Development Cycle Archive
Thread: In-Test: Merchant Vendor Changes
AloraElon
Mon Aug 16, 2004 9:58 pm
#183
I'm a Master Merchant and Master Weaponsmith. With 12 vendors and 3000 items, my weaponsmith business will survive and thrive. And if the final figure is 300 per vendor for Master Merchants, even better. Thank you!
Cafa
Mon Aug 16, 2004 10:00 pm
#184
Numen wrote:
Rubicon49BC wrote:
Simple database logic.
If you have 1 vendor with 3000 items, each time someone accesses the vendor, all 3000 items must be loaded, leading to strain on database. With 250 limit per vendor, database strain is much lower. Strain is not just in how much is in database, but how much must be loaded in each time.
Your missing a small piece of info for proof. All 3000 items don't get loaded at once. Only a max of 100 items on a player vendor are loaded at the same time(at least that should be what happens). When I hit next items, there is a delay. That delay should be the delay to get the info from the database.
One suggestion.
For merchants, we can view all our items over all our vendors at once. Would it be possible to get that same feature for customers? So instead of having 12 vendors in the front room. You could have 1 or 2 and then 10-11 in the back room. 12 vendors per merchant is going to be a nightmare in malls.
Geez, even though, loading 3000 items in Oracle 9i takes, um, .023 ms.
emonde
Mon Aug 16, 2004 10:41 pm
#185
So this means if i dropped merchant and business skills, when this goes live, all my stuff on vendor need to be sell or else it will be lost ? I hope im wrong...
lees
Mon Aug 16, 2004 10:59 pm
#186
TH, You said your going to make it so people cant place items on there vendor if they dont have the skills right? So if some one after 30 days looses all there items in he stock room and cant replace the items for sale then 2 weeks latter the vendors will be removed?
Also what are you going to do about the merchent tents? If i place one down can i still have it latter?
God only knows i can dothis now with the med center in a player city.
lees
Mon Aug 16, 2004 11:03 pm
#187
Just though about somthing that means i can have 12 listings selling my armor on the map and flood out others. Now thats just lame i think.
loop_not_defined
Mon Aug 16, 2004 11:04 pm
#188
LOL. First, you refuse to acknowledge the problem, then claim to see this in a realistic manner. Perhaps you should work for SOE, since you seem to have a better understanding of both their budget and technological limits.
Cygnusaa wrote:
I'm not missing the point at all. I refuse to believe that they cannot find a software/hardware solution that can handle it.
Believe me, I'm trying to see that side of it in a realistic manner. Frankly, their ineptitude across the board is probably catching up with them.
The result punishes the players.
Vaelorn
Mon Aug 16, 2004 11:07 pm
#189
If we're going to have to use twice as many vendors... are they going to have half the maintenance that they do currently? Or will we be paying the same maintenance, on twice as many vendors?
loop_not_defined
Mon Aug 16, 2004 11:21 pm
#190
Cafa wrote:
Numen wrote:
Rubicon49BC wrote:
Simple database logic.
If you have 1 vendor with 3000 items, each time someone accesses the vendor, all 3000 items must be loaded, leading to strain on database. With 250 limit per vendor, database strain is much lower. Strain is not just in how much is in database, but how much must be loaded in each time.
Your missing a small piece of info for proof. All 3000 items don't get loaded at once. Only a max of 100 items on a player vendor are loaded at the same time(at least that should be what happens). When I hit next items, there is a delay. That delay should be the delay to get the info from the database.
One suggestion.
For merchants, we can view all our items over all our vendors at once. Would it be possible to get that same feature for customers? So instead of having 12 vendors in the front room. You could have 1 or 2 and then 10-11 in the back room. 12 vendors per merchant is going to be a nightmare in malls.
Geez, even though, loading 3000 items in Oracle 9i takes, um, .023 ms.
And you know what equipment and programs SOE uses for SWG, I take it?Youalsoknow how the coding works?
When you've got tons of vendors all across every single planet, it's never just that one vendor loading 3000 items, each with their own individual serial number and statistics, being pulled from amongst every other item in the galaxy...and vendors might not be the only thing pulling from the database.
I honestly don't know how it works,and I'm not silly enough to jump to conclusions. The above is just guess work.
Lupaerian
Mon Aug 16, 2004 11:27 pm
#191
First of all, two thumbs up for raising the limits to something much more reasonable. Thanks for acknowledging the fact that some of us really do need all that space, not for -storage-, but for selling. Although it is still shaky, my confidence in the devs has been restored.
What I would like to point out is that communication is -very- important when it's something as major as this is. Don't just put up some patch notes saying "Oh yeah, btw. - we limited you to 110 items per vendor, have a nice day". Instead, post something like "Due to changes of our commodity server backend, we are going to impose limits to how many items you can put up for sale on a vendor. The limits that we will put up on TC shortly have been listed below. Please note that these are not in any way final and have been kept low on TC to allow for better testing of these limits. How will this affect your business and the enjoyment of the game? What do you think would be a fair limit?".
Having said all that, I do foresee some issues popping up with people being "forced" to put down more vendors though. Malls and tents will get pretty crowd and the barking spam when entering such places will get even worse. Mall owners will see their lives become hectic for a while as they have to accommodate all the extra vendors and people with slow systems such as myself will get even worse performance in those malls. If this means faster and more bugfree vendors, so be it.
On the good side, this does force people into being more specific about their vendors, which will make shopping easier. With master merchants being able to put down 12 vendors, they could in theory more easily become true merchants. All we really need now is some consignment system. This would allow a single master merchant, for example, to host the resource vendors of several part time miners/gatherers. Each person could be allowed to put a certain number/type of things up for sale on one or more of the master merchant's vendors. The master merchant would get a percentage of the sale with the rest going directly to the person putting the item for sale. This would remove the whole issues of trusting your valuable items to the merchant and would allow merchants to be just that - merchants!
-Lupaerian
What I would like to point out is that communication is -very- important when it's something as major as this is. Don't just put up some patch notes saying "Oh yeah, btw. - we limited you to 110 items per vendor, have a nice day". Instead, post something like "Due to changes of our commodity server backend, we are going to impose limits to how many items you can put up for sale on a vendor. The limits that we will put up on TC shortly have been listed below. Please note that these are not in any way final and have been kept low on TC to allow for better testing of these limits. How will this affect your business and the enjoyment of the game? What do you think would be a fair limit?".
Having said all that, I do foresee some issues popping up with people being "forced" to put down more vendors though. Malls and tents will get pretty crowd and the barking spam when entering such places will get even worse. Mall owners will see their lives become hectic for a while as they have to accommodate all the extra vendors and people with slow systems such as myself will get even worse performance in those malls. If this means faster and more bugfree vendors, so be it.
On the good side, this does force people into being more specific about their vendors, which will make shopping easier. With master merchants being able to put down 12 vendors, they could in theory more easily become true merchants. All we really need now is some consignment system. This would allow a single master merchant, for example, to host the resource vendors of several part time miners/gatherers. Each person could be allowed to put a certain number/type of things up for sale on one or more of the master merchant's vendors. The master merchant would get a percentage of the sale with the rest going directly to the person putting the item for sale. This would remove the whole issues of trusting your valuable items to the merchant and would allow merchants to be just that - merchants!
-Lupaerian
MilkToast
Mon Aug 16, 2004 11:40 pm
#192
Thanks. These changes seem very reasonable to me. Obviously having an aggregate limit would be ideal but these changes should work just fine.
KingKobra74
Tue Aug 17, 2004 1:10 am
#193
Looking good. Just one thing though.
Having all these additional vendors available will make maintaining stock a nightmare. Any chance of a UI change to allow us to add stock to any vendor via any of the vendors?
SyKoHPaTh
Tue Aug 17, 2004 1:40 am
#194
err - is the "nude vendor" bug going to be fixed?
Kinda shocking walking into "Joe's House of Weapons" and seeing nude vendors all over the place...
Kinda shocking walking into "Joe's House of Weapons" and seeing nude vendors all over the place...
DarkRenown
Tue Aug 17, 2004 1:42 am
#195
I can only speak for myself (obviously).
As a Master DE (also Master Artisan), I stock approx 100-200 items on myVendor at a time, the majority of these are Batteries and Repair Kits, and then stock 20 or so Droids (varying types).
The original limits were a concern, and intimated that I may need to get mroe Merchant skills than I would have liked to run multiple vendors.
These new limits, well to be blunt, are great! They suit me perfectly. Keeping Novice Merchant, I can now store 250 Items per Vendor (above my current usage) and I get a bonus Vendor! As I have just taken Management 1, I can now comfortably drop that, and keep going with my crafting. I can open up a new Vendor on a new planet, offering my wares to a whole new audience. Big bonus for me.
Obviously, I cannot comment for other crafters (Tailors, AS, WS etc) but for me these new limits are lovely.
I always approved of limits, and think this is a lovely compromise. I do think as an addition, it would be good to allwo Master Docs, Master Medic, Master CM a Vendor sotring 100 untis as well as they do a lot of crafting.
Thanks TH, nice work.