Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
Vendor cap idea is a BAD idea.
If people aren't realizing that there are more pages, then they need to be educated, and not make a game changing nerf just to satisfy those people. I call shenanigans on that "excuse" anyhow - as there are things more significantly complex (such as crafting and hoppers, and the like) than a simple vendor menu. To use "it's too complicated for people to figure out" seems a weak argument for capping vendors.
Are you really trying to solve whatever problem has ailed us recently with vendors -- or maybe that database issue all over again -- with a thin veneer excuse for this cap limit? This means people will need to find more storage space for the things NOT on the vendor, and you've already cut us off at the knees months ago by capping our housing limits.
I don't even see your "monopolies" argument, either. If a person makes good gear, and puts it on the vendor, why try and meddle with it? Let the economy flow as it is.
All in all, this is a really rotten idea. You're going to foster more animosity, and more people will bark that you need to focus on other things - such as the harvester bugs, dismount bugs, or all around game bugs, instead of spending time trying to restrict the players even more.
The bazaar? Sure. Only the new people seem to use it anyhow. Once you've progressed - it seems everyone buys from the vendors of other players anyhow. I haven't touched a bazaar in months. But as far as capping vendors -- don't, please. Just don't.
-Why are players once again forced to pay for the games inadequate DB?
-Will you be removing the Merchant Profession since this will neuter us completely?
Raising the bazaar cap to somewhere out of the range of reason would be best, maybe 50k. That would bring some purpose to the bazaar's auctions while still leaving super-high stuff alone on the galazxy trades, and not bottoming out the market on low items: making it viable to sell things OTHER than resources and crap stim/wound Bson the bazaar.
On lowca, the average price for a reasonable weapon hovers between 10k and 30k, generallycentering around 15k. If the bazaar cap is higher than that, it will actually have a purpose again, beyond just selling newbie crap and resources.
I think the bazaar cap should be around 10k rather than 6k because most specially crafted items will be selling for more than 10k in general. Also, it might be good to have a cap on the number of items a person is able to sell in the bazaar (to encourage people to sell their items on vendors) which may help with this whole cap thing anyways. I know that I buy multiple guns to have them sliced and I can't sell lower end sliced items on the bazaar because of the cap.
With the vendor issue, I think 150 might be too low, mainly because certain crafters may want to sell multiple types of the same item (i.e. meds, Stim B, Stim C, Enhanced packs, Wound Packs - all individual or in crates) and this would make it really annoying to open up 5 different vendors to get a crate of stims, a crate of each kind of enhance packs and a crate of each kind of wound packs.
If you need to limit items in the game to free up database space, increase the crate size for COMPONENTS. Keep Crates at the limit for final products (50 in a crate for stims, 25 for food/drink, etc), but increase component crate size to 200 or more. This way we wouldn't have 60 crates laying around for EVERY stimpack run, reducing the amount of component crates by increasing size will reduce the stress on the database
/sigh
Trying real hard to see a silver lining somewhere, but it looks like I'm going to wind up having to abandon my favorite profession.
the bazaar price is a good thing although I dont like the vendor limit.
What mostly happens in our city is we have several people that are primaraly merchants. our crafters sell their items to those merchants who then mark them up 10-20% and sell them so the crafters dont all have to be merchants. one crafter alone could fill a 150 item limit easy and with the volume that goes through that would only last a day at most for alot of our vendors. in adition we have a resorce vendor that routenaly has well over 300 stacks of 10k for sale in it. if we offer in larget stacks only it gets too costly for smaller jobs and yet this change would force either that or puting more vendors up and makeing it harder to find things.
its relitivly easy to find what you want if all the items are in the same vendor, just use the sort tabs to narow your search. (if the costomer dosent know bout doin that too bad for them) however there is no way to search through the wears of every vendor in a building or heaven forbid a whole city. this will jsut make people have to search through even more vendors to find what they want.
Vendor Cap - No.
As a BE how am I supposed to have ANY type of stock when I can make/sell tissues, Pet Stims, Pet Vitality Packs, Pets, Pet Food and Camps? Not only is variety necessary, but offering stims in singles and crates. People buy 10 crates of pet food at a time, and often will buy several stim singles. My vendor usually has between 80 and 200 items at any given time, and I usually have to restock every other day. The cap will hurt vendors in malls the most I think. Even if you have merchant (as I do), mall owners would have to have each merchant drop several vendors each, just to insure that there is stock, instead of having just one or 2 vendors per merchant. That would limit how mamy different merchants can exist in a mall. Another thing, how will it look when you go to a house/mall and see 10 vendors that have replaced the one that was required before? This gives us less item storage if we have to use that space for more vendors and not resources. I personally don't use a vendor for storage. If this is the real problem, they why don't you limit the "stockroom" section of the vendor, and leave the items available for sale alone? Nobody is going to stock storage items in an area that is for sale.
The Bazaar being increased is okay. Though I do not really care either way (A more useful change would be having Bazaars in Player cities)
The Cap on Vendors are too low. Personally 300- 500 would be more the enough.
I like the idea of raising the cap on public Bazaars. I also think you should fix all the messages that still claim the limit is 10000 credits.
As for the second point, please point us in the direction of people who are complaining as to why there should be vendor caps on our private vendors so we can get an idea of what the players are actually saying, and which professions have these monopolies. Personally I don't see why having a limitless vendor supply can create a monopoly but I am willing to look at the data to be able to make awell informed decision.
I think it's a bad idea, it may help some of the merchants but my guess is that it's going to hurt more then it helps. Many people have a hard enough time keeping their vendors full. Some merchants may only have a few items to put on their vendors like Armorsmiths who may only put tons of composit armor up for sale. But professions like Chef, Architect, and Bio-Engineer who have a much larger selection of items will have a problem keeping all those items on their vendor in any quantity.
The only thing you do my limiting the vendor item count for merchants is ease the pains of your poorly developed and over taxed database.
For shame you try to pawn this off as a improvement to the player base when all this is, is another sad attempt to patch work a failing system. The ONLY people who will prosper from this will be the devs, as this will only buy them time... Time till the Database dies, and drags all the servers down with it again.
Players, VOTE NO on vendor item limits!!