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Someone needs to define what a player run shop is and can do, but here are my thoughts on major issues that need resolution.

1. can you sell to a player-run shop?
2. to items in the shop inventory survive a reboot?
3. how do we stop a shop owner from using the shop as a stash?
   • By not allowing him to take items out of the store once inserted, he has to buy them like anyone else. Taxes/NPC-tariff will then give storing a cost.
4. does someone have to 'man' the shop at all times for it to be useable?
   • In that case, could you hire a NPC to do the basic job for you? -- Fred - 16 Sep 2004
   • A player should not have to man the shop, in that case he could not even go about playing to aquire items to sell, ie, boring & useless! And he might just as well use auction instead. -- PumaN
   • Ok - he can use any other normal in-game technique to obtain the items and then put them in the shop for sale. -- FantoM
   • How about having to man the shop to be able to sell things? Do we require an NPC or the player to be there? -- FantoM

-- FantoM - 16 Sep 2004

As for acquiring them - I think it should be based on more than just being able to afford it. Perhaps the player has to prove themself to a stall vendor before they're given a stall, and maybe it lasts only the time they're logged in - if they log out with a fully stocked cart, that is the same as leaving it on the ground and you'll come back to find it empty.

Having it as a stall will cut down on the overheads such as having an attendant hired - the player can also pack this up or push it when he wants to move. Perhaps if the law module is ever finished, or maybe just as a PK action (although I'm not as sure about PK only) it can be possible for thieves to steal from the cart.

-- ProdigY - 16 Sep 2004

I think we should allow a player to purchase land and a shop and run it as a business, something more substantial to stalls. We can control the spread through not allowing the sale of a piece of land. We can probably just auction a piece of land over a period of time when we decide we want a shop in a particular place. Once sold a player could no doubt sell it to other players as they wish.

I think a shop should require either the owner or an employee to be present to act as the shop keeper.

I think such shops should be general stores that can both buy and sell - unless the owner decides to not buy certain types of things.

Should there be a GST?

• Each sale should get some of its money cut off, one part to taxes, and one part to the NPC -- PumaN
  • I presume we are talking about sales of goods, not the land itself. I was happy to not have an NPC. And as for taxes - we could just require the owner to pay land tax to some NPC every month and if it's not paid the doors are locked. The governing body would want a fixed income, not one that depends on whether or not the guy manages to sell anything. -- FantoM
    • Well, you can have both, one fixed amount per month, one percentage per sale -- PumaN
      • I'd hesitate to implement the percentage per sale, they can pay for their stock and the building and the NPC if we decide you need one to be able to sell. -- FantoM

I believe there should be a regular (monthly?) land tax.

-- FantoM

Will the owner build the shop, or will it just be assigned to them? it seems almost as though this would be a general shop just as any other, but with the player or his hired help set to the attendant which means no trading if they aren't present.

Can we assume the owner has a key, and they may choose to lock up shop when they leave (the game/to go kill things)? Can we assume it be feesable for the picklock command to be introduced for this?

I'm not sure where the taxes come from, I wasn't aware we had a government that wasn't Puma :). Do we restrict shops to a 'town', which can be given taxes easier than in some desert plains?

Are things bought for store prices and then given a value and put in the list to be sold as normal, or do they become bought using trade and given better 'haggle' market?

• The player should set the selling price of the item -- PumaN

Can a player franchise and start owning shops all over the place?!

-- ProdigY

Wrt to the storeroom portion of the shop - we could treat it like other shops - it's not a place you can get to. IE everything is on the shelves. This does mean that the owner would have to lock up when he left.

I was not intending on letting anyone just build a shop anywhere. The idea was that we'd open a shop up for sale and let the players bid to see who would buy it and then charge them a monthly fee to keep it.

Perhaps the idea of a stall that can be set up anywhere is better suited to your (Prodigy) idea? Such a thing wouldn't last the user's logging out, might be lockable but not very well and when unattended would be moveable by anyone at all - seems like a lot of work for something the players are not likely to use.

• I don't really have a whole idea, just jabbering out everything that comes to me to keep the design process moving. -- ProdigY

I'd suggest that an owner could buy an item from a player, at which time it might enter their inventory, or be placed on the desk or something. The owner would then perhaps 'shelve' it with a price tag attached. That's not so say that a player wouldn't offer less and then the owner could change the price tag...

Writing haggling code seems a bit pointless, they could always use the 'trade' command. Would be nice if it just functioned like a normal shop while the owner was in the room tho - less confusing for the players. Although the process of valuing an item and selling the items would be more complex as they'd have to involve input from the owner.

• By haggling I was thinking trade command. -- ProdigY
• I guess you all have concidered that the player owning this shop will most likely set a speed walk trigger to it and as anyone will want to visit it (using some public line, my guess will be at auction) just trigger off and sell some stuff to anyone wanting it. I think this is good thing, lets the player do some script coding (sarcastic) but play the game at the same time. The thought is that it need something more special stuff a plyer can do to avoid it used as a stash and private aucion house. FreD

-- FantoM - 21 Sep 2004

Sure, but that would take tons of coding and effort I think. In Ultima Online you could only purchase from shops. To sell you'd need a list of every item in the game and then the owner would need to select what items he's interested in and place a value on those items. Then people could run in sell a whole bunch of stuff and make that player poor... I say no.

- to items in the shop inventory survive a reboot?

Just what we want, 50 rotas, 200 sets of qgear and demon gear... endless rose. No lol.

- how do we stop a shop owner from using the shop as a stash?

Once it's in the shop, it's there for good, all you can do is change the price. You can't purchase from your own shop.

- does someone have to 'man' the shop at all times for it to be useable?

An NPC that you need to 'hire' when you login to run the shop. Hiring = ammount of coins that won't offset the money you're supposed to be making off the shop... maybe 10k or something like that. That, or the shop can just cost 2million coins and run itself.

-- ImANewbie - 22 Sep 2004 (Coped from the bboard by FantoM)

Glad to see a reply to the 'can things survive a boot' - I don't think they should either, unless they are things that the owner made, and seeing as we have no system for making things that's not a problem.

Wrt to the system of 'shop buying' if we require a player to man the shop at all times we don't have to code much - we just have to support trading between them. That said we can just not code it and (as sort of agreed above) we just let the player pay for goods using any existing technique.

Given that the player has used his own money to purchase items from other players, not letting him use them is a bit harsh. Thus blocking the removal of an item from the shop once it is put up for sale is perhaps a no-go. It does solve the stash problem though.

• Items sold to a shop (IMO should include the >1000 coins items that are stashed by most existing shops) are then on public view. A player must make his shop accessable by players for them to use it, and after that a player may come along and purchase these supposedly "stashed" items. If the owner can't sell to their own shop, that would probably make more sense and mean that at least one other person needs to know where the store is for him to stash there. This will only be effective if price trends are used in selling items (owner can't change the sale price of something to beyond potential buyer's capability). -- ProdigY
  • Ignore the 'how the player got the item' for a moment as it doesn't make much difference. The problem arises when a player obtains a good item, puts it up for sale at 10 million coins, leaves for a couple of hours, comes back, changes the price to 1 gold, buys it and then goes off to use it. Adding a cap of "potential buyer's capacity" doesn't effect a whole lot to my thinking - items get auctioned for a huge range of prices after all. -- FantoM
    • Sounds like we might be thinking different things - the idea was to stop the problem of player setting a value of 10 million and leaving it as a stash by either not letting them sell their items at prices which nobody can/will pay, by not letting the owners sell to their own store, and by having stocked items on sale at all times. The potential buyer's capacity refers to the owner setting a price on an item which is out of player's price range - having a cap of (for example) 3x the set_value() would stop an owner being able to sell an item to their shop and keeping it stashed by having too high a price for anybody to afford. We could, of course, use that lame 'this item is too valuable and is hidden away' thing, but that would be a pointless buy since in current shops i believe they're just discarded. -- ProdigY
      • In the rest of this discussion I think we are saying that we won't be selling to the shop, thus there is no 'hiding away' regardless. The value of an object can't be used to set a max at the shop because people pay much more than that for items on the auction line.
• Another way to have a stash is to not hire an attendant so nothing is buyable while the owner isn't present. -- ProdigY
  • That could be curtailed by making the NPC charge you for a month's wages at the time of hiring.
• So much talk about stashes, I see no wrong letting the player using his own shop and stack up a bunch of stuff he'll need behind the counter, and if he doesn't need it, set a price and put up in shop. After all the player has payed for the shop so he might use it as he wishes (as long as he can still pay for it). I'm even for an office behind the counter where the owner can relax and put his elite ass gear (free for any thief to picklock and steal).
  • Raises a good point - as long as it can be stolen then it doesn't matter - in fact you'd almost be crazy to leave something there unattended.

-- FantoM - 22 Sep 2004