Merchant Archive

Well personally why would I want you using my vendor to look at my neighbor's prices? Go use his vendor if you want to look at his prices.

If you want a search system that is global I"m ok with that but not from my vendor.

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ArkonPhoenix wrote:

I'm not sure if this has been thought of already.

Make it so you can view everyones items listed on any vendor. Sort of like it is now, when you go to a vendor, you have the options to broaden your serch criteria; like City, Planet, Galaxy.

Add another tab called Player Merchants. This way, you can get a more detailed list of whats availible from everyonewithout actually having to visit there vendor(s) (in my opionion, traveling/searching from vendor to vendor is a pain). Of course you would still need to go to their vendor in order to retrieve the item, but this will make the vendors more useful and help merchants sell items accross the galaxy. This would also help stop spammin.

The biggest benefit here, is that you can do all your shopping from one place and find competitve prices. This would give merchants a broader market to.

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ArkonPhoenix wrote:

I'm not sure if this has been thought of already.

Make it so you can view everyones items listed on any vendor. Sort of like it is now, when you go to a vendor, you have the options to broaden your serch criteria; like City, Planet, Galaxy.

Add another tab called Player Merchants. This way, you can get a more detailed list of whats availible from everyonewithout actually having to visit there vendor(s) (in my opionion, traveling/searching from vendor to vendor is a pain). Of course you would still need to go to their vendor in order to retrieve the item, but this will make the vendors more useful and help merchants sell items accross the galaxy. This would also help stop spammin.

The biggest benefit here, is that you can do all your shopping from one place and find competitve prices. This would give merchants a broader market to.

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Message Edited by rexan on 05-06-2004 04:54 PM

Ok, I know I probobly didnt explain it to well for what I was meaning. First off, I dont want toreplace players vendors.

What Iwas simply tring to say, isthat I would like to veiwwhat everyone is selling (On the Bazarsand personal Vendors) from one place.

My biggest pet peve with trying to find something that costs to much to be put on bazar is the traveling form one vendor to the next to find exactly what im looking for (I have spent hours doing this on several occasions). I just want to access a bazar terminal in Theed, look for the item I want using the sub catagories in the UI. Then select the items that suits my needs, purchase it, and then finally travel to players vendor in the city of Freedom. Note: I just used the city namesas an example.

Then once people purchase something from you and travel to your vendor, they will then look to see what else you got. And people will remember you better for it. As of now, because of all the time I waste, I have a list of whos vendors not to visit, when it should be the other way around.

This will incease exposure for everyone to potential buyersand the products they sell. I see it being a benefit for everyone involved.

Now if you want it so your vendor only shows what your selling, then so be it, but I think that should be an option you set.

I would hate it. As it is right now, everyone got a chance of selling their stuff whatever the price is. If all the items sold were on a list, why would anyone go to the people who have higher prices but a huge stock? Nobody will, because all they will see is the price tag. As it is, people often go to a vendor, then see that it is well stocked and will buy other things or come back when they need different things. With a search... they will go to the cheapest vendor for the item they want and will just do the same everytime. Vendors who can afford a higher cost because of all the selection they offer will not even get a single customer. It would be sad really.

We shouldn't have to go so far to make sure we don't spend hours looking for one item though... When only merchantsare able to have a vendor and the empty onesare removed from the map, the list should be cut by 2/3 and it will be much more likely that at least half the vendors on the map will have what you are looking for.

Message Edited by Songe on 05-08-2004 10:52 AM

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DocSavag wrote:

I doubt you will see anything delivered in this game any time soon. Moving actual items from one place to the other without a character moving them is technically challenging. (Even with us moving them there are problems)

This is why people have been begging for some type of player-baseddelivery system that could do just this. While the way the game is now it would be "fun" to run a Galactic Fed-ex service, but the problem is there is no way to hold anyone to anything in this game, and any operation would only be able to run with really only one person and on the trust of merchants. If it's regulated by the game, it becomes a question of "how can this be exploited", much like player bounties.

Example - let's say the delivery system worked like this (in a perfect Galaxy) : Player A wants an item worth 100K delivered from Player B on Corellia to Lok. PlayerC gets the mission from a terminal in Corellia, and has to put up 100K in exchange for the item on Corellia. If everything goes according to plan, Player C makes it to Lok, gives the item to Player A, gets their 100K back, plus a reward (either from the system, Player A, or both).

Now, imagine if Player A and Player B are actually working together. Let's say after you pay your 100K "deposit" when you receive the item, Player B either disapears (if the goal is player-player delivery) or his vendor suddenly "poofs" or you are added to the ban list of the structure...any number of things.

You could try to circumvent all these types of exploits, but it would be more of a pain to make sure that someone couldn't destroy a vendor while it's the target of delivery mission, or that you get refunds if the person deletes their character after you have taken the mission, and then make sure the person loses the item if they get a refund, and somehow make that fair and return it to the merchant...ad infinitum.

In the end, it would just be easier to implement permissions for people - I'd love to be able to grant access to my bazaar account or bank to one or two people, for instance. However, they already have enough problems with people sharing structures (like, CSRs often times can't/won't compensate for items in houses lost, even through legitimate bugs, when other people are on the admin list of a building).

In the end, it would likely be a whole lot of work for something that people would rarely use in the manner in which it is intended or really isn't a huge issue now that we have vehicles. It would be nice, but there are tons of other things that need fixing first.

I wouldn't mide seeing a global search system that allowed you to find good prices on the merchandise you needed...however I still want you in my shop looking at my vendor and buying items that you didn't know you wanted until you saw what a great deal it was.

This is how it was originally intended - ever wonder why you get waypoints in "Instant Sale" e-mails? Since you are standing in front of the vendor when you make the purchase, it wasn't to remind you where to pick it up (although I'm sure it has served that purpose to people that have forgotten to pick their items up, but that's another matter entirely), and having one to the bazaars (which are all in major cities and centrally located) in those emails isn't very useful either.

Both were part of the beta system in which the intention was for the bazaar interface to somehow list vendor contents as well. Late in beta they fixed the e-mails, but never implemented the galactic-wide system.

If you think about it - they are right. I mean, as a merchant, do you REALLY want everyone to be able to compare the prices of every single other vendor in the galaxy selling what you have? This is (part of) the reason stores never took when implemented in TSO - in order to get into a store you'd have to see it's description. In that description, everyone began to list their prices. So everyone saw everyone else's prices everywhere all the time...which very quickly led to undercutting that was unavoidable.

In some ways, it would be even worse in SWG. We not only have prices, but quality that matters (which doesn't in TSO, since stores there are just ways to buy the generic stuff you can already buy from the system - just cheaper).

Imagine the market like that - you could instantly see who had the highest damage T21 in the Galaxy - and the person who had it could charge pretty much whatever they wanted. You would create two distinct markets - way, way over priced stuff that is overpriced just because no matter where in the Galaxy it is, it sells pretty much instantly because there are people out there that will buy anything if they thing it's "uber", and another market entirely which was all about the rock bottom prices. There really wouldn't be a whole lot of in-between.

This may sound good to non-merchants who think "crafters rule the game" (we don't, we just have the bulk of the money - not really power past a certain point, because we have even less to spend it on than the combat people do in many cases), but it really would make for a very boring market. Taking location out of the equation totally would eliminate a lot of the integrity"business" simulation in SWG.

That said, I have said for a long time that some sort of true, galactic advertising needs to happen. Vendor listings on the planetary map just aren't cutting it at this point in the game. The removal of empty vendors from the list will help, but we really need something "more" than that.

I've been thinking about it for quite some time, but haven't been able to come up with a system that would be easy to implement and effective. What I'd like ideally is something like the video-screens in space that they use to advertise player bounties in "EVE Online". We could buy "ads" on a video monitor that plays at Starports - people would see the object and perhaps have to actually choose to look at it actively (like a bazaar).

This would be for temporary advertising of specials, deals, new stores, etc. That's what I believe the problem is with the system right now - it's a one time listing and that's it until you change vendors (making you lose your rank in the map as well, meaning you have to start at the bottom again). It is not conducive to running a dynamic business - it just encourages merchants to throw up vendors and not develop past there. Heck, even if we could rename vendors it would help matters (or, more accurately, change their listing on the planetary map - I don't care as much about the vendor name in the store but the listing.)

The merchant barker droid was a tiny step in the right direction - and recognizes the problem we face regarding getting word out about our shops and new merchandise. Although there are some aspects of thevendor revamp I'm not looking forward to (when/if they implement the vendor item restrictions, I hope to heck the "offers" they gave us last time as proposed limits were REALLY lowball), but I hope that they really take into consideration their design goals but actually how people use vendors in practical use (and, in the case of the vendor caps, recognize that housing storage limits are the root of that problem for the most part; yes, someone will always abuse it, but it wouldn't be standard practice as it is today - you can't even decorate one floor of a PA hall with 250 items, let alone actually use it for storage).

While Galaxy-wide ubiquitous listings aren't the answer if we want a dynamic economy, there has got to at least be some refinement of the systems we have now.

AO

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Message Edited by AudioOrgana on 05-08-2004 12:04 PM

The problem already is that there are undercutters - people who sell their wares for way too cheap compared to the 'market price'. If it has only limited consequences with the current system, it would be a real problem if everyone could check people's prices in a click - everyone would shop there and it would lead to a devaluation of the crafting professions.

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cadof wrote:

If other thinks that they can take me out by under cutting me go ahead a try. They will only be hurting them self’s. It will allow better products at a cheaper price no more monopolies with only a few well-known crafters. It will seewho is over pricing andwho is not.

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Message Edited by Songe on 05-10-2004 07:39 AM

Wouldn't this kind of take the "game" out of crafting. This is just my opinion, but I find the fun in being a crafter actually creating the store and advertising it to attract business. As has been pointed out above, there are different approaches to setting up a store. The higher priced place that always has a huge stock, or the cheapest deal in the galaxy that you need to jump on a restock to get anything. This type of differentiation would be completely gone if you could look at every available item in the galaxy from one location.

There would be no reward for creating a nice store and maintaining it. Right now you need to build up a good reputation to get business. I want people to visit my shop because they like my goods and like me as a crafter. Not becuase they found my brandy on a galaxy wide search screen. Its a challenge to run a good shop, part of the game. Any and all roleplay would be gone from crafting. Merchants would be a faceless global product supplier.

Also from a customer perspective, isn't getting the right supplies part of the game too? It's supposed to be a mmorpg, not unreal tournamet. If you want to go fight take the time to search around and find what you need, interact with some people.

In my opinion the system is fine the way it is. I would be in favor of auto-removing empty vendors from planetary map, but thats easily circumvented by posting the 1,000,000 credit piece of junk, "read me" thing anyway.