Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
Jeeebs wrote:I sell Resources... mainly in lots of 5k-25k... just b/c people dont need that much of the same item once and a while... Right now i have roughly 8 million resource units for sale on 2 vendors... Now at the breakdown of on a average of 10k per lot thats 800 items... That is roughly 5.5+ vendors i would need... Now i have master merchant so 6 vendors isnt a problem for me... HOWEVER... I do sometimes have 10 million resources and i wouldnt beable to place them all on the vendors for people to purchuse... AND if i was to put them in my little tent (b/c i need the other lots for harvs) I dont even have enouf room to store everything...
As I wrote before, the fundamental problem is one of DESIGN.
I sell resources as well. A LOT of them. One of the fundamental design flaws is that there is no user-selectable QUANTITY field for purchases.
That forces us (if we want to provide good customer service) to often put in many, many lines in our vendor, all associated with THE SAME RESOURCE.
Powerup vendors run into the same problem.
The solution to DRASTICALLY reducing the load on the database is to allow us to load our items into the vendor and CONSOLIDATE identical items into just ONE LINE, and specify a price per unit.
Then the user simply buys however many they want, by specifying their quantity.
If you have 2.5 million units of BadDatabaseDesignium, you should be able to display it on your vendor as a single line, and the database should store it that way. When a customer wants some for a small order, and they need exactly 7650 units of it, they can buy PRECISELY THAT AMOUNT from you, without having an untold number of extra lines consumed.
Database load is greatly reduced, customers find exactly what they need MUCH faster and easier, and you don't have to worry about stocking and restocking the wrong quantities for your customer's needs.
It's a complete win-win, and almost certainly eliminates the perceived NEED for a cap. Everyone gets helped, and most importantly, NO ONE GETS HURT with this solution.
Please, Devs. Just fix the interface and instance storage problems, instead of slaughtering successful sellers in the name of improved performance.
Thunderheart that poll is worded in a way that misleads the logic of this change, i voted no but the reasoning it gives is misleading.
the option should be there that says:
- No i don't want this because it undermines the merchant profession.
- not:
- no i don't want his cause i am a greedy crafter.
Vendor/bazaar decidions affect merchants, not crafters.
it does nothing to my weaponsmithing skills, or my smuggler skills, it undermines my merchant skills.
like my post way back on page 10 says,
The question is are mechants supposed to be a stand alone profession that sells for others, or a add on perk for crafters.
Vendor = Bad needs to be upped to around 250 or so.
Also, start making more room in houses for people to keep there components and resources. Ihave 4 houses completely full. I have to run around to 3 houses to make a weapon. Resource house, component house , manufacturing house - vendor house.
A little off topic but a valid point I think.
The price cap on the bazaar does not sound like a bad idea. Some of the items on the bazaar are worth more than 3k and should be able to sell as such.
The cap on player vendors, I do not agree with. As a weaponsmith, my customers always want a fair number of each item. Popular items I may put on as many as 20-30 at a time because they sell so quickly. This would greatly reduce the variety I could have in my vendor. Considering there are about 30 types of ranged weapons, 10 heavy weapons, 15 melee weapons, and 10 thrown weapons, that is only enough to put about 2 of each on the vendor if you were to display a full selection. Granted I don't make grenades, but even so, 2-3 of each is not much and can sell out in an hour. Where would all the extra stock go from a factory run, considering people's houses and factories are usually already jam-packed with stock.
Also, as a Master Merchant I have the option of placing up to 6 vendors. I cannot afford to designate1 vendor per type of weapon: Pistols, Carbines, Rifles, etc. because I also sell other things such as powerups, krayt weapons, sliced weapons, and deeds which need their own vendors. Also, how would an armorsmith be able to sell "full sets" of armor, roughly 9 pieces per set, when 15 sets can sell out in a matter of an hour?
As far as the bazaar, if you need to free up space, I would suggest that each price range of an item should determine how long it stays on the bazaar. For example, there is no reason for a 25 credit CDEF pistol to be on there as long as say a skill attachment or a piece of composite armor. Most of the time, people have to scroll through pages and pages of junk, like CDEF weapons, junk loot from NPC's, etc. just to find anything worthwhile. Maybe have the option of 2 different bazaar systems, one for low items, 1-3k in price, and one for higher items 3-6k in price?
The vendor issue of unlimited items does not cause monopolies, but rather encourages people to become merchants and add some friendly competition between sellers. Besides 150 items per vendor for a crafter, or even someone who sells individual things like 1-time use spices, food, drink, etc. the limit would be a huge detriment to their business and force people to always be restocking their vendors instead of going out to enjoy the game, which is what we are here to do 
A very wise man once said some profound words of wisdom i really think should be considered here-
"If it aint broke,dont fix it!"
Utterly opposed to a limit of 150 on a personal vendor,this is sheer lunacy,trust me if this went through the game would die on its arse because no merchant is going to spend all day every day constantly restocking a vendor,many would probably give up and all the non merchant posters who think this is a good idea will soon be singing a different tune. I can slice almost tripple that in one days gaming for the same weaponsmith to put on his vendor! And how are the small time merchants like myself who can actually only place one vendor supposed to cope? Selling spices to meet demand and slicing tools on one vendor with a 150 item limit? Impossible!
As for saying its to minimise monopoly,ridiculous if i want to buy a new blaster i will visit any one of the ten or so weaponsmiths i have waypoints for to get it.
A suggestion like this truly highlights to me that the developers really dont know what is going on this game. For once lets see a big gaming company listen to what its player base want and KEEP THE GAME ENJOYABLE!
Againsnt the whole idea if you hadnt guessed.
I really like this, except that I'd like to see the efficiency line used instead of the management line. This requires more breadth of the tree to get usefulness out of it. And it makes it so that Master Merchants are more useful. Do something where you get increases at Efficiency I, III, and Master. Make sure to keep Efficiency IV as lower building prices though. That's one of the few useful Merchant boxes.
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.
Greets
The Number of Items a merchant can sell should be like the CH Pet Levels.
Example 1:
Novice Merchant = 150 items
Each skill box = additional 50 items
Master = additional 150 items
Total of 1,150 items
A dabbler that does just the mgmt line would get 150+50+50+50+50 = 350 items.
This does several things ... it allows the dabbler to be effective and it gives the master merchant, or the more serious merchant a nice advantage ... some merchants might actually become in "demand" for their services :-)
Numbers can be played with depending upon SOE's top and bottom limits.
Vendor item caps will KILL me as a master Merchant/Master WS! With sales of over 150 a DAY after a major restock even a 1000 item limit is insanely LOW! I try to keep at least 10 of all weapons on the vendor, plus some... VK's I sell those in sliced batches of 100... (make 100 in factory.. call the slicer... have him slice it.. load all 100 on the vendor).. and Rocket Launchers! OMG.. don't get me started there... the house item limits are so freakin low that I have to put the subcomponents for the rockets on the vendor in order to make them...
In Order to make 100 Rocket Launchers I will have tomake in the factory:
880 Projectile Feed mech's,
550 Light Warhead Mechs ,
550 Med Warhead Mechs ,
550 Warhead Stabilizing Device,
550 Warhead Fusing Mechs
220 Scopes
440 Blaster power handlers
110 proton Grenades
NOW Don't tell me to store those in my house... the items in the list above is NINETY crates of 25!!! and this is just ONE weapon!
I shudder to think about what the tailors will have to go through? the guild tailor has a price list of every craftable clothing item and the list is an excel spreadsheet that is 4 pages long.. there are 10 different kinds of belts and for each belt (most have 2 color combos) there are what... thousands of color combos...and outfit is usually an ensemble of 8 items ... with the 1000 item limit the tailor can only have 125 outfits on there?!?! Heck... the guild tailor has over 500 outfits... we need the ability to sell outfits as a "package" like putting the outfit into a container and allowing a customer to view the outfit.
This is so game breaking ... I WILL cancel my account if this goes through.
I would suggest that anyone who agrees with having a vendor cap take some time to do their homework, and present some real numbers based on how many schematics the various professions have, whether their sales are tied to having a variety of items belonging to particular schematics (like 10 different varieties of lamp posts, for instance), how often the different professions currently have to restock various items, and what amount of items they currently keep on their vendor(s) to maintain those restocking times. To voice an opinion under any other conditions is an insult to the crafting professions as well as to those of us who have to read those opinions.
BrandonIT wrote:
More and more we are being asked to surrender 'more' skillpoints just in order to perform some basic tasks. As much as I love the Merchant profession (I am a Merchant) I don't think everyone should suffer just to make us useful.
I can sympathize with that, but in the end, we're not supposed to be able to do everything ourselves. This isn't supposed to be a solo game, but a team game. Equating suffering with not being able to solo is what a lot of people do. I happen to think that that's an unhealthy point of view, though. You could make the "suffering" comment about needing an Entertainer to heal Battle Fatigue, or a Weaponsmith to make weapons you need, or outlawing certain items to give Smugglers a purpose. There's always going to be something you can't do, and not everything can be a cakewalk.
I think the Devs intended for crafters and salespeople to be separate individuals. One would make items, the other would distribute them. From resources to crafting to selling, every stage would get a cut of the action. The "problem" is that it's possible to do it all yourself, from mining resources right on down to operating multiple vendors. A lot of good crafters have burned out because they're not just crafters, but are one-man vertical business enterprises. If people would share the labor a little bit, I'd bet that people would have a lot less headaches.
And so for that reason, anything that encourages people to segment their business operations and work as a team is a good move, in my book.
I'm assuming that you mean that the cap should be 150 vendor listings, not 150 items, i.e. if I sell 10,000 units of iron in a block, that should count as only 1 vendor item, right? If not, then this will destroy resource selling from the vendors.
If it is the correct way, then I would support the cap only on the condition that merchants get some XP when people actually buy something. It will take more effort to keep some of the vendors filled, and the merchants should be able to recoup this effort in some way.
Jabber, on Wanderhome.