Development Cycle Archive

I love the 6000 credit idea. It could be raised to 10k without merchants feeling the stingI bet.

I doubt many merchants are going to agree about the item limit. As it is I see more vendors with zero items than I do with over 150 items. I think you should do more to encourage many items on vendors. And if players don't drill down to see more than 100 items, it's their own fault for not knowing how to read.

* I would like to see the maintenance costs on vendors go down a notch or two. When I first had a vendor it was ridiculously expensive to maintain a simple vendor. I know it is in relation to the value of what you are selling, but IMO it was extremely excessive. I'm not sure if it's been changed since then, but I don't remember seeing any notes about it.

The bazaar price raise will help me. I have a heck of a time finding enough resources to do factory runs, Mid-level weapons for my lower level characters etc...

Please, Please don't set such a low limit on vendors. I run 5 right now and need every one for organization purposes. I'm known to have 300+ clothing items on one vendor at most times. There are more than 150 colors even!. This would kill me if I had to start takingcustoms regularly again. In fact, if my vendors got nerfed and I had the 20+ emails I have on days when my vendor is lacking (Which keeping the vendor high high high on stock fixes) I don't know if I would even want to play a crafter anymore... I love keeping my vendor stocked. I hate tells and emails tying me down. I want to have fun!

As far as ideas go...

1. Let people see inside of backpacks on vendors. I would much rather buy a set of armor if i saw what it looked like first.. How do I know this armorsmith isnt trying to cheat me? Believe it or not, quite a few people sell "sets" of items. I would do it more often as well if people could see what was in the packs and actually buy them. (I don't know if it would help, but it would also save armorsmiths from needing to place their items 1 by 1 on a vendor. This could potentially help your db load if the items inside the backpacks didnt load until you looked inside + of course a smaller number of items on vendors.) PLUS, people can see what people have inside those storage bags. This makes it practically dangerous to store your items on a vendor.

2. Put a cap on prices for vendors as well. Not too "strong" of a cap, give master merchants an unlimited price.Maybe efficiency 4 should allow 4 million credit items, efficiency 3 should allow 3 million credit items, and so on, . (I should hope that someone selling something for more than 1 mil would at least want to say hi to the person buying it) This would make it taboo to store any good items on the vendor. And what's the point of paying to store useless crap?. "It would take me about once of "Holy crap they bought my entire stash of rare uber resources for1 mil *cries*" to stop storing my items in a vendor. If anybody is taking master merchant to be able to store items I say go for it *snicker* as long as (as mentioned many times before) Vendors poofed within say... a week after you dropped merchant. (Im sure most people would drastically prefer this to being capped at 150 items.)

3. Give us tailors and armorsmiths a nice way to display the clothing/armor we make. give merchants an npc "Dummy"that theycan dress and that only takes up one storage... Its ok if the clothing is non removable after its put on. This could potentially cut down on a lot of tailor/armor shops with 1 of every item stacked around the house if the items sort of "combined" with the dummy when put on them. Also, if these were transferrable it might be an opportunity for merchant itself to be somewhat of a moneymaker as they would also be great for placement in for instance, player city cantinas. (Oh dear that wouldnt help the db load now would it *grins*)

I have more ideas, but you guys have been tortured enough and most of this is probably a lot more "incoherent" than i realise =) PLease dont nerf meeeee

I really disagree with the vendor cap at 150. The real issue here is that you're having database problems and are looking for an easy way out, not because you feel that a vendor cap will "improve the economy, blah blah blah."

I suggest a compromise:

First, reduce the amount of sheer crap drops from NPCs... I mean, really, how often do we need broken datapads, CDEF pistols, and1 unit of 72 oq steel? That's half your problem right there, oversaturation of garbage you yourself (devs) are producing.

Secondly,reduce the duration of sales. People don't hesitate to dump tons of stuff on theirvendors because they don't have to worry about re-selling those items for a month (by upping it to 30 days, you kind of shot yourself in the foot there). I suggest 15 day sales. This is resonably long enough, yet just discouraging enough to keep people from putting too much up and having to deal with re-selling it constantly.

IF the first two options don't help the problem, THEN I would consider a cap. However, I think 150 is too low too fast, and would raise a lot of protest. I'd try300per vendor first, as I think most people would agree that that is a reasonable number. If that doesn't help, reduce the cap in increments of 50 until you notice improvement.

However, if it comes to capping (meaning WE have to suffer), I think it's only fair you take some cash out of your budget and expand your database capabilities (so YOU have to suffer,too).

Please remember, wedo pay one of the highest subscription fees for a single online game out there, and we expect more because of it.

th 150 cap would definately be the last straw for a lot of the people who have stuck with SOE and all their bull **edit**. not too many are still around from june or beta. but the few that are still here, definately don't get their voices heard.. all that soe here's is all the whining new players who are jumping into an already complex environment, without understanding that everyone around them isn't in the same boat as them.

but either 150 cap, and someone can have my jedi. i'll quit.

Bazaar change is very welcome.

Vendor change is welcome, but have a few suggestions.

First, since merchant IS an advanced skill, some people do try to make a psuedo-living out of the proffesion. Limiting the number at a flat 150 per vendor is a serious cut-off to the trade. Perhaps you could, in addition to the fee that is already charged to the vendor, charge an additional modifer to the base fee based on the number of items that are being sold. This would allow the people who 'cant keep item in stock' to store as many items as they want, but at a exponential cost. For example:

Vendor fees per item:

1-150 items: 1.00 x base rate

151-300 items: 1.20 x base rate

301-450 items: 1.50 x base rate

451-600 items: 2.00 x base rate

etc...

This would perhaps encourage people to only keep stuff WORTH selling on their vendors, and allow those who don't want to continually stock their good to stock an extra amount for a 'cost of convienence'.

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angeles wrote:

please dont limit vendors to a measily 150 items. between my two characters ( both on corbantis, dual accounts) i have roughly 10-12 vendors up already and all of them are either above or close to the proposed cap. my weapon power ups vendor alone has 450 items on it, mainly due to the fact that they only come in crates of ten. that would be three vendors alone to hold those items. beind a crafter/merchant is time consuming enough as it is, and the ability to make large runs and to be able to place those runs on a vendor is our only way of freeing up enough time to actually go do other things. as far as people using them for storage, well what do you xpect people to do? you have limited us so badly with storage as it is, that most crafters have to find ways to store everthing any way they can. look at almost any big time crafter and you will see a house filled with backpacks which are filled with supplies. most of us can t even have furniture in our houses as we just dont have the storage space to put it in em. if you do decide to go through with this i have a few ideas you may consider to help offset this issue.

1.) let factory crates come in stacks of 100 for everything. we could split off what we need to sell and still have some set aside for future sales without taking up all of our house and bank storage.

2.) create a type of structure for achitects to sell, such as a barn or wharehouse, that can hold maybe five hundred items or so, and can only be used for storage. make it like a factory where it s not actually a building you can walk in but just one you walk up to and store/retreive items from. (and dont jack up the lots on it for petes sake)

3.) increase the number of items we can sell on the bazaar.

4.) double the amount of storage each house can hold.

please listen to the people on this one devs, keeping vendors stocked in popular shops is hard enough, dont make this game anymore like a real world job than it already is at times.

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Places where players can store items? BRILLIANT!!

Reducing the number of items that a vendor can hold is not going to solve any db size issues, it is just going to move them to another place. This idea solves SO many problems that frustrate me in the game - lots for homes, storage in homes, sizes of factory crates, not being able to decorate my house, etc etc. Why not fix this item storage once and for all on your terms. If I had a barn that could hold 500 items I would gladly wait a minute or two for it to load, or sink money into it, or whatever - just gim'me!

I truly love the idea on raising the cap,but I would suggest to also at least double or take out the limit of things you can sell in the bazaar.

As I expressed I don't like the limikts in the bazaar and wouldn't like it on vendors

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Tayte wrote:

Bazaar change is very welcome.

Vendor change is welcome, but have a few suggestions.

First, since merchant IS an advanced skill, some people do try to make a psuedo-living out of the proffesion. Limiting the number at a flat 150 per vendor is a serious cut-off to the trade. Perhaps you could, in addition to the fee that is already charged to the vendor, charge an additional modifer to the base fee based on the number of items that are being sold. This would allow the people who 'cant keep item in stock' to store as many items as they want, but at a exponential cost. For example:

Vendor fees per item:

1-150 items: 1.00 x base rate

151-300 items: 1.20 x base rate

301-450 items: 1.50 x base rate

451-600 items: 2.00 x base rate

etc...

This would perhaps encourage people to only keep stuff WORTH selling on their vendors, and allow those who don't want to continually stock their good to stock an extra amount for a 'cost of convienence'.

---

this proposed increase base would just pull slightly extra revenue to the dump (soe). i mean my vendor with custom ad parking, and planetary map register (thanks for fixing it...), is 21cr/hour. even if it souble to 42cr, thats like 1000cr/day. if you think i'm gonan sweat over 1k/day maintinece on a vendor with 600+ items on it..... thats the best investmetn to be had.. sadly it wouldn't affect any merchants. those with 600+ items sell a bunch everyday...

Bazaar cap:

is a very fine idea. with 6k limit you can sell factory crates without splitting them to not very useful quantities ... and more.

Vendor:

I am not a merchant, but I know a lot of them and I browse all vendors to the limit ... so I would like to say that 150 items are not enough or only if the costs for vendors are reduced.placing and holding a vendor is very expensive and with a limit, the merchants have to place more specific vendors - nice for customers, but maybe too heavy for merchants.

bazaar price cap yes should be lifted.. id say at least 10k .. that would give ample room for modest business to be handled via local bazaar... (plus lets get these in our cities ^^)

vendor caps at 150.. VERY BAD IDEA.. one many organized businesses.. run 500-1k items.. to keep their vendor fully stocked.. and being stocked is inpart why the business is successful.. having to take those items off where are we to pput them..?? give us more storage .. fine. that will work ,, but i doubt that is going to happen.. plus i would think that 1 vendor with 1k items in it would bog down the system less than 6 maxed out vendors in the same spot.. ?

Raise the price too 6 k is good idea,since 3k is to low.

The vendor idea on haw max 150 item could be a good idea if you add extra vendore a person can use, if you smart you give the person who enter merchant a bonus of one vendore extra for taking up the skill and add perhaps one extra vendore on the merchant tree and make the master merchant have one extra vendore too.

The problem runing a city buisness is that you normal have to few vendore if you try sell all sort of stuff and the vendore only display the first 100 item if you choose to see all.So many who buy stuff from you think you only have the 100 first item that show since they dont on click on armor or weapon to see more.Have many time had the need for telling people that you need make a choose on the vendore to see all item. With a cap of 150 item this could perhaps be less a problem.

The best idea is to add more vendore and have the cap for 150 item, if you dont add more vendore then this will destroy abit the buisness a merchant try to run in a city.(should minimum get 3 extra vendore, be happy for 4 extra vendore,love you if get 6)

Raising the Bazaar cap - Agreed

Raise the cap, but $6k is still too low. Raise it to $25k or more and make it meaningful. Will raising it be inflationary? Possibly, but I have no intention of paying $10k or more for a CDEF pistol. Some people sell resources for 30 credits per unit on the Bazaar now... butI'm not crazy enough to buy them. You can't police idiocy... it's epidemic, so don't even try. Raise the cap and let the market work.

Willa higherBazaar capdestroy the merchant sector? Hardly. You made no mention of removing the 25 item limit on Bazaar sales. It might shift some merchant sales to the Bazaar because they can reach a wider market, but then you want to reduce the number of items on private vendors, right? Which brings us to --

Capping number of items on vendors - No, Absolutely Not

Tailors, weaponsmiths, spice makers, chefs, armorsmiths, furniture makers, doctors, etc. need to be able to put large quantities of theirdiverse wares on the vendor. They may not want to be Master Merchants with 6 vendors, and only need 1 or 2. Besides, from a 'technical issue' standpoint, what's easier for your database to handle... 6 different vendors with 150 items each, or 1 vendor with 900 items? I'm not being facetious, I'm really asking.

I live in a great player city on a remote planet, but we need to support our community with good products. For example, since we are remote, we needmedical supplies and resources. In response, I have started to make many different medicalitemsand have an agreement witha local merchant who sells them for me because I have no vendor of my own. If the number of items on her vendor(s) is limited, she's not going to sell my products. The same applies to other merchants whosell products for others. With the cap, they just won't be able to. We're trying to make a viable and growing player city, but we'll be hamstrung because we're not all merchants with vendors.Will it help your database situation if even more playershaveto set up their own vendors?

The 'monopoly' issue totally surprised me, as I've yet to see a player or group of players who control the supply of any product on the server. Amerchant who has great products at reasonable prices is going to get a lot of business,true. But that's the free market at work and players' freedom of choice to buy where they choose, not monopoly.

The real issue is that somehow you need tohandle the growing data storage needs of all your players.Just as I have done, many players are getting multiple accounts in order tohave more lots for morehouses for more storage, so we're doing our best. The game is successful, and that's a good thing, but it's a two-edged sword for you. I understand, but please don't 'nerf' the things that players need in order to play and enjoy the game. If you make it too difficult or annoying,they'll find another game.

Sere'na - Intrepid

I am convinced now that you guys are all on crack. I had my suspisions, but now it is confirmed. What the heck is the purpose of the merchant profession again? Oh nevermind I don't think it's needed anymore...