Ban people from shop

I am sick and tired of trying to offer good prices only to see the same 1 or 2 people taking the items and listing them on auction.

If I want to put item on auction (and I often do) I can do it myself with nobody's help. It's almost getting to the point where I'm considering selling my shop and just using auction.

I would like MA to introduce a way to ban certain avatars from my shop. Better still, a complete pricing system where I can group people (eg. soc members, regular customers, resellers, competition winners etc) and price items differently for each.

While I'm at it, give me an auto-pricing system so i don't have to individualy price twenty m2a everytime I restock.

Also, I want a way to sell groups of items (eg. complete armour sets)

And, and, and... MA, why don't u just look into revamping the whole shop system as you should have done pre-mall instead of just raising the auction fee in hope that scewing the auction would help shops.

Considering this game is marketed on being a real cash economy, they have put virtualy no thought into the ability of players to buy and sell.

some good ideas there, hope they pan out

My feelings exactly, and pretty much the main reasons that I have never bought a shop.

Some really good ideas there Slither. + rep

Yep. "Spam filter" kind of app in every estate terminal shouldn't be so hard to implement. Unfortunately ppl tend to have associates...

Unfortunately ppl tend to have associates

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There's no way to stop resellers if they really want to do it, but this would certainly make their life more difficult, and make the process slower for them.

hm, i get the point and i agree that shops/auction fee (for the not THAT rich ppl) should looked at and optimised

means improving both parts, not screwing one to make another one better
(adding higher dur to L armor, not dropping unL amps anymore to improve L stuff, the named increased auction fee etc.)


as to buy in a shop and sell at auction, i don't see a real problem

since there are several shop owners who buy cheap at auction and sell higher in their shops
it works the other way around as well and is quite often done that way as it looks like


but first, to ban avatars from shop

maybe if you really dislike one person, so yes
but if a reseller wants to buy it, they tend to have a couple of avas anyway, so blocking out one leads to blocking out several
since MA still didn't manage a bigger friendlist than 80, i doubt that would help much


different prices for different ppl sounds interesting though, although the same problem as above


the rest however sounds pretty nice and would be great for shop owners i guess
i would like the "sell complete armor sets" for auction as well though

totaly agree with this wish they would implement it!!

Totally agree with you Slither ... it was exactly the same in my shop Anyway, if you ban someone from your shop he won't have problem to create a new avatar to continue the same way!

Edit: And as i'm armor crafter, i'll buy again a shop only when selling group of items will be possible! When i was shop owner, i was really upset by people that only buy cheapest part to sell them back in auction!

slither said:

There's no way to stop resellers if they really want to do it, but this would certainly make their life more difficult, and make the process slower for them.

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Indeedy.

What I'd still like to see is autometic shop index in auction's purchase window. Like list of cheapest 5 shops prices listed.

Crafting shopowner's possibilities to promote his/her services is still shitty and expensive compared to the payback it may produce...

maybe if you really dislike one person, so yes
but if a reseller wants to buy it, they tend to have a couple of avas anyway, so blocking out one leads to blocking out several
since MA still didn't manage a bigger friendlist than 80, i doubt that would help much

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The pricing system in my mind would see the shop itself having a customer list where everyone who buys an item is listed (and those who haven't could also add their names). You could group your customers (soc, good customers etc) and then offer them discounts on some or all items.

And as I stated earlier, the reseller will always find a way around it if they want to but this will slow them down and maybe put them off doing it sometimes.

People will always be oportunistic and try and make a few quick peds if they see something they can make a deal on - these I don't mind. It's the guy who goes in the shop 2 or 3 times a day and removes anything he can make even a single ped on that pisses me off. I sell them item regardless, but my customers miss out on decent deals, which in turn means I get fewer repeat customers.

Well you can restrict shop entry only to friends as far as I know.

Combine this with the statement made at the developer chat that the FL is gonna be improved, there is a slight ray of hope here.
I really really hope that some of the changes that are about to come will happen soon and will be good...
FL is a mess and so nonstate of the art.

it bugs me as well. in real life a shopkeeper has the right to refuse service to anyone. in entropia if some sleaze bag skims stores daily to resell we can't stop him.

trust and his ore shop downstairs had the same problem.

While I understand the reason for this thread, what is happening here is no different to what goes on in RL.

I can walk into a shop offering an item for sale, buy it, and list it on Ebay with a starting price slightly above what I paid for it, and you can bet some one will buy it, as they will assume that the Ebay (Auction) price is going to be the best deal, and so won't actually check to see if it is.

There will always be (in EU and in RL) people who buy stuff in the expectation that they can sell it on at a higher price.

I can see no way to prevent it, unless you set your shop price above the current auction price. Of course, if you do this, it's unlikely to sell at all!

When I offer stuff in my booth I set what I think is a fair price considering the current MA reported price, and then it either sells, or it does not. If it does not sell, I have not wasted the auction fee, and if it does sell, I have the same peds i would have had from the auction (give or take a few pecs).

I don't care if it then gets re-sold. It belongs to the buyer now, to do with as they wish.
I am not saying I have the right business approach, but it does not give me an ulcer.

Same problem here ... same problem with Auk ... same problem with all crafting shop owners.

+rep for speaking what we'd all love to see.

Now send a link to this thread to MA and get them to action the ideas that come out of it.

agreed

it wouldnt be too hard to have a blacklist on shops. the fl option is effectivly a whitelist, so i am sure a few tweaks to that code wouldnt be too hard

+rep, many shop owners i have spoken to have the same problems

Name & Shame, Name & Shame....

LOL

(goes off to get pictchfork)..

Name & Shame, Name & Shame....

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lol

What I usualy do is use my med tp chip to go directly to my shop when I see them buying something and catch them red handed I then explain that my only option if they continue is to raise the price and then they can't make anything from reselling and nobody else gets a good deal. This has worked on a few occasions but some players won't even acknowledge that i'm talking to them.

Good post!

slither said:

I am sick and tired of trying to offer good prices only to see the same 1 or 2 people taking the items and listing them on auction.

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Wow, yet another flaw in the current system I never would have thought of unless somebody pointed it out. I think it goes to show the complexity of things in EU; not that the "game" is so complex, but rather that, once humans are involved in the mix, all sorts of unexpected connections and unintended consequences can pop up all over the place.

slither said:

Considering this game is marketed on being a real cash economy, they have put virtualy no thought into the ability of players to buy and sell.

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But here, I'd say your being a bit unfair. I think EU is a brand-new type of thing, and one with which nobody has much experience. The team at MA can be forgiven, IMO, if they've only managed to do a great job, and not gotten everything right. (If you don't agree they've done a great job, I ask you: why are you playing this game in the first place?) I'm pretty sure the people at MA have put a LOT of thought into it. But, one thing that many of you know from your own experience: economic theory is hard.

kalanen said:

What I'd still like to see is autometic shop index in auction's purchase window. Like list of cheapest 5 shops prices listed.

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That's an excellent idea, I think! This would at least have some effect on the situation, even if it's not a perfect fix: ppl would still be doing the thing that the OP complained about, and the Auction window would now be helping them. However, other players would at least have a better chance of getting the good deal...

I'd suggest a "Find this item in shops" button, which would bring up a screen listing every place the item is for sale, sortable by owner, location, price, and perhaps quantity, too. Or (to make it even easier on the dev team) maybe the addition of new "Shopping" terminals near the auctioneers, said terminals to allow browsing of items in shops throughout Entropia.

This would have the added benefit of boosting shop sales across the board, since most people refuse to slog through the lag-fest of every mall just to compare prices.

CorwinBS said:

I'd suggest a "Find this item in shops" button, which would bring up a screen listing every place the item is for sale, sortable...

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Would be very appreciated feature in shopowners' battle against the convenience of auction

Very interesting complaint...I can understand why you'd be annoyed; you buy a shop to offer good deals and build a group of repeat customers, only to have your good intentions "hijacked" by reseller whores.

Interestingly, this kind of behavior was far less common before the auctions were implemented. I don't even know what would solve that problem. You can't ban people from shops, even if they're reseller whores. You can't raise your prices because then you're on par with the auctions, and therefore there's no benefit to you or the customers to buy at your shop.

CorwinBS said:

I'd suggest a "Find this item in shops" button, which would bring up a screen listing every place the item is for sale, sortable...

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This doesn't solve the problem, unfortunately. That makes it even easier for reseller whores to buy up all the "low-priced store goods" only to slap 'em back in auctions. Plus, it competes with MA's auctions, and I'm pretty sure they won't dig that.

I vote get rid of auctions! Haha! I got pretty rich being a trader, the game was a lot more fun back then, there was a lot more player-to-player socio-economic interaction back then...now it's mostly just spamming and people stuck in auctions for hours on end...

(I realize that's not a valid solution, just joking...kinda...)

Some great ideas i'd like to see implemented, +rep.

I get flustrated when I want to go BUY a set of L armor only to find 4-5 of the parts available at the time. I thought it might be a good solution if the armor shop owners would put a sign for sale that said something along the lines of:

This sign entitles owner to one full set of "Insert armor name here" at "Insert full tt+price here" upon presentation of sign. Pm "Insert shop owner here" at (insert EF name, msn name, or email, etc etc here) or meet "Insert regular daily-semi daily time when shop owner available in shop here" to redeem. Cost of sign will be deducted from tt+price when returned and redeemed. Alteration of sign (there by altering who uploaded image) will not be valid and/or accepted.

This surely is a hassle and would be much better if MA simply fixed it but it is an option we could use now in game to solve a problem everyone is afflected by.

I would surely use this system if the price on the set was right and it would stop the people who buy up on piece preventing those of us who want the full set from getting it.

Hey Slither,

I had an idea like yours but not so much in the restrictive banning sense, as that usually does not go very far with people including the Dev's to implement such things on a platform based upon free market principles (re - Malls)

The idea here was to firstly allow people whom do wish to pay a monthly fee to extend their auction listing capacity.

ie. 100 items listing capacity = 100 ped per month paid via the auctioneer system in advance, 150 items = 200 ped, 200 items = 300 ped.

Now if a person wishes to change their capacity say from 100 items to 200 items, the new charge and capacity is applied, any remaining time-frame on the old rented capacity is lost from making the change. This charge ofc is paid to MA.

If the capacity is smaller, the items listed are purged from the listing from the oldest listed up-to the capacity limit in effect. The same would apply when the extended capacity rental time-frame runs out and has not been renewed/paid up in advance.

Now for Shops, Mall Shops, Booths etc.

Booths would get a boost to 150 items, this would be done by allowing 20 items on the displayable area along with MA redesigning the booth to add a shopping assistant npc, much like a shopkeeper pad that does not bring up a shopkeeper window but a self contained auctioneer style (much cut down simple straight out listing) of all items pertaining to that booth. This would list the (up-to 150) items including those out on display for the customer to easily browse through the listing and purchase the items wanted.

Apt Block # Shops & Small Mall Shops would have their item capacity boosted to 300 items giving them a clear advantage over the max auction listing. In the Apt Shop and Hallway of the Mall shops again would be a NPC Shop Assistant to give a browsing list of what can be purchased from a single point of sale. The NPC Assistant would list all items placed in the shop (up-to 100 item points worth on the floor in apt block shops & 150 item points in Small Mall shops) and the additional can be added to the Assistant directly with the easy to use single point of sale browse facility.

Note : The Assistant will only list items on the floor and within it's own additional item listing capacity, Shopkeeper pads still count as 6 item point floor items and will use up 6 of the floor points for item listing as they do now. The NPC Shop Assistant will not list items located in Shopkeeper Pads

Large Mall Shops would have their item capacity boosted to 450 items, 250 points for the floor, 200 points on the NPC Shop Assistant.

Now the part you have all been waiting for ....

Any item purchased from a Booth, Apt Shop or Mall will have a flag added to the item in the database with a time/date stamp of the purchase. This would restrict the purchaser from listing the item on the Auctioneer for a grace period of 7 days. The item however can still be sold and direct traded in open outside flea market style trading arena (ie. Port Atlantis, Twin Peaks wtb/wts areas etc and/or traded directly to others in any fashion that would normally happen to date)

So there you have it. No banning/restricting peoples ability to access facilities to purchases items from shops. Just that items purchased from a shop/booth with have a grace period time/date stamp associated with them upon purchase by a consumer before it can be listed on the auctioneer.

Direct trading this item to another player would not remove the time/date auctioneer listing grace period stamp of which can be clearly seen on the (i) Info page when examining the item.

Other than that the other ideas you have about pricing items in an easy fashion is great Slither. I feel something does need to be done about the poor auctioneer & shopping system here in EU ....

Like all things I suppose they are getting old hat, much like the chat system and are in dire need of revamping to bring it up to speed with the current day uses of the economic platform.

Of course I must not forget flexibility and freedom of choice, so naturally, this would be an option that would be activated from the NPC Shop/Booth Assistant and would allow the shop/booth owner to enable or disable time/date item resell grace period stamping upon purchased items.

~ Sparkz

Gandolf said:

I get flustrated when I want to go BUY a set of L armor only to find 4-5 of the parts available at the time. I thought it might be a good solution if the armor shop owners would put a sign for sale that said something along the lines of:

This sign entitles owner to one full set of "Insert armor name here" at "Insert full tt+price here" upon presentation of sign. Pm "Insert shop owner here" at (insert EF name, msn name, or email, etc etc here) or meet "Insert regular daily-semi daily time when shop owner available in shop here" to redeem. Cost of sign will be deducted from tt+price when returned and redeemed. Alteration of sign (there by altering who uploaded image) will not be valid and/or accepted.

This surely is a hassle and would be much better if MA simply fixed it but it is an option we could use now in game to solve a problem everyone is afflected by.

I would surely use this system if the price on the set was right and it would stop the people who buy up on piece preventing those of us who want the full set from getting it.

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One other thing I would like to add to this!

Be nice to seen gun/amp combos sold this way too--Like if you buy a "insert weapon here" get "insert matching L amp here" for "insert price here"(could show tt+ for each item or be a special combo price). Could be for any special combo sales.

I think it would best suit everyone to have the sign price equal to it's own market value and then just deduct it from the price of the combo when they redeem but oc any shop owner could do it anyway they wanted too--selling a sign for the full price of the "Combo Deal" would insure the shop owner gets the peds up front but could lead to hassles when they run into troubles trying to redeem it and can't meet/find the shop owner for various reasons.

Lavawalker said:

So there you have it. No banning/restricting peoples ability to access facilities to purchases items from shops. Just that items purchased from a shop/booth with have a grace period time/date stamp associated with them upon purchase by a consumer before it can be listed on the auctioneer.

Direct trading this item to another player would not remove the time/date auctioneer listing grace period stamp of which can be clearly seen on the (i) Info page when examining the item.

Click to expand...

In addition to this, it could work in both MAs favour to promote shops as well as the Shop Owners favour to promote their service offerings is to add to this (i) info page in addition to the time/date stamp the shop/booth number, location and owner as the place last purchased.

ie. Date 01/01/09 @ 11:00 MA time purchased from :
Shop # xx, Level 1, Emerald Lakes Mall : Snake Slither Hellfire

Another thing to note, the time stamp will not restrict other shop owners from reselling the items in their own shops, but will carry the above mentioned tag until resold in their own shop.

This time/date stamp is only meant to restrict the immediate resale of the item upon the Auctioneer system for a period of 7 days.

Again this would motivate people further to go booth/apt shop/mall shopping and again promote the whole shop/booth concept

~ Sparkz

What seems to be the problem? You sell your items you price them for, if the resellers want to buy them and sell them for 5 ped more on the auction, and with 3 ped fee who cares.

You have a point because some items get out of stock while hunters want to buy them but there are non left.

How about this then?
You buy a shop but you dont have anything to put there.
There is a crafter that has stuff to sell but cant afford a shop.
The crafter wants to sell his stuff in a shop but doesnt trust the owner of the shop.

What if:
The trader could put a thing so he can let people hire 50 places in his shop.

The crafter could put his stuff for sale in the shop at his chosen price, and he can just come pick up the stuff whenever he wants (the shop owner cant move them).
The shop owner gets a (by him) preset percentage of the value of the items sold.

Now the only thing I can see that wouldnt be good in this is if people put stuff where the shop owner doesnt want any items to be, but this could be fixed by adding a "return all items in shop that is owned by 'xxxx yyy zzzzzz' to its owner"-button that can only be operated by the shop owner.



That way crafters would be able to use shops without having to buy one themselves, if they are lower level.

What I would like to happen also would be a "search items in mall" display at the entrance at the malls.

I go up to it and can browse every item in the shops or search for a specific one and if there is some item I want in the shop/shops it would be displayed with prices.

I really hate running from shop to shop to see if any item I want is there. I rather just buy from auction. Pretty often on BO also.

But if any kind of "search & browse" system would be implented I would spend the extra few minutes browsing trough the malls inventory. Just like I browse trough auction pages when I need/want something.