Development Cycle Archive
Thread: In-Test: Merchant Vendor Changes
ResourceHandler wrote:
Good change, i like the limits a lot better as a master merchant
the only problem i find is that, at master merchant there is not much of a bonus like i mean you loose 1 vendor
well heres a idea that, that i think would be a good addition to master merchant but might take time to develope:
at master merchant you have a option on your vendor for other people to list items thro your vendor, like the bazaar. the merchant owning the vendor can set the number of days a customer(item lister) auctions or sells there items for and than they set on how much comission they get per sale.
i think it would revolutionize the merchant class really rewarding merchants who have kept the proffesion and plan on keeping it and also make it a proffesion that can make moneynot just from listing your own inventory
i think adding that would really give the chance for everyone to sell there goods and for the master merchant proffesionnot a selve serving proffesion, but a proffesion that can be used as a marketable item like architect goods and tailoring clothes.
I like this idea - I would also add the ability to run auctions through a vendor. This would allow for higher ticket items in a auction, and make the merchant a viable clearing house for loot gatherers.
PlayeroftheDay wrote:
MagenShae wrote:
Moepple wrote:
Creaturedoctor wrote:
Sorry this changes are crap....
however this Merchant-Revamp is the stupid way to seperate crafters and fighters.
People tend to forget that Merchant and Crafters are two different Classes. It a little bit like Marksman and Rifleman, if you want to be good with a Rifle, you need Rifleman, not only Marksman Rifles 4.
If you drop your crafting-skills because of this Nerf, its ok. You had the wrong aproach from start.
Be lucky about this.
This has got to be the most illogical thing I read today (aside from said thread name-sake post)....
what the heck would a merchant SELL if it werent for crafting classes? Im truly interested to know what you have to say....
A'ier Crestingstorm
Master Doctor
BHSS
Tarquinas
What exactly would a crafterSELL if it weren't for merchants? .... ok let's do it again
what the heck would a merchant SELL if it werent for crafting classes?
rinse and repeat.....hey look its a circular reference everyone!
I hate such big quotes....sigh.
Well, just think through it:
Crafter -> makes a Product
Merchant -> sells a Product
Whats not logical here?
You have a product, you want get it to the market, you need a sales-channel. You can either Sell it yourself with you limited sales and marketing-abilities or try an indirect sales-channel, a Merchant.
Nobody prevents you from selling your Stuff at the Bazaar or at the cities, guess what people did in the first few months of the game :-)
Getting everything at once is something you can put into your letter to santa, but its a wish. If you want the skill, you have to pay the the skillpoints. Thats the same for every class in the game.
ViddyWell wrote:I took too much time writting this. I should have gotten it out sooner.Why is anyone cheering for a nerf?
I'm cheering because I always liked the vendor limitation change as an idea, just not the super-low limits originally posted.
i'm cheering because 12 vendors are better than 6.
I'm cheering because a single vendor with 3k items if not more would be a major hassle to browse as a buyer. I really don't want to press next 30 times. Edit: I have never run into a vendor with this many items. I can just imagine it being a pain to show from without better ability to limit the scope of the contents, or sort among the entire stock and not just the "current page".
Now part of the current vendor browsing issue is lack of categories of crates. Everything that is crated is under "Factory Crate". This is very suboptimal for mixed goods merchants. Also for resources, it'd be nice to browse by type, i.e Steel, Ore or even Kammaris Iron, Carbonate Ore etc. Never the less, I'm very aware that the original numbers will all likelyhood were intentionally very low just to make "the new better numbers" look good. Don't agree with the method but don't mind the end result.
How's that for a "why" reason?
Message Edited by Mejowepra on 08-16-2004 06:02 PM
Thunderheart wrote:
These changes are part of the commodity server enhancements that we have pushed out.We apologize for any anxiety you may have experienced, but I’m glad to announce we’ve been able to make some good changes to the Vendor limits.While we can’t make the Vendor limits aggregate, we have doubled the number of Vendors merchants can acquire and also increased the amount of Artisan Vendors.
The revised Vendor limits are as follows:
Artisan Business III:
Artisan Business IV: Get (2) Vendor, that will hold (100) items, for a total of (200) items for all vendors
Merchant Novice:
Merchant Management I:
Merchant Efficiency I: Get (5) Vendors, that will hold (250) items, for a total of (1250) items for all vendors
Merchant Management II:
Merchant Efficiency II:
Merchant Management III:
Merchant Efficiency III: Get (9) Vendors, that will hold (250) items, for a total of (2250) items for all vendors
Merchant Management IV: Get (10) Vendors, that will hold (250) items, for a total of (2500) items for all vendors
Merchant Efficiency IV:
Master Merchant: Get (12) Vendors, that will hold (250) items, for a total of (3000) items for all vendors
Good news:
1. These limits are (in total) just barely large enough to allow my business to survive... you've managed to keep about 7 or 8 accounts from cancelling because of that fact.
2. Allowing additional vendors will allow people to diversify to other planets if they so choose. Players are likely to see at least some convenience factor from this as some merchants take advantage of the capability.
3. The limits make division of inventory into more narrow categories almost inevitable... if merchants name their vendors appropriately, it's going to be easier to find a map-listed vendor whose name tells you that it likely carries what you're looking for (instead of "stuff for sale"). This is especially true since we should be seeing vastly fewer empty vendors showing on the map.
That's about all I can think of as positives. I'm trying, but I can't think of any others at the moment.
Bad news:
1. These limits are (in total) just barely large enough to allow my business to survive. Not thrive, not expand, not offer good service... just survive. That's it. That's assuming I have Master Merchant on all of my selling characters.
2. Vendors are going to become even more of a time sink than they were before. It's going to mean more time running around from place to place if you want to diversify locations. Shuffling inventory from vendor to vendor is going to be a royal pain. Changing vendors means tearing everything down and replacing the vendor just to rename it. Hello carpal tunnel syndrome. =(
3. Large swaths of the map are going to be obscured by massive piles of vendor names, as people who were able to run their business on a few vendors will now be maxing out. This is especially true for those who run narrow lines (hundreds or thousands of the same item). We'll be seeing 10-12 vendors in the space that used to be served by one...
4. We will still likely be seeing a big economic disruption to the market due to product flooding from those with large inventories and templates that don't give them room for major point investments up the merchant line.
5. Vendor tents are going to become nightmarish if people try to fit in a dozen vendors.
Possible easy ideas to help make this change more palatable (i.e. not many months down the road... changes to go in at the same time as this vendor limit):
1. At a bare minimum, can we get the stockroom time increased to 14 days? Ideally, I would want it to be much longer, but this timeframe is in line with the empty vendor expiration, so no vendor sticks around longer than necessary and no one loses items due to vendor poofing time. It's going to be harder to ensure that every vendor gets visited in a timely fashion if we are on many planets and still fighting a 7 day window. Please, at least throw us a bone on this one...
2. We really, really, REALLY need a mass relisting feature, ASAP! If we have a stack of stuff in the stockroom, we should be able to highlight any number of items, and relist them all in their original locations at the prices that they were listed at. The information is already there, just get someone to write the loop to process it. This would gain back a chunk of goodwill that has been lost on this change, and save a lot of repetitive stress injuries. Better yet, allow us to highlight multiple items in our inventory and list them all for sale at the same price... kill two birds with one stone.
3. If you want vendor names to be more meaningful, please, PLEASE let us rename them! Many people invested a LOT of time, effort and expense to get pleasant nice-looking vendors with good equipment... a rename feature would help customers without hurting the merchants. Even better if possible: allow vendors to be moved around similar to furniture as well.
4. I know that I would be willing to pay a LOT more maintenance on a given vendor if I could get extended listing times or auto relisting... a LOT more. Make it a per-item charge if you like. I'd gladly pay at least 100 credits per item, and would consider as much as 400-500 credits per item in maintenance if the vendor would automatically relist my items on expiration. Want to make Master Merchant meaningful? Implement this and give Master Merchants a huge discount on it.
5. Vendor name flooding on the overhead map can be a serious pain, and may be even worse after this change... can we get a checkbox/toggle to turn vendor names off while leaving the rest of the map intact and functional?
6. It would be super-cool if the vendor names would show the number of items currently listed in parentheses after the name. Ideal if this shows up on the overhead map and registered name list (Ctrl-V), but still quite useful even if it only shows when looking at it locally. We may have a LOT more vendors to look through, please help us make the process faster and easier.
7. Help us save a lot of time when shopping by letting us auto-suppress any empty categories on a vendor when we view it... this would make life so much easier for the shopper.
If you can push to get some of these changes put in alongside the vendor limit changes, it would help ease the pain a lot. Months down the road would probably be too late, the harm will have been done and the account losses from excessive frustration will be huge. At least some of these should be fast and easy changes to make. Please help us, Thunderheart.
Mejowepra wrote:
ViddyWell wrote:
I took too much time writting this. I should have gotten it out sooner.
Why is anyone cheering for a nerf?
I'm cheering because I always liked the vendor limitation change as an idea, just not the super-low limits originally posted.
i'm cheering because 12 vendors are better than 6.
I'm cheering because a single vendor with 3k items if not more would be a major hassle to browse as a buyer. I really don't want to press next 30 times. Edit: I have never run into a vendor with this many items. I can just imagine it being a pain to show from without better ability to limit the scope of the contents, or sort among the entire stock and not just the "current page".
Now part of the current vendor browsing issue is lack of categories of crates. Everything that is crated is under "Factory Crate". This is very suboptimal for mixed goods merchants. Also for resources, it'd be nice to browse by type, i.e Steel, Ore or even Kammaris Iron, Carbonate Ore etc. Never the less, I'm very aware that the original numbers will all likelyhood were intentionally very low just to make "the new better numbers" look good. Don't agree with the method but don't mind the end result.
How's that for a "why" reason?
Message Edited by Mejowepra on 08-16-200406:02 PM
Don't misquote me:
What does a limit accomplish?
How does any vendor item limit improve the Merchant profession? By this I don't mean forcing a player to spend the skillpoints I mean how does an item limit make Merchant worth keeping? How does this make Merchant better in general? Why not add to the profession instead of take away?
Why aren't there skills granted through the trees and at master that improve vendor sales and not vendor usage, like:
1.) Preferred customer standing. Your vendor keeps track of the number of items and credits spent by a customer that has signed up as a preferred customer. As a Master Merchant you could set rebates, discounts, specials, and 2 for 1 offer to those that are preferred customers.
2.) A searchable advertisement bulletin board at starports. The amount of information is limited by level. This terminal would show current specials that a merchant is offering, and allow customers to sign up as a preferred customer, maybe a small sign up fee and weekly fee 
. At Master Merchant a player signed up as a preferred customer could remotely see all items and prices currently on that Merchants vendors, maybe even remote purchasing with a delivery fee.
3.) Being signed up as a preferred customer would have a weekly fee; this would prevent players from signing up at ever vendor. This would also encourage competition among Merchants while creating a loyal customer base for Merchants that do a good job.
Why not add to the Profession? ...
I will not repost the entire post, go here to read it:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=in_testing&message.id=25399#M25399
Out of all the professions to fall for a low ball, bait and switch. I am amazed at some of your reactions.
Tengue wrote:
this whole idea stinks. All the other crafters are screwed. A tailor can have 450 items on a vendor easy. Ill be damed if i have to screw around with another person doing vending, it is already a big pain as it is. Dam good reason to quit swg.
Don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out....quit...if you are not smart enough to see they just kissed merchant butt, while still reducing LAG, you know the thing we all despise, then you really should think about leaving...people like you scare me....