Merchant Archive

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Alepe wrote:

I consider myself a pure Merchant. I only have one account, and I craft nothing. I currently have (6) vendors. They all sell products that I bought at wholsale prices. I buy from the crafters and resell them on my vendors. Just like the way it is supposed to work in real life. It works well for me. My biggest problem is finding quality crafters that play the game long term. To many people get bored with the game after 3-6 months. Blame SOE (easy scapegoat) then they quit.

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I really don't think you're supposed to get rich off of someone else's labor in real life. Not to mention the fact that when i want something from a really good chef I go to HIS restaurant notsome other merchant's store. While Walmart is great for easy shopping, you can usually find better quality items from the "Mom and Pop" stores.In real life I have my own business and sell my own product without a middleman. I don't know why SOE has such hard time understanding that.

I'm not opposed to the merchant profession. I think it's good to have people who want to rp a business. What I am opposed to is a Master Elite crafter not being able to make a living without having his hand held. I agree that getting bus 3 then dropping it to store thousands of items on a vendor is wrong but making the limit 100 and giving a master WS, AS, Tailor, Chef... no ability to advance is just stupid. Now, I know half of you reading this are saying "well just get merchant skills" and that is really my point. If, in order to be a successful crafter you need to have merchant skills, then why not incorperate business into those professions?

I don't think there are that many "true merchants" almost everyone is merch/ws .. merch/as ... merch/chef.. merch/tailor .. see the pattern? Merchant is primarily a SP hog and a complete waste to most who have it. When the changes to merchant were made the crafters shouldn't have been left to rot.

Ok, now that I have complained here are my suggestions to fix what I view to be broken (some may not see any problems with teh system at all) First of all, business 4 should one of the prereq's for any elite crafting profession ( although it may be too late to change that.) At novice "elite" the crafter should get an additional 250 vendor items. That would give a crafter a total of 500 items on a vendor when added to Bus 3 and Bus 4. At the master level the crafter should recieve an additional 500 vendor items (or maybe another 250). That way a crafter can be a crafter and have a small business to make his living without having to deal with anyone else. For those of you who think that the numbers of vendor itemsI propose are too high, those numbers are actually half of my former regular stock. I usually had about 2000 items between my 2 vendors. We are supposed to be in a rp galaxy where there is awarfor independence and having to sell through a merchant takes away from independence.

The sad thing is that the devs don't really care and this system will never change. As of now, I've cancelled my other account and am just waiting for this one to run out. It really sucks, I can't PvP anymore because merch is hogging needed skill points. I can't craft anything because my vendor is still over the limit and i don't have anywhere to sell what i make. I basically use the game as a chat program now. I used to enjoy crafting 50 -100 weapons, putting them up for sale, then PvP'ing for the rest of the evening. Now I've just been waiting for my vendor stock to go down from the 2000 itemsI started with the night before the patch. I'm at about 800 now , for any of you who care.