Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
Thunderheart wrote:
You may have missed it, but it's looking like there will be an incremental cap based on the merchant skill.
::sigh:: I didn't miss it. You mentioned it in passing, favorably but not definitely, before the weekend. I was hoping to Ghod that over the weekend, you'd see the light.
Congratulations. You must made being an elite crafter as expensive, in skill points, as being a commando.
This is going to present me with an interesting challenge, if it goes through. Do I drop almost everything except bare-minimum survival skills and become a master merchant/master tailor? Or do I close up the shop, fill up a couple of backpacks with personal clothing, and finally give up on tailoring because you took the second-least-broken crafting profession in the game and nerfed it into oblivion, which is what this change is going to do.
By the way, please note that most master tailors will probably make the same choice I'm grudgingly leaning towards- going ahead and becoming master tailor/master merchant. Which will do exactly jack-all nothing for your database issues. Then what will you do to us?
Thunderheart, I once accused Sony of not even wanting there to be vendor terminals in the game. If you go back and look at preview video number one, they presented the simple act of buying a better gun as a several-day ordeal of trying to find a weaponsmith, any weaponsmith, who'd be willing to do a custom order for you, then traveling at least one planet over, then helping them with some boring low-level mission(s) in order to have them consider you a friend, and then you get the privilege of having them make a gun for you. Is that where we're going? If you can't punish us out of wanting to have fully stocked shops, if you can't punish us into only making clothes/armor/weapons/food/whatever on a custom basis for each customer, what will you do next? Eliminate the merchant profession, and merchant terminals altogether?
Before you do that, maybe you should consider that for a game this large, with this much income coming in, and with this many paying customers who (a) want to run fully stocked shops, (b) want to have fully stocked shops to buy things from so it doesn't take them all week to replace a worn-out gun, or (c) both of the above, then maybe, just maybe, SOE should invest in a better grade of database professional to optimize the back end database design, and maybe while we're at it some slightly better hardware for that database to run on?
Because the only alternative will be to do what you're already talking about doing, namely nerfing almost all elite crafters halfway to oblivion, then finding out that this didn't help with the problem at all, and then screwing over about 1/4 of your customer base by destroying their entire player experience all the way down to the ground. Because I don't see any third way that this could turn out.
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.
And Thunderheart may have missed that with all the incremental bugs with vendors and with all of the other issues with vendors, it might be nice if they addressed some of the .problems. with vendors rather than nerfing them.
I mean, just as an example,, since the system apparently is too crippled to remove vendors when players drop merchant skills, how is it possibly going to check the vendor limit for those people? So I can see the same number of people burning up the merchant tree and then surrendering it and STILL keeping the skill mods.
Lowering the vendors limit to 150 
???
So if I like crafting various things, and because I'm at the same time Master Artisan, Tailor and Bio Engineer selling :
- Craft tools
- Survey tools
- Repair kits
- Powerups (in crates AND singles)
- Stims (in crates AND singles)
- Pets
- Resources
- Clothings
- Vehicles
- And much much more... (My pride is that people always come back to browse my vendors because they're always sure of finding many interresting stuff)
With this rule I won't be able to stock more than 3 of each itemin each of my 6 vendors (ha yes I'm also Master Merchant).
So here's who you're hurting : people who enjoy crafting and do various things andprovide always stocked vendors...
Khubacca wrote:
Capping vendors is also ok. People will have to stock their vendors daily... OR make friends with a Merchant who can take stock and spend hours organizing and restocking vendors. I'm in a fairly small guild. We have 1 Master Merchant who's in charge of handling all of our guild sales. She manages 6 vendors on two planets fine.
So you're saying that your entire guild produces just enough items to stock 450 items per planet? This won't effect you then.
I stock over 1000 items in my shop, and I sell a staggering amount every day. I have a hard enough time keeping my production curve ahead of demand with overstocking, it's going to be impossible with an artificial cap on the # of items I can sell to keep everything in stock.
Moepple wrote:
Hi,
to solve the item-problem it would be just necessary to remove those vendors from players who untrained Merchant.
Read ya.
bah....i trained merchant...
after setting up my shops, there is no reason to keep those skills... they are one time use basically and waste of points... they just sit there and do nothing...
most people who have mastered merchant drop it because it is worthless and there is no fun factor.
do you really think its worth 15 skill points just to put a shirt on some npc charcater?
I think the bazaar should be capped at 5k for reg 10k for premium and 25k for auctions sales, also merchants should gain more slots on the bazaar as they gain boxes. say 5 for novice merchant, 1 for each lvl 1 box, 2 for each lvl 2, 3 for each lvl 3, 4 for each lvl 4 and 5 more for master merchant Giving you + 50 or 75 total. this would help merchants a great deal as we would no longer be a disposable class as it gives people an advantage for keeping the merchant skills.
As for the vendor item cap I myself strongly dislike the idea but I do understand the reasons for it. I am a master merchant running a shop with 6 vendors 2 of them have 300+ items on them and that is only going to increase in the future,A cap of150 would kill my business, Only an incremental cap based on the skills of the merchant can possibly work. here is a system I came up with thatworks;100 items at bus 3, 125 at bus 4, 150 at novice merchant, +10 for each lvl 1 box, +15 for each lvl 2 box, +20 for each lvl 3 box, +30 for each lvl 4 box and +50 for master merchant. This would allow a master to place 500 items on a single vendor total. This would give people a second good reason to keep their mechant skills, helping to solve another major problem with our class.
For the storage problems most of us crafters have I see two possible fixes. The first would be a dedicated storage building (like the wharehouse idea mentioned in an earlier post having it work like a factory all the items stored in it would be accessable from the outside via radial menu) thats upkeep is based on the number of items stored in it, like 12cr per day per item(100 items would cost 1200cr a day to store)with an arbitrary cap of 500-1000. People who store more would pay more for it. It should only take up one lot. Option 2 is a Storage terminal with the same 12cr per item per day cost that can be placed in a house or other structure allowing a crafter access to all his resources and componets without theneed to have extra houses for storage. By giving us a place to store all the things we need to craft our wares, we could reduce the load on the database by removing countless storage houses filled with crates and resources and putting these items into a database like the bank or bazaar . I think this would help everyone on both sides of this problem. As an architech I speak from experience, its time to fix the storage issue.
DND_Cas wrote:
Your a weaponsmith not a retailer - if you want to be both pick up merchant skills to cover this. I said I agreed with the "idea" not the actual numbers, which as pointed out is negociable, so if it turns out to be too low it can be changed.
Wow, what an absolute failure to read my .sig, I am a Master Weaponsmith, Master Artisan, MASTER MERCHANT. If you would like to go back and address the argument now that we've addressed the issue of whether or not I should be selling? That's fine.
In general however, it's foolish to say we should put the cap in at a low number and then we can bump it up later if it needs to be bumped. After all, we're still waiting for the house items limit to be raised.
No other profession gets this. As a fencer or an entertainer I don't get to dabble in the chef or carbineer proffesions for free.
Yes, and I've been shouting that they need to fix that for quite some time. Again, however, that argument doesn't reflect on me because I AM a Master Merchant.
I honestly think, in part, they are redressing an inbalence here. God knows I don't want to upset crafters cause they make all the stuff and we don't need to lose them because the game will be unbalenced - but the point remains that being a crafter != retailer. Two completely seperate skill trees imo.
Yes they are. But the artisan skill tree contains the business line for a reason. As a Master Merchant I have 0 objections to the crafter classes getting one vendor that they can sell their wares on. However I think if you cap that vendor at 150 items, you're essentially nerfing Tailor and Armorsmith making players who want either professions HAVE to get Master Merchant as well (because there's no effective way for a third-party merchant to keep a Tailor's vendor stocked it's too time consuming).
As I said tho I have sympathy for you guys and you should be given time to convert yourselves so your don't waste all your hard work or get the conversion for free.
As I said before, I'm a Master Merchant & a Master Crafter so no need for 'sympathy' for me except for the fact that people can have 6 vendors and not be Master Merchant. As a Master Merchant I think it's foolish for them to take one of the few aspects of the game that was functioning somewhat correctly, the player economy (other than rampant inflation), and introduce a change that's going to give incentive for a lot of the dedicated crafters that are driving the economy to quit.
After reading many of these posts and examining my own situation (non-crafter, non-businessman, casual miner). I would say the bazaar changes are a bad idea.
I can make 100,000 credits a day just by using harvesters and selling things on the bazaar in lots that can be purchased for 3000 credits. Each day I place 25 lots of minerals for 3000 credits as soon as I get on. Over the next 4-6 hours a good portion of my stock is gone so I fill it up again. By the next day all 25 lots are purchased.
I do this without any real time sink. I hit my harvesters every 3-4 days and usually I do thisbecause a Bounty Hunter mark has me on that planet already. So extra travel costs are no big issue because I have a 22,000 credit bounty hunter mission getting me to the planet.
Granted, my costs are higher being a bounty hunter but I dont have to buy speeders, I can mine enough metal and pay an artisian 1000 credits to assemble the vehicle. I keep a casual eye on what is needed and every time I visit a planet (3-4 each night) I bring up all my survey devices and look for the rare spawn. I put down a heavy, medium, and five chemical harvesters when Class IV Liquid PetroChem (98% concetration) appeared on Kauri a couple days ago.
I am a highly profitable resource seller without a vendor, without merchant, without anything except Novice Artisian. Raising the bazaar limit to 6000 credits will make my credit making potential just go insane.
Oh no Sir...I smell more nerfs coming!
Come on. Someone at Sony please give this game some more manpower budget to work with.
I know Everquest 2 is coming out in the next few months and yes I do realize alot of Everquest players who switched to SWG will leave for Everquest 2.
For the love of god please inform the project manager to work on something meaningful for SWG.
What's that?....Phone call....
Yeah I understand....you want the launch of Everquest 2 to be huge.....Yeah it would be kinda silly for one of your own products to take away from the spotlight.....hmmm....ok...wow...you tested the EQ2?....the combat systems are balanced...hmm...there is loot?....no way....you can rent apartments in the cities...nice....
Interesting. Well stratch this post. Just had an interesting phone call.
Star Wars Galaxies rules! Change the vendor caps to 50! No one but a master merchant should be able to place vendors! Do something about dabblers in merchant! I have fun running missions killing paralopes! Whhohhoooo!
Quickly flashes back to the Everquest 2 homepage.....
I have read many of these posts and through personal experience find the proposed solution to vendors rather strange.
It seems to me that we need more information on what this change will solve. There are so many empty vendors out there it seems this would be a better way to fix any database problem you are having. I understand a successful business being out of stock but when I visit a shop that has six vendors and they are all empty every time I show up then this cannot be a valid business.
So the changes you are proposing will only effect the actual business people who use their vendors to sell stuff and not the people just looking for xp by setting up as many vendors as they can and dont use them for anything except earning xp.
If cutting down on number of empty vendors will solve your database problem, I would try to address it in that manner.
For example, drop the xp gain for paying to access a business. I have never seen an actual business use that feature, I know that if I have to pay 1 credit to access a building then it will be filled with empty vendors.
Also lessen the xp for just opening a vendor. Make the biggest xp gain based on the purchasing of goods and not window shopping. Give xp for actually doing business.
With these changes, having multiple empty vendors will not help you in any way, while having a single vendor with goods that people want to buy will be good.
I would not totally eliminate the xp for visiting and window shopping since if you are new in the field then your goods may not be competative yet but I would not make the ability to become master merchant easy via window shopping alone.
Eola wrote:
DND_Cas wrote:
Your a weaponsmith not a retailer - if you want to be both pick up merchant skills to cover this. I said I agreed with the "idea" not the actual numbers, which as pointed out is negociable, so if it turns out to be too low it can be changed.
Wow, what an absolute failure to read my .sig, I am a Master Weaponsmith, Master Artisan, MASTER MERCHANT. If you would like to go back and address the argument now that we've addressed the issue of whether or not I should be selling? That's fine.
In general however, it's foolish to say we should put the cap in at a low number and then we can bump it up later if it needs to be bumped. After all, we're still waiting for the house items limit to be raised.
No other profession gets this. As a fencer or an entertainer I don't get to dabble in the chef or carbineer proffesions for free.
Yes, and I've been shouting that they need to fix that for quite some time. Again, however, that argument doesn't reflect on me because I AM a Master Merchant.
I honestly think, in part, they are redressing an inbalence here. God knows I don't want to upset crafters cause they make all the stuff and we don't need to lose them because the game will be unbalenced - but the point remains that being a crafter != retailer. Two completely seperate skill trees imo.
Yes they are. But the artisan skill tree contains the business line for a reason. As a Master Merchant I have 0 objections to the crafter classes getting one vendor that they can sell their wares on. However I think if you cap that vendor at 150 items, you're essentially nerfing Tailor and Armorsmith making players who want either professions HAVE to get Master Merchant as well (because there's no effective way for a third-party merchant to keep a Tailor's vendor stocked it's too time consuming).
As I said tho I have sympathy for you guys and you should be given time to convert yourselves so your don't waste all your hard work or get the conversion for free.
As I said before, I'm a Master Merchant & a Master Crafter so no need for 'sympathy' for me except for the fact that people can have 6 vendors and not be Master Merchant. As a Master Merchant I think it's foolish for them to take one of the few aspects of the game that was functioning somewhat correctly, the player economy (other than rampant inflation), and introduce a change that's going to give incentive for a lot of the dedicated crafters that are driving the economy to quit.
Firstly Chill a bit - essentially we are agreeing on the issues here and actually the fix for them. I think this thread has more of an impact on those who are not master merchants like yourself. Btw I'm also totally with you on the vendors/dropped skillsthing that needs to be fixed.
Let me ask you a question tho. Why should crafters sell thier own wares? Why can't they sell them to merchants who then sell them to customers?