Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: another problem from the 19 questions answered
Kevie wrote:
Merchant: Currently there is a lot of debate about the fact that there is no skill point check for managing vendors. Is it the intent of the development team that vendors operate normally even when owned by players who no longer have the Management skill required to place that vendor?
It was never intended for players to be able to keep and manage vendors after surrendering the Management skill boxes used to acquire them. This is scheduled to be fixed in a future publish and we want to upgrade vendors also, but it’s a bit early to start talking about that.
am i the only one who sees a problem with this?
armoursmiths, weaponsmiths, tailors, chefs, droid engineers only have to grind up 9 more skill points for a vendor, we need 24....... ignoring that fact that BE's take 29 extra pre-requisite points in the first place
doctors i see will have a problem with this also with their 77 prerequisite points
What's the problem? That they are fixing an obvious exploit?
no..... i understand that people who do not invest should not be allowed to have a vendor..... however my problem is this:
bio-engineers and doctors have to spend a LOT more points to get to their crafting professions.... and must spend another 24 to use a vendor.
as to the rest of the elite professions from artisan, who only need 29 skill points as a prerequisite for their chosen profession, only need to spend 9 skill points for a vendor
seems a bit unfair, no?
i'm just hoping for a happy medium...i sent a PM to talthazar and docsavag (the merchant correspondent)
Message Edited by Kevie on 04-23-2004 10:48 PM
Vendors should never have been tied to Merchant in the first place. The fact that they were was just poor game design. Lineage II and even EQ got this right, so it's a shame that SWG didn't (except by accident).
All Masters should have access to an outlet vendor as a part of theirProfession Master "bonuses".
If they do remove vendors from everyone bar Merchants I, for one, will be quite happy to leave SWG as I'd have to become either 1. An almost pure crafting character with almost no combat skills (not a goodproposition when your profession requires you tostick a needles in things like Rancors, not to mention the meatrequirements we have as well) or 2. Buy a second account (why the hell should I need two accounts just to play/sell things?).
Either way it's not what I'd want from SWG, which is why I'd leave.This isn't anultimatum to the Devs, it'll just be a naturalchain of eventsif they decide to take that path...
Message Edited by meroc on 04-24-2004 04:49 PM
meroc wrote:
Vendors should never have been tied to Merchant in the first place. The fact that they were was just poor game design. Lineage II and even EQ got this right, so it's a shame that SWG didn't (except by accident).
All Masters should have access to an outlet vendor as a part of theirProfession Master "bonuses".
If they do remove vendors from everyone bar Merchants I, for one, will be quite happy to leave SWG as I'd have to become either 1. An almost pure crafting character with almost no combat skills (not a goodproposition when your profession requires you tostick a needles in things like Rancors, not to mention the meatrequirements we have as well) or 2. Buy a second account (why the hell should I need two accounts just to play/sell things?).
Either way it's not what I'd want from SWG, which is why I'd leave.This isn't anultimatum to the Devs, it'll just be a naturalchain of eventsif they decide to take that path...
Message Edited by meroc on 04-24-2004 04:49 PM
OR you partner with someone who is a merchant and you work together.
Still, his point is valid.
A master weaponsmith with 1 vendor uses a total of 101 skill points.
A master bio engineer with 1 vendor uses a total of 145 skill points.
So with just our mastered profession and 1 vendor, we're already 44 skill points behind the other crafting professions (not counting doctors). Why should there be such a difference? What about our profession justifies requiring us to spend 44 more skill points than the other crafters to run a business?
i received this from the merchant correspondent tonight:
"I wish the loop hole had never have existed. People would have found other ways to do business and I think everyone would be better off. Now it will be a difficult transition.
I agree it is very difficult to be a practicing BE or Doctor and run a shop. I dont' think the Devs ever intended for those professions to be shopkeepers. I don't think they ever intended vendors to be the only way to sell or for everyone to want to have their own shop instead of a healthy merchant profession that was buying goods wholesale and selling them retail.
I won't oppose anything that allows limited sales ability for profesionals to sell their own merchandise. I never have. I simply insist that being a merchant mean something. That our skills make us better at selling than other players without merchant skills. That doesn't mean I want all sales to go through merchants. I just want us to be able to walk up to you and say..hey.. I can move those stimpacks for you and I can do it MUCH more efficiently than you can do it yourself. Give me 8% of the sale and I'll take care of the details.
I only ask that others look at the merchant profession and see that we produce no goods. We are a service profession. We can only survive with prodcuts to sell. And if that is to mean anything more than just crafters with a second profession we have to have customers who are encouraged to use our services because doing it themselves is less efficient or less desirable.
I'm not sure if any of this helps. I'm not sure what the devs will say to requests for vendors for BE's and Doctors. I think they will see it as part of the challenge, but that is just my opinion."
well.... i have abused this exploit, but i did not know it was in fact an exploit
i will grind myself back up to engineering III (i have a bulky vendor) and hopefully we can figure out a solution....... i do, however, totally find your meaning behind merchant being a seller.... i use the ctrl+m to find vendors a lot, i search using ctrl+v (i can't remember their exact names, just the hotkeys)
i wonder if we could propose to the devs an easy way to impliment your idea of selling someone else's goods. it is a very sound idea, kind of like having a mall and renting out shops.
thanks for not disregarding my message and flamatory and whining, and i hope merchants get the status they deserve
respectfully,
oaceen tunaisea
Merchants have had as one of their top priorities since I've been involved in the forums the creation of better tools to allow merchants and those with items to sell to interact more efficiently. I hope that we can accomplish that at the same time they make the chagne to fix the skill perk issue that is mentioned above.
You guys may have a valid point about the challenge you face. Almost all the other crafting professions outside of the Artisan tree have significant non crafting purpose in the game. Their crafting, while marketable, exists to supplement their other abilities. (Musicians crafting instruments they also use, Creature handlers producing pets from the wild, smugglers slicing and creating spices, Doctors crafting medicines all of those examples can either be made for profit or made for their own use in other aspects of their skills) Bio-Engineer doesn't really have a use for the items they produceoutside of marketing them (Unless they also have another profession).
DocSavag wrote:
...
Deep down my feeling is that the devs didn't miss the point about how difficult it is to be a BE and have a shop. I think they intended for it to be a challenge. You can choose to be a seller of BE products on a large scale or you can choose to use your BE products to support a combat profession (like CH). You can do both only if you have help from other players (Merchants) who buy from you and resell to others. This concept is very underutilized in the game.
...
Why though? Why make it more difficult only for the BE's, and not every other crafting profession (doctors excluded)?
We already have the most complicated crafting proceedure, no skill tapes, non-stacking materials, expend more skill points, an inexplicable pet check process. Why should trying to run a business also be more difficult??
AnakinsClone wrote:
DocSavag wrote:
...
Deep down my feeling is that the devs didn't miss the point about how difficult it is to be a BE and have a shop. I think they intended for it to be a challenge. You can choose to be a seller of BE products on a large scale or you can choose to use your BE products to support a combat profession (like CH). You can do both only if you have help from other players (Merchants) who buy from you and resell to others. This concept is very underutilized in the game.
...
Why though? Why make it more difficult only for the BE's, and not every other crafting profession (doctors excluded)?
We already have the most complicated crafting proceedure, no skill tapes, non-stacking materials, expend more skill points, an inexplicable pet check process. Why should trying to run a business also be more difficult??
Its a valid question. I don't know. Doctors in my opinion aren't in the same boat as BE's on this issue. The Doctor's main function is to heal wounds and damage and to give buffs.If they want to sell medicine on a wide scale then they have to get additional skills that seems like a fair trade off to me. As I said above BE's seem unique in that they produce products that they wouldn't use themselves but dont' have the business advantages of other pure crafting classes.
You have to admit though sticking a vendor skill mod in the BE skill tree is a rather odd departure from the way the business skills are otherwise granted in the game. Putting aside for a moment the disability a BE has on this issue, is it really fair to give the BE's a vendor in their profession when everyone else in the game has to have Business III in the artisan line?
As a BE I agree though that some of the challenges are a bit harsh. The non-stacking dna samples bug me (so do non stacking looted items with the same serial number btw) . And the lack of details on how to combine dna seems unnecessarily mysterious.
I think this is pricipally because they're a hybrid profession and need 2 novices already, the powers that be decided terrain negotiation was a skill that combat medics needed (presumably to keep up with their groups)
By the same reasoning BE should get vendors in one of their skill trees as we are also a hybrid profession but we are 100% crafting profession - we have no skill trees that dont relate to crafting and the bazaar caps at 6k which is not enough to sell pets on.
By logical reason this should happen - it wont but it should.
I think a better thing would be if merchants could rent vendors out to other players.