Architect Archive
Thread: TH's posts on the vendor nerf
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Pawlin
Tue Aug 10, 2004 11:51 am
#1
If you haven't seen it yet, this is what Thunderheart posted yesterday in response to the player reaction to the vendor nerf:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Developers&message.id=49121#M49121
"I've been reading the feedback with regards to the Merchant/Vendor changes.
On one hand, merchants need to be the vendor wranglers. There is no getting around tying vendor limitations to Artisan/Business skills and Merchant skills. On the other hand, I've been speaking with the team on the item number restrictions and I'm pretty sure we'll be able to get those limits raised to a suitable level."
And Here is an old bit from an old In Development forum thread where they originally brought up the idea in a slightly different form:
/forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Developers&message.id=18573
Currently, there is no limit to how many items can be placed on a vendor. This causes technical issues, encourages monopolies and actually hurts sales in many instances because most players don't "drill down" through all of the vendor pages to find items. We want to solve the technical issues, discourage monopolies and make vendors easier to use.An item limit is going to be placed on vendors and that limit iSPAN>
I note this because of the highlighted reasons that they cited for the nerf.
I think 2 of the 3 reasons cited are pretty lame. Well stocked vendors dont encourage monopolies. If people are too dim to push the 'next page' button then nerfing vendors isn't the answer.
They didn't elaborate at all on the 'technical issues' so who knows how bad that really is. Things seem to be working fairly well as far as I can see.
ZenDragonMLS
Tue Aug 10, 2004 11:57 am
#2
I'm a software developer and am aware of the complexities under the covers of these types of systems. I have never seen a company jerk its customers around this way and hide behind smoke and mirrors.
orange-arrows
Tue Aug 10, 2004 2:06 pm
#3
Seriously why whenhe indicates that the limits most likely will be increaseddo we find fault with him? Is that positive or negative reinforcement?
As an aside ... I've been wandering around the build zone surrounding Theed lately just to see what others have for sale ... and I can imagine somewhere a conversation that went like this:
designer X: .. hey thing1 .. do a stats run for me for all servers and tell me how many vendors are there, how many are empty, and what is the average number of items per vendor.
several hours later: designer X sir, here are the stats from the astromech .. we have (some number) vendors in all galaxies and about 15-20% of them have NOTHING on them. The average items per vendor is 18.2.
designer X: .. thank you thing 1 ... you certainly deserved that promotion from thing 2
designer X: .. thinking to himself ... yes, as I thought: lots of empty vendors .. that's not helpful and certainly supports what I've been hearing .... and yes .. .18 items per vendor .. well ... since we've been kicking around vendor limits .. 50 per vendor ... that's three times the average ... that should be enough.
My informal experience from saidwandering around Theed is about 1 in 5 vendors ARE empty and many, many vendors have less than a single page of items on them (and I AM clicking on the show all ALL items choice). So step out of your workshop for a few minutes and walk around a major city and tell me if I was just unlucky or if really, you notice what I have noticed. (which would also be what the dev's noticed)
ZenDragonMLS
Tue Aug 10, 2004 2:19 pm
#4
orange-arrows wrote:My informal experience from said wandering around Theed is about 1 in 5 vendors ARE empty and many, many vendors have less than a single page of items on them (and I AM clicking on the show all ALL items choice). So step out of your workshop for a few minutes and walk around a major city and tell me if I was just unlucky or if really, you notice what I have noticed. (which would also be what the dev's noticed)
I don't think that you'll find anyone here disagreeing with you. Empty vendors are a PITA. Therefore the patch 10 idea to drop empty vendors from listing on the planetrary map is a GOOD thing. People who get merchant skills, place a vendor, and then drop the skill *are* (IMO) subverting the skill system, and they should lose those vednors. Good move on the part of the developers.
And I don't doubt that your scenario happened. But there are really a *number* of interesting statistics:
- total number of vendors
- number of vendors that are currently empty
- for the non-empty vendors (i.e., the ones that are actually being used), what is the *distribution* of number of items per vendor?
We have seen countless testimony in this forum and in other forums that *many* successful crafters have a large number of items on their vendors, either because of a huge diversity in their product lines (e.g., tailors) and/or the need to stock multiples of popular items (everyone).
In terms of "rewarding" TH by bitching about this, it is clear that he is doing his job. I believe that SOE has developed - either by policy and/or culture - a horrible habit of 1) not *listening* to their customers and 2) deliberately "spinning" every SOE -> player communication rather than level with us on what to expect. I really do believe that their first round of item limits was a bogus attempt to "test the waters" and that they had a "fallback" position all prepared. In the meantime, many crafters that I know have completely stopped production and/or stocking vendors based on this uncertainty.
Pawlin
Tue Aug 10, 2004 3:15 pm
#5
orange-arrows wrote:
...My informal experience from saidwandering around Theed is about 1 in 5 vendors ARE empty and many, many vendors have less than a single page of items on them (and I AM clicking on the show all ALL items choice). So step out of your workshop for a few minutes and walk around a major city and tell me if I was just unlucky or if really, you notice what I have noticed. (which would also be what the dev's noticed)
At one point I checked every single vendor listed in 'housing' on the planet map on the kettemoor sever. All of them.
I agree with what you say above. About 20-25% were empty. Most of the rest had a few items stocked, usually around a page or less.
I also agree it is quite likely that the DEVs took the average number of items on vendors, failed to apply common sense, then arbitrarily picked a somewhat larger number out of thin air as the proposed limit. I've actually voiced that same exact theory in another post recently myself.
Pawlin
Tue Aug 10, 2004 3:17 pm
#6
orange-arrows wrote:
Seriously why whenhe indicates that the limits most likely will be increaseddo we find fault with him? Is that positive or negative reinforcement?
...
I think its good they are reinvestigating the numbers. I don't find fault with that. (Anything less would be total failure though.)
I was examining mostly the stated goals for the proposed nerf. I find fault with their underlying reasoning for the nerf.
I don't criticize TH specifically on that, he's just the messenger mostly.
Crimsonsplat
Tue Aug 10, 2004 3:38 pm
#7
Five star, sir! Pawlin for President! (of SOE, so he can fix these problems!)
ZenDragon also makes some very very good points.
Sony's dev's need to make the following analysis:
T= Total number of vendors on each server
E= Total number of empty vendors on each server.
S = Total sales volume across all vendors.
TE = Total sales volume across empty vendors.
TS =Total sales volume acrossnon-empty vendors. (just in case they happened to be empty during the check)
SS% ={TE and TS as }
SE% = { a % of S }
Sx = sales volume on each individual vendor. (where x is it's ID#)
Ix = number of items on each vendor. (where x is it's ID#)
Lx = amount of time since the vendor's owner was created on that server.
SEx { Same as above, empty vendors only }
IEx{obviously,ISx will always = 0 }
LEx{ }
SSx { Same as above, non-empty vendors only }
ISx { }
LSx { }
Repeat this every day for thirty days.
Eliminate all vendors from consideration which were not in existance for the entire period.
Eliminate all vendors with more than 25% of items priced at 999999999.
Eliminate all "E" vendors from consideration.
DSx =Average Daily sales for each stocked vendor
ASx = Average number of items stocked onstocked vendors over the entire month.
Plot each vendor as a dot on a chart, where the X axis isD (daily sales)and Y axis is the A (average dailyitems).
Watch an exponential curve develop... high stock = high volume. Intuitive, right? My bet is that at a certain point, the curve LEVELS. More items do not equate accelerating sales. Higher, yes, but the rate of growth levels off. The Merchant is just stocking up for longer terms.
Now add a third dimension to the chart -- L. If an oligarchy exists, vendors on the right (high) end of the curve should alwayshave the highest L values, and new vendors are locked into the low end.
Now draw a vertical line at 110 items. If it's not more than 1/3 the way from the left to the right (stock, remember), it's way too low. My guess is about one-tenth. The percentage of the chart to the right is roughly how many Merchants SOE is strangling.
I'm way over and have to get out of work; I'm sure that someone with more experience in statistics can take it from here.
Pawlin
Tue Aug 10, 2004 4:00 pm
#8
Crimsonsplat wrote:
....
Plot each vendor as a dot on a chart, where the X axis isD (daily sales)and Y axis is the A (average dailyitems).
Watch an exponential curve develop... high stock = high volume. Intuitive, right? My bet is that at a certain point, the curve LEVELS. More items do not equate accelerating sales. Higher, yes, but the rate of growth levels off. The Merchant is just stocking up for longer terms.
...
Agreed.
Just because someone has 2000 items in stock does not mean they'll sell more than if they had 500 or 1000 items. It just means less constant restocking work.
But I think the kind of analysis you're talking about is just too much work. Its so much easier for SOE to take a broad average on 1 data value and then make a few far reaching and broad conclusions based on faulty assumptions and how they "intended" things to work.
Lecivius
Tue Aug 10, 2004 4:35 pm
#9
I'll call BS
<quote>
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Developers&message.id=18573
Thunderheart wrote:
An item limit is going to be placed on vendors and that limit is intended to be placed on 150.
Request For Comments:
The community is invited to make comments and suggestions about the proposed changes from Thursdsday, January 8th through Friday, January 16th.At that time, the thread will be closed to further comments.Feel free to comment on any or all of the above items.Please stay on topic.
<endquote>
This on a developement thread on Merchants amoung others. This has been planned for a LONG time, and not listened to by any correspondent that I can find. Put into discussion way before monoploies, if they exist, really effected the game. There is something else going on here, and while I don't know what it is, I do REALLY get ticked at the thought of a nerf (call it what it is, needed or no) because the product they lease is unsupportable for whatever reason.
CPark
Tue Aug 10, 2004 7:34 pm
#10
I took a look at the January discussion where vendor limits were initially proposed. At that time folks were overwhelmingly against it too. So it wasn't that the comments didn't foreshadow the uproar we're hearing now.
I've suggested in other posts that we just don't know why these limits are being imposed. But it's clear we are going to have limits. And even if we don't know why limits under 100 items were suggested there is probably a reason. We don't even know why the reasoning isn't being shared with us!
And what's funnier is that there is a catch 22 here -- without other changes that make merchants more effective and shopping easier low limits make other things worse. And if the limits are high enough so those bad effects are minimized then some of the goals, whatever they are, won't be met. Not coming to a consensus ends up in a loose-loose situation!
Looks like SWG is more like real life than even it's developers might hope for
I've suggested in other posts that we just don't know why these limits are being imposed. But it's clear we are going to have limits. And even if we don't know why limits under 100 items were suggested there is probably a reason. We don't even know why the reasoning isn't being shared with us!
And what's funnier is that there is a catch 22 here -- without other changes that make merchants more effective and shopping easier low limits make other things worse. And if the limits are high enough so those bad effects are minimized then some of the goals, whatever they are, won't be met. Not coming to a consensus ends up in a loose-loose situation!
Looks like SWG is more like real life than even it's developers might hope for
Pawlin
Wed Aug 11, 2004 12:24 am
#11
Regarding the "technical issues", I would think that large amounts of items on vendors could cause some lag in the system. Everytime we access a vendor it has to get all the items on that page from the server. That eats server time and IO bandwidth. I would imagine that IO bandwidth is the real bottleneck there. However I believe at one point they referred to the public bazaar as being handled by a separate server. So I would assume that requests to vendors are handled separately than other actions like fighting mobs or manipulating your own inventory. I can believe that reducing vendor limits would make vendors quicker and more responsive. But would it help reduce other forms of lag? I kinda doubt it even though SOE (knowlingly or not) is letting people believe that.
I've also seen a lot of people say that SOE should just upgrade their harddrives or buy a better server. I am quite sure that hard drive space is not a limiting factor and I'm sure that SOE is on top of their server capacity. I'm sure they run high performance clusters and can upgrade by adding individual nodes rather easily.
As far as alleged monoplies are concerned I think this is something that SOE is just plain mistaken about. They don't seem to understand the system well enough and I think their working on faulty assumptions or making bad conclusions from whatever data they look at. They seem to want to help enable the "little guy" or the begining crafter to better compete in the market. As it is the "little guy" is just someone who hasn't reached master yet. As a crafterthere really is no market between novice and master.. You only start to compete when you hit master. Any master can produce the same amount of stuff that any other master can if they put the time and effort into it. If one master is unable to compete with other masters than that is really due to lack of ability or effort. There are no unsurmountable obstacles in the game design thata new master can't get around with a bit of elbow grease and a creative idea or two.
I imagine that SOE gets feedback from customers that its hard to be a successful crafter. Yes that can be true. Success takes hard work. I also imagine that they get people who complain about the viability as crafters when they are trying to make it as a novice or pre-master level crafter. That is definitely an issue, it is hard to make a living if you're not a master. SOE should address that issue by making the grind more tolerable / quicker AND most importantly giving more novice crafters some more viable products to sell inorder to support them while they work their way up to master. I think architect has it better than most in this respect cause the novice architect or pre-master has a few items they can sell like factories, medium houses, various furniture items and a pile of furniture. Instead I think SOE is probably hearing frustrations of some of the "need it now"types who are frustrated if they don't immediately succeed as crafters and deciding that its too hard for new crafters to compete and that its the fault of the imaginary monopolies.
The idea of monopolies is particularly ridiculous for architects. How can any of us have a monopoly when anyone can master our profession in an hour and start making the same quality of product we make and then undercut us too boot?
I guess I'll go eat lunch now...
CPark
Wed Aug 11, 2004 7:52 am
#13
Sorry for the inadvertant joke -- lose-lose -- clearly I'm to loose with my spelling
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