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Post by Fraze on May 4, 2009 18:45:02 GMT -5
We've been talking on and off about this for a while. Okay, so I've been doing most of the talking, but still, the idea of a Guild Shop War has been circulating for some time. The idea is simple: all the guilds open their own shops, and each one tries to earn the most money. I think this would do best as a relatively unstructured thing, but if we want this to be a competition of sorts, there do need to be some rules. Here's what I'm thinking:
--You cannot buy from your own guild shop(s). Otherwise, the people in the more populous guilds could just spend all their shinies at their own shops, and choke out everyone else. It might be hard to work out how to do this, since different guilds are different sizes and some people belong to multiple guilds. But hey, I'm not a math major for nothing. (For people in multiple guilds, it may just be simplest to say that, for the purpose of GSW, they just belong to one guild, whichever they're most active in, and simply cannot buy from that guild.)
--Everyone starts with x amount of shinies (where x may vary from guild to guild). Hey, you just paid taxes, and your tax refunds have come in! But what to do with the 150 shinies burning a hole in your pocket? Why, spend it of course!
Other than these two things, I think it should be a free-for-all. Price your shops however you want--whether you want to sell higher-priced, more valuable items, or cheap knickknacks, whether you'll do sales and special offers or not, is up to you. You don't even have to do a shop, it could be a restaurant--anything from a McMercenary's drive-thru to the Ritz-Ninjaton, where you make your reservations three months in advance and the food shows up on your plate without anyone seeming to have brought it there.
...Yeah, can you tell I'm having way too much fun with this? So, anyone else got any ideas?
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Post by Deleted on May 4, 2009 20:03:04 GMT -5
A tourist stand? I'd be happy to dress up in traditional Mage robes and get a Magey partner to take tourist photos outside Mage Manor. There is a lovely fountain near the eastern gardens which I think would be lovely!
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Post by ♥ Azzie on May 4, 2009 20:36:06 GMT -5
Ooh! Sarn, let me take the pictures!
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2009 0:13:50 GMT -5
Ooh! Sarn, let me take the pictures! Ok! And then we can refuse to give the camera back until they pay us double our asking price. |
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Post by Kengplant on May 5, 2009 0:50:41 GMT -5
I've been thinking about this too but the thing is how do we encourage people to buy from other shops? Maybe a prize for most items bought as well? (individual so that bigger guilds aren't at a disadvantage?) The money earned from selling stuff would have to be split up between the active guild members participating so that we can keep buying stuff once we run out of shinies.
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Post by Fraze on May 5, 2009 4:40:42 GMT -5
Each shop is responsible for its own advertising. However they choose to attract people to their shops is up to them, be it a "buy one get one free" sale, a "free doodad with every purchase of n shinies or more" thing, and so on. Or, of course, there could be real incentives--"sketch from so-and-so with every purchase of n shinies or more" kind of thing. I don't think we really need incentives beyond that--honestly, since when has anyone had to be convinced to go on a shopping spree with free money?
As for dividing up the money, I think the easiest way to do it would be to give each guild the same amount of money, and divide that up evenly amongst all the people in that guild participating in GSW. (For example, say, we give 600 shinies to each guild. Say the Mercs have three people who want to participate, so each Merc gets 200 shinies. But Spacefleet has 4 people participating, so each person only gets 150 shinies. That way, the total amount of money given to each guild remains constant.)
I hadn't thought about recirculating the money, to be honest--I thought that once everyone had spent all of their money, we would just tally up how much each shop had earned. If we wanted to make this go on indefinitely, we could recirculate the money, but that might just make the whole game drag on too long. Not to mention, it doesn't make sense economically.
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Post by Celestial on May 5, 2009 7:10:44 GMT -5
It's a very good idea Fraze! This should be fun and guild tourism is something that needs to be encouraged. What better way to do it than with free money? x3
However I do think that something needs to be done with the shinies that your shop earns otherwise they just seem a little...pointless. Perhaps when a shop reaches a certain amount of shinies in their till they can expand to store more goods or have some other perks? Otherwise it is just bragging rights (which are fine and dandy but you can't put them in your pocket and make them work for you).
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Post by Huntress on May 5, 2009 9:19:14 GMT -5
The one big problem I see with this shop war idea is that, well, you friendly local guilds include a friendly local Hunty if you remember, and if you don't by now know what she tends to do to competition, you're in for finding out the hard way.
...okaaay, no shady deeds and mauling/incapacitating/seducing/alloftheabove the competitors. Well, about the shop's income, I reckon the earned shinies could be distributed between guildmembers who'd then get more shinies to spend in other guilds' shops, who'd in turn get more shinies to... you get the picture. There's a number of loopholes in that system, including people with multiple alliances and inactive members, but let's face it, our primary goal here is to get more activity in the guilds. So long as that's going to work, does it matter if it's economically sound? I'd let people buy from my shop ad infinitum with no real shinies to their account if it means getting more people post in my guild.
...dear gods, did I just say that? We really are getting desperate.
Hm, we could drain inspiration from Neo for this. Create demand by limited stocks, for instance. That way people could also sell to each other, or sell back to the shop for a lower price if they're in a pinch... that's probably more loopholes, but I'm just tossing ideas out at this point.
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Post by Kengplant on May 5, 2009 12:39:02 GMT -5
Well, the guild wars shop was quite the success back in the first GW and I was rather sad that I never got around to it in the second GW.
I'm pretty sure that most guilds have at least one active artist in it, it's a question of if those artists have the time to commit or not.
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Post by Huntress on May 5, 2009 13:59:13 GMT -5
Well, I have no time to commit whatsoever, I need to get my thesis done in two weeks and am terribly behind in schedule, but when's that ever stopped me before? :] *drew this today within a couple hours and might as well give y'guys an exclusive sneak preview*  Come on, wouldn't you want to buy this adorable little fella, handmade, high quality, only twenty shinies apiece, huh, huh, huh? =3 ...yeah, I'm also having way too much fun with the idea x3 Now all we need to do is iron out all the holes in the system and eh, actually agree on the system. I wasn't too active around the first GW, how did the shop work back there? |
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Post by Cyborg on May 5, 2009 15:31:34 GMT -5
I would buy ten of 'em Hunty! And problems I see, are one if there's the artist, they need to be able to have time to draw these items, not everyone can do that. Two what if someone wants to buy something from their own Guild, but can't due to rules, that's not exactly fair for them.
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Post by Huntress on May 5, 2009 16:32:27 GMT -5
Nobody's saying that they all have to be fancy arteestic images. Or that there actually have to be images, Fraze's giftshop seems to have worked just fine without any. There's always Google and various RPG items to be leeched off from (so long as you re-host them. Some sites combat hotlinking by replacing the images with all sorts of inappropriate crud.) I always draw my own stuff because, y'know, artistic pride and all, plus I doubt Google has blarf plushies, but that doesn't mean everyone's obliged to do it.
...I'm not discriminating, though. I can happily draw stuff for other shops as well so long as I get inspiration :3 *has already been pondering drawing a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster for the Fleet*
And buying from one's own shop depends on the system we end up using. If we go for a full-fledged competitive shopwar then the rule of not supporting your own shop is nothing but reasonable. But after that's over, we can always go for a general non-economic semi-bloidal non-fixed over-hyphenated system that focuses on getting more activity in the guilds rather than getting shinies. In which case a shopwar would be the best way to kick the whole show off for starters.
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Post by Fraze on May 5, 2009 17:35:12 GMT -5
The one big problem I see with this shop war idea is that, well, you friendly local guilds include a friendly local Hunty if you remember, and if you don't by now know what she tends to do to competition, you're in for finding out the hard way. ...okaaay, no shady deeds and mauling/incapacitating/seducing/alloftheabove the competitors. Well, about the shop's income, I reckon the earned shinies could be distributed between guildmembers who'd then get more shinies to spend in other guilds' shops, who'd in turn get more shinies to... you get the picture. There's a number of loopholes in that system, including people with multiple alliances and inactive members, but let's face it, our primary goal here is to get more activity in the guilds. So long as that's going to work, does it matter if it's economically sound? I'd let people buy from my shop ad infinitum with no real shinies to their account if it means getting more people post in my guild. ...dear gods, did I just say that? We really are getting desperate. Hm, we could drain inspiration from Neo for this. Create demand by limited stocks, for instance. That way people could also sell to each other, or sell back to the shop for a lower price if they're in a pinch... that's probably more loopholes, but I'm just tossing ideas out at this point. Hm. But then the question becomes, when do we stop the shopwar? I've found that with any of these activities, interest tends to fade at a rate inversely proportional to the complexity of the game. GSW is a pretty simple premise, so I don't think the frenzied activity would last very long. I'd prefer to make it, say, no more than a few weeks long, stopping the game at some arbitrary time. Better to end on a bang than a whimper, then have people's interest carry over to the next guild activity. Divvying up the profits again could work, but I'd leave how to do that up to each individual guild. Y'know, maybe just give everyone an equal share of the cash, or allocate based on how much work individuals have put in to the game. That should be decided independently. But really, we can burn that bridge when we come to it. See, the alliances could make it really fun. As I stated before, I think this would work best with very few rules. Survivor-style, if you will. People can make or break alliances, sell items to one another if they wish (as long as these transactions are recorded in a thread for all to see, with the profits going directly into the seller's shop till), pool their money either with members of either their guild or other guilds and so forth. (Come to think of it, that would mean having the option of making really high-priced things, so that people would NEED to pool their money to buy 'em.) As long as people don't try spending money they don't have, and as long as it isn't too absurd (ie, people from two guilds selling the same items to one another back and forth indefinitely to inflate each of their guilds' earnings), I'd say go for it. |
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Post by Kengplant on May 6, 2009 11:42:35 GMT -5
In GW I mostly just set up "GW Merchandise" and away I went drawing mostly plushies. I think it started with one of myself and Omni. I sold them in pairs. It was convenient to put two into one image so that there were fewer images to upload.
Alliances sound interesting though.
I guess maybe we should go with the limited money deal though.
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Post by Fraze on Jun 18, 2009 17:28:44 GMT -5
Reviving this thing.
So, I just sent out PMs to some people in the other guilds, asking if they can make guild shops. (Though in doing so I may have skipped over a few people who seemed like they volunteered in this thread...oops.) I'd really like to get this thing off the ground, so here's the groundwork as I see it so far, if anyone has any objections please say so.
--Each guild gets the same amount of money (say, 1000 shines or something like that), and divides that money among its members however the guild members see fit. They may decide to give each active member an equal share, or give more money to some people, or simply have a pool of money that people can use until it runs out. (Note that in the last case, someone will have to keep a running total of how much money is in the collective coffers, and that might cause an overdraft--which is something I don't think anyone wants to deal with--so I think it would be better to divvy out beforehand.)
--For the sake of the game, each person is only listed as a member of one guild, even if s/he belongs to multiple guilds. That means that person is only participating for that one guild.
--Buyers cannot buy from their own guilds' shops (see above). This is to keep people from spending all their money at their own guilds' shops, which wouldn't make the game very fun. I think this should be the only rule as far as buying and selling is concerned. Beyond this, the game is a complete free-for-all. Shops may sell any range of goods or services (as in, some sort of service from the guild's members) at any prices (so long as these prices are economically sound), and may do sales, two-for-one deals, benefits for repeat customers, buy back items from buyers, make alliances with other shops, trade items between shops, and so forth at the shop's discretion. Similarly, buyers (within one guild or between guilds) may pool their money to buy more expensive items, trade or sell items or services among themselves (as long as these transactions are recorded), or attempt to hold a cashier at gunpoint and rob the register. Please note that Spacefleet has state-of-the-art security systems in place, complete with autotargeting phaser banks with settings ranging from "stun" to "grill" to "vaporize."
--If the game still has enough momentum going by the time all the money is used up, we may have the shops recirculate the money--each shop gives the money in its till back to the guild, and this money gets redistributed among the guilders for another round of spending.
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