Topic

Player vendors to supplement NPCs / Markets and kiosks / New skills and achievements

(In response to a discussion in the General forum: Phasing out NPC Vendors...could it mean "phasing in" in-world player vendors / mini-market hubs?)

Make everything harvestable in some way: new trees / beehives / fishing holes / icy regions / mushroom beds, etc.
Combine NPC vendors into small marketplaces

I'd like it if the street vendors were combined into little community markets or "malls", perhaps two or three per region, with all items players can harvest or craft taken off the vendors' inventory lists. In addition to finding new ways to "live off the land" (fishing for salmon in ponds (or, knowing Glitch, doing something unexpected like fishing upwards into the sky), beehives / honeybears / bumblebears / honey badgers for honey to extract from combs, olive trees / plants for olives to press into olive oil, birch trees for sap to process into syrup?), maybe players could also generate a thriving market independently.

Special player-run and player-owned (basic skills) roadside kiosks and  (advanced skills) marketplace stores 

It would also be swell if players could learn a Vendor skill and get a business permit to set up little temporary roadside stands, like: 
* Lemonade Stands (various basic fruit drinks), 
* Pet Stores (hogtied piggies, baby animals and animal eggs), 
* Florists (herbs, buff-based potions and tinctures), 
* Apothecaries (powders, ores, and elements), 
* Farmer's Markets (gardened veggies and crafted fruits), 
* Pubs and Speakeasies (crafted drinks and basic hooch), 
* Shady-looking Shifty-Eyed Person In A Trenchcoat Under A Flickering Streetlamp (no-no, entertainment-based potions, Purple), 
* Event Planning (party packs and entertainment-type potions), 
* Music Stores (music blocks), 
* Scribes / Newsstands (player-created newsletters or jokes or links to pictures or mini-quests, quills and paper; the vendor could offer to write something for other players without paper, a quill or Penpersonship) 
and/or 
* little food carts (various skill levels and available menu items; better food available from more skilled or higher-level players). (Some of these ideas are less practical than others, obviously.)

Customizing appearance and stock for sale of kiosks / stores

Player vendors could choose the type/category of merchandise for their kiosk, the kiosk's look and style (from a limited selection of visual "skins"), the Doing Business As kiosk name for its banner or signage, the items within the appropriate category that they wish to sell, and maybe a brief "mission statement" / clickable sign or menu or, maybe, a gnome-like generated greeting to passers-by.

Procedure to choose location of and how to set-up kiosks
Make Bureaucratic Halls useful again for upper-level players

To reduce congestion, your permit might only allow you to set up in one spot with less than X other vendors (perhaps scaled to size of street--small streets might only have space for one player vendor kiosk while huge streets might have 3 or 5--with entrepreneurs' kiosk permit cost scaled according to how heavily-trafficked a street is or how many other streets branch off from it or how close to the busy center of a region the street is; perhaps also vendors could not set up on Subway Hub or Bureaucratic Hall or Model Home streets) and only for X number of game days or game hours, and you would have to wait another X number of hours or get another business permit to set up another stand. Stands could have a progress bar visible to passers-by indicating how much longer the stand will remain open. 

Stocking items for sale in the kiosks

Player vendors would have to craft X amount of items (perhaps 200-300 each of three or five related items or X number of stacks of a particular item, with the total available to stock dependent upon how many items come per stack) as well as have the proper permit to set up their temporary vendor kiosk, and once they run out of items to sell, the kiosk poofs into nonexistence again (or they have to craft more without leaving the kiosk).

Indicate status of "working" vendor / player

While a player vendor is working as kiosk owner, perhaps they have a special green glow, or a symbol overhead signaling that they are "working" or a little greengrocer's apron with a currant symbol on it.

Permanent "No Soliciting" / Non-commercial regions

Some regions might also be deemed permanently off-limits to player vendors, such as residential streets, seam streets / locked door areas, The Tower, regions with active street projects, Ix or Uralia.

Badges, XP, achievements, buffs, more player independence and potential additional interactivity

Interacting with a player vendor would earn both parties a little XP and maybe some kind of community goodwill buff or progress toward a badge or achievement. Collecting badges might earn you a discount on future permits from the Bureaucrats. Progressing up the Vendor skill tree might enable kiosk-owning players to sell progressively more impressive and desirable goods. Perhaps players will have to whack together their little stands using blocks, planks and other Ur resources and Tinkering / Engineering / Carpentry skills and then activate their crafted stands once they have the proper permit and find a viable spot to set up. 

Commercial properties purchasable like residential realty, or leasable
Hiring other players
Roadside kiosks expanded into actual marketplace storefronts alongside NPCs, when player vendors gain experience

Players who work at this could eventually apply for a purchased business space in the permanent markets alongside the NPCs, which could work much like the home real estate market does (picking a store front and location from a commercial realty page) with an expanded amount of items in a particular category available to sell and the ability to "hire" other Glitchen to provide "work units" (or actual crafting labor) towards maintaining the stock for the store, and renew their lease every 8-day Ur week. Store supplies could be stocked in cabinets much like home supplies go in cabinets, and only owners and keyholders could access those. At street level or the market entrance, a Vendors Inside list would be generated from both the permanent basic NPC-staffed stores and player stores currently actively open and staffed.

Just thinking out loud.

Posted 13 months ago by ✰ Lorelei ✰ Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • I like your thinking Lorelei.
    Posted 13 months ago by Woochi Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks!

    Also, I liked several of the player-proposed new trees in another thread.

    EDIT: To tie in with a frequently-cited gripe about not being able to do the Back Alley Quest / get the location XP bonus and streets visited credit, perhaps trying to place a player-created and -staffed kiosk on a street or trying to buy a commercial business without the appropriate permits or market space rental agreements or leases can generate the Back Alley quest.
    Posted 13 months ago by ✰ Lorelei ✰ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thought of another player vendor possibility: A TP Script service.
    Posted 13 months ago by ✰ Lorelei ✰ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Addenda: Players with the ability to sell herbs and herb products independently from their own kiosks would also have reduced some of the unpleasantness that popped up with the release of the new skills and special items. You'd still have some overpricing and squabbling at community gardens, but maybe LESS of it.
    Posted 12 months ago by ✰ Lorelei ✰ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Very interesting and well-thought out idea!  I like it, I think it would add a lot of new fun activities for higher level players, and benefit lower-level players by giving them greater/easier/cheaper access to cool stuff.
    Posted 12 months ago by Clarabelle Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks, Clarabelle!
    Posted 12 months ago by ✰ Lorelei ✰ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I like this idea, except for the fact that we could only sell one type of item at each stall. I mean, if I had to stop gameplay in order to sell items, I'd like to be able to sell as much as possible in one go. That's all the stacks of eggs I've had piling up, the discount frying pans I've made for the new people, metal ingots as far as the eye can see, baskets of corn, a few potions, a whole bunch of hooch because I have more than I could ever use for myself, and whatever else I feel like clearing out of my house.
    Posted 12 months ago by girlthulhu Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I was thinking that drawing from categories to pick what you want to sell would make it easier to draw customers looking for stuff in that category. But, heck, maybe a Junke Shoppe could be an option, too: weird things that have no relation to each other. :)

    It might be a way to do the buy/sell/trade idea in a less street-crowding / laggy / balloon-spammy way, also.
    Posted 12 months ago by ✰ Lorelei ✰ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Another thread about salmon fishing is here: http://www.glitch.com/forum/ideas/14060
    Posted 12 months ago by ✰ Lorelei ✰ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • NOTE: If vendors are NOT going to be completely phased out, it might be nice to have an ability to buy herb products from a specific herbal vendor, much like the way we can currently purchase crop products.
    Posted 12 months ago by ✰ Lorelei ✰ Subscriber! | Permalink