Business And Economy Archive
Thread: Galaxy Wide Vendor Search on TC POLL
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Phaelyn
Tue Feb 10, 2004 10:59 am
#1
Scudder wrote:
Tempest must really suck for merchants.People selling at below cost? Vendor lag?
Aw, C'mon, Scudder - Do you mean there aren't people on Kauri who sell for less than cost? I have a characterthere - I know what it takes having been a crafter to make certain items - And there ARE those who sell under that established formula. As a disclaimer, I DO imagine that they are vendors I wasn't supposed to find - Guild only vendors, etc - But with the new Search, they will be well and truly hidden if they don't register for the search. Those guilds will become largely self sufficient, and will NOT be contributing to the ENTIRE Economy - Instead they will have an enclosed Micro economy - It's not hard to imagine that if every Guild picks up on this - You will have large groups of people paying MUCH different prices than they can find on the Global system.
Vendor lag will ALSO become a concern. On TC-Ahazi, people crowded around the Blue Frogs accessing that system created major lag for that terminal. Since th ENTIRE Bazaar/Vendor database will be on the Galaxy search - The Search system will become laggy - It's inevitable.
Phaelyn
Tue Mar 15, 2005 6:33 am
#2
With the Galaxy Wide search soon to be a reality, I'm curious to see how Merchants are going to respond to it's implementation. It takes no Merchant Skill Points whatsoever to register into the system.
Personally, *I* plan on eliminating all boxes in Merchant that I no longer need - Essentially the entire Advertising Line, because being on the Planetary Map or using a Barker Droid are now essentially a waste of time.
How about the rest of us? How will you now conduct your business?
DocSavag
Tue Mar 15, 2005 6:40 am
#3
It doesn't really matter what merchant skils you have after this. The only thing they count for is the number of items you can list on the bazaar. At master you can try to smother your competition with 4k items. Maybe that will give you a better chance of actually having something on the first few pages of a category.
Drusan
Tue Mar 15, 2005 6:44 am
#4
I don't sell my goods so this affects mea little less than the retail outlet I work with. But in the end I think it will affect my sales negatively.
Location, an essential element of a good business is now entirely inconsequential. My retailer's beautifully decorated and centrally located mall stocked by dedicated crafters is now risking being undercut by Joe Schmoe without a clue who thinks if he just pops up a vendor anywhere and sells goods at half the regular price, he's doing good business. This is already a problem with some professions like DE and Archi who don't have a decay system in place to bring repeat business.
Lets see what they do next to dumb down the game.
Capt_Obvious
Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:08 am
#5
Well personally as a crafter/merchant with two accounts (1 combat 1 crafter/merchant) I have mixed feelings about this. Now supposedly (although unconfirmed by tiggs yet) you can see the price/stats and pay for the item off the bazzaar, however you will have to goto the actual vendor to pickup the item. As a merchant I'll probably drop the advertising line and free up some points but still keep the management line for max items/vendors. I personally have always had a hard time selling my wares but then again I could be overcharging and not know it, this will solve that problem. However I can also see how this could cause a price war on the lower end items. The thing about that though is it wouldnt last very long as all someone would have to do is to buy everything up at dirt cheap prices, the seller would go broke eventually, and then get resold for a reasonable to possibly high price. Then the reasonable price would sell and the price gaugers would get no business still. I can keep an eye on trends and price my wares accordingly.
NOW as a crafter I LOVE THIS!!! Let me explain before the flames begin shooting out my boxers from the fire about to be lit. If there's one thing I can't stand its to waste an entire night searching for resources of a decent quality, finally find something halfway decent spend all my hard earned credits for them so I can craft some armor/weapons/etc then go back to my house broke but with a ton of "meh" quality resources because that was all I could find at the time. Then take my combat bubba out and bam run across a vendor that is the shangrila of resources. Then by the time I get enough money up again everything is gone. With the search tool problem is eliminated.
ALSO, I DO NOT AGREE that this should not be a merchant skill! Let me say that again this should be a merchant skill of at least advertising 4 MINIMUM! Merchants get so far little lovin in the game as it isa and now because of this the only points needed in merchant are going to be 0004 for max vendors/items without mastering. Personally I dunno, still keeping an eye on the TC thread for clarification from tiggs and opinions of the TC folks, but for now I'll just wait and see. Besides right now I have no internet til Saturday so I have no choice but to wait and see 
and hope that cooler heads prevail and hope that merchants will not be ignored in their tireless grind, as it is an undertaking to say the least (I have merchant 3004 so yes I know)
and hope that cooler heads prevail and hope that merchants will not be ignored in their tireless grind, as it is an undertaking to say the least (I have merchant 3004 so yes I know)Hoping for the best on this one......
Phaelyn
Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:37 am
#6
Capt_Obvious wrote:
Well personally as a crafter/merchant with two accounts (1 combat 1 crafter/merchant) I have mixed feelings about this. Now supposedly (although unconfirmed by tiggs yet) you can see the price/stats and pay for the item off the bazzaar, however you will have to goto the actual vendor to pickup the item. As a merchant I'll probably drop the advertising line and free up some points but still keep the management line for max items/vendors. I personally have always had a hard time selling my wares but then again I could be overcharging and not know it, this will solve that problem. However I can also see how this could cause a price war on the lower end items. The thing about that though is it wouldnt last very long as all someone would have to do is to buy everything up at dirt cheap prices, the seller would go broke eventually, and then get resold for a reasonable to possibly high price. Then the reasonable price would sell and the price gaugers would get no business still. I can keep an eye on trends and price my wares accordingly.
I can confirm for you - Prices CAN be seen, but you can NOT search by price - You have to select each item one by one and read descriptions to get the price. You DO have to go pick up your item.
NOW as a crafter I LOVE THIS!!! Let me explain before the flames begin shooting out my boxers from the fire about to be lit. If there's one thing I can't stand its to waste an entire night searching for resources of a decent quality, finally find something halfway decent spend all my hard earned credits for them so I can craft some armor/weapons/etc then go back to my house broke but with a ton of "meh" quality resources because that was all I could find at the time. Then take my combat bubba out and bam run across a vendor that is the shangrila of resources. Then by the time I get enough money up again everything is gone. With the search tool problem is eliminated.
ALSO, I DO NOT AGREE that this should not be a merchant skill! Let me say that again this should be a merchant skill of at least advertising 4 MINIMUM! Merchants get so far little lovin in the game as it isa and now because of this the only points needed in merchant are going to be 0004 for max vendors/items without mastering. Personally I dunno, still keeping an eye on the TC thread for clarification from tiggs and opinions of the TC folks, but for now I'll just wait and see. Besides right now I have no internet til Saturday so I have no choice but to wait and see
Hoping for the best on this one......
Again to confirm for you - No skill points needed that I can see.
Capt_Obvious
Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:42 am
#7
Thanks for the confirmations, this could take some getting used to... in some ways this could be good not being able to search by price as if that was the case all you would have to do would search by price and then just buy at the lowest, at least this way you will be looking at what you're buying (not that you shouldnt anyway) but then again I'll have to wait til Saturday to see for myself... but then by that time it may be going live already...... could take some getting used to but overall it could be good especially not having to goto the forums for the latest greatest auctions.
-edit- that does suck about no merchant love but then what did we expect?
Message Edited by Capt_Obvious on 03-15-2005 09:43 AM
Scudder
Tue Mar 15, 2005 8:03 am
#8
I'm not a merchant so this is a sincere question. If merchant 0004 (or whatever) is the only useful part of being a merchant after this search goes live then what's wrong with getting rid of merchant and placing those skills into artisan or the crafting professions directly? Are there any merchants out there that don't have a crafting profession? Are the skill points required for merchants not better used in some other way?
Phaelyn
Tue Mar 15, 2005 8:18 am
#9
Scudder wrote:
I'm not a merchant so this is a sincere question. If merchant 0004 (or whatever) is the only useful part of being a merchant after this search goes live then what's wrong with getting rid of merchant and placing those skills into artisan or the crafting professions directly? Are there any merchants out there that don't have a crafting profession? Are the skill points required for merchants not better used in some other way?
I am currently a Merchant that does not Craft. It's very convenient for me to have a vendor to sell the odds and ends I get while playing the game - And as such, I am perfectly happy that I had to get novice Merchant to have enough of an item limit to be useful to me. The system is set up the way it is (was) for a reason - To keep the database from filling up with items sitting on a vendor forever.
Merchant with this change become all about Efficiency, Item limits and number of vendors only. Still worth spending the points for all of those - But hiring and advertising is now useless.
Capt_Obvious
Tue Mar 15, 2005 8:20 am
#10
Scudder wrote:
I'm not a merchant so this is a sincere question. If merchant 0004 (or whatever) is the only useful part of being a merchant after this search goes live then what's wrong with getting rid of merchant and placing those skills into artisan or the crafting professions directly? Are there any merchants out there that don't have a crafting profession? Are the skill points required for merchants not better used in some other way?
Valid point, the only reason I would want to keep max vendors/items is that I currently have one account purely for crafting Master AS and a Master WS with Master Artisan. With as many items as I craft on a regular basis not to mention keeping everything sorted out it's nice to have the additional vendors, not to mention my storage vendor at my house since there's no way I can drop everything in there especially since they fixed the bug/feature with the crafting station storage hoppers. Once I unlock my second toon after completing the padywan trials I'll most likely turn him into a Master tailor Master Architect with merchant skills for even more possible sales, so I guess its all a matter of perspective. To completely answer your quwestion if you go with simply artisan 0030 for a single vendor you get very little total storage space which maybe fine for someone that only hunts loot and auctions it off, but in no way whatsoever would be substantial enough for what my needs would be.
just my 2 credits
Scudder
Tue Mar 15, 2005 8:47 am
#11
Alternatively, the advertising line could be replaced with something more useful to merchants. There's gonna be something better to spend your skill points on... maybe something that hasn't even been mentioned yet. You don't have to nerf something to change it... you can improve it instead.
velm
Tue Mar 15, 2005 8:58 am
#12
Well, at least you have to go and pick it up. Now, can a merchant choose to NOT list their items? It might sound like a silly question, but i am just curious, because I know someone who would like their stuff not be on that list.
Also, where is this list at? is it at a terminal or the planetary map (i might have overlooked where the location was).
Message Edited by velm on 03-15-2005 07:00 PM
Phaelyn
Tue Mar 15, 2005 9:04 am
#13
velm wrote:
Well, at least you have to go and pick it up. Now, can a merchant choose to NOT list their items? It might sound like a silly question, but i am just curious, because I know someone who would like their stuff not be on that list.
Also, where is this list at? is it at a terminal or the planetary map (i might have overlooked where the location was).
Message Edited by velm on 03-15-2005 07:00 PM
Yes, a Vendor is automatically set to OFF. You have to make an actual choice to list your vendor.
The new Vendor search is on ALL Bazaar terminals. The interface is essentially the same as it is currently, with Vendors added as a choice to look through. You CAN look at just Bazaar items.
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