Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
While we're talking about bazaar/vendor changes, why don't you pull medic & food/drink from the bazaar, and instead implement class-specific vendors in the cantina & med center?
The cantina could have a vendor that sells food/drink, while the med center could have a vendor/terminal that sell stims & such. This way entertainers can mosey up to the bar to get more action buffing foods/drinks, and medics can simply reach over and grab more meds (instead of both leaving their place of business and running to the bazaar).
Just a suggestion; I know there are bigger fish to fry, but I always thought this would be cool.
- Grym
If you're a crafter, being able to have a highly-stocked vendor is nice. It's a great business tool. It's part of an effective business strategy. It'd hurt to be prevented from doing it. But it's *not* absolutely essential.
However, (due to the way *you* designed the tailoring profession), having a well-stocked vendor is *essential*, and our definitions of "well-stocked" are a hell of a lot higher than the other professions.
My biggest fear in all of this is that you'll come up with some solution that's satisfactory to most crafting professions, but punishes tailors for our profession's differences. If you really do create a functional requirement of being a Master Merchant, in requiring Tailors to master 2 professions to get the full effect of one, you'll be creating exactly what you claim to be worried about - yes, monopolies.
Thunderheart wrote:
i dont know that your still reading all these negative responses, but hopefully youve gotten the gist that people really dont want a 150 cap
I do.
You may have missed it, but it's looking like there will be an incremental cap based on the merchant skill.
It should be pointed out that any type ofcaps placed on vendor items will inherently discriminate against certain professions, leaving others almost entirely unscathed. While the incremental cap is a good fix across the board, even this will single out certain professions. To show this however, it is necessary to see why certain professions have a problem with the vendor cap to begin with.
The way I see it, DEs and Architects have the least amount to sell. Other than maxxed out probots and the standard medical R2 or doctor droid, the DEs i know tend to do mostly custom orders since customers are picky, so they only need a small selection of standard offers. I doubt the change would hurt the architects much either. City structures are done almost exclusively to order. That leaves them with furniture (limited sales since many people don't even own homes, and many others never redecorate) and harvesters (again, typically a one-time purchase, since they never decay unless you leave them in the ground for a month unattended, and lot restrictions limit the number of these you can ever need).
Somewhere in the middle are probably the chefs and master artisans, although i'm not really sure about these. I'd say that chefs have about 4-5 items that people actually buy, but those who do tend to buy in bulk. The master artisans now need to stock a decent amount of items. A couple items are needed in bulk by WSs and many parts are needed for DEs, which with the addition of vehicles, can add up very quickly.
Then there are those of us who are getting the raw end of the deal: WS's, AS's, and Tailors. First, master WS has 65 weapons. A conservative figure says that perhaps 1/3 of these are used to any wide extent so the high volume dealers can probably get away with stocking only the 20-25 most popular weapons. However, using 150 just as a reference number, this only allows them to stock 5-6 of each weapon. There are many people who will buy that many ormore at a time in hopes of getting a couple good slices. Then, people like myself who don't work in the high traffic areas have to offer something more to our customers, i.e. selection. I try to stock every weapon that I can which probably amounts to about 40-50 different weapons. Even doing relatively slow business, 3 of each weapon is just not sufficient by any means. Restocking would be a nightmare, and we would be almost forced into committing the greatest WS sin there is....empty vendors. Empty, or near emptyvendors will send customers away, likely forever. The plethora of WSs on any given server will make it easy for a customer to find somewhere else to go, further killing any hopes casual WSing.
Armorsmiths have a different problem. While they have only a few different kinds of armor to sell, mostly composite, people who buy armor usually want a full set. For composite, a full set means 9 pieces. Again using 150 as a reference, this already limits the vendor to 6 suits. At that number the smith can forget about trying to sell any other type of armor, or offering different colors to the customer. Since AS's are a little harder to come by,the empty vendor problemwon't drive customers away as much, but will definately cause the AS population to become hopelessly backed up with orders, which almost always will be for composite. Vendor caps will severely limit an AS's ability play around with different armors, and leave little time for anything but filling orders, almost forcing them down the path of grinding out composite armor, which i think will limit the "fun" factor for many smiths.
Tailors will have a problem by sheer volume, no matter what caps are instituted. There are 206 schematics in the tailor profession, I counted. A few of these are components, sure, but only a very few. So say there are 200 different articles of clothing. Going by the 150 cap, the tailor already needs 2 vendors, just to show 1 of each item! Of course, tailors generally do custom orders I would think, since everyone wants something a little different, but without a common frame of reference (an item on the vendor to look at and say "I'd like that, but in red")such orders are next to impossible.
The incremental cap does go a long way to improving the situation, but I'm not yet convinced that it is enough. Business III gets you a vendor right now, and i'm sure many people stopped there, content with thier bigugly grey vendors (which i think is punishment enough for not going into merchant 
). Now every WS, AS and tailor will now have to spend at least an additional 11 skill points, probably many more, just because their particular profession demands that they have many items for sale at all times.
In much the same way that DEs need master artisan to be sucessful (which is a huge sore spot with them i know), it now sounds like about half the crafting community is going to need a significant chunk of merchant just to keep the doors open. That just doesn't seem right.
Vendor items:
Say it like it is - You don't want people storing unlimited stuff on vendors because it gobbles up thedatabase (I think database should be defined as a swear word on these boards).
ILLOGICAL - 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. You mean to tell me - IN THE SAME SENTENCE - that this will hurt players because they will sell too much, and it will hurt players because they sell too little?
ILLOGICAL - A person doesn't have a monopoly unless they havea better mix of all of these when compared to their competition- Quality - Quantity - Price - Diversity. There are two ways a person can achieve this. 1) they work their arse off gathering resourcesand crafting stuff which justifies compensation for their hard work. 2) They buy other peoples products at low prices and sell them at high prices, which is not only smart, but fully compensates the original producer at the rate they charged.
ILLOGICAL - Let us assumeIf A then B (valid logic) - If it is raining, it is cloudy (Valid) -If customers "Drill down" then you will make sales (we'll assume valid). HOWEVER - theConverse If B then A (INVALID logic) - If it is not raining, it is not cloudy(duh - INVALID) - If customers don't (not) "Drill down" then you will Not-make (hurt)sales (INVALID). If you are wondering what form of logic I'm talking about, it is called symbolic logic. EVERY computer programmer uses it whether they know it or not.
tsuya wrote:I am completely opposed to both ideas. The combination of raising the bazaar cap to 6000 and limiting the number of items on vendors will severely hurt many player run businesses like mine. I am a Master Tailor that worked very hard to get there and establish a successful shop. I am not poor nor am I rolling in money, but I do a fairly steady business and 90 percent of my income comes from my vendors. I have two vendors currently and keep a good size stock on them at all times (around 400 items). I receive many words of praise from my customers about this.
Same!
There may be reasons for both the changes to both bazaar and vendors, but these reasons hardly apply to all professions who have anything to sell. My tailoring business thrives because I offer a wide variety of items - people like to see the possible colours and styles, without having to tab out to a webpage (though I will put one up to pre-empt the vendor cap) or sending me email and waiting for a reply (I'm halfway around the world; my playtime is during SWG off-peak hours).
Additionally, as a chef, I try to keep crates and crates of the popular stuff available. I currently have hand-made samples for curious people to try, but will probably have to do away with that, too, if the cap is anywhere near 150.
I appreciate the ideal of creating an interdependency of professions, where crafters would ideally rely on merchants to sell their wares, but given the quantity of items most dedicated crafters put up for sale, *needing* a merchant would really kill one's spirit (imagine passing the merchant over 300 pieces of clothing!). And you don't wanna make the chef angry!
Sandusky wrote:
tsuya wrote:I appreciate the ideal of creating an interdependency of professions, where crafters would ideally rely on merchants to sell their wares, but given the quantity of items most dedicated crafters put up for sale, *needing* a merchant would really kill one's spirit (imagine passing the merchant over 300 pieces of clothing!). And you don't wanna make the chef angry!
Yeah, that's another thing to keep in mind. Professions have varying degrees of separation between the act of "making" and the act of "selling." For most professions, I think it's separable, at least in theory. A crate of Tatooine Sunburn is a crate of Tatooine Sunburn, and the chef might not particularly want to go to the hassle of actually marketing and selling it. Might be similar with a weaponsmith. You just make "the best" gun for whatever model, and could sell it to a merchant wholesale, theoretically. The production strategy is always going to be the same - produce "the best" you can with the given ingredients. Might be a little variation here and there (e.g., some people want speed emphasized, some damage), but nothing fundamental.
For tailors, the making and the selling are pretty much inextricable. You're triyng to figure out what clothes people would like to buy, what looks good, what colors to stock, what items to match up, etc. In the grand scheme of things, these are really "merchant" decisions. And a non-tailor "merchant reseller" would pretty much have to be a tailor anyway, just to have a decent understanding of the *options* he has - what colors can be made, how everything works together, etc.
So a tailor by definition almost has to be a tailor-merchant. And I'm OK with that - I just don't want to be forced to be a *Master* merchant just to engage in my chosen profession.
Thunderheart wrote:
You may have missed it, but it's looking like there will be an incremental cap based on the merchant skill.
If it's not broken, why fix it? People are complaining about having trouble using vendors because of too many items, redesign the interface. You're having database problems, buy a better database or upgrade the current one.
This is such a good idea!!!!
EUTHANIZE wrote:
While we're talking about bazaar/vendor changes, why don't you pull medic & food/drink from the bazaar, and instead implement class-specific vendors in the cantina & med center?
The cantina could have a vendor that sells food/drink, while the med center could have a vendor/terminal that sell stims & such. This way entertainers can mosey up to the bar to get more action buffing foods/drinks, and medics can simply reach over and grab more meds (instead of both leaving their place of business and running to the bazaar).
Just a suggestion; I know there are bigger fish to fry, but I always thought this would be cool.
- Grym
To be honest I don't think there should be a cap on the bazaar, it makes life more difficult even for the non merchant or crafting players. I am a Novice BH and I just bought a new LLC and would like to sell the old one. The best way for me to do that without having to waste my time spamming everyone in game is to place it on the bazaar. The only problem is the LLC is worth more than 3000 credits, heck its even worth twice as much as 6000 credits. So it leaves people like me in a hard place, we cant just place something on the bazaar and go and play the game anymore. We have to Spam everyone to find a buyer, that is a huge waste of my time as a Bounty Hunter. I can't be a Master BH and have a vendor so I can't even sell it that way.
I don't think there is an issue with monopolies with vendors in game. If a crafter dedicates their time and can make that much product than they should be able to place as much as they want on their vendor.
Thunderheart wrote:
I do.
You may have missed it, but it's looking like there will be an incremental cap based on the merchant skill.
Great, I get to grind merchant. Again.
I say NO to the cap on how many items a vendor has. My furniture vendor is a prime example. Look at the list of furniture we architects can make. It is pointless to have vendor if I only place say one end table or one chair when people usually buy these items 2-4 at a time per customer. Same thing goes for torches etc. etc. Factory crates wouldn't be a solution because then you are forcing someone to buy maybe more than what they wanted. All this results in just taking custom orders on all furniture and not having a vendor at all.
Resource Vendors would be terrible too..DON'T CAP THE VENDOR ITEMS PLEASE
Lan Master Architect
Chilastra
Btw I for one would like to know who has a monopoly on the Chilastra server regardless of the product. Man wouldn't it be great if we did? Just think I could actually go to a vendor and FIND what I'm looking for!!!
Monopolies are in your head devs..
Lan Master Architect
Chilastra