Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
The question on the bazaar limit is:
Are Merchants intended to only sell thier own products, or sell for other crafters?
6k will be enough for alot of craftersto operate solely out of the bazaar, meaning they will no longer need merchants, or at the very least reduce the need. This decreases inter-profession dependablity which is built into the design of the game.
lessening the call for Merchants below what it is, which is dreadfully low allready,will potentionally be enough to push the non-crafter merchants out of business. The only merchants will be crafters that dabble in it, like myself.
ALSO, the Bazaar is > Merchant Vendors.
- Merchants have to pay skill points and upkeep to get Planet wide advertisment.
- The Bazaar is 20c and Galaxy Wide advertisment, with no skill points used.
IF the bazaar limit was rasied i would prefer to see it as a Artisan Business or Merchant profession perk, not an across the board raise.
Vendor Item cap:
150 is too low by far. to keep up with demand i have 300-500 items on my weapon vendor, just by having 5-10 of each weapon, and i don't even stock grenades and such. To make me stock less pewr vendor, would mean i have to stock more often. This turns more of my play time into upkeep, which is not as fun.
If there is to be a cap, then it should be much higher, 2-3x that, and allow merchants the ability to have higher counts, maybe a lower limit on the business3 vendor. Other wise your just forceing us to use more vendors which cost us more money, and does not reduce the overall item count in your db, just breaks it into more records which would increase the overall file size.
3000 to 6000 change is agood idea.
Capping the number of items at 150 is a very bad idea. You changed the storage time from 7 to 30 days to help people with upkeep of thier shops so they wouldn't be have to switch out their supply all the time. I have to mention that this changed caused many bugs and a lot of heartache, but in the end was worth it. Now please don't come back amonth or two later and implement something that puts all that store upkeephassle back in,it just doesn't make any sense what-so-ever. Plus the likelihood of you implementing a big bug changing this just isn't worth the risk for any of the players.
If this change is meant to get crafters tospend more money on vendor maintenance by having more vendors for a money sink, go back to the drawing board please.
On the bazaar, I would like to see the price cap *FOR RESOURCES ONLY* raised, if not removed.
My reasoning for this is that the resources are probably the #1 thing that people buy/sell on the bazaar (or, at least, that I buy and sell) and it would make things a lot easier for crafters.
For everything else, I'm in favor of keeping the limit the same.
Another bazaar improvement:
Please make it so that I can search by region, this planet, OTHER planet, and by entire galaxy. It is silly that I can travel between the stars faster than light, but I cannot do some basic sorting on the bazaar. And, if you guys wanted to be really nice, make it so that I could sort by planet and by resource type - i.e. only carnivore meat from corellia (even if I'm on, say, Naboo).
The database decision and implementation bites us yet again.
Bazaar change = good
Vendor change = bad
Some people run Malls and they already have many vendors and have to keep them stocked pretty full as it is. This will do nothing but hurt them.
I thought you all were working on making a Merchant's life easier, not harder.
Guess there is nothing we can do though because this is yet ANOTHER database problem.
Bazaar credit cap of 6000 - Good
Mechant Vendor Item Cap 150 - BAD
There is already few reasons for people to be a Merchant, and if you limit how much they can sell, you hurt buisness. All you will be doing is promoting more empty vendors all over the place. Hint: Your Merchant Class needs HELP, not nerfing. This is NOT the way to help. I sell powerups, Chef items, Artisan electronics, and Droids. 150 items is barely a third of the number of Powerups I stock!
Now, how about this: If you insist on an item cap like this, then allow us to manage and stock our vendors REMOTELY! By this I mean, allow us to access a single vendor, and use it to place items for sale on any vendor we own, in any location. And let people buy from any vendor we own, from any location, AND RETRIEVE IT TOO!
You will NOT be encouraging more Merchants, okay? This will NOT be a good thing. Help the Merchants, dont hurt them.
Bazaar changes are great!
The item limit......depends.
If the item limit is 150 for the amount of items on sale thats not so bad. However thats still very small...personally i would like to see around 300 if there is a cap.
if the total limit is 150 for sales,offers,stock room then this is a horrible idea. In no way would i be able to keep up with sales.....or provide a viable way of getting items to regular customers.
Thunderheart wrote:
This ... actually hurts sales in many instances because most players don't "drill down" through all of the vendor pages to find items.
Thinking about this some more, it makes 0 sense and almost sounds like the dev team is just grasping for a 3rd reason to make this change....
When i go thousands of kilometers just to visit a specific vendor, I make Darn sure to browse every single item on the vendor. I don't know what statistic makes you think "most players" don't "drill down", but I'm definitely not one ofyour "most" players.
I agree with people here saying that the 150 limit should vary by some percentage depending on what profession you have. But I think there should be a limit of some kind to encourage and promote Merchants with Vendor +skills. The 150 limit should definitely be tied to a Merchant skill tree and increase accordingly.
Also as a follow-up:
I get any number of emails/tells from customers thanking me for having such a fully stocked store, and saying they'll be back. I appreciate that feedback and I bust my tailbone to keep my vendors stocked for my 250ish regular customers.
I care about my customers, and find it rewarding to have them know then can come by my shop and get what they need, and that if I don't have it, chances are it's 'cause someone else just bought my last one but I'll have it restocked soon.
Good customer service. Good business sense. Good deal of effort. If that means I get more business than a weaponsmith that stocks his vendor once a week with 20 items? Than I'd like to think it's because I'm working a >LOT< harder than that other guy is.They're called market forces: reliability, convenience, prices and selection, you're be artificially suppressing the selection of every crafter that's also a merchant. I feel .very. sorry for the tailors.
I'm a casual player, I play about 3-4 hours a night, and my time is dedicated to crafting. It's pretty much all I do other than harvesting resources for my crafting. This idea seems intended to invalidate that effort.
Oh, and while you're working on the bazaar, how about fixing the "storage exploit."
You know... the one that will let you store 25 items at a cost of 500cr/week.
How do you do it, you ask?
It's simple, really.
Put that guild hall deed that you want to keep on the bazaar and set it for a 7 day auction with a starting price of 3000cr.
Since 3000cr is the most anyone can bid on it, and 3001cr is the lowest bid the bazaar will accept, it will immediately reject any bid placed on it.
Bingo! Instant safe deposit box for a very small weekly fee. It costs more than 500cr/week to have a house!
How do you fix it?
Also just as simple.
Either set the max starting bid for an "auction" at 2999cr or make the bazaar accept an opening bid of 3000cr.
And while we're at it... since 3000cr is the most you can bid, how about ending all those auctions that hit the max as soon as they do it and sell it immediately to the high bidder. Honestly, what's the point of running an auction for 6.5 more days when it's not gonna get any more bids? In fact, this would stop the exploiters from cancelling their auction just before the sale becomes final so that they don't lose the items in their storage bin.
Oh, and what happens to vendors people have after they give up all their merchant skills? Get Master Merchant once and have vendors forever! Sure, you can never move them again but if you plan it right, you'll never need to. How about making it so you can't pay maintenance on any of your vendors until you're back at the limit you can manage. This would require a cap on maintenance you could add so you can't pay for 6 months of maintenance on all of them then give up the skill altogether, but shouldn't be so low as to force legitimate merchants to hassle with it constantly. 30 days would be reasonable. This would also keep the people who drop the skills from having their vendors go poof all of a sudden. You could also make "excess" vendor maintenance fees significantly higher. This would force these vendors out of the world that much sooner.
It's the little inefficiencies like this in the system that should be taken care of before you worry about those of us who are just trying to play the game as best we can.
I completely agree with Princess Thea since I am a Tailor so I am just going to paste her response here. Oh and why don't you follow throughwith the new decay you set forth - nothing that is at 0% is disappearing. People with totally destroyed clothes are still wearing them. ACTUAL decay should be put in.That should help.
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.
instead of putting in a vendor cap so you dont have to scroll though pages and pages of stuff to find what you are looking for, is there away you can post multible pieces that are the same under one listing.
ie: alot of weaponsmiths make crates of weapons and the break up the crate to sell the single weapon, but put several of the same gun up, so you have to go through a page of just laser carbines to get to an ee3 carbine. is there a way to have it list the laser carbine but say there are several in stock, and give the buyer the option to buy one or buy multipes.
does that make sence, Is this possible?
so when i am looking to buy a laser carbine and i go to a vendor it says there is one type (could be more if he/she made them with different stats). but would also say 4 instock instead of listing out thecarbine 4 timesand making the buy have to examine all of them to see if there is a differance. then i can click on buy, and it gives me a screen that says quanity, and has a defaut answer of 1. i click okor change the number to how many i want. then i computes the price and give me a screen with the total price and an accept button.
seems easy.
LadyLeala wrote:
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.
This part, at least, is a FANTASTIC idea.