Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
But my point about "tailoring knowledge" is that figuring out what colors and styles to stock isn't trivial or easy, especially if you're not a tailor yourself. You need variety, including some stuff that won't have *wide* appeal, but might catch the eye of one or two customers and make them very happy to have found it. And you need to give a little consideration to things that go with each other. (e.g., if I'm stocking a purple skirt, I want to also stock things that would go well with purple skirts.) And you also need a decent supply of the stuff you *know* sells in mass quantities (e.g., black Uniform Boots, gloves, cloaks.)
It's just really difficult to sever the "making" from the "selling" when doing this. And I, like most tailors, do a lot of custom orders too, but the vendor's a crucial part of that for me. If I'm not around, or out doing combat stuff, I can tell people "I can't make you a custom outfit right now, but go check out my well-stocked vendor! I might have what you need there, and if not, e-mail me and I'll make the rest ASAP." In the hypothetical "tailor selling to Merchant middleman" scenario, I bet most of the time that merchant isn't going to want the purple skirts - he'll just want the "known seller" black boots, gloves, and cloaks (or, even more to the point, high-quality pistols, composite armor, or other higher profit-margin goods.)
Now, yes, it *is* technically possible to be a successful tailor without even having any vendor at all, but it essentially makes tailoring a full-time "chained to your shop" profession. There are a few people who don't mind that, or actually prefer it. But not enough to sustain a galaxy's tailoring needs. (I actually *do* "stand by my vendor" quite a lot, btw - there's a synergy between vendor sales and custom sales.)
The other point is that I envision a vicious cycle starting here. First, you chase everybody out of the profession who isn't a full-time custom tailor or a Master Merchant/Master Tailor. Which means a lot more business for those two classes, but more than they can actually *handle*. So you get a lot of burnout here, and even *more* demands on the remaining tailors, who are forced to raise their prices to exorbitant (and yes, monopolistic!) levels to keep their sanity.
This sort of thing *already* happens in the profession, but adding more huge barriers to market entry will only exacerbate the situation.
DND_Cas wrote :
Show me how a non-human vendor is any better than a person with no tailoring knowledge. Do you stand by your vendor every moment of everyday helping your customers pick the correct clothing for them?
Your clothes still bear your makers mark so they know you made them and they can still mail you for customisationsand, of course,you can also keep a more select stock on your personal vendor (albiet now with a limit).
Perhaps I'm just not getting why it is different for tailors.....I know you get more customisation requests than any other proffesion but I'm just not sure why this is going to destroy the profession.
Sorry, as a master tailor i have to disagree.
We couldn't manage all the custom orders by mail or tell, it's difficult atm, even with some good stocked vendors. There are so many choices, and so many different people you can't really match what they would like. And tailors don't always have the time to offerattention to each customer (but the Customer, always thinks he's alone... go figure). Actually i have between 5 to 10+ custom orders, of people i often don't know per day, i don't count my ingame friends also, lol. Can you imagine how many time it's consuming ?
Could you imagine, how many time it will take after the nerf ?
Away to live of the profession without being master marchant/buisness 4 a least, would be to stick near starport... waiting for custom orders.. or to fill up the bazaar waiting for sales to be done. Do you think it is fun? Can't you think we prefer being at our shop, doing some consulting for customers ? because that's actually what we are doing... Stocking sales are a major % of the benefits, it helps to show what is available and save us time if people can just pick up the thing they wanted. And those peeps who are buying stocked items often order by tell if the owner of the shop is around. Some peeps don't want to send a mil, that's also their choice.
Is tailor future is to stick at their shop, like a green palm tree ?
If so, sorry, i'm going for bounty hunter... or what ever else... FUN
Because the whole problem is here = tailors won't have fun if the CAP cames live.
And don't think we're greedy, but when you see that all your fighter friends can get money way faster and better.... why staying tailor if you can't even offer what you have been able too...
DND_Cas, for sure i really enjoy helping my customers and picking clothes for them... it's because of that satisfaction we usually keep tailor, but we won't be able to manage that service to all.
That's why i think most of tailors would prefer to surrend than to be spammed or offer a bad service.
DND_Cas wrote:
Lol - henceforth I shall call you mr frosty
I can live with that
, new name-appropriate text color.
Imo its mean't for small time goods selling notretail shop selling otherwise there would be no point in having multiple vendors in the merchant line. Think ofthe bussiness line in Artisanas a greengrocers as oppossed to the management line in Merchant which is more like a supermarket(Mall).
The thingis that I always found the extra merchant vendors to make it possible for a merchant to run interplanetary businesses. A crafter with one vendor can sell on Naboo, sure thing, but he can't sell on Naboo and Lok and Danthomir.
A merchant with more vendorscan have business that surpass the simple planetary scale, they can bring the pointof scale to the frontier worlds, not just to their local neighborhood. This was the one place I saw Merchants having real niche viability. Buying high demand items on starter and other'safe' worlds, and bringing them to shops/outposts in the frontier. Markups for transport and convenience bringing a nice profit margin.
But as a crafter/merchant I ain't got the time
Numen that was a postscript to the post above it and should be read in context along with it, I think you misunderstood what I was saying and why. My comments referred to the combination of raising the bazaar cap along with adding the 150 cap to player vendors. The bazaar cap in and of itself is not as big of a problem, although I still don't agree with it for the reasons I stated in the original post.
If we could edit our posts that would have been all together lol
DND_Cas wrote:
SueDenim wrote:
Show me any merchant who wants to, and/or has the ability and knowledge of tailored clothing, to be a "tailor's merchant."
The design of the tailoring profession makes it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to do this.
Show me how a non-human vendor is any better than a person with no tailoring knowledge. Do you stand by your vendor every moment of everyday helping your customers pick the correct clothing for them?
Because they can stock their vendor with 500+ items in various types and colors and when 'Light Wookie Smock - Blue' sells out they can put another one up. The Merchant is generally NOT going to want to write down a list of each type and color of item that sells out to then go ask the tailor for exactly those items, etc etc etc.
The difference between being able to stock your own vendor, recieve the emails directly and post to it directly as opposed to needing to coordinate stock, transfer x, y, z stock at an appointed time and have no idea what's selling, is pretty vast.
And if a vendor cap is put in place, how many merchants are going to want to give 500-1000 slots of their vendor space to ONE tailor?
The point isn't that the knowledge of tailoring allows them to stand their and advise their customer, the point is that the knowledge of tailoring helps them know what should be stocked, how much and what varieties without having to add a middle-man to the process that can't do anything but muck the process up.
Perhaps I'm just not getting why it is different for tailors.....I know you get more customisation requests than any other proffesion but I'm just not sure why this is going to destroy the profession.
It is different for tailors, because the selection of tailor items is an order of magnitude above every other profession, and that's before you begin to count things like colors, etc.
Sinnare wrote:
I have a really neat concept: FIX YOUR DATABASE. Which all of us know is the problem, the problem for every issue since day one
That's my thought exactly. What worries me is if they are going to band-aid fix the database with these nerfs, what are they going to do later when more content is to be added and they need to cut down again for servers to handle new items and loot, etc? Are we going to be told that our inventories will be cut to 20 items to keep the database from choking?
Nomorenerfs wrote:
Rogue1970 wrote:
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.
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...
What do you think?
I think you've never played a Tailor before.
Crates don't work for Tailors in this case.
Tailor Customization (coloring) comes ***AFTER*** the "create prototype" and "create manufacturing schematic" step. Unless you want to completely remove colors on clothes, bad idea. Non-customized clothes are GRAY. Ever see the PBS show "Lathe Of Heaven"? They got around "racism" by making everyone GRAY. Grand idea.
You're right and I have not been a tailor before. Learned something new already
So, I guess the game has otehr limitations that any solution is going to run up against. Sad they can't fix the limitations first, then decide whether more limitations are needed, huh?
The most common Merchant skills needed are Novice and Advertising 3 - this gives a budding retailer 2 NPC vendors and Advertising on the map. Limiting us to 150 items per vendor is only 300 items - FAR too few for most crafters and another precious 5 skill points to get a higher limit will only take away from our other dependancies. Biz 3 should start at 100, then add 100 items per vendor per skill box....Biz4 is 200 items,Novice Merchant would be 300 items per vendor(2 vendors) and so on...
Also, Merchant should be a learn once and unlearn typeprofession in my opinion (as it is now), we can keep our vendors, advertising etc after learning and activating the features. It should remain this way not to deter from the Merchant profession, but to allow crafters to participate in the games content.
Many die-hard Merchant Only types will argue against it, but they are able to enjoy Combat content and Merchant - Crafters are not. So their opnion is biased. They can still enjoy the game no matter which way the system changes - Die-hard crafters cannot.
Politician is this way, why shouldn't Merchant be too?
How would we all feel if your Mayor unlearned Fiscal 2 and Faction 2 boxes and the bank, clone center and shuttle in their cities went poof? Or a new Mayor was elected without those boxes - should the city services poof too?
Being a Master Merchant does not add to the game, earning the skills does.
Penalizing people by forcing the skill point usage on them only limits their gameplay and enjoyment of the game.
Eola, Elona and SD,
Thankyou for explaining what the issues are.
However I now want to turn it around on you. Lets assume that the proposal goes forward - what could be done to lessen the problems you have highlighted?
i.e. instead of going by number of items on a vendor perhaps the number would be limited by wieght or price or perhaps tailors would get more skills to compensate etc....
SueDenim wrote:
DND_Cas wrote:
Eola wrote:
DND_Cas wrote:
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?
Show me any merchant who wants to, and/or has the ability and knowledge of tailored clothing, to be a "tailor's merchant."
The design of the tailoring profession makes it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to do this.
I'll add to that - show me a Merchant who can afford to support multiple crafters. I keep from 500k-1mil credits of stock on hand at times as a DE, Miner, Artisan.... Now picture 5 of me trying to get a Merchant ot pay me ahead of time.
A solution would be a consignment type system built into the merchants vendors - where we could be an admin and the vendor would pay us our cut and the merchant his set percentage on the sales.
This is a secure, trustworthy and interdependant solution to make Merchants actually useful to others. It would also eliminate a lot of the grubles over incremental caps (as long as they are reasonable).
Fixing the database or buying more would be a bigger help though.