Merchant Archive

***Cross posting this since I'm getting no response on the Artisan board***

I have a house.

I have a Vendor in the house.

I had Business III (That allowed me to get the Vendor)

I now have business II (Planning on dropping the whole line)

What's going to happen to that vendor?

I dropped to Business II on Saturday. I didn't destory the Vendor and it's still there and functioning. I left some maintenance on it. (5k or so)

I just want to know if I can use it still? I'd hate to load up a couple hundred thousand credits worth of inventory and have it dissapear.

Note: I actually use the vendor more for receiving items then selling them (Since I sell bulk medical supplies for 30k+ a crate and having them on the vendor for long periods of time costs me money)

Can anyone tell me definate on this?

thanks,

Theoretically it works, however, you are exploiting a bug that is causing the vendor to stay after you drop the skill. This might change at any time, and your vendor may go poof. You are not supposed to be able to run vendors without the skills required.

Wow.. Thanks for calling me an exploiter when I ask a simple question. That's really nice of you.

Why does everyone get defensive when we point out that using a vendor without the skill to do so is an exploit?

If you give up a skill you forfeit any benefits that you gained with that skill. A vendor isn't supposed to be available for someone who doesn't have Business III or higher. That it doesn't vanish or stop workingis a bug. It should be fixed and those of us who maintain our skills in Business/Merchant will of course lobby to have that fixed. It isn't fair that we give up other things to maintain our Merchant Skills if you can keep your vendor and compete with our sales without having to use the same skill points.

Probably because when people come here asking that question they are confused as to why the vendor was still there.

I know I was asking because I wanted to know if it was a bug or if it was intentional.

Having you slap me in the face with your "EXPLOITER" tag is straight up rude. That's why people are defensive. I honestly didn't know what was up.I thought it was a little strange. I wanted to know what the deal was.

You people don't have to be so "Offensive" about it.

Do you see where I'm coming from? If I knew it was an exploit, I probably wouldn't have come here and posted about it. Right?

The response wasn't rude. It merely pointed out that we consider it an exploit and expect it to be fixed. The post amounted to a friendly warning that it could be fixed at any time and you might lose your merchandise. There was no implication in this post that you were trying to get away with anything. Just that you are in fact now taking advantage of a bug in the code that we hope is fixed soon.

I realize that no one wants to be accused of being an exploiter, but no one suggested you were being malicious or doing anything purposefully dishonest. Just that the fact that you still have your vendors is a bug and keeping them is in fact exploiting that bug.

He said "you are exploiting a bug."

You did not know you were exploiting a bug.

Now you do.

How could have have given you that information in a manner that wouldn't have offended you?

Well...

It wasn't really Shonid's post that I was refering to with my comments. They pointed out the cold hard facts and walked away. Kinda like someone walking upa smokerand saying "You know, Smoking will kill you." and then walking away. I felt is was a little cold...I backed my comment with a Smilie trying to inject a little humor in there (Obviously I failed in that regard).

I was more refering to Chataka's post where you so eloquently chewed me up and spit me out over the details of the exploit and how unfair it was to you.

I'll leave you all to your bitter existance, sorry.

Groupal ...

You also have to realize this exact question gets asked at least once every day. So when I see a post like this, the first thing that comes to mind is ... "Geez can't the guy at least scan the front page of posts on this forum for the answer to the exact same question?"

Couple that with the sensitivity that vendors are all the merchant really gets as far as skills are concerned (if you dont count the broken ad line), so it *always* irks real merchants when someone wants to use a core skill without deserving it.

Whether or not the existence of the vendor after you drop Bus III is an "exploit" is entirely a matter of perspective.

Is the skill to operate the vendor, or to place the vendor? Most of the descriptions of the skills relating to vendors as you climb the Merchant tree refer to gaining the ability to place or choose vendors of a particular type.

Once the vendor is placed, is it an exploit to operate it even if you drop the skills necessary to create it in the first place? You're still paying the godawful maintenance vendors charge (not NPC's today, but they'll eventually patch that ... sometime between now and the next Big Bang), so what we're getting is non-merchants paying into money sinks as if they were still merchants.

I hadn't even considered keeping vendors as I drop merchant skills, but considering how broken the class is I'm certainly preparing to drop most of my merchant abilities. If somebody else wants to keep paying maintenance on 5 vendors when they only have the skills to place one, it doesn't bother me. Especially knowing how likely it is that a vendor bug will make them want to pull the vendor and replace it at some point, and they'll be unable to.

is it an exploit to operate[a vendor] even if you drop the skills necessary to create it in the first place?

Of course it is.

Nor is it a matter of perspective, unless we are to give the burglar's viewpoint a moral weight equal to that of the burgled.

The rules of the game are perfectly clear -- you cannot operate a vendoruntilyoupay for the skill giving youthe right tocreate a vendor. Therefore if you no longer have the right to create a vendor (because you elected tosurrender theskill giving youthat right), then you no longer have the right to operate a vendor.

In other words, use requires

Well, the circular logic wasn't any more convincing by saying it twice, Flat ....

You're deliberately missing exactly the question I posed. You say that the skill points are to operatethe vendors ... where does it say that definitively? Most of the skill trees talk about you "gaining the ability to place ..." "gaining the ability to choose" ...

There's little or no reference to "the ability to continue operating" after you've placed or chosen.

If I gain the ability to build a heavy mineral harvester, it doesn't disappear once I've built it, whether I continue to keep the necessary skills or not. Its built.

I'm not planning on operating anysurplus vendors after I give up merchant skills -- I've already pulled one vendor as I dropped skills. But I don't see the issue as being as cut and dried as you're trying to make it.

(and now to finish the message that somehow got posted [twice] before I was ready....)

There are plenty of Real World examples that back up the fundamental point that the right to use a thing depends on whether one owns that thing. Consider: When you sell a house, do you get to go back inside that house whenever you want? What would happen to you if you went to a used car lot, got into the car you sold a month ago, and drove off? Would you condone that behavior in others?

Similarly, ifI give up the right to create a vendor,how can I reasonablyclaim toretain a right to operate that vendor?

Of course I can't. It's justnot reasonable that the developers intended vendors to remain available afterall right to place vendors is surrendered. The fact that vendors (and everything in their inventory) aren't insta-deleted when you surrender Biz IIIis not evidence of a right to operate that which you do not own --such an intentwould render meaninglessthe game requirement that we haveto learn Biz III to earn the right to create a vendor, so that can't be their intent. Vendor survival after surrendering all rights to create vendorsis therefore unintended behavior -- i.e., a bug -- and to profit from that flaw is to exploit a bug.

To be fair, sometimes it's hard to tell what's a bug and what's just strange program behavior. (Programmers like to joke: "That's not a bug, it's a feature!") But the reasonable person who thinks even briefly about this particular case is going to recognize and acknowledge that this is a bug, and that to continue to operate a vendor after surrendering Business III is to be an exploiter.

--Flatfingers