Business And Economy Archive
Thread: An overview and general discussion of SWG economic principles
Message Edited by Sundown6 on 02-12-2005 04:04 AM
RelicOMO wrote:
mistys wrote:
IThe value that I provide is not cost, but conveniance. You can come in, and walk out with a full inventory ready to decorate your house. One stop shopping, asit were.
I've had a number of customers tell me that the shop is just about the best they've seen for the products I make. I know I'm high priced on some things, so I am certain they are speaking of the value of saving time digging around for things using either the global map or praying an archi does a custom order quickly.
As you said, most people are in this game for fun, and act as kids. That means instant gratification, rather than the best price. My shop gives them that. You want to decorate your house NOW, not tomorrow, not the next day. If you're willing to pay a bit more, I can help you with that
I appreciate this post, and your business plan, a lot. It's a fine example of a successful SWG business.
However, the Global Vendor Changes will instantly kill your business, and, I don't doubt, your fun. Nobody will pay 'a bit more' for your skill and time in stocking. Your convenience value will become meaningless. I really am sorry. The more and more I think about the Global Vendor changes, the more they horrify me.
I know 
I've posted as much in the thread in the "In Development" board. This change will ruin me
If they really do want to do something like this, maybe setup an advertising term, or a tab on the bazaar for advertising, so that you can pay to run an advert for your shop. This, I think, is a much better idea than ruining the entire furniture market.
I know that this sounds good for weapons and meds and the like, but I don't even think it is for that. Half the game for people looking to buy this stuff is actually searching it out. Then they might find other stuff they want as well. That increases the fun level for the crafters too, trying to lure customers to their shops.
I really think what they should do is just add in adverts us merchants can purchase. Would be a much better idea.
RelicOMO wrote:
mistys wrote:IThe value that I provide is not cost, but conveniance. You can come in, and walk out with a full inventory ready to decorate your house. One stop shopping, as it were.
I've had a number of customers tell me that the shop is just about the best they've seen for the products I make. I know I'm high priced on some things, so I am certain they are speaking of the value of saving time digging around for things using either the global map or praying an archi does a custom order quickly.
As you said, most people are in this game for fun, and act as kids. That means instant gratification, rather than the best price. My shop gives them that. You want to decorate your house NOW, not tomorrow, not the next day. If you're willing to pay a bit more, I can help you with that
I appreciate this post, and your business plan, a lot. It's a fine example of a successful SWG business.However, the Global Vendor Changes will instantly kill your business, and, I don't doubt, your fun. Nobody will pay 'a bit more' for your skill and time in stocking. Your convenience value will become meaningless. I really am sorry. The more and more I think about the Global Vendor changes, the more they horrify me.
This reminds me of the vendor exploit fix. People were complaining (and in the end the cap was higher), one architect I read about threatened to dump his inventory of several thousand deeds to screw up his server economy for a long time.
This system of perfect knowledge simply does not exist in real life. They can write text books illustrating this example of perfect knowledge. Hell, if this goes through, I might submit it as an example.
RelicOMO wrote:
mistys wrote:
IThe value that I provide is not cost, but conveniance. You can come in, and walk out with a full inventory ready to decorate your house. One stop shopping, asit were.
I've had a number of customers tell me that the shop is just about the best they've seen for the products I make. I know I'm high priced on some things, so I am certain they are speaking of the value of saving time digging around for things using either the global map or praying an archi does a custom order quickly.
As you said, most people are in this game for fun, and act as kids. That means instant gratification, rather than the best price. My shop gives them that. You want to decorate your house NOW, not tomorrow, not the next day. If you're willing to pay a bit more, I can help you with that
I appreciate this post, and your business plan, a lot. It's a fine example of a successful SWG business.
However, the Global Vendor Changes will instantly kill your business, and, I don't doubt, your fun. Nobody will pay 'a bit more' for your skill and time in stocking. Your convenience value will become meaningless. I really am sorry. The more and more I think about the Global Vendor changes, the more they horrify me.
Whew! I hope they don't totally shelve this. I hope they just enable some sort of advertisment system, but I'm glad they're not going through with this.
- A desire to have the best shop widget shopin the galaxy, selling all types and colors of widgets, along with widget accessories
- A desire to completely dominate (or at least try) the widget market, gaining 100% market share
- A desire to have many repeat customers
- A desire to help out their local community (PA or player city)
- A desire to make the best master widget in the galaxy
- A desire to meet new people and gain in-game friends
These are all valid motivations. And if we accept that these motivations are valid, then they also make a whole series of merchant behavior that people complain about "valid" as well. For example, most merchants can't understand why someone would sell ship components for 3 cpu when they could sell raw resources for 5 cpu. Is the shipwright losing money? Well, no, since their cost is much lower. But they are leaving profits on the table. This is baffling to some, but when viewed through a whole series of possible alternate motivations, such as the desire to be a high-volume seller, perhaps it makes sense. And who is to say that someone who desires to be the highest volume dealer is really wrong?
In the end, this results in in-game economic behavior that would not exist in the real-world. That's not a bad thing, but we must always realize that the in-game economy will not behave like the real-world economy as a result of this.
JTGAlpha wrote:
Actually Relic, I just got caught up on that change today (by the way it's being re-examined, so who knows?).
I'm ambivalent about it, and I'll tell you why:
On the topic of this change, this is pretty much exactly the sort of thing I would like to discuss.
It's apparent that there is a problem, insofar as consumers keep finding empty vendors and thus wasting their time. Yet to simply turn the bazaar into one giant Ebay isn't going to be good for the game at all. So what solution can be done? What can we do to smooth the passage for shoppers, yet still keep the sense of running an SWG business for crafter?
I think that a galactic search that involves prices doesn't solve anything - it's just Ebay while still making people drive out to get their purchases.A search that didn't show prices or stats might be something, but that seems a little simplistic. Are there other suggestions?
RelicOMO wrote:
I think that a galactic search that involves prices doesn't solve anything - it's just Ebay while still making people drive out to get their purchases.A search that didn't show prices or stats might be something, but that seems a little simplistic. Are there other suggestions?
Gotta agree with that. It'll be interesting to see how customers deal with information overload. Given the clumsy vendor / bazaar interface, I can't imagine what it's going to be like to search for items like armor - I know when I was an active crafter / merchant I was right up on that 2500 item limit.
As far as suggestions, mine mostly center around limiting what can be shown in a galactic listing, both to enhance the customer's experience and to make the actual galactic listing a "skill" that will be value added to the merchant profession instead of rendering huge portions of it obsolete.
I'd like to see the categories streamlined, and restriction for what items can be assigned galactic listings. Imagine what the "Misc -> Generic Items" category is going to look like with everyone's "Loot Vendor" hocking every single blue rug thread and gong structure piece they've ever looted. There needs to be a seperation between the bazaar and galactic listings, and items that the bazaar would suffice need to be prohibited from galactic listings.
I also think this should be a master merchant skill. Galactic listings circumvent most of the skills gained in the merchant trees, from barker droids and planetary map registration in the advertising tree to custom vendors and vendor uniforms in the hiring tree. Skills that render other skills / trees obsolete belong at the top, not where everyone else has access to them.
I'm looking forward to having these ideas torn apart (and I mean that, I'm just throwing them out there for the sake of discussion). My main requirement for these changes to be successful are that they're value-added for both the customer and merchant. Allowing anyone with a few points in merchant to list any item at any amount actually degrades the retail experience for both parties, and in my view would be a colossal failure.
