Store income and ideas

[Kilo]

After doing the store thing for a few server cycles, heres my imput. I love the idea of owning and running a store but sadly i take a loss everytime i do it and yet i still do it for the rp. 

- a business that currently is renting a store should have access to a big bulk store and buy all legal items at a discount in bulk. (repair kits , pills , gas canisters , etc...)

-the store where we cannot actualy rent should sell their stuff at a bigger markup (ex:repair kit is currently 200$- then the non rentable store should sell repair kits at like 400$)

-this would actualy make ppl use the player owned stores over the ai store because currently there is no incentive to purchase anything at a player store since their price will be inflated over the ai;s store simply to turn a profit .As it stand ppl are overlooking player stores and go directly to ai stores since A-prices are cheaper and B- they are guaranteed to have what you are looking for in stock.

As of right now, there is no real reason to shop at a player owned store , hopefully this suggestion would help solve this .

Love the update and the idea behind it , these are just a few things that i have noticed that might help push this idea forward. -thanks and lemme know what yall think- KIlo Woods

Edited September 12, 2018 by Kilo

[George Cahill]

I like your points @Kilo, I really do, Personally I believe there should be something like this to increase the RP between the player and the player owned stores.

 

+1

[xEmbers-]

I agree with your points. 

You don't make money by selling things that you can buy in the AI shops, you barely get any business because people can buy a larger variety from the AI shops, and etc..

But have you thought of maybe selling things that you CAN'T buy from the AI shops..? I.E. Grapes..? Because people are lazy and don't want to go out and pick them. "Why go pick them when you can just go buy them from the store on Strawberry?"

Edited September 12, 2018 by xEmbers-

[Victor]

1 hour ago, Kilo said:

 ai stores since A-prices are cheaper and B- they are guaranteed to have what you are looking for in stock.

This is my issue when I visit player owned shop. There is chance that item you looking for is out of stock and you waste time to go to store. Or, people stock on only Kebabs and Lemonade which my character does not like, thus getting even simple coffee is next to impossible from player owned shops.

Increasing product prices even further for NPCs and force people to half stocked "maybe I can find it there" shops is not good solution. Also businesess getting products in bulks for discount... There is problem, as businesess gonna then just directly sell those bulks to people and store owners will be in same position as right now. Even if you force businesess to own a store just to buy bulks of goods, why would you sell em at store when you can just tweet up and send delivery boys to deliver the product to people directly. Once again zero win for store owners. Or business would buy bulks of goods, stack em in store, buy them all themselves just to get cheaper pills.

[xEmbers-]

I don't know the exact reason why shops were specifically added to the game, but it feels like they are supposed to be another reason for "More RP" and possibly just to be a laundromat for our dirty money. If they were put in specifically for those two reasons and possibly adding new and cool  things for us to do... I think it would just me more effective for us to have a legit Laundromat for our dirty money that takes a percentage if we don't work there and you are charged a fee by the store clerks or something. I don't know. Just speculating.

 

PS. Posting this on this thread because is is titled for Shop Ideas as well.

[vDrop]

Great idea Kilo! 

I think it would bring more value to the store. 

@Victor  With Kilo's idea, it would be more of an incentive for Store Owners to stock up on a more variety of items for everyone. As of right now, everyone is selling the same things, but if Player Owned stores had more value to go to rather than a AI store, then Store Owners could provide that variety. 

 

[Corny]

Great ideas Kilo, this would really drive business to the player-owned stores. I will admit, I really stopped going to stores other than to chat as most of the time they are out of stock or it costs more than going to a local's store.

[speed]

So this was actually an idea I had, but there are a lot of things that can and will go wrong with it, which is why it wasn’t added.

That’s why a lot of items went missing from the markets in this patch, because I planned on offering them for a discount. But they would not be able to be sold back to markets, which makes laundering impossible, which kind of defeats the purpose.

1. The sell back rate is tied to the price of items in the shop. This was increased to 90% instead of 75% to keep people from losing too much money when laundering their cash.

2. If we offer items at a discount, people will abuse the system and just sell the discounted items back to shops. I know this will happen, because it happened when the “sell back” feature was first added.

So how do we allow shops to make a profit, while not causing money launderers to lose too much money, while also preventing abuse? That’s the challenge I’m facing now. I can come up with solutions for two of the problems (like yours), but not all three.

That was the idea behind inventory packs. They give you a bit of heavily discounted items for your shop (and they even have benefits over regular food/drink items), but it’s still not enough to solve the problems above.

[Kota]

What if Locals could over time buy inventory from the shop. Not a ton but allow for some static income if your store is stocked.

Edited September 12, 2018 by KotaJon91

[speed]

2 minutes ago, KotaJon91 said:

What if Locals could over time buy inventory from the shop. Not a ton but allow for some static income if your store is stocked.

Thought about that too actually. But I think the restrictions we would have to put on it (ie to prevent people from listing pills for 800k) would kind of defeat the purpose.

[Anton]

couldn't we just live without sell back feature? is it used often? cause i know i probably used it like once or twice

[Reuben ~ Reckonity]

2 hours ago, speed said:

Thought about that too actually. But I think the restrictions we would have to put on it (ie to prevent people from listing pills for 800k) would kind of defeat the purpose.

Any possible way to limit certain items so people can't sell something for a certain price? (What I mean is maybe limit the Kebab by hundreds as it's intended, this would stop Dirty Money being laundered quickly but it makes it a bit more necessary and helps with the local situation you're talking about)

Edited September 12, 2018 by Reckonity

[r3v0Lt55]

So I've ran shops a few times since the launch and here are my thoughts on some problem areas. First off like has already been said about the profit margin on items sold by AI market. So my idea to help aid in this problem is to get the delivery driver job that has been in the city to be involved more in the store process. So add the ability at the shops computer to place orders. These orders would go to the delivery drivers just like the current AI ones that he receives. These delivery drivers would either be able to purchase items from a newly added cheap Wal-mart warehouse or receive discounts at only player owned markets. Delivery man Anton met me at my store one day and we formed a business relationship that i provided him the items he needed to make his deliveries to others and he provided me with a shit ton of pineapple pizza and coke. The business relationship went well but for the shop owner to get money out of this current system I had to be stealing the delivery mans profits. Also for this idea to work the delivery man himself has to be able to deliver more than 4 items (tacos, water bottles, pizza, cola).  Def think something is here and can be used to improve current system.

Another problem area I see is at the end or your shops shift getting you stock returned to you for the next shift. People want us store managers to have a bigger inventory at or store and sell grapes and the like. But when we do this we get penalized on the back end hard at the end of our shift. I stocked a store with every item that you could get at an AI store + grapes, peaches, etc. Thought 30 mins would be enough time for me at the end to grab everything out but boy was i wrong. Ended up losing inventory stock as well as not being able to get some of my money out of the store. Until this issue is fixed personally I wont be spending 30+ mins on the front and back end of the shift loading merchandise.

So these are a couple improvements that I think would help the lives of the store managers, but there are some aspects of the store managers that I feel need to get fixed on the opposite end of the spectrum.

There needs to be safeguards in place to prevent mass instantaneous dirty money laundering. There is currently nothing to keep store managers from laundering hundreds of thousands of dirty money at snap of their fingers. I'm sure you devs know of this and I wont get into details so more people do it, but there needs to be some things added to maintain fair play. If devs need details dm me. 

Edited September 12, 2018 by r3v0Lt55

[BlackMagic0]

Oh god yes. The getting stock back before a storm is frustrating. I really wish there was a 'get all stock' for closing. I don't mind having to shove everything away into a Van for storage but it's really annoying having to use an hour+ to get stock back if you keep things heavily stocked at your store. Specially because you gotta buy it back in the first place, so you're usually just cycling the same 10-20k for ease.

Also it is very easy to launder mass amounts of money. Yes, even at the snap of a finger. No limits.

Then again laundering money is a little frustrating for another reason too. But that isn't what this thread is about.

[speed]

Regarding inventory withdraw:

I may look into adding it this weekend if I have time

1 hour ago, BlackMagic0 said:

Also it is very easy to launder mass amounts of money. Yes, even at the snap of a finger. No limits.

Then again laundering money is a little frustrating for another reason too. But that isn't what this thread is about.

Money laundering itself isn't really intended to be a difficult or super time consuming process. As it stands right now there isn't a lot of risk to money laundering, and part of the reason for that is because I expected the initial reaction to be mostly negative since it adds additional work to the already fairly lengthy process of drug dealing. So it'll be an iterative process where more risk will be added over time.

With the vision I have for dirty money, the real danger actually lies after the money has been laundered. Those that are careless and launder money with huge transactions will attract much more attention than those that do it slow and steady