Merchant Archive

Please read then post whether you think this is a good or bad idea.

I'm a Master Merchant but I am not a crafter so I do not have anything of my own to sell. I have a lovely Cantina on Corellia (Starsider) but without products to sell it's pretty much useless (nice, but useless).

I do not intend to become a crafter. So, I would like to ability to give other players the ability to sell things from my Vendors.

Proposal

When I bring up the radial menu on one of my Vendors, under the Vendor Control menu there is an Partners option. This allows me to add "Partners" to that specific Vendor. A Partner can place things for sale on the Vendor. When that thing sells THEY get the credits. Also, I can set a specific commision rate on EACH "Partner" I add to each Vendor. I might give a few of my guild mates cheap rates (5%) but give other friends/partners a more standard 20% commission.

The commission comes out of the sale price and the "Partner" gets credited the sale price minus the commission. When a "Partner" places an item on the Vendor they get a message saying "You will be charged a 20% commission by Epoiisa Lon for the sale of this item. Do you wish to proceed?".

How cool is this idea, now really?

THIS IS THE ONE FIX THAT WILL MAKE MERCHANTS THE BEST FRIENDS OF ARTISANS.

• Other crafters will no longer have to have use their own poor quality Vendor skills.


• This will encourage PROPER partnerships between business people and specialist technical trades people.


• Vendors can be shared between players with much less effort required from the Merchant himself.


• It is more realistic (simulates the idea of a contract).


• Gives crafters more options for selling items.


• Gives Merchants the ability to be useful and earn money without being crafters themselves.

I know there are many other bugs with the Merchant profession and I know the devs are slow in addressing them. However, as I am not a crafter myself I have not been experiencing the problems others are facing because I have not really been using my Master Merchant skills for actually selling stuff. That is why I think thiis is such a good idea.

I'd like to see some support for this idea. It would probably not rank as high priority but I think it would be achievable in the short to medium term.

If there is enough support for this idea I'd like marqie to add it to his official wish list.

I have been looking for something like this as well. I took up Merchant for my PA members to sell there wares so they wouldnt have to use the skill points. Not being able to make them Admins on the vendors really makes it a pain.

This idea is HUGE!

I know several people that would love this on both sides.

Many friends have merchant skills and want to drop them, but the high annoyance factor in not being able to stock or see who bought your wares is a show stopper. My main character has no merchant skills and its driving a friend who is merchanting for her crazy. I sell low ticket items in decent quantity, even though I was put on admin on his shop - if I drop items for restock into a container in the the house, its almost always fills up before I can drop everything. Since I maintian some low end bazaar listings, I can't make offers to the vendor of the full restock selection as i run out of offers. I have NO IDEA who to contact or thank on sales and thats important. If customers want something stocked an I have it .. the shop manager had better be online and available. Otherwise, I need to just meet customers personally - and if I have to do that all the time why bother with a vendor at all?

On the merchant side. The mail spam from 4 active vendors is insane, untrackable. The person I'm dealing with simply has to trust me to track my own vendors inventory from looking at it. Then charge back. There is no mechanism for maing sure he gets a consistent commision .. or even that he breaks even above the new propsed fees/taxes. I am also on another character looking at setting up a merchant for myself and a friend. A character that makes nothing. But the hassle I see my friend going through now trying to stock anf manage a merchant for me is VERY discouraging.

Right now the system actually forces everyon to get thier own merchant skills to sell thier own things due to convenience. The alternative is SO BAD in terms of game play that its a huge deterrent. There are folks that want to merchant .. but can't take the hassle. On the sellers side loosingthe ability to instantly stock, price and see who your customers were is also a huge deterrent.

This proposal would make it (I think) work as intended.

Make merchant someone who can equally efficiently sell other folks wares or thier own. Right now its a pseudo-requirement additional tree to any crafting class.

Bumpity bump.

Before they fixed the house sharing issue there use to be a "vendor list" option, just like how you could add admins to your house (even though they couldn't do anything), you could also add admins to your vendor (even though they couldn't do anything).

When the fixed the house sharing (and admins started working), they removed the vendor admin list :/

Maybe they intended to allow you to "share" vendors?

I really like the idea of being able to assign a commission to people who use your vendor rather than just having a "shared admin" list or something like that.

although even a shared admin would help me out.

As it is right now there is zero incentive for guildmates to use me (a merchant) as their vendor because they can sell stuff on their own vendor with much less hassle. About the only thing I have going on them is planetary advertising and bugged vendor costs

This idea would solve a ton of headaches and make it possible for me to stop tracking and calculating all of this manually. Right now I process emails all day and decide if the item sold needs to have a commission paid on it or if it was something that I had already paid the full commission up front. A system like this would make it much easier for partnerships to be made with between merchants and craftsmen.

I very much agree with this! This would make my life much easier, cause I could drop all my business skills, and just worry about crafting meds. Then my skill points could go into something else...

Plus, this would make "wal-mart" type stores very easy to make... Huge stores with many vendors, selling everything you could possibly want... Would definitely be impressive... multiple crafters all selling their wares there.. nice!

Another vote for this style system. This would be even better if the 7 day limit was removed. I would still want the owner to be able to maybe boot sales.

Merchants should have always had something like this. Excellent idea!

This system would be perfect! How do we push to get this implimented?

When I first thought of becoming a merchant, this idea was something I saw a merchant character doing.

I found out it wasn't an option though. But have decided to go ahead with my merchant anyway, in the hopes that one day it becomes one.

Has my vote for sure

You mean this isnt the way its SUPPOSED to work? *boggle* if not the what is the point of being a merchant?

I like the idea, and my friends have been asking me about it for some time now. It would admittedly make the life of the Merchant a but easier, but I think they would shoot it down pretty quickly for a few simple reasons.

It kills the interraction the Merchant has with his clients. He sets up vendors, pumps some creds into it and walks away. Part of being a vendor is doing business, and that means interraction.

As for other users selling items, there is a bazaar for that. Everyone has access to it and alot of people still use it.

If you don't plan on spending time talking to people and wheeling and dealing, they why be a Merchant? Part of the flair of beinga Merchant is for RP value, as well as usefullness.

I am not condoning shooting this idea down, but stating that this type of thing might make the Merchant less of a Merchant. Same reason someone placing down harvesters for you doesn'tmake them a Miner or a Crafter.

Take it for what it's worth. Good thinking though. We shall see.