Chef Archive
Thread: Vendor updates delayed, what would *you* want?
Easier restock? (kind of a "duh" suggestion, but it was the first thing I thought of). Definately. I cringe when I hear the chime of a new e-mail hoping it is not the start of a flood of unsuccessful auctions.
Region/Planetary/Galaxy search for item name only? See Below
Region/Planetary/Galaxy search for item name and details only? See Below
Region/Planetary/Galaxy search for item name, details, and price? Not sure I like this idea at all. Will force chefs to sell their more popular items such as brandy at a loss just to get the buyer's attention and to get them to come to their shop. If it has to be done, do it by region only with acategory for foods or drinks so that the intended purpose of this patch will enable players to find items they want without having to run house to house.
Item delivery? I'm not delivering anything, haha
Vendor-run auctions? I really like this idea but make it so that the merchant cannot end the auction whenever they feel like it or if the price doesn't reach an expectation. If amerchant doesn't likethe price it sold for or just wants to be cruel, theycan add the buyer to the house ban list and they cannot get in to retrieve it until itis gone. A lot of room for corruption but still an idea worth looking at. If runby an honorable merchant can be a beautifulthing.
What functions should be "free" with any vendor, what should require skill investment? I believe not enough is given to the master merchant. The auctions should be master level for sure andIf someone wants to auction an item off then they can find a master with a heavy traffic vendor to do it for a small fee creating a new service (Auction House). Might be willing to do this on Radiant Server for all the peeps that have no way to sell items except to spam the auction channel or in front of Coronet starport.
To be honest, I don't know where the idea of a new search came from. At one time I believed it was a good idea but that was before I became a Chef/Merchant. I have made almost all my business from repeat customers because I keep a well-stocked vendor in a ideal loaction--just 800m from Coronet starport. Hopefully I will not lose my loyal customers but if someone wants to steal them away, all they have to do ismake a batch of brandy available to the search function at a loss and people will flock their vendors for the bargain (People are fickle when it comes to money). Just look at Wal-mart selling certain items well below everyone elses' prices because they know people will buy other things when they come into the store and they will make up the losses in bulk sales. Another example is the gas stations that sell their gas for 10 cents when the going price is $1.75. People are lined up in the streets to get a tank of gas. Why do this? Those $1.50 cokes and $2 bags of chips make way more profit than the gas ever will. Not the way I want to dobusiness and if you ask most of the dedicated crafters, they willfeel the same way. We were given a systemand made it workthrough hours of hard work and tedious crafting and in addition the bending over backwardsfor customer relations. Now the playing feild will be opened up to anybody with the deisre to jump into the fray and it will all come down to one thing------price. 
SlingbladeTM
oortog wrote:
Everyone hates empty vendors (even me and I'm a DE).
Many merhcants and crafters don't like the proposed changes.
Walmart dominates RL and all its causing is open-weeping and hair-loss. Why should we have to pay $15 a month for that? We as virtual players can do better than greedy, slave-driving corporations.
SOLUTION!
Make a "Merchant Terminal". Stick it near the bazare terms. Make it Galaxy wide, or planetary.
Lists the merchants name, the shop location (and name of shop so you can see what he's selling)and the number of items inthe vendorsinventory.
-No empty vendors
- Well stocked merchants who are in this for the long haul are visited.
- Gives something to the Merchant tree
- Creates a nice compromise that players will
- Price wars are avoided and REAL crafters are rewarded.
Put this in the Merchant tree in 2 locations. 1 for planetary (say adv 4) and 1 for galaxy widelistings at Master.
This is not hard people. SOE, give your head a shake. I love most of the new ideas but turning every galaxy into Walmart has its disadvantages. I shoudln't have to tell you this. Your all programmers.. like me.. you know... the guys that got a 4 year undergrad and paid 60K for it just so we could watch our jobs get shipped to Wipro.
We have to deal with it in RL. Not here, draw a line in the sand and say no-further.
Torbin
Torbin Technologies! "I've got the droids your looking for!"
Tempest
I could go for this. Great wisdom in your speech there is. 
SlingbladeTM
Thank goodness this went back for more tweaking. I can't imagine the backlash that would have come from this being implemented as it stood.
Some change is good. Trying to reinvent the wheel is totally unnecessary. With some minor changes, both the bazaar and our individually owned vendors can exist with an increased functionality without alienating consumers, crafters or merchants. My suggestions aren't drastic, but they do allow for comsumers to be able to search the galaxy for items they're after, while protecting the heart and soul of the merchant and crafter professions. It's just enough information to be useful without giving so much that it becomes a threat to anybody other than those that aren't well stocked or stocked at all. Also included are some minor interface changes for factories and personal inventory, since I'm suggesting the same things be applied to merchant/vendor issues already.
That being said, this is what I'd like to see:
Planetary/galaxy vendor search feature from either the bazaar or from newly implemented, specialty terminals; NOT from individually owned vendor locations.
- Only generic item/crate names would be displayed for the sake of removing the ability to see the stats from individual vendors.
- Vendor WP given. Possibly vendor name as well, so that customers are able to look up their favorite vendor.
- NO PRICES SHOWN.
- NO INSTANT DELIVERY. Period. I'm not a fan of the surcharge idea or any other idea that would enable this function to be implemented.
Updated vendor interface to allow for the following:
- Multiple item listing.Thiswould enable a multiple item selection to list at the same price to alleviate repetitive dragging, clicking, pricing, etc. We can do this with mail, when withdrawing items from vendors, and when retreiving them. Taking one more step to enable this function in the other direction would just make sense. This would also be helpful with the factory interface and inventory interface. If nothing else, items should be able to be dragged from one place to another without finding a "blank spot", as is already implemented in the person-to-person trade window.
- "Relist" button. This would enablerelisting directly from the stockroom at the price the item was listed at prior to being moved to the stockroom.
- Updated "Offers" tab. Currently, we cannot see the name of the vendor when we've had items offered. This would display the name of the vendor offers were listed, similar to the bazaar interface where the city/planet name are displayed on a galaxy-wide search.
- Updated, more detailed item location, viewable by vendor owner only. Vendor name/location for all items should be displayable when displaying all items listed across the galaxy. Again, if somebody has multiple locations that carry the same items, it is impossible to see which vendor is stocked with certain items while another may have run out.
Random interface changes:
Factories:
- Multiple item selection. This would function as mail selection does now. Ctrl+left click would select multiple items and shift+click would select a whole group of items. Drag-dropping in line with current trade window interface. Items dragged on top of one another (as long as they're not a container) would still transfer the item.
- Inventory: Same as above. Yes, I hate dragging full runs from one hopper to the other, or double-clicking 40 times to transfer into my personal inventory and then having to drag another 40 times to transfer into another hopper.
Message Edited by SkunkDuster on 02-14-2005 11:06 PM
- The ability to view items in a pack. Have a special food combo pack you want to put together with just the right fillings but no one wants to buy it in a pack, cause they can't see it. List it individually and someone buys out all of one and not the others. Very helpful with armor.
- Better search catigories. Food comes in factories crates, like droid batteries, power ups, smugglers tools. The system as proposed would be useless as there would be way too many items to go through to find what you want.
- Auctions. This should have been in place a long time ago.
- Galaxy wide searches. I like the idea. It would be very helpful to find things with. however it needs to work the following way:
- A special terminal for searching in NPC cities and placable by mayors in their cities. IE can not be done from your personal vendor to advertise someone elses goods.
- High level merchant skill (Master or advert 4) to have A vendor listed. Each vendor must be registered at the terminal to work.
- A fee for listing a vendor on the search terminal and must be renewed once a month.
- Displays item stats, price and the location of the vendor, waypoint.
Dislikes:
- Instant deliveries. Makes stores pointless and useless. Makes buying out a single product in the galaxy just to relist it at a higher price too easy to do.
- Remote buying of any sort. See exploit in reason above.
It could be that the fee / speed ratio is fixed, and you just pick it from that.
PS - You could also increase the maximum credit price for things on the Bazaar. I don't understand why there is a cap at 6k at all. If its just to encourage people opening stores...okay. But I just see that limit as a big hassle. While I don't like EQ2 as much as SWG, their interfaces are a tad better. Take a note from how they set up their bazaar interface. Lots of drop down menus, very intuitive to use, no cap on how much you can set the price for.
Message Edited by Gizmarke on 02-15-2005 10:21 PM
sciguyCO wrote:
Tiggs made a post saying that the proposed vendor search update has been pulled out of the update schedule for more work.
This is mainly an effect on Merchant itself (rather than any of the particular crafting profs that use Merchant skills to sell stuff), but I thought I'd run a mini-poll here. I also think it's a good idea for people concerned about this to make their opinions heard on the Vendor change thread in "In Development" (If you haven't already) and the various threads going on over in the Merchant forum.
So, I'd like your opinions (choices are not all-inclusive, feel free to add your own):
1) What would you like to see added to merchant/vendor functionality?
- Easier restock? (kind of a "duh" suggestion, but it was the first thing I thought of).
- Region/Planetary/Galaxy search for item name only? This would be acceptable if it gave a generic name of the item and not what the item is actually named exp. Vasarian Brandy and not 415/45m//49fill/21use). I name my products in this manner but would be unfair for those that don't if they can see what i have to offer over others in a Global search.
- Region/Planetary/Galaxy search for item name and details only? Not acceptable as this would allow a few to dominate the market over the many.
- Region/Planetary/Galaxy search for item name, details, and price? Not acceptable for the same reason as above.
- Item delivery? Not acceptable as this would make having your vendor in a close location to a busy thourofare obsolete. This would alsowould contribute to the possible Monopoly of a few over the many. Only thing the player should receive is the Waypoint to the shop.
- Vendor-run auctions? This is a great idea but should have special terminals in Cities so they are easily accesible to all. Hard to run an auction if no one knows you are having it plus this could potentially increase spatial spamming which is already a problem if done on private vendors.
- What functions should be "free" with any vendor, what should require skill investment? To place your vendor in the Global search should require a specific skill just like listing on the planetary map. this gives those who spent the skill points a little edge over those just dabling. Another idea would be to step these into skill boxes: Novice merchant - Planetary search, the others in the appropriate skill line in merchant.
2) What don't you want changed/addedto merchant/vendor functionality?
- Item delivery?
- Region/Planetary/Galaxy search for name/details/price?
The crafting correspondants are definitely aware the strong reaction this proposal has had, and are working to make your opinions heard to the devs (in addition to the devs monitoring the public threads). I just want to get a good handle on what the various chef opinions are.
1) What would you like to see added to merchant/vendor functionality?
- Easier restock? (kind of a "duh" suggestion, but it was the first thing I thought of). Would be nice
- Region/Planetary/Galaxy search for item name only? This is the only choice of the 3 I think is fair. The majority of chefs I know include their name and the food details in the title. Question: How is this going to work with factory crates?????????????????????????????
- Vendor-run auctions? Why do they not just take the cap off the bazaar? Wouldn't that make much more sense?
- What functions should be "free" with any vendor, what should require skill investment? One option I've been praying for is to give another character admin to that vendor! I guess it should be a master skill only. My alt runs my vendor and since I cannot dual log like the majority out there it is a major hassle to stock it so I do it only 2 or 3 times a week and make sure I have enough to make it worth my time.
2) What don't you want changed/addedto merchant/vendor functionality?
- Item delivery? Definitely DONT want this changed at all. I feel that they should have to go pick up the item.
The crafting correspondants are definitely aware the strong reaction this proposal has had, and are working to make your opinions heard to the devs (in addition to the devs monitoring the public threads). I just want to get a good handle on what the various chef opinions are.
Please please please. The main features I would LOVE for them to add is the ability to drag and drop multiple items.
When loading a factory for canape, we have to load 20 crates of BE adds, 20 crates of Carbosyrup and 40 crates of Dough. We have to pick them each up individually from their output hoppers, then drag them each individually to the input hopper. Factor in lag and the quirkiness of the interface and it can take literally 15-20 minutes just to do that.
Imagine if we could take a cue from basic Windows behavior, and shift-click all 20 crates of additives, drag them to our inventory. Shift-click and drag them all to the input hopper. One action, each time. Wouldn't it be beautiful?
MULTIPLE RESTOCKING
And how about shift-clicking and selling multiple items to the vendor at once? Think how much time that would save!
These are relatively simple ideas, nothing revolutionary, but they would mean so much to us. The housing and inventory changes are a wonderful first step, really good way of listening to the customer base and making us happy. This would be even better.
O.
FantasticPlastic wrote:
MULTIPLE DRAG AND DROP
Imagine if we could take a cue from basic Windows behavior, and shift-click all 20 crates of additives, drag them to our inventory. Shift-click and drag them all to the input hopper. One action, each time. Wouldn't it be beautiful?
MULTIPLE RESTOCKING
And how about shift-clicking and selling multiple items to the vendor at once? Think how much time that would save!
O.