Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
Change to Bazaar Cap: YES
But how about removing the limit on auction bids altogether (as mentioned previously).
Limit on Vendor Items: NO
Unless the limit is more like 1000, you force every crafter to be Artisan/{Crafter of choice}/Merchant, leaving them almost no skill points left to do anything else with (hence ending their ability to open a FSCS btw)...
So I see the poll for upping the bazaar limit to 6k is winning about land slide. Any chace it will be raised above 6k? I think 10k would be nice round number.
I agree with NJ62, as a master tailor I also try to keep around 600 items on my vendor, this even is not enough. With so many items to make in so many colours I STILL get tells and orders for items I don't have stocked. 150 items is pathetic. There is already little to do with merchant, I am aslo master merchant and I see the only useful thing is to have more than 1 vendor, however, I do not think that because of this I would have to use all of my vendors in my house just to have a good stock of items.
Don't fix something that isn't broken! Fix your database so we can actually use the benefits you have given us already!
As for the bazaar terminals...hmm im not too sure on that, it could well damage businesses, but on the up side we may actually go into Mos Espa one day to find1 or 2 blue dots on the radar.
Thunderheart wrote:
1) The first change has to do with the Bazaar cap. The Bazaar cap is the dividing line between a convenient one stop shopping point for commodities items (commodities are things like food, medicine and other "pedestrian" items) and specialty items sold by crafters and merchants (specialty items are expensive items that are found in crafter shops and merchant tents).
Currently, the credit cap is 3000 and the development team is considering raising the cap to 6000 credits. Are you for or against this change? Why?
2) 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.
1) I fully agree with this assesment of the bazaar and some of the comments players have made.
The thing people need to look at is NOT how much money is in the game, or inflation, or even how this would benefit merchants or non-merchants.
As you said, the cap is the dividing line between commodities (lower prices items) and specialties (higher priced items).
The deciding factor then, would be how much is being charged for specialty items on most servers.
I do not think 6000 ishigh enough that it would adversly affect the majority of specialty items.
But it does open up the bazaar for a more diverse offering of lower priced items.
I think that 6000 would be a good cap.
However I think that much higher than that would cause problems.
2) I have to DISAGREE with most of the statements made about vendors.
While it's probably true that vendor items could cause technical problems, I would challenge SOE to improve the game database system so that we don't have these problems.
I have not heard the reasoning that unlimited capacity on vendors causes monopolies before. I suppose a merchant could post hundreds or thousands of items on a vendor if they wanted to spend the time reposting all those items every month. But that does not make a monopoly, even if that vendor undercut everyone else on the entire server.
I classify the issue of drilling down as a technical issue for which there are several solutions which have been repeatedly posted on the Merchant forum.
The easiest solution that could help allieviate this problem is making the Previous and Next buttons on both vendors and the bazaar LARGER and highlight them in some way so they stand out. I must admit I find it hard to believe that people can't figure out how to navigate through multiple pages of items, but I've heard about this problem again and again.
If the case is that players don't want to drill down, then the simplest of solutions would be to alphabatize (sp) the ENTIRE item listing instead of just EACH PAGE. This would be one step in helping people find what they want. They would not have to search each page, whether it was individually sorted or not, they could just navigate to the beginning of the S's for Stimpak and just look at those pages.
The most obvious answer would be a search function. But there seems to be some type of problem with implementing this solution. Perhaps speed, perhaps lag, perhaps the game database system again.
Without any type of metrics, it's hard for us toknow what the overall vendor min/max or average item usage is.
But I have to point out that 150 is not a multiple of the 100 item page count. Perhaps that's the point.
To me, 150 seems an arbitrary number. And very limiting for merchants.
Most crafting profession have numerous items and numerous feature combinations.
The most hard hit will be any profession that depends heavily on customization of items for sale.
i.e. Tailors, then probably Armorers and Weaponsmiths coming in a close second.
A 150 limit would not hurt most players with Merchant skills, if they only had ONE profession.
But since you can master THREE professions, this limit could greatly affect us all.
My vendors are Droids, Artisan Parts, BH Supplies, Harvesters & Tools, and Resources.
And I routinely keep 2 - 3 pages (100) of items on most vendors.
If I take a vendor down because something hasn't been selling, I'll use the remaining vendors in other shops and malls as specialized vendors listing specific types of items.
Cramming everything on to one vendor just causes problems for my customers, and with a limit of 150 I don't even think would work.
150 is way to low.
I need at least 200-300 items, but I'd bet many people need 500 items or more for legitimate purposes other than just stuffing dozens of the same item on a vendor.
Again, if there are technical problems, SOE needs to address the CAUSE not he symptom.
To rise the cap to 6k, Ok.
The limit on vendors should depend on Merchant skill, so at Novice 150 limit and rises 50 per each skill level achieve. At Master a bonus of 400 items should be given.
Bazaar cap is a good suggested change.
Vendor cap is a bad change, fix your database and quit punishing the gamers for your cheap database, spend the millions you are making every month and upgrade. Another item nerf is not an improvement except to your bean counters who feel the playerbase doesnt deserve the best that can be had.
Profit rules soe decisions, not game enjoyment.
Bazaar cap raised; questionable, leaning towards, "Yes, raise them please"
Vendor cap established; ABSO-FICKEN-LUTELY! If you are going to be a merchant with 100s or 1000s of items to sell, then be a Merchant! Creating a cap-per-vendor is a great way to raise the interest level of becoming a merchant, and taking pride in how you have your vendor(s) set up. Such as: 1 vendor for Weapons, 1 vendor for Resources, etc. Yes, I know most merchants already do that with thier vendors, but isn't it so nice? Its like an index; helps you find what you're looking for. And yes, oh yes, would it reduce the monopolies.
With both of these changes to take effect, they should compliment eachother nicely. People selling just basic stuff would be less inclined to get a vendor, and people selling large amounts of higher-value stuffs would be more inclined. If you are a true Merchant, then you would have no problem having to get more skill to get more vendors. If not, you've still a chance to sell your product(s) on the global bazaar.
As long as they are BOTH implimented, then they are BOTH a good thing. I don't think you can have one of these changes without the other.
Thanks!
Vendors - Limiting vendors seems like another way you are forcing players to spend more time than they can, need, or want to spend on this game. Especially setting limits at 150 per vendor, that means people have to log on more frequently to keep their vendors updated, they are forced to produce less items because of the lack of inventory space to store extra products. Everything will slow down because we will no longer have the space to store, merchants will advance slower, crafters will be forced to waste resources on practice mode if they still want to power-level through any crafting proffession.
Another thing about vendors - if Non-CH's can have 2 pets to store and are pretty much equal to a Novice CH. Why can't Non-Artisan's have 1 vendor to use, so that they dont need to sacrafice 24 skillpoints for one. CH's sacrafice 47 skill points to get Novice. Why cant everyone have atleast 1 vendor like everyone can have atleast 2 pets.
GnomeAd wrote:
The vendor cap will actually add value to the merchant's ability to place multiple vendors. Currently, it seems that the only people placing multiple vendors are just trying to grind merchant XP.
Adding value to a merchant's ability would be ADDING features or skills, NOT taking them away.
I don't agree with any of the changes.
Raising the bazaar limit will hurt crafters who wish to have their own shop, especially us tailors. You don't find too many pieces of clothing that exceed 6k cr. since clothes don't require much to make. With that any piece of clothings can be found on the bazaar and me, a tailor, will be hurt by that since my main goal is to run my own shop. I guess I'll be able to sell everything on the bazaar though then and can drop merchant. Leading us to wonder what is the purpose of the merchant?
As for item caps on vendors, I disagree there also. I am a tailor/weaponsmith who intends on having a clothing store and a weapon store. I have already decided that I'll divide my vendors by 1/2, but... I was wanting to also branch out and have another minor shop set up outside a more populated area. With these items caps I won't be able to.
I agree that crafters who flood a single vendor with a ton of items is... Well there isn't much to say there, they are only hurting themselves when doing that. I know I never browse through a flooded vendor. I just find some where else. But if the crafter wishes to do they have every right. I believe that is why the vendor's have filters. Or am i wrong?
True it is easier to flood a single vendor then to have a few, but that hurts the crafter. So I don't know why touch it. And if someone has a vendor made especially for a certain item, why should they not be able to flood it with that particular item? A weaponsmith should be able to have a vendor created specifically for pistols and then fill it with 25 of each pistol to keep up with demands. Otherwise it will be too much work.
If anything! What should be done is that there is a set fee on vendors who hold 150 items. Don't know exactly how much vendors cost right now, but lets say 15 an hour. That is the price with 150 or less items. For every additional 50 items put on vendor the prices raises. Instead of 15 an hour, 20 an hour with 200 items. And it continues to increase in that way. I remember that is how it worked on UO. Not by number of items, but by overall price of everything on vendor. Similar, just simpler.
But I must ask you developers... Are you insane? How many bugs have we had with vendors already? They seem to finally be working the way they were supposed to except for the horrendous lag. Please do me and every other player a favor and just don't touch the vendors. Everything you seem to try and "fix" or, in this case, make difficult you do nothing more but add more bugs.
Another thing, why miss with the vendors? We jump back or forward a few 100m's whenever we get off our vehicle, it is a pain to get a "table-top lamp" on top of a table, there is no content, professians are unbalanced, many professians are broken and have specials that don't even work, combat bears no point since PvP is nothing more then spamming or being one of the "everyone else" professians and PvE is just repetitive with no rewards (same as PvP), we have how many planets that have nothing on them and etc etc. I can go on and on about how this game is empty, broken and totally backwards and way more difficult then it needs to be.
Do you think you could take care of the more bigger issues instead of coming up with this crap about vendors? As of right now, the bazaar and vendors is the least of this games problem. Especially since this proposal is absolutely asinine in the fact that it will do nothing more then increase the above mentioned problems. Either forget the 150 cap, give us more vendors to compensate, or introduce additional fee's for vendors that exceed 150 items. And the bazaar... it will hurt people like me. Who is going to travel to visit a tailors store when all those same items can be bought right off the bazaar?
progman63 wrote:
GnomeAd wrote:
The vendor cap will actually add value to the merchant's ability to place multiple vendors. Currently, it seems that the only people placing multiple vendors are just trying to grind merchant XP.
Adding value to a merchant's ability would be ADDING features or skills, NOT taking them away.
It is adding value because it becomes a necessity, as well as a luxury. The only thing being taken away is the ability to have an "all-in-one" shop. Isn't that kinda what everyone is complaining about Microsoft in the anti-trust suits?
Diajo wrote:
Also, the cap should only be for "instant purchase" and not auction - auction should have a starting price cap, but no cap on bids. This would make it worthwhile to auction on the Bazaar and make the economy more market driven.
EXCELLENT IDEA FOR AUCTIONS!!!
I'm not sure how setting a lower limit on auctions would affect it's dynamics except to force auctions into the higher prices item bracket.
The purpose of auctions is to bring in a higher price.
So this may not have much affect at all.