Merchant Archive
Thread: Merchant Top 5: Solutions from the Forum
We have had spirited debate and discussion about some of these issues however in the interest of placing some suggestions in front of the development team in a timely manner I feel it is time to summaryize the ideas from the discussion that seem to have the most support. I ask for your feedback on this summary.
Issues #1-3 are bugs. We request that they be fixed ASAP. We are thankful that #1 seems to be fixed for the most part though there are scattered reports that it is still a little flakey.
Issue #4: The lack of tools to make good business arrangements with Artisans.
A. Consignment System
The resale vendor transaction has 4 steps if it is a concession sale.
1) Original owner (often Manufacturer) delivers item (Offer to vendor)
At this step the owner's name should be captured, and the owner should specify what they expect to get from the sale. They should also have a check box for whether they are willing to accept a consignment (of up to 30 days) or if they insist that the merchant take ownership of the item.
2) Merchant accepts or rejects the offer.
Merchant must be able to reject even a consignment offer, as I don't want a chance cube labled "Jedi Holocron" on MY vendor. Rejected items (as now) drop to owner's "available items" list.
If accepted, the item goes into stockroom, but visibly retains owner name and wholesale cost if consignment. Non-consignment sales make Merchant the owner. Whether accepted or rejected the offer generates an email.
3) Merchant puts the item up for sale, owner and wholesale cost are retained but not displayed for customers. Merchant selects the retail price, and provides a (or perhaps edits an owner provided?) description. The 30 day clock should start from the time of the offer on consignment sales, so the owner knows what the timing is. Sales from the merchant's inventory might allow the Merchant to set a wholesale price as a cost memo.
4) The item is sold. The owner gets the wholesale price, and the merchant gets the difference as bank deposits. Both get email but the owner is not told the selling price, the merchant's shows both. No owner email is generated if the Merchant is the owner.
B. Directed Sales.
This would allow the merchant to put certain items on their vendor with special prices for preferred customers. Other players visitting your vendor would not even see the item, much less see lower than ordinary prices and take advantage of the sale
C. Offer Limit
Remove or greately increase the current 24 item limit that can be placed on the offer screen. Remove the link between this limit and the bazaar limit.
D. Streamlined Sales Interface
Give us the ability to put multipe items up for sale (from inventory) or back up forsale (from stockroom) at thethe same price with one click. Reduce the number of clicks required to put each item up for sale. This would be a great time saver for Merchants and would probably help reducelag.
E. Single Item Sales from Crate
Allow crates of items to be put on the vendor for a set price. Allow the buyer to buy the whole crate at that price or purchase one item for a "single item" cost set by the merchant at the time of sale. This should also work on resource crates. There should be a slider bar to buy 1 or more of the items.
Issue #5 Currently it is possible to give up practically all of your merchant skills without having to give up the vendors that you received as a benefit of those skills.
This issue is a controversial one. There are two schools of thought on this issue. A passionate minority feels that it wouldn't be in the best interest of the consumer to remove vendors from the galaxies because the owners no longer have merchant skills. The majority of the merchant forum believes it is not fair to have people practicing as merchants without having the skills required to practice that profession. We believe that the use of vendors by people who are no longer merchants is a game breaking problem that allows people to pursure additional careers they wouldn't be able to pursue if they weren't using skill perks in the merchant skill trees without having to tie up the skill points for them.
Of those of us who belive that this issue should be resolved the following have been suggested:
A. Prevent the skill point surrender if you have a vendor that would not be allowed after the skill point surrender.
or
B. Render the Merchant Vendors non functional if you don't have the skill to operate them. For each Vendor skill point you recieve an additional vendor. As you surrender skill points in the Management line any vendors above your new vendor limit should be set to a retrieve only status so that no new sales can take place and no new sales can be added. The only option should be to wthdraw the sales and retrieve them.
C. Merchant Tents which are owned by a merchant which no longer has Effiency IV should increase in cost dramatically and punatively. It has been suggested that vendors inside also be rendered inoperable.
D. Surrendering Hiring skills is a tricker enterprise and we want to make sure that no one loses a vendor they might have gotten without the skill they surrender. We do not think that surrendering Hiring IV should remove clothing you have placed on the vendor, just that you can't change the clothing the vendor is wearing any longer.
E. Adbarking and Global Advertising should be checked upon load of the vendor to make sure the owner still has those skills.
F. All vendors which are empty or unable to sell merchandise should unregister themselves from the Global Map.
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Message Edited by DocSavag on 01-16-2004 01:26 PM
The above represents the solutions for the items we were asked to help resolve. There are a number of other great ideas that don't necessarily fall into those categories. I do not list them above because we had a fairly focused task. Those ideas include:
1. Merchant Discounts on travel tickets. This would help us in our ability to travel to far off places and make deals on a galactic basis. ReSelling Travel Tickets at a discount to the public would be another profit center for merchants.
2. Bazaar Linkage. There are a number of merchants who feel the bazaar should be linked to our vendors to allow us access to the people shoping at these convienient portals. I'm not sure there is a majority who feel this way, but there area number of people who do.
4. Merchant Advertising. There have been a number of proposals to the events team about setting up some sort of advertising terminals for events. We feel merchants should have access to a system liket this that allows us to place advertisements (at a cost ) for our shops to help draw in customers.
5. Shipping. The galaxy needs a shipping solution. Whether this involves merchants exclusively or other professions (smugglers) there needs to be a reliable, safe way to buy and ship products to remote locations. There has been some talk about a "Post Office" structure for player cities which would allow you to post shipping missions and allow for the renting of a one item storage box which could be used to deliver an item from one user to another.
6. Player City Mall. The merchant tents are an excellent small shop solution for merchants, however many merchants would like to set up multi-merchant malls in player cities. Curently that has to be accomplished with a PA Hall or Large house. A structure that is exclusively for merchants like the Cantina, Hospital and Theater are for Entertainers and Medical professionals would help in this matter. The structure should be fairly open to allow merchants to customize the look. The multiple rooms and floors of existing strucutures have a limiting ability on the merchants choices in layout. It would help if this included new merchant store furniture to help in building these establishments.
I am preparing the bug list for a separate submission and I'll include the loading issue.
Also would like to see another enhancement to streamline the interface.
Stacking of same items...group identical items with the matchingnames and stats (stats to prevent i.e.factory-produced pistols that have same name but different stats due to slicing). Just thinking technically,if done right these similar items can be consolidated to one record in the database (one record with a quantity/available stockfield vs. one record for each item)to minimize size issues while also providing a way for merchants more efficiently manage their inventory (less timemonitoring stock lvlsand babysitting vendors).
I had an idea for the vendor item limit, posted elsewhere but I will add it here:
25 Items total for Biz 3
50 items total for Biz 4
100 items total for Novice Merchant
+25 additional items for each skill box you level in Merchant (500 items at 4-4-4-4)
+100 items for Master Merchant (600 total)
DocSavag wrote:
5. Shipping. The galaxy needs a shipping solution. Whether this involves merchants exclusively or other professions (smugglers) there needs to be a reliable, safe way to buy and ship products to remote locations. There has been some talk about a "Post Office" structure for player cities which would allow you to post shipping missions and allow for the renting of a one item storage box which could be used to deliver an item from one user to another.
As a developer, I know implementation suggestions are appreciated. For this I would recommend that buyers be given a delivery option. The only place that items could be delivered are the existing bazaars and the cost of delivery should certainly be related to the distance/difficuly of the planet the item is being transported from. Not as much as a travel ticket because the transporter specializes in this and would be carrying multiple items. Maybe even a time delay to reflect shipping times that is longer for multiple hop sales.
I have not worked my way up the merchant class yet, but I would like to see high level merchants allowwed to place items for sale planet or even galaxy wide with attendant delivery fees. This could be a tremendous credit sink (good for the economy) with out turning into a time sink (good for the players).
I dont like your Idea i have waaaay more items then this salution you have ....your joking right?
hahahaha
.....I Loved the post you have DocSavag 
I think the easiest way to to do shipping from the bazaar would be to add a 'Ship from remote location" button right next the the retrieve button. When you click it,you are now able toselect the items from the list and asked to Pay xx amount of credits to GPS (Galactic Parcel Service). After you click OK topay theamount of credits, the items now appear on the retrieval screen as available to pick up from your current location.
It just seems to me adding a third party, another player, to do this via missions would lead to an unreliable method of shipping.
~Prinethea
And then PIRATES attack the transport that your stuff was on, and you lose it.
Could make for an interesting dynamic in the game.
Thorizan wrote:
And then PIRATES attack the transport that your stuff was on, and you lose it.
Could make for an interesting dynamic in the game.
Heh..better RP wise than the current method of losing all your stuff.