Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
Idea 1 Bazaar Rates: Good idea
Idea 2 Vendor Item Limit: I'm mixed on this. It would be more convenient, and would help Merchants focus their vendors on the more popular items. However, as a Chef, I have over 80 Chef items I can make, not to mention the Artisan foods. At present, this isn't that big an issue, because only about 8 foods really have markets. There are a number of those foods that can't even be made because of a lack of milk. However, with the proposed Chef re-vamp,foods and drinks across the board should become much more useful. Having the foods on hand that people need will prove impossible. My bartender will have to stop carrying individual foods & drinks in favor of a couple of crates of each food.
Oddly enough, this is probably *more* of an issue for Chefs than anyone else. If I go to a weapons vendor, I can click on the "Melee Weapons" option and see just the list ofCarbines, which I can likely skim through fairly quickly, because I don't have to look at all of the Rifles, Pistols, Heavy Weapons, Polearms, etc. At a Tailor shop, I can just look at their jackets without having to peruse skirts, dresses, etc.
With a Chef, all of their items fall into either the "Food" or "Drink" menu, making it incredibly spammy for the customer.
What might be useful is having a 150 limit in each specific category. This means that on a given vendor, I could have 150 food stacks, 150 drink stacks, and 150 factory crates of the more popular items. A weaponsmith could have 150 Rifles in stock, 150 Pistols in stock, etc...
It seems like this would take care of the spam issue, but I don't know if it's feasible to code it this way.
XanEldarie wrote:
MrMud wrote:
Lacer wrote:
I also support a vendor cap of 150. i opperate 7 vendors and none of them have even 100 items on them. so i don't think that capping the vendors at 150 will really hurt many legit merchants.
Tell that to Stryker on the eclipse server who sell quite a bit more than 500 weapons a day
And quite a nice monopoly he must have
Just because someone has a successful business doesn't mean they're running a monopoly. Especially when their reputation is to the point that they're bombard requests and complaints when their vendor runs empty. 
I feel both of these need linking to the Merchant class which is sadly broken. They won't fix the class but they will make it more desirable.
Increase of Bazaar to 6k is a good start, things will be sold in larger quantities and the auction option may get used (e.g. for quality resources). Merchants should get the option to sell for more as they skill up (the existing 'premium' sale field would indicate the maximum bid).
I often have a customer buy five or six of the same item and keeping a vendor well stocked is an important method of keeping business. Again this should be linked to the merchant class, with vendor storage increasing as your management skill increases, perhapse 100 for non merchant vendors, rising to 500 at master merchant. This may undermine the point of the exercise though.
Some specific examples of effect of Bazaar change on the economy:
Powerups: no effect
Artisan stuff: no effect (maybe some top end artisan food in full crates)
Muon Gold & Chef food would be sold in larger or full crates, which will hurt Merchant Vendors.
Tailor: will be effected marginaly as some master items get sold second hand.
Resources: little effect - may see larger 'out of shift' or organic stacks
Medicals: little effect - may see small crates of good stim B
Pets: Marginal effect as low end non CH pets may get sold on Bazaar.
Architectural: some small houses may get sold for 6k, more furniture may go on the Bazaar.
Droids: Marginal impact.
Weapons: no impact.
drop loot: marginal impact.
Realy the big impact will be maintaining stock levels with a 150 limit. Two problems
1) Consumables such as powerups and spice
2) Varied stockists like Tailor or weaponsmiths, less so armoursmiths.
Some of the first problem is taken up by the bazaar changes but stocking 50 crates of each of 3 diferent types of powerup is realy inadequate for a busy mall, a second vendor more or less solves these problems.
XanEldarie wrote:
Isissa wrote:
I feel that 150 items on a vendor is a very bad idea. It means constant restocking for the person with the vendor, and that can be hard enough as it is because if you only have 150 items, some people with a high demand for their goods can be sold out in a few hours..
I do think it's a VERY good idea to raise the price limit on the bazaar, but I also think it would be more helpful if it was upped to more like 20k as 6,000 credits doesn't honestly amount to anything & if you don't want to make your own vendor then it's hard to sell things on the bazaar. A lot of the time people are forced into spamming "this & this for sale, send tell if interested" & that gets very annoying after awhile.
Constant Restocking = Constant Attention. Isn't that what all customers here want? To know that the item they want is there? And that the vendor they are shopping at isn't a "set and forget" vendor?
As far as the 20k thing... They already told you that its NOT to be used for big-ticket items, and I think they've explained themselves well enough to show why they aren't raising it more...
Give an inch, you people want a mile... They should have never mentioned it, and stealth-patched it. That way, people would just accept it as "good enough". 75% of people want the cap raised, so that much is clear. So, they should just do it as they see fit, and be done...
So tell me Xan, you are a droid engineer yes? How many different items do you have to create?
From what I gather (if this is even working properly.. been a while since I had it done) you can't color droids until the owner has them out and tamed etc.
SO if that were not the case.. and they were bought already painted from you. Would you keep a stock of EVERY single droid in EVERY single color because that's what your customers want? Probably.. that would be a pretty well stocked vendor (or vendors) indeed!
Now.. are you a merchant? Do you have enough merchant skills for multiple vendors to spread around all these multicolored droids once the 150 item cap goes in? You are supposed to please your customers yes? So if someone shows up wanting such and such a droid in raspberry red, no reason you shouldn't have it in stock, limit or no limit, am I right?
We, as crafters, work pretty darn hard at what we do.. but we like a break sometimes as well. I know the change from 7 days to 30 days for the actions made a TREMENDOUS difference in my gaming day.. to make this 150 item cap, together with the amount of items I sell each day... I don't know how I'd do it.
Tailors have SO MANY items we can make.. hundreds.. take that and imagine that we can make EACH of those HUNDREDS of items in what? 55 colors... of course some items have up to 3-4 colors.. SO, that's hundreds of items with how many different color combinations?!
One major problem for me right now with my craft is finding the time to fill my vendors AND keep up with the demand of custom orders. My vendors have TONS of items in them.. hundreds.. many different varieties of pants, shirts, dresses, jackets, cloaks.. whatever.. but I STILL get endless tells and emails for custom orders.
So when people visit my vendors and they have only 150 items in them, logic tells me I will get even MORE tells, so not only will my vendors sell out quicker but people will not find the selection they once did.. hence giving me way more orders.. I just can't keep up with that regardless of HOW much I enjoy my profession or HOW good I am at it.
I mean come on.. cut us some slack.. you're talking like we are miracle workers who should be able to make the best of anything thrown at us. Not all crafts are like yours.. have some pity on those of us who really DO need to be able to stock our vendors well to please people..
progman63 wrote:
XanEldarie wrote:
This is where the monopoly comes in. You are describing your own, personal monopoly. If you want to be a merchant, be a Merchant. Buy and sell. But leave room for the next guy. If you are stapled, then you've no choice but to let some of your business leak out to others.
Selling unrelated items is not a monopoly - go look it up Xan.
A monopoly is being the ONLY one selling some item or commodity,
controlling the entire market.
There's no way you can say that someone selling clothing and weapons is a monopoly.
You can craft and sell clothing.
You can craft and sell weapons.
You can craft and sell clothing and weapons.
You can craft and sell any product mix you want.
No one is stopping you from doing that.
Go ahead and do it.
I don't care.
That's called competition.
COMPETE with me.
*CLAPCLAPCLAP APPLAUDS CLAPCLAPCLAP* Well said!
XanEldarie wrote:
Question:
What percentage of items do you sell on your vendor for less than 6k?
Ya know, the more of your posts I read the more I question your common sense.
My tailoring items are all between the prices of80 credits and 7900 credits. My website is www.Breigh.com with all my clothing and prices listed. The only items above 6000 in my shop are my master items.
Striking me as a little narrow minded there Xan, ya know not all crafts are alike and not all of our items cost a fortune. Tell me, who would pay MORE than 6k for a pair of dress shoes or a hat? Hmm?
Bazaar is tricky who knows what will come of a cap raise but the most I can see it being useful for, which would definitely serve it's purpose is for boosters/weapon mods etc... at 6k a few more items could open up. Sounds fine to me I really don't check the bazaar very often anymore so might bring some people like myself back to it.
Vendors,
Have not had the opportunity to use them yet but I do like the item count as it actually puts some more value on the Merchant Tree, any skill set should be important and really there were not many BIG advantages of going upt hat tree past the map registration. Maybe even scale the quality
Ugh.
As was saying scale the quality of the vendors and the items allowed, I.E. at the lower ends of the tree and the bulky vendors less items, upper echelon vendors more items. Is there or is their a maintenance on vendors planned? Even if a small amount?
In any case I think anything that puts more usefulness into a "class" is a good change, while I'ma ll for freedom of the characters specialization is also a must.
Bongabonga wrote:
Putting the new vendor limit. Well this is a bit unjust in the current state of some profession. My main charater is a chef. I sell the average item between 50cr and 100cr (most everything outside of Tat. sunburns). I make it up by keeping a very large stock on my vendors.
SUGESTION: The limit should be a mix of quantity AND VALUE. If your average item value is less than x you can have 300 items, if you sell only house with an average value of 30000 your limit is 50...
My 2 creds.
I think this is a fabulous idea!! It just sounds a bit difficult for them to put into action.. as it is they are having trouble, if they need to make vendors figure out the prices of things then sort the amount allowed etc, their heads will explode! (the devs I mean not the vendors, although who knows.. )
Great in theory but I don't think they'd ever be able to make it happen.
Breigh wrote:
XanEldarie wrote:
Question:
What percentage of items do you sell on your vendor for less than 6k?
Ya know, the more of your posts I read the more I question your common sense.
My tailoring items are all between the prices of80 credits and 7900 credits. My website is www.Breigh.com with all my clothing and prices listed. The only items above 6000 in my shop are my master items.
Striking me as a little narrow minded there Xan, ya know not all crafts are alike and not all of our items cost a fortune. Tell me, who would pay MORE than 6k for a pair of dress shoes or a hat? Hmm?
Common sense? You fail to miss a simple point.... And I won't explain it again. If you habitually miss the 15-Mile-Wide target, no one can explain to you how to hit it.
--Beav