Architect Archive
Thread: State of the profession
Requested by the devs, I post this. Please add your comments. This post will be collected in a few days, paraphrased and made into a doc at SWG (I think, it is unclear but it goes somewhere). I hope you all agree with me, if you do not, my feelings will be hurt, but I will get over it 
Please add constructive comments. Please!
The State of the merchant is poor, but getting better.
In short, our workforce (Vendors) is an unstable gamble, where millions of credits, game time, and energy hang in the balance. Merchants have become one of the most heart-racing classes in SWG, because any given moment in time, everything you have for sale could vanish without a trace. We have widespread reports of missing items, or missing vendors. When one of the vendors does fail us, there is little way for us to regain what is lost, we are told by the powers that be, “Sorry, it is a known issue”. Even merchant experience is also a gamble, you may get it you may not.
Merchants sell things, yet we are missing the basic tools to do the task at hand. We have no way to interact with our clients while we are away, no way to take orders, and no tools to work with our suppliers. We are, in short, a slave to our shop.
We cannot participate in the "conflict" our shops are open to all, no way to discount things to our "friends" and gouge the enemy, no way to bar those of one faction or another from our shops, or vendors. An option that, if this were a real war, would most definitely be in effect. I would not sell a gun to the one who would then turn it on my faction.
Here are my bullets to the essay I wrote:
Bugs (not all I am sure, but the ones that stick in my mind, sorry if I missed any)
- Items in vendors offen vanish, over all stability in the vendor system needs to be looked reviews, and changes made to the system
- Vendors randomly vanish, sometimes returning on server rest, sometime not
- All vendors (ie Humans)have no hair.
- Emails from sales (Our only real way to track sales) are offen never seen.
- The %TT and so on do not work in the "NON CANNED" barks.
- Items in the stockroom portion of the vendor vanish at anytime, as little as 15 mins, and as long as 10 days.
- Vendors do not report that they are nearly out of mants.
- Lastly, Merchants need to be made whole again, by finding and fixing the issue that allows people to place vendors, and then back out of the skill, retaining the use of the vendor. This undermines those that are merchants, and makes our class a throw away. NO OTHER CLASS IN THE GAME ALLOWS YOU TO RETAIN A SKILL AFTER YOU BACK OUT OF IT!!!
Needed Changes
- We need tools to track sales, prices and so on. We need tools that will allow us to "mark" an item for sale to just one person.
- We need ways to setup partnerships with others, allowing them to have limited use of our vendors.
- We need consignment sales, and auctions on the vendor as well.
- We need an option on the vendor to email the owner.
- Our skills need to be reworked, Master Merchant gets you nothing worth anything.
Improvments
- We need SHOP furniture, the items are all over the place, just make them craftable. (See http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=merchant&message.id=11370
- We need away to set faction rules on a vendor, I could see a screen that has the factions on them, a checkbox that says "sell to", and a field that allows us to set a + or - %, this will change the price of the item. If the box is unchecked, Overt members will find themselves shutout. (Seehttp://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=merchant&message.id=12542
- A /move up|down command, so we can decorate our shops.
There are some much needed changes in the pipe, but the class still lacks some major work. It needs to be made fun to play. Tools that allow us to leave and go hunt, and know our shop is okay.
Playing a merchant IS getting better some of the changes upcomming in the next patch are very exciting. But there is much work to be done. When all the work to keep a vendor stocked, deal with sales and customers and find merchandise is calculated Merchant is the most time consuming profession in the game. It took me four months to make Master Rifleman, mostly because I spent all of my time on merchant. Getting out of the shop was an incredible challenge. My friends would make fun of me if they saw me anywhere but in the shop dealing with the vendors, because that where I always was.
There are some very fun aspects of playing a merchant. The work involved to track everything isn't one of them. Hopefully with some of these ideas and the changes already on Test Center we will get a bit of a break.
A fine summary.
Thank you, as always, for your hard work marqie.
Marqie pretty much hit the nail on the head.
I got into the merchant skill sets because I wanted to be a businesssman inside the world of Star Wars. When I first started out, it was terribly hard to make a living when 90% of your merchandise poofed for no apparent reason. My suppliers loved it, they made more money. Now that the Devs have paid a bit of attention to our loud screams to fix things, things are getting easier and better patch to patch. I'd be inclined to say that before this year is done the merchant class will be somewhere close to resembling a state of stability. It probably won't be the duck shoot it is now in reguards to loosing things.
If the Devsbring us admin lists and allow the merchant to begin dealing with thier customers and suppliers on a more detailed level, the merchant class will become what it should be: I viable economic driver. Right now, it's pretty much a guess from day to day what is going to go wrong, fail, or just poof from exsistance. But most Merchants will agree that something usually goes wrong on a daily basis. Over all though, my PA OMOE is doing quite well. We have gotten through the major bugs, the poor customer service, and lack of support from the Devs and come out as a solidly built company. The fear of bugs dragging us down isn't quite as bad as it was during the first 2 months or so since the game went live. But, I have to admit I am pretty satisfied right now how things are progressing. I am just as impatient as the rest of us, and would like to see all the bugs, suggestions, and any other ideas I can think of all fixed right now. But, with a company as large as both Lucasarts and Sony, things are speeding along quite fast considering the power of the large volume of crap executives at both ends can probably dish out to the acctual programmers trying to make this game work. But, the work ain't over with yet.
If I were to attempt to think down to road a couple of years, something that would be entirely great for the merchant class would be a management console inside a 'corporate office' type class spacific building. This console would allow Master Merchants to manage thier entire business from one place. Imagine, if you will, logging into the game and sitting down at your big desk and logging into your terminal. You will be able to set prices on all your products for sale, auto-request new product from your suppliers, set up new contracts with new and old suppliers, purchase commodities from the bazaar and have it shipped automatically to your stockrooms and sell it on your own vendors. Turn the gears of capitolism right from the comfort of your big plush office on the top floor of your massive office building. Then when that tires, get into your speedy new ground car, ride off towards your favorite killing grounds and lay waist to the baddies there. All it a days work, eh? Ahh well, a man can dream.
Thanks for all your hard work Marqie. I seriously doubt the Devs would have a tenth of a clue as they do now about how all us Merchants feel about this profession. I have to say, at the time of writting this post, I am pretty well satisfied with the way things are progressing. If the Devs hold up thier end of the bargain I should have very little to complain about. And with Marqie leading the community I am almost certain that will happen.
Katrick Odi
An excellent summary Marqie!
I would like to add:
Please, please, someday soon allow:
(1) The stockroom to hold stock for 30 days before it auto-deletes so casual gamers or RL vacations andemergencies don't mean all of our stock is gone when we return.
(2) A way for us to list sets of items as a single unit for sale. Such as matched outfits, matched armor, all the components needed to build a certain item, a full set of survey or repair, or crafting tools, etc. (Gift boxes, item XXX building kit box/container, tool kits...) And an examine/description so the consumer can see what is in the kit. Also allow us to name the kits/boxes like we can back packs.
(3) A way to designate and restrict an item listed on the vendor to a single customer, allowing it to be purchased by only that person.
(4) A way to list a preferred customer discount price.
It's not easy to add more suggestions 
Every things seems to be said ...
May be, you can think about the different Merchant skills. Most of them are useless ... and we need a real differentiation between non merchant vs merchant players, not only the number of vendors.
Great post. But I'd like to comment on the issue of, say, becoming a master merchant, placing a c-3po vendor, and then giving up the skill.
I believe the skill involved here is the creation of the droid. Not the maintenance. Besides, can't i simply make a vendor for someone who's not even a vendor? Granted, there should be cost to giving up the ability to operate more than one vendor at a time, but if i just give up the variety, then I should not be penalized for not having the Hiring skill to run a 3po droid. So, can i have some clarification on the issue presented in your post regarding people backing out of the merchant class?
As a novice weaponsmith, Master Merchant/Artisan with some carbineer & scout skills, I'm pretty much maxed out on points. Any further advancement in my weaponsmith skill will come at a loss to the rest of the other classes. When I'm done giving up as much scout skills i can tolerate, The next thing on the list is the Merchant points. Now, what I believe should happen is that I should no longer be able to manage the same number of vendors if I mess with my Management skills. But if I want to trade point for point any new weaponsmith skills with Hiring skills, then i should lose them accordingly. the other 2 skill trees are self explanatory, give up advertising, or maintenance skills and you lose them, period. I just want some clarification here on what you presented, please.
thanx
Another addition: THE INTERFACE. It sucks. Too much clicking, too many laggy popupprogress barsthat prevent you from doing anything, have to close and reopen vendor a bunch of times to be able to retrieve an item, etc.
We need multiple selection lists for selling items. If I did a big factory run overnight, I'm going to spend 10-20 minutes standing at my vendor, listing each item individually and waiting for that slow popup box every time.
Great job. Please add:
- Vendor UI: Add acolumn for experiartions of sale (auction) and savecolumn sizing.
- Vendor Categoriation: Please remove empty categories and make sure all items fall under a sub category. Items such as A droid battery just fall under Misc and are hard to find.
Will this be a permantent sticky? Do I need to keep my bug section?
marqie wrote:
Bugs (not all I am sure, but the ones that stick in my mind, sorry if I missed any)
- Items in vendors offen vanish, over all stability in the vendor system needs to be looked reviews, and changes made to the system
- Vendors randomly vanish, sometimes returning on server rest, sometime not
- All vendors (ie Humans)have no hair.
- Emails from sales (Our only real way to track sales) are offen never seen.
- The %TT and so on do not work in the "NON CANNED" barks.
- Items in the stockroom portion of the vendor vanish at anytime, as little as 15 mins, and as long as 10 days.
- Vendors do not report that they are nearly out of mants.
- Lastly, Merchants need to be made whole again, by finding and fixing the issue that allows people to place vendors, and then back out of the skill, retaining the use of the vendor. This undermines those that are merchants, and makes our class a throw away. NO OTHER CLASS IN THE GAME ALLOWS YOU TO RETAIN A SKILL AFTER YOU BACK OUT OF IT!!!
Other bugs from my guide.
- Experience per vendor overtime does not accrue on NPC vendors after gaining Eff 2 (Reduced maint rate to zero), unless they are registered for planetary map. Place some droid or terminal vendors with a few items.
- All items on Stock Room or Offer disappear after dealing with one. For some reason a category is being changed, so list only shows this empty category. Fix by clicking All. (Seems to change to category used on Sales tab after one transaction)
- Experience per vendor overtime does not accrue on NPC vendors after gaining Eff 2 (Reduced maint rate to zero), unless they are registered for planetary map. Place some droid or terminal vendors with a few items.
- Merchant Signs on some house are not placed correctly.
- Failed to create vendor. Your inventory may be full. The volume of the female Aqualishes are bugged such that it takes up more space in your inventory than you have available.
- Giving cloths to a vendor that are meant for the opposite gender or wookies, may result in a naked vendor.
- Some are still having problems with Ad Barking dropping after a few times.
This is scheduled to be fixed in the next push.
Aquilus_Ferox wrote:
I agree with a lot of the stuff said. I have an issue with my vendors in my mall that none of their settings stay after server restart. My barks, and my planetary listings don't stay so every morning I have to get one and reset them. I really would like to see this fixed.