Development Cycle Archive
Thread: ID#2: Two Changes to Bazaars and Vendors
I dislike both of these proposals but particularly the raising of the bazaar price capas this will allow more goods to be purchased in NPC cities where players already have a strong motivation to congregate for the starports and leave the player cities with even less reasons for non-residents to come and do their shopping and explore a new place. If the development team wants to see player cities be an important part of the game and reduce the congestion around the Coronet City starport then the bazaar limit should actually be lowered or the number of items able to be sold in the bazaar reduced.
The 150 limit on vendors seems a bit low but would not be a large burden to crafters with the exception of tailors and armorers who need to provide a large selection of types and colors of goods. It will, however, put another nail into the coffin of the merchanting as a stand-alone profession. Trying to keep vendors stocked on multiple worlds with such a small limit would be too costly and time-consuming and would result in either more empty vendors or consolidating vendors into one or two locations.
Suggestion #1: I believe there is way too much cash in the economyat the moment. The 3k limit is forcing an artificial ceiling on items listed on the bazaar. In other words, "what the market will bear" may statistically look like it is 3k for a number of things, simply because people will buy them at this price on the bazaar. In reality, there are a number of sales where the buyer probably would have paid more anyway. The supply/demand model is currently skewed because of this. Raising the limit to 6k will alleviate this, but only to a certain degree. I would also disqualify certain items from being sold on the bazaar, such as quest items or loot items. If these items are valuable I would rather see someone search them out in a Player city. My basic suggestion is that at some point the devs should make some sort of decision as to whether or not things like a broken hyperdrive part should be something someone tries to sell in a mass market venue.
Suggestion #2: Make the bazaar SEARCHABLE (i.e. searchable by keywords like "iron" or "krayt"). You should be able to search the entire galaxy for items listed on the bazaar. Iwould also like to see a separate page that you can tab to where you could search for items listed on player vendors. A restriction may need to be placed on this such that only player vendors in the the region or current planet are searchable for this option.
Neilla wrote:
Idea 1: Splittable Crates
If your goal is to make vendors easier to use and to reduce database size, here's a suggestion: allow merchants to put crates into a vendor in such a way that customers can buy items out of the crates rather than a crate at a time. For exmaple: add a new check-box on the 'sell item' dialog to enable customers to break apart a crate. The customer would then be allowed to split the crate and pay for the contents pro-rata.
Idea 2: Larger Crates
While we're at it... one way to make the database a LOT smaller would be to allow factories to put up to 1000 items into a crate, regardless of complexity, or to allow merging of crates.
If you did both of these things, I would probably go from about 800 items in the database to about 200: it would save a huge amount of vendor space and a fairly large amount of working storage for subassemblies. It would also produce a huge reduction in database churn: instead of shoving 10 crates of 100 structure modules into a factory and getting out 10 crates of 10 walls, for example, I'd shove 1 crate of 1000 modules in and get 1 crate of 100 walls out, cutting the DB workload and item count by a factor of 10.
Idea 3: Auto-Stacking in the Interface
A third idea which would make the user interface work a lot better: for a given vendor, allow the system group items having the same schematic and name. Instead of displaying 20 items called 'Torch', have it display 1 item called 'Torch (20)'. The reson for grouping by schematic AND name: If you only group by schematic, It will group a BER-13 heavy mineral with a BER-7 heavy mineral, which is bogus. This puts the onus on the merchant to name things sensibly... but most of us do anyway. If you only group by name, then dissimilar items having the same name (e.g. the four different 'Loveseats') will group together.
If these three items were implemented I would fly to the west coast and wash the dev's feet in my tears of joy!! I could not imagine the tremendous amountof time and frustration that these would save me in maintaining my store and warehouses. I thought the7-->30 day increase would be the best improvement I would ever see, but these would be absolutely heaven sent if implemented.
..., encourages monopolies and actually hurts sales in many instances because most players don't "drill down" through all of the vendor pages to find items. We want to solve the technical issues, discourage monopolies and make vendors easier to use. An item limit is going to be placed on vendors and that limit is intended to be placed on 150
Personally, I believe, the monopolies does not come from the number of items you can have on a vendor. As you've stated "...actually hurts sales in many instatnces....don't drill down" So, by that fact, the number of items on a vendor does not cause monopolies.
As to the Monopolies, which I have not known to heard about, by limiting a vendor to have 150 items DOES NOT solve the problem. It is most likely, such ppl, would be a master merchants, so, 150 time the max number of vendors a master merchants could have still introduces your "monoply problem".
ppl like to shop where ppl want to shop. Some sticks to one shop and others shop around for a good deal.
Limiting a vendor to have 150 items does not make any sense to me.
As to the bazaar, yes that is good idea. I am for the 6k.
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.
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Once again....let's kill the 'casual' player that SOE said they were courting in the beginning. How is someone that likes to craft on the side supposed to sell their wares? The bazaar? Yea right. If you create something worthwhile it is worth more than 3k or even the 6k that you are considering changing the price to. Sell to a merchant? They are only going to want to deal with the monopolies you say you are trying to break. Why you say? Because since they craft so much, their prices will of course be lower so the merchant can make more profit on the item they are reselling and of course adding a markup to to cover their costs and time involved. The casual player will be left without anyplace to sell their wares unless they wish to spend countless hours that they generally do not have or do not play standing at/near a starport hawking their wares. Will they give up and then in the end give their money to another game? You betcha. So exactly what are the intentions? To lower even further the number of players that you didn't drive out from the first long run of bugs that took forever to be fixed (yes, I know some of them have yet to be fixed but at least some were fixed).
Please reconsider this or at least change the bottom end. Yes a master merchant should be able to place more items on a vendor than I can with 0 merchant but master artisian. But I should at least be able to have a merchant so that I can sell my items and I should have enough room on that vendor to do that.
Eladia Summerwind
Master Chef
"Master = 1,000
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."
Please keep in mind the great Mellon nerf, the housing storage nerf, the stacking skill mods (fixed yet?), the BE level 10 creature nerf,the "player cities cap won't be hit for a while" thing, etc... where the DB usage (or effects of mods) seem to be calculated on the low side - assume that a large portion of population will be master merchants and will have the max items on the vendor at all times - even if this isn't based in reality. There is no point in introducing a change, finding out you guessed wrong, and then have to do some quick and dirty fix that annoys people.
mongobob 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.
oh tell me this ait so, I use a vendor to sell my wares, I dont mind having a big bulky vendor. if this is the case it is going to be more of a time sink to run to NPC bazzars to hock wares. not to mention if I say climb the DE tree I may also have to climb the merchant tree to to sell high end bots thus the need to drop my combat skills so I have the frilling skill points to have the skills jsut to sell crap.
I don't agree. Both a change like this and one where the higher lvl merchant you are, you get to post more items... both would force moreinteraction between crafters and pure merchants - making the Merchant profession a more viable STANDALONE profession, which it certainlyis not right now. It is primarily a tackon profession for crafters.
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.
I agree. Merchants should have the ability to place vendors....notpeoplethat USED to be merchants.
I also agree with the skill based vendor limits that have been discussed. The higher your skill level, the more items your vendor can hold. Folks may say that the amount is minimal, but remember that one also get an additional vendor at each level of the Management tree.
Business III = 50 items/1 vendor; total of 50 items
Business IV=100 items/1 vendor; total of 100 items
Novice Merchant= 150 items/2 vendor; total of 300 items
Management I=200 items/3 vendors; total of 600 items
Management II=300 items/4 vendors; total of 1200 items
Management III=400 items/5 vendors; total of 2000 items
Management IV=500 items/6 vendors; total of 3000 items
Something like this might make the Merchant skill worth having.
A'kira < MeS >
Mos Syn, Tatooine, Flurry
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No No No.
A Vendor limit would be a very very BAD idea. Armor has 9 different pieces. So I can sell 16 suits of armor at a time? Thats gonna last what... 2 hours?? As to picking up more merchant skills? Do armorsmiths not already have enough skills they need? Master Artisian to make pieces for Shield Generators, Tailoring to make Reinforced Fiber Panels. Merchant Skills to put our vendors on the map. Ohh yeah... and in case you forgot Armorsmith!
If you raised the item limits on houses, this would become a moot point anyway. I need 4 houses to store just my resources(and horde the stuff that might not come out again for MONTHS). Not to mention a display room or even, heaven forbid, a few harvesters. The item limits are just way to low, they should be at least triple what they are now.
My 2 cents
Meiglyn
Corbantis
I'm a master weaponsmith, master merchant, and master artisanon Chilastra. I sold practically every item made while earning master, and did not "grind" my way to master. I'm a weaponsmith merchant because it's what I want to be, not because a holocron told me to. That should help you understand who I am. :-)
Money is becoming worthless, and the gap between the amount you pay to mine resources and the price you pay for finished products is becoming absurdly huge. How many people have done the math and figured out that your average weaponsmith paid 80 credits in harvester maintenance and power for the gun he's selling for 25000 credits? We're living in a fundamentally inflationary economy that encourages grinding by making raw resources worth more (for their grinding xp), than the finished products made from them. That should help you understand the problem. :-)
To solve the problem, you really need to decrease the money sources (not just increase the money drains). This means reducing mission payouts. Increase the cost of harvesters at the same time, and people will begin to shop for their products instead of tipping me twice the amountI asked for. :-)Each product will have more _value_ (not higher prices), and the total number of objects will probablly decline. The bazaar limit will not be a problem because most things will cost less than 3k or no-one will be able to afford them.
Oh, and you suggested some changes that you wanted comments on. :-)
Raising the bazaar limit is a good idea, since 6k todayis worth way way less than 3k when I started the game. 10k or 20k would probably better reflect the level of inflation.
Limiting the number of items per vendor to 150 is avery bad idea. I currently keep 3 vendors with a total of about 1100 items. This is an adequate selection for my customers, and allows me to make some of eachweapon before my stock of ths first item runs out. If the limit were 300 or 500, it wouldn't bea problem. I like the suggestions tying the number of items per vendor to the mechant class level. I also think you should be required to have the merchant levels if you have the vendors.
Very few people seem to havecommented on your monopoly concerns. That seems to be whatdriving this combination of changes. Clearly, the very low cap on the bazaar has driven most players to buy everything from a vendor. Since it's not worth the time it takes to shop they don't shop. Hey, 10k, 20k, 50k, what's the difference, right? They just go the the popular vendor that everyone else goes to and buys whatever they need.
I started playing SWG so that I could experience the player economy and own a small business. My primary goal now is to become the monopoly you're concerned about, and charge just enough to make say... 10 times my money, until everyone buys all their weapons from me. I'll have millions of completely worthless credits, every weaponsmith on my server will have to grind from novice to master just to be competetive, and good guns will sell for less than a newbie delivery mission. Sometime between now and then, I hope to see some real changes in the economy. :-)
Ockla Aberoci, City of Constellation, Naboo, Chilastra Server
P.S. I make practically all weapons, and sell almost everything for less than 5k. If you're on Chilastra, some check out my shop in Constellation.
Also, delete the vendors of people who dropped their merchant skills.. that'd clear up some space I bet.
IPourBooze wrote:
I am against both of these changes for the following reasons.
1. The Bazaar - By increasing the price limit on the bazaar you would in effect be DISCOURAGING interaction between players.
Isn't this game supposed to be about PLAYER interaction.
Jaye Mancoruf - Master Architect/Artisan/Carbiner/Politician
Trajen Mancoruf - Master Artisan/Master Medic/Master Doctor
The thing is, there is still player interaction. One player puts something on the bazaar, and another player buys it. That's player interaction. How is this any different than having to comb through dozens of empty vendors in peoples houses to find an item? The fact is, it is no difference except using the bazaar is both easier and faster for the person doing the buying. It is also easier for the seller since they can reach a larger consumer base than just using their personal vendor.
If they decide to give only merchants vendors, then having an increase bazaar price cap would be good and help give more people a place to sell their stuff. Not only that, there are classes that have NO artisan skills right now that can't get a vendor. How are those classes suppose to sell their items? If I was a medic or a scout class, I have plenty of items to sell, yet without artisan, I can't place my own vendor so I must use the bazaar as my main sales point. An increase price cap will help me by allowing me not to break my crates of stim B's down as much to sale for a good price, also, I could sale more resources at a time for the same CPU. Instead of 1k meat for 3k, I can do 2k for 6k or so.