Development Cycle Archive

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Thunderheart wrote:

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LeBob wrote:

TH

When this goes in, will players be prevented from using vendors if they already dropped the Merchant skills necessary to create that vendor?

I think I read this in the patch notes, but I wanted to make sure... if so, I think this will be a great change... too many people were taking advantage of the skill points...

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Yes, they will.

Though, I was able to sweeten the pot for Master Merchants. At the Master Box level, all of the Master's vendor limits will be raised to 300 per each vendor.

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TH, can you find out for us how this will affect someone who has a couple of vendors (of their own) in a merchant tent they own as well? I got all these things while I was a Merchant, and now I'm down to Master Droid Engineer and Novice Bounty Hunter. So, two direct quetions for you to ask:

1. What happens with Merchant Tents?

2. What happens to the items on a vendor if someone were to create a vendor, place items on it, and then drop those Merchant (or even Artisan/Business) skills?

Thanks!

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Katmer wrote:
OK, I'd like to run through a good-news-bad-news list for this modification to the changes (as I see it).

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. No Kidding!


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... I totally agree 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. I always hate when I hear emails coming in fast as I know it is time to relist everything!

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. Yes Please!!

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. Relisting is needed so we all can play other parts of the game!

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.

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Great Post and very well thought out!! I am not happy with all the vendors I will now need to sell the same items I now sell on 2! I also would like to see a bigger bonus or benefit at Master Mechant!

Message Edited by Aslanon on 08-16-2004 07:17 PM

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Thunderheart wrote:

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

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I'm a little confused, but that's not unusual for me

If I have Management III and Efficiency IV, does that mean I get 11 vendors? Or 10? Or 9?

Whichever the answer is, I can certainly live with those limits given the increase in vendors I'll have. In fact, this actually improves my situation rather than nerfs me (which the original merchant revamp did), since as a Master DE, Master Chef, Master Artisan, I didn't have enough skill points left to master merchant. Under this scenario, I'll get more vendors than I do now -- a perfectly acceptable trade-off for me for having to cope with item limits.

And I *think*, although I haven't done the math, that it would have even worked for me when I was a Master DE/Master Architect, since the extra vendors would have allowed me to split my furniture across more than one vendor to accommodate the item limits. Not sure Tailors can live with this, but I'll let someone who's a tailor comment about that.

I hate to end this post with a complaint, but surely someone on the dev side could have done a little math themselves and figured out why the original caps wouldn't work at all for crafters -- I would hate to think this was a bait & switch.