Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
I believe the cost increase will have the effect of:
A) increasing costs in general (which should perculate through the entire economy, which shouldn't hurt things in the long run)
B) reducing numbers of items on the bazaar (a lot of things are 300 for 3000 which could be just 1000 for 10,000 for instance).
I think this change (to 6000) is fine. I'm not sure I would echo the suggestions of others to change it to 10,000, though.
The vendor limit I think doesn't actually solve the problem of monopolies. I would suggest instead providing some way to narrow down the list of items. I regularly want to find a specific resource (such as all of the Corellian Insect Meat or all of the Known Liquid Petro Fuel -- Class 4 Liquid Petro Fuel). Providing an easier way to search (right-clicking the item to restrict) would make my bazaar time much shorter and would prevent any possible monopoly issues as I would be able to find the best product for the best price. A further narrowing capability to a specific OQ or PE would be even handier.
Jenjuan wrote:
Why did I work this hard?
(snip)
so now you guys are going to punish me for my diligence?
I don't get it?
Go look up the word "schadenfreude". Some people enjoy few things more than seeing the successful experience pain.
There's a long history of people wanting to punish success, especially so in America. Don't be surprised that it's rearing its ugly head here. It was inevitable.
If you implement the cap on vendors you will nerf all Crafitng professions. The reason there is no cap is because its a personal vendor that the person has. if ther eis a cap people will not be abel to sell all their stuff. A weaponsmith will not have anought room to post 1 of each eh can make so thats teh worst nerf ever so i say no to the cap.
Yes to rasing cap prices on baazar
Setting a vendor limit would absolutely ruin my business. I am a Master Merchant and nearly a Master Tailorand I am by no means a monopoly nor have I encountered any business that I would consider to be such.
One of the basic premises of SWG was suppose to be that the players make everything and the players sell everything. This change would make it impossible to get the items you need.
Merchant is already a very broken class. I will not go into the details here, but suffice it to say that we have no tools for business organization, management, or anything else that would vaguely resemble useful merchant skills. What we do have are vendors. Take that away and what have you got?
Jee-bo Mak
Master Merchant
Uniform Marshal/Costumier/Expert Tailor
Sunrunner
One Last Thing
I know there are a lot of "Ebay Millionaires" in this game, but that wasn't me, I started off placing Wind Generators and selling the energy, then I started replacing them with Miners and selling the Minerals, thenI moved on to Crafting and selling the finished goods on the Bazaar, then I moved on to having a private vendor and so on and so forth. 2 Months later, I have 3 Factories, 5 Employees (who've placed 50 Miners for me) and next week I'm sponsoring a 100K Grand Prize giveaway in a race. My employees LOVE me becuase I've made the game FUN for them. Everyone's saying what a great thing it is that I'm sponsoring this race with all this money being given away. Am I a millionaire in the game now? You bet I am, becuase I played the game smart and I gave both my customer AND my employees what they wanted. A little bit of extra FUN in the game. Isn't this what gaming is about? Having Fun?
I'll tell you what isn't fun:
-
Going to 20 Different Vendors trying to find what you are looking for, and finding NOTHING in stock. (NOT FUN!) -
Traveling to 3 Different Planets becuase the Vendors on your planet don't carry anything usefull. (NOT FUN) -
Having to pay someone extra, because their vendor RAN OUT becauseof a stupid cap (NOT FUN)
So if the goal of the Dev's is to increase everyone's workload and have everyone looking everywhere for things that no one has, then go ahead and implement your silly Idea's, but when everyone starts giving up on the game to go play something else, you'll all be out of Jobs and that is REALLY not fun!
TH I just realized an even bigger problem with the Bazaar cap increase. You're going to seriously limit casual crafters. Badly. It breaks down like this.
If I'm right, and people sell crates of items on the bazaar for 6k and that becomes the norm because no one is going to travel to a vendor and pay more than what the bazaar charges, for a crate of items, then...
Let's use molecular clamps as an example. They are a big big item sold by smugglers to smugglers. Now
1 molecular clamp uses 90 copper. One factory run (1000 clamps or 40 crates) needs 90,000 copper.
No matter your server you cannot find copper for less than 3cpu. So that run is going to cost you 270,000 credits. Now, if each crate won't sell more than 6k because that's the limit imposed by the bazaar, and you can only sell 40 crates that's only 240,000 credits. In fact you are hard pressed to find ANY resource for less than 3cpu. So at 6k max per crate you're not going to make your money back unless you mine your own resources, which means the casual crafter can't make a profit. See?
This sounds like a great idea as it would allw purchase of some f the mor expensive pedestrian items such as:
1. High end Stims and Pet stims
2. Larger resource containers. (I get tired of splitting into containers of 500 just because of the price cap)
3. Pet Vitality Packs. Good one cost more than 3k
I like this idea a lot.
I posted earlier but the more I think about this vendor item cap the more upset I get.
If there's so much spaghetti code and database strain as it is, how are they going to add more content in the future without fixing it? The fix to those problems needs to be addressed now so we can get more items, more mobs, more things to buy, sell, and use. I can think of 10 things right now that would make vendors and bazaars easier to use and it would make everyone happy and have an enjoyable playing experience, and caps aren't even on my top 1000 list.
SOE should be fixing the database to allow for a more vibrant world, with more of everything that people are asking for and more selections on the vendors, not applying bandaids to the servers and taking away from us. If this idea goes through the crafting and merchant classes die... but you can't just add those items as loot that the vendors used to sell, because the database can't handle it 
Take this idea directly from the table and put it in the trash. A vast majority of the players obviously don't want this to see the light of day, as you can see by the posts.
JTGAlpha wrote:TH I just realized an even bigger problem with the Bazaar cap increase. You're going to seriously limit casual crafters. Badly. It breaks down like this.
"Breaks down". How remarkably apt.
If I'm right, and people sell crates of items on the bazaar for 6k and that becomes the norm because no one is going to travel to a vendor and pay more than what the bazaar charges, for a crate of items, then...
Let's use molecular clamps as an example. They are a big big item sold by smugglers to smugglers. Now
1 molecular clamp uses 90 copper. One factory run (1000 clamps or 40 crates) needs 90,000 copper.
No matter your server you cannot find copper for less than 3cpu. So that run is going to cost you 270,000 credits. Now, if each crate won't sell more than 6k because that's the limit imposed by the bazaar, and you can only sell 40 crates that's only 240,000 credits. In fact you are hard pressed to find ANY resource for less than 3cpu. So at 6k max per crate you're not going to make your money back unless you mine your own resources, which means the casual crafter can't make a profit. See?
Fortunately, this is a non-problem. People today deal with issues like that by splitting the crates into smaller sizes, and selling the smaller-sized crates at an appropriate price to give them whatever cost-per-unit they were seeking.
The increase to 6k simply means that sellers can offer twice as many units (at the same cost-per-unit) at once, and hence buyers can pick them up twice as fast as well.
Sounds like a win-win to me.
electricnomad wrote:
I think 500 should be the max. 1,000 per vendor is still monopoly territory.
I respectfully request that everyone posting in this thread go look up the word 'monopoly' and the look up the word 'anti-trust' and then go look up the phrase 'unlawful restraint of trade'. Shouldn't take too long I'll wait right here.
Back already? 'kay. Then let me put it simply. The word monopoly, the word anti-trust, and the phrase 'unlawful restraint of trade' CAN NOT POSSIBLY APPLY TO THIS GAME. There is no way for me as a merchant to prevent you from standing at the starport and shouting 'Buy my weapons! Half the price of Eola's and just as good!', in fact I encourage you to do just that. If I had a monopoly, I'd be able to get you banned from selling there. I can't do that.
There are at least 6 or 7 Weaponsmiths who are as good or better than I am on NABOO, not even Ahazi as a whole, but Nabooand we all do about as much business as we want. We use Pricing, selective advertising, and inventory control to influence the number of customers that buy from us according to how much time we want to spend stocking.
Where, exactly, is the monopoly? Where's the little guy getting put out of business because we're conspiring to push down prices yadda yadda?
Oh right, there isn't one.
Are some crafters more succesful than others? Yes. Why is that? Well because they work harder, spend more time searching for raw materials, spend more time experimenting on the things they make and go that extra mile for customer service. Can those crafters keep someone else from becoming a success? Well ... no, which is the definition of anti-trust and a monopoly. Pull out as many other words that mean the same thing as you like, and that still won't make it true.
So the fact that there's an actual functioning free market system means that the ability of succesful vendors to sell product should be handicapped so that someone who doesn't want to work as hardcan sell more things. Well.. that's one theory... I suppose we could also make it so that after all the people with combat skills loot 100 holocrons, those who haven't practiced their combat can walk up to high-level mobs and be handed them. Sound ridiculous? Well yes it does to us too.
Merchant is a profession, running a business is as challenging as any hunt. Why should the benefit for not putting in the effort be the same as the effort for putting it in? Why should lazy merchants be given christmas holos every day of the year.
And here's the most important part:
Why should our customers be punished for wanting to do business with the merchants that have served them so well?
That's the key here. Our customers have a noted preference for our shops, they have an interaction with us, they wait for our schedules etc. While all of us have a certain amount of 'drifter' customer base, I'm sure we all have a core loyal one as well. Effectively what the devs are saying is 'Well I know you like Eola guns, but we just don't think you should be able to have alot of those available to you. Sorry you're on at a time before he gets on and long after he goes to bed so that particular gun that he can only stock 5 of? You're just not gonna get one'. Am I surprised that those who have only seen one side of the economy are clamoring 'Yeah, monopolies are bad!', nope. Am I surprised that those who think running a business just takes too much time are chiming in agreeing with that? Nope.
But I expect the devs to understand the economy at least as well as the crafter/merchants do. 'Monopoly' is a fiction, you're out to protect DB space, don't hose true merchants and their customers and then hide behind a ridiculous fiction as justification.
Bazaar price increase: Ok, but why bother?
Vendor item limits: NO
I am a true merchant (I craft nothing). I operate 4 vendors, on 4 planets, each with 500 items. Please, don't shut me down.
Asharad Hett (of Tarquinas)
ITEC Emporium Manager