Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
Too many responses to wade through, but in answer to " I just don't see why your vendor is the *only* place you can sell your wares."
Unless you sell insane profit margin items on an low frequency basis, the only reliable way to make money in the retail market is REPEAT BUSINESS. "How can I sell so low? Volume volume volume!"
I sell things on my vendors, some at silly low prices, because I want people to come back to my vendors and buy again. Great concept called a "loss leader". Occasionally some of my prices may even be higher than average. But the convenience of knowing they can come to my shop and find specific things brings people back.
Get the people into the habit of coming into my store, looking at my vendors, giving me merchant xp, and seeing everything else I have to offer. Customer Loyalty. Brand Identification. Things like that which DRIVE retail economies.
Another thing that's not been discussed that I've seen will be the fact that the centralization of most services to a single common point per server will increase even further than it has now. If there's no real need to go to WeaponSmith X's shop (because they can sell 75% of their stock on the bazaar for a heck of a lot less than maintaining a vendor, plus it won't fit in the new item cap), then sooner or later, EVERYTHING will be sold out of a single city's bazaar terminals. Already onmy serverthe sales traffic difference between, for instance, Corellia and Tatooine, is insane - like a 10:1 ratio. Now move all the armorsmiths, tailors, weaponsmiths from their vendor locations to the bazaar in Coronet... and watch as my frame rate drops from 5 to 0.
Summary:
Bazaar cap raise: good idea within reasonable limit. 6k is the top I'd support, 5k is more realistic, in my own opinion anyway =)
Vendor item cap: Not a bad idea IF the cap is rational. But based on the recent history of radical overadjustments in the game, I fear our ideas of "rational change" may be sadly divergent. To quote Inigo Montoya,"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Vendors only available for Merchant? If you toss in a skill-based item cap on the vendors, I don't see why you can't leave a single vendor at Artisan:Business3; "serious" sellers will still, unless they use the "new and improved bazaar", need to go into Merchant.
Too hard to find items in large vendor lists? How about you make the Sort ability work for ALL items, not just sorting the first 100 items by column, then you go to next page and you have more items that you'd THINK would have been on the 1st page, only the sorting doesn't actually work across "pages".Somethiing else on this: The Vendor interface is identical to the Bazaar interface. So how exactly will moving more items to the bazaar reduce the problem of "what's this 'next'button do?" problem? Other than it will force people into using the Next button more so they'll have to learn or never buy items again?
If a vendor is having problems losing sales because they have too many items and their customers don't know or remember to go to the next page, it'd be very simple to do as several vendors I've dealt with do- include a notice in the ad barking text!
ps : Would it be possible to get a way to add a description to your vendors? Something to get rid of the 9999999999cr backpacks named "Please see my other vendor on Naboo next to Theed" 
I like the idea of raising the bazaar cap to 6k credits. My question is will the cap be raised on how many items you can place on the bazaar? If I remeber couldn't you only put 25 items on them? I haven't checked because I have my own shop now.
Capping personal vendors is not a good idea... well not to 150 items at least. I am currently going for the master merchant profession and as it is I don't have enough vendors. I currently have 6 and with master I dont even get an additional one?
If not having a limit to how many items can be sold on a vendor causes technical issues, fix them then. Don't "punish" us for "your" problem.
Raising the Basar limit to 6000would be a good idea. It makes it possible that good items will be placed in the basar. Now it is a big Ressource Market and pool of Crappy Items. The real good things are in the vendors all over the Galaxy. This aspect could change in fact of raising to 6000.
Vendor limit 150 ? Restrictions, Restrictions, yes give us more restriction. We dont have enough rules and limits right now ! DOH !!
Lets think about the limits i must workaround to play the game: I cannot place all my Ressources in my Medium House, cause the nice Limit of 150 kicks my ass. So i have installed my personal Vendor as Storeroom for Ressources, Components and so on. But GREAT the possible limit makes the vendor as storeroom unuseable. Where should i store my Ressource, eh ? Tell it to me SOE. Now we take a look at the Shop Vendors. Let me see. As Weaponsmith i have 50+ Weapons to stock at my vendor. That means i can offer 3 Weapons per Type in the Vendor ? WOW, great. I am permanent sold out cause of the great limit. Folks this is a very very very stupid idea.
Just a few quick comments about these 'suggested' changes:
The Bazaar cap should be raised, but raising it to 6000 would be just as pointless as it is now, at a minimum of 3000. The cap on the Bazaar should be set to 10000 credits. This would allow most normal items to be sold on the Bazaar, for players who do not have the Merchant skills to set up their own vendor, and would also cut down on the number of items on the vendor (ie, the 20 stacks of 200 of one type of resource).
As to the limiting of vendor amounts, setting the Item limit to a mere 150 is going to seriously injure the economy, not make it better. If the limit were set to 150 for all, then Crafting professions (ie, Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, Tailor, Architect mainly) will be caused to spend all their time filling orders for things that they dont have room to put on their vendor, which will eventually lead to them becoming sick of crafting and they will decide to drop those skills. This willlead to only a few dedicated crafters remaining in business, thus causing a monopoly (whichsupposedly these changes are meant to avoid). I suggest an incremental increase in the limit on vendors, for those who actually HAVE the merchant skills. As we all know, a player can Master Merchant, set up the vendors in his house, then drop all the merchant skills, while still retaining the vendors. And while this is all well and good, what benefits are offered to those players who KEEP their merchant skills? I suggest this:
Master Merchant +60
Advertising IV +25 Efficiency IV +25 Hiring IV +25 Management IV +25
Advertising III +15 Efficiency III +15 Hiring III +15 Management III +15
Advertising II +10 Efficiency II +10 Hiring II +10 Management II +10
Advertising I +10 Efficiency I +10 Hiring I +10 Management I +10
Novice Merchant +50
Base Merchant +150 (A basic vendor, with no actual skill in the Merchant prof.)
This system would reward those players who actually kept the Merchant skills and abilities by allowing them to have a Maximum limit of 500 items per vendor at Master, while still allowing other players to have a merchant, just with a lower limit. By making ALL vendors have a limit of 150 items, you punish those players who actually retain the merchant skills, while rewarding players who only Mastered the professions to get the vendors (by allowing them to have the same thing as a person who has skill points invested in the profession.) This is just my idea of a way to fix this, so more people will be able to deal with this change.
Cuessane, Starsider
"You can please some of the people all ofthe time, all of the people some of the time, but you can't please ALL of the people ALL of the time." - Abraham Lincoln
I'd rather see the following:
1. Raise the cap for the bazaar from 3000 to 1,000,000. Reason being is that you want people to be able to purchase anything off the bazaar from the cheapest gun to 50,000 minerals.
2. Limit people to only 100 items on each personal vendor.
Another cool thing would be if you let players erect a bazaar terminal in their playercities. The terminal will work just like the ones in the regular cities.
Just a calculation:
Novice Merchant: 150 items/ vendor
Increase the nº items / vendor through thte ranks.
Master Merchant: 500 Items / vendor (I think it can be 7 vendors, which gives you 3500 Items for sale)
I think this will make the Merchant proffesion much interesting.
My two cents:
I'm ok with raising the price cap on the bazaar to 6k, it should work out in the long run.
I am worried about the vendor item caps, the SWG devs have a tendancy to implement insane limits then raise them after the community gets upset. I feel that this is un-nessaasry. Please make any changes in a logical manner that includes the community opinion along with whatever the final goal is.I beleive that a successful change is one that needs not be done two times to hit the target.
As for what skill level gets vendors, I would sugget that at least one vendor stays in the artisan tree, and that it is at master.
Well we have 2 ideas, one of them rather irrelevant, the other awful.
Proposal 1: Raise the Bazaar Price Cap to 6k.
Result: Now you can get your resources in stacks of 2k rather than 1k off the bazaar.
Proposal 2: Limit Vendors to 150 items per.
Result: Tailors are ruined as they thrive by providing selection. Same problem to a lesser extent with Resource Vendors, Weaponsmiths, Med Vendors, Armorsmiths. Skilled Artisan types cannot keep their Vendors stocked, people stop going to these vendors as they are "always empty". So the skilled crafters have 3 options:
1. Place multiple vendors in one location so as to provide proper selection. Doesn't seem like a problem, except for those who were running multi-planet businesses. This is not acceptable.
2. Crafters choose to focus on a few items, and stock these exclusively. This will result in an increase of crafters to fill the void left in the market. This results in less Combat Types, which means less $$$ comes into the galaxy. Thus the economy shrinks. But, the crafters will all be specialized, so prices rise. Result: Stagflation. Congratulations Devs!!! You just Jimmy Cartered a Galaxy far far away.Again, not acceptable.
3. Or crafters will quit out of frustration. Once more, not acceptable.
Ok, I get the feeling that this extremely ill considered Vendor Item Cap came about so that 2 things could be done about Merchant so the Devs could say they did more than throw 1 bone to the Merchant class. Altering the economy requires a scalpel, and the Devs seem far too fond of their Chainsaw. Having now shown you how retarded your 2nd idea is, I will give you a good idea:
Make Vendors either Customizable by Image Designers or Completely Customizable at the time of their creation. That would be a nice perk for Merchants.
I would support the Bazaar increase if the Merchant Skill tree had some more meaningful skills.
The Limit on personal vendors... I can't support in any event. Mechants will just place more vendors (which will in turn create the same number of items that you had previously) and Artisans or Merchant dabblers that stock lots of quantity will probably move thier lower cost items to the bazaar or use a friends merchant to support thier requirement.
While we are talking about merchant...
How about a skill at some level in merchant that allows Specific Sales to one person. (To fill custom orders). Bob orders a widget, and we could stick that widget on the vendor for sale ONLY to Bob.
Also..
Grouped Item Sales. Allow a "set" of items to be sold at once, while providing a means to determine relative values of those items. (Armorsmith would benefit greatly from this as would other classes that group items together in some sort of bonus deal.... Harvestor with Power, Gun with powerups, whatever)
I vote NO also to the both ideas.
Imo, business 3 shouldn't be nerf, it's merchant which has to be improved...
With the 6k bazaar cap, merchant would have less customers, not to mention the resources inflation.
150 item cap ? Holy crap ! Tailors already post the problems the profession will have to deal with. It's even atm difficult to maintain good stocks and to answer all our orders. I can't imagine what would be a merchant chat... so many tells and things to manage (whithout improvinghousing numbers or number of itemin theinventory... eeek), we already get so many work. At least 300 would be more realistic.
Stocking allow us to have less orders as customers find by themselves the thing they wanted.
If it's merchant who are managing that, artisans will loose the customer direct contact.. not to mention all the troubles of ordering, specialy for custom ones.
There are much more referencedvendors with almost nothing on stores that good ones with 200+.
Artisans vendors are often well stocked as NPC merchant aren't...
I don't figure the "next page" problem... as the bazaar would have it. Players have to clik on "next item" wohooo how exhausting it is !
If you want to improve the merchant, take a look at the referencing, most often vendors referenced won't have stock, and THAT is the real problem, they should'nt be allow to register on world map if they haven't at least 30 items. I don't understand that incoming nerf, for me, it's nerfing the good artisans.
Elona
Master Tailor on Kauri
Sowsky wrote:
What about an add ofa new type of building, lets call it "Wearhouse", Only one room and a capacity of300 items to store there, So you can crate your stuff and leave it there until you need to reastock your vendor.
This way you can crate your stuff for a couple of days, leave them there and do othere activities, ten once you see your vendors stock go down you just have to restocked with the stuff in your warehouse.
I think vendors should not be allowed to be use as a place to put your stuff
You're assuming that those of us protesting this limit use the vendors as a place to store our stuff.
I use my vendor as a place to sell my weapons, and other items.
I have 900+ weapons between the various vendors in my store, and that's counting crates of grenades, Heavy Particle Cannons, etcas single units.
The warehouse won't be all that helpful, since to keep my vendor fully stocked with certain items I'd still need to log in every 6 hours to replace things that sold. This is an issue when you have a full-time job.
What makes you think prices would double? If anything, there'd be a wider variety of items available instead of low-level guns
Scrofulechimaera wrote:
well lets tale the things in the order
increasing the bazaar cap prices what are the consequences :
prices will double for almost everything, and if like some already said 6000 credits is nothing for a businessman nowadays, it is still a very high amount of money for rookie characters.