Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
My additional comment on the reasons stated for the 150 cap on vendors:
Players are not able to find items???
If a player cannot figure out that there is a box that says "next items" then that is a GUI issue...this is yet another lame excuse for what is fundamentally a DB issue. Actually I think a player who can't figure out how to use a vendor to sort by what they are looking for has alot more issues than not being able to find an item to buy!
A great number of issues have been pointed out to fix the issue of players using the vendors as storage but none of them have been implimented.
Again, this is a lame excuss to cover the issues you have with your database and has nothing to do with the player economy.
Fix the merchant class, give us a real benefit over business, and REMOVE the vendors of non-merchants who used an exploit. Won't this fix your DB issue?
oh, and as someone suggested....let's see all these numerous complaints about player monopolies.....
Both idea’s are BAD, very BAD.
First on the vendor item cap.
I have to spend so many skill points to be a BE it’s ridiculous. I was only able to put enough into merchant to have 2 vendors and to be able to list them on the planetary map. That gives me a grand total of 300 items to sell on them. It’s simply not anywhere near enough. I don’t want to have to log on twice daily to restock my fast moving items.
No I don’t sell anywhere near to 300 items a day on my vendors. Most of the space is taken up by slow moving items, but items I still want to make available to my customers. Putting such a small cap on vendors will force merchants to only list their fast sellers and anyone looking for a rare or slow selling items will be SoL.
On the raising the bazaar cap.
What you should really do is have a commodities bazaar, a resource only bazaar, and it should have no price limit cap. Raising the price cap for all items on the bazaar is not needed and will be counter productive to the atmosphere of the game. Coronet doesn’t need to become more crowded and more utilized.
I support the idea of a Merchant Skill Tree based CAP (as opposed to a dumber generic one).
I also support raising the Bazaar to 6k.
I would also like to see master merchants (indeed skill tree escalating) have higher maximums on the bazaar.
If people drop skills then there existing gear stays but they would not be able to add to it until it fits to their capabilites.
I run 5 vendors with 100+ items on each. I have one vendor with over 500 items (batteris, repair tools,components etc..lots and lots of little things).
Oh and the argument a cap helps players coz they dont drill down is not a strong statement.
Either make the interface more obvious that drill down exists or just let the dumb players continue on !
Be Well, Bob'the Builder
I think Bazaar should stay at 3000 limit and the auction part should be eliminated entirely as its basically useless unless you want to make it unlimited.
I could live with a 150 limit on myvender at the cost to the customer, as I just won't be able to stock convienence items, they will just be out of luck. A lot of the items on my vender are small profit items and take up space. I suppose there won't be much use in scematics for 1000 items, might as well go back to 100 on those since there won't be any place to put them. I also suppose we can also give up crafting entirely now as the hundreds of items already on the vender will keep the 150 limit stocked for quite some time.
Then if we want to tie merchant skills with venders, I could always give up all my combat and spent all day at my merchant with all the free time that would create...Sounds like heaps of fun. This game gets more fun with every nerf...
Vendor cap = I disagree, and also disagree with some of the logic behind this, namely trying to curb "monopolies". Wha?? Those who make the best items, at the best price, and having vendors stocked iswhat, if anything that would encourage a monopoly. Whether the cap is at 10 or 10000 won't make a difference in that. Your thinking is reduce the risk of a monopoly by ensuring said monopoly can't keep it's vendors stocked???? Considering the number of people already crying about the run around game of finding what you need in the midst of holo merchant/crafters is tough enough why increase that frustration further? If you really want to spread out the business amongst more crafters this IS NOT the way to do it.
Vendor cap of 150 is far too low. 300, maybe 400 seems more reasonable in combatting the issue of DB bloat. But I think your idea of controlling monopolies is fundamentally flawed. This is terribly apparent by the number of rants that go thru here about the task of finding the things you need. In most galaxies vendors are routinely out of stock as it is now. Monopolies occur for reasons having nothing or little to do with vendor caps.
It would be a far more acceptable solution to the issue of players not "drilling down" to make that "next page" button alot more visible. Rather make the player viewing the item listings in some way much more aware of the fact that there may be more items on the vendor than what is listed on the first page. I mean really what kind of lame-brain came up with this?? This isa UI issue your trying to solve with a vendor item cap. Seeing as how the first page only lists 100 to begin with.. what about the other 50 items? those will still suffer the same problem they do now?? How is this really fixing that? Answer: It's not.
Lastly... many of the vendors I know... are currently using they're multiple vendors as a means of grouping together common items they may sell. For example a weaponsmith may have a "rifles" vendor, a "pistols" vendor, etc.... This is what players are doing currently to deal with the fact that most people don't ever "drill-down". And to me this seems as a perfectly acceptable solution and is working fine. Maybe you should just give merchants more vendors?
Bazaar 3k - 6k increase = I tend to disagree with this idea as well. It will only do 1 of 2 things. If not both.
1. Increase prices of commodities.
2. Cause those outlying vendors your apparently so worried about to get less business.
Although I disagree with the 3k cap increase, I am open to the fact it may bring more commodities onto the market, and in that respect I'm partially agreeable to it. But that will also in turn bring business out of the player shops and that I think is the wrong thing to do.
A more worthwhile enhancement to the system IMHO would be to make "auction" more usefull by raising the 3k cap on that alone... up to perhaps the 50k - 100k range. The bazaar hands down is the best thing in the game to make in-game player auctions a reality. And move such auctions off these forums and into the game where it ought to be.
In closing..... as is typical with SOE your "fix" for everything usually involves some form of a nerf. If you could just sit down and tackle this from the other perspective.... that being in this situation... to the improvement of the merchant class. Make the class more viable. Give them "purchasing" abilities far beyond that of other players. Lets goto a world where "crafters" are actually encouraged to try and sell they're wares to a merchant, as opposed to taking the profession yourself and selling your own wares. Allow merchants to buy and sell on any vendor in the entire galaxy. And give them "shipping" 
Perhaps even give merchants an in-game "bulk" discount for buying many of the same items from 1 vendor....(how this ought to work should be another thread entirely as to smash out any exploits that could easily arise).
Overall my thought is this, improve the merchant class to the degree that the preferable method for crafters will be to find a merchant or at least allow a merchant an easy method for obtaining and buying, reselling they're goods as opposed to becoming your own merchant because no one else in this galaxy has any inkling of buying and selling across the galaxy currently. Merchants should be a viable profession in and of itself. And if a elite crafting profession is actually coupled with this profession, then more power to it.
However currently.... there is nearly no viable way to get around the fact you have to be a merchant in order to be a crafter. And this ought to change.
If this were made to be reality you would ultimately end up with less shops (less db load), better kept shops, happy customers able to find things fairly easily, would lessen monopolies to the extent that since merchants are only selling what they've bought, then no one merchant will neccessarily have the best of the best. They will have to compete with other merchants for the best crafters and the best product. (would introduce a whole nother aspect to the game, almost making like a "wall street tycoon" out of the merchant class).
Shipping+intergalactic trade from your local data terminal are the primary two abilities I've come up with to make this a reality. I'm sure others can think of more.
If vendor limits are imposed, you know what the primary economic result is likely to be? The creation of monopolies!!!
In antitrust terms, regulators generally don't have much reason to be concerned (even if a particular firm is dominating a market) so long as barriers to market entry are low. True monopoly power only exists in cases where there are especially high barriers to market entry.
Like the ones this would introduce! With these vendor limits, superhuman efforts will be required to enter the market in a meaningful way, and those few players crazy enough to put in the efforts will reap the rewards of true monopoly power (to the detriment of the buying public.)
Who can read all these posts?
1. Price Cap Raise: Overall, I like it. I've been burned on items before, and was glad to have the 3K price cap, but as someone who could potentially sell an item for more, but doesn't have ready access to merchants, I think this is a good idea. I fear that this will inflate the economy, though...
2. I don't care much for the vendor cap. I find too little on vendors as it is (and I play on Bria, so there is no shortage of players). Those rare vendors that have pages and pages of clothes and furniture are my favorite! I can actually SHOP, as opposed to purchase what fits on there. I would hate to have to move over to another vendor when I reach 150 items. If this were a democracy, I'd vote no.
cap raise on bazaar - good.
vendor item limit - doesn't affect me yet but since I'm a weaponsmith it could hurt me down the line as I want to eventually include all weapons i have schematics for. I assume it could affect me later so NO!
??? - does the vendor cap include caps on the stockroom? That's where I keep crates of restock items so that wouldn't be good.
Best regards,
Omar Laxos, Master Weaponsmith
Why not allow Merchants only to post itemson the bazaar over 3000.. it could be a perk to the prof. Everyone who has been a merchant knows there is not enough perks to merchant. Come on... Master merchant give what? A whopping +10 to hiring... a function most merchants dont even use.
As for the vendor idea... 150 is too low. A better idea is: 500 items per vendor with an option to sell the customer how ever much they would like. Great example of this is the above post on quantity. Please dont limit the Merchant prof. any more.
Just a side note... I sell many things for other people... a consignment option would be a great addition to the offer field. For example: an authorized suppliercould place his items for sale on my vendor and the vendor would post a% to the price. When the item sells, he gets his money and the merchant gets his %. The merchant would have full control over the vendor, and naturally the supplier could only post and withdraw his own items.
Jyokker
Starsider
Katmer wrote:
Just allow listings on vendors touse one entry, with a "quantity in stock" field. People with 1000 identical powerups can list those powerups in ONE LINE, and specify how much each unit costs. People with 2.5 million units of Unobtainium can list the whole pile with one line, and a customer can buy exactly 3600 units if that's what they need.
So in effect allowing the stocking of crates which a customer can actually purchase as many or as few as needed .... as long as the serials match ... purchasing 2 or 3 would be just like taking 2 or 3 out of a crate.
That's an brilliant idea.
However how would it work with things that are normally bought in crates? I suppose they'd have to make as many valid crates from the amount purchased for retrieval. Anyway - great idea but somehow I doubt it'll be done, as anything useful is overlooked in general!