Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Sad Sight
darknacht wrote:
Are you crazy man? You don't have much competition...you better get to making droids right now. The lines outside your shop will be huge after the patch.
Exactly.
One person's sad sight, another person's golden opportunity.
When I'm looking to place a new shop, first thing I do is go where other DE's aren't.
Audio
Astronaut_jones wrote:
Well I make it a point not to register my vendor unless they have something worth selling.
It's too bad more people didn't subscribe to this theory.
People shouldn't be allowed to have a vendor registered if it doesn't have a minimum of items on it - most of the time when I get to an empty vendor it's not because it's sold out, it's because the person wanted merchant XP and would lure people in to get XP for viewing.
Audio
AudioOrgana wrote:
People shouldn't be allowed to have a vendor registered if it doesn't have a minimum of items on it - most of the time when I get to an empty vendor it's not because it's sold out, it's because the person wanted merchant XP and would lure people in to get XP for viewing.
Audio
Problem with that is that many people, like me, have a vendor that has the shop's name on it that doesn't carry anything, then they have 2-3 other vendors that are categorized into things like "BH Droids" and "Combat droids" and "chassi". It wouldn't make much sense to register any of these vendors, so I just register the "Haelon's Custom and Bounty Hunter Droids" vendor so people know the name of the shop when they look it up.
The only way to make any online game system work is to have human evaluation of in-game situations. Yes, this opens the door to a whole 'nother world of issues which I'll go into thoroughly if asked to, but it's not for this thread. A simple "must have x items listed" rule will lead to three things: 1) honest players being annoyed, 2) exploiters getting around it by making x junk items and constantly relisting them and 3) merchants all over swg simply evolving past the new rule set and coming full circle back to where we already are: listed vendors with nothing (worhwhile) on them.
AudioOrgana wrote:
Exactly.
One person's sad sight, another person's golden opportunity.
When I'm looking to place a new shop, first thing I do is go where other DE's aren't.
Audio
Well, it would be an opportunity if I were in the process of setting up a shop. However, I have had a shop here since a month after release, so it's still a sad sight to me. It's a sad sight because I'd like to see competition. However, there is no competition because there is no demand.
Oftentimes, a lack of competitors isn't an opportunity so much as it's a sign. lol
Message Edited by JediKnightMark on 02-27-2004 11:45 PM
On Sunrunner I have noticed A LOT of newbies
And I have also runned into a lot of masters who have no clue what to do at all. All they do is wait around for patch 7 now.
Personally, most of my business is by shouting around and people sending me tells while I'm online. And I dont make much money as it is. Of course, I have been taking patch 7 pre-orders...most of my guild is already either signing up for one or will be buying one.
Finally, will actually make money, lol
- Decorative Droid Chassis'
- Utility Droids by Malitevv (registered on map)
- Combat Droids by Malitevv (registered on map)
- Arakyds and Seekers (registered on map)
- Droid Batteries and Other Items
- Resources and Special Orders
I spread the inventory out amongst these so that everything is easy to find (minimizes the problem that multiple pages will cause some customers to not see some of your inventory). I also label everything consistently so it is easy to see what the functionality of each droid is. I charge relatively low prices (but still turn a nice profit), am only a 4/3/1/4 DE, and keep all the vendors well stocked. I also leave a BLL patrolling the player city I live in that is named: "Droid-Shop-East-of-Shuttle".
I make very good money, and have people regularly buying all kinds of droids and chassis. Word of the shop seems to be spreading amongst some in the BH community also because I've got a gradually increasing list of return customers to the Arakyd vendor; all whom I've never met.
And I only just moved my entire shop from Talus 3 weeks ago.
I made 300k on droid sales between last Saturday and today, but my typical sales are 30k to 50k a day on average.
Anyway, my point is that you can make good money as a DE if you have well stocked and well positioned vendors. Well-stocked is probably most important. Any player who visits your shop and doesn't see a good selection is going to delete the waypoint from his/her datapad and you will never see that player again.
what exactly are you presellling for patch 7? there's nothing coming out till patch 8