Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
*throws 2cr on the bar*
BAZAAR LIMIT - Upping the bazaar limit is probably ok, but I like the suggestion that auctions have no upper limit. Everywhere else in the game we see pressure to interact, it seems strange that this change would allow less interaction as players could get more of their requirements fulfilled without the need of player vendors.
VENDOR CAP - Don't nerf the vendors, fix the vendors! The sorting problem goes away if you let us drill deeper into the categories. Right now I can drill down to 'Inorganic - Mineral' that can be a LOT of items on a resource focused vendor. Allow an 'Aluminum' Filter or even a deeper level a 'Titanium Aluminum' level. Other things don't sort correctly - why are unlocked containers found under 'Containers' but locked ones are under 'Misc - General'. Fix the filtering so that everything shows up under proper categories and allow more granular filters so players can look specifically at what they want to buy.
Draznar wrote:
I want to expand on my idea to tie vendor item limits to Merchant Skill. I think that the limit should be as followed:
- Bus 3 = 50
- Bus 4 = 100
- Novice = 150
- Man 1 = 200
- Man 2 = 300
- Man 3 = 400
- Man 4 = 500
- Master = 1,000
This is an idea I like too. I shared the idea with theLead Designer and he likes this idea too.
The thing here is to implement it right away means that as a merchant goes up in level, it wouldnt automatically upgrade in numbers. If you gained a new merchant skill box which unlocked more slots, you would have to create a new vendor. We'd be able to add an automatic check and upgrade in the future, but it wouldnt be for a long time.
Even still, I think its a great idea to add this ability in. I dont know what the max numbers would be yet though Ill ask.
Now what about stoping the guys that have dropped their merchant skills yet still have several vendors cluttering up your database? IF you drop the skills to use a vendor you should not beable to keep using a vendor.
Both ideas sound great, as the 3k limit is way too low. 6k sounds good, but don't go much higher than that, or Merchants will become unnecessary.
I really like limiting the number of items that a vendor can hold. This could improve performance, and also gives a cool perk to Merchants. I'm not too familiar with that profession, but it seems that this would create the opportunity to grant more vendors to higher level merchants, thereby giving them something to strive for.
Raise the bazaar limit to 6k it wouldn't be a bad thing at all.
But to lower the vendor limit to 150 I think will be detrimental to vendors. If you're going to limit it make it something realistic like 300-500 items.
ResourceMan wrote:
It is good to see you are considering the good ideas by the community TH
Now what about stoping the guys that have dropped their merchant skills yet still have several vendors cluttering up your database? IF you drop the skills to use a vendor you should not beable to keep using a vendor.
Dude, I spent all day lobbying hard for player ideas.
The thing is that this is all about real game development for an MMO and a large team and its a lot more in depth than it appears.
On the vendor/dropped skill issue, Im speaking with DocSavag about that and its a correspondent issue.
I think Ill be able to get it so that basic vendors have 150 and merchants can earn more slots as they earn skill boxes (which I think is a great idea) and Im checking into the correspondent issue. It probably wont be until next week though.
I have to champion this issues, write up tomorrows friday feature, get the droid invasion written up for In Dev and get the patch notes notes done. On Monday Im meeting with a producer and a developer to go over correspondent issues and find out whats what. (Some are fixed, some are in QA and some issues are going to In Concept.)
TH,
Why don't you folks just fix the vendor exploit that exists and THEN see if there is a need for new vendor restrictions. instead you're telling people that if they have 6 vendors spread across the galaxy that they will have to micromanage setting them up AGAIN (after the last vendor hell you put us through), and would have to re-tweak them each and EVERY time we upped a level?!?!
I think all of the Dev team should be forced to play merchant and crafting classes for a month and attempt to hit a specific crafting and credit goal, then see if their hare-brained ideas make any sense. Im sorry if that comes across inflammatory, but we've given you MONTHS of ideas on how to fix these issues, but you've decdied to wait until your database is broken to do anything about it!??!
Not to mention you folks didn't even have the common courtesy to float these issues past the crafter and merchant correspondents before you dropped this bomb. Those people are supposed to be your LIAISONs for goodness sakes!
Yeah, the new year really is showing us what SOE is all about.
Please tell me that you've read all 33+ pages of this posting and can honestly tell us that you think these changes are a good idea and are supported by the people who rely on them on a daily basis.
Essentially you guys have a set of effed up databases that were poorly organized and coded in the first place and you're making multiple classes pay for that fact rather than dealing with the issue behind the scenes and leaving the players alone.
How about optimizing the search code so it sorts properly.
How bout sepdning some money on Oracle cluster experts to fix your DB design issues.
How about fixing auctions
How about fixing categorization
How about fixing any number of dozens of suggestions that have been handed to you specifically and SOE in general FOR MONTHS, deal with THOSE and THEN try a band-aid to your broken DB issues.
D'Ruk of iD Co
Master Merchant/Artisan/DE
150 - 200 on vendors is fine. I'm a master of 2 crafting professions, but allthe rest of my points are in merchant. Why? Because I need to have vendors.
Got a lot of items to stock? Use more vendors. If you don't have the skills to have 4 or 5 vendors maybe you shouldn't be able to stock 600 items. Maybe you should have a merchant doing it for you.
From the perspective of a tailor merchant, this is devastating.. I have been patient TH, I have tried to keep a positive attitude and believe that eventually we would have some consideration, but it seems that everytime you give us a lil bit, you take away 10 times more.. Finally the 7 day vendor dump was addressed so that we could actually stock our vendors for our customers and not have to be sitting there spending every second of our play time restocking, and now you hit us with this.. I have over 200 items that I can make, and in most cases I can make them in up 255 colors... The current ridiculously low housing limits prevents me from being able to show much of anything in my showroom... My customers come to my shop because I have a well stocked vendor with a lot to choose from.. Even if I were to take the 50 most popular items and have them available in just 5 colors, this would not be enough room for that vendor.. And, that is already slimming WAY down..
/sigh
This game has changed so much since I began playing.. With the current hologrind phase, almost everyone is just tearing through proffession after proffession in a mad frenzy.. It is altering the game in many very unpleasant ways.. If you do this, you will drive away the few people who actually like what they do, the few people who serve their galaxies with their craft and take pride in doing so and doing it well.. Please don't punish us any further for choosing to do something different..
I can say I do support the idea of having it tied to merchant skills.. But, I would like to see Master Merchants get a very reasonable item limit.. Perhaps at novice merchant you would get 150 items only, and then another 150 items at each level of efficiency, and then another 250 at Master.. This would actually give Master Merchants something good..
LOL.. I'm tempted to put in some TH quotes here from the CH discussions, but I kinda doubt anyone is even reading this anymore.. I remember laughing so hard when I read that line from TH about how every Master proffession should have something good.. I laughed knowing that I was sitting here with the exp needed to go pick up Master Merchant and wondering what the point was..I sat on Master Merchant for like 3 weeks before I finally went and got trained in it.. Not that it mattered.. You don't get anything for it..
If you want to limit vendors TH, why don't you take away the vendors from people who aren't even merchants anymore, because they got their vendors and then dumped the skill.. Why don't you give Master Merchants something good and allow us to have a reasonable number of items in our vendors, instead of punishing us because of things that are probably as bad as they are because of people who have vendors and are not even merchants..
/sigh
Please reconsider this.. Please don't make me leave SWG.. I have stuck it out through thick and thin, and have always tried to maintain a positive attitude.. But enough is enough..
setting a limit on vendors to 150 items? What a serious PITA! I'm an architect and carry both furniture and deeds on my vendor. At it's lowest, it contains at least 170 items. Looking just at the furniture, people come looking for a well-stocked vendor with a variety of items on it. Once they find the well-stocked vendor, they want to buy multiple items of the same type. So they buy a dining table and 6 gold chairs to go around it. That means that I need to try to have 1-6 (or more) of at least the most popular furniture items.
There are two reasons for limiting this:
- database limitations - as a software developer I have an opinion on this but won't express it here
- to make up for a poor user interface design and/or stupid users - penalizing people who handle a diverse product line and want to *serve* their customers by providing a well-stocked vendor to cater to stupid users is a brain-dead design solution. Frankly, if the stupid people don't buy my products, I don't care.