Actually it's tactically a lot harder to be good at playing a dexxer than a Mage, there's charm in that.
Let's just remove vendor fees entirely and instead just make them like a house where owner has to interact with it to refresh it every 14 days. This has 2.5 benefits: 1.) Incentive for players to vendor more items, even items on the forums as there is no additional cost. 2.) House owners could better deal with vendors from players who quit the game etc. 2.5.) Vendor "idocs" anyone? Wouldn't be a horrible idea to put a refresh time on them like house have. The downside is a small gold sink on the server is gone. But if players want to forum auction everything anyway and not use vendors, it doesn't really matter right? It also means players will NEED to visit each vendor every 14 (or whatever) days, and that might serve as a reminder to re-stock etc.
I mean you could do crazy things like prohibit sales of everything but houses on the forums but ultimately it comes down to if you have the patience to run a vendor or not. Hell I'd like to see a reseller market where people would, instead of posting auctions or sales of reasonable items, they would sell to vendors and let them sell it. Then just advertise on the forums "Hey this stuff is here for this much"
Remove vendor fees. Let the vendor contract share the same fate as house decay. Should the home owner deem it necessary, allow them to kill the vendor and recover all goods and pending profits.
Take all the "trammel" out of this server and it will be rendered to nothing more than a sociopath simulator.
I only put houses on the forum. For me, its a lot easier to put any special stuff Im selling on my vendors and then advertise them on the forums. My thinking is this... once people know my vendor has the item, I can go play and not worry about it. The item will sell in a day or two if I priced it right. I don't have to worry about checking the forums or arranging and making time to meet anyone for the exchange. The buyer can get the item right away. All I have to do is post sold on the ad. Ok so it costs me in vendor fees but the way I look at it, my time is more valuable. Now, if vendor fees were eliminated, that would be awesome but.. I can live with things as they are I am surprised that more people don't do this for mid-range items, but hey, it works for me
I like the idea of removing vendor fees, or maybe having a fee that's proportional to the amount of stock so there's a penalty for letting vendors sit around half empty (kinda like how some irl cities have an 'empty storefront' tax). I also like the idea of turning Minoc tents into a flea market where players who aren't in a position to own or run a vendor house could rent an individual vendor short term. It should stay in the guard zone, though. I'm not sure if One is trolling with that rotary phone business but vendors are an important part of the game. I've bought and sold a few items on the forums (higher-end or bulk stuff) and it often takes days to arrange to meet up -- I'd hate to have to do that every time I needed to replace a potion keg or other basic supplies.
If you put a finite resource available at a hotspot, someone is going to take it all. You simply cannot have what is essentially a shard sponsored "vendor" area in a fair manner like you think. Newbies are not going to get in there and hawk their freshly made chainmail tunics. I am also 100% against putting them in guardzone for reasons that should be obvious.
What finite resource -- the vendor spots? Make it one per account and have each vendor disappear once its items are sold. I'm semi-newbie, don't have time or money to maintain a vendor house and I'd definitely use a temporary flea market vendor to sell things like bulk cloth. Needs to be in a guard zone so people can transport their wares to the vendor safely, especially since they wouldn't have house owner banning power (and would likely be newer players). And since stock would change frequently, buyers would need time to browse and see what's available, which is more doable in guard zone.