Architect Archive
Thread: Hi I am a Merchant I want your business......
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Dvnce
Thu Aug 19, 2004 11:13 am
#1
ok .. i kind of started a thread along these lines and it has some activaty on it.. but I want to focus it a bit more.. on this issue.. as TH has said these vendor changes are not the merchant revamp.. which to me means that there are more plans for the merchant profession... I like the merchant profession it has its place but as of now it lacks many tools to be effiecent and lessen the work a crafter has to do... so what most crafters do now is master merchant themselves defeating the whole intent of the profession... I know many of you are quite aware of my feelings of the merchant profession and that I am So against the class just being Vendor Handlers... I will go into my position later because I dont want to affect your feelings...
What I want to do here.. is ... Lets pretend to the extreme here.. that if you craft the system would not allow you to pic up merchant.. ( i know that is real extreme but follow me on this.. and this in no way has ever been suggested so dont jump to any conclusions.. i just presented this way for 100% arguments sakes..
) So lets say that your only options were .. 1) only do custom orders and sell in person... 2) buy another account and have a merchant Alt.. or 3) actually use another player to sell your goods...
) So lets say that your only options were .. 1) only do custom orders and sell in person... 2) buy another account and have a merchant Alt.. or 3) actually use another player to sell your goods... IN the last thread i had on this subject there was alot of I would do what it takes to sell my own stuff... It is truly SOEs goal to make Option 3 the most attractive... right now.. I will be honest .. it is not the most attractive.. atm..
So I ask you again .. What would the merchant profession have to offer you to get you to actually seek out a merchant to sell your wares???.. Because ultamately the goal is to make using another player to be our merchant the most favorable solution.. so .. lets tell SOE what we want ...
*** note.. please try to start your response off with a very detailed sentance then a paragraph explaining your response.. if you want to list items have it be ... Sentance ... List ... explenation.... Also this is an issue that effects all crafters especially so lets get all crafts involved in this discussion... ***
Lecivius
Thu Aug 19, 2004 11:32 am
#2
My first thought on this...
Consignment, or some such tool, where I can offer my items for resale THROUGH a Vendor, as opposed to the current system, with no sale items and the corresponding emails & retrieval up to the seller, not the merchant.
This is just a brainstorm idea, to kick this off.
Iannyen
Thu Aug 19, 2004 11:55 am
#3
The strengths of using another person to vend my items is also its weakness.
I don't "hand make" 200 couches at a time, or anything else for that matter.
If I didn't have room to list 3000 items for sale, the problem is, where can I store them?
Is the Merchant I deal with going to take them on consignment? Will he have room to store my 3000+ items and still have room to market other people's wares? Will I be expected to work with dozens of player merchants, just to move my goods? Will the merchant be able to set up malls? Multiple vendor locations for me, and me alone? Basically, for me, a merchant would have to have about 25x the buying and storage capacity that they do with the upcomming revamp, about 3x the lots of everyone else, and about 5x the vendor capacity that is coming up, so that I can rest assured that the merchant can move my goods at a rate that I feel is appropriate.
I don't know if I can really pick one of the 3 items without having a better understanding as to where they think the merchant class might be headed, and what they know can and can't be done.
Elioi
Thu Aug 19, 2004 11:56 am
#4
I have bought another Account for selling things, and to pick up extra crafting classes (DE on my main, Architect and Tailor on the Merch alt, soon to drop Arch - reasons below). So I guess I'm doing number 2.
Right now because of the changes I am having to drop Architect mostly to go up to Master Merchant, why you ask? Because I'm taking a bullet for my team, I'm not going to ask my guildmates to gimp their templates which they enjoy just to take up merchant to keep selling. Nor am I going to ask them to shell out an extra $180ish dollars a year to get a new merchant alt. Nor do I expect them to work through Parasite merchants - those who feel that they deserve a discount in bulk so they can skim items for themselves off the top and sell the rest at huge mark-up, or have to deal with consignment sales where the risk of losing high ticket items due to "bugs" is an all too real possibility. I guess myself and my friends will have to rely on the "hope you don't burn out" merchant mule workaround as I don't see any way to make merchants, crafters, and consumers happy about prices or percentages. The basic fault of Merchant/Crafter relationshipsis that a crate of Vasarian Brandy that is worth 100k on the market is worth 100k to the person that crafted it.
Numen
Thu Aug 19, 2004 2:04 pm
#5
Obviously an easier way of selling large quantities of items to people is a must. The 25 limit right now just doesn't work.
The offer window though is perfect for something like this, extra features are just needed. This new window would be for things only selling directly on that vendor. I don't believe a merchant should be able to buy things off there that go into the inventory just beacuse that is what the offer page is for.
I'll call it the consignment window. This would have fairly unlimited storage. Possibly a new number just like the amount of vendor sales someone can have. However each novice profession would get x quantity, each master would be x quantity. So a Master BE/Chef in my case would get more than just a Chef. Something like 100 per novice and 500-1000 per master I think would be acceptable.
A few mechanics of this page.
- The crafter would usually just offer crates(they could offer singles, but it might not be as useful).
- The merchant has the ability to select a crate and place up for sale lets say 5 of the 25 in the crate.
- The option is available to sell them as singles or speficy the crate size to put up for sale
- Example is selecting a 25 ct crate. Merchant sells 25 of them, in 5 count crates. So 5 items are listed.
- The crafter specifies a price when they place the item on the Merchants vendor(I would say a per item cost, and not give the option for a per crate cost)
- When the merchant puts the items up for sale, they specify the price. If they actually want to sell at a loss they can enter a negative value. When the item sells, the crafter gets the amount they placed on the item, and the merchant gets or losses whatever price they place up.
A possible option for merchants. As a chef I normally put 39 crates of 25 up at a time. It would be nice if the merchant could view this as 1 crate of 975. The game would still not allow crates of more than 25(for food) to be sold, but I think this would make it a lot easier for the merchant in selling.
Another merchant option. Autofilling vendors. Again with the 975 example. The merchant can list 5 items, but when 1 of them sells another automatically replaces it from the stock room.
Sorry if that got a little long. The main thing is there needs to be a somewhat automated way of me placing items on a vendor for a merchant and me getting my credits when it sells. I don't want to have to deal with the merchant tallying what I sold in a week and getting a paycheck. The nearly unlimited offer part is key as well.I am not going to place everything in bags just because it is a workaround for a 25 item limit.
I would also vote for 1000 ct crates, but I doubt that is going to fly. Just transporting 39 crates to a vendor can be a huge pain sometimes.
Numen
Thu Aug 19, 2004 2:08 pm
#6
BTW I don't like the idea of vendor renting. The vendor must earn their money, they shouldn't just be vendor placers. No matter how difficult it is to me to have a vendor, I will not rent a vendor from a merchant. They must have to do something with it to get their cut. The merchant should dictate the final price. They also should dictate via some negotiation from the crafter on what price the crafter will sell to them for. As people have said, it can currently be done. It requires large amounts of capital and some people also aren't willing to sit on large amounts of extra stock.
Pawlin
Thu Aug 19, 2004 2:29 pm
#7
I would like to be able to go to a terminal in my own home or maybe a banking terminal. I'd offer items under consignment sale to the merchant/merchants that I deal with. They could then agree or delcine the item and price terms. Then the item would be in escrow until it is sold. I could remove the sale if I want or the merchant could delist it during the time its in escrow. When the item sells I'd get my cut and the merchant would get their %.
I don't want to have to fly across 3 worlds to deal with a merchant. I don't want to have to meet them in person. I don't want to have to trust them or expect them to trust me with the money before the item sells.
Moepple
Thu Aug 19, 2004 4:35 pm
#8
Pawlin wrote:
I would like to be able to go to a terminal in my own home or maybe a banking terminal. I'd offer items under consignment sale to the merchant/merchants that I deal with. They could then agree or delcine the item and price terms. Then the item would be in escrow until it is sold. I could remove the sale if I want or the merchant could delist it during the time its in escrow. When the item sells I'd get my cut and the merchant would get their %.
I don't want to have to fly across 3 worlds to deal with a merchant. I don't want to have to meet them in person. I don't want to have to trust them or expect them to trust me with the money before the item sells.
Thats close Pawlin, but I doubt it will implemented that way.
My Vision ist that Merchant-Vendors will act like a bazaar-terminal, but you need to enable this feature for a (limited) set of people. They then can sell through the merchants Vendor and the merchant gets his %, defined by either a vendor-based system or by the listed entry.
That would be perfect for me, as a merchant, and perfect for the crafters. An Option for a named delivery, which means that an item is only sold to a specific player, would be great too.
The other changes should be "internaly", there are still a lot of issues.
Shubashi/Gorath
Aiya1
Fri Aug 20, 2004 12:13 am
#9
The interface allowing for credits to go to 2 people on a % basis, more or less "renting" a vendor for a price. Merchant drops vendor, crafter can list, merchant gets 20% (or whatever) of the sale automatically and the crafter gets the rest.
The ability to sell from crates. Example: Crate of 50 up, JoeHack wants to buy 3, he can buy those and still leave a single crate of 47 up. With this implimented (as well as getting deeds to crate), a merchant can sell for up to 12 different crafters and crafters wont be forced to start a second account because all the vendors are already rented out. They will also not have storage issues.
A new "mall" building set up with an ideal layout for multiple vendors.
Aiya
Message Edited by Aiya1 on 08-19-2004 02:15 PM
Fneegan
Fri Aug 20, 2004 12:19 am
#10
What I want to do here.. is ... Lets pretend to the extreme here.. that if you craft the system would not allow you to pic up merchant.. ( i know that is real extreme but follow me on this.. and this in no way has ever been suggested so dont jump to any conclusions.. i just presented this way for 100% arguments sakes..
First - I'm not sure what you're sayinging here. Are you saying, if you take up crafting - that you can't sell sell but have to go thru a Merchant ?
My first thought is - I don't need a TKM, Commando or other to shoot my pistol for me - so, I don't need and don't want a Merchant selling my wares either.Do we not use our guns without having to go to the AMMO MASTER ?
I doubt many do Master Merchant profession. What many probably do is get Novice and drop it.
We're playing a game with players of various ages and different situations etc.....you don't know if they will be around or for how long. Why should anybodys business rely on anotherprofession? What happens when that merchant (oops forgive me, "Master Merchant") doesn't log on for a week because of boredom or whatever reason or goes on duty for 3 months without telling you ??
JUST TOO MANY VARIABLES here.
There's suffuicient problems as is with house sharingvendors as is (players quitting or destroying the house etc...)
Every individual/player (depending on the professions the've chosen of course) should be able to craft and sell there wares. Do they really need to master their crafting profession and a Merchant Profession to be able to sell them ?
Okay, I'm done now.....
SkyfireDL
Fri Aug 20, 2004 12:31 am
#11
Well, if SOE really wanted us (the crafters)to work more closely with other merchants, they'd have to change a couple things.
The first problem I see is that Vendors do not have a type of admin right. Thus, crafters are forced to keep in constant touch with a certainmerchant to make sure the money the crafters made from their sales gets transfered back to them by the merchant. Crafters also have to be online at the same time as the merchant to hand over the goods for the merchant to sell. And if the merchant takes a week long vacation, well, that can screw up a crafter and his ability to keep the vendor well stocked.
So, first of all, the dev's would need to add a type of admin right to the vendor, and the vendors should be able to keep track of who's goods were sold, and appropriatly send the credits directly to whoever put the item up for sale.
Now, the merchant ain't getting much out of this except for XP. So I'd suggest a percentage of the sale be given to the merchant. But this could in turn drive prices higher up. Perhaps SOE should chip in and freely give credits to merchants who use their vendors for helping others sell their goods. That could be based on a small percentage of the overall value of the sale, or a flat fee. Heck, combat professions can get easy enough cash hunting durnies, or looting meatlumps. Why not help out the merchants as well? I can't see any better way's of enticing the majority of merchants to help out otherwise. This is especially true if the worst case scenario of not allowing a merchant to pick up some crafting profession actually happens. But I doubt that would ever be the case.
Sirglenos
Fri Aug 20, 2004 4:53 am
#12
Ok,
-How about giving Merchants, perhaps at Master, the ability to use their vendor to view all vendors for that region (say 1000m radius), that planet, and the galaxy, just like the bazaar. This would allow Master Merchants to go from vendor to vendor and pick up, say, some droids on Tatooine, and some BE components on Naboo without having to explore the whole planet to find where the quality sellers are. This will allow anyone with Business 3 to place their vendor, and if their price is low enough/items good enough, a Master Merchant may come thru and pick it up to resell or use. Makes sense to me...
-How about giving Merchants, perhaps at Master, the ability to use their vendor to view all vendors for that region (say 1000m radius), that planet, and the galaxy, just like the bazaar. This would allow Master Merchants to go from vendor to vendor and pick up, say, some droids on Tatooine, and some BE components on Naboo without having to explore the whole planet to find where the quality sellers are. This will allow anyone with Business 3 to place their vendor, and if their price is low enough/items good enough, a Master Merchant may come thru and pick it up to resell or use. Makes sense to me...
_KernMist
Fri Aug 20, 2004 5:54 am
#13
How about giving Merchants, perhaps at Master, the ability to use their vendor to view all vendors for that region (say 1000m radius), that planet, and the galaxy, just like the bazaar. This would allow Master Merchants to go from vendor to vendor and pick up, say, some droids on Tatooine...
Using this system would also allow Merchants to act as advisors on where to get the best products if they themselves do not stock it. The real power of the Merchant could actually be in negotiating a good price for information...
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