Need Input on Traders

[Bovive]

Hey Ya'All,

So we basically have no setup for traders. I realize that some members of the guild do have trader alts and they prolly suck to be honest. A little organization and teaching would make us pretty strong. I don't think that having RID members traders joining Czerka Corporation is really the right path. Perhaps a merge is in order? My personal debate is this:

1) Do I help others compete against me?
2) Generally I only help traders that are non-competitive to me and my guild (Czerka)
3) If we merged with RID, then are we limiting our customer base to only IMPs or at least will we lose some Rebel customers?
4) Will Lexx ever order his armor?
5) Will my time spent helping traders get setup be worth it in the end? I mean, most give up as it is a hard profession to master.
6) A separate division? It is entirely different than the rest of RID.
7) If we recommended that trader member join Czerka, will that piss em off as it is not RID? I dunno.
Czerka has a pretty good RP deal going for it, people know it and it has been around for a while. Our customers love the continuation of the KOTOR Czerka Arms reference. But then again that is an actual low income (RPers dont pay a lot).
9) Why does Tenvik only comment on Zorb's beard? I have one too damnit!
10) If we were to somehow merge then Arramen and I would have to have total rights to kick asshats from the trader section.
11) My final thought is that Czerka does need a pick-me-up and merging it with RID does make sense. We could always call it Czerka Corporation but have everyone guilded to RID. That would maintain the RP factor.


Anyways I would LOVE to hear thoughts, opinions and ideas!

[Lexx Yovel]

1) Do I help others compete against me?

I think it should be permissable to help RID members get up to a level of skill needed to make quality goods. They may have no real desire to compete, and may just be there to help RID get needed supplies.

2) Generally I only help traders that are non-competitive to me and my guild (Czerka)

Perhaps RID traders could be recognized as "affiliates" of Czerka. Could also ensure that our traders aren't in it just to compete against you and your traders. Also, understandably, traders in Czerka can be given priority if needed, since it's your responsibility to assist them first.

3) If we merged with RID, then are we limiting our customer base to only IMPs or at least will we lose some Rebel customers?

Depends what you mean by "merge." Would this be having RID traders join up with Czerka, Czerka joining up with RID, or something else? If any kind of merge were to take place, I'd see no problem with selling things to Rebels. It's often very difficult to limit selling things to an entire faction.

4) Will Lexx ever order his armor?

Lol, Lexx seems to be a procrastinator.

5) Will my time spent helping traders get setup be worth it in the end? I mean, most give up as it is a hard profession to master.

It's important to identify who is really interested in their profession. Are some people just a trader to "see what it's like," or are they just using it so they can sell junk on their vendors? If we can identify traders who seem to genuinely be in it in the long run, I can see it being worthwhile. If they become demoralized due to the difficulty of the profession, we can at least recommend a more simple trader profession, such as structures.

6) A separate division? It is entirely different than the rest of RID.

There won't really be any official divisions added to RID, but as you can see, Erougn is forming a squad of pilots. There's no reason a group of traders can't be organized. So yeah, in a way, a separate division can be made, it just won't neccesarily be tagged as such with guild titles and all.

7) If we recommended that trader member join Czerka, will that piss em off as it is not RID? I dunno.
Czerka has a pretty good RP deal going for it, people know it and it has been around for a while. Our customers love the continuation of the KOTOR Czerka Arms reference. But then again that is an actual low income (RPers dont pay a lot).

I think the traders we currently do have should be able to stay in RID, especially if they don't have any other characters in RID. However, any future traders that apply to RID, can perhaps be directed to Czerka, so long as we solidify the ties between our two guilds even further.

9) Why does Tenvik only comment on Zorb's beard? I have one too damnit!

Zorb is more attractive?

10) If we were to somehow merge then Arramen and I would have to have total rights to kick asshats from the trader section.

Seems pretty fair to me.

11) My final thought is that Czerka does need a pick-me-up and merging it with RID does make sense. We could always call it Czerka Corporation but have everyone guilded to RID. That would maintain the RP factor.

Yeah, that's always a possibility. If such a thing were to happen, we could find away to make it appear like it's still its own "organization" in a way.

[Apium]

You bring up some good questions. Kurke and I formed a company earlier this year and it failed completely. In a guild company, you are going to have two primary problems. 1) its going to be extremely difficult to attain any level of trust between all the members. 2) every trader loves to see that "vendor sale complete" holomail, but they all have their own ways of getting there. (This is why the company Kurke and I formed failed.) To even begin to play a trader it requires at least some indepedent drive and that force is going to work to tear any organization apart.

I think something close to a trader guild (medieval style, not swg style) would be something to try. Maybe there could be two ranks, Master and Apprentice. Master traders (not all master traders would be master traders in the council) would have a vote on the council. It would eliminate competition, lend organization to RID's traders, and leave an avenue in which help could be given to the beginning traders. At this stage in SWG's life cycle, we just aren't going to see 10 or 20 active master traders in RID, but I think the council format would work with as little as 3 people.

The only real difference between a council and a company is that a council gives the traders working under it a greater feeling of personal freedom.

That may not be helpful, but it is one of the few things I did not try as a commercial division officer.

[Tenvik]

Yes I believe the important parts of this post is First off when is Lex gonna order some real armor because that paper stuff is a pain to heal thru when doing Hoth with Lexx. Last but not least I was totally gonna comment on your super sweet tits of a vest but someone totally beat me to it. everything else in this post is in French to me as I have never played a Trader nor will I ever!

[Bovive]

Some very good comments and thank you. Hoping to hear from Arramen as to what he thinks of the whole deal. After all Czerka is 50% his. Whether people are in CCORP or RID I suppose it does not really matter, but I think we do need to identify who has traders and how they play them. Arramen and I have successfully ran CCORP for about 2 years so we are pretty solid. We never charge each other for resources or items so it works pretty well. At one time we collectively had over a billion credits, but meh we spent em on nice things Now we have so many resources it is crazy. Zorb more attractive? Well Lexx I don't look at men in that way, but my vest is tits! It goes well wth my Harley Davidson

[arramen]

That is a nice Harley BTW. I want to find out how traders there are in RID, and find out if they are interested in joining czerka, or to avoid a repeat of superiority, we can put down a small "Czerka" shop in fort oasis, and let the rid members and czerka members put up vendors with no worry of loss on either side. Once the others have proven trustworthy maybe then we can move then into the czerka bunker and keep it as the 'Sam's Club" so to speak, and it is for customers to get discounts, or just a place to sell to our loyal customers. The bottom line is that if we are adding traders, they need to be active, and work with us to make a better product for the everyday player. Because I make droid parts for the tatooine moisture farmer because thats what i am and thats who i care about.

[Kurke_Aumea]

Because I'm lazy, here's a copy of a post I made over on the RID Agenda thread tonight...

I'll be happy to toss out suggestions on what to do with traders in RID if anyone is interested. Between Apium and I, we've tried quite a few things to get traders off their collective ass's. That said, many of those attempts resulted in failure. So, feel free to learn from our missteps.

Basically, everything comes down to profit and the system. Given the system, no trader can make money strictly off of RID. You cannot easily apply direct discounts to guild members, setup guild-only stores, or get RID members to shop strictly at RID merchants. Trust me, we've tried.

For some reason, many people in the guild think RID traders are supposed to hand out stuff for free to fellow guild members. WTF? I don't mind doing this with a small house deed to get someone into a city or some free resources to get a new trader through the grind, but for nothing in return? Not even a fair trade? Pardon me, but fuck you!

Discounts can only be applie by having secret stores that only members know about or applying discounts directly during a trade. Given the confines of the system, it is a rather painful process to setup guild-only vendors (typically setting up a vendor in a guild-owned city that is not your actual store, hence you are required to stock twice the supplies). Plus, why bother discounting or even selling to the guild when you can make more money setting up a shop outside of Mos Eisley?

And let's be honest, there is no way you can force guild members to shop at guild merchants. You can entice them with cheaper prices and convenient locations, but if you are a trader you are in it for the profit. Discounts by this point are a waste and running multiple stores is a pain in the ass. Unless you have a shuttleport in your city, you cannot run a sustainable business unless you are along a point of travel (near a NPC city or next to a popular grind spot).

And to be quite frank, in regards to pricing items, I was price cutting people on the bazaar by well over 60% or 70% and my fellow guild members thought I was overpriced. Go mine it yourself then you cheap-ass...

Also, again due to the confines of the system, the guild can only have so many traders at once before toes start to get stepped on.

What have we tried to entice traders to be more "guild oriented"???

- We've offered free resources to any guild trader so they could grind and then collectively make higher quality products. This worked well if enough people did the behind-the-scenes labor to distribute free resources. Ultiimately it is unsustainable because people grind up for free and leave.

- We've setup several malls so guild traders can have several different places to sell their goods. This only works if your city has a shuttleport and you can keep traders active. Nothing is more annoying than owning a mall that has five vendors of players that no longer play... If you can talk a GM into boxing up a vendor, God bless you...

- We've offered free use of factories, harvestors, crafting stations, and recyclers with no takers... This one kind of baffles me. I mean, you can still share factories and they take up lots, so if some nice guild member is offering you use of his/her factory for free, why the hell would you decline the offer (assuming you needed a factory)?

- We've tried using several player cities as bases of operations for traders. Again, ultimately unsustainable as any serious trader wants profit and wants to be close to the profit. This means they want near the highest density of players. Back in the day, this was Coronet. Today, it is Mos Eisley. Yeah, you can advertise on the bazaar, but people have loads of cash and they think their time is valuable, so why travel to the ends of a planet when you can run just outside a NPC city?

- I have personally discounted guild members at flat rates that would be cut-throat undercutting on the bazaar. Selling something to a guild member for 3CPU that would sell for 15CPU on the bazzar and still getting laughed at by a guild member is quite insulting...

- I personally setup a resource vendor for only guild members. Items were priced to cover the cost of harvesting said resource and that's all you had to pay. Resources were sold in a variety of sizes so you only had to buy what you needed (not a million units of steel when you only needed 100k units...) A set pricing structure that made grinding cheap and convenient. I had one... yes, one buyer on a vendor with many countless resources. Why? I don't know. I advertised the vendor via game-mail, but not many people read it. Hell, the damn thing was in the RID guild hall, but to no effect (put it there so people wandering through Fort Oasis wouldn't steal crap). Probably had more to do with the fact that since everybody has two characters on a server, you have 20 lots. So if you run a trader, you can be pretty damn self-sufficient if you want. Hell, I sold more power than I did anything else and this is the reason why.

So, not to be MR. Negative, but getting traders to work in RID is a bit of a challenge. Unless you can prove profit to a dedicated trader (not someone with a trader toon they use to make parts for their ship), a trader is not inclined to be a part of the greater good, especially if you want them to discount fellow guild members. They can make better money from the general public. Plus, many people already have a trader toon they use on their second account and that means structure traders and shipwrights have it rough from the get-go.

Maybe I'm being narrow-minded, but I've been down this road several times. It's a bitch to convince existing traders to sell strictly to the guild or even setup a guild vendor. You can recruit n00b traders, but they will just use you for your free resources and then just leavefor better profits elsewhere. (been burnt time and again by that one)

That said, I have never been a part of a trader-only guild. Things are likely done differently to encourage traders in such situations. Of course, I love RID and would only ever be in RID. And since RID is not trader-only, there will always be issues with getting traders organized.

These are just my thoughts, opinions, and stories. Take them or leave them. Part of the frustration of trying to organize traders is one of the things that led me to leave SWG this past time (that and planning a RL wedding...). To even attempt to organize traders in the guild is a lot of work and a half-hearted effort just won't cut it. There is a lot of organization, planning, and elbow-grease involved. What I've described in this post is just the realities myself and others have faced. I want to see traders in RID organized under the RID banner one day, but its a lot of work.

That's a lot to read, I know... Do I think a merge would work? Honestly, no. Given what you already have, it will go to waste and get lost in RID. I don't agree with shipping RID traders over to Czerka either. I want to be in RID, so let me be there and have a RID guild chat. Maybe making Czerka a sister guild would work, but I dunno... Plus, you can only have so many active traders in a guild before you start competing within the guild and that only causes problems. And like Apium said, you can form a company within the guild, but everyone has their own ways of doing things which don't necessarily work well with others. (For instance, Apium wanted to run a store on Tatooine near Mos Espa but I wanted to run one in Nar Shadda since I had just established the city. At the end, we wanted to do different things that resulted in us being unable to work together. That and we were also competing with each other) That said, there's a lot of variables to consider before doing anything. Having a good plan is never a bad thing.

[Apium]

I think you just about covered everything, Kurke. Excellent post.

This isn't really on topic, but Kurke touched on a really important thing to remember. The vast majority of consumers in SWG have a lot of cash and their time is extremely valuable to them. When a trader makes a decision concerning location or what type of vendors they group together, they need to think about the type of situations that would lead a consumer to buy this product or another. I've lost count of the number of times that I have bought an item that I could have bought for 5-10 million cheaper somewhere else just so I did not have to planet hop.

[Bovive]

Because I make droid parts for the tatooine moisture farmer because thats what i am and thats who i care about.

Oh that's hillarious, we have a new company slogan! Who ever came up with the idea of being a moisture farmer on tatooine anyways? Wouldn't ummm...ANYWHERE else be a better idea? But I digest.

Arramen makes some awesome points here. Dropping a shop/workplace with nothing of value in it would be a good idea. This keeps peeps from stealing the nice shit, which just plain does happen. Anyhow, it also adds a little bit of storage and shared stuff which is nice. I know at Czerka a lot of times we just start throwing shit we dont need into cabinets lol. hehe, reminds me of a something I was quoted on recently "I keep my battle droid in a cabinet". Man I get off track. Malls are a nice idea, I had a vender in the Fort Oasis mall selling Zorbs items for a little while but I noticed that after I moved him from Czerka to Fort Oasis he went from selling 5 items a day to 1 item a week. Problem was that nobody was window shopping there. At Czerka there are thousands of items for sale all the time so we get a lot of traffic. Of course after building up enough traders to call the Fort Oasis Mall home, you could get that same traffic. There are things I would offer for RID members at a discount on a RID only vender, but that would really only include food buffs for PVP and such. Of course I also do not make those items lol. But yah anyways, I totally agree with everything Arramen said.

[Bovive]

I think you just about covered everything, Kurke. Excellent post.

This isn't really on topic, but Kurke touched on a really important thing to remember. The vast majority of consumers in SWG have a lot of cash and their time is extremely valuable to them. When a trader makes a decision concerning location or what type of vendors they group together, they need to think about the type of situations that would lead a consumer to buy this product or another. I've lost count of the number of times that I have bought an item that I could have bought for 5-10 million cheaper somewhere else just so I did not have to planet hop.

There is a lot of truth to this. I am pretty well off but by GOD I will travel to save 5000 credits. Of course I am also the guy that continuously tries to loot the corpse that keeps saying "That item is too far away to loot" just to get the 38 credits it has on it lol. But also I PC EVERYTHING I sell on my venders on the bazaar and undercut the lowest bid every time. Whether or not someone undercuts me, well I just don't keep up on that unless it is a high ticket item. People come to our shop to buy one thing but end up window shopping and buying all kinds of other stuff too. I would bet that 90% of our business is window shopping. Other people come, buy one item and leave. Then again we also have customers that just shop with us because they know we always have competitive prices. The RP crowd usually sends us IC mail and then plays it out, which can be sorta fun, or creepy...

But having a shuttleport near the shop def pays off.

[Corvallon]

1) Do I help others compete against me?

I think it should be permissable to help RID members get up to a level of skill needed to make quality goods. They may have no real desire to compete, and may just be there to help RID get needed supplies.

2) Generally I only help traders that are non-competitive to me and my guild (Czerka)

Perhaps RID traders could be recognized as "affiliates" of Czerka. Could also ensure that our traders aren't in it just to compete against you and your traders. Also, understandably, traders in Czerka can be given priority if needed, since it's your responsibility to assist them first.

3) If we merged with RID, then are we limiting our customer base to only IMPs or at least will we lose some Rebel customers?

Depends what you mean by "merge." Would this be having RID traders join up with Czerka, Czerka joining up with RID, or something else? If any kind of merge were to take place, I'd see no problem with selling things to Rebels. It's often very difficult to limit selling things to an entire faction.

4) Will Lexx ever order his armor?

Lol, Lexx seems to be a procrastinator.

5) Will my time spent helping traders get setup be worth it in the end? I mean, most give up as it is a hard profession to master.

It's important to identify who is really interested in their profession. Are some people just a trader to "see what it's like," or are they just using it so they can sell junk on their vendors? If we can identify traders who seem to genuinely be in it in the long run, I can see it being worthwhile. If they become demoralized due to the difficulty of the profession, we can at least recommend a more simple trader profession, such as structures.

6) A separate division? It is entirely different than the rest of RID.

There won't really be any official divisions added to RID, but as you can see, Erougn is forming a squad of pilots. There's no reason a group of traders can't be organized. So yeah, in a way, a separate division can be made, it just won't neccesarily be tagged as such with guild titles and all.

7) If we recommended that trader member join Czerka, will that piss em off as it is not RID? I dunno.
Czerka has a pretty good RP deal going for it, people know it and it has been around for a while. Our customers love the continuation of the KOTOR Czerka Arms reference. But then again that is an actual low income (RPers dont pay a lot).

I think the traders we currently do have should be able to stay in RID, especially if they don't have any other characters in RID. However, any future traders that apply to RID, can perhaps be directed to Czerka, so long as we solidify the ties between our two guilds even further.

9) Why does Tenvik only comment on Zorb's beard? I have one too damnit!

Zorb is more attractive?

10) If we were to somehow merge then Arramen and I would have to have total rights to kick asshats from the trader section.

Seems pretty fair to me.

11) My final thought is that Czerka does need a pick-me-up and merging it with RID does make sense. We could always call it Czerka Corporation but have everyone guilded to RID. That would maintain the RP factor.

Yeah, that's always a possibility. If such a thing were to happen, we could find away to make it appear like it's still its own "organization" in a way.

This is what I had in mind when I threw out the original idea. I apologize for not elaborating more.