this is a silly post...
they are unique shops... 24 of them?
this is like a new weapon comes out... with the most amazing eco... currently the best eco is A-3 Justifier Mk.II Improved... at 3.28... let us say this weapon does around the same damage... and eco is around 3.50!...
they just introduced this weapon... now all impmk2 owners are pissed... and post a vote on the forum demanding to change their eco to 3.5... that is basiclly what i see here...
all the shop and apt owners are going to vote for free fees... but the problem is you dont know how much these shops will sell for... or apts... i would guess they are worth a premium because they are rent free... which makes them kinda unique...
it would be a disservice to the community to change all other claim deeds because you demanded it... would set a terrible precedent...
Just like the New Oxford cave shops were worth a premium, then on a whim, MA changed the way they were and upped the prices like crazy on ALL of them til a few of the owners of those places took notice and finally begged until FPC gave in and lowered the monthly fees on a few of them, and the rest of them got one year rent free. Just like on a whim, they changed every deed in game to remove the wording to associate the activity the deed owners have with "owning" something in game vs just maintaining it?....
If would not set a terrible precedent, because as has been proven over and over again, MA and FPC actually want us to demand and ask for things here in the forums. Actually, some many months ago, I think Marco actually said something in the forums somewhere about wanting participants to play a bigger role in determining the future of estates... How is threads like this not doing that?!? They want us to roleplay? Here we are on the forums they bought and now own, doing just that.
hmm I certainly like the idea of no shop fee... then again everyone who owns a booth in the current system is fucked. Basicaly a booth is a downgraded shop but its big + has allways been that they are tax free. Changing the system and thus nerfing the booth might create a bigger havoc than introducing something completely new without taxes because that will not affect previous booth/shop owners.
They could remedy that injustice to booth owners as they did similarly several years ago... I don't know all the intimate details, but somewhere there was a thread a few years ago, in the era before I bought my shop, where booth owners in Hadesheim (prior to the eviction and movement to Corinth - nice of a Government to support these homeless vegabonds by putting them near an ocean that may someday remove the beach as the global tide gets higher and wipes out Corinth - I digress) but... anyways, it is said that at that time couple of years before there were problems for the booths (for a much smaller amount of time then the quarter of a year booth owners got screwed right after vu 10, when they owned booths but could not put anything in them as others could pick them up) the booth owners that had the problematic booths at Hadesheim got the problems fixed eventually, and got free shopkeepers out of the deal too.
Solution - either increase number of item slots or give all the booth owners, and house owners with free rent estates right now, free shopkeepers when the switch is made to remove the fees on all estates!!!
The 'rent' fees do not go to Mindark or the planetpartners, but in the so-called loot pool. So it doesn't matter to MA one way or the other.
I'd like to see you prove that with a quote from an official website or FPC or MA. Prior to the time that I sent in a support ticket about taxes at Genesis, Sakura, and Omegaton, some believed that that money went to the loot pool too, but the support ticket clearly explained that that's FPC's income right there. I suspect it's the same with the monthly payment to keep the doors open on the various estates... but I'd definitely not call it a cash cow as many estate owners choose to not pay, and even if they did, in a shop like mine, it works out to be a little over 14 bucks a year - not too much money there... probably not even enough to pay one hour of developer's pay.
==== below copy of part of a post I made on another thread not too long ago====
Link to original thread this is from
http://www.mmogamer.com/06/11/2007/...ness-to-attract-150-million-users-to-entropia
The MMO Gamer: Does MindArk take a transaction fee when players trade with each other?
Marco Behrmann: No. We also don’t take any transaction fees converting real-virtual currency.
Case Description
Category: In-world (game play)
Subject of query: Other in-world questions
Details: As an owner of a shop and booth in Omegaton, I wonder where taxes on my shops are going. Normal LAs and Malls have participant owners that collect the Taxes. Omegaton, Genesis, and Sakura seem to have no LA owner or main estate terminal for the entire LA. Therefore, I'd like to know, where the heck are taxes collected from shops in Sakura, Genesis, and Omegaton going? If it's going back in to the loot pool, is there any way you can prove it? If it's going to Mind Ark or FPC, why? It seems a bit like taxation without any form of representation since there's no LA owner to talk to like there is with other shops on other LAs, malls, etc. If you can collect the taxes together, similar to the way ammo is collected in events to give to the winner of an event as a prize, maybe you can do similar with shop owners in game or maybe collect it for something for LA owners in the cities to vote on how it will be utilized in a voting booth or something, making the community stronger?
....
Hi,
Thank you for your patience regarding this issue. Please accept my apology for the delayed reply.
I have been informed that in such cases MindArk and / or Planet Calypso are the owners in such cases and therefore receive the tax fees.
Kind regards,
===============
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setview/features/loadFeature/120/gameID/31/from/features
We are very reluctant to change the stats for any item in the virtual universe, as such measures would bring instability to the ingame market, which is just plain bad. We are a business and our main priority is to have pleased customers for the long haul. Anything else is just plain stupid.
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Seems the promise to not take money from the transactions between players that Marco came up with does not have a place in shops, which is sad since so many shop owners paid so much to own the places. Both the taxes and the monthly fees seem like a transaction fees to me.
If the fees are removed, the shop owners can likely sell for cheaper then they are now... which can only be a good thing the the whole community. Can't see why people would not want to be able to buy things cheaper then they are right now?!?
It also seems to me that introducing this whole new rent free continent is , in essence, changing the stats of every deed that's in game now, irritating customers that have been here for the long haul instead of pleasing them, and IS and WILL introduce instability in the ingame market, and "is just plain stupid" for that very reason.