Development Cycle Archive

#1-I see no harm in this in general (raising to 6k credits)

#2-STRONG No on vendor cap of 150!

Here's why:

a) Guild-player trade (non-existent):

Any guild (from 5 people to our guild of over 100) has major inventory issues due to not enough capacity anywhere for the overall amount of items needed/accrued for personal and social/guild use. People play at different times, and there is no way to get something to someone without an elaborate admin-to-house issue at that person's home. But this causes a different set of problems.

Our guild operates a vendor out of a merchant's personal home with a nigh-impossible-for-anyone-to-pay entry fee just so we have a vendor to store these items. Currently we have over 400 items in this that facilitate a host of things: newbie training/help items, guild buff kits, guild-use mines, guild-use everything. And I must admit, we could get rid of maybe 100 old Act 1 quest fulfilling items, but still (and we're a very lean, efficient guild) we'd be way over the 150 limit proposed above.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION (to a non-programmer): Guild-only storage/trade vendor in the PA Hall. It should be placeable by the Guild leader or a Guild merchant and have a reasonable cap. Several times, I've gotten frustrated with this not existing, and even sent CSR's to that effect.

b) Merchant tent vendors:

In robust cities, especially metropolis level, if you're doing your job correctly, traffic will come through to buy items constantly.

In our city's vendors, I've seen everywhere from 20-300 items for sale, and we average 2-3mil credits in sales per week.

I'm a Master Architect, and try to keep 3 of each item just my one housing vendor, and that is well over 150 items total (probably more like 250). I can safely say the same would apply to most professions if they tried to stock this amount.

I really don't see a 150 cap as anywhere near acceptable for those who are trying to maintain a robust business and/or guild. Honestly, 300-500 minimum should be considered as reasonable. Maybe, 300 for merchants, 500 for guild-only vendors (if ever implemented).

Thanks

I am in close agreement with Eaca regarding 150 being low. I understand the reasoning for wanting to limit vendor sale sizes, however, 150 seems extremely limiting. Also, the first thing that popped into my mind when I read this was how the heck would you make that kind of transition. Currently, I have at least 5 of almost every piece of clothing I can make on my one vendor. Reasons for having only one vendor are somewhat irrelevant at thhis point. What happens to all that stuff when this type of change is made? EEP That's potentially a whole lot of wasted time, resources, and opportunity to do something less tedious. Perhaps 300 would be more in order. As it is, additional vendors do add value in the availability to have one in more than one location or to have one that looks different, to attract different folks. I do think this would add even more value to the ability to have more than one vendor, but it's not what I would call critical.

Honi Sonegal of Naboo near Theed on Scylla

150 items total means I can't even place a full run of Pet stim crates, Vitality Pack crates, Pet food crates and pets on the same vendor. Thus to do my job as a BE I'd also have to be a Merchant just to have one extra vendor to have enough room for all these items. Unless I limit my venodr to about 10 pets. unfortunately with how fast those pets sell I'd be out of stock long before I could. Which would cause me to lose a lot fo customers.

I can't even imagine how bad this would hurt other crafting types who have a lot more variety of items they can make in their factories. Some of which only makes crates of 10 per. Which is 100 crates from a single factory run. One example of this is weapon power-ups that Artisan's make. Add in their vehicles, Electronics Components that DE's need to buy and that Artisan will end up having to take Merchant as well.

As a BE, this means I'd be left with little to no combat skills in order to have the merchant skills needed just to have enough vendor space. Unfortunately us BE's need some combat skills or we'll be taking a lot of trips to the cloning center while trying to get DNA samples to make the pets to place on that vendor. As it is with having one advanced combat profession almost mastered (currently carbineer in my case, blasted holocrons) I still end up incap'd and occasionally takign the cloning trip when trying to get higher level DNA to make the pets the MCHs want.

The bazaar maximum price raise to 6k wouldn't be so bad if people stick to their current pricing schemes and sell double the units of goods for 6k instead of doubling the cost.

My opinion on the 150 item limit to vendors is a big fat NO. With 220 or so items available to tailors,(up to 3 or 4 colors on a singleitem,and 200+ colors to choose from)that's not even 1 of each item. My crafter is a master chef, master tailor, and master merchant. Even with her 6 vendor limit stocked to the brim they couldn't even scrape the surface of what she is able to make or provide for her customers. Not to mention bio-engineered clothing, bio-engineered food, and other goods. Right now I have 3 clothing vendors with 1850 items on them, total. Even with that amount there are some clothing items with little to no color selection (2-3 items only). And I *still* get a bunch of custom orders for clothing not found on my vendors. I plan on stocking atleast 400-500 more items to cover black, white, and a few color choices for each that were lacking. This is with logging in every single day to get any custom orders completed and restocking purchases. Everybody loves my crafter, her prices, her vendor selection, and her abilities at matching items up. If I cannot keep up this level of customer service, then I will simply close up my shop. I refuse to lower my standards because someone else thinks it is fun to use vendors as storage, and I sure as heck am not about to spend every waking moment in my shop because my vendor can't hold more than 1 of each item for shoppers. I love my customers but I do need to sleep, eat, and live my life. I've never metnicer people than those who shop at my store, and have made many friends and new guildmates through it. Either keep a high vendor item cap for master merchants, preferably the aforementioned 1000 items per vendor or higher, or expect some of the most beloved, serious crafters to close up shop in protest. I'm sure you can already tell from the amount of NO's to the vendor item cap ending up so low that itsimply isn't going to sit well with just about anyone. There are enough empty vendors out there already.

Sincerely,
A widely-beloved tailor regretfully (and angrily) eyeing her possible retirement

Eola. TH just said "Doc Savage" asked that only merchants be allowed to have vendors, almost as directly as that. He said it - it's in his post. Go look. Am I supposed to verify *everything* TH says before commenting on it? Be kind of busy won't I?

I probably should tho' lol.

Anyways, I'm not going to sort through the merchant forum to try and determine if TH got this right or not. Suppose he didn't - then maybe "Doc Savage" should tap him on the shoulder and set him straight. Sound like a good idea?

I like the idea of raising the price cap on the public bazaar. I think we'd see more people in the static cities, using the bazaar.

I do not like the idea of a 150 item limit on vendors...

Speaking as a weaponsmith, there aremany different items that people want from me. I have stock getting bought out every day, as I'm crafting more of the last thing that got bought out. The items getting bought run the gamut of what I can make, and there's no telling which item it will be from day to day. 150 items would limit me to about 5 of each item I can make in any of my locations (I'm already using all my vendors),and that's not even in the same realm as being enough.

In order to keep my stores stocked, I would have to raise my prices on everything, double, triple,possibly farmore. That would hurt any new (not rich) characters who wanted to buy from me. Of course, that might open up the market to lower level crafters to sell the lower-tier items they can make, since most of the masters would probably stick to the higher-tier items they can make, just to balance demand against their vendor limitations. That's not necessarily a bad thing, in the long run... But I still won't like the limitation of not being able to stock and offer everything I want to offer.

Or, a merchant with several vendors could consolidate them all to one location (possibly 2), and be able to offer sufficient amounts (hopefully) of his/her entire product line. But there will be many people upset about having to consolidate this way, thus giving up entire markets of customers they can now reach. Again, this would likely open up markets to new crafters/merchants. Long run, could be good. Again, I'd be frustrated at having to shrink my operations.

I never won the Nobel Prize for economics, but I bet we would see prices on everything increase dramatically, due totheserious limitation on what crafters/sellers could offer. Again, that could begood or bad. /shrug I'm not Kreskin.

AllI know for sure is I wouldn't like the limitation on my vendors.

I think I could live with 300 items, but 150 seems a tad low, especially if it considers items in a backpack.

Prediction for the year 2004:

SOE implements the vendor cap.

Tailors, weaponsmiths and Armorsmiths galaxywide pull their items off the vendors and either store them for future use or destroy them.

Masters in the Elite Artisan lines retire from their professions and give up on the game.

Hologrinders complain about the demanding tells from combatants and other non-crafters.

WIthin a week of this taking effect the game is going to be left with a handful of Master Crafters, they will only take custom orders and their prices will be massively inflated, Master Tailor items will routinely be priced at 100k at a minimum just to keep down on the demand.

With one fell swoop, SOE manages to eliminate all of the Master Crafters and the player economy. Bravo.

This is almost as good as losing the coveted demographic group Maxis has its claws in with Sims by implementing Hologrinding. Come to think of it, I can go play Sims, I just the latest expansion and can actually create textures and fashions far beyond what I can do in SWG. Oh, and I don't have to deal with tells despite an AFK message or people asking if an orders done yet every 45 seconds.

I bid my Adieu if the vendor cap happens as I see no reason to continue with a game that's no longer holds any of the joy that drew me to the game and the profession in the beginning.

You know, the fix for this isnt to cap the vendors. It's to fix the people that have vendors and shouldn't. You already do a check when a person drops a skill to see if it is dependent on any other skills before allowing them to drop it. Why not check how many vendors a person has before allowing them to drop the skill necessary to run that vendor. Then, if they want the skill points back they will have to close out the vendor first.

I don't like the vendor limit.

Please come up with another way to fix your technical problems rather than NERF us merchants. My vendor sells over 300 items each day. If your NERF takes place, I'm going to have to add more vendors. That won't fix your database problems at all.

Fengo

I can not concive how they come up which such BRAIN DEAD STUPID IDEDAS!!! Why don't the devs just fix the **edit** data base so it can handle the load insted of alows trying to criple and distroy the game?

I have 2 venders and may soon need to combine them to one to give up what little merch skills I have so I can get more combat for getting around and doing the holocrom stuff. In order to get the levels needed to get the venders to sellmy stuff I would have anything to sell. And I'm in this game more for crafting then combat. Keep distrying it and you loose another customer.

I agree with the people saying that the important fix is to not allow people to drop their Merchant (or Business3) skills while they still havevendors up (or at least cannot drop their +Vendors sill below the number needed to support their current # of vendors). Or give them a day to delete the vendor themselves and if they don't delete it by then, the vendor is deleted for them and they get a warning for exploiting.

Re: Bazaar limit. I think raising the Instant Sale cap to 5k-6k is ok, but much higher will simply delete my merchant character. None of the items I stock and sell go for more than 10k, so why should I pay maintenance and try to drive people by word of mouth to my vendors when I can just plop my stock onto the bazaar and never have to worry about it again? Not like I can't use the skill points for other things.

Here's an idea though: raise the Auction Limit to 10k or maybe higher. If someone has something they think will sell well, then by all means let them auction it off for more than 3k (and not have to spam the spaceports trying to find a buyer). Maybe have a percent fee at sale time rather than a flat fee? I don't do auctions on the bazaar so I don't even know if this is in place currently

Vendor limit: _MY_ vendor is fine with a 150 limit (higher with higher merch skill, he's at AdvIIII/Mgmt1 and growing) but I stock all of maybe 10 different kinds of items. I can see problems with Tailors, architects (furniture mostly), etc.

Final suggestion: Make a perk of Master for any crafting profession the ability to place a single, 50-item limit vendor. No customization, no planetary map registration.

Thanks, hope things roll out smoothly.

I have no intention of running more vendors than I do already and they are all over the 150-item limit. As the primary merchant in a large city, I have a lot of demand for my goods.

Armor is my main concern. I need to stock a variety of suits ina variety of colors and special protections, etc. Each suit is 8 or 9 pieces. Then, there are the repair kits, the PSGs, etc. that must also be stocked to be considered a real vendor.

There is myMedic/Doc/CM vendor, who would never hold enough in that limit.

How about my tailor? Think I can carry enough variety in that limit? Not a chance.

My architect is always way over that limit in furniture alone.

My bio-engineer would be ok because I'm not selling pets until I finally figure out the new system. So would my droid engineer because, well you know.

Yes, I'm a master merchant (two of my chars are actually) but I don't see how placing two or three vendors of the same type is practical, or makes sense to the shoppers. You going to give merchants more vendors?

Leave it as it is. 250 items maybe but 150 is, typically, way too low just like the temporary limit of 150-250 items in houses. I dare say, it's enough to make me close my shop.