Merchant Archive
Thread: Where is the Righteous Indignation?
Having been a Merchant since the first week or so, and definately the first Master Merchant on my server, I have had a long tenure to watch the advancement of this class.
We have seen bug fixes, and merchant tents, but we have not seen any fundimental changes in our profession. If my July 26th me suddenly time-traveled to today, he would see very little changed in how we do business. Most of our earliest issues have been ignored so long they arent' even issues anymore. We have become a contented bunch of cows because we're simply grateful that nothing new is broken.
This board needs some spirit. Master Merchant is still a JOKE profession that most people pass through on their way to their next holo. No special skills, no primary trade advantages, no skills that affect anything outside of minor cost savings that don't really amount to anything considerable when looked at in the light of how inflated the economy is.
I love roleplaying a merchant. It's what I do. I even enjoy the meta-game of making more profit and pocketing more credits. When it comes right down to it, however, most of the people I compete with are NOT master merchants, and never intend to be. They are smugglers, BH's, CH's, TKA's and any number of professions because they can still produce goods, collect resources, and sell them efficiently while completely bypassing the vendor system, or by using inferior vendors to compete directly with mine.
By taking a chinese menu of merchant skills anyone can compete with a master merchant with little or no disadvantage. That defeats the whole level system. If a pistols 3 Marksman could be just as deadly as a Master Pistoleer that elite profession would be considered broken. Yet after all this time we have come to accept this as par for the Merchant profession.
Vendors and Bazaars were down on Bloodfin for almost 3 days. This was a "low-priority issue" and the servers were restarted without these important services. It's plain to see where we stand with the management. If rifle damage were bugged, or if commando damage were doubled the servers would have been taken offline for repairs until those 'important' issues were fixed.
We need to see some heart on this forum. We have been teased, belittled, ignored, and generally disrespected and even with this new 'kinder-gentler' communiations strategy we cannot lie quietly and let the other professions get the attention and additions that we have earned through months of stoic faith and logical, peaceful protest.
Enough with the holo-merchant threads...let's get to the heart of our issues and GROW.
I agree that we need to stop contributing to some of the threads that have cropped up. I would like to see more love. There should be a revamping of our profession. Some of out skill branches should be merged and new fuctionality added. Holocron said that he wanted us to be able to have more control of our vendors (discounts or blocks on Guilds/Imps/Rebels), but none of this has been done. I would like an update by the developers on the things they said the would be adding or would like to add to our profession. I keep ll my vendors because I like them, not because they really help me. I could do just as well with the Bus 3 vendor.
Doc, next list we need to have seperate list of bugs and wish list. Many of the other professions even have subpoints. Lets submit as much as we can, maybe we will get some of it... It would be nice to have more detail responses on out sugestions. I would also like an update on our pre TH suggestions.
Draznar wrote:
I agree that we need to stop contributing to some of the threads that have cropped up. I would like to see more love. There should be a revamping of our profession. Some of out skill branches should be merged and new fuctionality added. Holocron said that he wanted us to be able to have more control of our vendors (discounts or blocks on Guilds/Imps/Rebels), but none of this has been done. I would like an update by the developers on the things they said the would be adding or would like to add to our profession. I keep ll my vendors because I like them, not because they really help me. I could do just as well with the Bus 3 vendor.
Doc, next list we need to have seperate list of bugs and wish list. Many of the other professions even have subpoints. Lets submit as much as we can, maybe we will get some of it... It would be nice to have more detail responses on out sugestions. I would also like an update on our pre TH suggestions.
I can't even get an update on our POST TH Suggestions 
Honestly we are better off creating a new list than trying to get responses on something that no one on the otherside remembers. That is just my read on how the current system is working.
Compiling a list would be helpful. But it needs to be a clear conside list of issues and solutions and not just a grab bag of random ideas. I think a clear format would help and would appreaciate suggestions. My first attempt would be something like this:
Category: Advertising
Issue: The Global Map advertising is functional but isn't enough information to allow enterprising merchants to describe the full range of prodcuts and services they provide.
Proposal: Advertising terminals to be used by merchants to put in an advertisement for their shop. Would include waypoint, brief description of prodcuts and services. Would be put in the terminal for a set period at a cost per day/hour. Access to these terminals would be granted at Advertising II and would be located in heavily travelled areas (Starports, Banks etc)
I Feel your pain Csin I'm and Master artisian, Master Architec and have been since july as well. I have only a few boxes of Merchant filled and saw no reason to sink limited skill ppoints any deeper. Now with the knowlge that you must master 5 professions to become jedi, i decide to master off merchant.
What a waste, once i had tried chef i thought there was no other proffesion as worthless.
The dev's are truly of 2 dimensional thinking and lack the imagination to fully "develop" profesions.
I have worked for activision, and microprose and really wonder whats going on at SOE, I wonder if SWG is there first concern, their web page would suggest EQ is.
I have dropped almost all of my merchant skills and moved on, this is what i suggest to you. SWG still has alot going for it and i still enjoy playing, just wish it could live up to it potential.
Eola wrote:
Doc,
Sorry for the random ideas train of thought, I started my message before you posted yours, honest. Feel free to file all that under /dev/null.
No. When I posted that I was looking for input not laying down guildlines of any sort. You list is divided up into sections which is kind of what I am looking for anyway. I just think we need to organize our ideas into a readable format. Typically a great idea gets posted in a long descriptive format that is hard to take in a list and give to the Devs. It is my opinion that we need summary form requests that could be fleshed out to more detail should the devs agree to make the change and allocate time to make it. Giving them pages and pages of suggestions will proabably result in those changes being ignored.
I will tell you that I have posted many of the smaller suggestions made here to the devs in places where they have asked for such things. But none of the huge profession altering ideas because we simply haven't been asked to post them. The closest thing we have been asked to do is to outline how we would secure the skill benefits that are not not secured against use after you drop the profession and for a list of suggestions on how to make the relationships between crafters and merchants more fulfilling. Those ideas should be posted in the top 5 post as I will be collecting them and presenting them to the dev team as soon as we have a fair response to those questions.
Actually guys, despite some small mechanical difficulties, we're doing pretty good right now. I agree we've not changed much, but we've gotten the major bugs fixed. Compared to other professions we're working really well. I agree we need better tools, especially for tracking sales. I agree we need better ways to form business partnerships, more ways to buy and sell goods (I run a cantina, I need a way for my chef to stock the vendor with drinks other than sitting them on the floor or offering them up for sale, I need better ways to divide up the earnings, etc, etc).
However, right now there are big combat changes coming up. Also the chef, droid engineer and smuggler revamps haven't happened yet. So the most we can do is what, unfortunately TH is telling everyone to do. We can give doc our suggestions, and he can pass them on to the Dev's and hope they do something constructive with them.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!
JTGAlpha wrote:
Actually guys, despite some small mechanical difficulties, we're doing pretty good right now. I agree we've not changed much, but we've gotten the major bugs fixed.
Our requests and ideas long pre-date any ideas about combat rebalancing. Most of what we have been pointing out as broken and unbalanced has BEEN broken and unbalanced since Beta. It is a reasonable expectationthat the class-as-advertised would work at release, and that the game would evolve and improve over the months of gameplay. We politely ignored this in order to give our patience and respect to the developers who were trying to bring the game up to a releasable standard AFTER the game was released.
Comparing this game to a premature child..we expect it to reach it's developmental goals at the appropriate time..which in this case are calculated from the time it was SUPPOSED to be born. This doesn't exempt it from the expectation that it will grow and develop beyond the 'at-birth' condition once that time has expired.
In other words, once our class is brought up to a releasable level, we still should continue to push for growth and change. I dont' believe that we've reached even this milestone. While I am extremely and respectfully greatful for the progress we've made, I believe that there is much work to be done. We've had some time to sit back and enjoy the prototype of what's to come, but that doesn't make it finished. Not by a long shot.
Contentment is for cows. We need to continue to raise the bar even as we enjoy and appreciate the work that has already been done. If we don't, we are doing a disservice to the developers and players of this game.
IMHO you're slitting your own throat, which is a serious problem since we share a throat.
My heart goes out to smugglers, DE's ,and chefs because they really are broken. But this doesn't mean that Merchant is suddenly 'ok' because I acknowledge this.
WE are, or should be, the core of the player-economy. Don't think for a minute we're all Watto..some of us are Jabba and Lando. Those worthy souls in broken professions deserve prompt and thorough attention, but by no means does this eliminate the problems with OUR profession.
The developers are big people. They can and will set their own priorities, and do things in their own time according to their own moral guide. I am suggesting that we as a board continue to treat them with deserved respect. HOWEVER, unless we keep the embers burning when the time comes that programming resourcesARE available our needs will not be readily apparant.
We can help them do their jobs by keeping discussions open, clearly outlining some achieveable goals, and fanning those tiny embers of creativity and hope until the time is ripe to let them burn.
Respectfully,
Csin
I am really going to sound like a jerk here.... but if you havent noticed yet, the Merchant Community is not that... hmmm, how do I put this, coherent.
We have half of the community screaming bug and exploit because they dont understand how skill mods work in this game - and they do this in place of asking for more appropriatly defined skill mods, or coming up with cohesive ideas to promote the profession.
The other half of the community celebrates everytime we get a fix to what is really a profession killing bug. Can you imagine if Pistoleer's guns were dissapearing from their backpacks with any frequency at all? That is the functional equivilent of some of the item disappearing issues we have dealt with. If the Devs fixed the dissappearing guns, I assure you that the pistoleers would not pop the bubbly and say "wow, the devs love us" - they would say, "about time, now fix our proffession with these suggestions in mind...."
In my experience with MMORPG's the quality of the community impacts the attention the community recieves from the games developers. This is becoming ABUNDANTLY apparent in this game as well and our community is just not up to par..... quite frankly, its the worst I've been a part of.
Have you read our state of the profession thread? Compare it to some of the other professions that ARE actually getting attention.
I happen to like our correspondant, but we need a better community of contributing players (who hopefully understand how the baic game mechanics actually work) and someone to organize and direct the consensus that is developed from this community.
Forgive me, for I am relatively new to the profession. My history in SWG is a strange one. I began, before I even played with the thought that BHs sounded kind of cool, but in my play I started to really like some other aspects of the game, I was 99.9% ofthe way to Master Scout, and 75% of the way to Master Marksman (no rifle line) when I started crafting, then weapons crafting, and then running my shop. Now 95% of my skill points are invested in Master Artisan/WS and I expect to be Master Merchant in the next few days.
So I'm a late comer to the party and don't know a lot of the old issues, but I can certainly see where a lot of the current ones are, simply because of the continual frustrations that hit me on a daily basis:
1) Vendor lag: It's incredibly painful when every aspect of the vendor operation has several seconds/minutes of lag, It's bad for normal characters, but when we're loading 70 items... it's ridiculously time consuming.
2) Relative Meaninglessness of the hiring line. In truth do we truly gain anything that potent as we advance in this line? A few more races perhaps, but since my established vendor was Twi'lek so are all the ones I've added. Wouldn't it be nice if hiring offered something before we hit uniforms? Perhaps the ability to create our vendors like we'd create PCs?
3) No ability to restrict sales, save for banning from the shop. As a merchant on Ahazi, I have a lot fo customers outside my time zone. I've been lucky that none of my custom orders has been 'sniped' so far, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.
4) No way to distinguish real vendors from exp machines on the global map. 'nuff said.
There are other issues of course, many of the servers are experiencing ridiculous inflation which makes it difficult to cater to established players *and* to new ones that haven't tapped into the multi-million credits vein yet.
What most concerns me is that one of the biggest selling points for me in this game was the player driven economy, and initially my thought was that the Merchant class would HAVE to be at the core of that. But it's not. As a Weaponsmith I can be a much better 'Merchant' than a Master merchant buy buying up two trees of the Merchant school. I'll have the vendors, I'll have the advertising and the rest is relatively irrelevant. I didn't go that route, but a lot of people do, and what's worse is many of them promptly surrender the management line, because they don't need it to keep the vendors.
What's the solution? Put meaningful abilities higher up in the skill trees, especially the neglected hiring and efficiency line (sorry but 20% harvester savings and 40% vendor savings are relatively meaningless). Introduce a check at server restart to see if a character has enough vendor slots to run all the vendors in place. If not de-initialize all of them and only allow re-initilization up to the number that player can control.
Every elite profession has an end-game. For crafters it's being able to create everything in a certain skill area and build the best items, for combat classes it's being able to kill things and loot items for sale.... for merchants it's..... ??? Does anyone know? I've dropped Medic to finish Mastering Merchant and to be honest i'm not totally sure why I've done it.
What would I do to up the class? Well you've read the vendor ideas I'd make available to Master Merchant... but I'd also add in the following:
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Trade Delegation (City Improvement): A Trade Delegation in a city woud provideseveral benefits to the city it's placed in and the city it's placed by, trade delegations would need to be in both cities for the benefits to take effect:
1) 5% reduction in city maintenanceif delegation is from the same planet 8% if off-world (to a minimum of 50% of city maintenance)
2) For cities with shuttleports a 100 credit reduction in shuttle costs between cities
3) Creation of an inter-city bazaar between the two cities which would function as a 'community vendor' for citizens of those cities (i.e. a bazaar specific to the two-cities without the 3K price cap). Advantage? Instant pick-up, no need to shuttle over.
(* Is this an amazing addition? No, but it could certainly be sought after and create even more of a push of players to actually live in and grow their cities instead of spending as much time in the major cities as they currently do. That Maintenance savings would also be VERY nice *)
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True Advertising. The ability to rent/hire the following:
NPC Crier in a major city/starport. The crier would have a generic /shout every 5-10 minutes telling folks to talk to him about local merchants. The conversation trees would give the player the option to look through armor, weapons, what have you and when selecting a merchant the player would receive a little blurb written by the merchant, and a Waypoint to their shop if they requested it. (Certainly possible given that this is the same code delivery missions run off of right now.) The ability to list there would be a Master level Merchant ability.
Ads in the starport. Running text in the lounge area of the starport. The ads would have to be brief, as short as a shop-name, blurb and waypoint and would just scroll through all listings.
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Location, Location, Location:
The ability to build a shop within the build/restriction zone of a city and/or actually rent a 'shop' in one of the city buildings themselves. The advantage of this is obvious (though sadly you'd be in the city lag zone), there'd be a clear advantage to Mastering Merchant and there would also be a REASON for other crafters to use a Master Merchant to sell their goods (which now there is none)
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Travelling Vendors:
Alternatively, allow a Master Merchant to create a special vendor, a 'travelling' vendor that could be given a set route of cities/planets and a set schedule and would be able to bark like it currently can, but wouldn't be listed on the global vendor list. This vendor would return 'home' after a set time, or when it sold out.
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Admittedly, alot of these ideas would take a lot of work, but if part of the core of this game is that the economy is build on the player base, than those who've dedicated the points to Mastering the Market and the art of the deal should get more than a discount on the 20 credit bazaar fee.
Doc,
Sorry for the random ideas train of thought, I started my message before you posted yours, honest. Feel free to file all that under /dev/null.
Basically we have had plenty righteous indignation. We have had brainstorms with excellent ideas. We have had a forum seething with life.
I have seen excellent ideas proposed, discussed and agreed on. Then forgotten, suggested again, forgotten suggested again 5-10 times.
And no proof of it ever being read or passed on to concept stage in dev quarters. I was most active in the days of Marqie, who I seem to remember quit as correspondent after being thoroughly ignored by the people who were supposed to listen to her.
Then along comes some doofus complaining about playing a 10 mil access fee, and is INSTANTLY heard, causing a nerf to our profession, killing our last workaround for private vendors.
That shows us quite clearly who are being listened to.
There is a small glimmer of hope, and that is this excellent post that got an actual response :
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=986888&page=1
Some good merchant suggestions in there, and it seems it actually got read.