Development Cycle Archive

---

Steven7856 wrote:

I read this post last night and it has been bugging me ever since. Therefore I'm going to rant and add another reply to this very long thread.

Cut down on Monopolys agood idea, limiting vendor spacebad way to do it. Before a monopoly can exist there must be some form of barrier to entry preventing other business from operating. People can enter and start any type of business they want so the barriers, if there even are any, are not natural they are artificial (read created by the mechanics of SGW not the players). I operate out of Tatooine and there are three major regional clusters, one around the krayt dragon area, one around wayfar and one in the Bestine / Anchorhead region, plus one town way out in the boondocks that no one goes to. Within these regions there are monopolies simply because it is difficult to travel half way across a world to visit a vendor that may or may not have what you are looking for. I know I check all my competitors weekly and it's a pain in the ass. If you want to discourage monopolies the SWG must encourage competition. The best way to allow vendors to compete is to allow customers to see what is for sale, where it is at and how much it costs, easily, conveniently and from anywhere on the planet all over the planet. That will eliminate monoplies. Not limiting vendor size. If you limit vendor sizeone will do this.

It willencourage monopoly behavior and the prices for goods is going to increase. I will use my business as an example. I have looked all over tatooine for the last two weeks for water. No one, and I mean NO ONE sells water, so I set up my harvesters and presto water for sell, cost 10cpu. Well a bit of time goes by and other people realizethey can make water for less than what I'm selling it for so they start harvesting water and now water is down to about 3cpu. Which I think is fair. They did this by not dumping their current invetory but by adding to it. What happens if there is a limit on vendor size? You have to limit what you sell and in a limited marketthere is moredemand for a good than what is supplied and the price will rise. In my business say my competers decided to sell water (and vendor limits were imposed at 150items)to do this they would have todrop something else say, copper. Well I would just go and sell copper for 10cpu, why because the only people who are selling resources just stopped doing it and I could. It wouldn't matter that 5000m away someone else might be selling copper, people want to buy what they need in the area they operate in. This holds true for any business. If you sell weapons or houses or armor or anything and maintain a stocked vendor then the limits for you to choose between selling all of your products and one or two. If you only sell one or two things where before you sold 20 to 30 who is going to sell the stuff they you no longer can sell and at what price? Two weaponsmiths with unlimited vendor space creating ranged weapons are in competition. Two weaponsmiths with limited vendor space specializing in three weapons each can charge any price they want because if they have half a brain between them one will make T21, laser rifles and rebublic blasters the other gaffie sticks, flame throwers and vibroknife. They can charge any price they want because no one is in compitition and if you are the unlucky soul who needs a carbine, well your out of luck, maybe one of them will be kind enough to custom make you one, for a price of course.

What about the vendorswho don't have 150 items in the vendor now, well this doesn't affect them does it? If you have 3 things for sell you are able to compete but only for the next 147 items after that well you are going to have to stop selling something to make room in your store for the new thing. Add a new vendor, sure to a point but there are only so many vendors you can have when your limit is reached that's it. The only way for limits to be affective is for them to be high enough that it doesn't affect the supply of any comoditiy, and really what is the point of limits when they don't affect the market. Fix the database not vendor limits.

Opening up the bazaar prices is an interesting idea, what I want to know is does SWG expect teh bazaar system or the player vendor system to be the primary economic force in the galaxy? If you are trying to encourage a bazaar system then raise the prices by all means. If you are trying to encourge vendors then you are hurting the people you are trying to help. If you are only interested in your database problems and not how the game is played flip a coin and go from there. If you want both...ahh then go back to monopolies and make bazaar terminals able to acces vendor terminals.

To allow a free market it must be easy to enter for the seller and it must be open so people have a choice in buying. Without either of these two things there will always be problems, right now neither works, it is not easy to enter the markets...it takes a significant outlay of money and time to become a master weaponsmith, armorsmith, droid engineer, ect, ect,ect. (that's not wrong but it does hurt competition) and it is not easy for buyers to find what they want fromvendors.

My two cents, vendor limits very bad idea, bazaar cap raised good or bad depending on what is intended.

---

Could you please explain how anyone in this game can or has a monopoly?

You can't buy other businesses then sell off there stock at cutthroat prices. After doing so closing the business down and laying off all employees. You can't create patents for items, so that it is copyright/trademark infringement if someone else makes a similar product. In no way can you stop anyone from making anything in this game or selling anything in this game they choose to...

Please you wrote so much I'd like you to explain monopoly to us. First you will need to look in a dictionary

while working on vendors, could you automatically remove empty vendors from planet map.

its boring to run 100 empty vendors.

Here's a good question for Thunderheart to ask the Devs working on this...

Right now, the bazaars tends to be slow, especially on the weekends. If you raise the caps to 6k, how will you handle the increased load? Also, shopping the bazaar is cumbersome... how about fixing the sorting before raising the cap?

Finally, if you are looking at moving vendors to Merchant only, why not make the new 6k cap only apply to premium auctions? This would make premium auctions worthwhile without totally gutting the Merchants.

Putting a limit of 150 items on a vendor will definitely hurt my crafting business. I am a master weaponsmith and master smuggler. I have barely enough skill points left over to have novice merchant. As it is now, I can't put my vendor on the planet map, I don't have any neat sayings for my vendors, but this is acceptable because I want to provide my customers with Master level weapons that are Master level sliced.

If you limit the vendors to 150 items each, I will be stuck at my shop restocking every day. I sell crates of spices too, which sell out incredibly fast. I pride myself on keeping most weapon types on my vendor plus many of the spices.

With my particular template, there is another issue. With the randomness of slices, I have to make crates of weapons and slice them by the crate in order to get the best slices. If the vendor limit is enacted, I will not be able to put the lower (and cheaper) slices on my vendor.

I planned to stay a weaponsmith/smuggler for the life of my character. I have enough fighting skills to go hunting with my friends, and I can produce some great sliced weapons for my customers, plus the spices they like to go with them. But if this 150 item limit is added to the game, I will probably choose to drop weaponsmith/smuggler and go to pure combat professions, I'd make more money that way anyway.

---

Ewach wrote:

You put insane artificial limits on housesizes. This led to people creating additional accounts for more lots (to have "warehouses") and the practice of inter-server lot trades for even more "warehouses" for storage.

.........

(by the way - there are people I know with 4 and 5 accounts - do NOT underestimate your player base - if necessary people WILL buy more accounts to have multiple Master Merchants to circumvent any artificial limit imposed)

---

I have 5 accts, and have already done these. I have twomaster merchants... largely because customers can't seem tosee the little button that says "Next page." That could be fixed with a little vendor interface tweaking or a new search function.

i'm for raising the bazaar cap to 6000cr per item. infact i'd be for raising it to 10000cr per item. why ? because its needed big time. theres alot of things that we simply can't place on the bazaar due to the price limit being too low which means less items get to the bazaar for people to buy. I think it will also reduce the spam in the major cities alittle bit.

I'm abit un-nerved at the fact that you're not asking our opinion on the vendor item cap. in your statement you;re pretty much saying " this is what we decided, live with it".

as a merchant who is a master droid engineer, master architect, and master artisan with a second account that is a master doctor, haveing a limit of only 150 items on my vendors means i can't place as much of a single item on a vendor as i'd like to.

You increased the amount of time we're able to have items on our vendors from 7 days to 30 days which was great. it ment i could drop 600 pieces of furniture on my vendor without having to restock it every 7 days. this change will completely negate the purpose of the 30 day item timer on vendors because now i'll have to restock every few days whether i want to or not.

I work all day long, when i get home i'd like to beable to play the game i'm paying for. not be tied to a vendor all night. might as well just go get a second job and cancel the accounts. atleast i'd get paid then.

---

Tayte wrote:

Bazaar change is very welcome.

Vendor change is welcome, but have a few suggestions.

First, since merchant IS an advanced skill, some people do try to make a psuedo-living out of the proffesion. Limiting the number at a flat 150 per vendor is a serious cut-off to the trade. Perhaps you could, in addition to the fee that is already charged to the vendor, charge an additional modifer to the base fee based on the number of items that are being sold. This would allow the people who 'cant keep item in stock' to store as many items as they want, but at a exponential cost. For example:

Vendor fees per item:

1-150 items: 1.00 x base rate

151-300 items: 1.20 x base rate

301-450 items: 1.50 x base rate

451-600 items: 2.00 x base rate

etc...

This would perhaps encourage people to only keep stuff WORTH selling on their vendors, and allow those who don't want to continually stock their good to stock an extra amount for a 'cost of convienence'.

---

Absolutely not. I should not be penalized for keeping my vendors fully stocked. Sorry but no. I think I can say that ANY crafter/merchant would protest this idea.

---

QuiJonOz wrote:

Finally, if you are looking at moving vendors to Merchant only, why not make the new 6k cap only apply to premium auctions? This would make premium auctions worthwhile without totally gutting the Merchants.

---

I second this. Would provide greater value to premium auctions and the artisan biz tree, especially if vendors are moved up to merchant.

Happy New Year! )

My two cents, being a Master Merchant & Master Architect, are:

1) Bazarre - Raise the Cap to 10,000 Credits per item.

2) Vendor Cap - I agree with several suggestions thus far in making it a part of the skill tree - i.e. Efficiency I - 100, Efficiency II - 200, Efficiency III - 300, Efficiency IV-400, Master Merchant - 500. Perhaps more people would keep their Master Merchant status if they had to have the skill trees to place not only additional vendors, but items on their vendors.

Looking forward to the changes,

Darmana/Ahazi/LOK

The Bazaar cap increase is good.

The cap on venders is a mistake. A BIG mistake. Perhaps if people cant find the next page button you should redesign the UI for venders to be more user friendly....or perhaps make pages longer. I sell stims and I can hit 150 items easy! stims and wound packs not to mention buffs and reses and crates! What you want us to do with a 150 limit is camp our venders all the time and that is not cool. now if you put in a system that automatically puts items up for sale from the store room would be a good idea if you want a cap. let it stock it's self from the store room then. I would go with a cap of 300 any thing less would mean me babysitting my shop all the time

I would stop playing if you wanted me to be tethered to my store.

WHY THE HELL ARE WE, THE CONSUMERS AND CRAFTERS OF SWG,BEING FORCED TO SUFFER BECAUSE A FEW PEOPLE USE VENDORS FOR STORAGE?

/sarcasm on

Some ideas for the Dev Team:

1. Kill the economy

2. Kill the professions

3. Kill the game

4. Get jobs on a farm because you are all talented at shoveling 5hit.

5. Have a tall cold glass of S.T.F.U.

---

Halaka wrote:

.

I know one WS on our server who stocks 500+ weapons on their vendor and within 12hrs they're down to 50 or so.

---

Like TH said... breaking up monopolies. I support a cap on vendors, and that cap can be increased with merchant managment level... As for the bazaar, I think it should be 10k... as stated before not everyone wants to buy a house to place vendors... a nice10k cap would allow things such as small houses to be sold and medium range weapons...

Side note: Wish you would "link" allbazaar terminalsin the galaxy. So you could buy an item from the bazaar in Theed even though the item was placed for sale in Anchorhead.. and retireve it from Theed. After all we walk into a city and ships fly about overhead... add to that the SWG universe galactic shipping seems reasonable... ( perhaps a tax when buying items and retreiving it across long distances. )

If bazaars were linked and there were GOOD search options ( like forum search item style ) they would be useful. In all honesty not many people use the bazaars whenver I go on them they have very few items for newbies... mostly resources.

If you linked all the bazaars, people on "abondoned" planets like Rori could buy the goods they need, as little merchants/crafters play on rori... compared to the other planets.

removing the cap on bazzar is good limiting personal vendors is bad.

simple to the point