An open letter about Store RP.

[ItsLiam]

Store Roleplay​

Spoiler: pre-thoughts nobody cares about For the past few days, perhaps longer, I've been pondering about things. Yesterday, one of those things that came to mind was Store RP. It's something that we all use in one way or another, is the driving force behind the economy and perhaps one of the most important gears in the works of CitizenRP. Yet, we all have our complaints about it, and nobody /truly/ has a solution to the problem where shopkeepers are moreso used as NPC Vendors rather than intriguing characters. As someone who owned a store across years and maps, most notably I had a toolshop in 2021, a supermarket in C8, a bar in T7, a bar/public events shop in C24 and then finally a bar/restaurant in the slums of C24, I think I am qualified to speak on the matter of Store RP, since I've been a part of it for a while. There are many complaints regarding how some people simply can't bring themselves to do intriguing shops, interesting concepts and to keep it active in a fun way. There are also many complaints about how some players (customers in this example) are just using shopkeepers as their personal non-npc vendors. After reading the preliminary feedback thread and seeing @Purple Knight and @Trutyis comment about Store Roleplay, I've decided to write up this thread. It'll be quite a bit of yap, so please stay with me on this topic.

There are no real solutions being displayed from people, and perhaps a part of this is because there are simply little solutions. Like what was stated in the feedback thread, good store RP is a culmination of the map, the setting, and most importantly one's creativity regarding the matter. This isn't wrong, but this also isn't completely right. One of the things that is fully correct though, is the fact that management can be controlled and changed in the regard of Store RP. The most important thing to understand is that without good and active leadership, stores will become less active and the cool/fun concepts will eventually make way for the standard run-of-the-mill things we all know and hate. Somewhat of a real suggestion that I personally have is that I think the more stores we have on a map, the more quality will take a hit. Think of it as a simple supply/demand equation. The more the quantity of stores are, the less quality will be. Of course there will be tiny spaces of high quality, but the amount of people that will flock to the easy '1-2-3 I got my order' stores is also higher. Akin to what staff said about rebels, and how forcing them to interact with the city will 'fix' or 'help' that part of the playerbase, the same can be said for store roleplay. By forcing the playerbase to interact with the high quality stores, the more they will flock to them, be accustomed to them and eventually they will also mirror this. It sounds cynical but humans are the masters of adaptability, it's why we've survived for so long yet other races before us went extinct. Another upside to having less stores is this simple equations: Less stores means that the stores remaining will get more customers on average --> This means that there is more profit going to said stores --> Less stores means that stores will have more demand to be active --> This means that they will either have to be more active by themselves, or hire more employees --> which eventually cultivates to round the clock active stores because you actively search out more employment. Why is this? Because I think management of stores should be more cut-throat. I think we should do away with this 'Oh if you pay then blablabla'. No, make management check up on stores regularly and if they miss multiple check-ups and can't explain why then they got phased out for a new store. Stop with this OOC store application stuff, and start interviewing people who want stores. People who have a boring concept like 'a bar : D' and that only, they get rejected. However 'A bar which hosts club-like nights and events bi-weekly' is something that'd be accepted, and if they show that they don't do this, they get kicked out for lying.

TLDR: Sometimes less is more, and store management needs to be more active and cut-throat. EXTRA: If anyone has better ideas, or contests mine, please don't be scared to post underneath.

 

[Imperator RAD-X]

Kaji had a pawn shop, a library and a restaurant. Store security consultancy and storage businesses (think banking). So each shop was unique and it worked into a conglomerate. So the one thing that cripples stores is the elephant in the room.

Vending Machines.

Guaranteed you'd have made more credits as a Vendor-Baron than a Store Conglomerate. So we'll take a hard stance in culling down vending machines. As @Rabithunter said to me - he got 20,000 credits alone through vending machines. Blame @Aspect™ he made the vending machines years ago!!!!

Anyhow. Denizen consumerism rights on the server was too much and took away from the dystopia.

We want stores to be more unique and in order to facilitate that to encourage people to make stores - the CWU will offer a variety of rewards and incentives including but not limited to;

- Startup Grants
- Innovation Grants
- Rent Percentage Negotiations
A handful more.

Case by case basis, of course. People that offer more than just a glorified NPC vendor that sells items will have the highest chance of getting the grants. We will also probably do business endorsements for those that are being the most proactive and engaging, so rewards will come with beneficiary perks with social credit rewards to enforce competition and encourages you to be unique, as said before. Those who aren't are usually a detriment to the economy and have to fend for themselves. Usually that might make things ugly in-character where usurpation may involve a gradual amount of tedious or tense plans. The introduction of that level of conflict will adapt players across the board to pursue something worth the reward and get more ontop of that if they retain it.

There was no reward for retaining it which was the main problem besides Vendor-Barons. If you encourage fun on the server and keep doing so - they could either be a target or they could become an opportunity for others. The ladder doesn't stop and we expect people to try and bump others off through means we can probably predict.

We had grants in V2 but businesses had a weird restriction where you could only do one thing at a time. That forced uniqueness, it was not organic. Therefore the enforcement was "AHA I can sell tea but you're forced to sell coffee!" - It made no sense in V2 and business was nonsensical as a result.

I fully agree with everything in this thread and you know - fuck it. Full steam ahead, we're going to do it differently and remove the red tape. Either people offer something decent and people flock to it or someone's store is a load of crap. But that's not to say that stores could not, themselves, be stuck to that route when we leave it open to illegal pawning, black market, "front" businesses and counterfeit stores that's in the dark corners.

We anticipate @dno to have a high level of competency regarding the black market and much more.

So yes, we're going all in on a revamp.

 

[Aspect™]

Blame @@Aspect™ he made the vending machines years ago!!!!

umm,, oopsie poopsie

 

[Rabithunter]

Litterally :/

 

[Lumbago]

Bars actively hosting themed events here and there would be so peak for V3.

 

[Trutyis]

Ty for writing this!! I'm super bad with words, and this is what I was trying to get at. Awesome to see the topic get touched on.

 

[Muho]

Less shops is a solution yes. Another solution to the problem is allowing people to work in lets say CMU and a store etc. The Factions shouldn't limit your options just because you are in one. If im off duty as a CWU worker, I should be allowed to work in a shop or even own one.

Most of the time you want to stay on 1 or 2 chars to progess their story. Giving someone more options with one char would help out.

 

[ItsLiam]

Less shops is a solution yes. Another solution to the problem is allowing people to work in lets say CMU and a store etc. The Factions shouldn't limit your options just because you are in one. If im off duty as a CWU worker, I should be allowed to work in a shop or even own one.

Most of the time you want to stay on 1 or 2 chars to progess their story. Giving someone more options with one char would help out.

I don't know if anything changed at the end of V2, but when I played during C8 --> T7 --> C24 I was allowed to work in the CMU and also run a store at the same time. Neither Quarter, nor Rabbit, ever prohibited me from doing either at a time.

If it /did/ change, then I do highly suggest it to be reverted. I think owning a store might be an iffy situation, but you should definitely be allowed to work in a store.

 

[Muho]

I don't know if anything changed at the end of V2, but when I played during C8 --> T7 --> C24 I was allowed to work in the CMU and also run a store at the same time. Neither Quarter, nor Rabbit, ever prohibited me from doing either at a time.

If it /did/ change, then I do highly suggest it to be reverted. I think owning a store might be an iffy situation, but you should definitely be allowed to work in a store.

I think it was a thing in CWU not sure if other factions have the rule too.

 

[Chit_guy]

I know this is basically what the posts said, but just to emphasize it, one of the things killing store RP is that "arcade" aspect that most stores adhere to. Something similar happened in CWU in I24 from 2024, where CWU was hosting mostly fabricator workshifts, and then it became a arcade faction where people would just go to get quick money. Afterwards it was changed so fabricators are only used in a few occasion and most workshifts were proper roleplaying workshifts ( it came with its own problems, but im not sure it applies to storeRP).

Another big aspect is that, at least from my experience in willard, most stores were simply not active for most of the day. I remember very well that for hours and hours not a single store was active. Of course people have their own stuff to do, but these stores had multiple employees and whatnot, and still they were rarely active. So, as a response to Rad-X's comment, i dont think completely removing vending machines would be the answer, because how are we supposed to buy a few simple items when theres absolutely no stores active? My suggestion would be to have at least one CWU owned vending machine with a couple basic items so people dont have to wait for a store to open so they can buy a sparkling breen water.

 

[Imperator RAD-X]

We don't have an interest to remove vending machines entirely. But limiting what their capabilities were is.

 

[Kappatalist]

Mostly agree, but

Like I said on the other posts, stores aren't just about providing RP to others as RP hubs. Assuming there's ten spots for stores, the server is realistically only ever going to be able to handle 2 or 3 of these hubs at any given time as bars or restaurants, or libraries with events, like you're saying.

But stores have a second purpose (which I think is just as important) and that's employment and bringing people together in groups, whilst a hardware store probably isn't going to be the peak of RP, if it employs just 4 people, that's a natural group forming around the store and people forming relationships as well as providing a service. Some stores there's just not a great deal you can do with them unlike bars, cafes or restaurants. Not all stores can or should be central RP hubs for the server, but we should absolutely focus on having 2 or 3 of good quality that are.

There's essentially 2 categories of stores, and 2 different standards to hold them to.
Not to say of course, that any store owner should be lazy with RP or sit behind a counter 24/7, either.

Willard should be capable of having that variety and number going into v3 especially since rebels ought to not be sitting in the sewers or outlands all day and like @Muho suggests having factions allow people to also work at stores. Being a city RP server, if there's 50 players on, there should be 50 players on the streets. Not in the Nexus, not the Outlands, not hiding in the warehouse - but actually out RPing with everybody else.

---

As for management I do agree too, if shops turn inactive they should be readily turfed out. But I'm always wary that we end up in a situation like v2 where it becomes incredibly overbearing, however. If a store is running just fine it should be left well alone. The irony that the store @Imperator RAD-X picked out for his "Willard good ending" slide ended up closing because of a (now long gone) staff member and DoB/CP targetting it to the extreme isn't lost on me and it's been similar stories since. It should be easy to get stores, but easy to lose stores if you aren't using them. But you shouldn't lose them because of minor suspicions or one characters ego.

 

[melodicwaste]

Why do people always make their titles so dramatic

 

[Imperator RAD-X]

"Willard good ending"

 

[joe moter]

I've ran a few stores in my time, nothing too interesting other than the casino and the illegal side business attached to it.

I think one of the biggest problems with store is the ability to sell too much. Back in V2 you could buy anything your heart and permit allowed, which made literally anything sellable. Basically, its like if I went to a restaurant and the menu had one hundred appetizers on it on it. The only thing stopping people from selling literally everything on the permit was the paper constraints. I think another fun thing would be to make buying stock a personal experience, instead of going into the skills menu and summoning a single unit of any product to a pickup terminal. What I'm saying is, bulk buying and having to talk to somebody, if you want to sell everything you have to buy everything- and at that point you have become Walmart.

There should be some way to measure employee work time other than guessing based on the POS, I honestly had trouble pinning down which workers actually worked, because many of my employees were hired from different time zones than my own. Possibly some sort of clocking in machine, or something like that. The transfer taxes and POS taxes made it harder to pay employees their wages, and my employees paying me some of what they earned was also taxed, which lead me to avoid taxes through coupons.

My next point is something that can't really be changed, but people don't eat in at restaurants, some evil people don't even drink at the bar, and that can lower the enjoyment of both the customer, other customers entering, and the person serving the customers. This is a roleplay problem, I can't fix it by suggesting staying-in-store rules.

My evil and insane opinion about vending machine over usage is to put taxes on them, and to tax them to all hell, since in V2 vending machines didn't pay taxes and stores did, which gave a huge advantage to the vending machines. I've always said that putting a 50% tax on items sold from a vending machine would be beneficial, because it would make vending machine prices ridiculous and be a last resort. For example, if a guy sold some Dr. Breen for 10 credits, he'd only get 5 credits from the machine. Nobody would want to buy Breen for 10 credits, and the vending machine owner would only make 2 credits based on V2 prices.

I'd be happy to speak more on this, but this is too much words for a comment.

TLDR: Bulk buying using player communication. Clock in system and no tax on pay. Nobody dines in these days. Large taxes on vending machines to make stores preferable.

 

[ItsLiam]

Why do people always make their titles so dramatic

Rule 1 of engagement bait

 

[Kappatalist]

My evil and insane opinion about vending machine over usage is to put taxes on them, and to tax them to all hell, since in V2 vending machines didn't pay taxes and stores did, which gave a huge advantage to the vending machines. I've always said that putting a 50% tax on items sold from a vending machine would be beneficial, because it would make vending machine prices ridiculous and be a last resort. For example, if a guy sold some Dr. Breen for 10 credits, he'd only get 5 credits from the machine. Nobody would want to buy Breen for 10 credits, and the vending machine owner would only make 2 credits based on V2 prices.

TLDR: Bulk buying using player communication. Clock in system and no tax on pay. Nobody dines in these days. Large taxes on vending machines to make stores preferable.

Tax vending machines, there should be no tax on stores it was an awful decision IMO. Clocking in would be cool too, like an entity which just lets you use a card on it, maybe a punch card IDK. It should be really easy to use tho, literally just press E on it or something and should be for the store owner to check not whoever oversees stores I feel. Keep it optional, just something nice and handy you could use at your store if you wanted.

If anybody suggests a google form tho, woodchipper

I found when I ran a bar I got a good influx of people but you do need to entice them in, I'd sell shots at a single credit as solely RP things but it gave people a reason to visit even when they couldn't afford to actually sit in and drink bottles which are priced high for gameplay reasons

 

[ItsLiam]

But stores have a second purpose (which I think is just as important) and that's employment and bringing people together in groups, whilst a hardware store probably isn't going to be the peak of RP, if it employs just 4 people, that's a natural group forming around the store and people forming relationships as well as providing a service. Some stores there's just not a great deal you can do with them unlike bars, cafes or restaurants. Not all stores can or should be central RP hubs for the server, but we should absolutely focus on having 2 or 3 of good quality that are.

I mean, a thing to note is that by having less stores, there's more demand for said stores to be open which means, in turn, that there will be a bigger employment rate on said stores.

Of course this could backfire, but since we now have a rule that you can sell items on the streets while not having permits, it could realistically fix itself(?).

 

[Chit_guy]

I think one of the biggest problems with store is the ability to sell too much. Back in V2 you could buy anything your heart and permit allowed, which made literally anything sellable. Basically, its like if I went to a restaurant and the menu had one hundred appetizers on it on it. The only thing stopping people from selling literally everything on the permit was the paper constraints. I think another fun thing would be to make buying stock a personal experience, instead of going into the skills menu and summoning a single unit of any product to a pickup terminal. What I'm saying is, bulk buying and having to talk to somebody, if you want to sell everything you have to buy everything- and at that point you have become Walmart.

That is a very interesting idea. It would give DoB something to do, which is nice because there was barely anything to do in the DoB, and it would allow stores to have a more dynamic selling system. Like, imagine a clothing store selling clothes for cheaper to burn the stock, like IRL stores do. Also things like " oh, people buy more of this item, so i will buy this particular item in way bigger quantities then the other items"

 

[Kappatalist]

I mean, a thing to note is that by having less stores, there's more demand for said stores to be open which means, in turn, that there will be a bigger employment rate on said stores.

Of course this could backfire, but since we now have a rule that you can sell items on the streets while not having permits, it could realistically fix itself(?).

I think for those types of stores which exist to sell goods like a clothing or hardware store not being open constantly is fine so long as it's not inactive like we saw on v2. Which I think might be moreso because the city was always dead and they'd be literally running with a single employee.

2 different stores with 5 employees is better than 1 combined store with 10 to me, because the former is two distinct groups which are going to act in their own interest together and that can be against or with other stores, gangs, CPs, rebels or anything. But if we can't get the pop for that, I agree yeah better to have fewer stores in total