Development Cycle Archive

1) Sure, raise the limit. You are just keeping up with inflation AND your item counts will go down since you won't have all the resource sellers putting packs of 200-500 resources up there for 3K. (and truth be told, this IS most likely why you are bringing BOTH these issues to us, to reduce item counts in the db)

2) Bad idea. There is only two, maybe three places on Intrepid where I see vendors going over the 150 limit. Armorsmiths, Tailors and powerup vendors, and there aren't enough of Armorsmiths or Tailors on Intrepid to keep up with demand due to people quitting those professions for Holodreams or boredom. I am a armorsmith myself, and only having 15 suits of armor on my vendor would

(A) drastically reduce the amount of colors I can carry. I currently carry in stock 5 colors so that means 3 suits of each color? I will sell that in HOURS sometimes.

(B) drastically increase the amount of empty vendors. Considering that the foundation of SWG is your player created economy, empty vendors is a Bad Thing(tm). There are already tons and tons of empty vendors across the land, causing player frustration. I doubt you want to make this worse. I get people telling me all the time thanking me profusely for having any stock at all, as they just spent the last two hours searching around for a single armorsmith vendor that had any stock.

(C) further reduce the ability for a casual player to compete with a powergamer. Sure, if I maintain my vendor three or four times a day I might be able to keep it stocked now. Pretty sure that isn't going to happen for me in the near future unless I win the lottery and don't have to work.

Players of SWG LIKE to go shopping and see vendors stocked. They like browsing vendors, and actually finding something there. It's not in your best interests to make that less likely.

I am TOTALLY AGAINST a limit on vendor items. unless its 300 or so

to endure repeat business you need SELECTION, ABUNDANCE AND CONSISTENCY

your cap interfers with two of these factors

I have mass volumes pass through my store for combat medic supplies and i try to keep multiple items of the same thing to ensure eveyone gets what they want..I even have two vendors one for offense one for support. Regardless there are still many different things that a comb medic makes and to carry 5 of each (which is really low) substantially limits our selection options.

I for one dont want to spend more time restocking than i already do. I like to load up 15 of each thing and leave 400 or so items on the vendor for a couple of days and restock then. The new limit makes sure im doing vendor refill daily which for me personally isnt possible if I actually want to have time to make the stuff, scour for resources and do some fun stuff.

PLEASE RECONSIDER THE 150 LIMIT AND MAKE IT AT LEAST 250-300

S'ATYR

I want to comment here, since I've had a lot of 1st hand experience with being a Merchant...

I think raising the Bazaar cap will move this profession further into the background as a "useless profession". Currently, I think it is a very fun profession with some nice perks. But who would spend all those skill points when they could just as easily (and more profitably in many instances if the cap is raised) sell on the bazaar?

I would also like to note the fact that COLOR CODES have been removed from crafted items. I know you all know this, but I'm going to propose something here since this issue seems very relevant.

DISADVANTAGES

Merchants will be at a serious disadvantage with the bazaar price increasing because of several factors.

1) MANY merchants make a lot of their money from small ticket items that sell for a bit more than the bazaar allows. By people being able to sell at a higher price on the bazaar, this will discourage players from travelling to find a merchant.

2) With a higher price, that means that people will try to squeeze more and more items into the bazaar that typically would not have sold on the bazaar. This makes it very difficult for merchants to get people out to their shops. Example: An x34 speeder takes approximately 6k of resources to craft. Some people would rule that the COST of these is 6k. So why not sell them for 6k on the bazaar? Well, what happens to the speeder shops? People stop visiting them.

3) With more stuff appearing on the bazaar, people will be less inclined to check their overhead map for vendors on the planet. It's MUCH easier to browse the bazaar and click ENTIRE GALAXY than it is to run to 25 different stores looking for something you want.

MERCHANT PROFESSION

1) If you are going to increase the amount that items can be sold for on the bazaar, then please make this a SKILL under the merchant tree. This will encourage more people to play this profession, and will also keep the people who DO play this profession from becoming obsolete.

2) The word "bazaar", by definition, means "A market consisting of a street lined with shops and stalls, especially one in the Middle East." So, naturally in order to sell your stuff for more money, you would need better salesman. For this reason, I think the bazaar price increase should progress up the "Hiring" tree. Make it 3k default, then +3k at each level up to a 15k cap at Hiring 4. This would allow people who don't feel like investing a TON of points to be able to at least get to the 6k cap by only spending 11 skill points beyond what's required in the Artisan tree.

3) Do away with "premium" sales on the bazaar. The above change will handle this. Only skilled merchants will be able to up their prices, and people can note the large price and know they're dealing with an actual business person and not just some schmoe. Or, if you feel you must keep premium sales, then just make them more noticeable. It seems like all you really see is a little asterisk to the left indicating that it is a premium sale. But beyond that, it doesn't tell the buyer anything whatsoever. So make that asterisk a bright BOLD yellow, maybe even increase the font size for that line. Or allow a longer description. Something. But either remove the feature, or improve it to make it useful. Colored items weren't the reason premium sales never got used.

4) Re-introduce color codes into crafted items. This never should have left, anyway. But don't just reintroduce it... actually add a color chooser option when you get to the final crafting stage. That way people who are unfamiliar with hex color code format can still take advantage of this feature, and it won't be considered an unfair advantage for people who use it.

5) Allow people to sort items in the bazaar by seller name.

6) Do make the 150 limit per vendor. I think that's a great idea.

7) Increase the total number of vendors by +1 more at Master Merchant, and reduce all other costs a little more (maybe another 10%). (Do you really want to get all the way to Master just so you can hire a cooler looking vendor?)

8) Add in the ability to "rent" vendors to other players. Of course we can (and do) do this now. But maybe just make it more easily trackable. A very simple system would be to setup an option on each individual vendor to have it "Pay money to..." and then you type in a person's name. So when any item is purchased from that vendor, it automatically transfers the funds to the person listed, instead of just defaulting to the merchant himself. A simple consignment fee could be added, so a commission goes to the vendor. This would handle the problem of people feeling slighted because they don't have the skill points to add merchant to their list of professions. Hey, I also can't use a lightning cannon without risking blasting my head off... so I'll just rent me a Bounty Hunter. See? Two way street.

9) Add in a few more categories when registering your vendor on the planetary map. The current categories are very congested, and don't tell enough to get people out to your shop. Like let's say you have clothing with tissues added to it. Do you simply list it as "clothing"? More categories would help here a lot.

10) Add in a skill (in place of PREMIUM AUCTIONS as mentioned above) that allows a vendor to list his items on the PUBLIC bazaar that are stored on his vendor. Limit this number to 25 just like the current bazaar limit. And limit the price as described above. But this would show people which shops actually have stuff stocked and for sale.

INFLATION

Okay. I realize that the amount of money available in the game nowadays is a lot higher than it used to be. And I think that's typical for any game like this. There's just no way to avoid almost everyone becoming rich, eventually. So if you must increase the bazaar sell cost for this reason, that is understandable. But please consider my proposed additions listed above anyway, as the merchant profession is still at risk of being usurped by the bazaar.

So maybe something like this:

Standard Bazaar Price Cap: 5,000 credits
Hiring 2 (Merchant tree): +5k
Hiring 4 (Merchant tree): +10k
Master Merchant: +5k
This would allow master merchants to list items on the bazaar for up to 25k. Very handy for just about all the crafting professions to get people interested in their wares and (hopefully) get them to come visit the shop and see what else they have to offer.

Anyway, that's about all I had to say. Let me know what you guys think...

Adding a vendor limit on the other hand, is a seriously horrible idea forthree reasons:

Point the first:

While I understand there is a desire to prop up the bazaar (which I support though I worry about increasing the usage of a system that is tending to be very laggy), it should not come at the expense of an entire profession. The Bazaar should not be augmented but weakening the advantages of getting to a Master class.

Point the second:

Inventory. The very idea of limiting a vendor to 150 items, suggests that the devs are woefully unaware of the single largest complaint/peeve I hear about vendors... which is that so often vendors you go to on the map turn out to be empty of products. There are two reasons for that, Grinders that need merchant exp, and vendors that have sold out of stock. It will become even harder to keep up stock if we're that limited on the items we can hold.

I'm a Master Weaponsmith, between ranged/melee weapons I have access to roughly50 schematics. One of the things I pride myself on is that I stock .everything. (except rocket launchers) what that generally translates to is stocking at least 5 of every weapon I can make on my vendor, as well as larger runs of the more popular guns.

So at base stock? I'd need at least 2 vendors in my store. But we all know some guns sell better than others... so I run off 70 FWG5s and Scatters, a run of Laser Carbines, Elite Carbines, and EE3s, add to that a run of the Vibro family (knuckler, and his cousins Lance and Long Axe) and I've got over 500 weapons on that vendor.

Add to that my Consumables vendor, that JUST stocks grenades, and things like the Acid Stream Launcher etc. These are sold singly and in crates and I still have 90+ items on that vendor. Why? Because when people buy them, they tend to either buy a small amount to play with them or because their funds are low or they buy a HUGE amount.

This is just one store, but with a vendor limit of 150 items, that would take up 5 of my vendor slots. That would still leave me having not offered up my attachments, vehicles, or sliced weapons. Attachments and sliced weapons in particular tend to get stocked in lots of 60-100, and 50-60 will sell in the first 24 hours.

So my options if I want to have more than one store, or a varied selection are to either drop some weapons entirely (abandoning those customers) or to stock only a little bit of everything which means if someone buys up stock after I log off, the next however many customers get to shake their heads and curse at my empty vendor. This also means a Merchant couldn't pre-stock his store and then play his other char for a few days, or go on vacation RL, because his vendor would be picked over quickly leaving only resentful customers.

Point the Third:

Where, exactly, are we supposed to store the overstock that's on the vendors now, or store things in future. There are already several threads dealing with the issue of storage space, which is at a premium. For a crafter/merchant our primary store tends to be filled to the very tippy-top with products or parts/resources/components. This would throw a lot of backstock back into houses that have no room for it.

A last question:

Where do you see a monopoly situation in game? I know of no mechant or crafter that can claim a monopoly on anything. Do you mean that some merchants stock enough that customers only go to their store? Well... what's wrong with that? That's what being a merchant is about. There is noone who is the only provider of a good or service and is thus unfairly suppressing competition (which is the definition of a monopoly).

Quite frankly, if there was someone making the singularly absolute BEST of an item, and you thought it a bad thing that he can offer up a thousand of them so people won't go buy second level quality... I again ask... what's wrong with that? Because we all now that the player base is spread up enough that we all get business. Restricting the amount we can stock doesn't level the playing field between 'dominant' merchants and 'victimized' merchants, it just makes it that much harder for dedicated merchants to keep their stores running, and makes those that were thinking of getting out to enjoy other aspects of the game (like I was), shake their heads and wonder how they'll find time when they have to reload vendors every night.

Regarding the price cap - I don't think it will make me use the bazaar any more than I do. A search feature would be a much better addition. Currently I only use it to find things like disks and other generic items.

Regarding the item limits - I think I understand the point about monopolies (not that the term is exactly correct in this context). Correct me if I'm wrong but you are concerned with too many vendors being one-stop shops and thus newer crafters don't have the opportunity to sell their goods as customers know they can always travel to a particular shop to find what they want. If this is the case - I do not see it happening in-game. I find a lot of empty vendors even with an unlimited cap, and even if my favourite smith was sold out under the new system - I'd probably send them an order by email anyway rather than travel from city to city looking.

The only way I see item limits working is to code some kind of automatic stocking system. For example - a weaponsmith makes a crate of Scout Blasters and places the crate in the "stockroom". The vendor then checks the serial number against the current listing and draws one blasterfrom the crate if it cannot find that serial number listed. At specific times the vendor rechecks the listing and re-stocks any serial number that is in the stockroom but not in the listing.

The other thing that would help with this is enabling after-production modification of colours on armour and clothing. Currently tailors and armoursmiths must stock all kinds of the popular colours on the same item (composite armour pieces let's say). If colouring kits (such as the ones for droids except permanent) were available those professions could stock one generic model and colour it to the taste of the customer following purchase.

Interesting. Your clustered databases and query implementations sucking again?

You contradict yourselves. First you say there are monopolies, then you say that people don't browse through vendor listings. Make up your mind, or FIX things instead of quick-nerf solutions to your inherent issues.

These issues exist because:
- You allow vendors to exist for people who have dropped the merchant class
- Youwon't allow identical items to be stacked (recombining stacks)
- You won't actually listen to any of the suggestions for months from the Merchant and other Artisan classes that deal with this issue in a coherent and thoughtful manner
- You won't deal with the economic/inflationary issues that you've created.
- You code your vendor/bazaar display so poorly that people cannot sort the items in it properly.
- You won't allow for consignment sales

I'm so livid right now, it isn't even funny. Do you folks at SOE actually play or work in ANY of the crafting or non-combat professions? If so, how can you seriously make the latter suggestion of nerfing inventory levels. Monopolies? Where? I haven't seen any. Hell, most people can't keep up with demand. To those who think 150 or even 300 is enough, some people actually have single vendors across the galaxy instead of all on one planet. Try doing that if you have to visit every 12-16 hours to restock, and tell me how much fun that is. That's five trips, at 1-2k cr/, with a 10-15 min wait, plus restocking time, plus crafting/coordination time, for just stocking! Over an hour at a minimum per day just to keep marginally ahead of things... and that's only if you have low turnover items!!

My suggestions: (for what it is worth)

- implement no or increased price limit for premium auctions based on Business/Merchant Skill levels. 6000 for business 3/4, increasing up to 100k or more for Master Merchant.
- MAKE THE BAZAAR/VENDORS SORT PROPERLY!!! You can't even find stuff in the proper categories because it ends up in some non-sensical section. This has been a BUG for MONTHS.
- Make items in crates show up in their respective categories instead of the idiotic Misc. category.
- Make the Bazaar/Vendors show item count in the display in its own col., so people can sort for counts of items they want.
- Make the charges an item has show up in the bazaar. You can get a crate of 1 charge item and pay as much for that as a 10 charge item, and you cannot tell that until you've already purchased the item, since the details doesn't tell you!!
- Make the Bazaar/Vendors sorts run through all the possible results, not just the 1st 100 or so from the first page... you know, a PROPER query. Perhaps include a word or item sort, as well as fixing the effing categories.
- Only allow the proper number of vendors for player with the CURRENT skill level. Drop vendors from players who have dropped the skill. Merchant is the only class where this is allowed.
- allow Vendors listed in the planetary directory to show up in a tab or as an option listing under the Bazaar
- if vendor stock levels are so important to you, tie the stock levels to Merchant skill levels, as Draznar has suggested.
- Implement consignment sales as have been requested since the beginning of time from the Merchant and Artisan classes.
- Allow same-stat items to be stacked
- Remove stack size limits for nonPC inventory purposes (inside vendors/bazaaar).Or increase them related to size of object.1000's for small items, 100's for medium, 10's for huge objects, only a few for factories and such.
- Place price limits on bazaarvendors at some reasonable level, to discourage 'fake sales', or tie them to merchant level caps.
- Stop mobs from dropping BS items (junk and junk dealer). Or allow the junk dealers to buy stock items for some percentage of their resource valuation. That would get rid of the 1000's for CDEF and other items in the bazaar and get some money to people who need it more urgently.
- Allow people to set price per item in stacks of items, so that they can buy partial sets from stacked items.

--D'Ruk of iD Co, Corbantis

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In Development 2: Droid Invasion

Welcome to Star Wars Galaxies second In Development overview. During the first 3 months of 2004, there will be many upcoming game features up for addition and design changes. The second will be a set of changes made to the game world that will add combat functionality to Droids.

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I thought this was the real ID#2 ?? Why does TH say its Bazaar/Vendor changes?

1) I don't thing the bazaar cap should be increased. Any more than 3000 and this will hurt Merchants who have invested several skill points to sell their items on their own vendors. With the reduction in new money coming into the server and the added money sinks of cities and vehicles most items except for very large ticket items can be purchased for 6k or less. Instead of increasing the cap, why not work on known bazaar issues, like items not listed in their correct categories or some type of search filter to make finding items on the bazaar quicker?

2) The item cap on vendors seems to be a good idea. This would keep people with only very few Merchant skills from selling everything they own on one vendor.

Hello Thunderheart,

I think the cap raise on the Bazaar is very appropreate at this point. I felt that the 3000 credit cap worked very effectively in the beginning of the game. The 6k cap will enable people to put a wider variety of items up in the system, with out seriously compromising Merchants, and result in revitalizing the Bazaar.

One suggestion, Optional Bazaar Terminal for Player Cities?

An idea for Minimum amount on Bazaar :

PLEASE consider temporarily removing vendors off the planetary map if the vendor is currently empty.

Countless times I drive around only to find an empty vendor (OF COURSE after paying the 1 credit to enter the merchant's shop)...

Why not temporarily remove thesevendors off the map (if they are empty) until they restock the vendor?

This would encourage merchants to stock their vendors when they're empty.

Also, 150 items is a too low.... that willmake the rich much richer.

A few ofrich players will buy up all thegoods once they're stocked due to fear of not being able tobuy itin the future -- thus, denying other players from getting a chance to buy anything of that vendor.

A cap of around 200 items would be more reasonable.... with a NEXT and BACK button that is flashing or obvious... not dull and easily missed.

A 150 item cap discriminates between professions. Some professions can keep well-stocked vendors with 150 items, others cannot.

For example, an architect can have 2 or 3 of just about any schematic that he or she can make on a vendor, and it will only be 150 items. For an architect, that is a well-stocked vendor. For professions that do not need to worry about variety, the 150 item cap is fine.

A tailor, on the other hand, has over 100 schematics and 200 colors. I keep my vendor stocked with at least 600 items, and that's still not enough. That really only gives 2-8 color choices per item, depending on the item, and I only make about half of the available schematics. I don't even sell jewelry. I have only a few items that I duplicated in the same color (i.e. I may have 2 black dusters on the vendor), but usually each item is unique. I have to restock every day, because whenever one item sells I need to replace that individual item.

Customers come to my shop specifically because there is a wide selection, they can browse items, and be able to put together an entire matching outfit "off the rack." They can shop while I'm sleeping, or while I'm out playing music in the cantina. They can find what they're looking for, even if they don't know what they want when they come in. Tailoring is a slow-turnover business. You need a lot of selection, but overall, a tailor sells very little.

Large stock for a tailor is NOT a monopoly. It's simply a fact of the profession. If I made 15 types of shirts, 10 types of pants, 5 types of shoes, 10 types of jackets, 5 types of skirts, 5 types of dresses, 5 types of bodysuits, and made one in white, and one in black, that would be 110 items. If I added some belts, a few assorted bioengineered items, a few robes, necklaces, then I would probably easily hit the cap. A quarter of the available schematics available in two colors is NOT a decent stock!

If you implement that cap, you will force tailors into the custom order business, a business that is overly time-consuming and does not allow for tailors to do other things. Effectively, you will chain tailors to their shops, because the vendor sales have been foreclosed. A well-stocked tailor would now need 4 dedicated vendors just to be able to offer the same amount of clothes.

A tailor would not be able to enter into an agreement with a merchant to sell his or her goods- no merchant would be willing to dedicate 4 out of 6 vendors to house a variety of low-priced slowly-selling items when he could be using the same vendors to sell guns or high BER harvesters which have a higher turnover. Tailors do not have a high turnover: people are particular about what they want.

It seems unfair that one profession (or more)be severely hamstrung by this cap, while other professions will not have to make any adjustments.

There are other ways to reduce item storage on vendors. Such a way would be to eliminate vendors whose owners no longer have merchant skills. Don't penalize those who retain their merchant skills by hamstringing the ability to showcase a decent amount of stock.

This change would also encourage people to train up merchant, and gain additional vendors for their goods, and then to drop the skills immediately after. This would result in the same amount of item storage, just spread out on 6 ill-gotten vendors.

If you're worried about people being unable to flip the page, the solution is to list all the items on one long, scrollable, page.

In summary, the results of this 150 item cap:

1. tailors will be too swamped with orders to be able to efficiently serve the needs of customers


2. tailors will not be able to enter into relationships with merchants because merchants would be unwilling to dedicate more than one vendor to stock


3. tailors may become frustrated and quit tailoring, or quit the game, something we cannot afford with the rapidly dwindling tailor population


4. this regulation would encourage people to gain 6 vendors and then drop the skills instead of just using 1 legitimately-achieved vendor


5. tailoring vendors would be poorly-stocked at all times. The only items would be items that sell quickly for high turnover. This would result in everyone looking like drones.

Increase to the Vendor price cap is a good idea, inflation has meant that 3000 credits just won't buy yuo much of anything.

Cap on items on a vendor, in theory I like the idea, but 150 does seema bit low, I would think between 200 and 400 would be fair (after 3 pages I start to get bored with scrolling down to see the same item listed again, just another stack).

On the previous page of this thread Kettemoor had a great idea, have a bazaar terminal which allows you to scan private vendors on other planets and towns, charge a price (maybe based on distance from current location, you know, long distance charges and all). Make it available to low level merchants, but charge them toregister with the vendor-yellow pages so it becomes a money sink. It is a real hassle to have to jump 3 planets and 2k on a speeder to find that the vendor is empty.

One comment about monopolies. Why would one crafter sell more items than another? Skill is more or less equal. There are skill tapes, but from what i've seen most top level crafters who are doing business with their primary character all have some and can all put out more or less the same quality of stuff.

Resources? Ya, these are important. If one crafter puts more effort into making better stuff because he bought better resources, why should he be punished bya cap on his vendor? His stuff is better because he paid more to make it better. That's fair anddeserves more business. If you want more business, buy better quality resources.

The main reason that a player gets lots of business and could be considered to hold a monopoly is that they're reliable. If you go to a 2 vendors and one is stocked and one is not, which one do you go back first the next time you need something? If that vendor has the stuff you want a couple times in a row you start sending people there when you're asked for a referral. That vendor spent the time to keep their vendor stocked and deserves more business. A cap would put an unreasonable amount of pressure on these crafters to manage their vendors. It's hard enough to find a reliable vendor, is the vision of the game to make all crafters and their vendors unrelaible because there's a high chance they'll be sold out of what you need?

Monopolies in this game are created by effort, nothing more. Everyone can make the same stuff, some people just choose to make it better and make it more available than other crafters. It takes more of their effort and time and they shouldn't be punished because the game's db is designed badly and can't handle all the items. If you're going to deny that it's badly designed then I want my starter melons back. There are already enough times that even the reliable vendors are sold out and you have to run all over to see what everyone's got.Reward the players who put more effort in to their profession.