Architect Archive

Hello All!

Well, as a merchant and only with the game for a few months now, I see need for vast improvement. Here are a few of the issues I would like to see addressed:

1.) Make the merchant profession more worthwhile by giving more lots. If you run a mall, it costs you anywhere from 2-7 lots (depending on what size/style) to have a decent, well-run and stocked mall with a variety of vendors. Secondly, to put up merchant tents is also lot prohibative. To give an incremental lot increase as you climb the merchant ladder would be well deserved.

2.) NEED MORE STORAGE SPACE! If you limit the amount each vendor can carry, then I suggest you increase the amount of storage a house, cantina, PA, or whatever can hold. I have 10 of each furniture item in stock on my furniture vendor which equals well over 500 items. For a merchant it is vital to have those items available for sale and in backstock.

3.) Allow for vendor to vendor transfers. If I have 5 vendors stationed on 5 planets, and one item isn't selling at all on one planet, but I can't keep it in stock on the other, then I should be able to remove item from stock on the one, and then put it for sale on the other. All vendors should be listed when you go to any vendor you own as well.

4.) Lastly.....what is the system for merchant xp? I would like this explained somehow, or a text message written across the screen as is for killing xp. If I kill a Rancor with my pistol, it shows all experience I get from that, but if I sell an item, I just get a lousy e-mail letting me know that I sold it.

Just my 2 1/2 cents worth

Koriag Acknod, Architect, Merchant --- Holocron City, Dantooine: Scylla

_______________________________

It is very simple. You give up the skill you give up the skill perk. If you are NOT a master merchant you don't have the right to use the protocol droid. The arguement that the skill is only to make one is specious. If that were true you would be able to give that droid to someone else. You can't because it requires you to be a merchant to have it. Once you don't have the skill for it you should not be able to manage the vendor any longer. If you gave up your weaponsmith skills you wouldn't have the power to create weapons only weaponsmiths can make. You can't use the weapons you have made as an arguement because ANYONE can use them. The skill per is making the weapons for other people. In merchant all of our skills are to allow US to sell things. Giving up your skills and keeping your vendor is stealing our business. You aren't a merchant why should you have the skill perks as if you were. I know many artisans think that they should be able to sell their wares themselves without any merchant skills but since my merchant skills don't give me the skill to make weapons why should your weaponsmith skills give you the skill to sell things?

Ive been playing Merchant for a couple months now and msnage what I consider a large and successful vendor often doing 1-3 million in sales a day. I do enjoy the art of business and procurement. I became a master merchant but along the way I found nothing of significance outside of placing more vendors and placing an ad on the planetary map. These seem to be very weak incentives. A few ideas outside of the ones already mentioned like discounting to friends or restricting access to opposing factions..

#1 Merchants as they gain in skill should be able to rebrand items - allow merchants to purchase from suppliers like weaponsmiths and armorsmiths then change the names. This could possibly be reserved to Master Merchants only but seems it would be easy to implement.

#2 I think merchants should get reduced travel fees, frequent flyer miles, while travelling from startport to starport for pickups.

#3 Merchants should have the ability to order movement of items from one vendor to another.. the closer the vendor is then the quicker the move takes place.. ie. multi-select a bunch of items, withdraw them so they are in the stockroom then select and choose relocate.. if the destination vendor is on another planet from the source then the move could take like 30min real-time or something... and by all means keep the price in place when it appears in the destination stockroom..

#4 A MUST! Merchants should get like a merchant tool kindof like a crafting tool so when they are out and about advertising their items they can select on the merchant tool and view anything in their inventory on any planet.. This way when merchants who have tons of items for sale and they are asked --- "Whats the quality on that copper you have.. " or "Do you have... " or "Whats the special attacks on that BE pet" ... so on and so on... then bring up the merchant tool and browse through any vendor and view your inventory no matter where you are.. even order the moves as mentioned in item #3 .. that would be cool .. oh and maybe even allow master merchants to view the bazaar using this tool...

#5 Also using the tool mentioned in item #4 allow the acceptance or rejection of offers place on any vendor.

#6 When players trade with merchants allow them to pay a merchant without having the cash on them. The basic theme here is that merchants can perform wire/credit transfers free of charge.. so if the player has enough in the bank then let the trade go through just as if the player was dealing with one of the merchants vendors...

I have a few more but Ill let the post digest these for now... thanks

- Raden

Nice idea There with the tool...

i have recently taken up Merchant to assist in my cityies growth..
I am currently at 0222

i am finding the profession entertaining to a degree..
The Tediousness of moveing stock around is jsut a bore..
Limited Storage space in a house creates problems of storing my Overstock... The 'Stockroom' looks neat but the only way to add any thing to it is to put an item for sale then withdraw it
... Why cant i jsut put stock directly into the stockroom?

Other then that im finding running a shop is fun... it takes me back to the good ol days of UO when i ran a Shop out side Vesper selling Bulk Arrows...

To my fellow Merchants
I Salute you

Tivix Otila
Pirate Peak
Intrepid

I'm just tossing this one out:

How about a little note in paranthesis on the global map to alert people that a vendor is empty...

eg. Vendor: BubbaJones resources Bought and Sold (Empty)

This way people who give up the tree and keep empty vendors,people who vanish , or even people who are incompetent merchants won't waste other peoples time going all over the galaxie looking for something.

i, also, would like an ingame calculator or other tool system available.

My suggestion from another post:

I read that the Devs are planning to cap the item limit in vendors to 100. I can understand this move and am actually in favour of it - even though I have over 600 items on a single vendor. However, I am very concerned about it's scheduled release date. The last thing any of us want is to be left high and dry with hundreds of items in the stockroom - unable to sell them or even pick them all up! If we could get a rough idea if and when this may occur I can continue to vend in peace.

I know this has been mentioned countless times, I'm just going to add to those numbers. Re-selling and re-pricing. It is essential we are given the tools to re-sell our items with as little delay as possible. Every day I have to check my stockroom and re-sell hundreds of individually priced stock over 6 vendors. Management is essential in games such as these, but when this form of dull micro-mangement removes literally hours of game time every day it becomes unacceptable.

We badly need more vendor. 6 is too less, we need about 1 vendor by craft prof (about 12).

Please, make something about the amount of daily income, actualy the SWG economi is inflating too much.
Any figther prof can make 200 or 300k crd a day, this is too much to get a true economics marcket.

Here are my thoughts on potential merchant updates or game updates to support the merchant class.

1) Have a calculator. I'm assuming this wouldn't be very difficult to put in (but hey, what do I know) and I'm sure *every* person with a vendor will love it.

2) Allow you to have permissions on the vendor like there are for harvesters. e.g. I can assign someone to be my business partner that can place items for sale on the vendor. This raises some issues as to where the money goes, but that leads into item #3.

3) Have the option for sales from a vendor to store the money on the vendor. That's the way it works in RL. The money is in the store. That way someone assigned as a business partner (see #2) can purchase items on the vendor using the "store's" money

4) Have an option to receive or not to receive the emails that something has been purchased.

5) Turn off the emails that say "Vendor sales not successful" emails when you remove the item(s) from sale. You already know it didn't sell because you took it off the vendor.

5) Have an option to modify the system "Vendor Item Purchased" message that is sent to the person buying the item.

6) Have an option to receive an email when someone places an item onto you vendor to sell to you.

7) Allow items to be sold to only a specific person. e.g. special orders, etc.

8) Allow for sales.

9) Allow you to place several items for sale on the vendor at the same price all at once. It takes *sooo* long to place items for sale on the vendor.

10) Allow you to move items from one vendor/stockroom to another within the same house.

11) Don't allow items to "disappear" from the stockroom. Or at the very least, give us warning. It really hurts to lose 1 mil worth of products because you didn't read the forums first to learn about this bug.

12) Allow us to customize the vendors at creation time. Currently we can pick the vendor type (Droid, NPC, etc) and the gender. But we can't choose if they are fat or skinny, dark skin/light skin, etc.

13) Allow us to change the vendor name after it has been placed. What if your store name has changed? It takes a long time to move stuff between vendors.

14) Allow us to transfer control of the vendor (if #2 isn't possible) to another character (checking of course that they have the skills). e.g. I have a vendor and successful business but I then decide that I want to become a TKA or whatever. I know someone who wants to take over the vendor so I've sold them everything. It would takes *hours* to switch/move everything to the new person.

And as a side note, on the debate about keeping vendors after the skills have been dropped, my opinion is that makes the profession worthless. Other than the reduced maintenance, what's the point of keeping it once you've placed your vendors?

Teivan San-Marko

Master Artisan - Master Merchant - Master CH

JO Guild Enterprises @ -2947 x 3331 Brenn, Naboo, Shadowfire