Doctor Archive
Thread: So what do you established crafters think of this?
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Marrow1
Fri Feb 11, 2005 10:49 pm
#1
http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/content.jsp?page=Galaxy-wide%20Vendor%20Search
Soon, folks can search for and buy/pickup items off any bazaar term. No need for your shop.
Personally I think it will be rather sucky for any established vendor. Lets face it many customers buy from you because they know you will have stock at a good price and quality but also simply because they can count on you to be stocked.
Obata
Fri Feb 11, 2005 11:26 pm
#2
I agree. It's going to help me, in that I'm not in the central vendor area on my server. But, I am well established, and I think it's going to result in fewer sales for me overall if I don't lower my prices to match the docs who produce in lower quantity.
Kryxal
Sat Feb 12, 2005 12:47 am
#3
I don't see them actually delivering items. Having a tool to FIND exactly what you're looking for will be very nice, I've done the "tour every vendor on the planet I can find" routine a few too many times ... I don't mind pickup if it's only one trip.
MasterNerfSlayer
Sat Feb 12, 2005 5:03 am
#4
It has many pros and cons, and right now I'm not sure which ones should take precedent. I think this will highlight the issues the game has with lot barons and resource harvesting ability vs item resource requirements. As Obata said though, it's definitely going to force a price war.
Personally I'd like to at least have to go pick the item up from the vendor at least...
DarthMarksman
Sat Feb 12, 2005 5:33 am
#5
I think it will increase business for merchants.crafters, and shake out the people who keep one item on their vendor just to stay listed.
Ojes
Sat Feb 12, 2005 11:31 am
#6
Personally, I like this. I have long thought the game really lacked the ability for a crafter to sell his products on a level playing field. For most products, people will find a few suppliers and not really look much further unless friends pass along information. I am also not so sure that it will hurt established crafters (like Marrow) who are quite successful because his customers can feel conident that he will have products that are of high quality in stock at all times. To take the buffpack market as an example, everyone will be able to choose a galaxy-wide search for meds and see a mind-numbing selection of products. If they are looking for crates of packs, they can look at that and the list will be even longer and include so many products that they are probably not interested in. If they are looking for packaged sets of buffs or crates, imagine how long that list might be. I think a few people will actually take the time to comparison shop, but many more will buy from the first set of 900 power packs that they see. It will all be about repeat business and that means servicing the customer through direct contact in email followup and accepting custom orders. The established crafters will still hold the edge in customer service IMHO. The one thing this will allow is I can check my competitors prices much more easily than I could in the past. I look forward to that...
I didn't see what the requirements are to get your vendor items listed on this though. If you can do it with Business 3 skill level and the basic vendor, I can give up my advertising3 skill and reallocate those points. I don't think that will happen, and I'm not sure I want it to. If it will require some level of merchant beyond what I currently have (3002 I believe), then I will have to evaluate the skill point requirements.
Ledao
Sat Feb 12, 2005 12:14 pm
#7
MasterNerfSlayer wrote:
It has many pros and cons, and right now I'm not sure which ones should take precedent. I think this will highlight the issues the game has with lot barons and resource harvesting ability vs item resource requirements. As Obata said though, it's definitely going to force a price war.
Personally I'd like to at least have to go pick the item up from the vendor at least...
I hope this point isn't missed...
From my perspective, Galaxy-wide vendor search removes the last remaining challenge to me as a major crafter. I can already produce quite a bit more than I can sell, even though my quality is higher and my prices are lower than the vast majority of the competition.
By giving the customers perfect knowledge of the market (not that this does that -- as I'm sure no one's going to slog through the galaxy-wide listing of "factory crates" -- but it does open up the possibility), we can only assume that they'll buy the best item at the lowest price... So the immediate affect is that I lose sales to whoever wants to undercut me... But then, assuming I'm functioning as a self-interested rational agent, I'm going to lower my prices to compensatefor the lost sales (looking for the point at which my sales rate is roughly equal to my production rate), and my competitors wil be forced to undercut me again. Presumably, this cycle would continue until prices reach a point where only the very largest businessesare sustainable (and sustainable isn't even really the appropriate term -- Thanks in part to the resource kits, I could supply my entire server for years without buying or harvesting a single resource... A zero-cost business is a pretty scary thing).
Although this possibility doesn't exist for every crafting class (no weaponsmith is going to achieve 100% market share having to hand-craft everything...), it most certainly does for Docs, and probably also for Chefs, Armorsmiths, and Architects.
As it stands now, no matter how low my costs are, or how low my prices can go, I'm limited by the simple fact that not everyone on the server knows about my vendors. Perfect knowledge for the customers eliminates this (major) hurdle in one fell swoop...
In any case, if this goes live it won't be me out there undercutting all the other Docs into oblivion, since I just retired. But I'm sure there will be those people who don't care that there's no challenge, who only care about making money, and who see that galaxy-wide vendor searching will allow them to at least approach, if not actually meet, 100% market share.
(and, for what it's worth, I calculated how many buffpacks I could produce with the resources I had in stock before the vet rewards -- roughly 7,500 sets, and probably 6,500 of 'em over 900 power. Not to mention a more or less infinite number of stims and other meds... And I'm not the only one with production capacity like this...)
Sunakk
Sat Feb 12, 2005 2:18 pm
#8
Tiggs recently said this about the new vendor/bazaar system:
"We are going to change the auto-retrieve items when items are purchased from a remote vendor/bazaar. Buyers will have to travel to the vendor/bazaar to pick the item up."
This should help merchants who have many vendors in one location. I know I've bought items because I saw a vendor while shopping for something else.
The issue this would bring up is having entrance fees in order to pick up a purchased item. That could be a sticky situation.
"We are going to change the auto-retrieve items when items are purchased from a remote vendor/bazaar. Buyers will have to travel to the vendor/bazaar to pick the item up."
This should help merchants who have many vendors in one location. I know I've bought items because I saw a vendor while shopping for something else.
The issue this would bring up is having entrance fees in order to pick up a purchased item. That could be a sticky situation.
MorrowMoondancer
Sat Feb 12, 2005 7:19 pm
#9
This makes great sense if it is a replacement for the "clutter up the overhead map so no one can see anything near a mjor city" ability.
It will force a price war, which is consistent with the actions being taken recently to slow the economy. Unfortunately, it will mean those who can afford it will run those who cannot out of business.
Morrow
It will force a price war, which is consistent with the actions being taken recently to slow the economy. Unfortunately, it will mean those who can afford it will run those who cannot out of business.
Morrow
TarMangani
Sun Feb 13, 2005 7:02 pm
#10
I thought about this in the past and thought it was a good idea, however it should be voluntary. Ppl shouldn't be forced to register on the "official" sellers net, etc.
Or are they?
TarMangani
Sun Feb 13, 2005 7:05 pm
#11
TarMangani wrote:
I thought about this in the past and thought it was a good idea, however it should be voluntary. Ppl shouldn't be forced to register on the "official" sellers net, etc.
Or are they?
Okay, so by actually READING the post, I answered my own statement/question...
diepa
Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:59 am
#12
This will allow any crafter, regardless of location to compete. I am seeing alot of the same protests from those who have a large market share complaining about competition. Current loyal customers will continue to buy from you, as long as you are not way overpriced. You will have to think of ways to make your products stand out over the other guy, you will have to make sure your prices competive so I dont know why the "challenge will be gone".
As a consumer I think this is great, I started a new character on Flurry, I wanted to buy some armor. I went all over the galaxy, looking at empty or sub par armor vendors. Took me a few days to find one. With this change I could have found a vendor stocked with what I wanted at the price I wanted, the trip would just be to pick up merchandise I knew was there.
Rere
Mon Feb 14, 2005 9:15 am
#13
Tiggs postthis yesterday night in the Development boards ...
Tiggs wrote:
Based upon community feedback we have decided to take this design internally and work on it some more before we release it to Test Center.
We are leaving this thread open so you can continue to give us feedback and we can update you once the new design is posted.
Thanks!
Good thing to do if you ask me, this idea better be carefully thought and developed before they throw itinto Test Center and the Live servers ...
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