Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
As far as the limit on items. I think thats great. Anything that can possibly help out with storage would probably be cool. I'm sure its tough to keep track of stuff now and hopefully the space you save can be used somewhere else.
I think other changes should include some way to make Higher level artisan's products stand out. The start thing means nothing to me. Perhaps allowing them to color the names of items etc.
I am just starting my entry into the artisan profession and i am excited about dabbling.
I'm against an item cap on player vendors. Instead of finding new ways to nerf the game, the devs should be looking for creative ways to expand the game.
For example:
Instead of a price cap and 20 cr fee on the bazaar, there should be a 5% commission based on the price of the item. That way people could charge whatever they wanted for their goods on the bazaar, but vendors would still have some advantage because 1) they wouldn't have to pay the commission and 2) would have no item limit (whereas the bazaar would still have the 25-item limit). With such a system, auctions on the bazaar would be viable, because there would be no artificial cap for the auction (though the commission price would still be deducted from the final bid). Also, a commission would be a bigger money sink than just a 20cr fee.
My 2 credits.
Slim Vargo, Corbantis
I think both ideas are really bad news for professions and are going to remove even more money sinks.
The caps on the bazzar force many of the professions to require shops to make a living raising the cap to 6,000 would remove a few professions requiring shops and vendors. As a tailor my highest item price is about 10,000 but I have to remove from this price the profit reduced by how long the item is in stock so the vendor and house cost. If I can list it on the market for 6,000 I might lose some profit but not a lot as I would be saving on vendors and housing cost.
Its not just tailors weaponsmiths, medic and many other professions would be able to list items without the need to shops.
As for the vendor cap, well you should of had one in place from the start anyone could see unlimited item listing on vendors would cause the database problems. I suggest 200 per a vendor would be a better limit.
I'm not happy about either change. The 3k cap on the bazaar is fine, it would encourage more people to go up at very least the Business line if they have more expensive items to sell.
150 item limit on vendors? VERY BAD. I only have one vendor.. I can't afford the points to spec Merchant, so I have to be content with what I have available at Business 4 -- and since I have to keep everything in my "fulfillment center" , taking my max down to 150 is very bad indeed. I don't have the skills to "improve" or "hire more" .. so you're taking away what little I do manage to sell if I need to decide what sells and what doesn't.
I don't have the time to stand in the shop to restock every day.
6000 cap on the bazaar is inconsequential. Why not fix the auctions so they work properly? The message says the cap on auctions is 10k, but you can't bid anything over 3k. Bazaar limit should be at least 10k if it is to be useful.
As for personal vendor limits...hire an actual Oracle consultant who can fix that nightmare you call a database.
I typically have slightly over 400 items on a vendor. The vendor isn't being used for storage, it has a good selection of items and is restocked when necessary. Having fewer items on the vendor will only mean less selection and more frequent stocking. I don't enjoy spending time stocking the vendor and this change suggests that I would be spending more time doing just that.
Fix the database problem instead of making changes that hurt game play to accomodate an inferior design.
Bazaar: Good choice. There are lots of things I wanted to list on the bazaar in the range of 3000 to 4500 credits. In fact, I could probably live with it quite comfortably if it were 5000.
Vendor: Good ghod, no! Doing this would basically require all of the real tailors in the game to be master merchants. Let me give you some sample numbers.Right now my business plan is to carry about 30 clothing items in a selection of 13 colors, plus some of them bio-enhanced, plus about 20 accessories in a selection of about 7 colors. Actually, I was planning on adding about 20 more items in a selection of about 10 colors each, because at the moment I'm carrying no wookiee gear and almost no twi'lek gear. If you total that up, that's 730 items. Add about 100 for bioengineering, and I'll be happy with my shop when it gets to about 830 items.
Mind you, this means stocking only 70 of the 230 items that tailors can sell, in only 13 of the 255 colors we can use, so I call this a minimally equipped clothing vendor. And in orderto list this many items under the new system, I would have to have six vendors in my shop. In other words, to be anything other than a dilettante tailor and sell your own clothing, you would have to be a Master Merchant.
What you're proposing may be all well and good for everybody else. Well, maybe not for armorsmiths now that they have color choices, too. So OK, maybe weaponsmiths and droid engineers can live with it. Maybe. Oh, wait, I take that back. My friend who's a weaponsmith tells me that to keep up with demand, he has to keep about 600 items on his vendor - and he only sells melee weapons, specifically to keep the traffic down to what he has time for.
So no, I take it back. I'm hard pressed to believe that any serious master artisan can live with this.
I am a master architect I only have 1 vender i keep 700 to 1200 items on it all the time.Why force people who cant have 6 or more venders to lose there items and be limited in the amount of items they can sell.
That is a stupid idea.
Bazaar change: /agree
Vendor change: /agree (I'd be comfortable with up to 200 items, though the idea for this to be tied to your Merchant level is still the best solution)
Vendor Cap Bad; 150 for some classes is way to low, the real reason they want to do this and maybe I am a bit synical but, I believe this has to do with them trying to trim out peoples inventories for Data Base reasons. They did this with houses, and now they are doing it with vendors. I don't buy into this mononoply BS. I have never once been to a vendor and said, dang they have so many items they have a Mononoply!
Tailors have so many different color combinations it isn't uncommon for them to have 200-500 items. Weapon smiths have so many different kinds of weapons they can make it isn't uncommon for them to have300 or so items. Some people like myself, when they find aweapon they want and will use, buy 5 or 6 of them.
Firstly an appology. i only managed to read 12 pages. Then everything that was being said was generally being repeated. I'll repeat again though.
Firstly both these changes will completely kill the Merchant. Isn't the point of a Merchant not that they sell their own weapons but that crafters sell to a Merchant who then sells to the public. Thats just what my PA is about to set up. Thats what a merchant is meant to be....not selling just your own goods.
So I have three cantina's I sell out of, then the PA Hall (which incidentally should be able to be private and have vendors in it).
How can I possibly keep weapons, armour, tools, food, spice and sundry on a vendor with a 150 item cap?
You basically kill the concept of a pure merchant.
Okay now onto specifics:
Bazaar Cap = Bad.
1) Prizes will all get screwed. Resources are already sold over the odds. I doubt you'll see them doubling stack price and not increasing price as well.
2) It hurts merchants. The Bazaar shouldn't be a one stop shop, it should really just be for new players. Well stocked malls in player cities should be where most people shop.
Vendor Cap = Worse
1) It completely kills 'pure' merchants, as explained above.
2) It hurts many other crafter/merchants as well...
3) It benefits nobody other than the DB.
The problem is item storage. The first step to remedying this is to makeus need to keep merchant skills to have vendors. Maybe limit the vendors from Business III so that it takes some real skillpoint investment to get one. At 'worst' I'd like there to be increasing in limits as you climb the merchant tree. A Master merchant needs to have HUGE stocks. So something like:
50 items at Business III
+50 Business IV
+100 Novice Merchant
+100 Efficiency I
+100 Efficiency II
+100 Efficiency III
+100 Efficiency IV
+100 in each other level IV skillbox
+100 Master Merchant.
That I could maybe live with.
Executive Summary: (its here because I have realised that my post has gotten a little lenghty!)
- Ok 6k Bazaar cap DO NOT AGREE! phase it in start at 4k and work you way up to avoid dramatic affects on a fragile economy! However seperating auctions from immediate sales on this issue would help alot, auctions should definitely cap alot higher than even the proposed 6k! (they are pretty useless on private vendors IMHO).
- 150 vendor limit DO NOT AGREE! its far to small to run a viable business without putting out customers for a casual player like myself. If the "technical" problems mean this has to happen I would hope that the limit is above 150 (if not doubled to 300)! to see how it goes and then lowered if the issues are not resolved (as I have yet to see something increase a little after being reduced etc)!
Thunderheart wrote:
The development team is planning to make two changes to the bazaar to make it more useful and effective.
The first change has to do with the Bazaar cap. The Bazaar cap is the dividing line between a convenient one stop shopping point for commodities items (commodities are things like food, medicine and other "pedestrian" items) and specialty items sold by crafters and merchants (specialty items are expensive items that are found in crafter shops and merchant tents).
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?
Ok this is interesting I dont necessarily disagree with raising the cap but doubling it could have a rather severe impact and I am concerned to say the least! I would much rather you test the waters and start with 4k etc maybe raising it weekly/monthly for a while to see how bad the live servers are hit when this happens! AsMaster Weaponsmith I was not happy to discoverI neededhave to be a merchant etc torun a viable business etc but I moved past that and now run my own shop with great joy!
My problem is that I no longer wish to sell on the bazaar and a lot of my items fall under the 6k mark you listed so this could potentially hurt my business as ppl I am sure would happily not travel to my shop if they can buy something on the bazaar etc. I consider the Bazaar a place for cheap and nasty weapons for the most its often cluttered with junk etc and attaining product differentiation is nigh on impossible esp since you nerfed our Hex colours! Making the best weapons on your server is something that is hard to do and I try! (alot of my melee is right up there at the bleeding edge) now if the Bazaar becomes flooded how do I make myself different from Joe Smith over there selling the same weapon but merely in a more convienent place amongst teh crowd!
I do feel this 3k cap is to low I am just cautious of large changes all at once I dont want to turn around and find out that my shop is obsolete after all the work I have put into setting it up etc!
While I think the 6k proposed cap is too high I have been thinking and for Bazaar auctions etc it could possibily go even higher if not uncapped (capping auctions at 3 or even 6k does limit the usefullness of even bothering with these on the bazaar)please note that I dont know of anyone that wonders over to my vendors that would take part in anauction on my private vendor almost all of my customers want it right this second etc!
Thunderheart wrote:
The development team is planning to make two changes to the bazaar to make it more useful and effective.
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.
Ok this is where I should start screaming obsenitities etc but I shall restrain myself for the moment.
For a MWS with a half successful business, (not quite there but I am starting to see the effects etc)you need to keepa fully stocked vendor! to not have something a customer wantsis a lost sale and a disgruntled customer (they have to travel which takes time at teh very least)... a very bad bad thing IMHO!
secondly there are an awful lot of different types of weapons (I think there are close to 12 pistols of the top of my head) If I stock 10 of each on avgthen I am dangeraously close to the 150 cap! The more successful the worse it will be and WS probably are not the worst either. Take a thought for our poor Tailors (my guilds tailor can have upwards of 500 items going in a given time) they need large amounts of items listed as they have a huge range of colours.
Ok sure you can just pop down another vendor but then i guess its too bad if you want to run shops on different planets! I know the best WS on my server have vendors on more than one planet and they have large stocks in each to keep them full! Heck our guild architect and his business partner have 4 vendors between them and they quite often have a diverse stock far larger than the proposed limit! (power-ups,medical supplies,architect stuff, vehicles and resource's).
As a casual player ie I restock every 24hrs at best sometimes it can be several days, I have to put larger quantities on my vendor just so I don't loose the precious business because I have sold out! I wont be able to cope with 150 as I am pushing that limit now with a lightly stocked vendor (as far as diversity goes)if you have to cap them at least give us a half decent amount. I would be more happy discussing a figure of 300 as opposed to 150!
You state several reasons for this change:
- We want to solve the technical issuesokdoes thisinfer your DB's can't keep up again! If so I don't hold much hope of this discussion being of any point as you will do what you have to to ensure stability!
- discourage monopolies ok maybe its just me but I have yet to see a monopoly in this game period and would gladly have some examples pointed out! Also how would a vendor limit cause the market to become more open in said instances! (milk might be a monopoly etc but that has squat to do with vendors etc etc)!
- make vendors easier to use: this is a GUI issue the next items etc seems to be missed an awful lot which tends to suggest the design of the GUI is flawed and not much else if this was fixed/altered so player could intuitivley use then the problem would not be soo bad, the same goes for the sub-fields etc they do not look as if the are meant to be expanded rather they are jsut dot points of major categories period!
Of these reasons the only reasonable one I find is technical and that really scares me as I know that the house limits thing may just happen again with vendors and then this discussion is really moot because stability has to rule the day!
now we can put up factory crates of stuff instead of individual items