Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: MBE free Vendor idea
Hi all,
I've been thinking how "odd" the BE class is whenyou look at where it fits in to the game. All the other craft classes have two major advantages over BE:
1. they only cost 92 skill points to master (BE costs 121).
2. They all have Artisan as their "root" class (BE has medic and scout).
For all the other crafting classes, a vendor will only cost 9 skill points more for them. If a BE wants a vendor, it'll cost them an extra 24 skill credits.
Why is it thatBE's are the "Red Headed Stepchild" of the SWG crafting world when it comes to these types of things?
The diference between, say, a DE with a vendor to sell hisgoods and a BE with a vendor is 44 skill points. Thats a lot of skill points in anyones book.
I'd like to get some discussion on the idea that an MBE should get a "Vendors +1" as a perk for mastering a crafting class that doesn't have Artisan as part of its parent class.
Hi Meroc,
I understand where your coming from but frankly selling through a vendor is pretty common for all the crafting classes. Plus we are supposed to be working with other people and merchants tend to be fairly easy to work with since they are insented to help us sell things. Surveying on the other hand is a pain. All of your arguments apply to surveying as well. The base level they get for free and we pay 15 extra points for. Mastering survey costs them 14 points and us 29 points. You need to have survey to place harvestors and trying to find someone to help you survey almost EVERY day is a pain for you and them. You both have to co-ordinate it as well because chanced are your needing to place the harvestors since they are in your slots. It ends up being a pain, a time-suck and something which makes the game less than fun for several people. If I was going to get some bonus it would be a way of getting my harvestors placed correctly.
I wish there were player assigned missions. Get a marker from a architect. Give it money and parameters (Endorian flower fruit, 60%). Then someone could take it, place it somewhere meeting the rrequirements. It would reserve the spot for you and add a waypoint to your datapad. It pays them the cash. Then you just go along and place your harvestor.
Actually, surveying doesn't compare at all. Not all BE's need a lot of resources (if they are pet makers only, they need trivial amounts really). ALL Bio's that make things (pets or tissue) need to sell them somehow.
I mine flora, water, wind and chemical just fine without Survey, because I can place those without needing a mine/harvestor skill. I leave themrunning all the timeand stockpile whatever is high. I usually have more than enough resources to get me by, but if I don't, I can sell what I don't need and buy what I do need from others (which is how that should work anyway IMO).
But interdependence isn't really that good an argument for saying BE's don't need vendors.
Why are WE the onlycrafters expected to have interdependence in this area?If we're not expected to have such high interdependance, why do we need to spend a lot more skill points thanother crafters have to,whilethey get it almost for free?
Mirrl wrote:
Hi Meroc,
I understand where your coming from but frankly selling through a vendor is pretty common for all the crafting classes. Plus we are supposed to be working with other people and merchants tend to be fairly easy to work with since they are insented to help us sell things. Surveying on the other hand is a pain. All of your arguments apply to surveying as well. The base level they get for free and we pay 15 extra points for. Mastering survey costs them 14 points and us 29 points. You need to have survey to place harvestors and trying to find someone to help you survey almost EVERY day is a pain for you and them. You both have to co-ordinate it as well because chanced are your needing to place the harvestors since they are in your slots. It ends up being a pain, a time-suck and something which makes the game less than fun for several people. If I was going to get some bonus it would be a way of getting my harvestors placed correctly.
I wish there were player assigned missions. Get a marker from a architect. Give it money and parameters (Endorian flower fruit, 60%). Then someone could take it, place it somewhere meeting the rrequirements. It would reserve the spot for you and add a waypoint to your datapad. It pays them the cash. Then you just go along and place your harvestor.
How? Makes good pets,stims, tissues, evantullay open a shop with a friend (more people will browse yer vendor).
Get a ton of merchant xp, place 3 4 , 8 vendors, get hiring a bit to have cool looking one, put them on planetary map and when you'r satisfied...
Surrender the whole thing.
Yer merchants will remains as they are (don't forget to remove the barking as you won't have the ability to make them **edit** once you do tho).
Some people may say that's an exploit, some merchant claims they spend a lot of points and should be the only people allowed to have merchants but c'mon....BE waste enough points for their broken proffesion as it is. It's simple if you are a BE + a merchant you have a total of what 20 point left for anything else.
If you take MBE andMaster Merchant you'd have 37 Skill points left.
I know of that...er...trick, but they are talking about fixing that, so I doubt you can feel secure that it'll stay in as a "feature". I just want to know what BE's, as a crafting class, don't get to "buy" a vendor for the same cost as all the other crafting classes.
I'd like to seehow the other crafters would like having "BussinesIII/Merchant" moved off to a different parent tree and then also add 1/3rd of the skill cost to their craft class 
/agree
I'm all for inter-profession dependance on each other , but its a total pain to have to find my merchant friend every time i want to put a new item on my vendor. I don't have the skill points to spend on becomming a merchant or even a artisan.
A second solution would be to allow Vendors to be rented. A Merchant sets up a vendor for you, then puts your name in a renting slot. Then you have full access to putting things on the vendor. Money paid to the vendor goes to you. You are responsible for the maitance fees on the vendor. You are also responsible for paying a renting fee. This money goes to the merchant. I relaize this sounds kind of tricky, but the same sort of system is set up for cities and taxes.
Eede
It would cost more for the non merchant player to "run" this merchant (maybe 110% of the cost of a novice merchant). This would open up more stuff for merchants to do and also give the non merchant folks something to use.
Meroc,
I agree with you, but it's not gonna happen. Right now they are working on nerfing player vendors to seriously discourage them to even the artisan classes. Raising the bazar limits, making strict limits to how much you can put in a vendor, and making it so only merchants can have vendors are all things being discussed by the SOE developers right now. So we got no chance at all of getting them to add vendor abilities to this class.
Meroc..
Couldn't agree with you more. The problem I see is the Pre-Reqs on BE versus Other Crafters. All other Crafting classes only need Artisan, and with Artisan comes the ability to go up Merchant as well. So to be standard Crafter your only Pre-req is Artisan.
To be a BIO with a vendor you need 3 pre-reqs that all cost 15pts. Medic, Scout, and Artisan. I'd imagine Smugglers are even worse tho.
I'd much rather see them add a Merchant wing to each one of the crafting classes, as opposed to the entirely different proffesion that it is now. Now it would become usable to all crafters. And lets face it Merchant has a lot of skill boxes for what little true gain you get out of each one. It could easily be combined into 4 boxes.
Tal, I generally love your posts, well thought out, lucid, and you don't butcher the English language. I disagree when you say that this goes against the "heart" of interedependence. If interdependence were a high priority for crafters, then droid engineers, armorsmiths, tailors, architects, chefs, and weaponsmiths would need to go outside their core profession (artisan) to sell their goods. Since BEs have two core professions, neither of which offer vendors, I think the argument that started the thread is sound.
Even though I think the argument for having a SPECIALIZED +1 vendor (specialized as follows: expensive maintenance cost, base skin only, unnameable, and with an inventory of 10 or 20 items) is valid, I would rather see vendors become the exclusive territory of merchants. Right now the only merchants I know are holo-merchants, and if the devs change the vendor behavior for people who surrender the skills, most people will be hosed. However, the TRUE MERCHANTS will benefit greatly. I have always been a proponent of interdependence, so while I agree that other crafters have an unfair advantage over us when it comes to commerce, I think the best solution would be to make vendors the exclusive, defining feature of the merchant profession. Medics don't get to craft a tissue; scouts don't get to create a pet. Artisans shouldn't place a vendor.
So do I ultimately disagree with you or do I agree, but just in a different way...?
Templar1865 wrote:
Right now the only merchants I know are holo-merchants, and if the devs change the vendor behavior for people who surrender the skills, most people will be hosed. However, the TRUE MERCHANTS will benefit greatly.
Only merchants you know are holo-merchants? well, I know tons, lol. Almost anyone who is a "serious" artisan, has at least the novice merchant box. When they posted the percentages of players in various professions a couple months back, merchant was actually like #2 or #3 on that list as I recall. Almost every tailor, chef, architect, etc. are merchants.
The trouble is, there are very very few "real" merchants (real merchant = someone who sells primarily goods made by others). I did a pretty exhaustive search a couple months back to find a "real" merchant who would be interested in selling what I and a friend had to offer(master bio engineer, master tailor, master chef). I posted on the server board, I posted on the merchant forum (ok, so sue me :smileytongue and for about a week I sent anyone a tell that logged onto my area with a merchant tag. The result of all that... I came to the conclusion that there are no "real merchants" in this game. And actually that makes perfect sense, since to become a merchant you need to be an artisan, and you become an artisan because you want to craft your own goods. It's screwy. I really wish merchant were not part of artisan at all, and that artisans didn't get vendors. I think SOE regrets that decision as well.