Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
xRavX wrote:
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.
Your larger font has convinced me that I am a fool. In all ways that are not.
Alrighty, fun with math:
925 items available.
Now, let's look atmy goal for 'minimum items carried toconsider my storestocked':
250: 5of every 'basic' weapon type. (50 x 5)
250: 20-25 more of the more popular weapons (12 fast sellers)*
70: crates of powerups (40 ranged/30 melee)
50: Miscellaneous clothing/armor attachments
9: 3 of each type of vehicle
135: 15 crates of every 'basic' consumable munition (grenades/mines (9 types))
45: 15 crates/units of the three basic commando consumables.
200:sliced weapons (50 FTs, 50 LLCs, 10 each of various carbine/pistol/rifle types.)
20: crates of low-quality CDEF carbines for slicers to practice slicing on (priced at cost)
20: crates of low quality WUK kits for slicers to practice slicing with (priced at cost)
------
1049 item minimum.
* I sell a lot of Stun Batons, Gad Bats, Vibro Knucklers, Laser Carbines, Laser Rifles, T-21s, Jawa Ion Rifles, FWG5s, Launcher Pistols, Flame Throwers, LLCs, and Scatter pistols on a regular basis.
Right now I'm not fully stocked, I have more in some areas (have roughly 100 FWG5s, that number has dwindled sharply) and less in others (0 scout blasters available).
This is mainly because I'd stocked my store with some new weapons that I hadn't been carrying before (stun batons, grenades) and let my customers know. Like the lovely locusts they are, they came and bought tons of everything, I love them for that.
Having the extra in some categories means that I still have FWG5s, Launcher Pistols, Scatter Pistols etc in stock, but it means the categories that I had less of are cleaned out, so I need to restock tonight so that my 'everyday' customer will still find things. Not also that by carrying so few grenades I'll be forced to stock more on the side of 'bigger' crates of grenades (full crate of 25) then smaller crates made for the non-hard core user.
We need to be able to back stock because you never know when someone will decide they want to get a scout blaster slice different from what's on offer, and will buy 5 of them and go off to see a smuggler. This is just for a weaponsmith, I believe armorsmiths have it worse with the various components it takes for a full set of armor, and I believe Tailors have it even worse. I've been to some really nice tailor shops.. I don't know if I could do that job.
I don't mind hardwork... my friday night gaming tonight will be restocking because of the huge amount of product that moved in the last two days, I'm out of several weapon types. When I log off tonight? I should be fully stocked in everything but the smuggler practice stuff and some of the grenades.
"my resource vendor has 300+ things on it, why? b/c i have to split it up itno 1k, 5k, 10k, 25k, 50k and 100k stacks so that everyone can get soem, all budgets. in case you didn't know.... not too many people buy a 50k stack of stomethign that sells for 20cpu or more."
You can put the smaller or less expensive items on the bazaar, no? Considering they mentioned raising the bazaar cap to 6K, that would allow you to put quite a bit of things on it. I see crates of muon and small stacks of hide/bone on the bazaar all the time, and that's where I usually buy from. I don't have time to trek out to your house and get a larger quantity at a cheaper price if I need it right then and there because the shuttle is leaving or because the hunting party is ready to go. I just don't see why your vendor is the *only* place you can sell your wares.
--Obas Moondi
why not just fix the database?
until you 1. fix the exploit where you keep vendors after sac'ing merchat, and 2. allow merchants to grant admin rights to a vendor, Merchant wont be a real class. sure a handfull of people run around buying from crafters to resell, but check your astromech stats thing...i'd wager 90% of elite crafters have their *own* vendor. Make merchant viable by *fixing* it, not by nerfing it for others.
That's the point! Are really useful the merchant profession? I think it will be better if they sell us the vendor machines like the droid engineers sell droids and CHs sells pets, i think is the best solution. You like the merchants then we dont need one to run a 'simple machine', let them to sell other players the vendors.
Kav wrote:
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.
Thunderheart wrote:
Ithink we're going to make it so that as merchants gain skill boxes, they gain the ability to put more items on their vendors. The lower and upper caps havent been established yet.
Love it! Good show...
Quote:
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.
I don't think this is a good idea. I could see limiting artisans to onevendor with 50-100 items, but i don't feel it is necessary to take all merchants away from artisans.3 points:
(1) There is a whole tree in artisan dedicated to having a vendor... It is not necessary to have, as elite artisans only have to take up the Engineering/Homemaking tree to get to weaponsmith/armorsmith/etc. If an artisan (especially a master) spends the skill points to take up the commerce tree, the SHOULD get a vendor. This change would take 1/4 of the artisan profession and make it worthless.
(2) To progress to merchant, you HAVE to get merchant xp while an artisan. The ONLY way to get merchant xp is to have a vendor (you can though house fees also, but why would anyone go into your house if you have no vendor). If you take the vendors away from artisans, none can become merchants.
(3) Having only one vendor with 50 to 100 items is already VERY limiting to artisan. As you have seen from people's comments on these boards, a large number believe that even 150 isn't enough. As a master artisan, you are a generalist that has a little expertise in merchandising, you can have a small shop that you have to constantly tend yourself (fill vendor) because you aren't very good at it. As a merchant, you become a master of managing a shop, and can train lots of vendors to handle a larger number of transactions (cap of 50 to 100 items goes up as you progress). It takes much less effort to supervise. This is the way it should be.
I just doesn't make sense to prevent artisans from having vendors. Limit the vendor they have to 100 items? Ok. But any more is an unecessary nerf.
Ackis wrote:Why not implement something along the lines of if there are X items of the same type (ie: crates of batteries, storage compartments, etc) then the vendor lists only one of the item, but shows that there is a certain quantity. ie: "40 crates of 25 Droid Batteries". That should decrease the load on the database immensly (because instead of 40 different items that need to be tracked, 1 item now needs to be tracked, but with two variables).
More efficient still is consolidating them all into just one quantity: 1000 droid batteries. When people buy them, they are automatically subdivided into crates of the appropriate size.
For warning purposes, you could perhaps have the item description mention what the maximum number per crate is (Crate Size: 25)
It's better customer service to allow someone to buy only 15 batteries, if that's all they actually wanted, instead of forcing them to buy 25.
This strategy accomplishes that, without forcing the seller to create artificially broken-down packaging. It also makes resource selling to crafters a real breeze.
Someone who wants to create a schematic can then come buy EXACTLY what they need from a resource seller, with ZERO waste. Those waste piles put additional load on the database server too, you know.
Consolidation could be controlled through a simple check box when listing an item for sale ("Allow item consolidation") and the check box would change the price field to a "Price per Unit" field. If you sell a consolidated item, it would automatically add its quantity to any other consolidated listing which had an identical serial number.
This allows people to put the first part of a factory run up for sale, and add the rest in later without having any additional database hit.
JediMasterKai wrote:
"my resource vendor has 300+ things on it, why? b/c i have to split it up itno 1k, 5k, 10k, 25k, 50k and 100k stacks so that everyone can get soem, all budgets. in case you didn't know.... not too many people buy a 50k stack of stomethign that sells for 20cpu or more."
You can put the smaller or less expensive items on the bazaar, no? Considering they mentioned raising the bazaar cap to 6K, that would allow you to put quite a bit of things on it. I see crates of muon and small stacks of hide/bone on the bazaar all the time, and that's where I usually buy from. I don't have time to trek out to your house and get a larger quantity at a cheaper price if I need it right then and there because the shuttle is leaving or because the hunting party is ready to go. I just don't see why your vendor is the *only* place you can sell your wares.
--Obas Moondi
cause the bazaar is 25 items. i have a shop 200m from the dant imperial outpost so hunters don't have to leave dantooine and go to the lag captial of the galaxy (coronet), and i run a high quality resoruce vendor on coronet. If I sold stuff on the bazaar i would have to repost stuff all day long. more importantly, no AS or WS will tell you then shop for high quality resoruces on the bazaar... besides even with a 6k cap, something that sells for 20cpu, you can still only list 300 units on the new bazaar. so.. that isn't a lot of good to most crafters.
all in all the bazaar doesn't allow you to move volume. If i couldn't sell millions /day, i wouldnt' sell at all.
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.
Please, Please, Please don't do this. Its hard enough to manage skill points. You can't make someone else a admin on a vendor so its not even like I can have a friend place one, for me.
Ok, my two cent as crafter.... I am working on master merchant, whichIF the limit was put in place would means Ishould beok... BUT limit really screws me in the long run. I have one vendor for all of my architect items. and I have a second for smuggler related warez (all good)... Now if the limit is put in place I will end up have two vendors just for furiture (not counting how many I need for structures), because it is hard to keep thingsin stock, I have load my vendor with everything I have.
Plus I assume that every 10 points of hiring counts as a vendor so at most a person can I have 10 vendors as a master merchant... there are some people in my town that would max that 150*10=1500 items total that one person can list on personal vendor... COME ON... Did you do that math before posting... most big name vendor on Bloodfin run at least that on one.
So I say NO LIMIT, just spend the money and fix your servers so they can handle it. I think that is a better idea, since we pay to play, not toget screwed...
Pilotos
Master Architect & Artisan
Section ONE
Bloodfin Server
edit:
whoever thought* up this one should be fired.
and beaten senseless.
I'm posting http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Ahazi&message.id=137197> this so that you can quick link to the Ahazi thread, wherein many prominent crafters on that server (prominent meaning those that have constant items in stock) state they will quit their ingame business if this nerf actually makes it live.
Now, I'm going to pray to the html gods in regards to that link.