Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
If you want the Bazaar to be more useful, why not change it so you can see vendor listings there. This would allow the Bazaar to be a two stop shopping place for everything in the galaxy. Click on Vendor->Armor and you see all the registered armorsmiths in your area, planet, or galaxy, and all their wares appear for you to compare with other vendors. Very few people want to run all over the galaxy to find the best weapons or best prices. This is the biggest problem for new merchants trying to break into the market.
I've always thought there *was* a limit on the number of items on a vendor. 150 items seems too small. Maybe 250. There really should be some sort of limit to make the merchant ability of having more than one vendor a bit more worth while, and prevent the use of vendors as infinite item storage. It's somewhat rare that I see a vendor with more than 200 items, but I frequently see vendors with between 100-150 items.
Aet0s wrote:
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 of your "most" players.
Oh, Thunderheart's basic point is sort of true. Lots of players are unable to find the "Next Items" box, or don't know how to efficiently use the bazaar/vendor system (e.g. don't select "All Items" on a well-stocked vendor), etc. Most players seem to learn eventually, though they often need some assistance from their friendly neighborhood merchant.
The *real* problem with this line of reasoning is that you're trying to punish players for the failings of your own user interface!
Vendor limits: I do not see any player driven need/reason for this change. I highly doubt the merchant class has asked for this (was a merchant, they add little value to the game IMO). If there is going to be a limit, it should be *very high* (1000 range), otherwise, leave it alone. I'd actually like to browse through all the items a crafter has for sale intead of having to click on 5 or 6 vendors (it's nice having them all on one view).
In other words, both these changes seem like a waste of dev time. They are either unnecessary or fail to address the larger question. Of course, this change will likely go through anyway. Seems like they've already made up their minds that the database needs to be restricted in this fashion.
I've thought some more about this.
If you are going to change the bazaar cap...make it UNLIMITED or at least up to 5 million. Instead of having illegal eBay auctions or big ticket items on the forums why not have them in the game on the bazaar like they should be?!
Who exactly is your "problem solver"? and do they actually ever play the game? 150 item limit is rediculous. If the problem you are addressing is the fact that vendors have too many items on them for people to scroll through, then device a new way to sort the items and make vendors more orderly.
You've made a game with a zillion crafting scenarios and resources to meet those scenarios. Don't nerf the back end of that.
The 150 cap is a VERY bad idea. Why fix the one thing that is stable in this game?
As a pure specialized merchant/crafter (I only have 1 Master trade) on the Lowca server, I would NOT like to see a cap of 150 on the personal vendor. The reason for this is that I pride myself in providing a wide selection of goods in quantities of 6 or more. With something like say, furniture, I would have to cut certain items from my inventory and that would hamper my ability to provide my customers with the selection I currently have. My vendor has ad barking that informs customers that there are multiple pages so if I do have someone that doesnt normally know to filter through the pages that bit of info will usually help them. There is no way that I have any market cornered nor do I believe anyone can corner a market with just vendors alone. From experience, I believe you cultivate repeat customers by word of mouth or by 'always' having a particular item on your vendors. This 150 cap would prevent us merchants from doing this.
Another thing I would like to add is that I have mutiple characters on several different servers so I don't always get to log into all my characters everyday and that would cause another problem for the merchants that are capped at 150. It would be like you are requiring them to play their merchant even more just to restock their vendors with inventory already made. And what about the storage space? Are you gonna be adding another 100-150 to houses forall this excess inventory?
I would like to see the Devs start focusing on things that are currently broken like: Quests/Missions, Jedi, several Professions, everything related to PvP, lack of adventure content, Server-side lag, warping, and rollbacks before trying to dismantle the one thing that I feel currently works well.
I just wanted to add that there are several things in this game that I should have quit over and the only reason I havent already done so is because I enjoy my merchant/crafter and how he can incorporate himself into the market. It took a while for me to get where I am and feel you are paying too much attention to a minority of merchants who just don't know how to cultivate customers, don't know how to advertise, or just don't want to put in the effort needed to succeed.
Raising the sale price cap on the bazaar won't help or hurt me. As an Architect, almost all the structures, factories, and houses I sell go for more than 6K. I don't even sell lesser-priced furniture on the bazaar, because I don't think it would sell that well (too many items on the bazaar for people to find my stuff).
This brings up a related problem with the bazaar, especially in the Miscellaneous, Generic Item category. I like to browse this part of the bazaar to find trinkets to sell on one of my vendors (such as looted items), but there is so much junk in there. It would REALLY help to have more categories to put some of those things in (especially pet deeds, and those ever-present COA2 components for the data decoder).
As far as the vendor limit, I didn't know we had unlimited space!!! I thought for sure there was a limit of some kind, because I've gotten messages telling me that before. But that was a limit on Offer To Vendors, which is different, and maybe I just thought it also applied to Sale Items.
I seldom see anyone's vendor with anywhere near 150 items, so I don't think that limit is harsh. As long as it's 150 PER VENDOR, and not 150 items per crafter, that would be OK.
I think that the cap and the vendor item limits should increase with Merchant skills.
The Merchant Management tree right now lets merchants change signs and place vendors, which most do just once per level-- they never get an ongoing benefit from the skill and thus some people drop the branch after placing their vendors. If the Management branch ALSO affected your vendor item limit, then it would provide a clear day-to-day benefit to keeping that skill. It also means that the Master Merchants can maintain larger inventories than the casual ones, which makes sense.
The bazaar cap, on the other hand, is why so many people do buy vendors and then drop the skills. Any non-artisancrafter (such as Smuggler, Bio-Engineer, musicians making instruments) who wants to sell their high-end goods is severely limited if they do not have a vendor. Raising the bazaar price cap lets more of these people sell their goods on the bazaar, so it is a good thing.
I recommend that you remove the bazaar price cap entirely, but make the listing fee a percentage (maybe 5%)of selling price, rather than a flat fee of 20 credits. This raised cap and altered fee allows a BE, for example, to sell their level-70 pets without a personal vendor. Simultaneously, it lets the newbie character sell items for 20 credits without losing money. Those who maintain well-stocked vendors would still have plenty of advantages (larger stock on the market, lower operating costs, advertising, etc.).
I would consider 10k on bazzar but 6k is a good start
I'm no longer a merchant, but I once was and 150 is waaaay to low. better make it 300.
-conversation from the top floor of SWG Tower concerning vendor item limits-
Dev - "We've got a big problem. The database is acting like and overstuffed burrito and it's about to leak beans."
TH- "mmm food"
Holo - "The database needs our help brave friends! To the rescue!"
Q - "So what's the problem? We took the melons out when you guys asked. What's wrong now?"
Dev - "Vendors now. There's just too many of them."
Q - "We can't take away their vendors. Not even WE could get away with that. Ideas?"
Holo - "The vendors must survive!"
TH - "I want a pony."
Dev - "Don't we have a correspondant for this?"
Q - "Not sure. We have them for everything else i think. TH, do we have a correspondant for this?"
TH - "You guys said when i took this job that I could have a pony!"
Q - "I guess that's a 'no'. Can we remove some schematics or something?"
Holo - "Schematics are the basis of creation young grasshopper."
Dev - "We might be able to limit the number if items on vendors."
Q - "Great idea. Then players would still have vendors, but they'd wouldn't really work."
TH - "**edit** it! Where's my pony?"
Q - "Talk to the pony correspondant TH. He'll make sure the pony csr sets you up."
Dev - "Can we just drop the limit and call it a bug and then just not be able to fix it later? It worked with armor colors."
Holo - "Armor protects the flesh and steels the soul."
Q - "umm right..... No, we'd better look like we're taking this seriously. TH, see how the players respond. You can go get your pony when you're done with that."
(fades to black with Q near tears)
<bored at work>
I've read a few more threads and have 'sort of' changed my mind on thinking the bazaar cap increase is a good idea.
Instead of a global increase, how about increasing it for those of us who have invested skill points in merchant.
Efficiency reduces our bazaar fees, but how about something that lets us list more items and gives us a higher cap.
The 'premium listing' is a joke. It just cuts into my profits. However, as a merchant (yes, I mastered it voluntarily) I enjoy selling things on the bazaar because it hits a wider-reaching customer base than my vendor does and I can sell cheaper but very popular items on it.
How about letting Master Merchants place a single bazaar terminal? It could be linked to the closest regional bazaar network. It would add value to our shops by introducing an element of convenience to customers who could buy from our vendors OR the bazaar from one shop, and allow us to load things into the bazaar from a convenient location.
Raised cap to 6000 is fine, but why not improve the actualy vendor interface to make it useful. Add keyword searching!!
Also allow merchants to place vendors, then add other non-merchants as "admins" and then charge a % fee for every sale one of the people make off your vendor. Makes merchant class more "merchant-like"
Lysateur