Trade Ledgers

[RedGiant]

The trade ledger system, which I thought of positively of at first, I actually now find more problematic as it gives a tool to settlement appointees to monitor transactions on a microscopic scale. If this is the intent, then bully for the system.

Some settlement appointees have taken to vigorously monitoring said ledgers and issuing out monthly warnings. Keep in mind monthly warnings, due to the 10 to 1 time reduction Arelith roughly operates under, means you can be under sanction in 3.25 days.

This is all legal. No one has broken the rules.

But is this really good for Arelith?

Thoughts?

[Xerah]

Great for Arelith. Absentee shop owners, over priced goods, or storage shops are a waste of space that someone useful could be using.

[The Rambling Midget]

But is this really good for Arelith?

Have you seen the state of player shops? I would explain it, but it would require more profanity than what's allowed here.

DMs can still intervene. If players are too heavy handed, report it.

[Ork]

Very good for arelith.

[Cerk Evermoore]

More shops should be evictable.

[TimeAdept]

Great for Arelith. Absentee shop owners, over priced goods, or storage shops are a waste of space that someone useful could be using.

[RedGiant]

Overwhelming pro response. This is not unexpected.

I suppose I'm with the minority then. I would like to see more unaligned housing and shops. I'm rather beyond some of the simplistic arguments here. No one is defending junk shops.

Current settlement economics can, however, easily...
- prioritize hard core over casual players
- exacerbate time-zone issues
- encourage bulk over quality
- lead to stupidly underpriced goods

These are probably just problems of the minority report.

Some don't think underpricing is a thing or at the very least a problem, but I think it is just as dangerous to a stable economy.

Take wands for example. People are routinely selling wands for 1-2k over cost. They are eating the tax and pretending the 225xp doesn't exist, because, for a 30th lvl, it kinda doesn't. Said wand may grant 46 uses of Umberhulk form and associated truesight. Your profits, in the Arelith economy, might let you buy one single spell component use. No sane mage should be this desperate or stupid, unless they are attempting to flood the archipelago with dangerous magic from their own personal fortunes. This is a great one-off mad mage story, but does not a functioning economy make. This is, however, the Arelith economy on underpricing.

[monkeywithstick]

I find volume begets profits to be quite honest. I'm not sure what the problem is with providing cheap consumables, just makes it easier for new characters to get them for leveling.

[Ebonstar]

Overwhelming pro response. This is not unexpected.

I suppose I'm with the minority then. I would like to see more unaligned housing and shops. I'm rather beyond some of the simplistic arguments here. No one is defending junk shops.

Current settlement economics can, however, easily...
- prioritize hard core over casual players
- exacerbate time-zone issues
- encourage bulk over quality
- lead to stupidly underpriced goods

These are probably just problems of the minority report.

Some don't think underpricing is a thing or at the very least a problem, but I think it is just as dangerous to a stable economy.

Take wands for example. People are routinely selling wands for 1-2k over cost. They are eating the tax and pretending the 225xp doesn't exist, because, for a 30th lvl, it kinda doesn't. Said wand may grant 46 uses of Umberhulk form and associated truesight. Your profits, in the Arelith economy, might let you buy one single spell component use. No sane mage should be this desperate or stupid, unless they are attempting to flood the archipelago with dangerous magic from their own personal fortunes. This is a great one-off mad mage story, but does not a functioning economy make. This is, however, the Arelith economy on underpricing.

Since my current toon is with the Trade Ministry and Finance office, I would just like to chime in.

We dont go after pricing much at all, save when the same items in other shops have set a running market value, and your items are double or triple that amount. It adds up like this. The running market has 100 sales for instance, those with double or triple the price have 15 of the same item. To keep this to a minimum, we would send a letter or post a sign asking the lease holder to come see one of the officers in the office.

Now this doesnt mean your item is 50-1000 off the market that is the current norm, again this is when its double triple or even more at time. Going closer to the current market makes everyone involved more coin.

Now our primary goal is to keep illegal goods from being sold.
Necromantic items, poisons that can be used in water supplies, not blade toxins, items that allow animation of the dead, or summoning of the dead. The basic dark arts nono things.
If something is questioned, it goes to the entire office before anything is done.

Warnings, Fines, and yes even lease terminations if the first two do not do the job (although I have yet to see an actual eviction happen)

Oh another thing, the every month inspections are not to the second. Full inspection of every shop and then dealing with anything found, takes about a RL week so they are more like every two to three month inspections more like quarterlies, with just casual checking for full shelves otherwise.

Plus we do do other things.

[The Rambling Midget]

Current settlement economics can, however, easily...
- prioritize hard core over casual players
- exacerbate time-zone issues
- encourage bulk over quality
- lead to stupidly underpriced goods

Casual and hardcore players alike can run good shops. It's not hard at all, it just takes a little extra time and effort. Shops should go to those who use them.

Time zones are completely irrelevant. Shops are accessible regardless of whether you're logged in.

Bulk over quality is an irrelevant issue, here. Quality is function of item properties, as set by the module designers. If people want what's being sold, it'll be bought in sufficient quantity to support the shop. If the market is flooded, the shop will become unprofitable and fail, or force the owner to sell other things in order to remain relevant. This is all self regulating, as long as competition is allowed.

There's no such thing as stupidly underpricing goods. They'll simply vanish in bulk from one shop and appear at reasonable prices in another. We already give away hundreds of thousands in equipment and consumables in charity barrels, and that's failed to crash the PC economy.


The only thing that changes is that settlement leaders, who are likely already mortified by the possibility of an OOC reprisal from an upset player, can at least develop a case to remove the absolute worst offenders.

[The GrumpyCat]

Just to keep in mind: the ledgers don't neccesarly have ANYTHING to do with eviction, except adding a tool. All else comes down to roleplay.

To evict all you really need is interactive rp with the person owning the shop. A settlment leader can evict someone from a shop because their nose is slightly crooked, or they have the wrong sort of hair colour, as much as because their goods arn't selling.

[Subutai]

As another current Ministry of Trade employee player, I can say that the issues necessary to get a notice (generally, consistently low sales volume) are not hard to overcome. The Trade Ministry isn't asking anyone to be making dozens of sales per IG month, only a few, really. Does it still need some work? Probably. Mercantile Building shops should be held to a higher standard, for example, than shops by the cemetery, simply because everyone and their brother uses the Mercantile shops, while only a few people ever wander out to the cemetery and browse the stalls there.

On the argument that it favors hardcore over casual players, I'll also chime in and say that it does not. What it does do is favor active shop owners vs. owners who only check their shop once a week, and only restock half of that time. It's not uncommon to check the shops and see two items in stock, then check the ledger and see 6 sales in the past 7 months. This isn't the kind of environment Cordor wants to have, nor, I think, is it the kind of environment Arelith players want to have.

My character recently got a shop after a long time of trying to get one. During that time, I saw dozens of shops go almost completely unused, and would often only very rarely be restocked until they'd suddenly appear back on the market one day, someone else would get them, and the process would either repeat, or happen somewhere else. This isn't an experience unique to me. It's very common. There aren't nearly enough shops for the size of the playerbase, so shops sitting idly held by people not using them simply isn't acceptable, or fair.

If your character thinks the Ministry's notices are unfair, they can address that IC. I'll note, though, that in the past, it's been as simple as adding a couple of relatively quickly-selling items to a shop. Throw in some repair kits, glass bottles, and spell components, and you'll go well beyond the extremely low minimum sales.

[Bibliophile]

It took a few tries to decide exactly what I wanted to say here so if I ramble please bare with me..

If you are a casual player and you can not keep your shop stocked then one I would ask why you feel like you need to run a shop. If it isn't the stock that is low but that nothing is selling then that is an entirely different issue. There has to be some reason why your things are not moving off the shelf. Is someone underselling you? Do you have high end gear that will move slow as it only needs bought once? Do you have just have random finds that just about everyone can lay hands on so no one wants to buy them?

Suggestion? Share your shop! People are desperate to sell their things and can't get their hands on a location because people cling to them. If you're casual and can't get out to collect things but want to do merchant rp? Hang out and ask people if they have anything they want to sell to you instead of the peddler. Use a temp shop and advertise you're buying. I personally let space in my shop currently to four other people even though I have zero problem stocking the entire thing myself. There are things that the shop owner can do that will help them comply with the city's current policy.

I can say that a lot of work and effort is being put into trying to get Cordor shops to be decent. If that is where the problem happened I would really encourage the shop owner to come find one of the Trade Ministry. We are not trying to kick people out of their shops, that is a last straw thing. We are trying to create rp and encourage and give ideas and make things better over all for other players who are looking for things in my opinion. If it isn't coming across that way then again please come find us and let us know what we can do differently. I can't promise it will change but I know I for one am more than open to ideas other than hearing for a third time ooc that all the time spent is just annoying people and not good at all for the server. Ideas to help it along are much better than just saying you don't like what is done. It can't be fixed if there is not a solution offered.

[Masceo]

Ebonstar and Subutai both explained the idea behind the ledger and shop oversight by the Finance department perfectly. As another current player of a department member, I'd add that all of us try to offer solutions to both the character and by extension the player ( if their playtimes are making it difficult to run the shop). The first question asked of an owner is "Is there something we can do to help you?" Eviction is always the last option, as neither my character nor I want to take a shop from someone.

For whatever reason, be it IC or OOC, very few suggestions or offers are accepted, including contacting other characters they could share space with, which seems the easiest and most inclusive option for everyone. Solves the empty shop problem, gives those wanting a shop a foot in the door and should create some rp at least.

As was also pointed out, it is about quantity. At least for me, I think a shop should serve several characters. If you happen to make something high-end that sells regularly, even better but shops should be making regular sales regardless.

My question to those that see this as an issue would be, why do you want to own a shop that makes a handful of sales every ig year?

[RedGiant]

I'll try to check the passion here...

Okay, lets be frank. I've owned two serious, long-term shops in my 10+ years in Arelith, and have largely been harassed/harangued out of both. This happens in and out of character, with my first shop even making it onto the forums, because people said I never sold anything...despite doing about 8-9 million in sales. (This was in the old days where this kind of cash was arguably harder to come by.) I thought the trade ledger would actually be a boon to people like me, since I could prove now that things were moving.

My current business plan was high-end enchants, including regular 3 stat items, improved "found" runic items, and curios, often with price tags at 100k, but never more than 200k. These were rarer but spectacular sellers, and again I was several million into profits. To make sure this was even better for the settlement, I purchased all the base items, invariably cheaply sold 1 and 2 stat items from the settlement shops to begin with, before improvements. This ensured the settlement got its taxes twice from a character who was intensely loyal to his home town.

Since the implementations of ledgers (and only since), I have had the shop repeatedly target by several iterations of settlement leaders, peppered with letters of concern, cluttered by threatening signage, and summoned to several meetings...to the point I no longer find it fun...again. This character's rationale and business plan was explained to trade ministers several times.

Many of you have posted here on your bulk sales theories and acceptable timetables, which are exactly part of the problem, and why I took this to the boards.

You can sell crap (I've tested this theory...with several of you) and if you sell it often, you will get no harassment. Despite selling three items of crap every month for a profit of 800 tax to the city, settlement leaders would seemingly prefer this over selling a 200k item once every six months, for a profit of several tens of thousands.

This makes no sense, its not fun for the target merchant, and much of the common wisdom of the "trade experts" here should be questioned.

Obviously, I take issue with many theories presented here, and at least this thread has gotten them out into the open. The 10 to 1 time compression is an Arelith fact, with many ministry members stubbornly sticking to their dogma that you have to make sales every month. This is 3 irl days. Seriously? Can we take an IRL vacation? What if I have to IRL work the whole weekend (which happens)? What if IRL my job takes me off the grid for a few days (and it does)? This apparently opens one to questions on "why I feel like I need to run a shop".

This is a critical hit of un-fun, but, as GrumpyCat alluded to, all technically legal. You can all make fun and play tiny violins if you want, but this just closes business for an entire type of player. The most elegant solution I suppose would be more, not less, independent quarters and shops.

[xanrael]

What exactly is included in the ledger?

Is it just the quantity of sales regardless of type? Quantity of sales by type? Does it include gold made? Is there a summary page that you can drill down to see more information like the sales log you would see at the shop itself?

[RedGiant]

And just because TRM always deserves abit more...

Casual and hardcore players alike can run good shops. It's not hard at all, it just takes a little extra time and effort. Shops should go to those who use them.

Time zones are completely irrelevant. Shops are accessible regardless of whether you're logged in.

Bulk over quality is an irrelevant issue, here. Quality is function of item properties, as set by the module designers. If people want what's being sold, it'll be bought in sufficient quantity to support the shop. If the market is flooded, the shop will become unprofitable and fail, or force the owner to sell other things in order to remain relevant. This is all self regulating, as long as competition is allowed.

There's no such thing as stupidly underpricing goods. They'll simply vanish in bulk from one shop and appear at reasonable prices in another. We already give away hundreds of thousands in equipment and consumables in charity barrels, and that's failed to crash the PC economy.

The only thing that changes is that settlement leaders, who are likely already mortified by the possibility of an OOC reprisal from an upset player, can at least develop a case to remove the absolute worst offenders.

Agreed that casual and hardcore players both can run good shops...if they are allowed to...which is measured, as I have taken pains to show, in highly subjective terms.

Timezones are completely relevant when enforcement agents are people you've only seen logged once, and they think the same of you.

Bulk being preferred over quality is highly relevant, because, again, the ledger records sales. Several generations of settlement leaders prefer regular movement of lower priced goods over infrequent movement of higher priced goods, even if this actually amounts to less profit to the settlement.

Finally, I did say "some don't think underpricing is a thing", which obviously includes TRM. I purposely gave the example of wands, which most take as something of a one-dimensional good for new players. This is not good for everyone. This is not good for the uprising wizard who may want to enter the wand market, but cant, because lvl 30 characters can eat the xp costs and easily survive on the comparative profit trickle provided by bulk wands sales, which are not at all commensurate to their actual value. I gave a detailed example of how selling wands for 1k over invoice, which is quite common in the glutted wand market, its really quite "stupid", as in lacking any connection to the other economic realities of Arelith. This, of course, won't crash the Arelith economy, it just kicks people out of the game who might want to make an actually reasonable profit.

[RedGiant]

What exactly is included in the ledger?

Is it just the quantity of sales regardless of type? Quantity of sales by type? Does it include gold made? Is there a summary page that you can drill down to see more information like the sales log you would see at the shop itself?

You know we might be coming to an answer here that would allay most of my objections. I admit, I'm not sure if the shop displays any more information to settlement leadership. I suspect it doesn't, but if it had some options to display profits to the city without doing additional math (maybe even per item, per time period, and per the lifetime of the current shop owner) this would maybe make the kind of shop I was enjoying more palatable to settlement leadership.

[Cerk Evermoore]

Methinks the wand makers should consider creating scrolls or potions or finding a different nitche' in the market. Several do exist in Arelith.

[Xerah]

I mean, say whatever you want to justify, but I imagine 99% of players would rather see shops that have sales that happen more than once every 6 months/18 days.

[Flashish]

I think encouraging people to sell products that actually move is a positive thing. It also makes people look around a bit to find out what isn't available, increasing diversity. It also encourages faction and otherwise shared shops.

I have a question about shared shops. FOIG is metagaming-y, IMO, as it's something that your character would definitely know and it requires at least two people to test. If a faction has a shared shop, does the gold go into the faction account, the owner's account, the person who put the item in the shops account or what?

[Xerah]

I have a question about shared shops. FOIG is metagaming-y, IMO, as it's something that your character would definitely know and it requires at least two people to test. If a faction has a shared shop, does the gold go into the faction account, the owner's account, the person who put the item in the shops account or what?

If it is 100% shared, then you can have one person (the one that doesn't own the shop) create a faction then have 50% go into that faction and the owner takes the other half.

How I've done it in the past is pay up front. So, I get something with known prices (gems, essences, spell components, etc.) I give them [100 - TAX_RATE - 5]%. So, for a 800 gp spell component with a 5% tax rate, I'd give them 710 gp for each one. People do not like this agreement for some reason but it's pretty fair for everyone.

[Kuma]

i will say that when recently approached by the trade police for having a garbage shop i was a little put off but since organising my stuff and moving stock, i'm making hella bank with ease, so it's a two-way street

[The Rambling Midget]

Timezones are completely relevant when enforcement agents are people you've only seen logged once, and they think the same of you.

Bulk being preferred over quality is highly relevant, because, again, the ledger records sales. Several generations of settlement leaders prefer regular movement of lower priced goods over infrequent movement of higher priced goods, even if this actually amounts to less profit to the settlement.

Finally, I did say "some don't think underpricing is a thing", which obviously includes TRM. I purposely gave the example of wands, which most take as something of a one-dimensional good for new players. This is not good for everyone. This is not good for the uprising wizard who may want to enter the wand market, but cant, because lvl 30 characters can eat the xp costs and easily survive on the comparative profit trickle provided by bulk wands sales, which are not at all commensurate to their actual value. I gave a detailed example of how selling wands for 1k over invoice, which is quite common in the glutted wand market, its really quite "stupid", as in lacking any connection to the other economic realities of Arelith. This, of course, won't crash the Arelith economy, it just kicks people out of the game who might want to make an actually reasonable profit.

They're looking at your ledger, not your login times. And if your times never overlap, they can't contact you to take your stuff, anyway. No problem.

These players aren't stupid. They're capable of understanding that selling one MD weapon per IG month is better than selling twenty little chest loot trinkets in the same time span.

If you're being undercut, sell something else. This is not a single player game. Others should not be required to make sacrifices to pave your path to success. Wands, scrolls, and potions are bad examples, because they take zero effort to make. Of course they're going to have some of the most narrow margins. You're selling sand in a desert. When you get into competition selling things that take more effort than clicking on your quickslot and then on a prefab magic item template, the one who cares more will win. Eventually, as prices are forced down on either side, one side will decide that it's not worth the time anymore. That's competition.

[Ebonstar]

Timezones are completely relevant when enforcement agents are people you've only seen logged once, and they think the same of you.

Bulk being preferred over quality is highly relevant, because, again, the ledger records sales. Several generations of settlement leaders prefer regular movement of lower priced goods over infrequent movement of higher priced goods, even if this actually amounts to less profit to the settlement.

Finally, I did say "some don't think underpricing is a thing", which obviously includes TRM. I purposely gave the example of wands, which most take as something of a one-dimensional good for new players. This is not good for everyone. This is not good for the uprising wizard who may want to enter the wand market, but cant, because lvl 30 characters can eat the xp costs and easily survive on the comparative profit trickle provided by bulk wands sales, which are not at all commensurate to their actual value. I gave a detailed example of how selling wands for 1k over invoice, which is quite common in the glutted wand market, its really quite "stupid", as in lacking any connection to the other economic realities of Arelith. This, of course, won't crash the Arelith economy, it just kicks people out of the game who might want to make an actually reasonable profit.

They're looking at your ledger, not your login times. And if your times never overlap, they can't contact you to take your stuff, anyway. No problem.

These players aren't stupid. They're capable of understanding that selling one MD weapon per IG month is better than selling twenty little chest loot trinkets in the same time span.

If you're being undercut, sell something else. This is not a single player game. Others should not be required to make sacrifices to pave your path to success. Wands, scrolls, and potions are bad examples, because they take zero effort to make. Of course they're going to have some of the most narrow margins. You're selling sand in a desert. When you get into competition selling things that take more effort than clicking on your quickslot and then on a prefab magic item template, the one who cares more will win. Eventually, as prices are forced down on either side, one side will decide that it's not worth the time anymore. That's competition.

As I posted above, it is not an every 3 day thing, or we would never be doing anything but that.

Ledgers show what you sell for how much after tax, just like the shop log.

It lets us see you havent sold anything for 18 rl days /6 months. or if you sold 20 things everyday.

What is being misread, is that we dont want shop keepers of all kinds. We do, There are some shops that have been held by the same person for rl years and you will notice they are not ones in the main shopping areas.

What we do want, is shops that both generate sales within the current market norm of providing what people want, and not to sell illegal goods according to the posted trade laws.

There is one shop I will not mention where, but was recently taken over when the player didnt log in to save his/her lease. It was stocked with some obvious top tier goods that hadnt sold due to its oddball locations. Now this new owner had windfall with these items and has been pushing people to his shop and he made sales. now he is in a quandry. Being a newish character, he doesnt have access to the areas to gather the same quality goods he has now sold out of. Simply put, he would die before ever getting to these places.
So he has been instead putting lower tier but available for him to place things that some people, mainly level 15 and under, have great demand for, so he is now rotating that into the supplement his lack of the top tier goods now.

What we dont want is to do our inspections and find no sales for months on end, simply because a shopkeeper wants to be Harry Winston, when his or her clientel are with a Walmart Purse.

Starter Settlements have little need for an all top tier shop that just collects dust, and then we hear on the boards and stopped in the street, why dont you kick those shops out, they are junk no one wants, or worse noone can afford.

Thats when we have to really think how can we solve this problem.