Player run shop/saved posts

The Situation (2015)

Category: Discussions with Simutronics
Topic: The Bad, and the Ugly (general complaints)
Message #: 13492
Author: GS4-WYROM
Date: 11/16/2015 11:35 AM EST
Subject: Re: Player shops

>>I wasn't looking for people to revamp the Player Shops themselves, i just want to know what's going on with them!

The reasoning for playershops being shut down is due to having suffered from a severe bug. As many knew, the shops were checked at midnight CT at the end/beginning of the month to see if you should keep your shop. You had to meet two requirements, that you visited your shop as well as interacted with a SHOP command inside and you paid your rent. If you didn't meet those requirements, the system looped through all your inventory and packed up your items. It cleaned out the shop of any personal alterations (like shop name), and put the deed back on the market. Most people toward the end were just farming deeds to sell because they knew how it worked.

At some point during this process, the shops were blowing up, deleting inventory, breaking the rooms, trapping players, and deleting player crates. And then when this happened, it didn't finish the process of checking shops. Other oddities were starting to happen. The decision was to shut down the rent collector portion of the system so it didn't check anything. That's why Prime is rent free. We've had several people work on the system, with our last lead on it with hundreds of coding hours into the rewrite to fix these issues, as well as give major overhauls to some much needed areas. Something came up though. One of the scripts were overwritten by mistake, deleting months of work. No offline copy existed due to a number of factors, and well, it slowed it down. He managed to fix it, but it was never fully tested. Then he left staff shortly after.

Training up staff to take it over is hit or miss. Sleken has tried to get a few people on it. But getting someone up to speed on GSL and then onto someone else's project in a hobbyist programming language that is completely unique to the IFEs (That's what GS is) is not as easy as you'd think. It's not like I can just put someone on it, they have to be skilled and experienced enough to understand the project. They also have to go into someone else's work and debug, learning it for themselves. Sometimes this is easy, most times it's not.

This is where we're at. We want to get this out as much as you all want it.

~Wyrom, APM

The Fixing (2017)

Category: Game Design Discussions
Topic: Player-Run Shops
Message #: 487
Author: GS4-RETSER
Date: 05/10/2017 12:42 PM EDT
Subject: Playershop Updates

Hey Everyone, for those of you that missed it we finished a stability test in our test environment. This test was being conducted since my last batch of "open testing" that some of you participated in. I concurrently pushed these updates in with our fresh copy of test from prime; with no issues. That being said, barring no major issues, we're ready to move forward with the updates to playershops. I'm going to explain what happens from here, the phases, and what this means to you.

General Information

All players will have until Monday, May 15th to login and visit their shop. You will need to make sure that you have silver in your shop in order to account for the rent. Single room shops are 10k and three room shops are 30k. Shop rent will be drawn monthly, if you are 3 months behind in your rent your shop will be closed for eviction. The playershop system evaluates if the owner or a partner has entered the threshold within the last 90 days. You can check in by entering the shop and entering the SHOP command. After 90 days, your shop will be evicted.

A lot of you are going to be asking, I want a shop, how do I get a shop? Starting phase 3 you will be able to purchase shops again. There won't be a shortage of shops, so don't panic. There are 679 shops and of which 462 are abandoned with my latest test from prime.

Phase 1

Starting Monday the 15th, all shops will start paying rent. All shops that have not been visited within 90 days will be closed for eviction. Owners will have 30 days to visit closed shops before they will be evicted during this process.

Phase 2

Starting June the 15th, all abandoned shops as outlined above will be evicted and removed. This phase will take approximately 2 weeks.

Phase 3

Once all the evicted shops have been handled I will slowly start opening permit sales in all the realms. This will allow players to visit the local shop warehouse, buy a permit, and CLAIM a shop. The method of release is under discussion, but there will most likely be more than enough shops to just open it up and let those who want one, buy one.

Phase 4

From here, the shop system will remain in its updated state. Rent monthly will be drawn every 30 days. If you do not visit your shop within 90 days, you will be evicted. If you do not pay your rent for 90 days, you will be evicted.

Phase 1

Category: Game Design Discussions
Topic: Player-Run Shops
Message #: 615
Author: GS4-RETSER
Date: 05/16/2017 06:12 PM EDT
Subject: Re: Playershop Updates

Hello everyone, a few updates and notes.

First, I've updated the policy on PARTNERS and OWNERS. You can view the policy by using SHOP POLICY.

You will now find the following item:

4) If a shop owner fails to check into their shop for 90 days the partner can take over the shop by means of an ASSIST. If more than one partner is on the shop, all partners will need to give consent to a single partner. If an agreement cannot be made, the shop will be evicted. If the original owner returns, they cannot reclaim the shop from the new owner without their consent. This will be handled in a case by case situation and is not a guarantee.

In the near future, I'll be working a way to automate this process. These changes are in effect as of 5/15/2017.

Shop Notifications PREMIUM ONLY

All premium subscribers can now enjoy shop notifications. If you are a premium subscriber, you must enter and exit your shop to refresh your premium status on it. This is held for 30 days before needing to be refreshed again. At this time, all partners will also receive the benefit of the owner's premium status. You will not see this message if your offline, they will not be stored. If you are online and an item sells, you will receive a message like this:

Your kroderine full plate just sold for 5000 silvers from the simple shop. After tax you made 4849 silvers!

NEW SHOP VERBS

Effective immediately, all shop owners will have access to the following two commands.

SHOP SALES

This command will let you see the last 5 items to sell in your shop.

It will display the item name, the price, and the amount after tax.

>SHOP SALES

Sales Report (last five items sold):
Item: some kroderine full plate - Price: 5000 silvers silvers - After Tax: 4849 silvers
Item: some kroderine full plate - Price: 5000 silvers - After Tax: 4849 silvers
Item: a vultite broadsword - Price: 50000 silvers - After Tax: 48485 silvers
Item: a vultite dagger - Price: 25000 silvers - After Tax: 24243 silvers
Item: a tiny red volcano - Price: 5000 silvers - After Tax: 4849 silvers

SHOP INFO

This command will let you get a general shop listing.

>SHOP INFO

Playershops


Shop Entry: a simple shop

Shop Owner: Retser

Shop partners:
Rester 
Tamuz

Shop details:

Total silver in shop: 165968

Time until next Rent collection: 

Time since last OWNER checkin: 1 minute

Time since last SHOP checkin: 1 minute

Banned from the simple shop:

Thanks

As a final note, thank you all for your patience during this. There is still a lot of work to be done.

Retser, ASGM

Category: Game Design Discussions
Topic: Player-Run Shops
Message #: 667
Author: GS4-RETSER
Date: 06/12/2017 11:49 AM EDT
Subject: Re: Playershop Updates

Hi

There are a couple of things I'd like to address and outline as we move along with the current phase of playershops. These are changes that will impact the next few phases and I want to make sure everyone is informed and aware.

Account Limitations

The existing playershop system did not have the capability to limit by account. With the implementation of these updates I have started to track every playershop owner by account. All existing shop owners that have multiple shops on the same account will be grandfathered in. If you transferred ownership of a shop from yourself to a different party between 5/15/17 and when I put in the next batch of changes you will need to ASSIST to be removed from the account level tracking. Staff members will not assist you in transferring your multiple shops between your accounts or other characters on your account.

F2P

Playershops currently block anyone access who is not a citizen. Loosely, this allowed us to keep F2P accounts from owning a shop. Moving forward, I have put in a few checks for F2P accounts. If you are found as having a F2P account with a shop, you will have up to 30 days to re-subscribe or risk losing your shop. This is addressed in SHOP POLICY # 6:

6) Free to play accounts are not eligible to own a shop. If a free to play account is found to be the owner of a shop they will have up to 30 days to resubscribe. If are unable to do so your shop will be evicted.

Multi-Room Shops

Multi-room shops are intended for premium subscribers only. There have been multiple occurrences of a non-premium account holding onto a multi-room shop. This was never intended. This is addressed in SHOP POLICY # 7:

7) Multi-room shops are for premium subscribers only. If you are found having a multi-room shop and you are not a premium subscriber you will have up to 30 days to resolve the issue. You can SHOP DOWNSIZE in each side room or resubscribe to a premium membership. Failure to do so will result in an eviction.

General Policy Additions

I've added in two new general policies. All shop owners will need to agree to new shop policy when they enter their shop for the first time since the updates have been pushed in. Anytime there is a major shop policy update you will need to agree to it again before entering.

8) All shop owners must adhere and abide by the shop policies. Failure to do so will result in an immediate eviction from your shop.

9) Exploitation of any shop mechanics are considered to be a Game Mechanics Abuse which could result in loss of your shop, temporary lockout, or a permanent ban depending on the severity.

Retser, ASGM

Phase 2

Category: Game Design Discussions
Topic: Player-Run Shops
Message #: 703
Author: GS4-RETSER
Date: 06/14/2017 02:45 PM EDT
Subject: Playershops: Phase 2 Starting 6/15

Hello everyone! As previously outlined, the eviction process will begin tomorrow.

What does that mean exactly?

If a shop is still in an abandoned state it will be crated up and shipped away. The shop face/entrance will be removed from the area. If you are a partner or an owner you can visit your local authority and ask them for your crate of belongings.

Can I has shop now?

No.

When can I potentially get a shop?

When they are ready.

How will they be released?

I'll be starting a separate thread on this relatively soon.

Retser, ASGM

Category: Game Design Discussions
Topic: Player-Run Shops
Message #: 738
Author: GS4-RETSER
Date: 07/17/2017 02:34 PM EDT
Subject: PlayerShops: Evictions Complete and Next Phase

Hello everyone, I finished the first pass of evictions in Prime and Platinum. With the evictions completed we're still not quite ready to move fully into the next phase. There were a couple complications that drew out this process that will need to be addressed.

Current Shop Owners: If you owned a shop and were a partner in an evicted shop you will need to visit your shop immediately. (You may have noticed your manifest crumbled) Please make sure to ENTER your shop alone, or as the leader of your group. This will be auto corrected upon entry.

There are still a few straggler shops that will be evicted soon. There was a minor bug with people being able to UNLOCK and LOCK their shops even when it was in an abandoned state. This pushed back the eviction timer a little and your time is still nigh.

Here is a listing of potential shops available by town in prime after evictions.

Landing: 85

Teras: 13

Solhaven: 27

River's Rest: 8

Icemule: 49

Zul Logoth: 15

Ta'Illistim: 23

Ta'Vaalor: 58

FWI: 28

Now, lets talk about the next phase. With the complications that came up during the eviction process there are still some unknown elements with how the system will behave. I've introduced a lot of changes through this process with the back end and have had to re-develop a lot of points. That being said, I will be doing small releases of shops of assorted release mechanisms. These will be controlled experiments to make sure that the new shop process is performing as it should.

What type of releases?

I will try to hit a couple different methods and locations for this.

A raffle for each town and for premium.

A couple of auctions per town and for premium.

MYSTERY OPTIONS!

You must be eligible to own a shop (not have one) and be a citizen to win. These will be announced with at least 24 hours notice in the next few weeks. Upon winning I will need to monitor you claiming your new shop when our schedules match.

After this intermediate phase is completed we'll discuss the next release phase.

Retser, ASGM

Category: Game Design Discussions
Topic: Player-Run Shops
Message #: 768
Author: GS4-RETSER
Date: 08/07/2017 02:05 PM EDT
Subject: Playershops: SHOP DEED is no longer available.

Hey everyone, you will need to use SHOP TRANSFER to transfer your shop.

The DEED command is no longer available.

Retser, ASGM