Merchant Archive
Thread: Some ideas about retaining vendors after merchant droped
I was thinking that it could be good to have a discusion about what to do about vendors held when the skill is droped (as its basicaly part of the game for non merchants to have the odd vendor and people would go bonkers if they log in to find their vendors and stock missing I doubt that Sony will simply remove vendors from thoes without the skill). Some ideas:
1) very high maintainance rates on vendors in excess of your limit 60 credits per hour or more. Not a big disincentive.
2) wastage: petty pilfering causes items to disapear from time to time (you'd get an email like a sale to diferentiate it from a bug). Would ensure that only dedicated merchants stocked quality goods.
But then I thought actualy it would be far better to add something to the merchant class that master merchants can do that is in repeated demand (like slicing is always in demand and you can't slice unless your a master smuggler). Here are some thoughts:
1) player bounty - simple concept, allow Master merchants to put player bounties on the BH terminals. OR if player bounty goes into Politician class (seems a more logical place for it) allow master merchants a 'safe house' skill that protects someone from player bounty, perhapse means the BH has a window of opportunity.
2) Quests - allow master merchants to create hunter missions (kill 45 nuna - my vendor at xxxx yyyy is paying 10cpu of Tatooine nuna meat) or artisan missions (make a fishing rod and deliver to my vendor at xxxx yyyy) or entertainer missions (Dance at my cantina xxxx yyyy, 500c and then 500cph plus tips) or Faction missions.
2) city upgrades - The merchant tents are OK but player cities should be a key element of merchant content, allow merchants to have some city specialisations.
Well one way to do it (assuming it can be coded) is:
1 week before the change a notice appears in the patch notes outlining this so people have time to remove the items from the vendors so item loss does not occur.
Then at the time of reconing the system runs a check of your Vendors skill. If you have more vendors up than your skill the last ones placed would get the following Maintaince.
1000cr per item +100% the price of the item per hour.
That would stop people from doing it.
Tarnak_Archvold wrote:
It would be much simpler to just turn off other people's abilities to view any of the person's vendors, at the specified date, and prevent the owner from placing more items for put fore sale.
Yes that is what I support. Disable the ability for people to buy from the vendor. (and make offers to the vendor) and prohibit the ability of the owner to place items for sale. That essentially gives the owner 30 days + the stockroom time to remove the items before they vanish. They could alternately regain the skills in that time and resume normal operation.
Zmey26
Why the angst against people who keep vendors after they drop the skill? It doesnt effect you in any way.
But it DO affect us... in fact it affects EVERYONE.
First off, it cheapens the value of the merchant profession. You can take 7 boxes of merchant and still get almost all the benefits, as long as you have take the other 2 lines first and then dropped them. Place 6 vendors and dress them, then drop hiring and management.
This mean that thoughts that take advantage of the holes in the design, would have abilities available to them as if they had 28 skill points more then everyone else...
Now Zmey26, what would you say is you knew that some people in your chosen profession had 28 skill points more to spend then you, because they was taking advancing of a hole in the design of the game?
Drop skill = Dropped Vendor
No brainer here. You lose goods, thats your problem.
Zmey26 wrote:
Why the angst against people who keep vendors after they drop the skill? It doesnt effect you in any way.
Forgetting for a moment that there are skill point restrictions in the game for a reason. If you can sell things without being a merchant (or having businss III) then you are denying me and every other merchant the opportunity to sell those items.
The real problems that merchants have are two fold:
the low end market is served by the bazaar (you won't get rich saving 10c per sale)
the high end market is served by the trade forum
Player vendors (placed by an artisan or a master merchant - it makes no diference) fall into the bulk sale of mid ranged items (resources being the most lucrative though again that is mostly done on trade forum) and realisticaly the class is little more than an adjunct to mastery of a crafting proffesion.
Killing non merchant vendors is just going to make the world more empty, less people will have their house be public which means less player generated content. It won't impact on the problems of merchants because these closed shops have virtualy zero trade. All the big malls are PA halls with the same basic layout - practical but dull.
I think merchants need to concentrate on the real problems that the class has and not imagine that their lack of sales is down to the evil of non merchant vendors - its because the class adds virtualy nothing to the ability to trade and has virtualy no impact on the game world.
What will have the bigest impact on your ability to trade:
1) increase of bazaar max sale value up to 50,000 at master merchant
2) deleting all the obscure vendors selling junk
Or
3) a skill that allows you to instantly transport goods from one vendor to another
I'll be quite frank I don't think that owning vendors should be a merchant only skill, I do think that merchants should have advantages in that regard but "vendors +1" should not be the 'class defining' skill - its too lame and cuts too much player generated content.
Sistere wrote:
Drop skill = Dropped Vendor
No brainer here. You lose goods, thats your problem.
I couldnt agree more. I've posted this in the top 5 merchant issues thread, but i think it bears repeating. If people want merchant skills to be valued, they need to be treated like other skills in other professions ... you drop a skill, you lose the ability. If people have tons of stuff on vendors, then they need to make arrangements to clean out those vendors IN ADVANCE.
I've said it before, and i'll say it again ... I dropped Ranged 3: Warning Shot. I did NOT do it while being attacked by razor cats.
aachil wrote:
OK here is an example:
What will have the bigest impact on your ability to trade:
1) increase of bazaar max sale value up to 50,000 at master merchant
2) deleting all the obscure vendors selling junk
Or
3) a skill that allows you to instantly transport goods from one vendor to another
I'll be quite frank I don't think that owning vendors should be a merchant only skill, I do think that merchants should have advantages in that regard but "vendors +1" should not be the 'class defining' skill - its too lame and cuts too much player generated content.
Your #2is not what we are suggesting:The idea is to remove the ability of people to sell their wares in their shops without the services of a merchant (or at least business III). If they are unable to do that then they will be forced to make sales to merchants (or retain some merchant skills) and the profession will benefit from the influx of sales. (This can only be accomplished if we increase the ability for merchants to accept and process such offers which is also in the Top 5 issues) so framed this way .. Removing the "illegal" vendors is more effective than adding sales to the bazaar.
Increasing the bazaar max sale does nothing but flood the bazaar with items and make it difficult for anyone to find anything. The bazaar is for quick purchases of small items. If you want serious goods and services you don't go to the bazaar you go to a merchant shop or contract directly with the tradesman to do it. In the bazaar I have no control over the content of what the user is looking at, no control over the astmosphere or control over who is buying my merchandise. In my shop I have all of those things.
Vendors ARE the defining skill of a merchant. You CAN sell without one but not as efficiently and effectively. That is the point of 1/2 of our skill trees.
Shipping is a oft purposed thing and I suspect there are technical limitations preventing it from being a reality. I support the smuggler professions idea that they should be the point profession for any shipping in the game. That is fair. Moving things around rightly belongs to their profession.
You loose the certification for a T21 if you surrender the skill but you can still equip the gun - if you like the look you can keep it. The only thing that a merchant does of any note is place vendors but thats a flaw in the game - by concentrating on this issue you fetishise vendor placement - raise it up as the great goal of merchantdom when its an utterly banal ability which has only slightly more impact on the world than the ability to rotate your furniture.
What does me loosing my vendor ammount to? I have to go to a merchant? No, it just means that I'll go to the trade forum or the bazaar or not sell stuff at all, its not worth the effort anyway and frankly even as a merchant I have to use both the bazaar and the trade forum for most of my sales (and probably all of my significant sales). I can't sell a full crate of muons on the bazaar but I can sell a crate of ten much easier than using a player merchant as a go between.
This is not a solution to merchant problems - the rest of the class is still quite worthless. Most people who have anything worth selling already have some merchant skill, taking merchants off the tiny percentage of people who still have vendors just makes the game less fun for everyone.
That is why it won't hapen - the Devs want a fun game with lots of player content, argue for limited stock levels, higher maintainance, limited prices or other restrictions but its quite pointless asking for player vendors to simply be removed. In any case concentrate on stuff that improves the class - makes it worth keeping.