Making the merchant a template

MZ3K

MZ3K

Grandmaster
There seems to be a good number of players who enjoy doing business for its own sake. Those players might enjoy merchant specific mechanics, which could include things like

Loan contracts and repo:
  • Loan contracts might work like vendor rental contracts with a way to try to collect on defaults.
  • Delinquent borrowers might go grey to the lender.
  • The lender might be able to use forensics to get the approximate coordinates of the delinquent's character or house.
  • A lender with LP and stealing might be able to break into a delinquent's house and repo a limited number of items.
  • The period during which the lender could collect from a delinquent might depend on certain skills.
  • The lender might be able to hire a skill-dependent number of players to help him repo items directly from the delinquent; the delinquent would be grey to the hired players.
Consignment:
  • Merchants' might be able to enter into consignment agreements to sell items on their vendors.
  • The total value of the goods being sold by consignment or the percentage taken might depend on the merchant's skills.

Silent auctions:
  • Merchants' vendors might be able to sell their inventory for the best offer received over some period.
  • The maximum length of the auction period might depend on the player's relevant skills (e.g. item id/arms lore/begging?)
Live auctions:
  • Merchants might be able to host live auctions.
  • Merchants might be able to take commissions for the items sold or charge an entry fee.
  • Auctions could take place in private homes or larger safe venues could be rented in town (another way to sink gold).
  • There might be a mechanism for multiple merchants to host joint auctions and split the profits; which could make for big player-run events.
  • The maximum value of all the items on auction would depend on the participating merchants' cumulative relevant-skills.
Empty Plots:
  • In order to get rid of empty plots faster, after some period of disuse (10 days?), empty plots might go on a list available to merchants.
  • Merchants could buy or bid on the plots on the list.
  • After acquiring the plot, the merchant might get to own it out right or might have until the house decays to sell it.
Currency Exchange:
  • The merchant might be able to buy plat from the banker. To keep the plat supply balanced, the exchange rate might depend on the amount of plat recently sold or the amount on the server.
  • Might be cool if the merchant could buy silver exclusively to loan to factioners. Some faction items are for sale for a limited time so the market could be big. Consequently, merchant's would charge a higher interest rate. Collecting from the best PvPers on the server would be tough if they decided to default. So silver loans might create high-stakes options for merchants.

Appraisal and bargain hunting:
  • The merchant could view a list of the prices of items with certain characteristics that are for sale or have recently sold.
  • The ability might depend on certain skills.
  • The radius and the length of time the merchant could search might be skill dependent.
  • More skilled merchants might get more detailed information about the items that the search returned.
  • To prevent market information from disseminating, merchants might be allowed only one, or a few, searches per day.

Haggling and special items:
  • The merchant's vendor's commissions and NPC prices might decrease according to the merchant's skill in (maybe) begging.
  • With enough skill in begging and a skill relevant to the NPC (e.g. taste ID for an alchemist) the merchant would have a chance to be offered a special item after purchases from an NPC.
  • The chance to be offered that item might increase the more often the merchant shopped at that NPC (becoming a favoured customer).
Keeping the merchant exclusive:
  • If a merchant is too easy to make, everyone will use one for their buying and selling. Presumably merchants want to be rich (i.e. have more than others do), so it would defeat the purpose of the template if everyone had one.
  • Merchant's might need to have a costly membership in the merchant's guild.
  • There might be recurring fees for membership in the merchant's guild.
  • Membership in the merchant's guild might require that the merchant keep his vendor's sales above a certain amount each month.
  • Rare power scrolls might be made for the merchant skills.
  • The merchant skills might increase slowly and might not increase after the first successful interaction with an entity (like with animal taming) in order to prevent macroing.
 
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MZ3K

MZ3K

Grandmaster
wreckognize said:
ever heard of roleplaying? u can just roleplay basically all of this without any coding needed.
Click to expand...

You could roleplay half of it, but it would have to be based on trust. That's a hindrance. It's the reason we have repair contracts, vendor rental agreements, etc. If I had a 500K item to sell, I don't know how much I'd trust most people in consigning it or auctioning it for me. A contract would go a long way.
 
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