Armorsmith Archive
Thread: What do people think of this change which went to Test today:
You are one in a sea of many. Have sympathy for others on this subject.
Personally, I sell all my pieces seperate. A lot of my customers have no interest in full sets. I don't even wear a full set.
I check the vendor to see what pieces need to be made, and refill those. Seems to keep me going and I don't have a problem with sales.
Well, I've been an armorsmith since right after launch, I honestly can't say that I will remain one after publish 7.
This, along with the experimentation changes has just turned me sour on the game. In fact if I hadn't paid up for 3 months recently I think I may be tempted to hit that "cancel" button.
AtlantisCH wrote:
Well, I've been an armorsmith since right after launch, I honestly can't say that I will remain one after publish 7.
This, along with the experimentation changes has just turned me sour on the game. In fact if I hadn't paid up for 3 months recently I think I may be tempted to hit that "cancel" button.
If you change this I will cancel my account !!!!
ROFL.
Don't let the door hit you on your way out...
Sorry mate but I have seen post like this in about every MMORPG I have played....
Ail has a point. The "I quit" messages don't help. If we try to be constructive about this, we can introduce an alternative. Ibrainstormed an idea to help with suit sales, maybe others can think up some other ideas as well.
Ail wrote:
Don't let the door hit you on your way out...
Sorry mate but I have seen post like this in about every MMORPG I have played....
Due to the recent changes with the vendors, armorsmiths and to some extent, tailors, have ran into some rather difficult problems. I am a master armorsmith by the name of Anger Ysako on the Radiant server. I was the thirs master AS on ym server, its been over 2 months. This is purely for background, title has nothing to do with the problem. Anyways for those not familiar with the problem, as of 3 days ago you cna no longer place items in bags on vendors. OR more specifically you can, but they will be deleted leaving you with a empty bag. Now this came as a suprise to em whe i log in and have 4 emails from customers thihking I scammed them. All with the same problem. They bought a bag of armor adn all tehy got was a empty bag.. So i pulled my remaining sets off the vendor.. all empty.. I check the boards and everyoen havign the same problem. Then I read a message from a csr on the boards saying this was as attended since people were using it as an exploit to have infinite storage.. Please note, this was NEVER mentioned in the patch notes. No advanced notice at all. And not everyone reads the boards, though admittably I do, but some dont. Now this is what was changed, despite the reasons, its done. Now heres the dilemna.
Armorsmiths adn to a lesser extent tailors, sell items in "sets". The only way we have of doing this effectively is to place them in a bag with either the contents or the buyers name on the bag, and place it on a vendor. Why dont we just sell individual pieces? For tailors its a bit different then armorsmiths. They have people rodering outfits in assorted styles and colors. Now the could change the name of each item to "CHARACTERSNAME striped pants" etc. an place them on teh vendor. That looks dumb when you click on someones clothing adn see their name on it.. Anyone else have parent who wrote thir name on their underwear? bad flashbacks.. The other choice is to jsut palce it on the vendor where anyone can buy it.
For armorsmiths its a matter of different tastes for different people.. Say that "Yoda813" wants to buy a set of composite off me. he wants it with reduced hams because its so heavy, in gold. So I make it and palce it on ym vendor.. Again the same problem with naming the individual pieces. And i go hunting with my friends on Lok. Well unbeknowest to me a guy walks in 5 minutes laer and buys the armor.. Well Yoda shows up adn his armor isnt there. he jsut traveled from Endor to ym house on tyrena and hes not happy. I sont want to leave my friends because Im having fun.. So what do we do? Someone is greatly inconveneinced.
Of course this is all settled by us just meeting up and trading items for cash.. What if he emailed me his order because he heard about my awesome 55 percent resist composite and has to have it. Unfortunately he lives in Japan and I live in phoenix and we have opposite play schedules.. This makes a face to face meeting impossible. And now I cant leave the items on teh vendor for him because they can get taken by someone else.
Now these are not exaggerations. These are very real scenarios that happen daily. Maybe not to this extreme, but some are.
Even if everyoen had the exact same timtables for playing, adn everyhtign is done face to face, is it the "vision" that SOE has for these professions ot have to sit in their houses all day doing nothing but selling their items because they cant place them on vendors without fear of them being sold to someone else. At least with bags that were labeled peopel elft them alone. Why would anyone spend 150k on a bag when they dont know whats inside. it was never an issue until this fix. Now I understand the reasons behind why you had to do it.. Exploiters kill games like this for the people who are playing it correctly. I enver used my vendors for storage but im sure some did. And Im assuming this clogs your database adn causes lag. Or amybe it doesnt effect that at all you jsut dont want people to do it.. Either way it doesnt matter.
NOW. Some solutions I had in mind.
1) this is my personal favorite. Have vendors that are profession specific, creatable by droid engineers (robot merchants), bio-engineers (npc merchants) and architects (vendors). Say I buy my Armorsmith vendor. I place it as usual then go to load it up with items. I hit the "sell item" button adn get a popup "single" or "set". I click set and a box pops up. This box has a 10 item limit (padded armor thats has a belt is 10 items, the max for any armor set) and ONLY armor is allowed in this box. Now you place your items, hit "done" adn set your anme adn price for the "set". Now people know exactly what they are buying, or who is supposed ot buy those items.. Charge a maintenence fee if you want. Set a limit to how many sets you can sell. THis will make sure that only the items that are supposed ot be on that vendor, are on it. It eliminates people tryign to store items on it.
2) Also involves profession specific vendors.. These arent elaborate but they only thing they accept are armor, and bags. Id reccomend haveing a "merchants satchel" added to the game.. Armorsmith and Tailor vendors only accept these, and only if they have armor or clothign in them. So you can trick it by placing others items in them. Once again gives us the flexability to sell sets, or customize orders, without the threat of people exploiting it.
3) Make a new item "merchant satchel" item. Craftable my tailors, that can only hold armor/clothing. And have it so these can be bought and sold on the excisting vendors.. once again 10 items per satchel, and id say a limit of 5-10 satchels per vendor.
Something has to be done. As it is currently set up Armorsmiths/tailors have some tough choices to make
Stop selling sets/outfits
Place them on vendors and hope no one else takes them
Stay in their house at practically all tiems so they can meet with customers face to face. This is very difficult if your customer has opposite play times as you.
I hope this letter falls into the hands of someone who can help. Ive spent the last 3 days in limbo trying to figure out a way to accomodate my customers. I am a very popular armorsmith on my server. I have 5-10 emails daily asking for sets of armor. Alot fo these people I dotn se ingame. I need to havea a way to be able to service these people with their particular needs without fear of the items getting deleted, or someone else buyign them. I could of course make my house private and add the customers to my access list, but this hurts since Im trying to lear merchant and we get exp based on customers in our store, plus it doesnt stop otehr people from picking up their order adn someone elses.
I would sincerely love to discuss these and other possible options with any SOE employee that would really like a opinion of someone who is in the trenches daily. I know the palytime for employees isnt that much, adn would love to help in anyway, shape or form. I play on average of 40-60 hours a week. I love this game, I love my profession. But it needs help right now. I was a guide in everquest for 2 years, and on 3 different servers. I know it has been said that a guide program is not in the works, but I would really love a way for you all to tap into the experience of your players. If there is anyhtign I can do to assist, please let me know.
Sincerely "Anger"
master Armorsmith, Radiant server
The fact that no other changes are mentioned along side with the non-empty packs unable to be sold/traded tells me that you won't see any of these changes anytime soon.
Personaly, I havn't sold items in packs, mainly because I never wanted to deal with the vendor eating the items, or the items getting lost in recovering them from the vendor (8 open slots, 10 needed, oops!) If it worked right, I would be doing it.
SOE needs to go out and fix their database, period. They need to give us realistic items limits for houses. They've created this environment where the crafters need to hoard resources in order to be successful, then cut our ablity to store them at every turn.
Hello? SOE? TH? remember us, the people who PAY YOU to play the game? Quit killing our fun, or we stop paying...
I'm not going to bother threatening... I'll try out whatever cr** that makes it to live, this bag thing won't hit me much, but these crafting changes will, if they cram them down our throats. If I stop having fun, I'll just stop paying to play, pure and simple.
They should go over and ask someone on the Ashron's call 2 team how it feels to loose a player base, last I heard they were still cutting servers..
I sell 300-400 SUITS of armor a week off my vendor (all in bags). Whenever I do a custom order... I put it in a bag on my custom orders vendor. My resource providers, upload stuff to my vendors in bags (many don't have enough available auction spots to upload individual resources.
If they take out bags, without providing some other facility to sell complete suits of armor... it will probably make me quit the game.
Personally I don't care one bit about this change. I do wonder why though with all the problems this game has are they choosing to throw resources on a fix no one wanted.
Natanial Storm
Message Edited by WarlordRhawn on 03-05-2004 10:43 PM