Merchant Archive
Thread: DocSavag, regarding the vendor limit (items rumour)
IV - 2
There was a long ago proposal on the table to limit vendors to 150 items. That was roundly rejected by Merchants and other vendor operators. The devs are supposed to come back to us with a new proposal that will probably be higher limits but will be indexed to merchant skills. We don't know what the final proposal will be yet because they haven't released it.
Numen wrote:
Are there merchants out there that would drop 10-15 million on some days for my product?
With the consignment feature we have asked for, the merchant wouldn't have to tie that money up speculating on your product. So if that goes in place, yes, a merchant would find it very attractive to handle your product.
The ability to put a case on a vendor, and vendor logic to let the buyer buy singles or partial cases, could greatly reduce the need for vendor items. Stocking various case sizes in quantities to handle sales for a couple of days really multiplies the number of items.
Containers that were "transparent" so the contents and their stats were visible would reduce the count needed too. While this is especially true for Armourers, lots of items like buffs, and components are needed in sets, and things like customization kits, batteries, pet stims, and furniture are nice to package with larger items. It would be especially nice to package a manufacturing schematic with the needed resources. Merchants should be able to package items.
I would like to see the Bus 3 vendor limited to a very small count -- less than 100 and perhaps as small as 25. It is, after all, just a "starter" vendor. It should be meant to fill orders and
I like the idea of putting the maximum item in a different column than management, and efficiency seems a good choice. But the item count maximum should grow exponentially at each level. Otherwise the difference between the higher levels doesn't amount to much. Something like this:
- 25 bus 3
- 50 Bus 4
- 100 Novice Merch
- 150 EFF 1
- 250 EFF 2
- 400 EFF 3
- 650 EFF 4
- 1000 Master (or perhaps unlimited at that level)
The mechanics of enforcement should be that you cannot add an item to your vendor beyond the limit. If you drop a skill, your items stay, but you cannot add another. If the devs have trouble with dropping vendors when dropping a skill, perhaps the item count should be a total with suitably larger numbers like:25, 50, 200, 450, 1000, 2000, 4000. You could keep those extra vendors, but still be limited in what goes in them.
With a good user interface, a single vendor should be all a master needs at a location. Management should be about multiple locations once a reasonable level of efficiency is reached.
The Merchant profession needs some love to be what it ought to be, not just some single patches or nerfs. I posted a while ago what I thinkit should be:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=merchant&message.id=26942#M26942
Haruspex77 wrote:
Numen wrote:
Are there merchants out there that would drop 10-15 million on some days for my product?
With the consignment feature we have asked for, the merchant wouldn't have to tie that money up speculating on your product. So if that goes in place, yes, a merchant would find it very attractive to handle your product.
The ability to put a case on a vendor, and vendor logic to let the buyer buy singles or partial cases, could greatly reduce the need for vendor items. Stocking various case sizes in quantities to handle sales for a couple of days really multiplies the number of items.
Containers that were "transparent" so the contents and their stats were visible would reduce the count needed too. While this is especially true for Armourers, lots of items like buffs, and components are needed in sets, and things like customization kits, batteries, pet stims, and furniture are nice to package with larger items. It would be especially nice to package a manufacturing schematic with the needed resources. Merchants should be able to package items.
While all those features are nice, I'll say I'm a bit sceptical that the devs can actually put it off. If they can't, great, that solves all my issues. I've just seen too many professions have a list of things they wanted and the devs rip it apart and hand back the little pieces they wanted to do.
I completely agree the merchant profession needs some help. It is nothing more than a support class right now for crafters. There needs to be a reason for someone to be a Merchant and not have any crafting skills. Otherwise there is no point in having the merchant profession, just give vendors to all the crafting professions.
There is no doubt that the changes I suspect the Devs will make are going to require a complete reworking of lots of people business. Let me say up front that I do not neccesarily agree with the underlying reasonings I am inferring, but I do agree that something needs to be done to make Merchant viable.
Let me play devils advocate for a moment. /raiseflamaeshield
Do you really need to have 10 million in the bank? What can you do with 10 million that you cant do with one million *if the entire economy is adjusted down*!! WS tapes and AS tapes go for a million or so a point. What is they only went for 100k a point? Your Million credits would buy you the exact same tape. All thas happened is a zero was dropped of the end of all the numbers involved.
Its my sincere belief that the Devs want to make the credit worth something again. I believe they want the insane inflation we have been seeing to become reasonable.I blieve that they would rather see you, the dedicated crafter, selling dozens of weapons a day instead of hundreds. If my suspicions are correct, you wouldnt be selling your Retailer 10 million credits worth of goods, but maybe 100k.
The idea, IMHO, is to make it so more players can experience the crafting game, and actually develop a niche market. What we have now is maybe 3 or 4 WS on each server who are well know and who have a loyal patronage that includes virtually anyone who fights! Even new people, while learning the game, are referred to these Established Masters by the people they interact with. The newer crafter has little chance to carve out a territory. SO we have a huge gap between the upper and lower echelons of the craftign game...those who make 20 million or more a week, and those who make 200k or so a week. Or even 20k.
It is this gap I believe the Devs want to narrow. Again, it wouldn't be too hard. They would just have to break out the riot gear, warn the Suits who are getting rich off us to expect a short-tern decline in subscriptions, and make the changes. Schematic revocation as you go up the profession would help as well. Allowing lower level crafters to fully experiment on items that exist on the lower spectrum of the tree's. Harvester ber nerfs, vendor caps, etc....
Its just a game, after all, and all we have to do is find a way to have fun in it. This will likely mean we need to adjust our expectations in-game. So what if I only have 2 million instead of 20? I can still do everything I wanted to do. And more people are able to participate meaningfully.
We'll see....