Comments on Vendors

When vendors first appeared in the "Coming Soon" section of Origin's web page, I was very excited. After all, vendors showed a great deal of promise as a way to move the economy closer to a true supply-and-demand based system like the one I propose in my Economy Treatise. Unfortunately, the current implementation of vendors has a few serious flaws which I believe need to be remedied in order for them to achieve their potential.

Note: I had originally thought that there would be a problem with vendors affecting the local resource banks for the area where they are located. Obviously, long-term effects like this are difficult to examine and analyse, and I now have it on excellent authority that this is not the case.

One major problem with vendors is that they are invulnerable. Time and again, the game's designers have told the players that houses and boats are not meant to be 100% secure. This is fair enough, assuming that concepts like NPC human and animal guards will eventually be implemented correctly. Unfortunately, the current implementation of vendors defies this policy by providing a unique character in the game (the vendor) with the power of invulnerability. The additional feature that vendors can carry not-for-sale goods allows abusers to store items at no risk. This directly contradicts many other game elements such as limited safety-deposit-box capacity, insecure houses, etc. Unfortunately, due to the combative nature of the player population, this is probably a required feature, and the bulk of my objection to it will end if vendors are changed (as it seems they will be) to disallow most items from being made not-for-sale.

Another design flaw, less serious, is that vendors operate differently from NPC shopkeepers. Vendors would be much nicer to use if they worked (for the buyer) in the same manner as an NPC shopkeeper. Even though vendor inventories are generally more varied than those of shopkeepers, I believe that this would still be easier to use; if not, perhaps a variant of the NPC shop inventory with groupings similar to skill groups in the Skills window could be provided.

In addition, vendors damage the UO environment in general by promoting the UO equivalent of urban sprawl and by allowing people to inconvenience other players by trying to corner the market on certain goods (in the past, reagents were a prime example). Even before vendors, the proliferation of buildings was becoming a problem on all established shards (see my comments on houses). The initial popularity of vendors made the situation worse, as vendors in tents appeared on major roads throughout the world. For the most part, these vendors were created to sell one-time supplies of magic goods and other novelties; it would be better to allow consignment of such items through NPC-run shops (see the second addendum to my Economy Treatise for details). At least at first, the other major use of vendors seemed to be a concerted effort by vendor owners to monopolize the world reagent supply. Fortunately, under the current economic system this is extremely difficult, because reagents are created during magic-shop restocking. Nevertheless, this was very inconvenient for a time, and is (most unfortunately!) a good argument in favor of the current system of shop restocking (at least for reagents) that I attack in the Economy Treatise. Obviously, the correct fix for this is to provide a more consistent supply of reagents from the world at large (i.e. wilderness spawning and/or a way to harvest reagents; to prevent hoarding/stockpiling, all reagents should decay and respawn after a few days - after all, they are organic).

Although the idea of vendors is very appealing, the current design is badly flawed, for the reasons above as well as other problems. In my opinion, the correct implementation for vendors is not a distant dream, however. A few simple changes would make them much more user- and ecosystem-friendly:

• Vendors already require association with a building, so make the vendor's inventory be inside that building (also, consider removing the requirement for vendors to be associated with a building: allow marketplaces). Since owners wouldn't want to give up an entire building to their vendor, a new owner-to-vendor command (add) would be provided, using a targeting cursor to select an item in the building to put on sale. The vendor would add the item (probably a chest) to his inventory; also, the item must not be moved out of the house after adding it to the inventory (to prevent abuse). The vendor's money supply should also be kept in the building. Good side effects: vendor security equals house security; vendor death no longer means owner's items are free for the taking; vendors could operate more like normal NPC shopkeepers. Bad side effects: vendor security equals house security (yes, this is both good and bad). See my ideas on shops for further elaboration on this topic.
• Assuming the above, it should be possible (difficult, but possible) to kill a vendor. The benefits of doing so would be very limited, and it would have the appropriate effect on notoriety. The vendor would of course attempt to call guards, and any pets or NPCs set to guard him would defend him. The vendor might also be able to teleport into the safety of his building when attacked. As stated earlier in this essay, this becomes less of an issue if items cannot be made not-for-sale.
• It should be possible to determine the owner of a vendor, perhaps by asking the vendor himself. This does not hurt roleplaying, since the name of the owner doesn't in itself mean anything: the purchaser must still learn about the owner through other means. Another idea would be for the vendor to have the notoriety of its owner, as other controlled NPCs do (summons, pets, hirelings).
• Only containers should be able to be "not for sale". The main legitimate use of "not for sale" is to organize the vendor's inventory by putting items into "not for sale" containers; no item or stack of items should be allowed to be "not for sale". The first bullet point above would, of course, eliminate this abuse. "Shop decorations" like books with information that should not be for sale are also a legitimate use of this feature. It looks like Origin intends to implement this, although in my opinion it is vital that they include keys and keyrings in the list of things that cannot be made "not for sale" in order to prevent continued vendor abuse. This simply comes back to the purpose of vendors: they are intended to provide a way for players to run shops, period. Not-for-sale keys have no part in that, and are in fact a bug.
• PC-owned vendors should operate the same as NPC vendors from the buyer's perspective: address the vendor, use the keyword trade or buy, and use the familiar scrolling item and quantity selection screen.
• Presumably this is already planned, but it should be possible to specify items that a vendor will buy, at what price and in what quantity (see my thoughts on this). If a seller has items that the vendor is willing to buy, the traditional "sell" window should appear.
• It would be beneficial for owners to have more control over vendors, especially where they stand and perhaps "patrol" areas so that they don't just stand still. A way to provide clothing for the vendor to wear would be ideal: a wear command from the owner would attempt to don the next item given to the vendor (exchanging with whatever is currently worn if appropriate). This would allow for better-armored vendors as well as recognizable appearances for multiple vendors owned by the same player.

In addition to these changes to the current vendor model, I also support the idea for vendor marketplaces currently being discussed. There are a variety of areas in the game specifically designed for this (Trinsic and Nujel'm have the prime examples) and it would be a great addition to the game for many reasons: easier shopping, reduced need for buildings, community building, and more. Some thought needs to be put into various related issues, in particular, the costs for placing the vendor there, vendor commissions, and other means of discouraging people from just placing a non-serious vendor (who would effectively shut out a serious vendor, since there is a limited amount of room there).

Vendors would be allowed to start elsewhere (i.e., near a house, like current vendors) and if they get a certain number of unique customers actually buying things from them -- say, at least 500 purchases from at least 100 different people -- then the owner is allowed to move him to a town market area. An alternate "qualifying" factor could be a method whereby customers are allowed to grant "popularity" points to their favorite vendors, and vendors with high popularity qualify to move to a marketplace. Pricing for placing a vendor in a market would be high and dependent on the number of vendors already present -- as would the commussions charged. The variable commission is important, so that people who get in early don't end up paying a fraction of the real value for their spot. The game should adjust the prices dynamically to account for demand for the spots, of course. Initially, they would be dirt cheap, with hardly any extra commission; eventually, the commissions could rise up to 50% or more, and the price for the turf could be tens of thousands of gp.

Any or all of these fixes would be very beneficial to the overall economy, and would benefit both legitimate vendor owners as well as their customers.

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