Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: For those BEs who are also Mercahnt, major change coming
fishbrains wrote:
If this is the logic the Merchant Corr keeps pushing then there needs to be some sort of system where once your items got sold on their hosted vendor you would automaticly get the creds and a pre determined portian of the sales going to the merchent. Seems to be the best way to work on the new system if the devs are hell bent on it.
That is true, but there are actually many many other problems with the current system as well. When I first became a tailor and bio engineer, I really wanted to distribute my goods through a merchant. After an exhaustive search including posts to the trade forum, the merchant forum, the malls, and everyone who wore a merchant tag (all two of them) I gave up, created an alt, and did the merchant thing myself. Then I also ran vendors for a couple of friends as well. There are SO many problems with it, it's not even funny. Really the only viable method of reselling that the game supports is that the merchant buys the goods outright from the artisan, and marks them up. Consignment is really not supported (like you mention). In any kind of volume business it would just be impossible to sort out what sold for whom and what their "cut" was and all that. And if you don't have a lot of money, trying to afford to buy all those goods outright can be a big challenge. Sometimes it was like "ok, offer those to my vendor, but let me go run a couple hours worth of survey missions first so I can afford them" lol.
To the poor soul trying to sell through a merchant, he can only offer 25 items to the vendor at a time, and if you also sell on the bazaar you are completely hosed. If you deal in higher volumes then 25 items per day, fagetaboutit. Getting things restocked in a timely manner is a huge problem, as is the obvious conflict of interest by selling through a merchant who is another artisan selling his/her own goods. Handling stuff like refunds, exchanges, or having suppliers that drop off goods for you is pretty much impossible without your own vendor. And if your merchant takes a vacation, then so does your business. You may as well take a vacation yourself.
The really odd thing about all this is that most of these problems could be solved (presuming their really were people who wanted to "play merchant" of course) by being able to grant "vendor admin" privaledges to a 3rd party. But when asked about this at fanfest the devs were really strongly dead-set against it, claiming that it would somehow cheapen the merchant skillset (I guess it's the "giving a monkey a loaded gun" theory, not unlike being able to give your schematics away for free... but I digress).
So anyhow, I think in summary, I believe we have a system where there are no merchants because they are somehow not seen as being a "fun" thing to play, and even if there were the tools that we have right now fall way way way short of being able to effectively sell other people's goods. But that's ok damnit, let's rush out and do a vendor nerf anyway /rollseyes
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 08-11-2004 12:09 PM
Kevm wrote:That's also what the Mercahnt correspondent has been pushing for. If there MUST be limits placed on merchants, then hold off on them until there are proper tools in place so merchants can actually sell the items of others in a secure way.
fishbrains wrote:If this is the logic the Merchant Corr keeps pushing then there needs to be some sort of system where once your items got sold on their hosted vendor you would automaticly get the creds and a pre determined portian of the sales going to the merchent. Seems to be the best way to work on the new system if the devs are hell bent on it.Message Edited by Kevm on 08-11-2004 01:40 PM
Thats exactly what DocSavag has been pushing for, he's said time and time again that before limits are put on vendors there needs to be the tools in place for merchants to be merchants.
As it stands there is no secure way to sell through someone elses vendor risk free for both parties.
Kevm wrote:
That's also what the Mercahnt correspondent has been pushing for. If there MUST be limits placed on merchants, then hold off on them until there are proper tools in place so merchants can actually sell the items of others in a secure way.
fishbrains wrote:
If this is the logic the Merchant Corr keeps pushing then there needs to be some sort of system where once your items got sold on their hosted vendor you would automaticly get the creds and a pre determined portian of the sales going to the merchent. Seems to be the best way to work on the new system if the devs are hell bent on it.
Message Edited by Kevm on 08-11-2004 01:40 PM
i'm not a BE .. i'ma tailor but may i ask? for a merchant to buy the goods of someone else say a BE and a merch.
You have your merchant...the BE goes to his/her vendor and drops about 2 mil worth of products/tissues etc on there. the merch doesn't have the kind of credits to buy the stuff. so then what does the BE do? they keep the stuff or hit auctions trying to push their product?
being a tailor i can easily make custom orders, but an issue with that is not everyone is going to like what i make. can make something with 4 sockets and they specifically want only 2...what do i do then? i have to dump it and recraft it. tailors can't make in bulk like you guys can. and is a more specific craft. how are we suppose to sell our wares?
my brother is a BE on another server. he is dumping it. He's devastated by this change. and knows he won't make and credits as his business hasn't even got off the ground yet. this change is going to kill the craft very quickly. 