Merchant Archive
Thread: A Sad Architect's View, With Suggestions For A Better Way.
This, like so many intolerable situations that have arisen with nearly every profession, is all thanks to a database that has been incredibly inadequate from the get go. The very idea that a number like 150 could even be thought of as anywhere near adequate shows a lack of forethought or concern for the members of the player base who choose to be artisans. With the horrendous lack of space to begin with, they are choosing to implement such a game stopping nerf on an already overtasked group of people.
I am an architect/artisan with most of the merchant line. I plan to go to master merchant. These changes will affect me profoundly, and perhaps even be game stopping if they are implemented as proposed in TH's post. I am always badly hurting for three things: resources, storage space, and lots. I have four houses and five factories, and find myself needing yet another structure factory (I have two now), because I can't keep up with the demand for harvesters and other items. Yet these factories take two lots. Why?
I also need at least two more storage houses to store all the resources and components and whatnot I need to have access to in order to continue my profession. This, to me, is absurd. Storage should be handled better than having to have a half dozen houses to trot around between. Crafters are severely limited in lots, yet by the very nature of the classes we are required to have more buildings, for storage, and for factories, and for harvesters. Yet combat classes who use perhaps one or two lots for their homes are issued the same number of lots. Why lots cannot be increased as an artisan of any crafting profession increases in skill is beyond me. Why combat classes need the same number of lots is also lost on me. But this is not addressed. Why not?
Crafters are in dire need of extra space. The amount of storage it takes to be a successful and busy crafter, making and selling items, is incredible. Yet instead of finding ways to accommodate this handicap, instead we are faced with a surreal blow which takes the only real space we have left away from us. Instead of reducing the asinine number of non-stackable items and resources in the games...do we really need two billion different types of copper with unpronouncable names? Do we really need three quarters of a million different kinds of Nabooian leathery hide? Why aren't there larger crates of trees, instead of breaking them into absurdly small crates of 10? Why aren't components like ore mining units stacked in factory crates, but churned out one by one? Why is any foraged item unstackable? Why are there SO MANY DIFFERENT TYPES OF THE SAME ITEM IN THE GAME?
If there are so many terrible database issues to be addressed, why are the professions...and thereby the players...whacked with the nerf bat? Why aren't the obvious flaws of the game design itself cleaned up? There is no need for so many different types of non-stackable items in this game. There is no need for such an endless variety of every single resource.
Also, there is no need for the auction option on the bazaar. It's a useless function that serves only to take up space and time. Remove this dead weight option and you've cleaned up one heck of a lot of database space. Make it possible for more items to be listed on one page when browsing vendors and bazaars. Make it possible to advertise somehow, instead of having a weird little listing on the planet map and an unreadable radar map listing.
Make it possible to rent out shops in the sadly empty, lifeless, and colourless main cities. Make it possible to rent out apartments in the cities. A lot of people...I'm thinking fighters especially...would love to have an apartment in the city, I'm guessing, and therefore wouldn't need to build their own houses. Give us in game bulletin boards where we can post messages and information.
Want to make vendors and the bazaar more viable as a tool? Put in a search option! Alphabetize the ENTIRE listing, instead of having the most non-intuitive, non-user friendly listing system I've ever seen in either game or any other kind of software in my life.
But...a vendor cap of 150? It's not only jaw-droppingly inadequate, but thoughtless and inconsiderate. The database problems would be greatly eased if the items in the game were organized differently, and their sale and purchase facilitated by some the options I've suggested, and that others have suggested. There have been many more extremely thoughtful and creative ideas listed which I have read. Why are these ideas so rarely...if ever...considered in any meaningful way? Why?
A vendor cap is not an unreasonable thing. And I even have to grudgingly admit...grudgingly only because the way this has been approached is so callous and distasteful that I'm naturally rebelling now against any change at all, and trying hard to fight against that knee-jerk reaction...I have to admit that advancing the number of items that can be offered on a vendor with the level of the merchant does give much more weight and meaning to the profession.
The database, sad and weak as it is, and as it has always been, does have its extremely obvious limitations. As an aside, after much reflection on this particular issue, I can only conclude, based on the clear and proven impotency of the febrile database, that the guys who designed the db and the guys who were designing the game never once spoke to each other, and perhaps didnt speak the same native language, nor perhaps even enjoy mutual citizenship of the same country. Clearly the only explanation for the glaring schism between the anemic database and a game that has six hundred trillion different variations of every item in the game is a dire lack of communication, right across the board.
So much for my personal ellucidations. A vendor cap is certainly a good idea and a good way to cut an overloaded db a little slack. But make it a thousand. Don't just whip out an insanely low and completely arbitrary number without looking at the requirements of the professions...and the real people who play them...that will be badly affected by such a tremendously negative blow. There are so many other ways to address this important issue without making the experience a miserable and intolerable one.
And perhaps most importantly, I just wanted to say this: there is absolutely no use for having dedicated, well spoken, thoughtful, hard working profession correspondents...or even in some cases, totally incompetent correspondents...if they are not only not listened to, but not consulted and even worse, not even shown the respect of being informed of such impactful decisions as these before they are announced to the general community at large. The already tenuous illusion that SOE and the SWG team are mindful of their player base is simply made, if possible, more brittle by such behaviour as this. What was done to DocSavag was rude and disrespectful. This is a real person who is giving his up his real time and real effort to something he believes in and enjoys doing, and to treat him...or anyone...in that way is shamefully bad form, and I'll bet your mothers would all agree with me.
While the player base has been heard on some occasions, far more often are they not only ignored but actually hurt...in terms of gameplay, enjoyment, and immersion...by the thoughtless and inconsiderate actions by the development team. Serious bugs are extant for months, yet go unattended while the nerf bat is swung again and again.
I am a big fan of SWG. I like my character and I enjoy playing the game. I have a lot of patience with new games, and I understand that a game of this nature and complexity will be "new" for at least a couple of years. I can deal with the bugs, and I enjoy helping to report information on them when I can. But what gets me angry is when things like this happen, when players suffer because of the short-sightedness or thickheadedness of the people who are supposed to be trying to make the game better, and who claim to really want to have open communication with the player base. It makes me angry when bugs that have existed for months and months are never addressed. It makes me angry when customer service is appalling and promises are made and nothing changes. It makes me angry when simple, basic items...such vendor and bazaars...have heinous lag and spontaneously go down without warning nearly every single day, and have had these issues nearly every day since the game went live. It makes me angry when the very heart and soul of the entire game...the database...is so inadequate and poorly constructed that the game is unable to grow even before it's begun...and yet it's pushed live anyway.
These, to me, are some of the things that need to be addressed before anything else changes. I'll have to wait and see what happens with the vendor cap, but as someone who uses all five (so far) vendors and stocks a minimum of 400 items on each vendor...items that almost all sell very well and have an excellent (even overrapid) turnaround...the cap will have to be a lot more than 150 for me to still be able to play a viable master architect/artisan. Since I greatly enjoy the profession and my persona in game, I have utterly no interest in changing that. I have a busy and active life in SWG, and I have a great time playing the game...but lately these sorts of crippling changes have made the game feel more and more like real life so that a lot of times, I feel stressed and tense while I'm involved in activity that's supposed to relax and entertain me. What's going on here?
If the vendor caps are placed at 150 or even 250...it will change my ability to play so greatly that I might have to consider simply leaving a game that otherwise I have vastly enjoyed playing, I'd say probably a solid 85% of the time, and had even a better time in beta. I already spend hours and hours and hours just trying to keep up with my stock...I play probably an average of 4 to 10 hours a day, several days a week, because I work at home and have a little more free time than most folks do. Having a vendor cap set below 500 for me would make me have to quit my job and spend 12 hours a day just to keep up in the *game*. I not only can't do that, but I won't. No reasonably sane person would or could.
I am rooting for you, DocSavag, because I think you're an excellent correspondent. I'm very happy that you're so against these proposed changes, and you have my full support as a player and a merchant in your conversations with the dev team. I think you were shamefully treated in this situation and are owed a public apology by the dev team. It's clear that we're going to get whacked with the nerf bat, but I'm hoping that you can reach an agreement that will alter this from a devastating blow to something that is much more tolerable and even helps to render master merchant...a goal which I have yet to achieve (but i'm 4/0/3/4!) ...a more meaningful profession, by increasing the vendor storage limits as the level of the merchant goes up.
I just hope that TH and the dev team hears the outcry on this one, and actually does something to avert this latest self-propelled disaster.
Thanks for reading. I hope my suggestions prove in some way insightful and are reasonable enough to be considered, at least at some level, as a potential solution, or component of a solution, to one or two of the database issues.
I just logged in, looked around at my shop, which I had been so happily redecorating and making into a minimall so a couple of other friends could place vendors there, sadly took a look at the several hundred pieces of furniture I had on a couple of vendors...and was so dejected, I just logged off again.
What am I going to do with all this stuff?
This has really, really ruined the enjoyment of the game for me for now. I dont know what the outcome will be, but for right now, I'm really, truly upset about this change. If there is storage of less than 400 or so on each vendor, I will have a serious dilemma on my hands. People buy dozens of pieces of furniture at a time from me quite often. I just won't have the time or the energy to keep up if the vendor restrictions are severely limited.
And I had been having such a good time the last few days, too.
I sure hope this doesn't wind up the nightmare it's got the potential to be./sigh
Perilous don't feel bad. I have been a tailor since day one. I was happy when I finally opened my own shop and it grew into a huge buisness and my name is recognized.
I am not only concerned with the item cap but also the increase in the bazaar cap because players will no longer need to seek out tailor vendors to buy the nicer clothes. I don't use the bazaar and have been running a successful shop, but the cap increase to 6000 will make players lazy.
Plus... don't you think that LAG will increase in cities like Cnet??? I can feel the lag increase already and it hasn't even changed yet.
I think I will wait and see what happens, but I enjoy being a master tailor and running my shop but now it may force me to sell on the bazaar which I really don't want to do.
A great many vendors out there have dozens (and in some cases 100 or more) lines listed on a vendor for IDENTICAL ITEMS, in order to offer differing quantities to their customers... or to put a massive pile of crates from a factory run onto their vendor.
Sellers do this as a WORKAROUND, trying to overcome a ridiculous flaw in the vendor interface. Namely, the lack of a buyer-controlled PURCHASE QUANTITY field.
Fixing this flaw would be a smaller change than trying to make non-identical items into identical ones (which has some merit, of course), and would take a LOT of load off of the database. Customers would also be able to buy exactly what they need, without waste.
Simply allow vendor listings to have a check box for "consolidated listing". When there is a consolidated listing, the "price" field becomes a "price per unit" field. Consolidated listings with IDENTICAL serial numbers will automatically collapse into a single line with an updated quantity.
A buyer would see "BER4 Micro Flora Farm" listed, and a quantity of 200. Price per unit, 999 credits. If they want ten, they can specify ten units, and the quantity field drops after the sale.
Likewise with resources. If someone has 2.5 million units of Unobtainium Desh Copper, they should be able to list it all ON A SINGLE LINE, with a single database entry. If a customer wants only 7500 units of it, they should be able to buy exactly that amount with no extra work on the part of the seller.
This one change could recover a BOATLOAD of database space, and the best thing is... everyone benefits. Sellers have less-cluttered vendors, and they can provide pinpoint services to their buyers (need exactly 17 powerups? No problem!). Sellers can easily stock an entire factory run and not worry about having to fiddle with it.
Buyers can find what they need without having to wade through mountains of inefficient "packaging" (5k units, 10k units, 25k units, 100k units), and they can buy precisely what they need. They can also directly see the cost per unit without having to flip to a calculator, so they can comparison-shop easily.
The database breathes a sigh of relief when the number of records plummets, and there is very likely NO NEED for any vendor limits in that case.
The vast majority of the logic is already in place to handle this... there is code in place for splitting crates of identical items (for final delivery of quantities bought). There is already code for automatically collapsing identical resource stacks into a single stack with a tracked quantity. They just need to allow pseudo-crates with unlimited capacity to be (internally) handled by the vendors automatically, and they have consolidated listings.
Just tweak the interface a bit, and use the splitting code to generate crates/containers with appropriate quantities as needed when a buyer makes a purchase.
No muss, no fuss. Everybody wins, no one screams in pain.
What do you think, sirs?
Perilous wrote:
No, I don't mind. Thanks for your thoughtfulness.
I just logged in, looked around at my shop, which I had been so happily redecorating and making into a minimall so a couple of other friends could place vendors there, sadly took a look at the several hundred pieces of furniture I had on a couple of vendors...and was so dejected, I just logged off again.
It's cold comfort, I know... but I did the same thing just now.
This has me so utterly sick to my stomach that I can't bring myself to play. Why work hard to make my shop nice, if the Devs are just gonna drop a piano on my head?
I'm thinking it's time for me to start looking for another game... this one has too much utterly WASTED potential. There's no sense in my paying 50% MORE than other online games only to have my hard work slaughtered.
I totally agree with you. If SOE is truly having database problems due to vendors, they should fix the problem the easy way: eliminate the variable causing the massivecalculations of data.
In other words, make crates stack to 1000 units and resources stack to a million units. A schematic can make 1000 items, thus, a factory produce a single crate of 1000 items. They all have the same serial number anyway, You would instantly reduce the # of factory crates in storage by 40 times.
On resources, SOE are the ones who gave us 12, 13 & 14 BER Harvestors. I'd guess the average lot use per account for mining is 8 with 2 reserved for a house. The serious crafters and miners have additional accounts. I use 30 lots myself, mine with 24 of them. I run 24 Harvestors constantly with atleast a BER of 12 KH/Hour. I'm running out of storage space now and it is entirely from resources.
Even on an average 75% resource concentration, I mine 331,000 units of resources a day.
If I'm going after Ore, sure it's alittle less, if it's an Iron, Copper or Steel etc, I'm usually getting 85% to 95%.
Having resources stack to a million units would again, reduce resource storage by 10 times. It would ALSO be nice to have the resource in my inventory identified by the NAME of the resource, not Steel or Iron, you can tell that from the color of the Icon.
These two simple fixes would save SOE 50 times the amount of database space. You wouldn't have to touch a single thing concerning Mechants/vendors, except for those who exploit them for storage.
Katmer wrote:
Perilous wrote:
No, I don't mind. Thanks for your thoughtfulness.
I just logged in, looked around at my shop, which I had been so happily redecorating and making into a minimall so a couple of other friends could place vendors there, sadly took a look at the several hundred pieces of furniture I had on a couple of vendors...and was so dejected, I just logged off again.
It's cold comfort, I know... but I did the same thing just now.
This has me so utterly sick to my stomach that I can't bring myself to play. Why work hard to make my shop nice, if the Devs are just gonna drop a piano on my head?
I'm thinking it's time for me to start looking for another game... this one has too much utterly WASTED potential. There's no sense in my paying 50% MORE than other online games only to have my hard work slaughtered.
This, too, is how I feel. If this item cap is implemented...in fact, if any item cap under 500 per vendor at minimum is implemented, I am simply not going to be able to play my profession any longer. And since I am going to be unable to play what I consider, in my own personal opinion, to be the most interesting and enjoyable profession combination in the game for me, then there is really no reason for me to play. I simply do not have the storage space to keep up with the storage limitations in the game. If I can't stock several thousand items on my vendors, I just won't have the room I need to make play and in-game business viable. I will be forced to quit playing by the SWG development team themselves. Since I have two accounts, that's $30 lost...pushed rudely away. Actually, it's $60; my roommate, a master tailor, will be in the exact same situation. She too has bitterly indicated her inability to play with the implementation of any vendor item cap. We both have two accounts each...and we still have no room for storage.
I really, really love playing this game the majority of the time. I am saddened and upset beyond description at this potential nerf. It will literally be forcing me to quit the game against my will, and I not only am badly disappointed and reluctant to give up my game...I love my game and my character and do not want to quit playing them...but I am extremely resentful that it will force me to take such action totally against my will.
How is this improving the game? I'm not the only one who will be forced to give up their profession, and in many cases as a result, the entire game. My roommate, for one, will be forced to do so, as well. There are hundreds of people who've posted the same dilemma on these boards.
This makes no sense at all to me. This is supposed to be a player based economy. So far nothing I've seen done by the development team has been done with a mind toward improving that economy and making it more enjoyable and viable. And now, they're thinking about forcing me, and hundreds of people like me, to quit the game.
Well, I guess it's a great way to free up space in that creaky old database, isn't it?
I had more suggestions to make...I like the idea of stackable vendor items, like the bazaar system in EQ, where if you have 50 harvesters on a merchant, it will "stack" and you'll have the option of buying several at a time, instead of each harvester showing as an individual item. But then, that returns to my most urgent original question: why in the name of the gods doesn't anything stack in this game, and why do there have to be 20 million different varieties of each resource?
Yes, as I started to say, I had more suggestions, but right now I'm too upset and disappointed by the idea that I might have to give up my character and quit the game in a few weeks because I won't have any way of playing and enjoying myself at the same time, and I have no urge to become a creature handler...which is a whole other story.
I think I'll go into the game and start trying to come up with a way...any way...I'll be able to store both hundreds of resources and components already crowding the houses I own as well as all the thousands of deeds, components, furniture, and miscellaneous items I have up for sale on my vendors.
I'll have to figure out a way to put 3000 items of furniture somewhere so I can attend to the five or six pending complete interior design job orders I have pending at all times, as well as the orders for a couple dozen or so harvesters from a couple or so people, and the orders of 80+ pieces of furniture per customer, from two or three different customers at a time. I worked hard to make my items high quality and fun to own and display...so now I get to pay the price by spending the next three weeks trying to figure out what to do with it, since I have utterly no room to sell it or store it.
Yeah, I'm having fun now!
Actually, maybe I'll just go play Settlers III instead.
Same here, I logged on last night and almost cried. I spent how long building up a stock that was complete and offered a variety of colors as a tailor? I spent how long marketing myself and my shop? I spent how long researching just where to open my second shop? I spend how long in just maintaining records? And I will spend how much longer doing what I haveonly just nowstreamlined and made bearable?
I have no desire to even log in, last night my boyfriend had to twist my arm and once I logged on all I wanted to do was log off. I can't even go out and explore and hunt for a break because my mind keeps on going back to what I am going to do with the 900+ items on the 2 vendors in my main shop, not including my second store or custom order pick-up vendor.
Padre
As a master weaponsmith, I have no desire to load my vendor ... I have two vendors ... "Sliced" and "unsliced & Factory crates" I really don't want to be forced to have multiple vendors in order to be able to list more itmes...the ONLY reason that I keep two vendors is because It is too much work to type the words "Sliced" in the note description and most customers don't even read the description field so they usually end up buying sliced stuff thinking it is unsliced. Hence the CLEAR separation as to what is sliced and not. (sidenote: wish SOE would add a "Sliced" tag to the weapons so you can see if they have been sliced, then I will start keeping one vendor.)
Quite frankly everytime there is something in the game that is "fun"SOE manages to whip out that nerf bat. So all in all I feel like my SOE online experience is like this: ME: "Ohhhh fun" SOE: WHACK with the nerf bat. ME: ugh... ohhh another fun item. SOE: WHACK.
I've been a player since week 1 of release.... that "Cancel Account"button never looked so good before.
I'm just going to /sign this after reading the whole post
I'm a Master - Artisan, Architect, Merchant if they go through with this its just going to kill about every crafting profession there is.
so if they do....well TKA or something for me, or worst case, send a mail to cutomer service and demand some $$$$ back for a product that din't deliver the promised goods
I don't have a problem with the DEV's trying to fix something but i do have a problem with them allways haveing to NERF something REAL bad each time they try and fix something.....
one could amost get the feeling sometimes that the game came out 2 years to early and should have been in development another 2 years instead.
I know...my typing sux, got dyslexia...sue me 