Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
Having the cap on vendors will only hurt my business b/c I want to enjoy other parts of the game than just worrying about restocking my vendor every couple of hours. If I have to do this, I'll just raise prices so my products do not sell as quickly. Gotta love inflation.
The bazaar cap being raised will not do too much in my opinion unless it reachesa pointwhere good weapons or crates of med supplies can be sold.
Bazaar Price increase = GOOD
150 Item Limit on Vendor = NOT ENOUGH ROOM
Increase the limit to 250-300. That should be a reasonable amount. If anything i would hope you would cap the number of items allowed to be put up on the bazaar by one person.
I seem to be in the minority here on this, but hear me out. The bazaar is just a way to circumvent having to work up at least Business in the artisan tree to sell items. Increasing the cap only further invalidates the Merchant profession at all. If anyone can sell items in large quantities as some here have proposed, you may as well eliminate the merchant class. I think the 3k cap on the bazaar items should be kept. It is a fair way to make some money while starting out (I got my capital to start my interplanetary business selling small lots on the bazaar for 3k). The value of vendors and the merchant profession should be preserved.
As for the merchant limit, I think a modified version of this would be the right way to go. Although I am an arcitect and an artisan, so very seldom do i keep more than 150 items on my vendors, I can sympathize with my fellow crafters that the 150 item limit for people selling things like weapons, armor, stimpacks, etc would be devastating. What I would suggest, however, is to further add some meaning to someone actually taking the time and using the points to master the merchant profession. I would argue, as someone above suggested, with a staged limit. Say 25 items (same as bazaar) for the first vendor you get in business tree, and with each vendor is an increase in the amount you can place on each vendor. Something like:
Business 3: 1 vendor, 25 itemseach Novice Merchant: 2 vendors, 50 itemseach Management 1: 3 vendors, 100 items each Management 2: 4 vendors 150 items each Management 3: 5 vendors 200 items each Management 4: 6 vendors 300 items each and Master Merchant: 7 vendors 500 items each.
This would allow those who want to specialize in multiple fields and only dabble in merchant and sell some items but would force the folks who want to be global monopolies on a particular area to have the Merchant experience to back it up. Merchant experience is supposed to be the equivalent of business experience in the real world with Business 1 basically someone who knows enough to run a hot dog stand, novice merchant being basically likea manager of a small home based business, up to Master Merchant being like the CEO of an International Company.
I ask that you preserve the value of the Merchant profession please by keeping the limit on the bazaar items low (although 6k isn't that unreasonable the other suggestions of going to 10k or more are way out of line). You also have an opportunity to do some balancing with the merchant class and add value to that profession by staging your proposed limits on vendors to coincide with the players merchant skill in managing them.
Thank you for your time and attention. I sincerely hope my horridly undervalued profession will not be further degraded by the developers implementing the changes as proposed. I believe what I have laid out is a reasonable compromise between the sides and will help balance the merchant class overall.
Squiddi McSquid
Master Artisan/Master Architect/Master Merchant
Kettemoor Server
Love the raise on the bazaar cap
150 is way to low to try to keep vendors stocked
I don't usually reply to stuff with this many pages, it's never going to get read 
The Bazaar is used mainly by new players to find the stuff they need during the first few weeks of play, if raising the cap gives new players access to better stuff faster, then this is a Good Thing.
The vendor limit worries me. It's not a fix for 'The Problem' that is the database, it's a leaky patch that is just going to make something else burst further down the line.
People don't put 100s (1000s) of items on their vendors because they want to break the database, or because they want to monopolise a market, they do it because they don't want to have to restock their vendors every 5 minutes. People who currently only have 1 or 2 vendors will just create 4 or 5 so they can stock the same number of items they always have, and people who stock even more than that will have to get extra houses so they can store all the stuff they used to be able to put on their vendors.
In my opinion, limiting the number of items vendors can hold will not fix the database problem, fixing the database will.
I know nothing about the system used for the databases, so I won't pretend to offer a solution, but forcing people to play the game differently is not a fix, because the resourceful people will always find a way to work around it, and it often makes things worse.
With the new 1-thread discussion paradigm, good ideas will get lost in the dross.
I, personally, am tired of having to change the way I play this game all the time.
The 6k cap on the bazaar is reasonable but limiting vendors to 150 items is as rediculous as needing a camp to call your vehicle. In fact, to use the same logic being used for the camp, I paid for the advantage of being able to have a vendorwith skill points. I sell a LOT of things and I don't care whether people have to scroll through 50 pages to see it all. Obviously they DO scroll through it because I keep selling it.
Want to place a limit on someone? Follow your own creature-handler example and cap the "dabblers" who only get business 3 then fill their one vendor with a billion items.
As a merchant, I've sacrificed skill points so I could sell things more efficiently than other professions. I primarily sell furniture. I have one of my vendors set up to sell all my architect related items. I have other vendors set up to sell other types of items that I can craft. I'm sorry, but asking me to split my items up amongst all of my vendors is just plain wrong and amounts to "dev griefing" on your part.
You've taken away my ability to mass produce things and then store them in a building, now you're essentially taking away my ability to mass produce things and sell them too. I try to spend one day a week crafting and restocking my vendors and then the rest of the week actually having "fun" in the game. What you're proposing would mean that I have to spend seven days a week crafting (because I can't store too much stuff) and stocking (because my vendors would start to empty too quickly).
As for monopolies, I doubt that they have a significant impact. You've created a free market and players will go where they find what they want at a price they're willing to pay for it. The most you can ever hope for is a regional monopoly because it's just too easy to travel to another city and find what you're looking for.
The people who do manage to corner the market on something like a rare resource have done so because they exercised shrewd business skills. The people who sell tons of merchandise do so because they produce quality items at reasonable prices.
Basically, stop griefing us because we're playing the game that you built.
Increase Bazaar Cap -Vote NO !!
- One of the reasons that commerce works so well in SWG is because of the 3K cap!! The 3K cap insures you can still get vital items, ie stims, sm qtys of resources, powerups, ect.. But more expensive and specialized items you will need to seek a player vendorwhich Ithought that was the point of it all!!. I believe this will hurt private vendor shoppes everywhere! Why bother going to a player shoppe when you can get most items now on the bazaar. Why bother getting merchant skillswhen you can just sell your stuff on the bazaar !! This will hurt merchants everywhere!!!!! I beg you to please reconsider.
150 Item Cap on Vendors- Vote NO !!
- First I will say that I understand that your concerned aboutpeople abusing the vendor limits by using them for storage and what not. But this is only a small minority, the rest use the vendors correctly as intended just to sellour wares. And these are the people its going to hurt, the majority. Some vendors sell hundreds of items a day, I know mine do. The biggest problem(besides the obvious decreased sales)would be not offering much of a selection to our customers. I sell furniture, so I go right down the list alphabetically and craft like 3-6 each of it all to put in my vendor. My customers get to see the entire selection and choose what suits them. Tailors have it worse because they need to do the same, but in many different colors.Also,maintaining our vendors stock would need to be doneon a dailybasis to keep them full. I have alot of structures andharvestors to maintain, which is time consuming enough and feels like a real job, but to havelog in everyday to craft and fill the vendors will just add morechores for me to do. I would rather spend the bulk of my online time enjoying the star wars galaxyandexploring the planets.In conclusion, if there must be a limit would you consider 350? This would be enough to sustain most people's current levels of sales and stocking routines.
Prinethea -------<<<---@
Before I comment on the changes, let me say I play a pve and pvp combat character only.
I would like the Bazaar limit to be higher at 10k credits. This would let me sellreasonable sizelots of the animal resources I collect as a scout. I could also sell off more of the looted crafting components I've been finding lately off of NPCs.
The 150 item limit on a vendor is just too low. If I need a weapon, stims, food, or powerups immediately, I'll just go to another vendor if the one I just tried is empty rather than waiting. The vendors I keep going back to tend to be stocked with well over 150 items at any time.
As to the item bloat, have you guys ever considered a hybrid of a vendor and an item factory? It would have slots that a crafter could insert a schematic and its associated resources into. This hybrid machine displays a list of all items it has shematics for. The customer selects the item to buy, pays, and the machine creates the item on demand and consumes resources that are already loaded into the machine. No more items can be produced once its resources are exhausted. This would drastically reduce the number of new and unused items that exist as database entries.
1) "Currently, the credit cap is 3000 and the development team is considering raising the cap to 6000 credits. Are you for or against this change? Why?"
I like this idea...maybe take it further and raise it to 10K. This will get more usefull stuff on the Bazaar. Is there anyway we can discourage the people who put up things like 2 units of hide for 3K?
2) "An item limit is going to be placed on vendors and that limit is intended to be placed on 150."
Sounds good to me but I think for some crafting professions this may be a little too low....how about 300? Weapon smiths and Bio Engies may have a hard time with only 150.
Vendors:
- Pro: You can charge any price, you can post unlimited items.
- Con: People have tofindyour vendor to browse your goods or purchase them. You need Artisan Business III to place one, and currently the ones below Novice Merchant are bugged and unusable.
Bazaar:
- Pro: People can see your listing from anywhere in the galaxy.
- Con: You can only sell 25(?) items at a time, and for a max of 3000 credits each. Items only last 7 days.
Raising the bazaar limit: Will allow better items to be sold without vendors, freeing up skill points for mid level elite crafting professions. Most mid-level weapons sell for under 6k, as do certain armor pieces, and most droids, but few people can afford to sell good weapons for 3k.
Limiting Vendor Items: Why? Just seems like griefing merchants... at least make it something like 1000. Most people could live with that.
Increase the bazaar ok...I see no problem with it.
As a master tailor, decreasing the vendor items to 150 would be a disaster!
Please, please do not do this to us!
Shianse - Master Dancer
Mionette - Master Tailor
I have another concern about putting a 150 item cap on a vendor. Currently player cities do not have bazaars so all merchandise must be done through vendors. By limiting the number of items on vendors you can be seriously limiting the economic viability of cities that rely on sales tax to sustain their community. I have enough problems maintaining my vendors now with over 150 items.If this is implemented Iguess I will just have to raise my prices to lower my demand and further screw the economy. Hey it's just a game but I don't want to spend every waking hour restocking my 150 item vendors. I make items becuase I enjoy it, but I like doing other things in the game too besides getting tells all time time with complaints about such-as-such items not in the vendor.
I guess I have to apologiza for using a successful business model and havecreated good compnay. It's all my fault I have a monopoly. In life, if you run a porr business you fail and go bankrupt, period. Creating this cap does not reduce the monopoly, it just limits successful business people from operating and their fullest ability and does not address all the people selling horribly overpirced items that aren't worth the materials they are made from.
If you implement a cap on personal vendors please allow cities to have bazaars to compensate for the potential loss of items a city can have available.