Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
I think increased bazaar sale limits should be a perk of the merchant class, maybe going as high as 10k for master merchants. Likewise a raise in the total number of bazaar sales allowed as you progress in merchant skill. I don't see anything wrong with the 150 item vendor cap. An in-gamegalactic holonet where you could advertise the location of your shop would be great. Like ayellow pages terminal.
I for one believe a price cap raise on the bazaar is a wonderfull idea, heck raise it to 10k at least!
For one thing at least when you run all the way out to a vendor it wont be empty anymore.. youll be able to buy from the bazaar most things you need. My biggest grip is that people will post that the vendor is a weapon or armor vendor, then you travel all the way to it and it ends up being completly empty.. possibly just so they get xp for people browsing... or they left the game.
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.
Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl
Assistant Community Relations Manager
----------------------
I am quite saddened by the general trend SOE hashad for quite some time now...in generally unnecessary nerfing. Given current trends, I would suspect that Star Warscould truly become the most "fair" & even-handed MMO on the market. However, I fear that there will be little left of the game whichis truly fun. Now, I am not advocating exploits, and do recognize the need to adjust the extreme ends of the spectrum in terms of game balance, but I think the development staff is truly underestimating the severity & repercussions all the nerfs have (and will continue to have) on the overall game quality.
Perhaps a small anecdote will help illustrate my point:
Asheron's Call 1 was an relatively interesting game at the start, but after the development team began a year + rampage of nerfs, while generally ignoring the pleas & outrage of players, the year old game ended up a shell of its former self. As a result, a great many players dropped the game within a year. When AC2 was released to the public, many potential players did not forget how Turbine had handled AC1 & thus did not purchase & play.
AC2 has become a cautionary tale in the MMO industry. I ask that SOE learn the lessons of games that came before SWG. True, EQ was, andis a current hit in terms of customer base, but please do not rest on your laurels for too long. New MMO's are released every year...each one chips away at your customer base. The Star Wars theme will likely only hold customers until the release of the Space Expansion, and if that is not a smash hit, SWG may become the next cautionary tale.
Personally, I planned to be a master artisan, architect, and DE...(what can I say...I am a builder at heart)..with a bit of Carbine to allow me to help out beyond the city walls. Though, with the recent non-CH pet nerfs, my character (and so many like him) is even less competent in the combat arts, further forcing a larger portions of points into non-crafting related professions.I found it interesting that the rationale for many of the recent CH nerfs, were to stop dabbling...and yet that was one of the aspects specifically touted by marketing.This makes me wonder ifSOE has lost its originaldirection & focus?
It has taken countless hours of hard work (approx. 40 hrs per week on top of a full-timejob in the RW), but my partner & I have a thriving business (approx. 2000 items/each on 2 vendors + many warehouses of overstock). From what I gather from TH's postjustifying thevendor limit nerf, I am not a dedicated business person willing to put in more time than most to make a good business great, but instead some sort of game breaking exploiter? I worked hard getting so many items for my customers...and enjoyed running a business that was as close to the real world as possible. One of the most touted features of SWG is it's crafting economy...and until all the nerfs, I saw why. After weathering through losses of every kind (bugs, data loss, resource shifts that defy specs, unscrupulous bazaar sellers (those who sold/sell unusable items, etc) we have finally become a successful enterprise. But this latest round is the perverbial last straw for us & an enterprise-level business...you win.
In anticipation of this latestimpending nerf, I have stopped purchasing any new goods, stopped crafting architect goods...and begun dropping architect altogether. Architects have the 2nd highest # of different items (next to Tailor), and with the vendor nerf coming I seriously doubt I will be able to do anything but provide a "cottage industry" sample of goods. With the loss of a enterprise-style business, the game loses another large chunk of interest for me (and I suspect I a not alone). This was a defining profession for my character...and now I ask...what is the point? In reality, I could (& can) make more credits by going exclusively combat. However, I know that a"mom & pop" shop, an entertainer, or a combat-only focused character will simply not hold my interest as long as running a real business would. Everyone is different and enjoys the game for different reasons. As the nerfs continue, the options decrease, and thus the interest to play at all.
As for my account, yes, I will likely stay until the Space Expansion, however, I can say without reservation that my enjoyment in the game has steadily declined. And although you likely have me hooked (though that continues to wane)...until the Space Expansion, I for one, won't forgetthe trend in"business strategies"implemented for SWGwhen it comes to myadoption decisions when you releaseyour next game.
Bottom line, we pay an awful lot of money (one of the highest monthly fees for an MMO), to have to suffer nerf after nerf because of poor pre-release planning, testing, and an unwillingness to use some of SOE's profits to pay for reliable & scalable infrastructure.
In closing,I would like to propose a new poll and invite any & all to vote.
Which of the following statements best reflects your views of SWG when weighing the overall quality of the game as it has progressed from release until today?
A) I would rather have my character suffer through some of the game inequities and had the dev team spend their timeexclusively onnew content & bug fixes.
B) I think the currentratio of game-balancing changes,new content, & bug fixes has achieved the best possiblegame thus far.
C) I would have preferred that the dev team focus more efforts on game-balancing changes.
Thank you for your time,
Convene
On raising the price cap: GOOD - ILIKE IT!
Suggestions on Bazaars:
- Lift the cap altogether
- Instead if a "set" fee, charge a % sell price fee with a floor (i.e. the greater ofnn creds or xx%)
- Allow Mayors to place Bazaars
- Allow Mayors to set the charge % between a min and a max % (xx% goes to operating/transaction costs
This will have the following effects:
- It provides a common "shopping center"
- It discourages high credit items
- It gives the seller flexibility
- It allows a city another way of generating money, and could give a city a good trade reputation
- It ciphens more creds
-Ratos
RatosKintar wrote:Allow Mayors to place Bazaars
I think one of the advantages of being a Merchant is that you get to change your sign from the regular house sign to the standalone one that indicates you probably have a vendor inside. Also, you get planetary ad campaign, at the right level. As such, I can understand the lack of a public bazaar in player cities.
However, non-merchants already "suffer" this lack of visibility, and unless you have your own means of advertisement, it can be quite difficult to draw attention to your vendor, that's in a house that looks like everyone else's.
Why further penalise crafters by limiting the number of items they can put on their own vendors? I make a huge load of clothing, because I enjoy the crafting, and my customers appreciate the variety.
Perhaps enhance the merchant profession instead of penalising everyone else?
A "yellow pages" idea was mentioned..perhaps make it a merchant-only skill as well?
Propolis wrote:
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.
I wish that SOE would just beef up their servers. The entire game gets impacted because they can't seem to get themselves to add some computers to the clusters. Please stop hurting people who take some initiative to start a business and would like to caster to their customers' needs!
Then again, it seems as though the tailor profession is just going to be coded out of existence. First the decay system is implemented to "help" the tailors. Then it winds up that most tailors don't even want it, not to mention is has hurt some tailors' business. This game turned into micromanagement hell for them if they can't have many items on avendor.It would take hundredss of orders just to make the business worthwhile. Please, don't let this go through. Personally never stock more than 100 items on a vendor, but I see the implications of this plan. Artisans don't need more reasons to be discouraged from the game!
Gods, I hope not. The retention of vendors after dropping the skill is already a farce.
saintchuck wrote:
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.
Will we be able to master Merchant then drop it and still keep the higher cap similarly to how we can drop Merchant and keep the extra vendors?
First, the raising the bazaar isn't a big deal,3k is so little money right now, raising it to 6k or even 10k would allow some worthwhile trading to go on. All it has to do is allow more resources to be sold through bazaar and the bazaar would be much more useful.
Secondly, I don't disagree in principle with putting a limit on vendors, and I certainly understand the technical difficulties there, but 150? That's way to low to maintain any semblance of variety on a vendor. Sure if you look at most vendors they have maybe 3-4 pages (most I've seen, could be more) but a good buyer can trim that down pretty easily with the filters on the left. That's why they are there, isn't it?
For the people who say it will give multiple vendors meaning, they already have that. Sure, you can put all your stuff on one, and as I stated above, dedicated people can filter them out, but if I (voluntarily) add one or two more to save you the trouble, well that's just good salesmanship isn't it.
Thunderheart wrote:
You may have missed it, but it's looking like there will be an incremental cap based on the merchant skill.
Do you realize what this will do to the game? At least with the crazy low numbers you came up with earlier in the thread for the levels.... There are hundreds of reasons why explained in this thread.
Personally I'm here: Now, my main character who is a Master Musician, Master Droid Engineer, Master Artisan will have to drop Artisan and become dependant on another Artisan in order to sell my wares or drop my Musician skills. Don't we have enough dependancies as crafters? Now you want to add more?!?!
PLEASE, read the whole thread. Caps are NOT the solution - once again you are reverting to punishing ALL of us for the exploits of a few using vendors for storage.
The simplest, easiest solution to the whole problem of the constant caps you are putting on us is to BUY more database servers. To heck with the cist, you are SONY for chrisake! This game is making money hand over fist and must have passed the profitability mark by now.
The cost of SATISFYING your customers is more than worth it.
GET RID OF CAPS!
Ok - suggestion number two - this solves the cap issue and the stock issue for many...
Allow us todesignate crates to pull identical items for individual sale from, on the vendors.
A crate of 10 powerups takes up one slot of inventory(not 10) -you sell one andthe vendor conventiently takes it from the crate and hands it to the customer.
Being able to combine crates would greatly help this issue as well.
This can't be any more complicated coding wise than setting limits that the server has to constantly check against a players skills.
Imagine a tailor with a crate of each type shirt in each of the popular colors - Imagine the happy customers who can choose from an organizedvariety of each item rather than a minimal selection as it is now...
Imagine an Artisan vendor without 6 pages of powerup crates (since they are now combined into one stack per item type/serial#).
Imagine the reduction in server loads now.... WITHOUT punishing anyone!
What do you think?
Seriously, why do we keep trying to LIMIT???
"Because it causes a big load on the server". Then get another server, or a few of them. Make this game better for the customers not worse.
The limit on vendors, imo, is not a good idea. So now, instead of haveing one vendor well stocked with items players obviously want (it wouldn't be stocked with so many items if there was not a market for them, and if it were, its not affecting anyone) we would need to place a bunch of vendors down with the same item. Really, think about it:
Lets say I have 600 items up for sell on one vendor, and I sell out pretty quickly, so I need to keep restocking it. So if varies depending on my factory output and my sales. But suddenly I have a cap placed on my vendor, so now I can only place 150 items on it. Well am I going to reduce production and loose money because of some useless cap, which is not a solution imo. Of course not, I'm going to place 4 vendors next to each other, each carrying 150 items, totalling 600 items.
So now instead of haveing to deal with one vendor with 600 items, the server will have to deal with more vendors, and the same amout of items. Hmmm, doesn't seem like a solution at all does it?
Of course not. Don't give in to cheap logic. Limiting any profession in any way, at all, limits the game for everyone.
So say yes to the raise in the bazzar cap (finally giving us something) BUT SAY NO TO THE VENDOR CAP!!!
THERE IS NO NEED TO LIMIT YOURSELVES.
The rediculous 1% decay is FINALLY being removed from PvP. Why, you ask? Because it LIMITED the game experience, and made it worse, not better.
DON'T LIMIT YOURSELVES, OR LET ANYONE LIMIT YOU.
Come on, stand up for yourselves. The cap is wrong.
Raising the Bazaar cap: I am for this change. This allows addtional units to be sold at the cap, however, this is a stop gap measure and perhaps raise this to 10k, instead of 6k.
Vendor Item Limit of 150: I am against this change. I frequently shop for clothing and many times there are 500 items, especially if the tailor restocked. How can a tailor set up a vendor for a RL vacation or time off? I am not against a cap. If there is to be a cap, perhaps 800-1000 items. Armor smiths, weapon smiths, droid engineers, all these trades have many items and this cap would be hard on them to keep their vendors in stock. This would make it more like work and less like a game in my opinion. If it is a goal to make vendors easier to use - a search function would be greatly appreciated.
If a change must be put in, only change the bazaar and leave the vendors alone. I think it would be a great disservice to severely limit the artisans and merchants.
KingDroid wrote:
I also like the Bazaar Price Limit increase (maybe i'll use it now)
But capping personal Vendors at 150 is too low , maybe 300 ? , I would stock 180 crates on my vendor every 2 days on average and they sell out almost everytime ,capping the personal vendors would mean I would have too log in everyday too restock ....and I do have too do the school/work/family thing too do once and a while soo stocking everyday does not sound very appealing too me at all.
What he said
Raising the cap is a GREAT IDEA!!
But capping the item limit to 150 would seriously hurt a player based economy.