Architect Archive
Thread: State of the profession
, but I feel that this is a very important part of the in-game world and far to broken to be worth playing effectively...so there's my two cents with a bit of whine on the side, maybe the collective gripes will (someday) be heard. If the developers cap the limit on vendors, I hope it is at least 500 items. I like to load my vendors up and then go play the game. I actually have very few items drop off after 30 days. Since factories allow us to make a 1000 items, it is better to put it all on a vendor then to take up the limited storage space in a house. Also, armorsmith takes a lot of different resources that I store on a house vendor because there is not enough room in a house to keep it all. I guess what I am requesting is that if they put limits on the number of vendor items, that they make it high enough to make it workable or give us more house storage.
snacks wrote:
in game calculator would be awsome
Probably the simplest, yet most useful request I've seen to date.
I second the calculator.
The thing I really want the most out of merchant right now is the ability to make a private vendor. My PA has an interesting system set up where everything is essentially free to anyone in the guild but it requires a guild warehouse and I really want a vendor in there so we can keep track of who takes/needs what.
My brother and I set the accessfee to as high as possible (49999 since we want it to stand out so people don't go after the building owner agrily,) put a normal housename on the building and hid the vendor in the back room. We still worry though... If someone should come in they could clean that vendor out and make more than they lost on that "little" access fee. All our guild members have admin so they don't have to worry about the fee. I know it's a silly thing... but I just have this feeling... even though the building doesn't stand out, the vendor is silent and not registered... someone is out to get us... Hehe.
As I see it a private vendor could be set up two ways. One by just removing the "Needs to be in a public building" requirement. And two, the previously suggested "preferred shopper discount" assuming you can make their discount 99.9%.
I have to say that #1 on your list is most important. the argument against it sounds like political somantic spin. Arguing if the skill is to PLACE or to USE a vendor is to miss the whole intention of vendors in the first place. We all decide where to put our skill points to create a skill set we would have most fun with. To decide between spending the points to have a vendor or to pay a fee to some other player to sell your goods is the same as choosing to spend the points on doc so you can self buff or paying some doc at Coronet to do it in my book.
Losing all those xtra vendors might also fix that database problem so that the current merchants out there can continue to have a large selection. I have certain merchants I go to for each of the things I use because I know they keep a full vendor, I dont care about paying a bit more I have a relationship with them. If you cut back their inventory so I can't always find what I need you will destroy that relationship.
Evicting a vendor has never been an issue for me so far, but I can certainly see how it could be. It would be nice as a landlord to have the option to charge something on the maintenance of other peoples vendors, for instance let me recieve Xcr/hr from each of them as rent instead of having to track them down to remind them its rent day.
This may sound kinda stupid, but shouldn't a merchant get additional lots added? I mean, if we're meant to use our lots for tents or stores inside of traditional houses in multiple locations (if we are successful), shouldn't we get an extra lot or two to use harvestors or whatever else fuels our business? Maybe not all merchants have other artisan skills (a scout can sell organics and anyone can sell 'loot') but 95% of the merchants out there need resources to cover their crafting profession while expanding our business.
I do think the extra lots should be in merchant as merchant is a lot of skillpoints invested for a very particular purpose.
Also, why do we get no experience for selling something? Merchant is insanely slow to start off with no means of attracting sales outside of spamming in a populated areas (which normally only irritates people) and our vendors give no experience if they do not currently 'exist'. This only encourages afk macroing for 'unattended experience'.
I don't want merchant to be a cakewalk, but I've now concluded that merchant experience is more painful to get than bounty hunter experience.
Areriye wrote:
This may sound kinda stupid, but shouldn't a merchant get additional lots added? I mean, if we're meant to use our lots for tents or stores inside of traditional houses in multiple locations (if we are successful), shouldn't we get an extra lot or two to use harvestors or whatever else fuels our business? Maybe not all merchants have other artisan skills (a scout can sell organics and anyone can sell 'loot') but 95% of the merchants out there need resources to cover their crafting profession while expanding our business.
I'm not so sure I agree Areriye. If everyone were able to be self sufficient there would be no call for merchants at all. You may want to make some business associates, find a supplier of a certain resource or item and make a deal with them offering discounts or services for their product. There are issues with these kind of associations, with the bulk of the transfer relying on trust it can be a little daunting for some to get involved with. Hopefully, this will be addressed in the future.
Then advertise, advertise, advertise. Make items with your shops waypointin it's nameand sell it on the bazaar and other player vendors. Get a barking droid and also hang out around areas where your major custom base is - cantinas and the like. It's not hard to advertise, but it is hard to get customers if your vendor is hard to reach or does not sell what people need.
I've recently heard many people complain their Merchant XP gain is incredibly slow. I found the opposite, but like any RL business you need to do a little research in your chosen business. If you're a budding weaponsmith, there is little point opening a new weapon store next to a Master weaponsmith, unless you see they are not taking full advantage of their vendor. Make sure you're not too far away from a shuttleport. If you lose your shuttleport in your local town, move house or attract people back to your town asap.
Sorry for the long response to your post, but I hope you get a few ideas on how to make a thriving business. But please, I implore the Devs not to increase our number of lots. We need assistance making business relationships not any hand in allowing completely self-sustained players.
DocSavag wrote:
*sigh*
You guys have to realize that the number of items you can have is very powerful in this game. Any change to this game makes your ability to make more items exponetionally easier..that isn't their goal. It isn't supposed to be a cake walk you are supposed to have to work hard at being a huge crafter in this game. They aren't going to make changes that will give you 10x the space you have now.
So... wait a minute. Let me get this straight. It is not a goal of SOE to make being a master crafter easier? Just who is supposed to run their vaunted "player economy" then? A flock of geese?
Understand that I'm not frustrated with you, Doc. You have done a great job since taking over the reigns from marqie. But time and time again we have been told that their back-end database is over-stressed because of all the things players are crafting. To me, the fact that so many people are continuing to craft (or are picking up crafting professions) is a sign of a very healthy economy. Why SOE would not want to encourage this is beyond me. So when we come to them with suggestions to lessen their database problems -- increasing stack sizes is but one example --we're told that it is not their goal to make our lives easier? I could list a myriad of reasons that weaponsmiths have obscene storage requirements, but I'll spare you the list. I've gone over it with our WS correspondent already, re-hashing it here accomplishes nothing.
However, because I feel the merchant forums is the appropriate place to do so as it crosses all the crafting professions, I will say this: being abig-time crafter in SWG would still be a major pain in the ass even if our storage problems were alleviated. Storage is but one issue a crafter has to deal with. Others include complete lack of privacy and ability to play uninterrupted (aka "tell hell"), undereducated customer-base, buggy vendors, pathetic vendor interface, inadequate marketing tools... I could go on.
You'll have to forgive me if I sould a bit peeved. I am. To hear that SOE doesn't want to make our lives easier makes me sick to my stomach. I bet if they actually sat down and looked they could find a few hundred people on each server that provide the bulk (I'd guess over half) of all crafted items available. It is in their interest to give these people the tools to own and operate a highly successful in-game business without being driven away because they don't actually get to play the game for being bombarded with tells and e-mail.
That all came out as more of a rant than I wanted, and for that I apologize. Hopefully I got my point across in there somewhere.
SeaRaptor it isn't their job to make it easier for you. It is their job to make it a challenge and funto play. They have to also balance that with the fact that if they make it too easy for you it will seemlike fun for a while but then you will get bored and go do something else. I'm not trying to tell you that they have the perfect balance right now. I am telling you they aren't going to make changes that make it easy for you to craft 10x what you do now. They consider that bad for the economy.
DocSavag wrote:
SeaRaptor it isn't their job to make it easier for you. It is their job to make it a challenge and funto play. They have to also balance that with the fact that if they make it too easy for you it will seemlike fun for a while but then you will get bored and go do something else. I'm not trying to tell you that they have the perfect balance right now. I am telling you they aren't going to make changes that make it easy for you to craft 10x what you do now. They consider that bad for the economy.
I don't see where helping us (and helping themselves) fix everyone's storage issues for resource stacks makes it easier for me to craft 10x what I do now. A lot of other factors keep me from doing that, not the least of which is that I don't particularly want the game to feel like more of a job than it already does.
Are you trying to tell me that the reason we don't have 1000 count crates is because SOE doesn't want us crafting stuff in bulk? If you were to come at it from that angle, it would make sense, and I can see the argument. I agree, in fact. How that argument applies to resource stacks is what I don't get, though.
That still does not excuse SOE from hopefullymaking our play time more enjoyable by giving us the ability to better operate and manage our vendors and to shut out the public when we need some time away from our businesses (a simple "do not disturb" command that shut off incoming tells would solve this handily).