(since these forums are dead. I will provoke a debate. I couldn't find a related thread besides merchant maps and merchant positions so here it goes)
HeRO's population is very misleading. There are people who have 3+ vendors who are always online, which sometimes doubles or triples the server's actual playing population. Wouldn't it be a good idea to limit 1 or MAX 2 merchant at auto vending per IP? This would give us at least a true ballpark figure of the actual number of players. I'm sure in any given time, there are more idle merchants than actual active players. What do you guys think?
GO!
I don't see how it's misleading. People in game are always quick to correct anyone who assumes the /who is the total population that roughly 150 or more are actually just autovending merchants.
I am going to say let's not LIMIT how many merchants a person can have but how long they can stay up.
You can program @autotrade to only let you autotrade for so long a period of time. The heRO server does not reboot all that often and we know how merchants will try to overprice something stupid like a Jellopy to essentially "hold" a place in good vending spots (Prontera, Payon, Izlude).
So my idea is to force kick players after oh...72-96 hours after they use @autotrade. That is 3-4 days, enough time to sell most goods in a shop if you didn't totally overprice the darn stuff. It also opens the other spaces to other merchants so they can essentially have a chance at the good spots on the maps most often used for vending. It also forces people to update their prices more. I find it absolutely disgusting that some merchants get to keep good spots for sometimes over a month before a reboot happens simply cause they put some stupid overpriced thing in a shop to keep their spot on the map. ;O
I doubt limiting the number of merchants is gonna be accepted, but the option to log them off after a period of time is nice.
+1 Aaron. Would be easier to limit @at time than number of accounts imho...
-w-
It is impossible to limit merchants in any meaningful way - enforcing, new rule, more burden upon GMs, besides it would destroy the convenience shops (7-11, PnP...). Unfeasible, I am against it.
I fully support Aaronock's suggestion though - let autotrade have a time limit of 72h (not less than 48h due to convenience shops).
On those other servers where the limit was introduced (according to my experience before I joined HeRO) number of merchants per player wasn't THAT lower (4-5 merchies per player) - but the difference was that items in shops had more accessible prices.
Right now if I put, say, a Mantle for 100k for sale it can lie indefinitely. Eventually someone might consider buying it or not but I don't care. If I had 72h timer I will either not make a Mantle shop at all or I will make it at 50k, then 40k, then 35k... simply because it is irritating to have to remake an OP shop nobody sane will buy from anyway ;-).
I really like Aaronock's time limit suggestion. I would say 72 sounds very reasonable. I also saw that in other servers and it makes merchs work for their money/spots
I love Aarons idea
It will, atleast i hope, make shops less OP and give other players a chance to stand by the front lines instead of those never ending "Sorry, holding spot"-shops.
Also 1-2 merchies per IP isn't a good idea at all since (i'm sure i'm not the only one in this) some people share IP's. Alex and i for example always play through the same internet connection 9/10 times.
*goes back to work now*