Business And Economy Archive

1. Remove Merchant from the Artisan line entirely. The entire Business line in Artisan can switch to a "Bazaar perks" section, to give Artisans a basic marketplace for their sales.(Assuming price cap is raised to @25k)Level 1 would decrease Bazaar posting costs. Level 2 would enable the "Premiere" posting option on Bazaar. Level 3 further reduces posting costs. level 4 enables a new Auction ability on Bazaar. (100k credit limit auction - 5% fee *tax*) Artisans no longer receive a Vendor.


2. Create a Manufacturer profession to replace Merchant as the "Elite" form of Artisan. At the Manufacturer level is where being able to use Factories comes in, and could also lead to new types of structures as well. So, Artisan means limited production, Manufacturer means mass production capability.


3. Crafting sections of Non-Artisans also lead to the Manufacturer line.(Docs, CMs, BE, etc)


4. Survey is at Basic level until Manufacturer level.

This seperates Artisan from selling except on the basic level, such as Farmer's markets work today. An Artisan, unless the are a Manufacturer is a specialist only, working on hand made "Premiere" goods. Manufactureres are the Suppliers of wholesale goods to Merchants, as will be outlined below.

Additional info on Artisan:

• Can only place Profession specific factories. Chefs can place Food factories, etc down the line.


• Enables Structures that have been discussed in other threads such as a Ranch, etc that are tied directly to specific professions. It would be interesting to bring Miner in as a class as well under Artisan, and making it that you have to select some Miner ability to lay down harvesters, etc.

Merchant Changes

1. Create a new Base Profession, Salesman. Build around the current business line in Artisan. At Novice Salesman, you receive 1 limited Vendor (50 items,1 style only) As you work up the line, you receive many of the bonuses Merchant currently has around Hiring, additional vendors, and increased item limits. Note that Saleman receives NO bonuses of using the Bazaar - This is the basic sales force.


2. As a Salesman, you will only be able to sell items from Artisans that place individual items on your Vendors. As a Salesman, you are capped at only being able to accept a 20% fee from Artisan sales. This limits Salesman from mass merchandising items.


3. Merchant is the "Elite" form of Salesman. At this level, you receive ability to advertise on planetary map, use barker droids, and set your Fee down from 20% to 5% (Or anywhere in between). You also receive at Master Merchant the ability to place a new structure, the Auction house.


4. Merchant becomes a Mass Merchandiser akin to Wal-Mart, KMart, etc.

Note that since Artisan is now Seperated from Merchant, co-dependancy is established. Point costs will further limit current market strategies of "Having it all". The burden of Crafting is directly on the Artisan, and the burden of Sales is now on the Merchant/Salesman classes.

Additional info on Merchant class

• New Structure: Auction House is created. At the Auction House, a Master Merchant can work with a Master Politician to place the structure (Craftable by Master Archittect only)in an established Metropolis sized player city. This limts the amount of Auction houses per planet. Can also be held in check by limiting the amount per server.


• Auction house takes over the burden of Auctions from the Bazaar. Auctions with NO price cap would be conducted here through automated procedure along the line of the Bazaar. Merchants would have to choose from Auction vendors or regular Vendors - Should not be able to use both. Player would place item on Auction vendor, select starting price (Starting at 100k - the end value of Bazaar Auctions), a Buyout price if desired, and duration. (1, 3 or 7 day Auctions). A 5% fee is imposed, with 1% going to Merchant directly, 1% to City Treasury, and 3% as a *tax* that acts as a money sink. City sales taxes do NOT add on to sales from the Auction structure.


• Vendors will be expanded to allow Manufacturers to offer items to vendor, select desired pricing point, and fee selection they offer the Merchant for carrying their wares (5% to 20%). Merchant can choose to automatically accept all submissions, or reject any that do no match his/her % requirements. As each sale occurs, money is automatically sent to both accounts based on % chosen.


• Salesman/Merchant receive XP ONLY through actual sales, not through view refreshes or vendor visiblilty.

Mind you, this all is a pipe dream, and would take a lot of work to implement. I however think the seperatin of Merchant and Artisan is a very interesting idea. Thoughts?

Message Edited by Phaelyn on 02-08-2005 10:14 PM

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bluejanus wrote:
Artisan is a basic profession that springboards into the a number of elite crafting professions and Merchant. What would be the purpose of making it an end crafting profession?

Actually, Artisan would stay a basic profession, leaving other crafting professions as the "Elite" form of Artisan. It merely replaces Merchant with Manufacturer to distinguish between Artisan type (Read "handmade") crafting and mass crafting (Read "Assembly line"). By making the Manufacturing profession, you can address the needs of Docs, BEs, etc who have crafting skills outisde the Artisan line.

So crafting professions can only set down factories specific to their profession? I don't think this is worthwhile change to put since generally people set down factories that they can use. So their templates include professions that can use the factories. My architect character has three types set down: Structural, Equipment and Wearables for my architect, artisan and tailor profession skills. I think that sort of change is a waste of time.

Potentially yes. The idea would encourage specialization - True, a Master Manufacturer could place all type of Factories - But they would be putting points into being able to use specific equipment, instead of having a Free For All where even a non-crafter can place a factory.

If I'm reading this correctly, you'd like crafters to have their required artisan skills, manufacturer skills to allow for factories and whatever elite profession. This sounds similiar to the recurrent idea of requiring certs for harvesters, except now it's certs for factories.

This was actually to address the concerns of a vocal few who decry Cross Server lot trading. By adding cerftifications, you eliminate the casual trading in favor of using on server cooperation. Also note that I stated I feel that miner should be added as well.

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samijx wrote:

I enjoy both your creativity and passion, but I think merchant is designed to be a skill point sink. Certainly if you're an elite artisan, you're going to want to sell your own wares. You sink some points into merchant and that restricts the crafter from being able to go too deep into a combat profession or too many crafter professions. If you want to save those skill points for other endevours, you give up a little profit to do so. Seems like a decent plan to me.

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admiraljz wrote:

Your proposal is extremely creative and dynamic; but unfortuantely, due to the nature of the MMO playerbase in general, and the limited availability of distinct items, is ultimately doomed.

For instance, what chance would a new weaponsmith ever have of selling ten crates of Scatter pistols to a merchant, if that merchant was already buying from five other weaponsmiths? If there were 4000 distinct, different kinds of guns, and a Riflesmith, Pistolsmith, and Carbinesmith profession base, then you'd have the kind of diversity to employ your proposed system. But with essentially 5-10 different types of weapons available that people buy, hundreds of weaponsmiths making nearly identical items, adding another layer to the sales process is just going to hurt the system more.

That's pretty much why I seperate the Bazaar from Merchant altogether in the idea. Beginning crafters would gravitate to the Bazaar at the start of their career, and as they progress in skill level, they begin to seek out Merchants in good locales, etc to further their sales.

In addition, giving Merchants the ability to pick and choose the % fee they charge for allowing someone to stock items onto their vendor creates a dynamic - Those with weapons they feel are "superior" would not hesitate at paying a higher % fee as their goods are already higher priced (Look to other threads pointing out price disparity for weapons varying in only a few points), whereas some would seek out the lowballing merchant hungry for business, just to get a deal. This actually encourages the Crafter to look over the wares on a vendor already, allowing them to make the choice to price their wares accordingly. Biggest hazard as I see is price wars on a single vendor. Haven't quite figured out that one yet

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing you in any way, shape or form. Your idea is, in theory, a great model, but in the limited market that exists, I just don't see how it would work.

Even in the "real" world, although we have a variety of choices for items, several "brand" names always come to the forefront. Even though we all may use Crest toothpaste for example - It doesn't stop the Wal-Mart brand from having brisk sales as well. All markets really are essentially limited to the top 5 brand names in each category - But competition revolves around advertising - I think that is one area I haven't addressed in the proposal that needs serious consideration.

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Phaelyn wrote:

Great responses thus far, folks! Even though the idea will never go anywhere - I love seeing the creativity in my fellow gamers.

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The one major change I might suggest is to forget profession specific factories... (too many professions require multiple factories anyway) and change the mass production class to be bonuses to factories. Maybe one tree reduces manufacture time, a second reduces fees, the 3rd increases the amount of items that can be run at the same time, and I ran out of ideas on the forth Master could even give some sort of % bonus to the finished items- like 5% capping out at 105%... definately a reason to have a master mass producer do your factory runs!

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Ripster26 wrote:

They were talking of revamping crafting after they finish the combat revamp, so you never know!

The one major change I might suggest is to forget profession specific factories... (too many professions require multiple factories anyway) and change the mass production class to be bonuses to factories. Maybe one tree reduces manufacture time, a second reduces fees, the 3rd increases the amount of items that can be run at the same time, and I ran out of ideas on the forth Master could even give some sort of % bonus to the finished items- like 5% capping out at 105%... definately a reason to have a master mass producer do your factory runs!

maybe the 4th could be along the idea of scrap recovery and recycling... use x amount of copper and regain 1%x back at the end of the run. Climbing up to 5%x at master...

If we all brainstorm more ideas we could definately have some good suggestions when they are ready to look at revamping the crafting classes!

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Don_T_Shoot wrote:
Seems very punitive towards Artisans, like a laundry list of things you want to take away from artisans with nothing in return while making what they do harder by forcing them to deal with others for basic needs like factories and even selling what they have in an efficient manner. It's all punishment with zero positive tradeoffs, I do not like it at all.

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Crimsonsplat wrote:

Ok, I admit I only skimmed the last half of the idea, because from the first half, it was no go.

First, I am confused by the way you use the word "artisan." Sometimes you seem to mean Artisans, other times you seem to mean "Artisan and all elite crafting classes."

To clarify, I seperate Artisan as it's own class, and bring the ability for other Crafting professions that don't require Artisan to get the benefits of the Manufacturer class.

Second, my position is that Merchant is not a viable profession in and of itself. The Devs had this insane idea that the crafters would sell to players (i.e.: merchants) who would re-sell at a markup to the public.Problems with this concept are:

a)There are too few players whowant to do nothing besides buy and sell goods for this to work, even in the daysof unlimited vendor stock.Some very few do this, but the game economy would founder if you tried to restrict sales to only a Merchant class.

But sales wouldn't be restricted to merchant at all. With an increase of the Bazaar limits, Artisans have a viable plece to sell en masse to the public. But, since some items are inherently more valuable than a possibl 100k Bazaar cap, Merchant class becomes the "next level"

b) Human greed. I made it, by god, I'll make the profit on it, not some other greedy SOB trying to chisel me down on the price while marking it up ever higher for resale.

c) Game functionslimit the ability for Merchants to be independantretailers, requiring much time and effort for the merchantto find sellers who can keep a shop in stock, and for the seller to find a buyer before he goes broke on factory/harvester maintenance. If the Merchant could "rent out" vendors by spawning them for other people and take a cut from the final sale, or the devs put in a consignment system, then it could be done.

That's exactly what I propose - Artisans (Or looters) offer the items for sale using a new vendor system owned by the Merchants. The Artisan (or looter) decides on the selling price, not the merchant. The merchant merely receives a small percentage of each sale. It actually limits the amount of credits a merchant will make, UNLESS they are also an Artisan for their own goods.

I'm sorry to say, you're another in a long line of game players who had a clever idea and got carried away with it before examining any ramifications. As the game's devs learned, they can plan for the game to be played one way, but the players are bound to do something else.

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PyroVespin wrote:

i personally dont like your plan, because i dont have 2 accounts like some... and im not a jedi, to spend more skill points to run my buisness would ruin the game for me... as it is i think that the merchant tree is to sp expensive... because just to make my weaponsmith skills worth having i need to have quite a few merchant skills... which leaves no room for combat skills which hands down is what a mmorpg is all about.. everything leads to combat... and what fun is it to sit arround all the time listening to your friends fight and xp and get jedi's... while your sitting in the back room making hammers? granted its fun sometimes... but not all the time... as it is i recently decided to go back to master swords and i have to drop some of my vendors just to do that... its hard to fight when u done have a elite combat profession... so im not in favor of anything in artisan causing me to have to go farther into skill point debt just to do what i do now...

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