Business And Economy Archive
Thread: Planned Vendor revamp: Concerns
I might be wrong, but i am concerned the "galaxy wide search'n sale" patch fpr vendors will do no good.
How many PA Malls, whole citys, recruiting guilds etc. benefit from "visitors" ?
I think, when this "net shopping from the chair" update comes, many parties will suffer under it.
My 0.02 cents, could be wrong tho.
Instead of doing this, please be so kind and use the developementpower on CUSTOMIZABLE vendors (char creation interface like when making a toon).
Im a bit "tired" of black vendors with blue hairs and BRIGHT green lips @473 lbs:-P
(Please do NOT get me wrong: I have nothing against blue hairs, black skin, or "fuller" bodys...the mix it is...)
Message Edited by KyriosBurg on 02-15-2005 06:11 AM
i see too many crafters looking the wrong direction. adding this to the game will, in effect, be adding the sales side of the internet. no longer do you have to drive for 30 min to get a set of pink & purple hawtpants. you can shop at home, and actually find what you are after.
i think, this will actually drive a new wave of spending for 'stuff'.
the other point i wanted to make; not everyone cares about your mall. i hate em. they are always laggy, loads of vendor spam, usually a couple of them empty. probably have to kill a couple of things just to get there / back.. bah feh and meh.
give me a quick interface to order what i want, and have it delivered and i will buy buy buy. keep it like it is, i buy when i absolutly have to have something, or if i see something when buying what i need.
One of the big problems with SWG is the fact it is too easy. There are different aspects of the game which different players are interested in. This change will make the economic game too easy. There are better ways to accomplish this goal.
Message Edited by BladePride on 02-15-2005 08:47 AM
As a pistoleer/BH, I carry an assortment of pistols (DE-10, Geo) and other weapons (LLC) that most people don't use. As a result, most vendors don't carry them.
Therefore, I had quite a difficult time finding quality items. In one case, I came to the forums and said I was looking for a good Geo pistol and a merchant replied within minutes "Oh yeah, come to my vendor at *WAYPOINT*, I always stock those."
So I head out that way, a 20-minute trip between loading in from the desktop, flying between planets, shuttling, and then making my way to the vendor.
Sure enough, in the midst of a bunch of other weapons was a single Geo pistol, which just happened to be the most expensive weapon on the vendor.
The Geo pistol was 102 max damage, for 350,000 credits. Now, I was born at night, but not last night.
This also happened to me when I was hunting for a decent LLC. Vendor says "oh yeah, I always stock those," and when I get out there, there's ONE in the midst of lots of other stuff, and the thing's no better than a CDEF.
The vendor search can ONLY be good for the consumers.
Another problem this could potentially cause is one in which merchants setup a ban list and do not want to sell their goods to a group of players. By adding all the vendors to the bazaar this now means that a merchant loses the opportunity to deny service to specific players. A perfect example would be a person who wants his/her goods sold only to a certain faction or to refuse entry to a faction guild. While it's understood that anybody could just roam in there and buy the item(s) for the banned person, it does require a bit of an amount of work to do so. Many times people who've been banned will not venture back to the place and will seek for their goods elsewhere.
On the subject of unwanted sales it's easy to speculate that if/when this goes live we'll see a sea of items for sale listed throughout the galaxy. Many times crafters who are running short of storage space will toss their resources or components onto vendors at a 9999999 sale price to detour players from accidentally (or purposely) buying up a person's articles. What good would it be to see tons of resources and other items offered through the bazaar at a price of 9999999?
One way around this would be to allow merchants the opportunity to refuse such posting; however, this could provide to be a fatal move. If a merchant refuses to place their goods on a bazaar listing so that players are forced to stop by their shop, this will hamper part of their earning potential since other merchants are selling goods through the bazaar. Add to this if the merchants have the ability to place goods on a vendor they didn't want other to access (the temporary storage situation) then it would be possible to avoid some of the waste of listing with prices in the 9999999 range.
Overall this would be a great idea to push to live and could potentially boost sales to all crafters along with help promote new crafters. It's also possible that if done correctly, this would boost travel and other sales to player cities if players could purchase the goods from a bazaar terminal and then are required to travel to the city in order to pickup the item(s). This would give the best of both worlds thus allowing merchants to compete on a galaxy market and yet give them a private market as well.
Spookibus wrote:
I don't like having to alt-tab or log out to come to the message boards looking for specialty items.As a pistoleer/BH, I carry an assortment of pistols (DE-10, Geo) and other weapons (LLC) that most people don't use. As a result, most vendors don't carry them.Therefore, I had quite a difficult time finding quality items. In one case, I came to the forums and said I was looking for a good Geo pistol and a merchant replied within minutes "Oh yeah, come to my vendor at *WAYPOINT*, I always stock those."So I head out that way, a 20-minute trip between loading in from the desktop, flying between planets, shuttling, and then making my way to the vendor.Sure enough, in the midst of a bunch of other weapons was a single Geo pistol, which just happened to be the most expensive weapon on the vendor.The Geo pistol was 102 max damage, for 350,000 credits. Now, I was born at night, but not last night.This also happened to me when I was hunting for a decent LLC. Vendor says "oh yeah, I always stock those," and when I get out there, there's ONE in the midst of lots of other stuff, and the thing's no better than a CDEF.The vendor search can ONLY be good for the consumers.
I agree that this can suck fairly bad, as ive experienced it myself. But if they add in the new vendor serach changes, wouldnt you allways buy the best stuff? yes you would, thereby effieciently cutting out all non-12point crafters and crafters wich hasnt been in the game for god-knows how long and doesnt have the best resource spawns. As it is now, you go to a vendor and you find what you are looking for, then you buy it if you think the stats and the price is good enough for you. If you where able to compare all the geo-pistols in the galaxy at the same time, of course you would buy the best one!
This is why i think these changes are bad. In my opinion they should just line out the new vendor search option and rather customize the map interface more. What if they had a second "vendors" tab on the map screen, on this second tab you could choose armor/weapons/food/whatever just like now, but then you could for instance choose composite armor. Then you would get up vendor waypoints like the ones you have now too all the vendors on the planet having composiste armor in stock, not prices, not stats, just the fact that they have it in stock (maybe the number in stock to be sure its not only 1 or 2). This way it would still be a heck-of-alot easier to find what you are looking for, but it wont kill of the smaller non-12pointers as you will still be coming to their shops if they have what you want, and theres still a chance that you buy there stuff.
Ochiir wrote:
Spookibus wrote:
I don't like having to alt-tab or log out to come to the message boards looking for specialty items.As a pistoleer/BH, I carry an assortment of pistols (DE-10, Geo) and other weapons (LLC) that most people don't use. As a result, most vendors don't carry them.Therefore, I had quite a difficult time finding quality items. In one case, I came to the forums and said I was looking for a good Geo pistol and a merchant replied within minutes "Oh yeah, come to my vendor at *WAYPOINT*, I always stock those."So I head out that way, a 20-minute trip between loading in from the desktop, flying between planets, shuttling, and then making my way to the vendor.Sure enough, in the midst of a bunch of other weapons was a single Geo pistol, which just happened to be the most expensive weapon on the vendor.The Geo pistol was 102 max damage, for 350,000 credits. Now, I was born at night, but not last night.This also happened to me when I was hunting for a decent LLC. Vendor says "oh yeah, I always stock those," and when I get out there, there's ONE in the midst of lots of other stuff, and the thing's no better than a CDEF.The vendor search can ONLY be good for the consumers.
I agree that this can suck fairly bad, as ive experienced it myself. But if they add in the new vendor serach changes, wouldnt you allways buy the best stuff? yes you would, thereby effieciently cutting out all non-12point crafters and crafters wich hasnt been in the game for god-knows how long and doesnt have the best resource spawns. As it is now, you go to a vendor and you find what you are looking for, then you buy it if you think the stats and the price is good enough for you. If you where able to compare all the geo-pistols in the galaxy at the same time, of course you would buy the best one!
This is why i think these changes are bad. In my opinion they should just line out the new vendor search option and rather customize the map interface more. What if they had a second "vendors" tab on the map screen, on this second tab you could choose armor/weapons/food/whatever just like now, but then you could for instance choose composite armor. Then you would get up vendor waypoints like the ones you have now too all the vendors on the planet having composiste armor in stock, not prices, not stats, just the fact that they have it in stock (maybe the number in stock to be sure its not only 1 or 2). This way it would still be a heck-of-alot easier to find what you are looking for, but it wont kill of the smaller non-12pointers as you will still be coming to their shops if they have what you want, and theres still a chance that you buy there stuff.
So what you are saying is that we should make it hard on everyone just to protect the few so-so crafters out there? I should have to waste 3 or 4 hours looking for what I need just so mediocre crafters get the occassional pity-sale? Competition means you have to work to stay ahead. I already buy the best stuff when it isn't priced too outrageously but I never buy sucky stuff no matter the price anyway. Most crafters do everything in their power to craft the absolute best, and they have earned the credits they get.
Case in point. For a while, I was making Composite armor suits in the 50 to 60% range because I was missing a few HQ resources to make the better 70% stuff. Did I whine? No, I charged less for my lower quality armor than people were charging for the good stuff. And you know what? It sold. It sold because people could afford more of my armor and used it in situations where armor condition got tore up (corvette) or because the MOB's they were fighting didn't require the Uber-resist stuff. Was I a 12 point smith? No. That extra 2 points don't make enough of a difference which is why I never spent the 20 million the tapes would have cost me for the extra 2 points.
When I finally got the quality resources to make 80/70 armor I made it, and it sold too for just as much as the 12 point smiths were charging. I worked hard and learned my profession so that I could be competitive. You're saying that my effort has no worth simply because of some OTHER crafters who don't want to put the effort in...
Being able to shop in a centralized manner would increase competition, quality, and variety. It would force people to make the best they could and price it accordingly. I fail to see anything bad in that.
Spookibus wrote:
Too many businessmen witha "lowering prices will hurt the vendor" attitude is exactly why a certain discount store is now the largest single employer in the U.S.
I'm not a merchant, but I sell loot and harvested resources on the in-game eBay system a lot. I pull up lists ofsimilar items, price mineless than the competition, and things tend to sell quickly. If a certain kind of hide seems to be priced at 5 cpu, I sell mine for 4. I make less money per sale, but since I have MORE sales, I actually come out ahead.
If someone's willing to sell similar quality for lower prices, then you either have to compete or you're out of business.
The problem is, this is a game and people have different motivations other than just making a profit. Plenty of people sell things barely above cost, or even for a loss, because they "don't want to be greedy" or because they "want to help other players". If you're a merchant who sellsfor profit, and if every consumer has perfect market knowledge, then there's no way to effectively compete against a kamikaze merchant who doesn't care about covering costs or making a profit.
Slim Vargo, Corbantis