Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
I have 4 vendors on 2 planets and in 3 buildings.
Its not about XP .. its about sales oportunities..
The 150 item cap isnt a problem for me personally as i dont normally have more than 100 items on each vendor anyway. However as I read these post about all these people whose sales are so good that they seem to need 100's of items, i start thinking, maybe my business isnt humming as well as it could!
I do like the idea one person raised that the limit be based on merchant skill.
If that were the case i would suggest:
No Artisan/Merchant Skill ..... +50
Master Artisan +50
Novice Merchant +100
Advertising1 +100
Advertising 2+100
Advertising3+100
Advertising4+100
Master MerchantUnlimited
Then .. if you really do need to have hundreds of items in stock .. there is a way!
Nobody will ever read this, but:
I'm a novice weaponsmith, novice merchant, novice rifleman on Kettemoor.
Bazaar increase = bad idea. I used to think that it should be raised, before I got into the game. I realize now that the economy depends on this being so low. This will take AWAY from the utility of the Merchant skill.
Vendor limit = good idea. But a higher limit of something like 250 is better. This limit makes the merchant skill tree more important. Want to sell more things? get merchant skills. Prevents people, like I do now, from selling stuff for everyone in their guild. All you need is one merchant and your whole guild is set. So to make merchant useful, bazaar increase bad, vendor limit good with a higher limit.
I dont think there should be acap on the auctions on the bazaar
And maybe the vendor limit should be 600 not 150
And selling items on the Bazaar there should be no cap on pricing
They made this decision long ago to help give a crutch to their crippled database. No matter what we say or do, they will implement the merchant vendor cap.
It's not that we don't try to tell them how we feel when they ask, it's just that they don't care what our answers is, and only ask to make it look like they care.
Why doesn't SOE think of reasons to make the Merchant track more attractive to where people actually KEEP the skill instead of getting merchant, place vendors, drop skill?
Maybe at Master Merchant you get +10 lots? I'll bet a LOT of people would get Merchant and actually KEEP the skill then. Perhaps harvestor bonuses also? Ability to survey a larger area? Ability to sample unavailable resources?
With extra Merchant skills I'm sure it would attract a lot more people to the Merchant track and actually keep the skills.
Raising the cap on the bazaar sure! So long as you don't raise it above 6k.... Any more andit would seriously affect most of my smuggler item sales from my vendor...
There is only one product a smuggler can get more than 10k for and thats a crate of pixie.. and thats not a great seller as it is.. (at least on wanderhome)
Of course if you gave merchant exp for items sold on the bazaar...
I don't think I have to get into why capping vendors at 150 items is a bad idea... many others before me have presented the reasons much better than I could...
300 could be lived with by most professions I believe. The cap wouldn't affect me much at all, but a few of my guildies, one being a tailor would be hit hard.
Devs better think long and hard before capping vendors at 150 items... If the cap goes into place it sends a real bad message to the community. If it goes into place this board and the feedback requests will have lost all credibility.
A'rago, Master Smuggler, Wanderhome
Sy'renn, Merchant, Wanderhome
I personally don't see either of these suggestions as helpful or beneficial to the player economy system in any way, with the exception of some short-sighted benefits that are very obvious if you put the question into a vacuum without considering anything else in the game's design.
Regarding the proposed bazaar changes:
1. Increasing the bazaar price cap to 6k would cripple the business of mid-level crafters that don't sell over-priced wares. It would wreak havoc on the economy as well-priced powerup vendors, for example, were repeatedly bought out of their items, only to have them resold on the bazaar for up to 6k, which a lot of people would pay, for the convenience factor. This would ruin the viability of selling decent/good single items on a vendor on account of the convenience factor that the bazaar naturally brings with it. If you're encouraging merchants to sink even more time into maintaining good sales by having to visit multiple selling locations (vendors and the bazaar) to successfully sell their wares, I think you'll see a lot of resentment from their side of the discussion, in addition to ruining the abilities of a perfectly good profession.
2. The 3k cap for items on the bazaar is perfectly reasonable. You can still buy and sell a good number of quality items and resources off the bazaar, if you spend the time to look for bargains, quality, etc. Raising this cap to 6k slaps merchants in the face by allowing players without vested skill points to still make great money selling (or scandalously reselling) higher-end items on the bazaar. People without the invested skill points shouldn't be allowed to reap the benefits to such a degree (hrm... this is almost like the AT-ST vs. CH debate...).
The bottom line: The bazaar is a place for inexpensive, small quantities of items to be sold, and should be kept that way. People investing the skill points into merchant, etc. shouldn't get punished for the sake of the people that whine that they can't sell 50k worth of hide on the bazaar at one point in time... all because they didn't invest the points into merchant.
Regarding the proposed vendor cap changes:
1. Placing a cap on vendors will solve your database problems, sure... but it will cause endless amounts of additional player frustration when we find empty vendors for things that we want for our professions. 150 items is too little. I cannot tell you some "appropriate" number because anything I tell you would be completely arbitrary, and it depends on the profession... which leads me to my next point.
2. I'll reiterate what some others have said by stating that this limit discriminates against professions entirely too much. A bio-engineer that specializes in clothing and high-end creatures can easily get away with 150 items at a time, on account of the fact that the items are all top-sellers that can demand high prices. A doctor that sells crates of enhancement packs and stimpacks can also get away with the same thing. A weaponsmith that sells suits of composite armor cannot. A powerup smith cannot. A good tailor cannot. You're punishing good businesspeople for going the extra mile to reward their customers with variety and availability and quality. Why?
3. Do not reward people for being lazy and not wanting to learn how to use the drill-down system. They learned how to shoot a gun and harvest resources, drilling down is not difficult in the slightest. If vendors are capped, you'll never have to use the drill-down system and it will almost be a moot point, with the exception of the bazaar.
The bottom line: Don't discriminate against profession by instituting vendor caps, and don't add to player frustration by increasing the likelihood of empty vendors across the galaxy.
There are some things you could do to make the whole selling experience better, though, as long as we're on the subject...
1. Implement search capabilities for the bazaar.
2. Implement grouping/collapsing of the same items down to a single line on player vendors, assuming the same creator, etc. etc.
3. Add an option to the player screen to enable/disable that awful email notification every time you buy a single item... ugh.
All my suggestions aside, please do look at my comments on the proposed bazaar andvendor changes, and comment as you see fit.
-BX
thunderheart, you are the pwnage.
thanks for all the help you've given us in making this game better
we all appreciate it
upping the bazaar to 6k and increasing the number of items you can have on the bazaar to 30 would be great.
Link the amount each vendor can hold to the number of merchant skills just like the max taming skills are tied to the total number of CH skills. If you have novice merchant, you get 50 items, +5 for each level 1 skill, +10 for each lvl 2 skill, +15 for each level 3 skill, +20 for each level 4 skill and + 50 for Master. So a Master Merchant would be able to offer 300 items. A dabbler in the vendor only skill tree could hold 100 items.
i like the idea for raising the bazaar but i DON'T like the idea of an item cap, i am a architect,weaponsmith,tailor, merchant
furniture alone is alot so this is a bad idea
i have several things on my 1 and only 1 vendor alone
furniture, weapons, sliced weapons, deeds, clothes, crates, resources,and misc stuff
and i different items at different prices.
this will hurt me in the long run, i dont want to have multiple vendors for things,
i mean you dont go to target just for toilet paper, thats not all they have, they have food, toys, electronics, clothes, shoes, etc, etc......
im goin up in the weaponsmith tree pretty fast and i dont think that this LIMIT will in anyway be useful at all
especially the fact that i cant go that high up the merchant tree becasue im goin to master architect and weaponsmith, and have already master artisan, and i can only go up 1 tree in merchant
this totally bites if SOE puts a limit on vendors, itll hurt my business, which nerfs!!!
I just want to know how bad the database has to get before you will fix/replace it? You constantly make the PLAYERS AND GAME suffer because of developer/database shortcomings(and that includes your not removing all the "drop skilled vendors"). Why?
Oh yeah, thats a "no" on the vendor cap issue if you couldn't tell.
Curt Williams
Master Weaponsmith
Bloodfin