Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
In response to someone who posted ideas above,
I think it is a bad idea if you ever plan on taking away Vendors from people who have dropped the skill -you don't disintigrate houses made by people who no longer have architect skills and guns made by weaponsmiths don't go poof when they drop their skills. Why should vendors that are 'made' by merchants be any different?
Suddenly people will have products they made while they had thier skills and no longer able to sell them for fair prices because they decide to pursue another occupation.
An increase to 6k would be ok, but doesn't seem required. I would suggest that the base cap be relatively low (3k, maybe 5k) and that premium sales be allowed to exceed that (perhaps double, perhaps triple). There are many features in the bazaar that are more far more needed, making this feel like a ``Look! A distraction!'' strategy. Simple keyword searching, crates of foo listed with foo, alphabetic sort that works, and resizable/selectable bazaar list columns would all be much better choices for developer attention to the bazaar.
Limiting Vendors to 150 items:
First and foremost: as a dedicated crafter (Doctor/Bioengineer), this would seriously hurt my ability to enjoy the game. Other crafting professions are even more strongly impacted (Tailors, Armorsmiths, probably Chefs if they weren't already so severely hamstrung).
This feels like a misguided attempt to avoid a developer annoyance with vendors (people using them as unlimited storage lockers) and deflect attention/complaints about a vendor problem (multiple pages not working well). If this is NOT the case, then a vendor limit of 400-500 (instead of 150) should almost totally accomplish the developer's goals while solving 90% of the player objections to the suggestion. The idea itself is palatable (that huge vendors are too much of a challenge for the SWG codebase), the particular suggested implementation (150 limit) is not -- it's too low.
I'll tell you what I think TH. This is a issue you and the devs already had your mind made up about. Thats why you came here asking everybody who plays SWG about a merchant issue. And yeah bazaars have everything to do with the merchant class. The real deal is, you guys wanna free up database space and your humouring us with this garbage. Just come here and say, look...our database is screwed and this is a change we HAVE to do cause we all know this is going in period.
I got a idea though, how about you do away with all the morons putting 3 units of meat on the bazaar wasting time. Why dont you clean up that pos and all the garbage sold on it to solve your problems instead of hitting merchants. Heres something else, why dont you fix the problem people are having getting resources to begin with with this ridicoulous system of getting meats, hides and bones. Its idiotic. I could spend all day posting about solutions but no point, this is going in....I could tell that the moment I saw a merchant issue being addressed by the entire SWG community that doesnt effect them one bit. That be like asking a merchant if a BH should lose the eyeshot abiltity. This is BS imo. Come here with something worth my time reading instead of stuff thats a done deal.
IllandroKIlek wrote:
Vendor Cap: I won't like to see it but in all honesty It would be fair. That is why there is a merchant class and why merchants have multiple vendors. It has always seemed to me that without the ability to do consignment sales, Merhcant has been a pretty useless class. Perhaps this would add a little meat to it.
Okay, I'm completely fascinated by those who think that capping the number of items on a vendor will improve the class whose only worthwhile skill is the ability to have vendors. The merchants who run the most succesful businesses would be punished for running well stocked vendors by having to remove items from stock that we simply have nowhere to put anymore.
This also hurts those merchants who deal in highly customizable goods and/or have a large number of items that are in demand.
I confess to being completely baffled by how this makes the class worthwhile or adds 'meat' to it, when it's further reducing the ability of those who've stayed at Master Merchant (instead of simply getting it, placing the vendors and keeping the vendors after you surrender the skills which so many people do).
I think the bazaar limit raise is a good idea, but to limit the vendors is a bad idea i have 5 vendors each with a large number of items on them, i sell over 40 items on any given day and on weekends sometimes over a hundred items a day i sell all types of stuff, but to keep my resources and furniture in stock plus deeds and meds, weps , ect.. i have to put up large numbers of items just look at the number of differant items there are then multiply that times how many i have to keep in stock so people have a selection andthe numbersget crazy, ihave millions of credits worth ofstock and i have made millionsof credits so to limit me would be like telling a super walmart hay you got the store but you can only stock 150 items, one other thing to look at is the super low limit on how many items can be in houses. where am i to keep my stock if i cant put it in the vendor lets look even further down the line.
First there is the resources to make the items, this takes up space, then there are the subcomponents, if you plan on making any money there can be hundreds of items right there, becasue you have to make bulk of subcomponents to make alarge run of the finish product, so now with hundreds of items i make plus hundreds of subcomponents to make the items and the resources to make the subcomponents ihave thousands of items to put into 5 vendors of 150 and a house of 150, yea that adds up to im screwed. i havent made millions of credits by not knowing what im doing if you limit me then you will kill my store!!!, and for all the haters out there who will say oh another greedy merchant/arch, i say you have never been to my store, because i have the lowest prices on everything.... i've made my money like McDonalds i sell large amounts of low price items to make millions, not like others who sell a few over price items to try and make millions
Probably will never be seen this far down, but anyway...
6k limit on the bazaar. For most goods, 3k is fine. It keeps the number of items on the bazaar down to a reasonable level and insures that the good stuff is on personal vendors. If the cap is raised, the bazaar will have more items, slow down, and potentially hurt individual merchants. Items would just shift from personal vendors to the bazaar. (not because people can put more on it in an absolute sense, but because more of their items fall into the cost range)
The only exception to this is resources. If it was possible to raise the cap for resource stacks only, then I would be all in favor of the change. A stack of resources that costs 3k is usually incredibly small. It encourages (necessitates) people breaking a stack of resources into 20+ little stacks to sell on the bazaar, which ups the number of things to keep track of, clutters the bazaar, slows it down, inpairs your ability to find what you want, etc.
For the personal vendor limits, more is better. Each class is capable of making so many different items that people want (as a doc I readily sell, all woundpack B/Cs made, rez kits, B/C/D/E stimpacks, some status kits). A factory run can make 1000 of these items if you were to sell them individually, it would require all your available vendors. Granted, alot of the stuff is sold in small stacks of 5-10 (small crates or individuals of woundpacks, rez kits, enhance packs, large crates of stimpacks, individual status packs) but I think I make the point... With so many different goods that can be mass produced, 150 is a really small cap and it can potentially be reached without much effort. It also hurts the more casual gamer who knows he's going to be away for a week+ and stocks the vendor fully. I can do this to a limited extent and without fail, it's empty or nearly empty when I return.
66 pages and going. One just has to wonder.
I wrote up long responses about 5 times to this ongoing "discussion" but I'm really just tired.
Kurt, you ruined our entire towns economy in Vesnia with the free holo giveaway. You decimated the town.
You removed protection from crafter classes that spent millions purchasing AT-ST's under the rules in place so they could harvest without having to grab somebody that is totally NOT interested in harvesting to assist them.
You set up rules systems, people play within the rules and you, SOE, continue to screw them for either:
A.) Being successful
B.) Creating something useful or unique in the game.
You responses (and lack thereof) do nothing but indicate that this is going to happen again.
Honestly, would you talk to us like normal human beings and jump down off the platitudes. I don't know what's more frustrating, bugs in the game or your seeming indifference to the customer base that pays the bills.
Again, let me point out, you have made TWO responses so far to this thread which have done nothing but point out the direction you seem to want this to go and do not reflect the honest discussion YOU REQUESTED. A discussion requires TWO SIDES Kurt. When are you going to respond, or someone with resonable authority.
I'm a master weaponsmith, if there is a 150 item limit on vendors I'll never be able to keep a variety of weapons stocked.I love being a master weaponsmith and running my own shop. If I can't have a usefull vendor I can't be a weaponsmith and I see no point in playing. I'll just quit to make some database room for others.
Why do the devs hate fun?
I just thought of something constructive. Let us re-crate or combine crates. That should help a little with the number of item. How about having crates of 100 or even 1000 items. We can always split them.
And I'm still quiting if the vendor limit is 150. Its the last straw.
I will just put it this way.
Bad idea. Period. Both are bad ideas.
I don't care if the programming is having difficulties or the servers are too slow to access the databases in a timely manner. Fix the problems or buy better hardware.
It is hard enough to find what u want - the color you want - or the right match for what u are looking for without limiting the vendors an enormous amount. With holo-vendors, they are going to be horribly limited in what they can sell as it is, being that they go up & out as fast as possible. Give the vendors MORE things to sell & support the online community, not less. Overall, a dumb decision that will impact merchants a lot, and customers a lot more. Many besides the merchants actually use their vendors. I sell stuff through friends vendors - now that will be limited also, since he will need all the space to sell his own items. It is the only real way I can get items to the public without standing in front of the Coronet spaceport & yelling every 30sec like the rest of the loosers...
If bazaar's ran by the cities are increased in price, more will be moving away from the PC vendors. If you limit the amount of items that can be sold, then I would increase the Bazaar limit - absolutely - since items will have to move to the bazaar's since nobody will be able to sell everything they want to sell on their own vendor. I would move the limit to at least 10K in that case, to make the bazaars really useful - for both overloaded vendors and people without vendors or holo-profession people which cannot keep a high merchant level due to other blocks being worked on....
thanks,
Tracklor of Chilastra
Dione of Sunrunner
I probably won't have time to read through 50+ pages (I hope the devs do) but I am gonna add my comments.
I did a small unscientific experiment Saturday. I was looking for resources. After checking 10 to 15 and finding most of them empty I decided to start writing down what I found. I forgot to bring the numbers to work with me but here is what I remember. I looked at 54 venders. Of those 10 were completely empty and another 12 had less than 5 items. Of the 54 I checked only 1 vender had more than 150 items (a tailor with 312). There were 4 other venders with over 100 items, 3 weaponsmiths and a chef. The total number of items on all 54 venders was 1944 or an average of 36.
I'm sure if you read that you think I'msaying that the 150 item limit is fine. Actually, the 150 items limit punishes those that do a good job in keeping their venders stocked.
On Wanderhome I am a Master Armorsmith (Harbin) and I work closely with a Master Weaponsmith (Druidia). Combined we have 7 venders. The total of items on our venders is 1108, including two that are over 300 items. I'm not a merchant so I only have one vender. As soon as I saw this proposal by the devs I started planning for the day I'd have to be at 150 items. On that day I had over 500 items on my vender, I've added 15 to 20 items a day since. My vender is down to 314 items now.
SWG is designed to offer a huge amount of variability, if my pitiful statistical skills are right, I can make 4096 different permutations of composite armor counting the 8 different types of layers, that 3 may be included as well as the segment enhancers dropped by Krayts and other creatures (and that's not counting all the different colors). For me to make one of each item in the armorsmith trees, I need 47 different resources, 10 of them are creature resources, there are specific resource requirements from Naboo, Yavin, Corellia, Rori, Dantooine, and Lok that I can think of right off the top of my head.
Defeating all this variability by reducing the number of items I can store in my house, reducing the hoppers on my factories, and dramatically and fatally (for me anyway) limiting the number of items I can put on my vender only to protect a database that is inadequate is ludicrous.
I'm not a database designer and I don't expect people to be perfect. I think it is perfectly acceptable for the devs (or whoever) to tell us, "look we drastically underestimated the database requirements for SWG", then to redesign the database. Heck, I'd be willing to start my character over again if needed.
All of that said, if these limits go through I expect we'll see a great many of the Master crafters either quit crafting or leave completely. I'm starting to believe that most of the people running around wearing Master X tags are only doing so because a holocron told them to.
If the idea of this limit is to force crafters to be merchants, that's just fine, except for one thing. Last time I looked at the Merchant profession there were no skills in it to allow me to fight off the creatures and NPCs that are invariably guarding my harvesters, factories, and house.
Thunderheartwrote:
The second item has to do with Vendors. Currently, there is no limit to how many items can be placed on a vendor. This causes technical issues, encourages monopolies and actually hurts sales in many instances because most players don't "drill down" through all of the vendor pages to find items. We want to solve the technical issues, discourage monopolies and make vendors easier to use. An item limit is going to be placed on vendors and that limit is intended to be placed on 150.
Let ustake these reasons in the order of least probable, to most;
- Actually hurts sales in many instances because most players don't "drill down" through all of the vendor pages to find items
- If there is a true problem of people locating the next page button, this is not an item limit issue, but more of a GUI design issue.
- Encourages monopolies
- Monopoly?!? I dareyou to show me a real monopoly within SWG. Anyone can get into the market, and create a customer following with veryfew problems. Anyone with the proper resources, can match whatever is being made by any supposed monopoly and sell it for a lower price, thereby gaining market share.
- This causes technical issues
- This is the true reason they are even considering this limit. The SWG database holds more information per item than any other game out there. Every item in this game is unique, it may not look it, but, due to everything having a unique serial number, you have more items in game than any other game.
- In EQ, DAOC, UO.. all same named items are only a refence to a database entry. IN SWG every item is a unique entry.
- Due to this fundamentally different way that information is collected in SWG, their database is accruing too much information, thereby slowing it down and eventually causing it to crash. As instanced a few days ago when all the vendors went down, and the subsequent "fixes"/"band-aids" to the database.
- Database troubles in SWG have been around since Beta. At times in Beta, the bazaar was unavailable for days. Beta plans had the player vendors tied to the bazaar. Those plans were changed, but it appears that they still use the same database, hence the idea of limiting player vendors.
- If they wish to limit database load, there a multitude ways of implementing this.
- Make everything from a factory come out in a 1000 unit crate.
- Make all resources stack to 1,000,000.
- Change the resource shift system to shift less often, thereby reducing the overall number of resources.
- Allow duplicate items within a vendor to be consolidated into a "vendor crate", allow the buyer to specify a quantity, and generate the item when bought.
- Put a minimum price/unit limit on the bazaar. No more seeing 1 unit for maximum price
- Remove auctions from bazaar / change auction setting to actually be useful by removing price cap.
- Auctions reduced to 3 days instead of 7.
- Remove all the stupid loot from the game. i.e. broken items, 1-3 units of resources that dont match anything ever spawned.
If the problem is a bad as it seems, then Sony should spend the money to upgrade the system. If this means they have to take the game down for a day or two, so be it. We pay the most money per month for this game over any other game out there, we should not be required to live with such absurd limitations, we pay the premium price, we should get the premium game.
Linmor