The decrepit state of the shopping malls in Entropia Universe

[Doer]

Originally Posted by thoreau

MA needs to make it so any item sold in a shop appears in the auction. The buyers can compare the price of the items and decide if they want to buy from the shop. If you did a search of MK2 you would find something like this:

MK2 - Auction - TT 25 PEDs - SB 27 PED - BO 30 PEDs.
MK2 - Port Atlantis Mall Floor 1 Shop 1A - TT 5 PED - Total 7 PED.

Then the buy can decide what to do.

I'd go one further and say that the real way to resolve this issue is to list shop items in the auction interface for purchase. Just like the "shops" in Ebay which have items listed, the shops in EU need to be able to sell "virtually" (virtual virtual shopping? ) Each category in the auction interface would have all corresponding items in shops listed at the end, with a different background color. Buying these out would deliver the item, just like it does for buyouts.

It's either that or remove/charge for buyout on auction. You can't leave auction the way it is and get a vibrant virtual brick-and-mortar retail economy. That's bass ackwards from the way things are going in the real world.

Originally Posted by Snabble

I would like to hear from some mall owners about how much peds they are making but im pretty sure no one wants to brag about a loss

Skippie's main frustration with mall ownership was that MA wouldn't fix the PvP issue so he could have mall mayhem PvP events. He didn't lose money on his mall transaction...

Originally Posted by P-J

One of the issues that damaged shops was the nerf to the shopkeepers. This made it much more expensive to sell items (particularly low value items).

My two suggestions:

Reduce the cost of selling through shops
Remove the minimum markup limit

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yup. That's the single most ridiculous and handicapping aspect of shop ownership i can think of.

[Chilly]

I suppose that I don't have much more to add, except that I try to find the best deals. Im a non-depositor to the best of my abilities and really try to make my pecs last. But sometimes it's hard to hit mall shops, shops at Sakura, TI City, etc etc, shopkeepers at estates, and the streets to find the best deals...prohibitively hard. It could take me hours to do a thorough search and still end up back at auction, either it has better markup or I couldnt find what I was looking for in the first place.

I try to use EU websites to narrow the field a little...hell, I even keep a notebook with shops and notes on types of items found and prices. But I still have a hell of time.

Me spending less time having to find what I want/need will pull me to auction sometimes...I don't always have a few hours to spare.

[Acronoid]

I rather spam "buying..." at PA then going into one of those shops. It's laggy as hell, it's full of junk and what I need is mostly out of stock
Auction all the way,
btw I told banks would suck months before they where sold. Not only EU is too small, but banks lack any function in this game.

[Doer]

Originally Posted by Acronoid

It's laggy as hell

That's your computer talking. Mine doesn't agree.

I'll grant you the rest of that though.

[Acronoid]

Originally Posted by Doer

That's your computer talking. Mine doesn't agree.

I'll grant you the rest of that though.

at highest settings overrides by your GFX card you would agree that the polygon structures of many buildings are shitty...


btw, to the ones that want to nerve stuff:
don't you think MA nerves enough already? Some of us want to actually play a game, instead of looking hours for stuff all spread around the islands.
OK, shops are nice, but useless more most IMHO. unless you have a dedicated crafting shop in mining/hunting or such.
I rather go 57sec auction hunting then needing to tp to a mall, go down, search a shop that serves what I want, buy it, go up again, tp again...
that takes 10 minutes doing something I don't like doing.

I love shops IRL, I hate shops ingame. Strange, I just don't like them ingame. If I play EU I seem to want to play... If I shop I don't want to sit behind a computer.

[NightwolfAA2k5]

Originally Posted by Acronoid

I rather spam "buying..." at PA then going into one of those shops. It's laggy as hell, it's full of junk and what I need is mostly out of stock
Auction all the way,

Indeed, I can rarely find anything I'm after, If I do its usually overpriced...

Originally Posted by Acronoid

btw I told banks would suck months before they where sold. Not only EU is too small, but banks lack any function in this game.

By strange coincidence, so was I... They still do...

Originally Posted by Acronoid

I love shops IRL, I hate shops ingame. Strange, I just don't like them ingame. If I play EU I seem to want to play... If I shop I don't want to sit behind a computer.

Haha, I guess I'm like that myself, to be honest... I loathe internet shopping...

A guy that likes shopping? Call the mob!

[Caoryn]

Originally Posted by AJack10600

Some shops are really overpriced and it's the a question of whether it is worth it running about to try to find a shop that has cheaper stuff... you spend a lot of time to try and find a bargain... is it worth it? In auction you just see all offerings on a big screen...

I think auction and malls don't get along together... for a simple reason.

Auction is global in this world and shows the best available price (in theory). Now since it's global and easily accessible there is no real incentive to go and strall through the malls. If auction was regional, serverbased by town for example, then bigger price differences could come about. In fact I believe that the price trend analysis that MA introduced against spammers also killed the market itself in that it created a perfect market with no unnkowns. Now in order to trade and to allow for price differences a market needs to have imperfections... where in RL do we have worldwide prices to compare in one tool ? We don't ..

I say make auction regional, make teleporters kind of a web (Reminiscent of old Tau Ceti) and put a little (1 PED or so) fee on each jump.

Then we have a market.

For the overpriced shops: Well guess people who go shopping can snipe out the underpriced stuff by looking at the market history and ram it into auction.

[Encicra]

I have two suggestions.

#1 - Tools. The average market price is a tool and as I've said for a while should be the thing removed from public and granted to shop owners.

#2 - There should be a auction tab that lists all objects in shops and allows you to sell on that page at the price it would cost you to sell in a shop. (Land owner %)

[Mega]

For those that are suggesting crippling the auction, I think it would be better to improve how shops can be browsed (such as buy from auction interface idea) then break something that works.

A previous MMO I used to play had such a system with player owned shops, and you bought from an interface and then had to travel to it (which could take 20mins or so) to pick it up.

I think the auction could be modified so that you could see the items in player owned shops but there wasnt a buyout. If you wanted to buy the item, you still had to travel over to it (gives the shop owner the opportunity to sell other items he has for sale). That's an improvement to both auction and shops - a Win / Win situation IMO.

[aia]

Originally Posted by AJack10600

In fact I believe that the price trend analysis that MA introduced against spammers also killed the market itself in that it created a perfect market with no unnkowns. Now in order to trade and to allow for price differences a market needs to have imperfections... where in RL do we have worldwide prices to compare in one tool ? We don't ..

Before MA implemented the internal stats, there was and still is pe-auction (http://www.peauction.com) and "my two pecs" (http://www.mytwopecs.com).

IRL, dunno if there is a real worldwide (unfortunately, big companies don't like when consumers buy from another "market region"), but at least locally, there are websites such as pricerunner (http://www.pricerunner.se).