Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
The way i see it, all you are doing isscrewing over the players that don't have enough skill points to get more Merchant (and hence more vendors).
This would seem to promote monopolies among those that had the Merchant skills and those that didn't. 
Ops Sorry for my last post:
I think in the cap a lot of time, really it´s very low. In my opinion the money system of SWG must better a lot yet, YES it´s a good idea up the CAP not just 6k maybe 40k (the price to buy a house).
I would like to made another sugestion the auction cap could be free. If someone can auction a Item the item could get more than 3k too, in a auction i think it´s could be free.. Imagine a iten that´s go more than 1million. Maybe just to don´t have problens a player just can have only one iten per auction in a time.
Tks all.
Oh by the way, I am refuing to answer the Poll about raising the bazaar limit because it does not have the option :
Yes raise it, but raise it more than just 6k.
I think 150 items per vendor is a bit low, I think maybe 200 would be an better idea - also I liek the idea that "real2 merhcants will profit from having 6 vendors more than before.
The 6k cap on the bazaar is ok, also I think this might affect some crafters alot (powerup crafter for example). But i would like the idea of an auction on the bazaar with no price cap at all but instead an auction fee in % of the sale price - this would allow to take most of the forum auctions ingame again!
Laos a'Toran
This does hurt majorly.
As a resource merchant myself, I stock quite a bit on my vendors. I would have to sit there all the time then to keep restocking which would give me no time to play myself.
I would say 90% of my offerings in resources are 10k or more in size. And when I do stock my vendors, I will easily have 200+ items on them. 1 vendor for minerls, 1 for gas/chems, 1 for flora, and 1 for misc. With 2 other vendors on Dantooine.
And so I would keep Master Merchant 4/4/4/4 with no chance of losing these vendors, and being able to make components while playing my main, I bought a 2nd account. Now I'm being screwed.
I agree with a price cap raise on the bazaar. I think that you should also further limit resources being placed for sale only in increments of 100. For most crafters, anything under that just won't do the trick, and there is far too many of them to quickly find what ya need.
The limit on vendor Items is alright, though I think 150 is not the right number. Maybe 200 (2 full screens of items) Also, consider tying the limit to a merchant skill.
Price cap raise on bazaar: good
Limit on vendors: not a problem once you fix it so people can sell containers holding multiple items, with those containers counting as only a single item. A full set of armour should only be one item, or you are making life very hard on your successful elite crafters. Your crafters have been asking for this to be fixed for a LONG time and you should get that done before implementing this change.
VizSunrunner wrote:
Yes & yes.
If your selling more than 150 items every few days then you *are* monopolizing the economy and reducing fun for other merchants/crafters to a huge degree. If you are too busy/lazy/whatever to restock your vendo r every few days, tuff. Really how greddy and lazy can you stand to be.
Sorry, the following statement can be deemed to be unrepentently inflammatory:
ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?!?!?
Here is a little lesson in the economics of a Weaponsmith, for those who think selling more than 150 items a day is 'monopolizing':
There are two varieties of weapons, essentially I'll call them 'fixed' and 'consumable'.
Fixed Weapons:
Fixed weapons function a certain way, and lose a bit of condition during combat can be repaired a finite number of times but generally last a while. For people who hunt intermittently awhile can be months, for people who only hunt? Awhile can be days. But either way eventually the gun will fall apart.
This means that many Prime Hunters by 2 or 3 'Fixed' guns at a time so that they'll have spares between getting gun repairs and when their other guns completely fall apart. For hunters that use 2 or 3 different types of pistols, that can mean 6-9 guns in one sitting. For Holo-grinders the standard practice is to buy the starter and then intermediate weapon of the class they're grinding, so for marksman that's generally 6ish guns.
Consumable Weapons:
This means grenades and commando heavy weapons. The demand for these is always high because they're a pain to produce, and most combat classes go through them like water. You'll sell more grenades than commando heavies, but they both sell quite fast. You average customer is looking for at least a full crate of grenades, sometimes more. Some people also want to experiment, so I offer them in units of 1/2/5/10/15/25 (note: A 'unit' of grenades, is actually 5 grenades).
I have had commando customers come into my shop, and by 20 units of weapons. 3 flamethrowers, 1 of each consumable type, 3-4 pistols and 10 grenades. I've had single customers clean me out of consumables totally.
Do I have a monopoly on the Ahazi weapons market? The very THOUGHT is laughable. Am I keeping other crafters/merchants unhappy? Nope. Are people who sell as much or more than I do keeping me unhappy? Nope. Because I'd have to log in 24 hours a day, with 3 characters to even come close to satisfying every weapon order on Ahazi.
Most Weaponsmiths I know are online for a few hours every day to craft some custom ordersto move harvesters around, to pull stock from our factories and put it on a vendor and to lay down new schematics.
A Monopoly? I'm beginning to wonder if the Devs play the game as little as you do that they expect anyone who's familiar with the economy on their server to buy that there's a monopoly on anything.
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BTW: If the term is used to reference a monopoly of those that buy up resources/tissues/scales/segments/etc? Please understand devs, that won't change a thing. The people with the most cash by far are the resourcemerchants, and they'll still be able to do their jobs just fine.
I don't have a vendor, but I do agree with some that say what's the point of having multiple vendors if you can just have 1 and put an unlimited amount in it. 150 items might be too low of a limit for some though. But it would increase the benefits of being a Merchant since they're the ones that can have more vendors. Perhaps an increase in vendors for them as well, to offset the lower item limit.
As to the bazaar, 10k sounds good, but whatever the cap is, make the charge a percentage of the selling price. There's too many people selling 1 or 2 units of resource for 3k right now. If the cap is raised, I can just see people selling the same for even higher. A percent charge on this items will make them think about putting that 1 unit of hide on the market for 10k. Perhaps a 5% fee would be reasonable.
My suggestions concerning Vendors.
While I really like the idea that as a player I can make and sell a wide variety of commodeties, I belive that it would be helpful to the on-line economy to have a means of removing credits from the game, besides the minor (Clone/Insurance/Travel, etc...) expenses that hit most of all the players from time to time. I'm in no way suggesting that the prices on these go up, I believe they have to stay resonable for Newbs, but, I do belive that as the game progresses, the need to relieve credits from the game will become increasingly more and more important.
Currently large amounts of credits are not removed from the game, they are simply transfered from one character to another via purchases.A basic principal of econmics will begin to evolve here, the value of credits will decrease causing the price of items to effectiviley "increase" Inflation/deflation. As the game progresses and people continue to run their gnort missions, players will amass large amounts of funds cuasing the price of items to rise because everyone has the creds to pay the higher prices (effecitivley decrasing the over all value of the credit; You need more to buy the same) All, will have these amounts of cash, except newbie characters who will have their 250 credits, which is likely to dissuade a newbie from continuing to play as they realize they must amass a small fortune to purchase a C-DEF pistol.
One way to remove credits from the game would be utilize vendors (non-pc) that sell common goods for a reasonable price. This will have two good affects on the virtual economy. First, this will set some precedent for the price on goods and allow other players (crafters) to set their prices accordingly to the quality they produce compared to the quality produced by the (I'll call them e-vendors for economy vendors) e-vendors. The second good affect this would have is to remove credits from the game.
The quality of the e-vendors could be average compared to the base creation of a pc crafter. If it would not fit into the game balance to create these types of vendors then it may be a good idea to create mineral vendors, vendors whose sold purpose to provide resources to characters who may not be climing the Surveying tree and still need resources and also for crafters who need cross dsicipline components. A good idea to limit this would be to prevent goods/resources purchased from one of these vendors as "non-expirimental".
I realize this may not be the proper forum, however, this thread pertained to vendors and the like so I thought it might fit.
My suggestions for the original question posed. I agree that the Bazzar limit should be raised. It will natuarlly allow for some items currently not sold on the bazzar to be sold. However this does not address the aforementioned points of currency and the need to keep the economy healthy. I'm not a large seller on the bazzar, however I often look there hoping to find various items that are not commonly sold. I can't help but belive that these are not sold due to their value being above 3k. This cap will still not allow for still other more desired commdeties, but it is definitely a good start.
Vendors as Storage:
As programmer myself, I realize that there exsists a need to keep the app clean and allowing people to horde or monopolize on commdeties would affect the overall perfromace of the game from a technical standard. However, for some classes, the needs exsists to keep serveral items (various pharmesudical components/Archetechture supplies/crafting statsions, etc.) Having vendors as a mule is not, in my opinion a good idea and should therefore be limited, however the limitation should be reasonable and error in favor of the player.
One possible method could be as follows: When vendor is placed, player selects the type of vendor: (i.e. arms dealer, pharmasist, etc..) at this point the only items that can be placed on the vendor are items that would fit into this category. This would prevent players from placing 100k of minerals on their vendor and placing the price at 900Million. At this point the number of different items can then be limited based on the level of merchant/bussiness ranks the players has. Perhaps a character who only has the 4 blocks from Artisan can place up to 12 different itemsat a time and can only place items that they could actually craft. An important detail here would be stacking though, this would allow a player to sell 24 guns,not just 12 of the same. This would allow for a bit more role play in the sence that an artisan could speicalize in only MA items for sale, actually utilize their bussiness blocks and allow for cleaner DB's for us all.
As for selling bulk resources, I think these should require two items, firsta "warehouse" and second a vendor. A warehouse would only hold resources and the vendor would be the interface.
WHY ARE YOU NERFING MERCHANTS?
Merchants are one of the most BROKEN classes as it is. This will only make things worse for those of us who have finally found a way to make a living as a merchant.
If you want to limit vendor items, here is an idea: Increase the capacity as you progess up the skill levels.
Non-merchants: 100 item cap; Novice Merchant: 200 item cap; Efficiency 1: 250 item cap and so on
Alternatively, you could increase the number of vendors Merchants can have. A master merchant should be able to have a shop on every plant with multiple vendors per shop.
Rai Cella