Shop Policies and Wishlist for Player-Run Shops

Astarod

Just so we don't derail the memorable quotes thread any longer. 

Keorin

For the sake of not derailing quotes further, I'll go ahead and repost my last post from there:

Silas said:

Keorin said:

Alternatively, you could treat cities under the same rules for credit fraud as you treat players, pretty easily. It's not as if cities don't have the credits to cover this, and it's not as if it isn't players who both make the initial deal with a shopowner, and who take away the shop later on the other side.

I don't know, this would limit roleplay in ways I don't particularly like, but I don't think that hundreds of dollars in out of character investment should be up on the chopping block when cities come into conflict, especially as the admin have been fairly consistently pushing for more conflict between cities.

Absolutely not. The players on both sides are responsible for their actions. Imagine if I bought a shop in Mhaldor, got myself enemied, and they had to pay me 2000cr for it. Ludicrous.

I don't necessarily disagree, but for the sake of argument, consider that this is already the case for players in most other scenarios. If I buy earrings with you to share, and then I turn traitor and run off to another city, you're going to have to buy out my share of the earring if you want to change earring partners. It doesn't matter whether that roleplay makes any sense, the moment that OOC money is on the line different rules already apply.

The situation you cite also isn't how that would go down. If a shopkeeper got enemied to Mhaldor, they could close down the shop and force the owner to sell it. If things worked this way, a city would never have to pay another player credits, they just couldn't seize shops whenever they wanted and put people out hundreds of dollars of premium currency and claim it for themselves on a whim.

Also, while players are largely responsible for their own actions, they aren't always responsible for the actions of cities. It's undeniable that the admin have been pushing cities to oppose each other more and more over the last years, and while this may be good for the game, it's pretty directly leading to shops getting seized and large IRL investments lost (and not just in this case). The only situation at all comparable is factional classes, and that tends to both give players less control (you can't force someone to lose their class), and it doesn't let cities pretty directly take credits from players and pocket them.

Adrik

Keorin said:

For the sake of not derailing quotes further, I'll go ahead and repost my last post from there:

Silas said:

Keorin said:

Alternatively, you could treat cities under the same rules for credit fraud as you treat players, pretty easily. It's not as if cities don't have the credits to cover this, and it's not as if it isn't players who both make the initial deal with a shopowner, and who take away the shop later on the other side.

I don't know, this would limit roleplay in ways I don't particularly like, but I don't think that hundreds of dollars in out of character investment should be up on the chopping block when cities come into conflict, especially as the admin have been fairly consistently pushing for more conflict between cities.

Absolutely not. The players on both sides are responsible for their actions. Imagine if I bought a shop in Mhaldor, got myself enemied, and they had to pay me 2000cr for it. Ludicrous.

I don't necessarily disagree, but for the sake of argument, consider that this is already the case for players in most other scenarios. If I buy earrings with you to share, and then I turn traitor and run off to another city, you're going to have to buy out my share of the earring if you want to change earring partners. It doesn't matter whether that roleplay makes any sense, the moment that OOC money is on the line different rules already apply.

The situation you cite also isn't how that would go down. If a shopkeeper got enemied to Mhaldor, they could close down the shop and force the owner to sell it. If things worked this way, a city would never have to pay another player credits, they just couldn't seize shops whenever they wanted and put people out hundreds of dollars of premium currency and claim it for themselves on a whim.

Also, while players are largely responsible for their own actions, they aren't always responsible for the actions of cities. It's undeniable that the admin have been pushing cities to oppose each other more and more over the last years, and while this may be good for the game, it's pretty directly leading to shops getting seized and large IRL investments lost (and not just in this case). The only situation at all comparable is factional classes, and that tends to both give players less control (you can't force someone to lose their class), and it doesn't let cities pretty directly take credits from players and pocket them.

Best way to get around traitors is slutty earrings. 8 earrings i am master of that i can change to whoever. For free.

Austere

Uhhh, to my knowledge, buying earrings with someone does not, and never has, necessitated reimbursement if you change them at a later date.  

Adrik

Austere said:

Uhhh, to my knowledge, buying earrings with someone does not, and never has, necessitated reimbursement if you change them at a later date.  

Also this. Yeah. I only read half of what you said. If someone goes halfsies on earrings with you and you turncoat later and have the master, they are sol.

Ismay

Earrings can always be transferred to another player. I've never viewed it as a loss.

Now shops are another story all together. There seem to be so many losing them. Cities are hurling threats of seizing shops left and right as a means of retribution for hurt feelings. This entire thing is spiraling out of control. What an unnecessary nightmare.

[Deleted User]

You shouldn't invest anything outside of your mechanical control that you aren't willing to lose. If you go in half on earrings or any other artefact with another player, you do so at your own peril as there's no recourse if they decide to run off with it. That's not to say you shouldn't trust your friends, but this is a game that depends on allegiances being dynamic and that should always be a consideration.

Shops in cities have always been at the whims of the organization they belong to, there's really nothing new about any of these recent situations and any sort of mechanical guarantee on their ownership would involve removing agency from the orgs that control them. The lesson to be learned here should be to not overvalue shops and to factor the risk of losing ownership into the transactions you make.

Keorin

I mean, at most you'd need to explicitly agree that the other person owes you the other half if they move them, and it should be covered by fraud rules, no?  I'm a bit surprised it wouldn't be covered be default when so many other things are, but all you'd need is to make an agreement and record it, to my understanding.

Generally speaking, fraud rules are still one place where OOC concerns essentially always stump any roleplay. I just think it's a little nuts to give players the power to swipe hundreds of dollars of premium currency to be used by their organisation however they want.

Adrik

Keorin said:

I mean, at most you'd need to explicitly agree that the other person owes you the other half if they move them, and it should be covered by fraud rules, no?  I'm a bit surprised it wouldn't be covered be default when so many other things are, but all you'd need is to make an agreement and record it, to my understanding.

Generally speaking, fraud rules are still one place where OOC concerns essentially always stump any roleplay. I just think it's a little nuts to give players the power to swipe hundreds of dollars of premium currency to be used by their organisation however they want.

No...? That's not how that works at all.

Also literally people with any amount of COMMON SENSE know better than to go halfsies if they aren't the master of the earring.

Rackham

TIL I can get earrings half off with the help of a 'friend'.

Keorin

If earrings aren't covered by scam protection, then I'll defer to the knowledge of those with more experience with earrings than I do. But it would certainly surprise me if I could split earrings with someone and then immediately transfer them to someone else and get in no trouble for it. The admin have made someone pass credits back to me that I gave them for an earring transfer after they decided to retire, for instance.

Either way, this doesn't change the fact that cities being able to renege on old deals and take thousands of credits from someone to then do whatever they want with is stupid. Shops should not be both a big ticket premium currency purchase kept in scarce supply -and- predictable casualties of the roleplay directions this game has been getting nudged in.

Atalkez

I’m pretty sure it is in the help file related to earrings that there is one sole owner, so think and choose wisely.

Adrik

Keorin said:

If earrings aren't covered by scam protection, then I'll defer to the knowledge of those with more experience with earrings than I do. But it would certainly surprise me if I could split earrings with someone and then immediately transfer them to someone else and get in no trouble for it. The admin have made someone pass credits back to me that I gave them for an earring transfer after they decided to retire, for instance.

Either way, this doesn't change the fact that cities being able to renege on old deals and take thousands of credits from someone to then do whatever they want with is stupid. Shops should not be both a big ticket premium currency purchase kept in scarce supply -and- predictable casualties of the roleplay directions this game has been getting nudged in.

Okay, but here's the thing. I'm not doubting @Prythe's character, but.. Does she have the original documentation?

Targossas sure as hell doesn't, and more to the point.. was her deal with Shallam?

Targossas is a new city, which yes, took the place of Shallam.. but Shallam died. Gods and all.  I know we're on terms of 'technicalities' now.. but the side question is.  Did she spend credits, or gold? The auctions I've seen in Hashan's shop history has been primarily gold (150k as a starter for some, credits valued at 5.5k gold).. but gone to insane prices. The most recent one I think I saw was 500cr starter that ended at 750cr. (Which the owner promptly didn't do well with the shop, sold it off to someone else they could scam for that much).

This isn't primarily a "YOU MUST PAY US THIS MUCH!" deal... This is players auctioning with eachother, driving the price up, and the city going "Well okay!" and guess what?  All shop owners, in Hashan at least, are bound by the 3 strikes rule, and the scroll of being a shop owner.. which includes.

"- Any property belonging to a person who becomes an enemy of Hashan may be closed and secured by the Chancellor."

and more importantly..

"- Upon default in any term or condition of the lease, the Chancellor shall have the right to terminate the lease and repossess the shop."

I know I can speak for one shop that I have seen the wording of that was bought for that 750cr.. that was, in fact, a Long Term Lease. They paid a bunch of CR up front, and got to keep the shop for, basically a LONG ass while (more or less forseeable future). They do not own the shop. The City does. They just paid their rent upfront to the point that they never have to worry about it unless they break the rules and get evicted.

It's like paying a security deposit and expecting it back. You're much better just paying year-to-year, but sometimes people go fucking apeshit over a shop in prime real estate, for whatever reason.

Milabar

Paid 500k for a 30 year lease in Eleusis.

Made 25x that so far.

If you're going to rent in a city (or Village) it's common knowledge that cities can take said shops as all shops in ANY city can be reclaimed.

Simply because Cyrene, afaik, doesn't take back shops from those that "bought" shops in the city doesn't equate into that being a universal concept, nor into something considered a scam.  

The only place where shops are legitimately only the owners are Delos, as it's not a proper city state, region, whatever.  Even then it takes admin approval (I think) to sell shops and finalize the transaction.

This is simply not the case of any player city.  All land within the city is owned by the city itself, and falls under city ownership regardless of past agreements, transactions, or credits spent.

To believe otherwise is to live in a bubble.  She's lucky that Targossas was willing to deal at all, or made any payment whatsoever.

Ismay

What a bunch of bull. Just because this is the way it is doesn't mean it's the way it should be. Shops aren't cheap and shouldn't be treated as another way to do something shitty to another player.

The really bad part is that it's admin approved, or tolerated, at least.

Adrik

Ismay said:

What a bunch of bull. Just because this is the way it is doesn't mean it's the way it should be. Shops aren't cheap and shouldn't be treated as another way to do something shitty to another player.

The really bad part is that it's admin approved, or tolerated, at least.

Shops literally are that cheap though. 27k / year to use a shop to sell stuff. The only reason they're so pricey is because players drove the price up to exorbinantly high because they wanted a deep dish investment.

The fact that other players fell for / bought their fuck up is just them pushing their mess onto someone else.

Rackham

Are there laws against subletting shops or something?

I feel like owning a shop is a decent goal to work towards. People bitch about the cost to buy/own ships, but people still want to do that right? Saw some jerk marketting a strider for 2k credits because of what he had into it. Now, -I- wouldn't have spent all that on a ship, but between comms for weapons/additions, weapon racks, nondecay weapons, ships are expensive, and likely give you even less return than shops. Not to mention the pride of it. Not everything you do in Achaea needs to be a return on investments

As for repossession, it's a really shit thing to do to somebody, just to point at the fine print and go 'your loss, fucko'. I went out of my way to deal with a problem shopkeeper (turned out to be communication issues) so we DIDN'T have to repossess shops from her. And even then, we were going to give her a compensation of like 1250 credits/shop, and resell it at 1500. On a repossession, that's more than fair. 100k though? I mean... If you wanna roleplay an asshole, 100k for a shop is how you do it.

[Deleted User]

The difference between shops and ships is that organization shops are not personally owned. The way that the shops are set up makes this very clear - they're under the purview of that org and it's the responsibility of the players renting them to stay in the city's good graces. On the other side, if cities are too quick to repossess shops, players should be more skeptical of entering into a lease with that city. Assuming the shop's value as anything other than this agreement is a mistake and sets up either party to be burned if the relationship sours. Don't 'buy' things you can't own.

Accipiter

Is there a deed or something that says 'You own this shop' or is the difference between renting and owning just people agreeing that it is working that way?

Iocun

Literally any in-game reference I could find speaks of ownership and sale. When you go to a shop and do WARES, it says "Proprietor: Whoever". The syntax for selling a shop is, well "SELL SHOP TO <person>". HELP SHOPKEEPING talks about "acquiring"/"purchasing"/"owning" shops. Etc.

I see absolutely no reason to assume your character doesn't own a bought shop unless a city explicitly states this for their shops.

Rackham

Renting a shop, the city retains ownership, typically through the Chancellor I guess. You pay lease fees, taxes(usually worked into lease). Owning, you own it, your name is on it, you pay taxes. And unless I'm wrong, you can rent it out. You can't rent out a rental

[Deleted User]

HELP CHANCELLOR -

CITY OWNER SHOP <shop> <new owner>
   Transfers ownership of a shop to a new person.

For those wondering about the actual cost of the shop:

CITY TAXRATE SHOPS <rate, in percent>
   This is the annual rate at which shops will be taxed. Each shop will owe,
     after the new year, (taxrate/100*assessed shop value). Since shops cost
     the city 5000 gold each year, it behoves the city to tax them to make
     up for this. If a shop has been closed for 12 continuous Achaean months,
     then it will cease to be taxed, and cease to cost the city anything.

I actually wasn't aware about the SELL SHOP TO <person> syntax, but I would recommend not doing it for an organizational shop for the reasons listed above. It doesn't seem like it precludes the city's ability to govern their shops. It might be a good idea for the help files to include a warning about this.

Prythe

Adrik said:

Keorin said:

If earrings aren't covered by scam protection, then I'll defer to the knowledge of those with more experience with earrings than I do. But it would certainly surprise me if I could split earrings with someone and then immediately transfer them to someone else and get in no trouble for it. The admin have made someone pass credits back to me that I gave them for an earring transfer after they decided to retire, for instance.

Either way, this doesn't change the fact that cities being able to renege on old deals and take thousands of credits from someone to then do whatever they want with is stupid. Shops should not be both a big ticket premium currency purchase kept in scarce supply -and- predictable casualties of the roleplay directions this game has been getting nudged in.

Okay, but here's the thing. I'm not doubting @Prythe's character, but.. Does she have the original documentation?

Of course I don't. Although I wonder if maybe in my old old logs.

The shop was original owned jointly by a name which escapes me right now, Alayna, maybe, and Trae.  They owned it free and clear - that's how things were done in those days.

They sold it to me free and clear for what was a large amount for me then and more than 100,000. <grin>

It was a large enough amount that I had to make payments to them, which they were generous enough to allow me to do.

It was a large enough sum that when one of them needed gold for something else, another friend lent me the gold to pay them off.

Not sure how many of you are over 500 years old - or have been playing that long, but it was a very different world than it is now.

Anyway, see my previous points about buying cars and artwork. I really do not find the original price to be that important.

Glad you're not doubting my character.

Milabar

Just for clarification, if anyone owned it outright, the city couldn't reclaim it. 

See previous post for more details.

As far as subletting shops, you can do such, by allowing allies to run said shop, as you'd learn in actual shopkeeping.

I've ran shops in multiple cities.  I've tried to buy a shop in Delos. There is absolutely nothing, ever, that's stopped cities from reclaiming shops. 

Not today, not 500 years ago. 

Every single room that's within the sphere of said city can, at anytime, be reclaimed by the city regardless.  It is thiers.

You can pay thousands of credits for a shop, but this doesn't make it yours.  It makes it where they can't lease it out from under you, MAYBE, but to ever believe the shop itself was yours and always will be is like believing your God will always be alive and around to interact with.

Ask Shallam how that went for them.

Iocun

Why would ownership preclude the possibility of a city to remove said ownership?

Lenn

Private housing can't be taken back unless there's nothing built there. It can only be closed off.

Minifie

If Prythe was working with the chancellor to try and sell it to avoid this happening, I don't see why Targossas doesn't pay her after selling it for what it sells for. She wasn't being obstinate about keeping the shop by the looks, just so happened that it didn't sell before things spiralled to that level.

Milabar

Private housing can be blocked, denying any access to said housing.  That's the same as reclaiming.  Private housing can also be force entered by Council and development minister at any time, proving the claim that all within the sphere of influence is indeed, said organization land.

Perhaps they sold said shop for 100k, ergo the amount given to her

O.o

Iocun

Gods can remove any room from a city, can "force enter" every room at any time and impose whatever restrictions they want on people to use said rooms. Does that mean that cities, too, don't own any land?

Just because I have to follow the traffic laws IRL, have to obey police instructions, have to pay certain car taxes, and just because the government has the power to possibly even seize my car against my will, doesn't mean I don't own my car. 

Thaisen

Minifie said:

If Prythe was working with the chancellor to try and sell it to avoid this happening, I don't see why Targossas doesn't pay her after selling it for what it sells for. She wasn't being obstinate about keeping the shop by the looks, just so happened that it didn't sell before things spiralled to that level.

Well, because she is a heathen, obviously.

Milabar

I mean, the first part of your post is correct.  Sarapis could decide he's done with all ya all bullshit and shut down the game.  Does this mean you owned anything in the game?

The second part is partial truth.  You only own stuff until you fail to follow the laws that your respective society has made, then you own nothing.

I "own" my house and land, but I'm also knowledgeable enough to know that the government could, if it so deemed, force me to sell my land, move me, or jail me if they so wished.

The only thing you truly own is yourself.  Everything else is temporary.