Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
i would say that the cap to 150 is too low.
I would have to stock my smuggler vendor every day.
I stock the dang thing with 300 crates every 2 days
no i will have to stock it every day.
maybe often.
also is the 150 cap per vendor or all vendor for one player?
I think the price cap increase on the bazaars is reasonable.
I am a master weaponsmith and do NOT like the idea of capping vendors at 150. That is too low. There are just too many weapons to make and keep stocked. I would have to log on every couple of hours to re-stock my vendors. You would be making things really bad for merchants by putting that cap on. I would suggest abeter cap would be at least 300-400.
As for the 'problem' of people not hitting next. I would suggest making the 'Next' and 'Previous' buttons a lot bigger, so people actually see them. (Wasn't there going to be aredesign of the bazaar/vendor interface?) If merchants are having problems selling stuff then they should suck it up and do what I did, Ihave enable ad barking and adverstise a message telling my customers to hit next or browse down to a more specific category on the left.
Increase to Bazaar cap is badly needed. I can't count the number of times I've sold something worth more than 3000, for only 3000 because it was taking up precious inventory room and I hated to destroy it. There should also be a cap applied to "junk". Why have junk drop that's worth 4cr anyway? The real junk is all that noob CDEF and Knives that drop and people just destroy or try to sell on Bazaar. That fills up the Bazaar real fast.
Regardingvendors... well, there has always been a problem of being able to sell/trade items in this game. I'd actually give it a report card of Worse than Everquest's Bazaar system. The main reason is that a single class controls the ability to sell Privately. That means that either A: You trust a stranger to sell your products (in an MMO, expectingthat is a noob idea for Developers), or B: Take the skills yourself, wasting precious Skill Points.
I don't like the Merchant class, to be honest. I think it's intention in the game is bad. What I'd envisioned pre-release, and what the reality of the class was, were not the same. it's design isn't that bad, if you looked at it from the design perspective of being able to "enhance" your own personal sales. But being designed as "Public sellers" is a bad design. MMO people cannot be trusted to be in sole control of another's items. I'm not saying just "stealing" trust, I mean "trust" as in "continuity of play". People take breaks, decide to play strong for a few weeks, then log in infrequently. (due to various reasons)
But one of the largest reasons right now, is the Holoprof chasing that has infected SWG. Proof that the game is designed to switch classes at a fast paced rate, encouraging people to try Mastering every profession, with the possible reward of unlocking their Force Sensitive Slot.
Since before Release, SOE has encouraged the player to change multiple professions. Therefore, designing a class that other people must depend on, Merchant, to sell items in the game, is a bad design.
Everyone should have the ability to set a merchant down (just like Everquest, even be a good idea to turn your character into the Merchant as a limiting feature) Then the Merchant class should be retooled around that singular, independant economy concept, where Merchants get extra personal abilities (like able to place NPC merchant instead of themselves) and some non-dependent public features (like able to create selling "perks" for other players, etc)
That's how I would approach the Merchant design class. Placing an item cap is not the right answer. That whole system needs to be redesigned. Redesigning Merchant,might even be a solution to some of the technical database difficulties that come with "pack-ratting", using multiple houses, Factories, 2nd accounts and/or exploits to store items that they hope to sell by "hawking" in towns later.
Also, cutting down on "/shout hawking" might decrease some of the lag from Spatialspam that accosts people when they load into their server's popular cities.
Bazaar cap raise is a good idea and 6k will keep it pretty much like it is now, only with a few more items available.
I am torn on the merchant cap. On the one hand it will definately make having multiple merchants worthwhile. But I don't know if this is worth the pain it will cause some people who have to stock alot of items like armor and weapons.
Yes, raise the cap. 3k is just too low to buy useful amounts of resources.Even up to 10k would be wise as it would give resource gatherers a little more room to charge for HQ resources.
I think the will benefit the Scouts a ton, considering many are not Artistans with vendors. Lots of 1000 will become more common.
As a Merchant, I think 150 may be a little too light. 200 is probably a better number.
I dislike both ideas.
Idea 1- This only encourages more use of the global bazaar and less player interaction. You will find even less merchants and player shops as a result. You need to fix all of your bazaar filters properly before doing anything else in regards to caps or you will find even more clutter than you do today.
Idea 2- A a Chef, I would be crippled. I have customers who require both crates as well as stack sales. Limiting my stack vendor to 150 items would force me to maintain 3-4 vendors just to supply stacks to my customers. BAD business.
On the surface, it looks like you are having database issues again.
While you are revamping the chef profession to be more useful and diverse, you are destroying the way we will be selling our new goods.
Monopolies because of limitless vendor listings? How is that a monopoly situation when you say that people don't even go to page 2? I think these propsed changes are meant to address the minority abuse by some to use vendors as a storage vehicle, and you will end up ruining the crafters which supoprt this player economy.
I am both a Master Chef and a Master Merchant. Yes. I have the vendors available to me, but there are those who may not. Make being a merchant mean something and remove vendors completely except for characters with merchant skillsand I bet your vendor exploiters/abusers will go away.
All for it TH. Although I think a bazaar cap of around 10k would be more reasonable. I often use the bazaar for the resale of items I have previously used and have replaced for whatever reason, and the 3000 cap almost makes it not worth doing.
It would be a MAJOR boon for using the bazaar to buy resources.
I may finally have figured out the real issue,,its not merchants that really want to sell an item that are causing the problem at all,,,its players using a vendor as a storage location,,
solution ,,,tie the daily maintenance to the total offering prices on the vendor,,,that might solve two problems,,,vendors with unsaleable items,,and vendors with items that are not intended to even be sold,,and are priced to prevent any reasonable person from buying the item..