Artisan Archive

This is a great idea.

However, it should ONLY be available to Merchants. Period.

Advertising is a MERCHANT skill, its an entire line in fact. This concept should fall under that line. Perhaps even Advertising I.

Polenth:

You can get around this in two fashions.

First, don't list any vendors that are in locked buildings or buildings with a required access fee.

Or, secondly, mark those vendors that require an access fee in the terminal. Add a comepltely seperate column titled (Access Fee) Yes/No. Then flag the character and on the off chance someone tries to be a pain and add an access fee after a purchase, the flagged character has 60 minutes (example) to automatically gain free access to obtain his items.

Or thirdly, make the terminal ONLY list items, but not be ble to purchase them.

Sorry guys. Merchants should have skills that give them premium listings on this new terminal and other advantages. But it certainly should not require merchant skill to show up in the listing at all. You have a ton of players that only have business 3. Locking them completely out of this just isnt acceptable. The solution shouldn't leave a vacuum between when a player has graduated from the bazaar and the point were they are able to make a decision on wether or not to obtain merchant skills.

4. Items must be listable on these terminals with only the bulkly style terminals available to players with business 3 skill. It can NOT be gated by requiring Merchant skill. Sorry, wont fly using this to justify the existance of a broken profession that people can't afford the skill points to waste on. Especially given how tight skill points are getting and will be come even worse with the elite-elite professions that will be added.

Spoken like a true "Business 3 Merchant". The terminal itself is a great idea, but if this were added to a mere artisan, what would that do to the Merchant's Advertising 3 skill? It would render that skill useless. I am for the terminal, but it would need to replace the current "efficiency" type skill that is in Advertising 4, and that skill (reduced advertising fees), would need to be added to the Efficiency 4 line.

I would like to sign against this idea.

there is enough problem already with people undercutting each other to ridiculously low prices. this will only make the problem even worse.

You have a ton of players that only have business 3. Locking them completely out of this just isnt acceptable. The solution shouldn't leave a vacuum between when a player has graduated from the bazaar and the point were they are able to make a decision on wether or not to obtain merchant skills.

Actually, gating is exactly what you want to do when there are a "ton" of players with a particular skill. There's no way this should be a Business III skill ... in the same way that the Engineering line lets you dabble in rudimentary weapons and armor, and the same way that Domestic Arts lets you dabble in rudimentary chef & tailor ... the business line should you dabble at the merchant skills.

I agree with you that your idea is a great one, but it's at the most beneficial end of the value of merchanting skills, so needs to come with the same kind of point of cost: probably Advertising IV, as it is even more convienent than the Planetary Map options at Advertising III ... which would place it 25 points after Business III.

Carvin Abrok, Merchant/Smuggler (Lowca)

I actually would vote no on the concept in general. Basically, I don't want Merchants to be just an extension of the bazaar system, or just places people have to go to pick up their stuff. Shops should be *destinations*.

I *would* like to see maybe some scaled-down version of this - like an "Advertising Terminal" that would let merchants explicitly advertise their shops and their wares, but would prefer keeping the actual vendor and bazaar markets more separate. The bazaar should be able to keep its own market niche too. I think a lot of merchants seem to be looking at Bazaar as "The Enemy," but it really isn't, or shouldn't be.

If these terminals get implemented as a merchant only feature, they will be a complete waste of the DEV's time. Will be about as utilized as the routlete tables and slot machines. Listings on the terminals will be thin and the space the terminal takes up in the city would be better put to some other use. It won't force anyone to deal products through merchants. At best, people will sign up additional accounts to create mule merchants. Its unrealiztic to expect this to work with item listings only if you have merchant skill. More than 90% of the vendors will stay in use only for their stockrooms, a whole lot of the DEV's time implementing this would be wasted, and nothing is solved. Do merchants have exclusive control over the bazaar? No. Should they have exlusive control over this? No. Should merchants get advantages? Yes. Their skills should affect the sort order of items on the list. Purchasing players should find their postings first and other like advantages affected by skill.

If it has to be a merchant only system, then just kill the idea here and now. It's not worth the effort as it will solve absolutely nothing. Better to let the DEV's go work on something that's a real solution to existing problems in the game.

Sorry Arden, you're going to find you're barking upt he wrong tree in this forum. Asking for more benefits for Artisans, especially benefits that so readily belong in the Merchant tree. You will find very little if -any- support on this forum for ADDING Merchant type benefits to the Artisan tree at all.

We're a seriously jaded class. Our entire skill line is in need of an overhaul. We have -these- issues on our minds. The last thing we want to or need to be concerned with is the addition of advantages to a skill line, that many of us believe to have too many advantages already.

I wish you good luck in your petition, but if you truly want support, I'd suggest you take it to the Artisan forum if you haven't already. For you will find little solace or acceptance here.

Noterac,

Not to burst your bubble, but that's not really a valid argument. People have the right to charge whatever prices they want. And you can only undercut so much before you lose profit. This is living economy, you can't force "price fixing" just because someone is selling lower then you.

My prices are easily 10-20% higher then almost every store around me. Yet I maintain a steady stream of business because I -always- have the merchandise they are looking for in stock. Price is -not- everything when it comes to running a store.

Yep. Gathered that. Excuse me for trying to fix a problem. Sadly, there's no delete thread option on Litium. You guys are so desperate to justify your existance that you pretty much killed the concept. Any sort of comprimse solution would be a waste of effort.

I was going to get on hear with a pitiful plea that the devs should fix the vendor's to work as designed (i.e. let us place items on the public bazzar with no fees and no linits). Frankly this is the only reason I got Biz 3.

Now that I have to slep everything down to the bazzar, I'm thinking about surrendering the 9 biz skill points.

Then I read this post. I think it is a wonderful idea.

JA, DA, SI, OUI, HAI, YES YES YES.

While we're talking about a new terminal network, how about if they have information terminals. Merchants could (by paying a fee of course) establish a site on the terminal and publish things - news stories (Stupid AI drops fort on Dob's house), publish ad's (novel idea in this game apparently) produce movies (joke - bad - probably). Anyway one the activities merchants could then undertake is that of 'publisher' (hire reporters, editor's copy boys Jimmy Olsen, Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Lex Luthor ....)

Anyway just an additional thought.

Sign this petition if you are in favor of this proposal!

I tried posting this in the Merchant forum but all those guys wanted to do was make it Merchant exclusive and lock every craftsman out of it. I feel its fine for merchant skills to provide an advantage using something like this but not grant a monopoly on it. No reasoning with them so I moved the post here.

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Right now, unless you can price your item or split it so you can price below the 3K limit on the bazaar, SWG completely fails to provide a means to realistically connect buyers and sellers. Once you've graduated from the Bazaar, your forced back to networking, word of mouth, shouting in populated areas, and in short, complete BS methods of operating a market. It's this failure thats the reason why player owned vendors are being used for just about anything but as vendors they way the DEV's intended. As things stand, more that 90% of the player owned vendors will never be used for anything more than storage and mail boxes. The following is a solution to fix this problem.

Place new standard style terminals that look like the bazaar terminals but are a different color, possible blue or green, in all the cities near the red bazaar terminals. These are "Trading Terminals" which functions as follows:

1. Items can NOT be posted for sale or auction on these terminals. They only list items that are currently listed somewhere on a player owned vendor.

2. Items can be purchased but not retrieved from these terminals. Purchaser must go to the player owned vendor to retrieve the item.

3. The default filter for these terminals is planetwide. After all, there are no player owned buildings in the cities region and there for no player owned vendors or items for sale in the city's region. The only other filter option that can be selected is galaxy wide.

4. The trading terminals should be open to all professions either to access or have the items on their vendors listed. It should not be gated by a required skill by any one profession (i.e. Merchant).

5. Add player crafted data terminals that can be placed in houses which function as these new trading terminals giving people access to the Player Vendor Network in their businesses and homes.