Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
Other than fixing the database, how is a cap on vendors going to help? Your not stopping a monopoly. Monopoly exist, If ONE person Controls the Market Of lets say weapons.... now explain to me who hasa monopoly on weapons on shadowfire? I routinely shop the various cities. and i do not see this Monoply you are talking about. 150 item limit is going to Kill off the tailors and weaponsmiths who have multiple items up on a vendor and a reasonable stock of these. I find this bit odd to do since From the start this "game" is supposedly aimed at the casual gamer. thsi 150 limit is going to ruin it for those who actually have lives.
You are in the assumption we have nothing better to do than sit and stock vendors? grind all day long and generally not leave this game, ever.
Right now i have a ton of times on my hand so this Cap will not affect me, also i run a small mining operations to which it will not affect me. how ever if i was one of the full time crafters say Tailor. who is casual It will Affect them greatly.
You will be losing the casual gamer In a huge way if you do this.
If you are in need of a cap due to your data base, say so, dont tell the majority of us "its due to monopolising"
What a bunch of crap lol You personally come show me in game.... "T'lor or O'rak" who is monopolising shadowfire. and ill concide and say ok to the 150 vendor limit. when we actually had masters on our server i went to a select few. for weapons NOT cause of there stock but because of the QUALITY. You bring this in . your ruining the game for the very few remaining "actual" crafters in the game.
As for vendors in general. you just gave me a great reason to dump my vendor with the cap being raised on the public bazaar. i now find zero need to use it once again. Now the prices on the public bazaar will jump up . yoru only doing me a favour by following suit in raising, yet ,keeping under everyone else's prices for resources.
This is a huge economy killer if there ever was one. your going to wipe out the casual crafter and jam the prices thru the roof for everything else.
/clap great idea.
not.
If you find a need for a cap 450 is reasonable and for the weaponsmiths and tailors. having 450 right biceps on a vendor i cannot see, but will at least give the armorer 30 suits to put up on the vendor.
a 5k cap on the bazzar is sufficient . should of been that limit from day one.
How do you all come up with these numbers? do you even watch this game being played? LOL
150 is insane. Talk about doing this solely for a database problem.
I am against both proposed changes: raising the bazaar cap and limiting vendor amounts.
As a master tailor, I have my own tailoring shops, one on Naboo and another on Tatooine. I am a casual and social gamer and as such, I enjoy running a virtual shop in game. I have four vendors, each fully stocked with over 300 items easily and even with such a large selection of inventory, I am still inundated with many custom orders.
Tailoring is a crafting profession with a lot of items. There are over 200 items of clothing that can be made and this is not counting the multitude of colors possible. I enjoy crafting and making colorful clothing and I know the tailors on my server do also. The 150 limit on vendor will greatly cripple this profession. Even a limit of 300 per vendor will adversely affect this profession.
As a full crafter (master tailor)/merchant, the bazaar changes will affect me also. The bazaar is a convenient shopping spot but as a merchant, my skills to own vendors make me (and other merchants) viable and useful. The merchant profession will be hurt with the changes, making such a limited profession even more so. The benefit of taking the merchant skill is setting up vendors and therefore being able to set the prices for items being sold. By raising the bazaar cap, the merchant skill is lessened and what was already a “weak” profession is made even less desirable to play.
The bazaars and vendors are fine as is. To implement changes now will adversely affect the crafting and merchant professions. The vote shown on the boards reflect a large player base but the majority of that player base are not crafters and merchants. They are the ones that would find some good with this bad change. The ones most affected by this change, the crafters and merchants, will not benefit at all.
To propose such a change that affects crafters and merchants to the general gaming community (groups) is not wise. Such a drastic change should be consulted with the groups most affected (crafters and merchants) and most in those two groups will agree these changes are not good and are not necessary.
In conclusion, SWG is a unique game in allowing players to set up shops and to create an “economy” of sorts. These proposed changes will not benefit at all. In fact, these changes that are to “fix” a problem will instead hurt the game by chasing away the group of gamers, the ones that craft and socialize…the ones that play for fun.
Bazaar changes - NO.
Vendor limitations - NO.
Sibonay
Master Tailor, Sunrunner
Consider adding cap not for a single sale on bazaar, but for overall cost of items being sold. So for example one can sell upto 25 items with total cost upto 300.000cr. This will GREATLY reduce number of items, especially resources. And make it far more convinient.
Second, problem with browsing vendor is NOT in the large number of items, but in VERY POOR filters. I dont want to browse 2000+ items on bazaar to find a single copper type, but i have to. In addition, all items on bazaar are "spread" over few pages, even if seller is the same. Solve it by adding one more filter level, like Misc->Pharmaceutical->Posons, Resources->Mineral->Copper, or add some way to alphabetically sort entire list, so browsing minerals in the beginning came ALL aluminium on bazaar (may take more than one page), then all crystalline gems and so on.
150 cap on player vendors IS CRAZY idea. I run combat med shop, and often sell more than 10 types of poisons/stims, both 5-20 crates and 5-20 single ones each. That wont fit even under 300 cap. And imagine weaponsmith shop with 150 cap. Pathetic!
Again, problem with large lists is NOT in number itself, but in VERY POOR filters. If I want a laser rifle, i still have to browse through hundreds of other stuff. Adding one, or even two more filter leves will solve both bazaar and vendors problem.
Increase crates size. Really, why i have to make 20 crates of layers/ARC/ABEC, then 2x20 crates more of another components, then i open input and output hopper of factory and make a 60 drag-and-drop. And same headache while buying components. You really have to increase crate size on components to 1000, and on some other goods (like upto 50 on powerups, upto 50-100 on food/spices).
More complicated idea, but really will help reducing database size - allow online crate splitting. Most established crafters make full factory runs of 250-500 units, but then have to uncrate like 50 singles of EACH weapon/armor/whatever type and load them all to vendor, because ppl buy both singles and crates of 5-10-50. Add an option to put a crate for sale, fix the price for single unit and let buyers uncrate them online. So instead of loading 4x50 = 200 units i will load 4 crates, put a price on a single unit and mark them as "uncrateable by user online". This will cut database space at least 75%, just look how many uncrated duplicated items are on vendors in large shops.
If you want to fix the bazaar, nix the auction. NO MORE AUCTION. It doesn't work like intended.
Thanks.
Price change on bazaar going up:
Good.
Limit on vendor items:
Bad.
mayby try a little bit higher of a cap than 150 for vendors, mayby 500
as a tailor/architect/artisan/merchant there is no way in hell that i would keep merchant if you do 150, I do not rape my customers with high prices, the only way I can keep merchant vendors is by providing a WIDE variety of clothing and furniture
clothing alone has 200ish schematics. try putting 3 varieties of the same item for every schematic on your vendor and see if you get many sales.
you wont.
you will kill the merchant/tailor business with any cap below 500
If the vendor space is limited, I quit.
I will destroy the 700 items I have spread over 3 vendors, pull up my vendors, my houses, and my factories, log off, cancel my accounts, and never ever ever be fooled by SOE everagain.
I really want to like this game, but if you do this, it's the last straw for me.
Incredibly stupid idea on both counts. If you can't manage a database with this many people putting this many items on it, then fix your database. Don't punish the people using it.
Merchant is a joke as it is, but I've learned to work around its quirks (who was the brain surgeon that came up with Efficiency 1? Wow, for 5 skill points, I save a whopping 1.6 credits on bazaar postings! Whoopie!)
After reading Thunderpant's post at the beginning of this, I went and put up two more vendors and moved my well-stocked tailor vendor contents to three vendors. Did this save your database? Nope, it made it worse, but I played by YOUR rules. You guys seem to go out of your way to PUNISH the people who work within your constraints, and then nerf them into oblivion, destroying their businesses. This is becoming too much like a job. Your proposed limits are UNSATISFACTORY. Fix your database or build a more efficient one, quit punishing your paying customers.
Man I cant read through 9 pages of posts to see if this has been mentioned.
While your playing with the bazaar, can we get a useable search function for it?
Or at least make it sort the whole category instead of just the page your looking at?
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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.
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As a master weaponsmith and a master artisan, the 150 unit limit on vendors would have a serious negative impact on my business. With the variety of items I sell, it wouldn't be uncommon for me to sell 150 items in a day. Often when I update my vendors I may add 500 items at a time. I certainly can't be avaliable to update my vendors 2 times a day everyday. Items I may stock could include powerups, vehicles, a wide variety of sliced weapons, artisan tools, etc.
I do understand that some limits will help solve technical issues. Your other arguements don't seem to hold any water. I'm not sure how placing limits on how many items I can place on a vendor has any impact on monopolies? Perhaps if someone could control all of the raw materials or if the barriers of entry into the marketplace were very high, we might see monopolies. Having a lot of stock certainly won't do that. Not having the stock your customers want however will make people unhappy and less likely to return.
Limitingthe number of items won't "make vendors easier to use". You are correct that some people don't hit next page and do miss some items. This is also a problem on the bazaare where thousands of items exists. Perhaps you may want to explore simple options like making the <Next Items> prompt blink. That seems more of a contrived issue than anything.
I do feel like most of the developers don't fully understand some of the space issues suffered by crafters. I have worked hard as a Master Artisan and Weaponsmith to build up a thriving business. To support this business effectively, I have several friends that have graciously donated spare lots to me, just so I can have enough storage space for all of my raw materials and items. If I do a run of a crate of 25 weapons allowing only 2 guns per profession (carb, rifle, pistol, unarmed, command, BH, 1 handed, 2 handed, polearm, other for even #) I'd get 50 x 10 = 500 items. Add to that powerups with different attributes, vehicles, artisan supplies, etc., you geta lot of items. Now my business is probably at a higher volume that many people, but not that unusual. One of the reasons my customers come back is that I have very high quality goods, and generally have something for them in stock. Selling armor could be equally difficlut. Just one suit of composite alone has 9 pieces.
With an increasing shortage of high quality artisans (much due to the holo career changes), this limit would be difficult. I understand for technical reasons, some limit needs to exist. I'd be supportive of something like 500 items per vendor.
JimmTanis Master Weaponsmith- Master Artisan - Merchant
I am wondering if you are intending 150 item limit per vendor or 150 items per vendor.
Instead of capping items per vendor, why don't you incorporate a higher number of items available to be used on one vendor throughout the merchant tree, sort of like the creature handler creature level deal. Say a novice merchant gets +50 items, therefore giving him 200 items on one vendor, and a master would have say, 1000. This would make being a master merchant a valuable skill to crafters. Setting a flat limit of 150 would be annoying for big time sellers, and would in fact drive people away from the game. Some people have a hard time keeping their vendors stocked as is, with a cap at 150, that would be way tooo much.
Bazarr cap raise is fine.
Intrepid1888 wrote:
[[[[[ Bazaar Auctions should have no cap. If for any reason, at least it may get people to quit spamming the Coronet starport with sales pitches for krayt pearls and such... ]]]]]
I really like this idea.
Or why not just let us post Auction items on our own vendors (also, of course, with no cap?) Auction has always been a pretty silly and useless mechanic on Bazaar, since anything worth auctioning would be worth more than 3000, and anything worth buying for less than 3000 is usually something you want *right now*, not to wait days on.
But on private vendors, it'd actually be a very useful thing to have. The alternative of out-of-game threads on the Galaxy Trade forums just really really sucks....