Business Update

[punkrules]

Well here is the update.

Food/ammo/items have been doubled in price.
Pay for food stocks has been doubled.
Pay for ammo/item stocks/minerals have been tripled.


An employee cap of 18 has been implemented into every establishment, most don't need more than 12 to run correctly.

Since the pay has been buffed, those who derive pleasure from working will be better rewarded. Everyone else still has the option to go trash picking.

A "hire date/last login system" along with the weekly stocks per player "Log" button will also allow the Owners to monitor their employee's and decide who deserves a promotion and has eventually earned their way to recruiter like position, aka Supervisor/Manager. I think a player cap/monitor system will allow hard workers to move their way up the ranks, eventually becoming Co Owners, instead of the Owner's best friends.

I will be monitoring every business closely to make sure everything is run smoothly and fair. Equal opportunity for all.

None of this would be possible without the help of our Scripter *ice_is_nice4.
Send your love to him, and your complaints to me.

Luv,
Katbot.

[xDarkTAx]

I still don't think stocking food comes close to making money trash picking. at 6$ a stock you would need to stock something like 5k-10k food/hr to make what you do trash picking. Not only is that not possible but also unlikely a food biz would need 5k stocked. IMO You need to make it a little more expensive and double the max stock number.

edit: Also what's up with the 20 drop limit? It makes dropping it suck and stocking even worse money. Just to drop 5k doughnuts would take 7-8 minuets.

[shrimps]

So one person doesn't hoard a bunch of donuts and yeah.. Stupid reason.

[natchez416]

Okay so these updates seem good in general and we should all appreciate the volunteer work that has gone into them.
I am however worried by the prospect of hyper inflation. Remember the more of something you have in the economy, the less that thing will be worth. This applies to currency as well. You guys know about Zimbabwe right?

[Demisis_P2P]

Originally Posted by natchez416

Okay so these updates seem good in general and we should all appreciate the volunteer work that has gone into them.
I am however worried by the prospect of hyper inflation. Remember the more of something you have in the economy, the less that thing will be worth. This applies to currency as well. You guys know about Zimbabwe right?

It's possible for everything on Era to have a ceiling price and a floor price though, so shouldn't really have to worry about hyperinflation.
You're not going to see people offering 10,000,000 zimbabwean peso dollars for a cheese pizza when it's fixed at $18 in store.
Items that aren't available in stores may be affected, but those items are generally already the rarest and best items to begin with.

[natchez416]

Originally Posted by Demisis_P2P

It's possible for everything on Era to have a ceiling price and a floor price though, so shouldn't really have to worry about hyperinflation.
You're not going to see people offering 10,000,000 zimbabwean peso dollars for a cheese pizza when it's fixed at $18 in store.
Items that aren't available in stores may be affected, but those items are generally already the rarest and best items to begin with.

Yeah that's true, but houses and a ton of rare hats (that aren't in shops) are going to get ridiculously expensive. Also, all of these Christmas items are going to get insanely expensive along with all other future releases that aren't sold in shops. Staff members need to be cognizant of this.

[Godzilla]

It gets annoying being right all the time.

My store was making 250-300k a week before the update, now it has made 38k since the update.

I don't really understand why the prices were raised so high, I also don't understand why they didn't just make it easier.

Raising the prices of everything is probably the dumbest thing I've seen done, we raised the pay-outs because we wanted players to beable to easily obtain things, now it just looks like everything was doubled in price (except guns) and we're back at square one.

This is how the update should have gone;

1) Raise prices slightly (add $2 or so onto each product)
2) Raise the total stock limit
3) Raise the stock per item
4) Make stocking easier

Instead I'm stuck de-motivated to run a dead business that no one wants to work in because no one buys from it.

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by Godzilla

It gets annoying being right all the time.

My store was making 250-300k a week before the update, now it has made 38k since the update.

I don't really understand why the prices were raised so high, I also don't understand why they didn't just make it easier.

This might not be 100% of the issue; but I'm sure a large majority of your drop-off in profits can be attributed to the dramatic decrease in players & PvP.

We were getting 110 peaks on the "most online" counter pretty consistently; gangs were producing tens of thousands of points (the average was like 20k+). Now we're getting peaks of like 85; or even 75~ on some days and the gangs currently are (on average) below 2k points.

So it stands to reason you'd make around 10% of the profit margin when gang activity is around 10% of what it was before. Since food products aren't used for anything else.

Though I will agree with you that just doubling everything with no research and no monitoring at a random point is a pretty awful thing to do. The business admin isn't there to just 2* all the numbers, I could've done that at any point in a matter of minutes. He needs to do some math, check some logs, see peoples tendencies for using/buying food and balance it into a butter zone like Fiber and I did with the jobs. I don't see any documentation or spreadsheets or proposal toward the benefit of doubling these numbers (we didn't just 2* all the jobs..).

[Kohola_KinG]

My store was making 250-300k a week before the update

If your business was making that amount of money then why were you trying so hard to get changes. You got changes (not well thought out ones, i do agree) and now you're back to square one asking for more changes.

Why change a business that brings in that much revenue? Surely that's bringing in profit, why change it? Why was the prices of the food raised when it was bringing in so much money it should have been the other way around. The price should have lowered to bring more people through the door.

A change you should maybe have considered was reducing the heals of ALL food items so more food items is required increasing the sales. If your business was making that amount of money, you could have increased the payout without increasing the food prices. You tried to keep that gap of profit and to have the ability of paying them higher wages. It doesn't work like that, you need to just raise your wages without raising your prices. You might lose a little money but happy staff and people wanting to work for you is very important.

Advertising is the most important aspect of business. If people don't know what or where your business is then how are you ever going to sell anything.

- leaflet drops. Think of the number of houses, sewer houses and apartments there is on era. Do they have a mailbox? Give business owners the ability to drop leaflets into their mailboxes every so often of recent news of their business. Owners can hire people to do this, creates more jobs.

- Undergo a makeover. It's nice to keep updating and changing your business levels, they get old and boring to look at. New levels encourages people to come and check it out, they grab some food while they're at it.

- Use the exterior of your premises.. By this i mean every business on era should have a window displaying the items the shop sells. You cannot buy from outside you can only see what is on display. This encourages and reminds people to call in and buy some items.

- Advertise your best deals outside your premises.. Ask for signs to be put up of what you best deals are. They could be put on top of your business or whatever.

- Reward loyalty.. Get loyalty cards that you grab on the counter and by having one in your inventory every time you buy an item you gain loyalty coins for that shop and maybe open a loyalty business shop (gui) where they can buy some cool stuff. Or by having so much points they get discount on by how much they buy etc etc

- Give out a free one... Give owners a stall... Let them have it in their inventory.. You drop it on the map and it opens a stall that's locked to you, you cannot move while this thing is open to stop you opening one and running away and leaving it. Then there would be no point having a shop. Once the stall opens a gui opens up where you can set prices to give people samples, or even cheap deals. (Who cares if people buy **** loads, it gives employees more work)

These are only some ideas that i am running of the top of my head. There is so much more that you can do and these are the type of positive changes that need to happen. Not just chopping and changing prices.

Also take into consideration that raiding is a big factor when it comes to sales. Without raiding activity food isn't really needed.

[Godzilla]

Originally Posted by Kohola_KinG

you could have increased the payout without increasing the food prices. You tried to keep that gap of profit and to have the ability of paying them higher wages. It doesn't work like that, you need to just raise your wages without raising your prices. You might lose a little money but happy staff and people wanting to work for you is very important.

That's exactly what I had, SP was making DECENT money compared to other businesses and that's why I proposed a change of pace in things. I stressed my concerns about raising the prices of things and well... like usual my concerns became reality.

I think I made a total of 100k in the 2 weeks of it making 400k + in total before the update, which really, sounds like a lot but with the current economy really it isn't.

I had my own paying system where I would give the top 2 stockers 25% of the total profits each, keeping 50% to myself, which after pay wasn't all that big.

I like to think I had a good thing going for SP but right now... my motivation has hit a wall.

[Kohola_KinG]

I also forgot to add. Why do we have to eat just the one doughnut when healing? It's a game, why cant we go through x3 of them per heal.

My point is. You buy x1 doughnuts at a time but when you heal you eat x3 of them at a time to get your 40hp heals per time.

Doughnut just an example.

You go through more food.. increasing the likelihood of needing more food a lot sooner. Increasing the sales & work.

[Kohola_KinG]

A huge problem is that people have huge bundles of food in their inventory's that they dont need to buy food for months on end....

It's very important that you add a method that food rots within a month of the day it was purchased. It then becomes useless and add the option of taking it to the recycling center and getting a % of what you paid for it. Just genius if i do say so myself.

You put money into the economy by spending it.. It rots, you recycle it, economy puts more money in and then you spend it again. Now you don't get more than you paid for it, by this i mean just putting money out there by spending it.

This needs to happen. People have massive amounts of food that they don't need to buy anymore food. I use to be one of those people, i still have around a thousand doughnuts etc left that lasts me for months. In fact, i can not even remember the last time i purchased food.

Summary: Food needs to rot, become useless. Give people a reason to go back and get more or they wont have any food to heal. Give them an option to recycle it to get some of their money back to go buy more.

[Demisis_P2P]

Originally Posted by Supaman771

This might not be 100% of the issue; but I'm sure a large majority of your drop-off in profits can be attributed to the dramatic decrease in players & PvP.

We were getting 110 peaks on the "most online" counter pretty consistently; gangs were producing tens of thousands of points (the average was like 20k+). Now we're getting peaks of like 85; or even 75~ on some days and the gangs currently are (on average) below 2k points.

So it stands to reason you'd make around 10% of the profit margin when gang activity is around 10% of what it was before. Since food products aren't used for anything else.

Probably also doesn't help that I've got 900 food items from Christmas, and I only gathered and opened about 120 presents and wasn't actively grabbing tree cookies every chance I got either. Although I did open the majority of the presents after the nerf to the loot table and it seemed like almost every single one was food.

Originally Posted by Kohola_KinG

If your business was making that amount of money then why were you trying so hard to get changes. You got changes (not well thought out ones, i do agree) and now you're back to square one asking for more changes.

The changes he was asking for were because he was stocking the business himself. He wasn't asking for more profit, he was asking to pay his employees more so that it was worthwhile for them to actually stock instead of picking trash or mining for that same amount of time.

Originally Posted by Kohola_KinG

A change you should maybe have considered was reducing the heals of ALL food items so more food items is required increasing the sales. If your business was making that amount of money, you could have increased the payout without increasing the food prices. You tried to keep that gap of profit and to have the ability of paying them higher wages. It doesn't work like that, you need to just raise your wages without raising your prices. You might lose a little money but happy staff and people wanting to work for you is very important.

If you lower the amount that food heals then I may as well just heal in beds. Most PKing nowdays happens in the gang bases, where there are beds readily available, so food needs to be either faster and/or more convenient to be worth anything at all. The fact that food freezes you for a substantial amount of time when players can spawn basically right on top of you at any time by using the sewer entry actually makes it pretty incovenient to eat mid-raid. So that only leaves food healing faster.

There should be a way to cancel eating.
Either that or change food to a heal over time (e.g. 5hp per 3 seconds for 18 seconds) and drastically reduce the freeze.

[Kohola_KinG]

Originally Posted by Demisis_P2P

The changes he was asking for were because he was stocking the business himself. He wasn't asking for more profit, he was asking to pay his employees more so that it was worthwhile for them to actually stock instead of picking trash or mining for that same amount of time.

Like i said. He could have made it worthwhile for them if his business was making 300k a week!? Why not just pay them a lot more you would have still been left over with nice profit. If you're making that amount of money then raise the wages and people will work for you. It's that simple.

Originally Posted by Demisis_P2P

If you lower the amount that food heals then I may as well just heal in beds. Most PKing nowdays happens in the gang bases, where there are beds readily available, so food needs to be either faster and/or more convenient to be worth anything at all. The fact that food freezes you for a substantial amount of time when players can spawn basically right on top of you at any time by using the sewer entry actually makes it pretty incovenient to eat mid-raid. So that only leaves food healing faster.

I was never a fan of healing beds anyways. I was always for removing them. Another positive for food businesses. If the beds are staying then just reduce the freeze time on the heals. They're healing less so it wouldn't matter.

[xAndrewx]

I have no idea the state of the economy on Era but if people can bring in 100k+ a week i'm pretty certain it's ****.

Can you tell me how much is made per job each day? with ~3000 players in the past hour here is the below

incomehour_carmissions=9764
incomehour_flowers=3433
incomehour_killlooting=4905
incomehour_letterdelivery=5704
incomehour_mining=869
incomehour_mushrooms=27910
incomehour_pizzabaking=10129
incomehour_shells=94023
incomehour_trash=30989

incomeday_carmissions=422862
incomeday_flowers=65912
incomeday_GuildFortEvent=112466
incomeday_killlooting=234777
incomeday_letterdelivery=174626
incomeday_mining=54303
incomeday_mushrooms=1076795
incomeday_pizzabaking=408175
incomeday_shells=1855160
incomeday_trash=1198948

incomeweek_carmissions=2760086
incomeweek_flowers=387791
incomeweek_GuildFortEvent=719647
incomeweek_killlooting=1721335
incomeweek_letterdelivery=1216601
incomeweek_mining=282441
incomeweek_mushrooms=6987225
incomeweek_pizzabaking=2581108
incomeweek_shells=12476073
incomeweek_trash=7948242

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by xAndrewx

Can you tell me how much is made per job each day? with ~3000 players in the past hour here is the below

incomes

But people can just USD > Money infinitely at any point; there is no economy on iEra. I never felt any accomplishment when I did jobs on there knowing I can just buy the stuff... the pay was so low and it took so much effort... I had to keep my iPad from going into sleep mode and tap **** constantly.

Then someone removed my hat and I never logged on again.
Can't really compare the two at that point.

[Kohola_KinG]

I hope Katbot is reading this thread and took these ideas and tried to do something with them.

[punkrules]

I've spoken to the owner of DD, DH and MW. All of them are doing great, making more money than ever, absolutely 0 complaints. Alas, Godzilla is the only one who seems to be having an issue, what a shocker.

And Rogue you don't have to speak about me in 3rd person, we're both very aware of each other's existence. I'm not going to give you a goddamn spread sheet and documentation about why I raised the prices, the solution was simple and it's working effectively. If you have a problem with what I did and want to propose another option act like a ****ing man and come find me, don't cry on the forums. I'm tired of these repulsive passive aggressive wussy antics.

Working for yourself got buffed to hell and the Biz's were left in the dust. No one was doing anything about it, so I stepped out to the plate and proposed a temporary solution because **** was plummeting down fast. Everyone became a millionaire so CLEARLY I had to raise the prices and pay.

Every other food biz is doing fine, if yours is falling behind then get creative about how you to market your product. I work almost 60 hours a week I don't have time to be doing statistics and probability for Era's economy. I'm here to patch up the holes, not un**** what's already been ****ed. The issue is WAY deeper than PIZZA SALES.

If someone wants to take over the Business Admin position and do a better job be my guest.

[Godzilla]

Speedy Pizza has made 22k in the last 2 weeks.

I guess it's because there is 4 Food Businesses that all act the exact same. I guess I'm just the Era Police of the Food Industry

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by punkrules

And Rogue you don't have to speak about me in 3rd person, we're both very aware of each other's existence.

I honestly didn't even know you were the Business Admin anymore, thus I didn't quote you or even mention you. I thought Ice buffed the jobs when he came back; I talked to him briefly when he was asking permission on RC to edit that stuff, I haven't seen you in months. Beyond that, I don't believe it's up to me to make a conscious effort to find you... since I'm online/available on RC 16 hours a day. And thus I post my opinion here where it is archived and publicly available.

[geneticfrog]

statistics should be automatically logged via scripts that would sure help the managers to see whats helping.

there should be even a NPC inside the managers room a book he can read with all the stats.

today, this week, this month, this year and also being able to compare.



TIPS FOR PIZZA DUDE: add a heal stopper on pizza like cheese does an you will sell more im sure.

[Godzilla]

Originally Posted by punkrules

If someone wants to take over the Business Admin position and do a better job be my guest.

So when do I start? Nah, valid points, might be going smoothly, I'm just yet to see the success within SP

[geneticfrog]

Originally Posted by Godzilla

So when do I start? Nah, valid points, might be going smoothly, I'm just yet to see the success within SP

get rid of the owners and let admins control ammo prices take that owners pay and distribute it to players who stock for a job + use some for lotteries at OSL.

at least then there wont be owners complaining about low income on era. even if they already own everything you can buy already it seems.

seems you promote eating foods in middle of fights to make them longer and more boring so people need to buy more food and ammo...........

to basically make a couple owners riicher and pay the employees worse wages then recycling trash LOL

sounds pretty legit to me! lol........... 3 owners? over he whole game get priority or else they *****

anyways.

[Godzilla]

Originally Posted by geneticfrog

get rid of the owners and let admins control ammo prices take that owners pay and distribute it to players who stock for a job + use some for lotteries at OSL.

at least then there wont be owners complaining about low income on era. even if they already own everything you can buy already it seems.

seems you promote eating foods in middle of fights to make them longer and more boring so people need to buy more food and ammo...........

to basically make a couple owners riicher and pay the employees worse wages then recycling trash LOL

sounds pretty legit to me! lol........... 3 owners? over he whole game get priority or else they *****

anyways.

Sometimes I can't even understand what you are typing because it really makes no sense. There are 7 Player-Owned businesses.

Some aren't even rich. E.g Scoper and Floggy

[Scoper]

there was a vow of poverty at the end of the PT business contract

[shrimps]

I think you can blame Jem for that, possibly. Whoever added Grenades to GP and AM nuked PTs major profits. Took me about 2 years to make 2 mil owning PT.

[geneticfrog]

Originally Posted by Godzilla

Sometimes I can't even understand what you are typing because it really makes no sense. There are 7 Player-Owned businesses.

Some aren't even rich. E.g Scoper and Floggy

3 food 4 ammo shops


what im saying is that it seems more trouble making the 7 owners happy then its worth.

right now era allows you to heal any time any where without freeze or hardlyany freeze.

so basically they get you to waste abnormal amounts of ammo and food just for 1 kill if you are even motivated anymore.

gettin 1 kill is also more trouble then its worth now.

[Godzilla]

Originally Posted by geneticfrog

3 food 4 ammo shops


what im saying is that it seems more trouble making the 7 owners happy then its worth.

right now era allows you to heal any time any where without freeze or hardlyany freeze.

so basically they get you to waste abnormal amounts of ammo and food just for 1 kill if you are even motivated anymore.

gettin 1 kill is also more trouble then its worth now.

I'm no longer going to bother posting back to your comments on threads or your threads until you either; stop trolling or learn basic knowledge of Era.

[ooger]

Originally Posted by Godzilla

learn basic knowledge of Era.

Yes, please do this

[ToreG]

Hi guys, Owner of Dippin Donuts here.

I do very much enjoy many of KoHo's suggestions, and think they would do this server good. Specifically, the one that caught my eye was the whole concept of rotting food. However, in regards to stocking, there could have been something else done rather than doubling the prices.

For instance, right now at DD, if you drop 20 stocking chocolate donuts, you will stock 20 donuts, making $120. However, a better idea instead of doubling prices for food, would be so that if you dropped 20 donuts, you stock 40 or 60, effectively doubling or tripling the pay.

I don't know.
Just an idea.

-Tore

[geneticfrog]

ide like to see heal time increase like some food ive 2-3 heals but freeze you got like 30 seconds like the older version of era when PVP wasn't a heal fest.

2-3 heals per food but 30 seconds freeze time so people only eat AFTER battles fora change.


Also we dont actually need business Owners at all. They are more drama then anything just sitting back complaining about earnings compared to other shops. the owners dont do anything that 1 admin couldn't do themselves.
businesses are awesome, the owners are redundant leech on the earnings of the shop that could be distributed to the players/lotto.

right now its just set up to make businesses money in the form of:

promote loooooooooooong boring fights with heals small heals so they eat tons of food and waste tons of ammo.

so we all get less kills yet still waste our money on ammo and food. (insert the im rich argument/omg so ez to make money!)

/era 2015 got mad boring for the solo players who dont want to join a OP gang who just team on gangless noobs all day... not supporting that!

[ToreG]

Originally Posted by geneticfrog

Also we dont actually need business Owners at all. They are more drama then anything just sitting back complaining about earnings compared to other shops. the owners dont do anything that 1 admin couldn't do.

Era does need business owners. Regardless of how much we profit to ourselves, we are needed. I doubt one admin wants to have to watch over and babysit 126 players (18 players x 7 businesses).

Also, I don't think I've ever met you, so where do you get off saying that I'm 'more drama than anything?' I haven't made one complaint, and have been busy for the past two weeks making improvements to the restaurant. Hell, I even spent upwards of $30,000 out of my own bank paying my new employees for fully stocking the restaurant.

Don't make assumptions about people you don't even know.

-Tore

[xDarkTAx]

IMO food should heal you enough that if someone is just rushing out of hospital/gang heal over and over you can try to keep up with their health. You shouldn't die just because they keep rushing out over and over. Even if they only land 1 or 2 bullets every life the food heals so slowly you can only heal about 20hp before they get back. In gang bases if they get a good spawn you can't even heal 20hp

[geneticfrog]

Originally Posted by ToreG

Era does need business owners. Regardless of how much we profit to ourselves, we are needed. I doubt one admin wants to have to watch over and babysit 126 players (18 players x 7 businesses).

Also, I don't think I've ever met you, so where do you get off saying that I'm 'more drama than anything?' I haven't made one complaint, and have been busy for the past two weeks making improvements to the restaurant. Hell, I even spent upwards of $30,000 out of my own bank paying my new employees for fully stocking the restaurant.

Don't make assumptions about people you don't even know.

-Tore

just saying it can be automated so why would you need to babysit.

make a script that divides the pool of money at the end of the week to anyone who felt like stocking. depending on the percentage of stocks you have, you get an equal %of that pool of money used for pay. this means your pay is directly effected by the amount of traffic generated to that store. workers could work together to advertise to increase all of their profits as a collective.

then giving bonus pays to the top stockers as well to promote some competition and EVEN if theres only a couple loyal stockers they get the biggest % of the pay out so good pays but anyone can stock no list of employee.

allowing anyone to stock would promote people to go from store to store to stock who ever has less people competing gives higher payouts.

70% of the pool of money could be used as pay to employees 20% for buying minerals and 10% sent to public lotto every week or adjusted accordingly. if the pool of minerals is over flowing then more can be sent as pay or lotto and even used for special spar events or music events cash payouts.


As far as minerals go:
a script again could keep track of the current stock of minerals in the ammo shops. then according to how low its getting it could offer more money to promote players to go from shop to shop to sell their minerals for the best prices.

NPC that shows current mineral buying prices and their stocks pile around era.