Inactivity of the Stores

[theHandgun]

There is a problem that I've been having both as a store owner and a loyalist citizen since V1.

I will start with the store owner side:
I was the owner of Mark's General Store which was very active in the first week of both V1 and V2. I was selling some interesting/weird things there such as 'The hottest pepper of C24' (was just a normal pepper, scamming, you can say) or the 'Lettuce kebab' etc. These interesting items produced a lot of roleplay in my store and I was enjoying it a lot in the first week. After the first week, my motivation to man the store reduced a lot because I kept asking myself, why am I standing here for hours watching youtube videos while I could go and do some good roleplay somewhere else. I don't know about my employees but they also were active much much less on manning the store as well. The store was empty in the last week of V1. And then in V2, things were the same again, I had my fun first week and got bored of it after asking myself the question so I decided to quit the store even though I had enough credits to pay the rent. I never owned or became an employee in a store again.

Then the citizen side after that, I was very frustrated of stores being closed on the second week of the server and constantly bugged CWU for that and then, after a week of dead stores, their owners were replaced and the activity was up to the roof, I was able to do my shopping and RP anywhere I wanted most of the times. But unfortunately, they died after one week and their owners/employees are nowhere to be seen now. I spent multiple days trying to buy a kitchen knife and I was ready to pay 50C for one if I could find a store open. And then I realized this loop that will plague the server for the upcoming weeks thinking about the reason of this.

Here is the loop for you:
> New store owners, they are very active for one week.
> Next week, some stores are closed for rebellious behavior, the rest of the stores are very inactive.
> Next week, owners are replaced and they are very active for one week.

Today, we are on the dead week, CWU will probably replace inactive store owners next week and the new owners will be active for one week just to disappear the next week.

Because I was on both sides, I can tell you why this is the case.
First of all, cafes, from now on are to be considered as RP hubs, don't close as often for inactivity because people go these places to RP, and owners/employees enjoy it as well. But this is not true for clothing, tools, and electronic stores. People go to tool stores to get items that will help them achieve their goals. They are not there to roleplay, they are there to have their requirements met. This is bad for store owners because they only get to roleplay for a few minutes buying and selling items, they get credit profit as well but let's be real here, credits don't matter at all if you are a loyalist. I had this problem while owning the store as well, I am manning the store for hours only for a few minutes of roleplay, this is extremely boring and for that reason, it is expected for non-RP hub stores to be inactive, it's like a second work.


Now you might ask what could be the solution to this. I have a few and they have their big downsides as well, but it's at least something:
The first solution is to place a terminal vendor that sells tools and electronics for 2x, 3x price of the bartering price. This will help citizens at least to have their requirements met to roleplay with scripts. Allow people to open up any type of stores as well, so if stores are open, people will use them. If customers are desperate enough while stores are inactive, they will buy items from the terminal for very high prices. This solution, however, doesn't solve the problem of store owners.

The second solution is to only allow RP hub type of stores to be rented (so, no electronic, tool, or clothing stores). If people need to buy tools, they will have to use a vendor or CWU worker. This is also not a good solution because it limits the loyalist RP and people don't like vendors much.

These are my bad but developable solutions to this problem. I shouldn't have to spend 3 days looking for a tool store for hours in prime times, the length of this post should indicate how frustrating all of this is to me.

 

[Robert]

This I can agree to since I have also had many times where I have joined the server to see no stores running and it becoming painfully hard to actually find someone.

But there are a lot more issues to this. As A store employee myself, there are a few things I gathered on why:

1. Rent
   1. Starting with the easiest one to start with is Rent. Rent is the current killer for a lot of stores at this time because it is simply put... too high. The Civ eco is currently more dead than it ever has been before. While in V1 the civ eco was overflowing due to lack of things to spend on, it is quite the opposite here where no one has the money to pay stores and are quite literally starving for cash. This causes stores to go unused and unpaid causing an entire collapse in the market as rent kicks in sucking on the souls of the store owners who do not have the funds to spare.
2. Stores lose more money than they make
   1. With the current stock and barter system in place, stores are being forced to pay insane sums of money for the cost of the many day to day items they need from the bartering menu in order to run their store. Unable to actually have a stock and fully rely on a hard set stock limit on items. This is choking stores to death and business owners and their employees and not having it. Why should they run a store which is eating their income whole.
3. Stock
   1. Like I mentioned above, I quickly mentioned stock.... at this time, it is impossible to actually have a container full of items... or even 3 for that matter since such a feat is impossible. No one wants to be forced by the stock system to basically decline customer payments because lol the stock system says "No.". This is killing stores that do many of the tools, materials or clothing because they are limited to selling less than 3 items per hour... which is killing them in return.
4. Bulk buying is impossible
   1. Relating to stock, bulk buying is literally impossible for a paying customer. Simply put the stock system prevents this and in turn kills store eco.
5. Store types and the unfairness between them.
   1. Now here is the biggest point of all... what type is the store? Like you said, Cafe's become a zone of being RP hubs while other stores... never ever count as such. Tool stores, electronic stores, clothing stores, etc just become a necessity to buy for your char here and there but never required. This forces people to not use these stores and just focus on food/water (Cafe's and restaurants) instead.
   2. This means there is also a lack of incentive to go to these other stores. Food/Water is important to get, everything else is optional. There is no reason for a civ to buy tools, no reason to buy clothes, no reason to buy electronics, no reason to buy materials, no reason to buy anything but food and drink. The stores are in an imbalance.
   3. Carrying on Food/Drink stores have the most stock... surprising I know. This makes things really unfair on every other store that can't sell anywhere near as much as food/drink stores can.
   4. And well you get the idea, for a quick summary:
      1. Food/Drink matters, nothing else does to a standard player
      2. Stock limits every store (Cafe's are better off by far)
      3. Food/Drink is essential, there is no reason to go to any other store
      4. Bulk buying is impossible due to stock issues (This is killing more stores than one might think)
      5. Stores lose more money than they make
      6. Rent is too high
      7. Civ Eco is dead
      8. Rebel eco is booming and far cheaper than the civ market.

I think that pretty much goes through it all. I believe some dev work needs to be done + changes by CWU and Commerce to be made to cease this random imbalance between the stores. There should be no reason this should be happening, stores are completely forced to abide by something put up against them since V1 store issues. V1 store issues are now showing up again because of the countermeasures we tried putting in place to stop clothing stores booming. Its backfired and murdering stores.

All my employees and owner are basically broke... but in the chips department, we got thousands and thousands of chips (Rebel eco). Rebel eco is far too strong and needs a serious nerf on top of a lot of fixes to the Civ and store eco.

 

[Votton]

People go to tool stores to get items that will help them achieve their goals. They are not there to roleplay, they are there to have their requirements met. This is bad for store owners because they only get to roleplay for a few minutes buying and selling items, they get credit profit as well but let's be real here, credits don't matter at all if you are a loyalist.

I agree, so let us try and look at options or think of options as to how we can make these stores that sell tools and other items lean more towards RP.

* We could introduce more RP items to these stores that make sense

* What if the tool shops were the only ones able to function as “repairmen”. Ergo the shop could have an increased number of official employees and work in collaboration with CWU and citizens to help repair items in their homes, repair broken stuff that the CWU requires and then receives a profit from that. This would help create more income and RP as a general basis. CWU would be able to use some of their funds towards these shops (e.g. say 50credits to get a repairman to assist)

* Any other tips or trick on how to make tools and those type of shops more “active” in sense of RP?

The first solution is to place a terminal vendor that sells tools and electronics for 2x, 3x price of the bartering price.

This should be and would be cool to try out I think. It is a bit dangerous I think and the prices should be around 4x or 3x the price. This is due to limiting the ability of overflow. This should be discussed further within the MOC and elsewhere.

The second solution is to only allow RP hub type of stores to be rented (so, no electronic, tool, or clothing stores). If people need to buy tools, they will have to use a vendor or CWU worker. This is also not a good solution because it limits the loyalist RP and people don't like vendors much.

This is an incredibly drastic measure. And it takes away quite more. I am not against the idea but I am neither supporting it. I think that in the future this should be discussed after we have tried all other measures and ideas that we have discussed regarding the economy. And the reason why I am not outright declining it, is simply put that we have to be a bit imaginative about it.

Imagine if we are able to remove tools and all of that and have it rather provided through expensive terminals or through the CWU. That would cause a bit of an conflict for the rebel RP, as Robert mentioned as well, there truly is no need for tools for a normal citizens.

Okay we let us think about it in another way; how would we use the vacated space available after tool shops available now to introduce new RP ideas to increase consumer rp and general RP for citizens. We shouldn’t see the need to expand more on offices for departments and unions as these are rather store fronts than anything.

More arcades, more Social hubs, more interactive shops is needed. Clearly.

Starting with the easiest one to start with is Rent. Rent is the current killer for a lot of stores at this time because it is simply put... too high. The Civ eco is currently more dead than it ever has been before.

We have introduced a new system for rent and low rent. This is always in change but we want to see how it will play out now. We should or we could extend rent for various large shops. E.g. we could have it so that they only pay rent per 2 weeks instead of the current 1 week. We did have an issue or more of a flex-issue that one owner who was super active was able to gather enough credits for rent within a few hours. Of course this varies on permits, location and timing. We will not make any changes for a week (like we always do) and take it from there and compare it.

While in V1 the civ eco was overflowing due to lack of things to spend on, it is quite the opposite here where no one has the money to pay stores and are quite literally starving for cash.

Consumers does not currently have the need to purchase food and water as the food system does not fully function. Causing a rather increase in savings rather than spending. This is after all a combine society where citizens are not supposed to be swimming around in cash, it takes time (grinding) to reach a savings goal. So by this logic that I pointed out we should come to the conclusion that rent is indeed the generally issue and that we do not have enough interactive consumer items that provide RP for tool stores.

Stores lose more money than they make

I am unable to provide an insight here as I am a bit unfamiliar with stock and containers as that is mainly CWU area.

I do however want to point out some maths regarding items.

If we say that rent somehow is 130 credits

You average income of a sale is 10 credits.

You would need 13 sales that overall provide 10 credits in profit each to be able to successfully pay rent.

If your average profit margin is 5 you would need 26 sales to have 130 credits.

That means if we account for 6-day period as the 7th day usually is a give-or-take with rent. You would need 4.3 customer per day to be able to pay rent if your average profit margin was 5.

(5x26=130 , 26/6=4.3)

If it was 10 credits per sale you would only need

(10x13=130 , 13/6=2.1)

But it isn’t as easy and you will always have some sales where you earn 1 credit and some where you earn a lot more.

So in my view after looking at this it should be fully possible to bring in 4 customers a day that provide you with a 5 credit margin if not then you need to raise prices of other items. If that is not possible, and that can be due to competitors having lower margins on some items then that is simply just a competitive market. What we could do is that you could try and apply for a startup loan or grant provided that your business is different and creative. Like an arcade social club where you have checkers, chess, etc etc.

To make a profit over rent you need to bring in more than 26 customers (if accounting 5 credit in profit margin). Which can be hard. It is supposed to be hard. You are completely free, no requirements to go to a workshift, no requirements to be in the store 24/7. You are your own boss essentially.

Now we can kinda see that, some stores manage the rent easy and some don’t.

Those who don’t need to try multiple things, maybe you can make rent by doing illegal activities and provide rebels under the table, maybe you close your shop in search for a different field, maybe you set up a different theme for your shop. Or maybe you simply try and stand out and increase your profit margin and hire more unofficial employees (max is 6).

This is a competitive market for businesses, you are not supposed to earn a lot either. You are basically living in a society that controls rents. I can say that rent will be a variable depending on the economic stance, if we are in a recession or boom then that will ultimately affect it and that will hurt or be for the better. The goal is simply put to manage over rent and have some profit.

Civ Eco is dead

I do fully agree. We need more creative social hubs, more interactive items that as a result provide more RP functions, more RP in general and activity. That is the only way to revive civ eco in comparison or else people will just keep saving money especially now that the food system does not work.

Rebel eco

Thanks for providing us with info on this that they are booming, I spend most of my time in the office doing research and what not so I am unaware of a lot of the mechanics and rely solely on feedback. Ergo this long post. It is definitely healthy and good that I do go around stores and receive feedback but some feedback is just not like this one so it does definitely help.

Right so, Rebel eco and how we need to Nerf it.

Nerfing it is what we tried by not allowing pickup terminals there, tools permit and so on. We also de-nerfed it again by telling the CPs and such that the Slums needs to be a bit less controlled / restricted / regulated allowing for owners to survive longer.

We will look into the blacklist prices but it will be hard for us to directly nerf the rebel Eco system without backtracking on our changes regarding slums. Usually a lot of the rebel eco is a dependant variable on the real eco. We always want a mixed economy with both ups and downs for both sides.

So; now that we have heard your complains and discussed them, If you have any suggestions as to how we can combat it in the future and try and fix it that would really great.

If I did not answer on something please, let me know and I will try my best again.

Cheers,
Laurentius Heartwick
Chief Operating Officer at MOC

This is written by noodle#2195 who works for the MOC. This is his response as MOC deals a lot with the CWU and finance generally.

 

[Robert]

Moving this to closed as it is being worked on.