Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
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.
Thank you for a response.
Might there be a definitive analysis on exactly what is going to be implemented so we may adjust beforehand without an insane mad scramble?
Either way, I'm a constant player (read idiot) who spends way too much time on game lately so I will compensate. 
But there are a large number of players that are casual and lead time to implementation would be greatly appreciated.
I wanted to mention one thing about crafters using vendors for storage. Primarily for architects there are two strong reasons why vendors are and remain the best option:
1.) There simply is no way to store the necessary materials in one place because the game does not stack our components in large numbers. Structure modules stack to 100 items in crates, walls stack to 10 items, ore mining units do not stack. Increased stacking would eliminate HALF of my need to use a vendor because of storage limitations in game.
2.) I need to be able to see the stats on my resources and components through some interface more condusive than 'examining' provides in a backpack or personal inventory. The variations in materials required is a large number and being able to simple sort and examine all my parts with one clickin a vendor solved this problem. Easily two hours of overhead during heavy crafting eliminated by simply being able to examine materials in an informative interface. Could you please re-examine giving crafters a specific storage vendor that is private (but can delegate admin) and does nothing but store shop materials? And please give us a yes or no response from the devs. I don't care where you put it in the crafter tree. If it's Master, more power to you. Just please note that the lack of storage for crafters drives a large degree of your overhead. At least 60% of houses planted at all are simply storage, in my opinion, on Tempest. Would not the whole DB issue be better with a reduction in the number of storage houses? Surely a house causes more lag in game than a potential crafter storage hybrid vendor would.
I urge you to give us a definitive response on increased stacking.
Fivo Asia
Master Artisan - Master Architect - Master Merchant
Tempest - Dantooine - SiN City
IF THE CAP ON VENDORS TO 150 ITEMS IS INSTITUTED...
I will cancel my three accounts and stop playing SWG. Very simply, I don't even want to think of how I will deal with both vending (one character is a master merchant and a serious one) and as a shopper.
The development team has already POURED energy into nerfing that should have gone into bug repair and elimination. The development team seems to delight in accompanying nerfs with very proudly righteous explanations about the why and wherewithal these are necessary; but the players who get nerfed do not feel the same joy.
Why is the CREATIVITY of the development team expended on REMOVAL rather than ADDITION (sans bugs)??? I know I am not the first player to want to know this. The hard work of players to achieve a Masters at some profession, or in the case of stocking vendors to round up or create the items for sale and place them on vendors and monitor them is not being respected. When I told my friends I was going to post on this issue, and say it would RUIN the game for me to the point where I would cease to participate, I was warned NOT TO POST. I was advised SWG developers frankly DO NOT CARE what players are feeling or thinking and that my post would in all likelihood be wiped. There has been a lot of censorship already in SWG, so when I get advised that my opinion doesnt count at all....I do not immediately argue that it does. That is pretty pathetic.
SONY hardward has superb customer service; just about the best. It is a HUGE contrast to the attitude of the SWG team. SOE please, rethink how you are running SWG; and leave the vendors as they are. If you don't respect the industry of merchants.....why will anyone ever bother to put points into MERCHANT again? I certainly won't be around to even consider that choice because I will feel my gameplay has been unfairly stifled and tampered with again.
RADIANCE, Master Merchant and then some, Gorath (plus 2 other unnamed Master accounts on Gorath)
Reticulan wrote:
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?
I've been wondering about this a lot. My guess is that it's politically impossible to publicly expose exactly what and how the database design for SWG was screwed up so badly, or to expose the fact that remedying it would be a major, major task. In other words, if this is revealed, one or more important people get fired.
So, the better course of action from a self-preservation standpoint might be the current one: to punt. The "official story" is that the database design was actually fine and dandy; the rapacious, greedy, irrational demands of the players are the real problem, and they can be controlled. (Of course, they can't be controlled without sacrificing huge portions of the original SWG game design, but let's pretend that won't happen.) And another consideration might be that, by the time things get to the total breaking point and the official story falls apart (say, with the Space Expansion, perhaps), whoever's head would be on the chopping block will have moved on to some other position, whether in another company or the current one, and won't be exposed anymore.
It's funny how paradigm paralysis works. People get locked into thinking inside their little box and always have trouble seeing other points of view.
Optimizing the data storage by changing stack sizes should be as easy as twiddling one field in the database for the crates. Give us larger crates and the amount of crates will decrease. Not too tough. What I really like is the idea that allowed us to post a crate in the vendor and set a price per unit. A Customer can come in and purchase as many items out of the crate as they need and when they retrieve the items they should receive a crate of each item type with all of them in it. This might be a little more problematic to implement but it's a darn good idea.
Of course the absolute simplest plan is to cut out the folks that are operating vendors that shouldnt be. I stated earlier that it shouldn't be too hard to add a check in that sees how many vendors are currently in operation and disallows surrendering a merchant skill if +Vendors would end up lower than actual vendors in operation. C'mon guys, there are better ways to fix this other than just adding a cap.
Now, who writes the check for my consulting fee?
Well, I can see that This is a topic everyone has an opinion about. So here is mine.
1. I have the feeling that the use of the word 'Monopoly' was ill advised. If, by some quirk, anyone has a monopoly on Anything I'd like to know what it is.
2. Price Cap - I can see how the devs can see a need for a higher cap. If the purpose of the bazaar is to provide a place for the 'average' person to sell items then 5K is a good max. This will insure that those who cannot use a vendor have somewhere to sell items for a decent price. Anyone that has a need to sell an item at a higher price can easily find someone with a vendor to do business with. I also agree that the auction should either allow for a Much higher cap or be removed altogether.
3. Item Cap - 150 is Way too low. I am a Master Artisan and I have one vendor. I handle the sales of several crafters on my vendor (see above). I sell instruments, meds, resources, buildings, harvesters, weapons and whatever else someone needs sold on my vendor. I sell by the crate and individual items. While putting 150 items on a vendor would be easy for me to do, being the facilitator for others hits that cap in a single day. I am in a guild and several guildmates use my vendor because they don't produce enough to warrant one. But together, we keep mine well stocked.
Since this a discussion about the proposed changes to the Bazaar / Vendor system I will offer some of my own (Apologies for repeating others ideas)
1. Offer admin tools for vendors. Several groups/guilds have clusters of people that trust each other. Allow for vendors to be 'shared'. As I have read here, and learned 'in-game', there are hoards of vendors that are empty. One of the biggest problem that can cause that is "1 vendor - 1 admin". No one can administer a vendor except the creator. Being in a guild, I have met and played with people that I have learned to trust. I am admin on several buildings and the guild hall. I also know a merchant that would allow me to administer any of his vendors. This would reduce maintanence time for myself, if I keep my vendor, or my friend if I maintain one of his.
2. Allow ANYONE with a vendor to pay a recurring fee (just like maintanence)to be included in the search tools on the bazaar. This would allow artisans, with the one vendor they are allowed (from the business tree), and merchants,to be searchable from any bazaar term. The benefit for being a merchant here would be a reduction in that fee based on skill treeranks. This would permit people to look for items from one convenient location. For an additionmaintanence feeto the vendor, the items could be purchased through the bazaar term just like any other transaction. The item would still need to be retrieved, just like the current bazaar system. An added bonus could be a waypoint to that vendor when a sale is completed.
3. As several messages and flames suggest, a revamp of the searching and indexing tool of the database. It has plenty of room for improvement. It may even require that a data dump of a list be sent to the players PC. This would allow a local data engine to sort the information faster. This could be made an option in the search window. That way only those people Really intent on searching for an item would have the associated delay while the data was sent to their system. The data could be transitory, in that it would be wiped when the player leaves the term or logs off.
4. Allow the items in the vendor to retain the price set for them when the sell time expires. This would make it much easier to resubmit an item or items in groups. When I have 100 plus items drop off the 'for sale' list I have to go to each and every one and reenter the sale price. That got old very fast.
5. If, as suggested, part of the problem with the 'technical' side of things is 'vendors as storage', then, make it cost.
A. Increase the vendor maintanence based on the number of items for sale. Instead of capping the max number of items, charge a fee for the higher counts.
B. Using idea #4 above, if someone has more than 100-200 items in the 'stock' side of a vendor, charge a 'restocking' fee when someone pulls an item off the vendor. 5% with a minimum of 20cr per item/stack. This won't stop the practice, but, it will at least give some people pause when they pull a stack of 100K of steel for a factory run off the vendor.
Note to devs - ANY system can be abused. So, instead of abusing Everyone for the actions of a select group, find ways to address the target issue.
One idea is this, charge an increased maintanence fee on the vendor when the number of items in the stockroom reach a certain count. Increase that fee in ranges. Not everyone can afford to pay 250cr an hour for a vendor. So, either they have to put the item up for sale, or remove it into their own inventories.
Another way that might be easier to code would be a once a day fee, againin ranges, that charge for items left in the vendor stockroomover a certain max. Either way that will have an affect on people simply using the vendor as a really Big pack.
Yet another is to make allow access to a limited number of items in the stock room for retrieval. This shouldn't affect buyers at all since they are retrieving what they bought. The vendor, however,will either have to re-offer items or remove them to get to items that are lower/higher in the queue. Until that happens they are inaccessable. While a dedicated munchkin will go through this effort and still abuse the system, most people will not have the patience it takes to bother.
Just a few suggestions. I hope they help.
Thanks
Spryte <Haven> City of Haven - Corellia - Scylla [My vendor is in the Last Chance Saloon] << Blatant plug
PadreBook wrote:
Since merchants CANNOT operate vendors for other people, that means that to be a crafter you will have to be a high-level/master merchant (and hence no skills left to participate in the so-called 'content' of this game), which most people do NOT want to do. The merchant forum is primarily people that want to do that so that is your choir, if you actually polled all crafting professions and even other types of retailers you would get and even clearer picture.
A related question: who among the Development staff actually play primarily elite crafting professions on live servers? I should ask are there any?
Padre
A better consignment, multi- admin, input, output and access controlled vendor would help too. Less stray storage, more in defined space for array garbage collection.
Fivo Asia
Master Artisan - Master Architect - Master Merchant
Tempest - Dantooine - SiN City
Why make a change to the Vendors at all? Is there a reason for the change? I just don't like changing things to change them.
Have the Merchants wanted this change? Has there been a loss of sales?
The bazaar cap: I can see arguements both for and against this one. As others have stated, I think it would work much better if the higher prices were accessible by Merchant skill level.
The vendor cap: As a tailor, all I can say is that a cap of 150 per vendor is utterly ridiculous. Others have stated the points as well as I could. I do not mind a cap, but 150 per vendor is far too low. 300-500 would be fine.
I also agree that much of the problem here would be solved if dropping your Merchant skills deleted any vendors you were no longer qualified to own. If I am a rifleman, and acquire a T21, then sell back all my rifle skills to Novice Marksman, I cannot use that rifle.
And speaking as both a merchant and a customer, having empty vendors disappear off the world map would be wonderful. Nothing is more frustrating than a 10 speeder ride (or god forbid, on foot) halfway across the planet, just to find an empty vendor.
5k as bazaar cap would be ok but anymore and you dont need to be a merchant exept for high prize items.most medic and tailor stuff could then sold on the bazaar easy and there is no reason to have a good stocked vendor.
remove the limit for auctions let them run as high as persons bid or remove the option as its stupid as it is now
give player citys bazaar terminals
vendor cap need to be much higher as 150 items when there should be a cap it should be around 500 or start at 200 and go up +100 with every efficenty or management step in merchant.
also it would be nice to raise the item caps of medium house over those of smal house and PA Halls over those of large houses (100 smal, 200 medium, 400 large, pa 800)
By the way, the fact that we are on single character servers just continues to disprove the monopoly theory. No one is fully self-sufficient. I am a resource vendor mainly, but I also use a factory. I have to make a decision about how many stores, harvesters, and factories that I need to maximize my profit. I currently run three stores (two in player cities, one outside of Theed), I have two wind generators, and five harvesters. If I open any more stores, I may be pushing my limit here and I will most likely not be able to stock all of my vendors well enough. I will not get a second account simply tospend more of my real dollarsso I cancollect moreSWG "Monopoly money".
Monopolies can only work if everyone works under a player association, but even at that point it is very difficult and time consuming. Repeat business and business referals are not monopolies, that is called repeat business. When a customer is happy with the business, they tend to go back. Just because a lot of people go to the best crafters does not mean that all crafters must be punished.
There's no sense in further posts. They've already made up their minds. As soon as they got an idea that set well with them, they stopped reading this post.