Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
I see everyone saying "bad idea" to the vendor cap, and we're getting it anyway? To what purpose, to what end? For what reason?
Care to kick up the storage spaces in our houses then, so we have the room for the stuff we can't put on the vendor for sale? I still don't buy the monopolizing argument. If a person has 10 or 1000 items on his vendor, he doesn't twist someone's arm into buying them. The "stupid user" argument doesn't fly, either.
There's obviously a bug in the marketplace system again, I'm guessing, more than likely something along the lines of the eternal db problem we've had forever.
Just go delete all those "Pieces of Art" and Wookiee Life Day orbs SOE forced on us, to free us up some space in that poor ol' database.
The Bazaar cap is fine, as there are some "pedestrian items" such as superb stimpacks that could potentially sell for over 3000 credits.
The 150 item limit would absolutely cripple my city's merchants. I am a member of a city that has three master merchants, and maxed out with vendors, items are still hard to keep in stock. This 150 item limit woulddestroy our city's merchant outputand cause a daily restock to be a requirement.
After all, the empire is obviously not oppressive in this game. If it were, then it would take over monopolies. This is capitalism, baby. People go to where they can get the best stuff. Why are you trying to change this?
For instance, my city sells all of their goods through the three masters' merchants. Doctors sell their stimpacks, armorsmiths sell their armor (obviously), etc. We have quite a few people whose income are those merchants, and to limit the merchant item intake at 150 would damage many in my city. (Perhaps include a guild or city merchant?) It's not a monopoly, it's just the common livingplace of manygreat crafters.These superb crafters in my city, who don't have the skill points for merchant, would spend the bulk of their time in Coronet or theed trying to sell their items ifthere wasn'thave room ona citymate'svendor for their items, which just isn't fun. We experienced that enough in East Commons on EverQuest, which is why you guys (Sony) implemented the Bazaar on Luclin. Don't make your error twice.
Just my two credits. 
Moyer
GrafvonSoden wrote:
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.
I think we're just talking amongst ourselves at this point (sincepulling the plugon the general Discussion forum has left us with noother place to discuss changes that affect economic game).
--Flatfingers
I like the ideas posted about a merchant's vendor being shareable. Allow the vendor to give other players usage rights, and to set a 'merchant fee' on the vendor that is taken off the top of their sales to compensate the merchant. Right now merchants are forced to manually load all the vendors and sort through emails to figure out how much they owe who. Why should we all be using calculators and sorting emails, when the vendors could do it themselves?
I'd also like to see some enforcement of vendor placement. That's leading to so many empty vendors around that it's hard to find anything good any more. If you don't have the merchant skill to have x number of vendors,put the most recently placed vendors in a shutdown state where only the owner can access it.
Flatfingers wrote:
Lefty, I really like your "Stockkeeper" concept -- I thinkyou're on tosomething very interesting there. As you suggest, it would certainly open up Merchants to be the elite sales professionals. I would suggest, however, that a little more attention be paid to the Merchant side of the equation.
...
Isuggestfocusing on the "markup" aspect ofyour Stockkeeper suggestion: let the Merchant set a commission percentage on stockkeeper sales. Every time the stockkeeper vendor makes a sale, the currently set percentage is deducted from the sale price and added to the Merchant's account.
The result of this would be to allow Merchants to compete with each other on price, rather than on location or notoriety. You'll still get people who'll just find the closest Merchant, or use a Merchant they already know through previous purchases, but others will price shop to find the best deal (i.e., lowest commission). That will tend to spread out stockkeeper sales, encouraging more Merchants to participate and keeping more money circulating in the economy.
(One possible extension of this feature would be to let Merchants set a different commission for each person they allow to use their stockkeeper. This would enable Merchants to set lower percentages for really good customers who move lots of high-ticket items, while not risking as much on new clients.)
That said, good job coming up with the Stockkeeper concept! I think we'd all benefit if the developers implemented your suggestion.
--Flatfingers
Flatfingers,
Thanks for the thoughtful review of the stockkeeper idea. Just to clarify, as I conceived of it, the stockkeeper was for sales TO the merchant...not through. It is basically a device for large "offers to vendor." The merchant can still choose to reject the items if they are not what was agreed to with the supplier, etc.
Basically, as I described it, I seea "stockkeeper"as a tool to get around that pesky 25 item cap on "bazaar sales/offers to vendor." That cap is a good limitiation for both database and game restraint ideas. But the merchant, to be a good sales needs sometimes to be able to recieve as many orders as they turn around. That 25 item cap on offers can get in the way sometimes, restricting the flow of goods from producer to merchant (especially if one or both of the players cannot always be on at the same time).
That being said, as I originally conceived of it, you as the merchant then can choose to "buy" the offers to your stockkeeper. You can hold them for yourself, place them on another vendor in another structure manually, or use some new "transfer to vendor with markup" option (with the markup able to be dialed up or down for each transfer).
I'll check out your post. Hopefully it's nota read-only now so I can respond there. I personally think agressive economic gaming has yet to happen in an MMOG. Games like Europa 1400 and Capitalism have shown me that this aspect of gaming can be as compelling and cut-throat(if not more so) than combat based play.
I have other ideas. But this stockkeeperone could be done with little artwork (an interface menu) and at it's heart is another data transformation function tool. Ultimately, for merchants to be a fun class--as opposed to a mule class like they currently are (second account anyone?)--they need options in the functionality of their hires. If there were even three options: A vendor, A stockkeeper, or a *blank*--it would require you to strategize as a merchant regarding who you hire when tosuit your markets. And if your market is dynamic enough, you may find yourself needing to fire a Vendor so you can get a Stockkeeperfor a way station near a manufacturing community. Like any profession, being a merchant should require that you play--not just exist.
Heck, shooting from the hip, what if there were two types of vendors? One's with LOW item caps but HIGH price options (unlimited) versusa second typewith HIGHER item caps but a price cap (set at double or triple the Bazaar price cap)? Or what if there were specialized item vendors such as "Servers" that could sell only foodstuffs? Ora vendor that specializes inclothing items only, with anincreased item cap? How do the tailors reading feel about such a suggestion?
Bazaar Price Raise = Good
Vendor Item Cap = Bad
I think I would be ok with a vendor cap more like 300 or 500 or something like that... I sell resources and my vendor constantly has more then 150 stacks on it, I don't want to have a second vendor for MORE of the SAME THING, I want to use my second vendor for Premium Quality Resources.
I understand that people are using them for storage in homes, etc.... you're not going to get around this no matter what you do.
PLEASE, Crafters and Merchants, realize what it is they are trying to change... and let's keep it reasonable.
YOU may only need 100 spaces for your vendor depending on what it is you sell, but there are plenty of us who need more, and you too may be limited by what you voted for.
Think about it before saying 150 is a decent cap....
Ok I don't know if this has been commented on or if this is even the appropriate location for this post.. But I didn't feel like spending the next two weeks reading through 74 pages of posts lol.
I like the idea of amping the bazaar limit to 6k. But more importantly I think the "auction" should not have a cap at all.. after all it is an "auction"?!? correct? The whole purpose of an auction is for the seller to get the highest dollar amount on a givin item he or she has for sale. That's kinda hard to do when the auctoneer says 3k going once! going twice! ohh Im sorry kind sir.. your bid is over our 3k limit.. Doh!
jlsmentek wrote:
I LIKE the idea of raising the limit on the bazaar. It will allow resources to be sold in larger quiatity and thus reduce the overall number of items on the bazaar possibly... of course there will still be the lamers who post 2 units of hide for 6k credits
AND, as a non-merchant changes to the vendors do not affect me so do what you want with the limits to those
Actually, the vendor limit does effect you as a non merchant. Armorsmiths have to keep 9 different items in good stock (if they only stock comp armor) and weaponsmiths, they have to stock TONS of items.
Since random slicing is such a pain in the ass, I have braught a smuggler to an armor vendor and baught 45 pieces of armor before in order to get my mind encumb 320 suit of advanced comp. The armorsmith is not on all the time, so he depends on being able to put a crate of each piece on the vendor because he sells so much armor.
Sure he could become a merchant and get another vendor. He could do what most merchants do and buy a second character just for the vendors. I doubt he will do either. This might just be the straw that breaks him and makes him quit. Now i will have to go back to paying market price for my armor
.The bazaar is great. No longer are we all newbs running 1200 credit missions trying to get to novice pistoleer and make our first 100k credits. The 6k bazaar cap will only be good.
Remove the cap from that completely so that it will be useful and you can leave the bazaar instant sale cap at 3k. just make the Auction max beginning bid at the instant sale price so that people dont abuse it and use it as they would an instant sale. So that if someone wanted to sale something for 15k, they would only be able to list it as the max instant sale cap(soon to be 6k) and hope that it reached 15k - or just never take the chance and setup their own venders.
Otherwise, remove auction from the baazar terminals, its useless in its current state...
Bazaar credit cap raised = Good Idea
Limit vendors to 150 items = Bad idea, make it a more reasonable number, say 500?
Thanks for asking!
Lefty73 wrote:
Thanks for the thoughtful review of the stockkeeper idea. Just to clarify, as I conceived of it, the stockkeeper was for sales TO the merchant...not through. It is basically a device for large "offers to vendor." The merchant can still choose to reject the items if they are not what was agreed to with the supplier, etc.
...
That being said, as I originally conceived of it, you as the merchant then can choose to "buy" the offers to your stockkeeper. You can hold them for yourself, place them on another vendor in another structure manually, or use some new "transfer to vendor with markup" option (with the markup able to be dialed up or down for each transfer).
DOH! You're right, I did misunderstand -- thanks for the correction. Of course, this is why general discussion is good: now we have two potential enhancements to Merchant sales. 
There may be (probably are) more than just two possibilities, but looking at these two as objectively as I can, it seems to me that expanding the 25-item Bazaar limit is really less a goal than it is a means to a goal, that being the expansion of economic activity (which is my design goal, too). That said, it seems to me that there is a difference in the amount of additional economic activity we'd likely get in choosing between the stockkeeper-selling-to-Merchant model you described and the stockkeeper-using-Merchant-vendor-to-sell-to-anyone model I mistakenly thought you meant.
Let's look at your version first. If as a wandering player (i.e., non-Merchant who doesn't want to sell on the Bazaar) I can now sell to Merchants, then that's an expansion of the economy and thus a Good Thing. I won't sell everything I offer, but there'll still be more sales than there otherwise would have been.
The key difference in the other model is that "wandering" sales aren't limited to Merchants -- anyone who visits the Merchant's shop can buy from the stockkeeper. To my mind, that's more economically advantageous than the original model because it opens up vastly more opportunities for sales (since the total number of players is always much larger than the number of Merchants).
OK, there's a plus -- what are the potentialdrawbacks to a stockkeeper that allows Player A to postitems for sale to any anonymous Player B?
One that occurs to me right off the bat is factional items. If we're about to see a real "Imperial crackdown," then Merchants who sell Rebel-factioned equipment should be subject to severe penalties... but if someone can post items on my stockkeeper for sale, what's to stop him from getting me in trouble by sticking Rebel gear on there? We could have a rule that makes Imperial troopersignore stockkeepers when searching vendors for Rebel items, but that doesn't make much sense. Or we could have a rule that prevents factioned items for being offered for sale at all, but that would prevent Merchants from participating in the GCW if they wanted to take the risk of search and seizure. Or we could allow Merchants to reject items from their stockkeepers (whether factioned or not), but they'd be at risk until they were able to get back to their shop to remove the listing.
Personally I'd go with the third option as offering the most bang for the buck -- it solves numerous potential problems.
Another possible drawback to stockkeeper-as-vendor would be that it would allow players to use stockkeepers as additional storage. They could simply charge 1cr for everything they put on the stockkeeper so their friends could collect the items for free (the 1cr at sale time would go to the Merchant). To this I'd reply that if Merchants have the ability to delist items (in addition to the necessary feature of being able to specify who's able to place items for sale on a stockkeeper), then this problem is minimized.
There may be other problems, but those are all I can think of. And as I see it, they're vastly outweighed by the potential increase in exchanges when selected players can sell to anyone. (One nice additional feature of stockkeepers selling to anyone is that potential buyersmight visit the other vendors in the Merchant's shop.)
Comments welcome, of course.
I'll check out your post. Hopefully it's nota read-only now so I can respond there.
Sadly, it is read-only now that the Discussion forum has been closed. I think the original message of the threadshould probably remain there as it's somewhat recondite.But I'm considering reposting the core of the General Contracts messages in that threadto another forum (probably Game Guides)-- there's just so much potentialin the concept of player contractsthat I wouldn't mind seeing it get additional playerexposure, even if it does wind up beingslightly off-topic.
I have other ideas. But this stockkeeperone could be done with little artwork (an interface menu) and at it's heart is another data transformation function tool. Ultimately, for merchants to be a fun class--as opposed to a mule class like they currently are (second account anyone?)--they need options in the functionality of their hires. If there were even three options: A vendor, A stockkeeper, or a *blank*--it would require you to strategize as a merchant regarding who you hire when tosuit your markets. And if your market is dynamic enough, you may find yourself needing to fire a Vendor so you can get a Stockkeeperfor a way station near a manufacturing community. Like any profession, being a merchant should require that you play--not just exist.
Heck, shooting from the hip, what if there were two types of vendors? One's with LOW item caps but HIGH price options (unlimited) versusa second typewith HIGHER item caps but a price cap (set at double or triple the Bazaar price cap)? Or what if there were specialized item vendors such as "Servers" that could sell only foodstuffs? Ora vendor that specializes inclothing items only, with anincreased item cap? How do the tailors reading feel about such a suggestion?
I absolutely agree with the essence ofyour thinking here --there is no reason why there can't be or shouldn't be an full-blooded economic game within SWG. It borders on criminal that a game with a powerful crafting system and the possibility of interstellar commerce lacks the few additional features necessary to allow players to compete to become Merchant Princes. Merchants should be more than glorified vendor attendants!
The real difference between SWG's Merchants and RL's "captains of industry" is that in our world it's possible to organize workers to produce new goods and services. Give me player contracts, hierarchical organizations, and the ability to create new kinds of items from existing items, and I'll give you the deepest, most satisfying MMOG ever created.
Now we just have to figure out how you're going to give me those things. 
--Flatfingers
I like both of these proposed changes.
The 6000 credit cap change to the bazzar, would allow merchants and players to openly sell many more items for the price they deserve, without having to go around looking for a black-market Trade or Trade & Tip scenario. It will also clear out the player vendors of more lower end items... opening them up for more and more advanced items.
I also love the idea of a cap on the number of items on the vendors... I know that I am not alone when I say that I have been frustrated many times by the crash of the whole bazzar/vendor system, or specific vendors... or trying to open one up, and waiting for the next "HOUR" (obvious exageration) for it to display the items inside.
Consider the following though... while it is nice that players can "Name" the items they make... instead of having all pistols show up as "Pistols" and rifles as "Rifles" and so-on/so-forth... perhaps you could add an identifier tab on the bazzar/vendor terminals. So that you have the "Class" of "Pistol"... but then another tab identifying the pistol as a "FWG5" or a "CDEF"... because it's getting rather rediculous to have to open up every pistol you look at to make sure that you really are looking at an FWG5 instead of a CDEF.
Just a thought.
Jericho Farstrider, City of Fate, Naboo (Ahazi)... Novice Pistoleer, Novice Brawler, Composer/Virtuoso
Flatfingers wrote:How do the tailors reading feel about such a suggestion?
Yeah, I thought differentiated caps might be a fair compromise...would it be possible to have them within the same vendor, though? Like one cap for clothing items, and another for food?
*remains hopeful*