Development Cycle Archive

61 pages? Think the devs are gonna wade through all this?

The 3k/6k bazaar thing I don't care about. There's a limit of like 25 items for bazaar stuff and it's too much of a pain to keep trudging over to the nearest NPC city to restock the thing. It's for newbie items... maybe I'd care more if player cities could have bazaar terminals and I could list cheap stuff there.

The 150-item-per-vendor thing seems to unfairly penalize some crafters over others. Many classes don't have that much variety in what they usually sell, so they can compensate by not breaking up crates as much. As a weaponsmith, I know I'd probably compensate by stocking only the most popular weapons in the most popular configurations. As other people have pointed out, Tailors & Architects, with their huge variety of colors, will be totally hosed. 'Tailor' will pretty much require a huge bunch of merchant skill too, because they'll need lots of vendors. God forbid the player took up TWO crafting professions...

Don't BS us by claiming this nerf is "good for the community". It's not. "Hurts sales because people don't hit 'Next'" is a joke and everyone knows it. If this was actually a common problem, you could just take away the 'All' category on vendors that have more than XX items. You seem to have a simple problem:

- Database size is too large, and performance is slow/storage space is too expensive.

Typically, when commercial organizations have this problem, they go for solutions like:

- Upgrade your hardware to improve performance
- Identify "problem" database users and address them separately
- Destroy stale information in the database
- Cache/Index data to improve performance

I'm sure you've heard of the 80/20 rule (pareto's principle). You could assume that 20 of your vendors are causing 80% of your problems and remove exploits like:

- People using vendors as storage to get around house limits
- Players with vendors on many planets, all stocking the same stuff
- Players who have dropped the Merchant profession

And look for solutions like

- Decrease the max price on a vendor to 5million credits or so, and let people see what's in bags on the vendor. People shouldn't offer stuff for sale that they don't intend to sell.
- Let merchants with Advertising IV register their vendor with the Bazaar! This would let a merchant effectively sell stuff in the bazaar for more than the bazaar cap, and customers would have to run out to the player's vendor to buy stuff. (This would cut down on people having to place vendors on multiple planets all with the same stock)
- Don't let a player give up 'Management' skill (or novice merch) if they have vendors out that require that skill level.

Bazaar Cap

I am neither for nor against upping the Bazaar cap. I could care less.

Why? Because I really don't use the bazaar that frequently. In fact, I just go there to get a quick, cheap stack of resources when I need to grind something.

This will have zero impact on my gameplay.

Vendor Cap

This is a retarded plan. 150 items on a vendor is not nearly enough for most everyone. In fact, the only two professions that might easily fit under this cap and still be considered "fully stocked" are architects and maybe bio-engineers.

You mentioned several issues that you're trying to resolve with this. I will offer alternatives that will not artifically limit what a vendor can do.

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  Technical Issues. Here, I imagine you're referring to people placing a ton of information in the database with items for sale. I have two responses to that. Firstly, I have been shocked and amazed at the instability of your database since Beta. If it can't handle a few thousand items per vendor, you still have something terribly wrong in it. Secondly, if a limit is an absolute must, please put more time and critical thought into what you're doing to the players. Think about the unique needs of Tailors and Weaponsmiths in particular as you make this decision. The limit should be measured in hundreds, not dozens.


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  Monopolies. I don't understand how the ability to have more than 150 items on a vendor encourages monopolies. I would think it encourages diversity and competition. If you want to talk about monopolies, think about Weaponsmiths limited to 150 items on a vendor. They'll start specializing in only one item. We'll have rifles near Coronet, Pistols near Theed, and maybe Carbines near Nahsal. Which means more time-sink for those of us who buy, because the current sales system will not let us find what is on a vendor until we actually get to the vendor. More travel and more money sink doing so, yes. But way less fun meaning fewer subscriptions. Monopolies is completely a non-issue.


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  Ease of Use. People don't know the "Next Items" button is there? Make it more prominent in the UI.

Please don't do this to us. If you need a limit because of technological limitations, fine. But set the limit significantly higher than 150. 1500 might be good. If your database can't handle it, hire Oracle consultants. It should.

You know this forum is pointless when the players don't even have time to read the thread, much less the devs.

A cap of 150 would not be a solution but on the opposite would harm merchants as well as customers.

If you want to reduce database size :

- remove crate cap, this cap of 50is a nonsense

- remove ressource cap, that ressource cap of 100 K is a nonsense

- remove factory shematic cap, its a nonsense

Whats the point of having 20 identical crates ? remove cap on database size divided by 20

Whats the point of having 10 stacks of 100 K instead of one of 1000 K ? no reason, remove this cap and divide database size by 10

What the point of having a cap of 1000 for factory run ? none, remove this cap and have larger factory run with just one crate, thats going to be a hell of less objects in database....

Add to this : stacking of similar items, if segment are similar you should be able to stack them. if you have split a crate, you should be able to re combine them.

Staking worked in a game like UO ten years ago, dont be stupid and be late on stacking from game that where here 10 years ago....

Better stacking and no cap mean easier life for player, and database, there is no reason not do do it but stupidity

Raising Bazaar credit cap to 6k is Good. My crafter Merchant would put more on it. How about raising the item limit per person as well on The Public Bazaar? (of course that might be good idea with the current database?)

Limiting private vendors to 150. I have heard alot of Pros and cons, My merchant vendor sells weapons, harvestors, houses, Resources, and lots of master artisian items. Has 4 vendors. (The Womp Rat, Just north of AH On Flurry server)

I see an issue with a cap at 150, maybe a bit higher? say 300, I agree with past vendor bugs, issues with lag and not intializing might be the reason to put a cap on vendors. (I really hope you guys one day fix the database issues)

I do not like either idea. By raising the limit on the bazaar higher end items will then be available and discourage folks from seeking out masters for what they need. It is a bad idea to limit the amount of items on vendors also as a master artisan, master merchant and working on architect I try to keep as wide a variety of items on my vendor as possible. Rather than have multiple vendors in one location I have utilized my vendors by having several stores in various locations to make it more convienant for players to find me and my goods. There are lots of items that I have considered not to offer but they do sell. Just because you don't sell alot of something doesn't mean that no one wants it. Merchants should not be limited to what they can sell. It would be very difficult to form a monopoly anyway the amount of resources needed to take on such an endeavor would be incredible and keeping up with it would be a full time job. I myself like to restock all my vendors once a week and then devote time to hunting or running missions. I enjoy crafting but don't want to be stuck just doing that all the time.

Weaponsmith here, with 2 vendors. 150 item limit is going to be a disaster for our class. I can understand why the Devs may need to do this, as a lot of us use our vendors for item storage as well as for sales.

At least reconsider and maybe double it to 300 if it is for the sake of the database, but if it is simply to make things easier for customers as TH states, then PLEASE leave well enough alone. One way to stop vendors being used as storage would be to charge fees on vendors relative to the stock listed, and how long it remains on the market. Don't just take the easy nerf option here guys...

On a lighter note, Bazaar caps being raised is a great idea, especially if you decide to have no upper limit on auctions. This may inject some feeling back into our cities again, and our class could maybe consider moving our lower class weapons on the system while making credits at the same time...

I think the bazaar change is absolutely terrible. What you are doing is destroying a slice of the merchant profession and giving it to everyone. May as well give everyone surveying ability, and everyone healing ability and evertone slicing too... not a good idea, and your poll is pointless because most people would love to have 750 skill points too... not in the best interests of the game.

I find all those idea very bad... first for merchant but also for player city...

More thant that the good would be to give more intest, more value, to player city. To go this way the first thing to change is bazaar... but not by upgrading it !!!

The best would be, may be, to reduce the cap for NPC's Bazaar in NPC City (donw it to 2K Credit Cap) and to add Baazzr terminals in Player's city with a 6K Credit Caps... then Player city would, one day, take the place of NPC City.

If you up the cap of NPC Bazzar we will see more and more ghost city, this is obvious

For merchant there are tons of things to do to change this porf, there are already a lot of good ideas here But I think that the most important is to link the merchant and the player city, to improve the services in those city and to reduce the use of NPC City.

1. Raising to 6k on Bazaars: Whatever, sure.

2. 150 item limit on vendors: You have got to be joking. 3-500 cap is ok. 150 is way too low. Fix your database, don't penalize players for your mistakes.

For the bazzar I would change to cap to a total price not a number of items. For example if you are like me and sell a lot of spice at low prices you could sell lots of crates. if you were a high end master crafter you could place a few very good items on the bazzar. So I would place a limit of 50 or 100k of sales on the bazzar. If you want to use it on 100 items at 1k your could or you could use it for 2 items at 50k. This sounds the most reasonable to me.

Also NO LIMIT ON THE PRICE OF AUCTIONS!!!!! An cap on the max auction kills any bidding war. How many people have actually had a bidding war on a bazzar or vendor. Very few. Any thing worth bidding on is sold in the forum or by spamming in busy starports. We should be able to have real auctions on high end items.

I don;t care about the bazaar but under no circumstances should you be capping vendors. I spen enought time stocking my vendors and running my shop as it is. I don't want to be limited to 150 items. That's insane! I have 5 different vendors offering diffent guns and items and I c ould easily fill up my pistol vendor with a few hundred pistols. I need to be able to offer my customers lots of variety. I sell sliced guns and want to be able to offer a huge variety of diiferent sliced guns. Putting a limit will only upset my customers and make so much work for me it won;t be worth running the shop any longer.

Why not implement this: resources can be sold for 6000 credits but other non-resource items should still cap at 3000. That way tailors wouldn't be forced out of buisness, but yet resource sellers would be able to consolidate their sales into larges bunches.

While I hate to agree with someone with Pink Hearts in their sig :-), I have to agree with this. I like the idea of selling plain-jane resources on the market, but going to vendors for value goods.

-Jeff