Merchant Archive
Thread: Too many advertised vendors unintended, or by design?
Taking a look at the vendor list at the end of the day reveals what I view as a problem, although the devs might not.
For example, on Naboo, there are 32 vendors listed under weapons, and it's only 10am PST. By tonight it may be 40+. However, there are actually only 16 unique "companies". Half of the ads are duplicates placed by only 5 companies. In my opinion this is far too many global ads because it is too cluttery. Nisi Daca, for example, has seperate vendors for each of: pistols, carbines, rifles, heavy weapons, powerups, and one just called "weapons"! Players really don't want to go through that many ads I think, and whoever is at the bottom of the list (whoever is slowest on the day they fix it I guess) is somewhat scr*wed.
But it's also important to let people advertise exactly what they have. If Nisi didn't sell pistols, he might want people to know that.
I imagine that this is partly due to the maintenance bug that makes vendors so cheap there's no reason not to have a bunch of them. But since they are working on a new tax/maintenance scheme that will be less expensive than the current (unworking) model, I wonder how many of these vendors will go away. Especially if the bulk of the cost is in the form of sales or VAT taxes instead of maintenance that's waged on pre-sale value. If it's still fairly cheap, we will continue to see more ads than are useful.
One solution I'd like to propose is to limit the number of ads one person can have in each category. The easiest programmatically would be to simply limit people to 1 per. However a more subtle way would be to change registration of a vendor to registration of the buildinginstead. That way, they could have "Joe's House of Droids, Armor, and Guns" listed under all three, and he could call each of the vendors something that makes more sense, rather than having to name them all something long that includes your name.
But if there is a limit of 1 ad per category, then there needs to be a way to be more specific in them. Having a "whole shop" listing instead of individual vendors will help, because it can say what they have all in one line. But we also need the planet map ad list to be resizable, so we can read names longer than 24 characters or so. Half the room is taken up by unecessary indenting.
Have the devs said anything about this aspect of thevendor advertising bugs? I don't read the merchant forums much, but I am more than halfway to master, so I have some experience in it 
Hopefully this hasn't been beat to death when I wasn't looking.
I agree....like many vendors I know, I have a 'dummy vendor' hiding in my house named the name of my store. That vendor serves no purpose except to be listed on the vendor map, and the other 3 vendors I have in my house are named normal names and just do their thing.
However, I have been in a few stores where every vendor is the store name, and they are all listed on the map. While I understand the need for 3, 4 or even 5 vendors in the same store, I do NOT see a reason for them to all be listed on the planetary map as "Bob's Clothes for Men" "Bob's Clothes for Women" "Bob's Master Tailor Items" "Bob's Wookie Clothes" Etc.....its just a mess of names on that vendor listing as you said.
A solution to that would be putting the vendor listing option on the SIGN control...if you have ad 3 (or whichever skill allows the planetary ad..i forget hehe) then you would get the option to list your store and that's it. I think people can figure out that there are vendors inside.
Skedoozy wrote:
I agee, why do these merchants think that listing all of their vendors is better? It clutters the vendor list, and someone just cruising by with their overhead map on will not be visiting your shop since all they see is a garbled bunch of letters and can not tell what it is.
Yes, it is pretty annoying that the advertised vendor names all overlap on the HUD map. I know they'd talked about fixing that, but it's a low priority. Well, changing the planet ad to be linked to your sign rather than the vendors would fix that problem, since no one house would ever have more than one name showing up.
The reason merchants do it though is two-fold. First, they probably figure having a long list of their name in the ad list will get their name out there. I know that SpyFX on Gorath has been pretty successfulby being one of the first "mall" type places near Theed. Theysell pretty much anything you can sell, and they got the name out there early.Secondly, it's very cheap since it's still broken, so why not?
Registering multiple vendors can also send out the signal that you are a more serious crafter and not just some average joe with a dozen novice items listed- as a weapons crafter, I would like to convey that my shop sells all kinds of weapons:ranged, melee, commando, presliced, krayt enhanced, etc. I do think it would be better to have merchants register their shop globally rather than their vendors and be able to put in a short paragraph for a description. But that brings up other problems... what if you are running a vendor from someone else's house that does not have global advertising?
Plus, if you limited the global registration to one per character or something, that would prevent people from advertising multiple shops on different planets (something that I think should be encouraged as a merchant).
Arrya wrote:
... what if you are running a vendor from someone else's house that does not have global advertising?
Plus, if you limited the global registration to one per character or something, that would prevent people from advertising multiple shops on different planets (something that I think should be encouraged as a merchant).
That's a good question. But houses already have a "vendor access" setting. If they give you vendor access to the house, that should automatically add the "register shop" item in the housing control panel for you.
I did mean to limit the ads to one per shop. So if you are a super merchant and you have 3 shops on Naboo and 2 on Tat, you should be able to get a listing for each of them.
CowboyBothan wrote:
Another thing about the vendor list that I have been thinking about is that I don't care for how it sorts the list, having it sort by the first to register or alphabetized is going to create problems for exploitation, and for casual gamers. In my opinion (I'm sure it would be difficult to code) they should sort by distance to the waypoint. so if Bob's shack of guns is 300m away and Daffy's Armory is 1800m away it will sort Bob's shop to the top of the list.
I think this is an excellent idea. Generally someone is interested in a number of factors, distance not being the least of them. Shouldn't be too hard to implement, but you never know. But whatever happens, I really dislike the current system. Once they fix the advertising so it doesn't reset on every server restart, whoever gets it in first that morning will permanently be at the front of the list. That's really not fair in my opinion. Especially on servers like Gorath, where a large percentage of the population is in Europe and it's easier for them to login right as the server comes up than someone like me on the west coast, who'd has to wake up at 6am to register
Have not seen too much of an issue RE this on Naboo on my server, but it will certainly become one at some point, and should be addressed.
I support the idea of only allowing a certain number of ads per planet or category. However, those with multiple accts have an obvious workaround to this...
I do not support the idea of putting this option on the building control panel and using the sign text on the planet map. Why? - it is far too inflexible. For example, this would inhibit my PA's ability to advertise effectively on an individual lvl. We do not use houses to sell, rather we put all vendors in one building, which would mean one overall ad. Those vendors wishing to advertise individually won't be able to do so - meaning a potential loss of sales (if a critical mass of people ever realized vendors were listed on planet map).
What I would very much like to see is the option to customize (with the ability to subsequently edit)the text that is displayed on the planet map. I do not understand why it has to be fixed to a vendor name (Irun eight vendors across 3 accts, one of them serving as a dummy planet map vendor - the resthave very specific namesthat I do not advertise).
Another issue the very limited space that vendors have with text on the planet map - it has to be short or it will be cut off, even when the map window is opened as wide as it can be.
I came up with the "shop" idea independently; I suspect others have as well.
Personally, I favor a system with the following features:
*A "shop" is defined as a house with the "public" switch on which contains 1 or more initialized vendors containing at least 1 item. (This solves the problem players routinely curse of traveling all the way out to some great-sounding vendor only to find it totally empty. By definition, if you aren't selling anything, you don't have a "shop," and it doesn't get advertised.
*Vendors aren't advertised; shops are. This cuts down on the clutter of multiple vendors.
* Shop advertising is handled at the main home terminal. It would require an interface modification, but clicking on an"Advertising" optionon the radial menu of the home terminal should bring up a list of types of sellable items (Clothing, Armor, Equipment, Weapons, etc.), from which you could activate multiple types and then click on an "OK" button -- basically a check-button menu that allows you to select multiple items.
*TheVendor option on the Planetary Mapischanged; instead of displaying vendor names,afull list of sellable item types (including "junk" so the NPC merchants are included) is shown.Clicking on one of these types will causepushpinsto bedisplayed on the actual Planetary Mapshowing the location of allshops advertising items of the selectedtype. You could then use the existingpushpin UI to create and activate a waypoint to those shops of interest to you, based on their name or location.
This change has some strengths and some weaknesses. How vendors advertise would require fairly significant recoding, for example. However, this approach also reuses existing planetary map UI code, cutting down somewhat on code modification time that would otherwise be spent writing a new UI for sales searches.
On balance, I think this would be a change worth making. But I'm probably somewhat biased. 
Comments?
--Flatfingers [Master Artisan, Radiant/Naboo/Keren]
I dont like this idea for a few reasons.
Lets take my shops for example. I have 3 shops on 1 planet. They each have a different set up for # of vendors in house, but when people look on the map they see multiple locations for 3 types of my advertising.
If im selling Weapons and Armor or Deeds at3 different stores , i want to adversite this on the map. When people look for Armor i want them to see 2 waypoints for my 2 armor locations, and when they look for weapons i also want them to see these 2 seperate shops on the map, same for Deeds.. 2 seperate waypoints.
With your way i lose the ability to advertise multiple locations with the same diversity i use now.
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With your way i lose the ability to advertise multiple locations with the same diversity i use now.
Jhava Bein, I assume you're talking about Philomorph's original suggestion. Under my proposal, you're still able to advertise everything you have at every physical, waypointed location (house = store = shop). The only difference is that you do your advertisingfor an entireshop at once, rather thanhaving to do it independentlyforevery vendor in the same shop.
--Flatfingers
Jhava_Bein wrote:
With your way i lose the ability to advertise multiple locations with the same diversity i use now.
Perhaps if you'd actually read past the first post, you'd see my later clarification on my suggestion:
Philomorph wrote:
I did mean to limit the ads to one per shop. So if you are a super merchant and you have 3 shops on Naboo and 2 on Tat, you should be able to get a listing for each of them.
Jedorin has a valid concern for superstores and malls where a lot of vendors are in one spot, like in a PA hall. However, if you are allowed a description of the shop in addition to the name, that can include a description of the various things for sale. In my plan, the main planet ad list would have an entry like "PA X Mall - for all your shopping needs". When a player clicks the item in the list, a popup box gives them more details, like "We have every type of item available at master level, from armor to spice. Conveniently located near Theed. Imperials only please."
This would clean up some clutter on the big list, and give vendors more opportunity to be specific in what they carry and who they cater to.