Architect Archive

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ZenDragonMLS wrote:

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Khristen wrote:

An addendum to what I said previously...

I made the decision last night (and will send out the notice to all of my customers today) that I am halting all restocks and custom orders until futher notice. Even with the advanced warning of this change, there is no way I can find a place for all the items I currently offer for sale. It's going to completely destroy my business, I'm afraid, but if I start making arrangements now I might be able to salvage a bit of the capitol I've put into it before the mass discounting begins if/when the cap goes live.

If they change it later, I'll just have to play serious catch up.

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Dvnce, please take this post directly to the developers RIGHT NOW. *THIS* is exactly the boat many of us will be in. There are a large number of very active and very conscientous crafters who have built reputations and who *care* about what happens to their business and to their customers. Even if the developers relent on their asinine limits, they have already damaged the fabric of the game. Between the holo-grinding and this change they have whip-sawed the players and the economy from one extreme to another.

I'll be doing the same thing in the next day or so. Someone might as well benefit from my leaving the game.

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I've done a similar thing. I've also stopped buying resources etc because I was about to do another set of multiple factory runs. Won't do that now until I know what the situation is.

The sad thing is that my entire desire to play today has been sucked out of me. I didn't craft - I logged in, checked my emails, left a message on a backpack in the shop stating I'm no longer buying meats / resources and then logged.

Why they would want to elicit this type of reaction from paying customers and why would they want to deflate players desire to playis beyond my understanding. I'm still waiting to see a response on how exactly the vendor limits are 'broken'. And yet, I still get that error on my factories.

Dvnce, I think that there is a very fundamental issue here than no amount of "ok, lets be good citizens and accept limitations" will help.

I am willing to bet $100 that if you conducted a survey of SWG players and asked them "what do you value in a crafter?" that "a well-stocked vendor" would absolutely be in the top 3 responses. I value that when I shop, and I've had numerous customers say "the reason I recommend you to others is because I know they won't be disappointed going to your shop".

If you just look at the *direct* impact of these limits (and ignore all of the other factors) and compare it to that customer preference, it is absolutely clear that this will *smash* one of the top 3 reasons people go to a crafter. Just think about it for a second and let it sink in. Take one of the top 3 "customer satisfaction" indices and throw it in the toilet, across the board.

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Cafa wrote:

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3) will you give your items to that merchant and have them pay you as they sell... ?

For anyone to honestly believe this "trust" relationship will exist is so juvenile that it doesn't even value a response. The devs have no controls in place to hold people to contracts and the CSRs have FLATLY refused to hold people to contracts with me, even when I have the emails stating so.

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1) Will you pick up merchant?

Already am a Merchant. 3/0/0/1. That's what works for my business and it gives me some extra SP to spend on some combat skills so I'm not toatally defenseless.

1a) will you have enough with the item limits to hold your viable business.. ?

No

2) will you find a merchant to sell your stuff?

No. I shouldn't have to. I take pride in being self sufficient. I also have a rl job which requires I work second shift. My in game hours are similar to European players.

3) will you give your items to that merchant and have them pay you as they sell... ?

Assuming that option was available to me, I wouldn't do it as I'd have no way of knowing if said merchant was making an actual sale or just hoarding money made from other people purchasing my items off of their vendors, telling me I made a sale, and then ripping me off by making me pay them for fraudulent sales.

4) Will you make the merchant pay you first?

I could, but what assurances would said merchant have that I wasn't ripping them off??

Hmm...

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Dvnce wrote:

Ok... So .. If things with vendors Should happen to stay the way they are presented now...

1) Will you pick up merchant?

Already Merchant 4/4/4/4, the only reason I'm not a master is lack of App XP.

1a) will you have enough with the item limits to hold your viable business.. ?

Just. I did a check last night, and I had 450 items on4 vendors. If I go up to the full six vendor's I'll be able to cope, but I will have to split stuff on the furniture vendor across three vendors. The problem is I was intending to expand my stock and my range, and start carrying stuff I didn't use to make. I can't do that now.

2) will you find a merchant to sell your stuff?

Unlikely. Every other Merchant is going to be in the same boat. However, I do currently sell stuff for my guild mates already.

3) will you give your items to that merchant and have them pay you as they sell... ?

4) Will you make the merchant pay you first?

Currently they give me the items and tell me how much they want for them, and then I give them the money once it sells. However, the only reason we do this is because they are a) guild mates, and b) friends in real life, so they are people I trust, and they trust me. If it wasn't for that, I don't think it would work.

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I am not currently intending to drop the character or cancel my account as I am waiting to see what sort of effect this has on the game.

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Elyssa wrote:

Not to derail this discussion, but I've seen the phrase "12 point" used frequently and I was wondering what it means.

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It means they have +20 or more in Structure Experimentation add-ons, so they have 12 points worth of experimentation to play with instead of the max 10 at master.

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Dvnce wrote:

Ok... So .. If things with vendors Should happen to stay the way they are presented now...

1) Will you pick up merchant?

1a) will you have enough with the item limits to hold your viable business.. ?

2) will you find a merchant to sell your stuff?

3) will you give your items to that merchant and have them pay you as they sell... ?

4) Will you make the merchant pay you first?

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Well I'm already master merchant. But I'm probably going to shut down certain parts of my business, like selling furniture and lighting (I wonder how many architects would keep making those stupid bugged lights at least for vendors). And I'll probably charge more, since I'm sure the change will make more of my competitors leave the profession. It takes time to establish trust relationships, I question the idea of viability of using other people to sell your goods for you. It's too easy to get cheated and the CSRs have a rather spotty record when players get cheated by their busines partners.

I have already done what I plan to do in response to this.

Account cancelled.

If this entire nerf is not dropped by 8/27, that will remain the case. Nothing less will get their attention, people. Threatening a boycott of JTL (see my sig) was obviously not enough to get them to fix the game, now they're going to totally fubar it. Anyone planning to stay is just a masochist, anyone planing to buy another account to be a merchant needs their head examined immediately.