Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
I don't see what the big deal about the 150 Item cap...
You want more items, get more vendors. I see 150 items per vendor as plenty since 90% of the people with vendors don't have ANYTHING at all on them.
6 x 150 items + 25 = 925 items
Anyone that can sell 925 items in a couple days...well, you'd be a god. I think this cap is just fine.
I run 6 vendors: Clothing, BE-enhanced clothing, backpacks and special orders, furniture, crafting stations/tools/houses/harvestesr, pet and fishing supplies.
I don't run a monopoly. I even have other crafters filling orders to help me stay stocked up. And I'm not obscenely rich.
Most of these vendors are at or over that 150-item limit. Particularly when it comes to tailoring, I try to keep one of each item in stock so people can refer to them when placing custom orders.... that vendor usually has 250+ items in it.
A 150-item limit would make my life hell. For starters, I'd have to stop reselling anyone else's stuff - and isn't this part of what merchants do?
This change won't help your database, because the number of vendors will proliferate when every crafter starts placing as many vendors as possible, knwoing they can no longer rely on the merchant class to manage their sales.
Thunderheart wrote:
DocSavag is a strong voice for the Merchants and based on the correspondent issues, this change may include the fact that only merchants can have vendors.
Emphasis mine, obviously.
Anyway, wanted to make this clear and also wanted to add that it would be nice if artisans could still run a vendor, even with a 50 item cap.
thats not right making only merchantsallowed to place vendors, thats not fair to weap smiths, etc. where are they gonna sell there items? You have to stop making players use skill pts they dont wanna spend to be able to take full advantage of there profession, what good is making items to sell if you can sell them cause your not a **edit** merchant ya know?
why not make merchants have vendors that hold the most items and that any item can go on, and give like armorsmiths a vendor that can only hold there own armor, doctor vendors that can onlly hold there own meds, etc. that would be more fair, as it is its pretty lame to have to have business 3 to have a vendor, you want this to be a player economy but yet you continue to make it harder for the players to sell items, or better yet, make it like UO, anyone can "buy" a vendor, have to pay for it but open the option for everyone not just one profession, its bad enough we have to me scout to call vehicles dont make people have to be a merchant just to sell there real joy which are the items of the profession they WANT to play.
Please dev's, enough with forcing players to play the way YOU want us to play, its getting less and less fun with every "hotfix" or patch you guys put out.
Let us have fun, is that too much to ask? Stop making it more like work then a game
Thunderheart wrote:
Draznar wrote:
I want to expand on my idea to tie vendor item limits to Merchant Skill. I think that the limit should be as followed:
- Bus 3 = 50
- Bus 4 = 100
- Novice = 150
- Man 1 = 200
- Man 2 = 300
- Man 3 = 400
- Man 4 = 500
- Master = 1,000
This is an idea I like too. I shared the idea with theLead Designer and he likes this idea too.
The thing here is to implement it right away means that as a merchant goes up in level, it wouldnt automatically upgrade in numbers. If you gained a new merchant skill box which unlocked more slots, you would have to create a new vendor. We'd be able to add an automatic check and upgrade in the future, but it wouldnt be for a long time.
Even still, I think its a great idea to add this ability in. I dont know what the max numbers would be yet though Ill ask.
/agree
beautiful
Vendor change: This is by far the worst idea I have heard up to this point. I am one of the only major Droid Engineers on my server (everyone knows this is a horrendously broken class and prefers to dedicate their time elsewhere), and have a very large amount of traffic passes by my vendor on a daily basis. I keep my vendor stocked with tons of batteries, BH droids, and custom models. There are hundreds of combos out there for droids, so I attempt to keep the top 20-30 packages in stock for customer convenience. I can not remember the last time I had under 100 items on my vendor. If this goes into effect I would have a couple major options: 1) create a separate vendor for each "type" of droid 2) Severely limit my stock, hand craft each, and deliver each individual order. Neither of these options are acceptable to me. In addition, if I choose to only have one vendor with the 100 cap, I would be force EVERY NIGHT to restock and re-evaluate my vendor instead of enjoying some of the other classes I choose to play. Want to talk about monopolies? What happens when tons of crafters stop crafting due to this horrendously idiotic?
XanEldarie wrote:
And yet, through all this, you've not given any logical solution to the problem at hand; you've only done well to point out there's a problem.... Hmmm...
Of course there's a problem! This wouldn't be an issue if there was no issue to make an issue of! I've given my ideas, though you've spared your's.
That was quite the interesting grammatical labyrinth there.
The solution, as suggested by her and many, many, other merchants is not to cap vendors. There is no 'problem at hand' the problem will occur if they put caps in place, we are not accepting caps as a fait accompli because they would be game-breaking for many merchants. Thus, instead we argue that there is a problem.
Unfortunately for you, you seem fixated on badly focused 'work arounds' for the vendor cap, thinking that somehow advertising more will make limited vendor stock less of an issue (eh?). We're not here to discuss ways to work around the vendor cap. We're here to vote it down.
Request For Comments: The community is invited to make comments and suggestions about the proposed changes from Thursdsday, January 8th through Friday, January 16th. At that time, the thread will be closed to further comments. Feel free to comment on any or all of the above items.
This means that, while your "approval" or "disproval" is appreciated, suggestion to support the overall outcome is wanted when giving a response more than "I like it," or "I hate it".
Yes, 'comments and suggestions about the proposed changes', about the proposes change we comment that it would be game breaking for many merchants, that it addresses a fictional problem (monopolies) and only patches one actual problem that they prefer to obfuscate (lousy database design), therefore our suggestion is that they not implement the patch.
What part of that don't you understand? Is it quite possible that they'll implement the patch anyway, invalidating the statement that they wanted feedback? Sure. But the request for commentary doesn't mean that they only want the opinions that support the proposed change, no matter how you attempt the twist the wording.
Over and over again you say how the original idea, and subsequent ideas, are unacceptable; though you give no idea of your own. If I've missed it, please, repeat it now that we know TH is watching.
I believe the statement has been made many times, that removing non-merchant vendors will go a long way towards relieving their database issues. I reiterate, a request for commentary does not mean that only feedback that assumes the suggestions will go through is needed.
Point is, between you and I, I seem to be the only one truely contributing here; even if its not exacly in the best way. Start chopping wood, or get away from the axe.
I would suggest, that since the thread (as started by TH) is a request for commentary and suggestions on the PROPOSED change, that if you want to discuss how to live with the IMPLEMENTED change that you wait until it's actually been implemented. In the meantime I think everyone's right on target on their feedback whether they support the measure or no.
Thunderheart wrote:
First off.. limit the stock room to 3 days time. If the items are not claimed within 3 days, then just make the vendor auto delete them.
For instance, if we auto-deleted items, there would be a hornets nest. Lets say you put some items on your vendor, intending to play SWG all weekend, then suddenly you get a phone call. Something really good or really bad has happened in your RL and you have to leave for the weekend. You either forget to pull things off your vendors or simply just dont have time because you have to rush out the door.
You return and valuable items are gone. *poof* You assume its a db problem or some other player guess and assume its a mistake when its not - - no good can come from that.
Even if you add in player messages and other sorts of safeguards, you'll still have mistakenly deleted items..
Ok wait a minute... when 90+ Wall modules went "missing" from my stockroom back in November, the CSRs told me that it WAS intentional deletion, and that there was nothing I could do about getting them back, that I should have been aware of the autodeletion...
So now you're saying that it's NOT intentional? That doesn't make sense, since I've been told repeatedly that items are autodeleted off Bazaar and Vendor stockrooms after XX days. (the number always seems to change, CSRs aren't exactlythe most reliableinformation sources)
_YakFace_ wrote:
That's really bad news, really really bad news, the people don't have the skills to be master armorsmith and master merchant at the same time without to be a complete non combat class
Thunderheart wrote:
DocSavag is a strong voice for the Merchants and based on the correspondent issues, this change may include the fact that only merchants can have vendors.
where is the fun in merchant?? i think that you have to delete the merchant profession and put this abilities in the artisan classes. I don't see the utility of the merchant profession, really not useful ones
Not totally true! I'm Master Artisan/Merchant/Weaponsmith and I have the Carbines line of Marksman and three boxes of Carbineer.
Don't have medic though... had to give that up.
Owie.
If you do this, I quit the game. I have just made master artisan, and what you are suggesting does not make any sense. And, I might note as a company director, it is going to kill the game's economy. Basically you are saying the game owners are too cheap to buy additional item servers. What you will be left with, will be just another shoot-em-up. Been there, done that, got bored with it, don't play them anymore.
As artisan, there is a great number of items you can make, items the combat profession needs in order to do their thing.It takes a lot of different components to keep those guys in business, often from different suppliers too.
Now let's take my character as an example.I make and sell tools, and I'm trying to branch out to installations. Currently, my tools sell like hot buns. If I wanted to keep the bazaar fully stocked, I'd practically have to stand next to it at all times. That's why we have vendors: I can quickly load my most popular stuff into the vendor in large quantity, and spend the rest of my time actually PLAYING. And, of course, developing the next skill level in my profession. What do you want us to do? Abandon all our old hot items as soon as we can make something new? Not sell the new stuff at all? 150 items is a mighty small number, especially if you want to offer variety. Basically, you are forcing artisans to specialise, whether they want it or not.
And don't tell me we can store items in our houses. You can't. There are no closets, you can't stack crates, and the backpacks we use in stead of closets, tend to disappear into the wall all the time. Guess what I'm using for extra storage space...
So what would be left? With only 150 slots, you would be forced to go for Master Merchant, so you could put up more than one vendor. But what if you had rather use those skill points elsewhere?
And what is this about a monopoly? There can be no monopoly as long as other people have the opportunity to make and sell the same items as you. It is more than obvious that no one in development would know an actual economic model if it hit them in the face.
I do admit something has to be done about the vendor system, but I think this can be solved a lot easier than this. From experience, I know it can be hellishly difficult to find some items. It helps only a little bit that advanced merchants can list their vendors in the bazaar: too many of these vendors prove to be actually empty, or hardly stocked at all. The answer seems perfectly obvious to me. All these items have generalised names. Why not add a planetary item search database, where one can compare prices and find vendor locations? Make it a separate bazaar function, so merchants keep their listing advantage. It's not as if a search engine is difficult to create... This might also help the economy to stabilize, as people can finally work out a good price balance.
And another thing, while you're at it, do something about the resources: too few, too scarce, too low in quality. An artisan can't earn an honest living this way.
Final word. I mean it when I say I will quit the game if you follow the vendor/bazaar proposal I'm reacting to. If you reduce this game to sheer work for me so other people can play, I'm out, and I wouldn't be surprised as all other artisans would leave too.
Gaenjin wrote:
Thunderheart wrote:
First off.. limit the stock room to 3 days time. If the items are not claimed within 3 days, then just make the vendor auto delete them.
For instance, if we auto-deleted items, there would be a hornets nest. Lets say you put some items on your vendor, intending to play SWG all weekend, then suddenly you get a phone call. Something really good or really bad has happened in your RL and you have to leave for the weekend. You either forget to pull things off your vendors or simply just dont have time because you have to rush out the door.
You return and valuable items are gone. *poof* You assume its a db problem or some other player guess and assume its a mistake when its not - - no good can come from that.
Even if you add in player messages and other sorts of safeguards, you'll still have mistakenly deleted items..
Ok wait a minute... when 90+ Wall modules went "missing" from my stockroom back in November, the CSRs told me that it WAS intentional deletion, and that there was nothing I could do about getting them back, that I should have been aware of the autodeletion...
So now you're saying that it's NOT intentional? That doesn't make sense, since I've been told repeatedly that items are autodeleted off Bazaar and Vendor stockrooms after XX days. (the number always seems to change, CSRs aren't exactlythe most reliableinformation sources)
What if instead of auto deleting the item, you have to pay an amount to maintanence just like re-deeding. You are unable to retrieve the item until your pool is over 3000cr or something like that....
just a thought
As a Weaponsmith/MA/Novice Pistoleer/Novice Architect I would treat that as a very unfriendly change.
You'd see my scouts on the bazaar for 6k and that's about it.