Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
As for the bazaar limit being raised, I understand and support that. I use the bazaar as advertising, putting up real products at real prices with descriptions of where to buy crates, people are impressed with what I craft and come to my store. Upping the limit will allow me to expand my line of bazaar goods.
The limit on the vendors is a very very bad idea. As a merchant, one of my biggest frustrations was keeping items in stock. With only a couple of vendors, with my weaponsmithing selection on one and artisan selection on another, my sales were fast and furious and I was always in the store restocking items. Being able to list to for 30 days was nice, I could put up enough and not worry about them for a few days at a time, giving me time to actually play the game rather than mess with vendors. If there is any variety at all on a vendor the capwould behit right away. I can sell 10 of one type of gun in one day, but only if they are listed; I would need to be a Master Merchant to adequately display my own wares. What if I wanted to own a store in two locations? In our guild we have a weaponsmith, a doctor, an architect, and we sell resources. One high level Merchant profession player should be sufficient for this load of saleables per location. The cap would kill the way our guild offers things for sale, why would limiting the selection of items be good for the community or economy? Find a different way to stop people from using their vendors as storage. Find ways to make the Merchantprofession more fun and less tediouswork.
We players are very ingenious people. We will find a way to overcome.
You think the "Holo Trade on Server X for Server Y" or "Will Trade Lots" posts were prevalent?
Just wait until people figure out they can "cross server" level Merchants up.
I can see it now - Sample message follows:
Subj: Will Setup Master Merchant on Naritus for Master Merchant on Eclipse
Need vendors? I have an ALT character on Naritus. I will spend time leveling him up to Master Merchant and place vendors in return for you doing the same on Eclipse.
I will log in weekly to accept any offers of your crafted goods and place them up for sale. Any monies received from that week's transactions will be bank tipped to you at the same time.
You would agree to do the same.
If both parties agree, we could conduct the Vendor maintenance activities on a more frequent basis.
I wish the DEV's would get the point - no "temporary nerf" is going to fix the database problem. We will just find another way....
This appears to be one of those bite the bullet issues thats going to hit the crafting community. The probelm with the DB is that we keep adding to it and rationally it can be assumed that no DB can store an infinate number of items. Even if they increased the size of thier database 3 fold there would still be an issue with stockpiling resources and goods which would cause serious issues. The alternatives to vendor caps would probably cause more problems than setting it.
I've taken some time to think about this and hopefully I'll be offering a few constructive suggestions:
I. The price cap for instant sales on the bazaar could definately use an increase. With the amount of money flowing around on the servers noncrafters have to have a viable means of selling resources and newbie crafters have to have a viable means of recovering some of the cost of advancing in thier trades.
A. Set the bazaar cap for instant sales to 5000 cr.
1. Allow for a price capof 10000 cr with the use of the premium sales ability.
B. Remove the bazaar price cap on auctions.
1. This would allow a commodities market to develop which would be a positive development for both crafters and resource suppliers.
2.Address the money sink issue bybasing fees on a percentage of the price paid for the commodity.
3. Allow the Merchants the use of their efficiency skills to reduce these fees.(essentially they becomethe most effective brokers)
C.Allow the Merchants to have more slots for sales on the bazaar.
1. Management would be used to increase the slots by 10 items per level.
2. Master Merchants should be alllowed 75 slots total on the bazaar.
II. Artisans should keep the ability to have vendors. It's important that they establish themselves and vendors are one of the few ways that they can provide an outlet to the goods theyproduce. Certain items just don't fit within the bazaars pricing capacity.
A. The Artisan vendor should be less efficient than the Merchant vendors.
1. Limit the Artisan vendor Capacity to 150 items or scale its capacity to the business skill tree.
2. Establish a fee structure for the Artisan vendoron a percentage or per sale basis.
III. Merchant vendors will require some scale back as presently they area problem for the database. Seeing as a substantial increase in the size of the database would not be a cost effective strategy for SWG some changes need to occur.
A.Capacity
1.The proposed 150 item limit is too low. The capacity should be scalable with skills appropriate in the merchant class but should start at 250 items.
2.Scalable capacity should probably work in the following manner:
Novice 250 items
Level 1 of the appropriate skill tree+ 50 items = 300 items
Level 2 of the appropriate skill tree+50 items =350 items
Level 3 of the appropriate skill tree +100 items=450 items
Level 4 of the appropriate skill tree+ 100 items=550 items
Master Merchant +200 items =750 items on each vendor
Considering the amount ofvendors a Master Merchant can have there should be no problem with total capacity of goods. Even a slight investment in the class would yield adequite capacity for item intensive crafting classes. Dabbling in merchant is practically a necessity for some of the crafting classes and should not be something for which people are penalized for.
Does the Merchant Communityconsider this viable? WillArtisansbe willing to acceptthe nerfing of their vendors on some level? Would a commodities market based upon an auction system without a price cap benefit the SWG economy? Can the developers indicate what would be an acceptable capacity that players can work with?
These are the questions that must be address before any substantive changes are implemented to the economy of the game.
you know the one thing that i dont know if anyone has thought about in this whole debate has to do with the fact that there are three tabs in the vendor. does anyone know, is the 150 proposed limit per vendor, per tab, per skill level, or is it 150 item limit on all vendors, all tabs at all skill levels? has anyone of the devs given us any feedback on this?
if the cap is on all, all and all: this would mean every merchant no matter how many vendors you had you would be allowed 150 items total for sale, offered to you and in the store room. ridiculous i know, but at this point i am assuming the worst scenario that the devs might be thinking about.
if the cap is per vendor, per tab, per skill level: then if i was an artisan with the first skill levelwith the ability to have a vendor i could be selling 150 items, offered 150 items and storing 150 items on one vendor. not too bad but i have rarely had more than 15 items ever offered to my vendor. and most of what i have is in storage because i dont want people to have to drill or use the search function on the left because both work in a retarded fashion.
can anyone, especially you ThunderHeart, answer this? again i know that we are all pretty darn sure that it means 150 items total on a vendor, but TH wasnt really that clear on this if you ask me. not in the post that started this anyway. :\
The vendor cap should be reconsidered at a higher number 150 is just not quite right, unless you intend to give businessIV +1 vendor. 300 is a far more reasonable number. But as I have seen stated the problem of number of items will not go away. It will just shift, storage characters will be made and traded between servers etc...
The answer is an increase in you cache hit rate, which given the scope of your database is obviously daunting. No doubt you are faced with a hardware limitation issue and, depending on you SQL vendor choice, many other factors. I just hope you aren't forgetting that the underling issue is still there. I hope while you are coding this "quick fix" that you have some people addressing the real issue.
If you are referring to output and productivity the seperating factors are teamwork, time spent and devotion. Those three traits equate to good business practice.
Another is reliability, if people know they can come to a vender a always find items for sale they will continue to come back.
All of the part time, wishy washy crafters in the game who do not demonstrate the commitment to their class, by definition do not deserve the rewards the commited crafters do. And the Conglomerates who work together to produce big numbers and high quality? That is capitolism at its best, if not for them we will never see the Best products available in the game, and these poeple should be rewarded for their hardwork and teamwork. It is not easy to coordinate such things, but god bless them for their efforts.
We run a small vender business, we fill in the niche in the market that the big boys avoid. We sell many of the mundane products that others do not. If you limit the number of items on a vender, you will require us to return frequently to restock, and chew up what little profit margin exists.
As developers you have done a great job on the player driven economy and the players have responded in kind. The bazaar is good and the vender system is good. We bessech you stick to the job well done, and pleasse do not fix that which is not broken. Please.
DiscoJason wrote:
Why don't the devs make it so the bazaar system and the vendors are tied into one system. When you pull up a bazaar terminal, you can see what vendors have in stock on the planet. They can buy it right there, but they have to go to the vendor to pick it up. Also, please add a search feature to the bazaar.
A while back this was brought up. Apparently in beta that was the case (sorry wasn't in beta myself, so I'm going off what the dev response was). People could buy items that were on a private vendor at the bazaar terminals and got the waypoint to go pick-up their item. But people put outragous entrance fees on the buildings. So if you actually wanted to pick-up what you bought then you had to pay thousands (or more) extra. That's why the systems were seperated according to one of the devs (Q I think).
I think the bazaar should be raised to 25k
I think the vendor cap should be 200 items in one page of items.
just my 2 cents
I think the limit on the bazaar needs to be raised, 6000 is a start but higher would be better.
And about the vendor limits, I have to disagree with this in part, unlimited items is ridiculous, but limiting it to 150 is ridiculous too, the limit should be around 300, be reasonable, 150 is just too small, In my opinion the purpose of multiple vendors was that so you could have shops on different planets and cities, not so that I have to place 5 vendors inone buildingjust to be able to stock all my goods. I am a crafter of armor, each suit of armor is 9 pieces and I like to stock the vendor with about 10 suits of several different sorts, 300 would barely accomodate this but its a reasonable amount, again, 150 is just too small.
Armorsmiths arent the only ones who would have issues with this, weaponsmiths with 50 different weapons, 10 of each, will now need multiple vendors in one building, medical crafters who sell single units of a huge variety of items will also have this problem, then there is tailors with their multi colored clothing and about 100 different garments, 150 just isnt going to accomodate these people.
300 per vendor only results in 3 pages, thats fine IMO, wont have to grind down thru the pages so much with this amount.
I say NO WAY to 150 items, thats just SILLY.
GrandPotato wrote:
What I mean is, why can't we place a stack of resources on there, and sell them at a cost-per-unit basis. Let's say I stick a stack of 100k Dantooine berries on my vendor for 5cpu, and someone can stop by and pick up 5k, or 1k, or 30k, their choice. Then the stack should only take up ONE slot, and can be sold to multiple people.
The same could be done with factory crates, and while you're at it, make factory crates stack higher (I'd like to see 100 per crate for most items... why have 40 crates of 25 clogging up the database when I could have 10 of 100?)!
A weaponsmith could make a run of 100 guns, stick the crate(s) on the vendor, and people could buy one ata time directly from the crate, at a cost-per-item basis.
This all has been probably said before, but I just wanted to make sure it WAS said.
yep it has, and probably before me too. i think that this is the best way to fix the database glut that the devs are so concerned about.