Development Cycle Archive

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DegarKalon wrote:

I would also like to see an option similar to the bazaar for merchant vendors. That way the crafting professions can concentrate on crafting, then go to their favorite merchant's vendor and offer it items to be sold, with a certain percentage of the sale going to the merchant, and the rest going to the crafter. The percentage can paid for when the crafter offers his item, or when the merchant accepts the item for sale.

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I think that's a great idea... Kind of like an admin list for the vendors. The vendor owner can set the commission as a percentage, and upon sale the credits are divied immediately to each account. Although the 150cap would not even come close to accepting a system like this. However, it would hugely reduce the amount of empty vendors (total # of vendors period)out there if the cap did not exist.

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DegarKalon wrote:

I would also like to see an option where the players who play merchants can have their vendor items listed on a separate window on the bazaar terminals. That way the merchants can Advertise their vendors and sell items through the bazaar terminals, of course all items would have to be picked up at the actual vendor's location.

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Another good idea, or I think this spin-off would help out player cities immensly. A protocal droid (similar placement as an NPC trainer) that carried information on city events and vendor waypoints. The mayor could charge a small fee to have its citizens advertise their shop waypoints. Actually you could even tie this into DE and give them some type of advertising storage module to craft that can only be placed in Protocol droids (the DE's need more sales opportunities )

I personally like both changes, but perhaps merchants, as they climb up their skill path, could hold a slightly larger amount on their vendor? Perhaps from 150 to 200? I dunno, just an idea.

Most of this discussion just makes me cry/laugh.

Most of the people posting haven't even read the previous posts and don't know the issues.

They are NOT going to increase item limits on houses because the PROBLEM is too many items in the world.

So reducing vendors and then increasing housing will only add to the problem, not reduce it.

They're putting a cap on vendors to REDUCE the number of items in the world.

The thing to pay attention to when setting a credit cap on the bazaar is the price of specialty items.

If set too low, there will be alot of mid priced items that don't take any special skills or resources to produce en mass.

These mass produced items would not be concidered specialty items, yet the producers can't move them because there are inadequate outlets available to the public.

This hurts the producers.

Set the cap to high, and we'll be flooded with items that should sell for reasonable prices, but people are undercutting the prices just to place them on the bazaar.

This also hurts the producers.

Auctions are a different thing entirely.

An auction systemallows producers to provide items to the public at a price the public is willing to pay for that item.

A cap on auctions makes no sense because items for auction can never go above the cap even though people might be willing to pay more for those items.

There should be NO cap on auctions so that the system works the way it properly should.

Vendors do NOT cause monopolies.

I don't care how you try to rationalize it.

A monopoly is the absence of any other competition.

And while that other merchant, or even a mall or PA might have more ITEMS for sale, they aren't keeping anyone from selling their own items.

They just have an advantage you don't have - that's NOT a monopoly, that's competition.

The big guys will always have an advantage over the small guy.

You can't avoid that.

And capping vendor items will NOT change that at all.

The big guy will STILL have more vendors and more items for sale than the small guy.

Having more items for sale MIGHT affect SOME people to shop with them, but this isn't the real world.

Most people that I see that frequent any particular shop do so because they KEEP THEIR VENDORS STOCKED and they have NAME RECOGNITION.

So if you want to call stocking your vendor and making a name for yourself - being successful - a monopoly, then all is lost, so let's just give up.

There's nothing you can do about it so get over it.

Doing away with the merchant class just so whiners can have skills they don't want to spend skill points for won't fix any problems either.

If you want to sell things directly to the public, become a merchant.

If you don't want to 'waste' points on a 'useless' profession, then YOU DON'T GET THE SKILLS.

Adapt, and figure out some way so that you can sell your items. There are plenty of ways to do that.

Whining isn't one of them........

If you want to clean up the world, get rid of 'free' skills that people are using without spending the points.

Keeping vendors when you don't have the SKILLS to HAVE vendors is BULL.

Fix that FIRST and THEN see where we are with this problem.

THAT MIGHT FIX THE PROBLEM ONCE AND FOR ALL.....

Yo will NEVER be able to control items on vendors unless you limit ALL stock areas of vendors.

And that will make them pretty useless for anyone who is seriously trying to sell things in this game.

And THAT, more than any other problem or complain, will ruin any hope of a player run economy.

PLAYERS cannot 'run' the economy if all the tools for doing so have been TAKEN AWAY from them.

And if you want to reduce the number of items in the world because of technical difficulties, just call it that.

Don't make up excuses for hardware or softwareshortcomings.

We understand.

We don't LIKE it, but that makes more sense than flimsy justifications forchanges that no one wants.

What capping the item limit on vendors WILL do, and I haven't even seen it mentioned yet, is force players to FOCUS their efforts in fewer slaes areas.

Pick what you want to sell, and then concentrate only on that one area.

And while thatMIGHT be a goal worth 'encouraging' players to pursue, it does have one huge drawback for players.

It's NOT the game we were sold.

We were told that we would be able to master THREE professions and dabble in a forth.

And while there may be many people that DON'T master three professions the way they were expected to, that fact should have been taken into account during initial development - the player will not always do what you expect or want them to do if you give them an open ended game system.

But even given this unexpected turn of events, players can STILL master three professions.

And ALL THREE of those professions can be crafting professions.

So if the three professions a player decides to master just happen to be high item producing professions - like wearonsmith, armorsmith and tailor, and then dabble in merchant to get as many vendors as they can, capping vendor items severly limits their ability to USE those professions they chose to master.

The were told when they purchased the game that they were going to be able to master three professions and dabble in a forth, but now they cannot effectively use the professions they chose.

The game that they were told they were getting when they made the purchase is not the game that they got after they paid their money.

Not all people who have multiple vendors are trying to grind out merchant xps. Some of us have multiple vendors so that when customers visit our shops they know which vendor to use to get a specific item. Get a clue before you post remarks like that.

I feel one of the main issues that both the players and the developers have is the amount of items this game has to work with.

The databases seem to be overloaded and players are constantly looking for ways to store items, whether it's to sell, stockpile, or to display. It seems there are also a lot of unique items and i'm sure more to come that people just don't want to get rid of. Crafting and mining have taken the scale of using and harvesting resources way beyond what the game was probably intended.

I think it's time to address this issue in a way both parties will benefit.

Yes, the merchant and vendor changes seem ok, but along with this I believe addressing how items are handled in the game could use a simple adjustment.

1. Increase the stacks of resources from 100,000 to 1,000,000. This alone will reduce the number of items for people who use, sell, or harvest resources. I normally mine 300k to 600k in resources per shift. That is 3 to 6 stacks each shift now reduced to 1 stack each.

2. Increase the items that are stored in crates. The crates vary in they way the factories handle them and it was a good start. Also some items, (I believe it's ore mining units) still don't come in crates and are individual pieces. Let all items be crated in 100 or 1000 increments and then the players can divide them up for sale, but while they're kept in storage they take up less room.

If both of these could be implemented, it would greatly help both players and the database load.

I like the fact that there is a debate on this issue. I would like at least 40 items for any player..50 for business 1 and 60 for business 2 and 80 for master merchant. The value should still be kept low however. I think that 6k is a very good number.

As far as the amount on personal vendors well I think great idea bad number. More like 500. And with more merchant skills they more avaliable slots. Hope we come up with something that well alow more sales from bazare and more of a marketplace for personel vendors. Thx

I dont care as long as i can keep my vendor without taking merchant back

I like the Idea of increasing the Bazzar cap. Sence we are being arbitray, why not raise the cap to and even 10k. While you are raising limits, why raise the limit on the number of items you can have on the bazzar.

At the moment, I am not a merchant, but have been selling lots of resorces on the bazzar with 25 unit limit, I can only stock 2 maybe 3 cities.

I do not like the idea of capping the personal vendors. Like other people I have seen, with multiple vendors, I was able to serve more cities and planets with goods. In real life, even a smale convinence store has 3k to 5k items, with regular grocery stores 20k to 50k items.

I talking about re-stocking the rendors. If I am paying the maitanence to have the personal vendor, I really dislike the fact that every 7 days, if "MY" stuff did not sell, I would have to put it back on the market in "MY" vendor. Instead of capping the vendors, why not just base the maintenence amount/rate on the number or value of the items in the vendor. That would cap the vendor were people didn't sell much because the maitence rate would become prohibitive, and the people making profit with their vendor could put as much in the vendor as they are willing to pay for.

I would like to see house maintence based that way also. When the cost of storage in a vendor or house is costing to much people will either pay it or get rid of the junk.

Thanks for listening.

What bears repeating is that the vendor limit will penalize those merchants who "play by the rules" while nothing has been discussed which would take away vendors from those players who have given up all merchanting skills. The fact is that a lot of stress on the database is from vendors that should not legitimately exist anymore. It seems unfair to target all vendors in order to relieve stress on the database rather than first targeting vendors that are retained by players that have dropped all merchant skills, vendors which should not even exist.

Increasing the cap for bazaars is a good idea...although I have picked up many bargins on them because people want to sell on quickly. This has created an amazing power in the bazaar system and one that does keep people coming back to find bargins, but I think that this is still too restrictive and that once the new limit is set the same thing will start to happen but to more expensive items.

As far as setting a 150 item cap on vendors I think that this will be a disaster! I am a master merchant and pride myself on being able to offer more items in my shop that is currently available in the region. This is once again taking some of the little power away from the already difficult Merchant Profession. THE

Hello all,

Increasing the cap for bazaars is a good idea...although I have picked up many bargains on them because people want to sell on quickly. This has created an amazing power in the bazaar system and one that does keep people coming back to find bargains, but I think that this is still too restrictive and that once the new limit is set the same thing will start to happen but to more expensive items.

HERE IS AN IDEA: Why not allow JUST merchants to place items on the bazaar at a higher price. You could have their placing price increased by 2000 for every level of efficency gained...perhaps. This will give them an incredable inflence on the Market. Hang on you mean Merchants might actually have some control over the galactic market! You mean they might actually be like...noo hang on...Merchants? Just imagine other players coming to merchants for something.....

As far as setting a 150 item cap on vendors I think that this will be a disaster! I am a master merchant and pride myself on being able to offer more items in my shop than are currently available in the region. This is once again taking some of the little power away from the already difficult Merchant Profession. THERE IS ONE SIMPLE WAY OF SOLVING THIS SCROLLING FACTOR....WHY NOT JUST HAVE ALL THE ITEMS APPEAR ON ONE SCREEN WHEN THE VENDOR IS LOADED. Easy. All the customer has to do is click a collum header and it is listed by price orname and they'll be able to scroll down to the desired item. The thought of having a restriction on goods in my mind would also be unrealistic as my shop could stock thousands of items if real. If you do decide to add a 150 limit then surely Merchants must get more vendors?

I would also like to add that I was hurt to have some so called players wanting to call an end to the Merchant class. We are only trying to earn a living you know...how inconsiderate....

BrokaVas Remot - Of the *REMOT* branding

The *REMOT* Co-operation shop can be found on the Chimaera Server at -5307 3371 On Naboo Near Theed ...Please come by and smell the coffee, try on the armour and figure out how to to the interior decoration of your new place. Thanks!

This whole vendor item cap thing just kills me.

I currently run three factories as full-time as I can. Some days, I CANNOT KEEP UP WITH DEMAND, even with three factories running. The ONLY way I can keep up with demand is by catching up on other days - I restock daily and would run a 4th factory part time if I had the lots and resources - this week Ifactoried through the output of 4 medium and 2 heavy mineral harvesters sitting on a 90% concentration on a daily basis. The limiting factor was my ability to pull items out and start another run during "workday" hours.

The only reason I have become a fairly successful merchant is because I keep stocked up. I started this merchant because I saw a niche I thought I could fill, having seen few vendors in my line, and most at best sporadically stocked , and so far my customers seem to be telling me I'm helping them.

If a too-low vendor item cap comes into play, I will lose the little time I currently spend away from my shop doing nothing but carrying crates from the factory to the vendor as I get the "Vendor Sale Completed" emails, or I will give up the merchant and look at some viable profession instead.

Please examine the way the system works currently before making major changes like this.

Then go back and start working on the hundreds of known/reported bugs.

If (as many people have called you on) the problem isn't in fact the mythical monopolies or the "too many items to view at once and I can't read the "Next" button" GUI issue, but is in fact a less-than-stellar database whose flaws have been exposed by bumping the sale duration from 7 to 30 days, then, until you FIX the database flaws, how about you drop the duration back to, say, 15 or 21 days?

I don't have an issue in restocking things that don't sell in 2 or 3 weeks. Most of my problem is keeping stock available at all much less for weeks.The only issues I can really see with an intermediate duration would be for people using vendors as unlimited storage devices, and architects and crafters have been asking for a "warehouse" with realistic item capacity for months now. Of course, I'm a young merchant, so I could be wrong - someone let me know if I am.

Again I'll post my opposition to a too-high increase in the bazaar cap. If people want to sell stuff for a living, they should be merchants. How about this, then: There's currently a 25-item, 3k/item limit on the bazaar. How about making it a 75k total (still 25 items) per person limit instead. And for your bazaar viewing pleasure, add search capability! REMEMBER THE COLUMN WIDTH SETTINGS (do I REALLY need to know whether something's Instant or Auction? NO, I need to see the qty of resources!). And delete low-value "newbie drop gear" after a week MAX. If no one's bought that 400 condition CDEF Pistol in a week, then no one is likely to buy it anyway.