Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
Indene wrote:
NJ62 wrote:
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.
You know I have seen this complaint a lot. That some evil crafter is 'exploiting' the system by having a vendor.
What I find amusing is that every time someone points out that the Merchant class is ridiculous because you can drop all of the skills and retain the benefits, someone jumps on and says 'Don't say we're exploiting' yada yada yada.
NJ62 didn't say you were exploiting, or that you were evil, rather they said when you drop the skills you should get a benefit. It's nice topaint the picture that they arereactionary and inflammatory to make them seem like they're not level-headed anf like they're calling for a nerf.
There was a long drawn-out discussion of this, and in the end it falls back to the fact that the skill under 'Management' says 'place' vendors, rather than 'run'. It's completely a semantical argument because you can't justify that it's right, or that it should be that way, you can just argue that's how it's written.
Fine, when the devs fix the skill they can fix the description too.
For the bazaar limit, 3k is within easy reach of (most) newbies. 6k is more difficult. The first thing you would see is *not* items priced in the 3k-6k range, but rather stack sizes increasing to put everything up to 6k. It may or may not cause inflation in general, but it'll make it that much harder for people without a lot of money to buy things off the bazaar.
For the vendor limit, 150 is an arbitrary value and useless to nearly everyone. If you want to limit it, have different vendors cap it at different capacities. Put a 150 cap on the basic vending machine, and increment it upwards according to the skill of the merchant who placed it, with the "best" vendor maxing out at maybe 1,500 items, but costing more in maintenance. A tiered structure works much better than an arbitrary limit.
MC
Yvgar wrote:To the people that claim that resources are selling 1000 for 3000 (the current bazaar cap):
Where can I find these resources?
All I've recently been able to find are stacks of 600 at most, for 3000. With this change, I'll be able to find stacks of 1200 or 1000, for 6000. Plus, every single tailor item. Bleh.
But, I guess no one cares about crafter or merchant professions, without teh ub3r dodge/melee defense mods.
I'm on narcsuls (or however it's spelled) And i will sell my good resources at 1:3. If i get an exceptional resource, like 900+ in 4 stats, Then that gets jacked up. If it's got one or 2 stats in the 800-999 i'll sell 1:3.
I agree that raising the cap on the bazaar would be a great idea. But I think reducing the space on the vendors is a bad idea. As a Master Armorsmith when I put a suit of armor out it takes 9 slots. so with this change you are talking about allowing me just over 16 suits of armor?You guys are trying to get away from the one stop shopping so insteedour customer has to look at a couple different vendors next to each other to find what they are looking for. I think they would get tired of looking through vendors all together and go straight to the crafter to make what they are looking for and then you have eliminated the entire need for vendors and most Bazaar.
I think instead raise the amount of space on the Bazaars to allow us to sell more than 20 items through out the galaxy as well as raise the cap on price maybe even a little more than 6k. We can then put more of our medium to lower grade wares on the bazaar and generate more usefullness from the bazaar and make us want to put stuff there. This might actually give the crafters who are overloading vendors some place to put the items they want to sell but dont have enough room on the vendors with 150 items that are better quality.
How about you do away with all the useless garbage in the game such as the creature samples from lairs that aren't good for anything except taking up more space on the database. The bazaar is full of useless garbage such as that. Perhaps a minimum ammount on resource quantity to be sold would also be a good idea. Am I the only one tired of wading through advertised sales of 1 unit of eggs, etc for 3k? These people that attempt to sell that stuff for those prices shouldn't even be playing this game in my oppinion lol. How about a 500 minimum to resources in order to be sold on the bazaar? I could go on and on. Take a look at the bazaars in game sometime and you'll see what I mean here Thunderheart. It's pretty pathetic.
As far as raising the cap goes I don't mind, but I'm sure we'll just see all the worthless garbage increased in price is all lol. It's such a joke what people think things are worth in the game anymore that it's not worth the time to even look. And vendors being dropped down to a limit of 150 items is only going to hurt those merchants that we can really count on for having well stocked vendors with quality merchandise at somewhat affordable prices. I say somewhat because the whole econemy is out of whack on my server. I'm going to have to get into the harvesting game just to make enough to pay for my weapons, armor, buffs, etc. anymore. By the time my buffs wear off I'm barely back to were I was financialy so I can get more buffs and travel expenses. I need something obviously that will help me to pay for the high priced weapons and armor, etc. that is needed as well. I guess it's just all very much out of hand anymore, yet most peoples mentality is if they can't keep their vendors stocked full because people are buying the merchandise too fast. They'll just raise the prices lol. Do I really need to purchase another 2 accounts or so in order to make this in game econemy affordable for my main character? Nevermind my master bio character, that's a joke profession even more so now than it ever was.
There a few things to consider with these changes. Raisng the bazzar to 6k may casue inflation and make it hard for novice people to sell there crafted items. The reason being is that Masters, I am a Master Artisan and Merchant, can sell higher quality stuff. IfI had the credits I would buy the higher quality items. Also people would charge more if the items they are selling at lower prices now, this would hurt the new players just starting out. Also it would discourge people from visiting shops and hurt the XP needed for merchants. I personally like having people come to my shop, it is fun. I feel raising the bazaar limit may hurt.
On the vendor limits, I am a little torn. I myself have no problem with it , I have 6 vendors. But I do feel for the other Masters. For instance a Tailor would want to have a large variety of clothing available, if they have one vendor this will ruin them. These people would be forced to compromise on price to have a Merchant post their wares. Monopolies? I haven't seen any. A Monoploy is when a compnay makes it so they have no competiion aka Microsoft.
I would suggest that the devs read these post carefully and then decide on a course of action. Let's try and make this game fair for all. I know it is hard to do but you devs have all this feedback use it wisely.
I am what I am becasue I choose to be.
i like the idea of a tiered system for number of items allowed on vendors. in fact i propose that first there is a per level limit that also determines maintainance levels. for example, the first vendor that is available should be at the current maintenance rate with 150 items, 250 +10 to maintenance, 350 +10 to maintenance, etc. this would allow for more items and create another money drain. at each new vendor level you could then take off the +10 maintenance as a bonus and increase the item limit. at master merchant we could be allowed a huge amount of items but maintenance costs would also increase.
i'll make you a chart of the idea later.
as far as the 6k limit, i dont really like that, 3k is plenty.
As for 150 item limit are you crazzy??
come one thats 15 suits of armor.. what about small stuff like power ups, pet food, tailors, spice, ect there is tons of stuff that could be on a good merchants vendor. soo im supose to stock it every day and leave off tons of stuff that i would normally have that dont sell often??
droid batteries, power up singles, singles of food, or meds or spice that someone would want to try but would never buy a full crate.
Im supose to leave all that stuff of my vendor just becuase that would be consitered a monoply?? please thats rediculous. Sure an architect with 150 items on a vendor would have plenty of stuff. But what about a tailor. soo they can pick 15 items at 10 colors or 150 items with diffent colors?? thats complete screwed up.
How many times do you go to a vendor and there is nothing on it or 4-10 things,. its nice to go hit a vendor that people share and have lots of diffents things or stuff that people dont use often. The bazzar is a joke to find good stuff on trying to search through tons of stuff and most of it is junk.
basicly a 150 item limit would screw a good merchant big time. there go my doird battiers, CDEF's power up singles, random crates of my extra stuff, misc singles or armor parts. no more pet food, no more meds, no more spice, you want everyone to stand around waiting for special orders?? why not just say player citys cant have vendors cause thats a monoploly.. a good PA selling quality wares of all types that must be a mononply too.
How about no vendor from the same pa in a 500 m distance, cause thats a monopoly..
its hard enough to find a good city that has everything you are looking for. and if you find stuff you like now your gonna make us have to do all custom orders??
there are 5 types of armor, an average of 8 peices each.. soo basicly i can make 2-3 of each tops, what i get to pick one color just soo i can have 2 suits.. your forgetting that there can be 10-15 ways to make one suit.. high resist, low encum, maybe a middle of the road different layers... ohh and then there is color.
150 limit soo a good armorer doesnt have a monoploly.. how many good armorers are on a surver?? 2-3 maybe?? and now you want um to have bare vendors?
what about weapon smiths,,how many weapons are there. what now you want um just to stock the popular ones or pick up a whole merchant tree just soo they can reasonably have well stocked vendors.. YOur basicly turning a crafter into just that,., why let um acually go play the game,, just make um stand there in a shop waiting for someone to come by so they can custom make what they need right then and then wait for another 2 hours for the next guy to stop buy after all, they wont have skill points to do anything else right??
Its a big enough challenge to make stuff just to keep up with your demand as it is now you want us to have to restock dailly just to have a wide varirety of items? Ohh wait thats a monopoply selling meds, armor, and weapons on one vendor... ever think that maybe the reason why they are on a vendor is for the convience of the customer, or maybe they make the best stuff around?? why not just say a pa with a mall is a monopoly cause a small shop could never compete.. or bettter yet just eliminate all craftable items all together because if i want to become a WS on a different server there is no way i could compete because they have resorces from day one and i only have whats avaiable to me now.
some times i think you dont have a clue what the gaming comunitry needs
Je'Cy Dax, master, armorer, artisan, merchant, (i was gonna be a tailor and do bio clothing but i guess that would be a monopoly soo i guess ill just wander around and keep my lame pistol skills and kill chubba while im waiting for some one to show up at my shop so i can make there custom orders, besides my holo told me to)
Eola wrote:
There was a long drawn-out discussion of this, and in the end it falls back to the fact that the skill under 'Management' says 'place' vendors, rather than 'run'. It's completely a semantical argument because you can't justify that it's right, or that it should be that way, you can just argue that's how it's written.
I saw some of that - I think also it was brought up that the wording for the Merchant Tent tooltip is also "Allows merchant to place a tent" or similar, yet it is impossible to transfer the tent to someone who lacks the necessary skill to be able to place the tent themselves in the first place,which is a clear indicator there the intentions were that 'to place' is the same as 'to own'.
It was a pretty ugly semantic debate that's for sure. But semantics aside I believe that it's just plain rules lawyering to try seperate "place" and "run". They may have different definitions in the dictionary, but they are one and the same for all intents and purposes in this game. I'm sure there are some weird exceptions, but I believe by and large if someone places a vendor the intent is to use it. There is no inherent benefit to someone creating a vendor and dropping it in a place, leaving it untouched, uninitialised, ergo, 'un-run'.
Exploit or no, semantics or no, it's plain wrong from any perspective to have this happen - to retain vendors after the dropping of the relevent skills. Take artisan and surveying. Early on it was noted that an artisan with survey 4 could calibrate their tools to maximum resolution and then drop all survey boxes and maintain the resolution.
This was pounced on; this was fixed as a bug.
Same deal with that and the vendors- you didn't hear too many people complain though, or make up stupid comparisons like "but if I surrender my weaponsmith, the guns I made don't disappear" etc- which I will come straight out as saying as the most stupid argument ever - vendors are not the end product of the profession but a core and definitive tool -vendors to merchants arelike /healDamage to Medics, singing and dancing to Entertainers, biological harvesting of creatures to Scouts/Rangers and so forth.
I guess this one's because there are a lot more people enjoying the 'perks' of this 'oversight'.
With respect to putting a 150 item limit on vendors, one reason given was to discourage monopolies. I think this is flawed reasoning. There are *no* vendor monopolies in game, by definition,because anyone is free to enter any market (after acquiring the necessary skills, of course). If a player manages to dominate some particular market it is because they are offering better bang for the buck than anyone else. To hamper their success with some artificial limit to how much they can offer for sale would hurt the economy by undermining competition.
If technical reasons require that a limit be placed on player vendors, then put as high a limit as technically feasible, whatever it may be.
One the other hand, leaving the $3K and 25 item limit on bazaars should stay, I believe, so as not to detract from the value of player vendors. If inflation is the issue, that should be addressed another way.
I am in favor of raising the credit cap on the bazaar. (I personally would like to get rid of the cap entirely.) If there is a problem with the database size, then perhaps you could split the bazaar into smaller categories and use more than one database (similar to how mission terminals are split into different professions). For example, one bazaar terminal could sell only weapons and power-ups, and another terminal could sell resources, etc.
VENDOR INVENTORY CAP:
Regarding capping the number of items on a vendor, please consider the following: I was a Master Doctor, and I needed 3 small houses to store all of my inventory. If you cap the vendors, it will have a double effect on a player's inventory. Less space in the vendor AND less space in the house, since items that normally would be in the vendor are now sitting in the house waiting to go into the vendor. Many crafters already have more than one house. Capping vendor items will increase the number of 'storage houses' that already clutter up the galaxy.
Also, a side note:
Reading this thread, it became obvious to me that many people do not know how to use the UI for the bazaar. People don't seem to know that you can sort items or resize the columns. If some of the UI features were explained, shopping on the bazaar would become much more pleasant for many people.
Idea #1) I think raising the bazaar limit will help those that wish to sell item and not be merchants.
Idea #2) VERY BAD. I am an architect/merchant. of that I only make and sell furninture. I stock a vendor with only 4 of each item. That is usually over 350+ pieces. I have vendors in different location and do not have the spare vendor slots to be splitting up my item at each location. If you are going to limit the # of items on a vendor, then you had better up the # of vendor a master merchat can have.
THanks
Emni T'Surt