Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
Thunderheart wrote:
Currently, the credit cap is 3000 and the development team is considering raising the cap to 6000 credits. Are you for or against this change? Why?
I am in favor of the change. I am not a crafter, so I have no need of a Vendor of my own, but I do, from time to time, find myself needing to sell something that I'd like to get more than 3000 credits for. I think 5000 might be a more intuitive cap, but whatever the exact number, I do favor raising it.
I would also like to bring up one other Bazaar issue, if I may. When someone lists something in an Auction, it usually lasts until someone decides they really want it, at which point they bid 3000 credits, and the Auction is effectively over. I am of the opinion that the Bazaar cap should NOT apply to Auctions. That would allow the items Auctioned to actually go to the highest bidder, not just whoever got there first with a 3000 credit (or whatever the new cap becomes) bid. Alternatively, maybe the solution is to just remove the Auction type of listing. As it is, it isn't much on an Auction.
The second item has to do with Vendors. Currently, there is no limit to how many items can be placed on a vendor. This causes technical issues, encourages monopolies and actually hurts sales in many instances because most players don't "drill down" through all of the vendor pages to find items. We want to solve the technical issues, discourage monopolies and make vendors easier to use. An item limit is going to be placed on vendors and that limit is intended to be placed on 150.
I do not favor this change. I didn't set out to be the guy who uses non-standard equipment, but somehow that is what happened. When I go into, for example, a weapon shop, I see half-a-bazillion of the flavor-of-the-month weapons listed (seems like the FWG5 has been the flavor most months) and a few others, including, if I am lucky, one of whatever weapon I am seeking. This change will probably not cause weaponsmiths to list fewer of the flavor-of-the-month and keep the odd stuff, this will probably cause them to drop the odd stuff from their inventory to make more room for the flavor-of-the-month. I have the same problems when I shop for armor or clothing. This will push me into having to do business exclusively by special order, which is a problem because a lot of crafters don't want to be bothered with special orders. That being said, I realize that there is no way around needing to fix the technical issues. It has to be done. Would it be possible, however, to push that limit higher? Even 250 would be better than 150. 500 would be wonderful. Please, any help here would be appreciated.
I agree with raising the bazaar cap. Tho' 10 or 15k is where I would set it... perhaps limiting the number of items listed to just 5 or 10.
I completely disagree withimposing such drastic vendor limits tho'.
A 300-500 item limit would be more reasonable.
If we have to have one at all.
Tho'now that I think about it, I do see the benefits to full-time Merchants in limiting the "dabblers" ability to funnel the output of a fleet of factories through one little artisan-level vendor.
Perhaps as an alternative, set a floating cap... Artisan Business4 gets you a 150 item limit, with 25 item bumps scattered throughout the Merchant tree?
I HATE this change! 150 item limit! You must be joking? Please be joking.
I just finished loading a vendor with 700 tailor items and I haven't even done the dresses category yet! Nor is there one of everything from the other categories either! I get too many tells and mails from customers that are ecstatic they finally found a tailor with well-stocked vendors! This change will kill Tailors that try to offer variety! I get tell hell already from people trying to complete an outfit because they can't find variety in colors or styles offered on the average vendor. At least 50% of my regular business comes from being "well-stocked." Dang. There goes the fun in that. 150 items huh? Guess I better start slashing prices and throw it all on the bazaar as junk before the NERF auto-deletes everything I have invested in time, effort, maintenances on harvesters and factories, vendors, houses.... I am soooo not happy.
And the bazaar cap raised to 6000. Great. Not. 99% of what I sell is 6k and under. What? I stock only 7k and above on my newly 150 limited vendors and hope the bulk of my sales don't get lost in the plethora of junk on the bazaar? Great. Big fun.
Monopolies? What monopolies? I am one box away from master merchant and it is suddenly a waste of my time, money, and effort. I have 3 business partners who were planning to use my 2 remaining vendors I was about to get. What was I going to monopolize again? Tailoring? General Merchandise Merchant? You can't spit without hitting a Tailor or a Merchant. (mostly due to the holo grinders now and we all just LOVE going to vendors with nothing on them, don't we?)
Nope. I hate this with a fierce passion. I just spent about 6 hours a day for the last ten days stocking vendors, harvesting resources, running factories... and for what? Now I get to pull all that stuff off of there and store it somewhere till I can sell it in itty bitty dribs and drabs. Great. Just great. I think I will give up my crafter I've had since launch day, and played in beta too and just go play my Scout on the other server. Or wait, I got The Sims for Xmas. Yeah. There's an idea.
Oh well. My opinion doesn't matter in the least. It is just one of thousands lost in the noise of a huge thread. Bah! Joy joy, my logins for the next week will be pulling off all the merchandise I just spent 10 days putting on the vendors! Hate it hate it HATE IT!
That way SOE notices what a horid idea this is. Fix it in real ways . . . like getting rid of the vendor after skill drop exploit. Like increasing limits with Merchant Skill advancement . . . like anything other than a hard 150 cap. They're taking the easy way out, that is for sure.
Elao wrote:
Wow, this thread is getting long.
Bear in mind what this would mean for clothing.
Need a new outfit? Well, first head out to Worldwide Pants, where you'll be able to choose from several different styles and colors (though mostly black.) Want a shirt to go with it? Take a hike to Just Shirts, where they might have a shirt in a color that sort of matches the pants! (Probably not, though, if you went with the "non-black" option.) Then hope the proprietor of Simply Gloves bothered to restock this week....
Sound like fun?
I like the idea of reaing the cap and I would like to see it go up maby even as high as 100k.
As to the vernder cap I do notcare ether way as all the peoples Ihave ever looked at never have that many anyways (Ibuyfromfriends only and mostly custom made).
What I would like to see though is a way to have yourvenders apper on the bazaar as a 4th choice. Have thisability inMM and make them pay more I think peoplewould do it and this wouldeven drain more credits from thegame world helping to kill infaltion.
Double Nerf to the Merchants.. They're both horrible ideas.
Increasing the Bazaar to 6k Max will hurt merchants who sell low-price items (stims/powerups/etc) that are just slightly higher than the 3k max. Nobody will trudge out to their shops if they can get the same stuff in the main cities. This will cause vendors to go out of business, either voluntarily or involuntarily.
It will also lead to inflation, because people will charge 6k for the "impulse" goods simply because they can. So locked containers and other similar items people buy off the bazaar will now cost double.
I can't really add much about the 150 cap that hasn't been mentioned already, the only thing this will do is force merchants out of business because it becomes too much like a real job to haveto constantly re-stock.
Just aboutthe onlyideaI saw that was any good was theguy who said to get rid of the Auction feature on the bazaar.. I'd support that. The rest of this isjust another transparent attempt to reduce database size.
FruitSmack wrote:
Amen Epifet!
Although this is another personal anticdote, I think it's valid for others as well.
I chose to become a weaponsmith so I could mess around with and sell some of the lesser used weapons. Not every player wants to use the killa firearms that everyone else uses, even if they arnt the best. I wanted to be someone that can be relied on for making things like SG62's and Cryoban grenades, stuff that other WS rarely touch. A cap on vendor items effectively closes me out of the niche market and forses me to either pick up more merchant (something im not interested in doing), stock only stuff that sells to cover my costs (thus not doing what I became an artisan for in the first place), stocking all the time (something I dont have time for), or saying f**k it all for a game of soldiers and just drop any sort of artisan for a combat class because I cant do the fun stuff I became an artisan/ws for in the first place. Odds are thats what would happen.
Exactly. I'd love to buy a decent quality weapon that's not what is considered "the best", however, there's no way I'm going to run across the planet just to find one. I only go out hunting the planet for vendors when all my backup weapons have broke, anyways. If I can stop by the vendor, and have fun buying certain low-cost weapons, then I benefit from getting an item I want to mess around with (I like grenades, but don't see many good onesI can use out there), and the person selling the item gets the benefit of a decent profit and -gasp- a market for his low-end goods. At the same time, there will be other players who want the best, and the line between the average item and the best item will be settled at a vendor.
Anyways, enough talk for me.
I have never had more than 100 items on any vendor at any time..
But I must say that 150 item limit on a vendor? How does this cause a monopoly?
If I put 10,000 items on my vendor, does that prevent someone from putting a vendor right next to mine and selling every item that I have? Nothing..
What's to stop another tailor from showing up and under-cutting all 10,000 of my items.. nothing..
If another tailor can produce the same items that I can for cheaper cost, people will use the other tailor instead of me... it's that simple..
Also the 'hurts sales' argument doesn't seem valid either.. if I put 10,000 items on my vendor, and sales were POOR.. why would I continue to list 10,000 items.. If that problem really existed.. it would be self-correcting...
Not trying to be picky here.. but if it's a server issue, then it's a server issue..
One thing this WILL do is force people who dabble in merchant to go deeper into the management tree than they might want to..
I know this is one more in a long line of posts, but here we go.
Bazaar limits I am not really worried about. 3k now is fine, I am not sure I see any kind of bonus to have a 6k limit.
Vendor limits, I think this is a horrible idea. You are going to hurt the crafters in this game by doing this. Stocking vendors is possibly the most-unfun in this game. By giving vendors limits like this your going to make it harder and much more of a pain. I think you will lose customers with this kind of decision. Please don't do it.
Brendoon
I like the bazaar limit being raised, should probably be a little higher maybe 10k.
I don't like the vendor item limit being lowered.
My take on the vendor/bazaar thing is this:
Sure up the high end price ont he Bazaar. It means more people can sell low end product there and get noticed as someone who sells things and someone may actually find a waypoint or name they can contact to get the better stuff.
But...
Vendors capping at 150...bad idea. Personally I don't want to have 5 active vendors to sell my stuff. I don't want my customers to have to go from one machine to another to find what they want. It makes it more complicated for everyone. If all the categories of the bazaar and vendors actually worked the way they should, no one would need multiple vendors.
I am a loot hunter right now. Its the only thing I am having fun doing. So right now I go out every day and hunt for skill attachments, force crystals, armor segments, scales, hides, and anything else that can be looted off an animal. Some of the fun is just finding the stuff...whatever it is and seeing that I completely looted. However right now I have some 235 skill attachments for sale...have nearly 100 of just voritor hides and scales...along with numerous other numbers of Kryat tissues, kryat composite armor segments, rancor bile, rancor scales, padded armor segments. I had been collecting these for a grand reopening to sell all of the loot, since I can't possible store all of it any more even across my 4 houses, and I finally have enough that it won't all sell in an hour. So if this change takes place, it means several things. Now I have to go towards master merchant to get more vendors just to sell more product. This means I have to drop the skills I need in order to hunt thecreatures that Iget any enjoyment fromin the game. Consider that these loot drops tend to drop in stacks of 2-11, which means around 20-25 total loots and the vendor is full.Recently this has been the only fun thing I have found to do in the game consistently. If this change takes place though you are basically taking away what I want to do in the game, my last reason to stay.It seems that every proposed change is a way to force us to play the game the way you want us to play, then we have to find a way to have fun and it is taken away. There's nothing fun about that, and in the end I don't want to pay 20 bucks a month to pay for a glorified chat program. The game is here to provide entertainment and enjoyment for the people who play it. Its here to provide them with opportunities to have fun in a social setting. I shouldn't have to go searching for fun in a game.