Business And Economy Archive
Thread: Ideas to make the Bazaar a viable trading venue
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CenoKreFey
Fri Feb 04, 2005 2:04 pm
#1
Ideas to fix the bazaar and make it viable:
- Instant sale price set at max of 10k. IMO, this would allow many crafters to offer good wares and advertise at the same time. Architects could viably sell small houses at 10k (instead of a few selling at 6k and deflating the market). DE's could sell MSE's with storage. Armorsmiths could sell comp gloves. BE could sell mounts. Artisans could list speeders at a decent price. Weaponsmiths could sell spraysticks and such.
- Auction max bidding unlimited, but put a 5% surcharge (or moneysink) on items. Also put a min bid of 30k to keep off all the crap loots and other trivial items that do not need to be bidded on.
- Allow 'Lots' of items where all items are viewable. Putting things in travel packs is just not the way this should be done. Toeasy of an opportunityto grief/deceive.
- Do not tie any standard bazaar features to Merchants, but addadditionalperks not yet ingame(I do havea great idea on merchant skill rewards, see below). Pulling auctions should not be allowed, merchant or not, except if no bids have been made or within the first 24 hours (this would stop the distasteful advertising problem also). It should be a binding contract. A warning should be there to set your minimum bid for the least amount you'll take for the item. A 5% surcharge should be taken at the end of the auction or when it is pulled (5% of min bid price); this would keep the market fair and not allow abuse by listing items with insane min bids (50,000,000) for advertising or storage purposes.
- Make the "premium" option show up the lot in BOLD letters and/or allow the merchant to choose a color for the listing, but add aflat surcharge (maybe 100 credits?). Also, do not make premiums sort to the top. IMO, this only screws up browsing. If I'm looking for a certain item, I want to see them all side by side, not check the top of the listing and then the alphabetical placement for that item on each page.
- Make searching by category, name, and original item name ('variation of',when an item has been renamed other than its default crafting name).Add filters for seller, price, planet, city, and end time.
The above ideas solve the followingproblems and/or provide a solution for:
- 7 day crap loot auctions that don't sell
- bogus 7 day auctions used as advertisements
- bogus 7 day auctions used as alternative storage means (becoming a problem on my server)
- crafters to usefully/tastefully use the bazaar to promote their vendors, by offering certain full quality wares (+ the solution for merchants below...)
- making the "premium" option useful and relevant, something other than a means to screw up alphabetical listings
- saving much much time by being able to search
- moving auctions off the tradeforums and into the game, where they can be conducted fairly with unbreakable rules and easily determinable end times.
Merchant Perks for the Bazaar:
The following is better suited for the merchant board, but I'll include them here, since its on-topic. Merchants could have a 10 item limited "Showcase" on the bazaar terminal to sell whatever items they want at any price they want AND/OR to merely show off items and list a brief product description. This could be sortable by profession, merchant name, or description, but not by individual items, as this would turn into another mini-bazaar. This would be a good skill to add at merchant 4-0-0-0 (which is weak, and since the 'is able to have NPC's in player cities advertise their wares' option was pulled from there in beta).
- Instant sale price set at max of 10k. IMO, this would allow many crafters to offer good wares and advertise at the same time. Architects could viably sell small houses at 10k (instead of a few selling at 6k and deflating the market). DE's could sell MSE's with storage. Armorsmiths could sell comp gloves. BE could sell mounts. Artisans could list speeders at a decent price. Weaponsmiths could sell spraysticks and such.
- Auction max bidding unlimited, but put a 5% surcharge (or moneysink) on items. Also put a min bid of 30k to keep off all the crap loots and other trivial items that do not need to be bidded on.
- Allow 'Lots' of items where all items are viewable. Putting things in travel packs is just not the way this should be done. Toeasy of an opportunityto grief/deceive.
- Do not tie any standard bazaar features to Merchants, but addadditionalperks not yet ingame(I do havea great idea on merchant skill rewards, see below). Pulling auctions should not be allowed, merchant or not, except if no bids have been made or within the first 24 hours (this would stop the distasteful advertising problem also). It should be a binding contract. A warning should be there to set your minimum bid for the least amount you'll take for the item. A 5% surcharge should be taken at the end of the auction or when it is pulled (5% of min bid price); this would keep the market fair and not allow abuse by listing items with insane min bids (50,000,000) for advertising or storage purposes.
- Make the "premium" option show up the lot in BOLD letters and/or allow the merchant to choose a color for the listing, but add aflat surcharge (maybe 100 credits?). Also, do not make premiums sort to the top. IMO, this only screws up browsing. If I'm looking for a certain item, I want to see them all side by side, not check the top of the listing and then the alphabetical placement for that item on each page.
- Make searching by category, name, and original item name ('variation of',when an item has been renamed other than its default crafting name).Add filters for seller, price, planet, city, and end time.
The above ideas solve the followingproblems and/or provide a solution for:
- 7 day crap loot auctions that don't sell
- bogus 7 day auctions used as advertisements
- bogus 7 day auctions used as alternative storage means (becoming a problem on my server)
- crafters to usefully/tastefully use the bazaar to promote their vendors, by offering certain full quality wares (+ the solution for merchants below...)
- making the "premium" option useful and relevant, something other than a means to screw up alphabetical listings
- saving much much time by being able to search
- moving auctions off the tradeforums and into the game, where they can be conducted fairly with unbreakable rules and easily determinable end times.
Merchant Perks for the Bazaar:
The following is better suited for the merchant board, but I'll include them here, since its on-topic. Merchants could have a 10 item limited "Showcase" on the bazaar terminal to sell whatever items they want at any price they want AND/OR to merely show off items and list a brief product description. This could be sortable by profession, merchant name, or description, but not by individual items, as this would turn into another mini-bazaar. This would be a good skill to add at merchant 4-0-0-0 (which is weak, and since the 'is able to have NPC's in player cities advertise their wares' option was pulled from there in beta).
If you agree or have suggestions, please post and keep this bumped. If your suggestions are better, I'll update this post accordingly.
Thanks,
Nareese
![Iron City, Corellia [Gorath]](http://www.jedisanctum.com/swgpics/IronCity1300x1300.png){kind=link}
RWC
Fri Feb 04, 2005 3:35 pm
#3
great ideas and very well thoughtout and explained
they have got my support
Rakos_Rokarr
Fri Feb 04, 2005 4:08 pm
#4
i actually wish the bazaar would be worth selling stuff on...not everyone wants or can affrod to be a merchant just to sell stuff or trade.
Scorpy_LF
Fri Feb 04, 2005 4:47 pm
#5
- Instant sale price set at max of 10k To low... I think Instant Sale Prices should be capped at 50,000 credits.
- Auction max bidding unlimited I highly agree, even with the 5% money sink.
- Allow 'Lots' of items I dunno, cap should be around 10 items. Merchant should be allowed up to 40 items on the Bazaar at once. Any more than ten, and Merchant populationwill disapear.
- Do not tie any standard bazaar features to Merchants, but addadditionalperks not yet ingame Strongly Agree
- Make the "premium" option show up the lot in BOLD letters and/or allow the merchant to choose a color for the listing I agree with this as well. My only issue is that anyone who knows basic hexidecimal can color their items name. (Could be mistaken) And last i checked it will show in the interface. Items should only show in default coloring. And yes I'd like to see "premium" sales show in bold and color of choice. My only problem is people generally don't pay much attention to what is a premium sale or not. So essentially the 100 credits goes to waste, and only further limits the ammount of items you can place up on the Bazaar.
Advertising through the bazaar is not needed. That is what merchants are allowed our barking droids for. I will also note that my barking droid worked out substantially better than a spammer or the bazaar. I personnally hate spammers, as they just suck up bandwidth and make it almost impossible to communicate in Theed, Bestin, or Coronet. I counted 35 spammers in Coronet starport one night most on 60 second timers. Pretty much had to switch to my group chat just to read my /tells. The auction channel is also a joke already. If people aren't running an afk spammer in one of the major cities, they are running a passive macro in the auction channel. But fortunately redundant macros are comming to an end soon.
Malanello
Fri Feb 04, 2005 4:48 pm
#6
very thoughtfull ideas,
here's a couple variations on increasing the bazaar max price:
a) certain npc cities have higher limits on item types
CenoKreFey
Mon Feb 07, 2005 9:49 am
#7
Scorpy_LF wrote:
- Instant sale price set at max of 10k To low... I think Instant Sale Prices should be capped at 50,000 credits.
This would allow the comman crafter to usurp Merchants and make them mostly useless. For example, almost everything a weaponsmith, armorsmith, chef (with smaller crate sizes), and DE makes could be sold for 50k or less. I know the item count would be low compared to a merchant's vendors, but ambitious "bazaar camping" crafters could keep the bazaar stocked with their goods and severly hurt merchants. 10k is enough to give the public a 'taste' of what is being sold...far more beneficial IMO.
- Auction max bidding unlimited I highly agree, even with the 5% money sink.
- Allow 'Lots' of items I dunno, cap should be around 10 items. Merchant should be allowed up to 40 items on the Bazaar at once. Any more than ten, and Merchant populationwill disapear.
We should NOT go backwards. Non-merchants should not be cut off from the overall markets. I think 25 items is great for non-merchants to make some small money on the side. Plus, I think you mis-took what I'm saying. If I want to sell a "Noob Starter Kit" for 3k, I would like to sell a "lot" consisting of each CDEF weapon, some stim A's, some wound packs, clothing, and food. The buyers should be able to browse all the items in the lot and purchase at one price.
- Do not tie any standard bazaar features to Merchants, but addadditionalperks not yet ingame Strongly Agree
- Make the "premium" option show up the lot in BOLD letters and/or allow the merchant to choose a color for the listing I agree with this as well. My only issue is that anyone who knows basic hexidecimal can color their items name. (Could be mistaken) And last i checked it will show in the interface. Items should only show in default coloring. And yes I'd like to see "premium" sales show in bold and color of choice. My only problem is people generally don't pay much attention to what is a premium sale or not. So essentially the 100 credits goes to waste, and only further limits the ammount of items you can place up on the Bazaar.
You may not have been around, but at one point, they restricted hex coding from being applied to items. They essentially would "strip" whatever coding you tried to place on stuff. So color controlling is possible.
Advertising through the bazaar is not needed. That is what merchants are allowed our barking droids for. I will also note that my barking droid worked out substantially better than a spammer or the bazaar. I personnally hate spammers, as they just suck up bandwidth and make it almost impossible to communicate in Theed, Bestin, or Coronet. I counted 35 spammers in Coronet starport one night most on 60 second timers. Pretty much had to switch to my group chat just to read my /tells. The auction channel is also a joke already. If people aren't running an afk spammer in one of the major cities, they are running a passive macro in the auction channel. But fortunately redundant macros are comming to an end soon.
Character yelling and barking droids both present a problem if spamming annoys you. My idea might actually cut down the number of spammers if everyone gets accustomed to checking the bazaar for showcased items, and more so if they can search those showcases.
CenoKreFey
Mon Feb 07, 2005 9:52 am
#8
Malanello wrote:
very thoughtfull ideas,
here's a couple variations on increasing the bazaar max price:
a) certain npc cities have higher limits on item types
Hmmm...sounds interesting. If I read you correctly, you mean a city, such as Doaba Gurfel, would allow ppl to list weapons for up to 50k or something like that. I'll have to let that sit in my head for a few days and brainstorm the consequences. Mixed with the other changes to the bazaar system, that could be a great idea.
Nareese
Neekocha
Mon Feb 07, 2005 11:17 am
#9
Great ideas. The Bazaar needs a revamp, it's a very good tool but it could be dramatically improved.
Having different bazaar rules for different cities could also be interesting - basically I think anything that can make different cities actually different (in terms of gameplay) is interesting, because it adds reasons for people to visit other cities than Coronet and Theed.
Famine101
Mon Feb 07, 2005 11:32 am
#10
How about another option for merchants. I would love to be able to sell individual items from crates. The item for sell would be listed as a per item price and the buyer would only see one entry on the vendor/bazaar. Then the buyer would be able to specify quantity of items to purchase.
For example: I put a crate of 25 brandy (as one crate) on the bazaar and I want to sell each unit of brandy (within the crate)separately. My sale would then stay on thebazaar until all 25 units have sold.This would really save on the amount of space needed for me list each unit of brandy one at a time. The buy could then specify if they wanted to by 1 to 25 (or the max avaialble) units with one selection.
CenoKreFey
Mon Feb 07, 2005 12:05 pm
#11
Famine101 wrote:
How about another option for merchants. I would love to be able to sell individual items from crates. The item for sell would be listed as a per item price and the buyer would only see one entry on the vendor/bazaar. Then the buyer would be able to specify quantity of items to purchase.
For example: I put a crate of 25 brandy (as one crate) on the bazaar and I want to sell each unit of brandy (within the crate)separately. My sale would then stay on thebazaar until all 25 units have sold.This would really save on the amount of space needed for me list each unit of brandy one at a time. The buy could then specify if they wanted to by 1 to 25 (or the max avaialble) units with one selection.
That idea has been pleaded for time and time again. However, I strongly believe that should be a standard feature only for player vendors (and not hooked to a merchant skill). To me, that is afeature thatshould have been in the system since launch.
Straker_Atrella
Mon Feb 07, 2005 4:03 pm
#12
All are pretty good ideas, and i also think that the Bazaar UI needs a revamp, make it easier for people to find stuff. It's not the bazaar though, many people miss pages and don't know how to sort properly.
As far as prices and such though. I would probably agree to a 10k limit, but never any highr then that. 10k may be even a little to high. The Bazaar, is just that a Bazaar, which is a place that people can get cheap goods. Hence cheap, meaning low quality.
Even at 6k or 10k, the Bazaar can cut into some things like cheap weapons, or tailor items.
It is not hard at all to get at least a little artisan merchant into your template if you want to sell better items. The Bazaar is a starting place for new players to buy and lower level crafters to sell. It should not be a place for top quality items. By doing so, you infrings on the merchant profession.
If you don't want to have your own vendor, then work out a deal with a merchant. We should be working on a system to enhance merhcnat and allow them to actually have an interface for selling other peoples stuff. The last thing we need to do is undermine the Merchant profession by making the Bazaar better.
CenoKreFey
Tue Feb 08, 2005 7:04 am
#13
Straker_Atrella wrote:
If you don't want to have your own vendor, then work out a deal with a merchant. We should be working on a system to enhance merhcnat and allow them to actually have an interface for selling other peoples stuff. The last thing we need to do is undermine the Merchant profession by making the Bazaar better.
Totally agree. Merchants = the only (non-combat) profession that hasnever gotten any added benefits. The interface should be "hands-free", where the merchantis not required to actually handle the goods (but has the optionif needed). That way, trust is not an issue (like in slicing).
Letsget back on topic to the bazaar issues and keep this bumped! 
Nareese
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