Petition - FC shopkeeper!

So - this is what i keep hoping SE does for FC's - but figured i'd post it here for people to comment on.

The idea - an FC/House shopkeeper. With the following workings
1) Similar to company chest - but your required to set a price on every item on the shopkeeper.
2) multiple tabs (like the chest) where you can set access restrictions
3) history - similar to company chest.
4) gil tab/button - similar to company chest - w/ permissions and so on.

To the User/purchaser this would appear as a shopkeeper with multiple tabs - they would only be able to access tabs they have been granted "purchase" rights too. Maybe only two tabs but maybe more. Ideally this would let you set at a minimum a "public" tab and an FC only tab. Even better would be able to seperate tabs by FC rank (so that raid leaders can buy food for their raids - but no individual FC member can "clean" it out).

In effect this would permit FC crafters to sell items to only FC members at reduced rates in one tab - and other things to everyone in the world at whatever rates. It does create a possible issue with people putting stuff up in the wrong tab or wrong prices (right now this can only happen on a personal level rather than an FC level) but i feel the benefits would FAR outweigh the detractors.

Additional notes
1) can only be placed inside a house
2) can only have a "public" tab if your house is public
3) Possibly have the "housing enthusiast" list all "public" items for sale from the "fc shopkeepers" - this one might be a little to difficult on a technical level though.
4) possibly permit a setting to send a portion of sales to FC chest? - just a thought though (KamikazeMan)

Bonus impacts
1) additional traffic in housing zones from NON-FC players :)
2) Crafters and FC's can develop server wide reputations for what they sell, what they can do, and at what price (something crafters would LOVE to do).

feel free to hash it out some more and lets see if we get a response :)

I mean this is interesting. I would usually make food or items for people at a reduced rate but it usually turned into spur of the moment 'I need x amount of y in 10 minutes' or tagging back and forth with mail. I wouldn't be opposed to this system since I could just drop the stuff in there and let people take as they need and only have to worry about refilling it now and then.

How would this affect the market system that is all ready in place for the general public? How would it interact with the market boards, or would it be completely independent? If it is an independent system I don't know how much traffic you would being that the market board is usually pretty full, and there is always and undercut price, as an added bonus you wouldn't have to run from housing ward to housing ward for the best deals.

You would almost have to be able to assign specific slots to specific people, especially in a large FC. It would be incredibly unfair to allow a single crafter to hog 5-10 slots of very limited space hogged all to himself. Especially since this would essentially act like an extra market slot when it comes to general public sales.

I think I would prefer to see the ability to assign a price to items we place inside the FC chest. I place 50 Stuff Cabbage in there at x amount each, just like a retainer. This allows people to get items they need, while somewhat discouraging people from just jacking everything. (I say discourage because d*ck wads would still buy it all up and resell on market if it would make a profit). This could also be used as a system to get the FC gil for housing, items, repair materials, cooking materials, small things to just provide quality of life improvements without resorting to begging for donations from members or straight up demanding them. Anything an FC member purchases goes straight to the coffers, want to be generous and give away your goods? Don't give them a price.

Not to deride your idea, but why exactly would you need this? The market board works just fine for selling to other players and the company chest or straight up face-to-face interactions work for exchanging things with FC mates.

ElHeggunte -
1) for a larger FC face to face interactions are not always practical due to people actually doing a lot of stuff. In my mid-sized FC a number of us crafters would like to help other raid groups with food but it proves challenging.
2) The marketboard is the best place to sell stuff if all you care about is selling/profit. It is NOT the best place to sell if your looking to sell to people at cost or high demand items (who are in your fc).

Friendly Uncle -
1) I think this should be implemented separately from the FC chest because they server different purposes (though somewhat close) - i don't think it would be practical to merge them together (it would make FC chest management to complicated).
2) Adding individual users to this would again be to complicated - which is why you would leverage settings similar to what are available to gardening and chest access.
3) As to abuse - it is why you would have a history - your choice on how you approach any who abuse it but in my FC if we had this and someone abused it - they would be kicked w/o any debate - permanently.

It doesn't really serve a different purpose, its the same in my eyes. Getting items to your FC members when you may not be available or around to provide it. Most of the items you are probably wanting to sell, are probably all ready located in the company chest. Meaning all they would need to do is add the option to place a tax or cost on the item placed in the FC chest. I don't think it makes anything more or less complicated to manage. If you are able to put things into Tab A and B you simply get a prompt to associate a unit cost to the item no different than selling an item on your retainer. If you are able to withdrawal items from a particular tab and the item has a cost, it simply has a prompt telling you the unit cost, an input to enter how many you want to purchase, and a field that updates with total cost.

Really all it would be doing is adding the option to associate a cost to any item you place in a chest tab that you have access to. This keeps it private and from affecting the market system all ready in place. It is simple, it uses functions that are all ready in place including the transaction history. I think it would be a waste to develop a separate system for what is essentially an FC chest with the ability to set or pay an item cost.

I guess i'm biased in this regard - my fc has a HUGE turnover of existing stuff in our chest we usually turnover the 200 history limit daily - with each tab dedicated to a separate activity. Adding this functionality would probably cause it to implode into a nice sized blackhole :)

I support this personally... would encourage people to be a bit less grabby in the FC chest for private sales, and for public sales, the more alternatives there are the better. MB is just so friggin limited.

On top of what was already mentioned, it would be great if a percentage of all sales would go directly to the FC funds via Grand Company chest. Maybe like 5%.

thought of that - but again left it out of my description because it would be to complicated. Would be easiest to just have the shopkeeper with its own gil setup like the chest (with access permissions). I'll add it in the optional stuff though :^^:

I think the Market Board is a more suitable place to add it (or model it after) than the company chest, simply because that allows each member to offer stuff. LOTRO has an option on its Auction House to sell items either freely to anyone who wants them, or to sell them specifically to members of your own kinship (LOTRO's equivalent of FCs), and that seems to work pretty well. Lots of players use it to offer items to kinship members at cost (while using the higher market rates to sell similar items to other players).

Incorporating this feature into the MB means it takes up the individual member's MB slots rather than the company's chest slots (or new company-wide slots), so you would avoid the issue of one or two crafters monopolizing all the slots so nobody else can offer anything.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

Incorporating this feature into the MB means it takes up the individual member's MB slots rather than the company's chest slots (or new company-wide slots), so you would avoid the issue of one or two crafters monopolizing all the slots so nobody else can offer anything.

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If this were to be done, I would actually prefer the slots remain separate. A problem the MB has is most people focus on high movement, high margin items. Because slots are so limited.

So folks would be forced to trade off their very valuable, very limited slots... which would probably stop them from using an FC vendor in the first place. But separate this, and you'll see things like, for example... "Well the marketboard prices on pots/food have spiked but I know I can go to FC-such-and-such and get them for a good price!" (Where they're still prices at a margin that's profitable, and the crafter/FC benefits because their reputation leads to more sales).

Replace food & pots with crafted gear or who knows what else.

Anyway, I just think it's a benefit to have alternatives. The MB is very limited and wildly unstable.