by ImpalerWrG » Mon Oct 06, 2014 10:16 am
Stall squatting is going to be a problem with this low rent rate. Folks with one stall have an incentive to buy up others just to keep other people from entering the market place.
I think this system of 1 owner for each physical stall is unnecessary, especially when it's been said that anonymity is intentional. I see no reason that multiple, even unlimited owners can not function through one stall. Each one just has a separate account, a separate tax bill etc. This mean we only ever need 1 physical stall in each cost category, the best would be in town square, mid grade down the lane to the dock and the crud one down at the beach, 10 all together would be plenty, new merchants can always buy a stall in what ever category they are willing to shell out for, rents should also scale with desirability. In fact it would even allow the owner to rent on a PER-SLOT basis so that people can scale up a bit at a time.
The shopper will have a very long list of stuff to purchase of course, and that likely presents an interface hurdle but it solves what I predict will be an ongoing problem of lock-out and/or Boston bloat as more and more stalls are added.
Also, I very much like the idea of a leader-board for most lucrative merchant, but don't make it cumulative sales, make it sales in the last month. We care about what are immediate competitors are doing right now, not some one off lucky sales streak they had a year ago. Same goes for all leader-board type stuff, keep it current, it's not a hall-of-fame (you want thouse fine make em but be clear about the difference).