Merchant Archive
Thread: Fix for the Non-Merchant vendor issue Proposal
- If the vendor type is assigned to a skill box that the owner no longer has access to (becuase they dropped the Hiring skills), they can not add any new items to that vendor.
- If they have out more vendors that they are currently allotted, they can not add ANY new items to ANY of their vendors. They can still withdraw stuff, and people can still by stuff, but nothing new can be added.
- If the owner does not have the Advertising skills to support Ad-Barking or Planetary advertising, ALL of their vendors are unregistered from the planetary map, and ad barking is disabled...for ALL OF THEIR VENDORS
Basically, the "Random" vendor ability granted in Artisan only gives you the standard NPC's (Wookie, TwiLek, Bothan, Human, Trando). So if the owner has an Aqualishvendor but not a high enough Hiring skill, they get tagged. If they have no Advertising skills, they get tagged.
- If the vendor type is assigned to a skill box that the owner no longer has access to (becuase they dropped the Hiring skills), they can not add any new items to that vendor.
- If they have out more vendors that they are currently allotted, they can not add ANY new items to ANY of their vendors. They can still withdraw stuff, and people can still by stuff, but nothing new can be added.
- If the owner does not have the Advertising skills to support Ad-Barking or Planetary advertising, ALL of their vendors are unregistered from the planetary map, and ad barking is disabled...for ALL OF THEIR VENDORS
Basically, the "Random" vendor ability granted in Artisan only gives you the standard NPC's (Wookie, TwiLek, Bothan, Human, Trando). So if the owner has an Aqualishvendor but not a high enough Hiring skill, they get tagged. If they have no Advertising skills, they get tagged.
Which is the same system we've been proposing for a long while. Not saying that as a diss. But it IS just that good a system.
You cannot add maintence. You cannot add items. You can only remove items.
I am a Master Armorsmith, Droid Engineer and Artisan. I have a couple of merchant skills (ALL of my extra skill points are merchant skills, in fact) and yes, I have dropped one or two so I could master Artisan. I may not be a full time Merchant, but I am certainly a full time Crafter. Crafting is all I do. I need a place to display my wares and I need to be able to do so in a fashion where everything is not bunched together so people cannot find things within a half an hour of searching. Limiting the way I do business would stiffle my business and likely cause me to go out of business. The fact that I can placethe 4 vendors I have keeps me from having to do things like spam the starport. While that is totally out of control (and will get worse with the merchant droid modules coming), at least I am not one more annoying line of spam.
I think it is a poor "school of thought" that limits the way legitimate "businessmen" do business. There needs to be a concession for those who are full-time crafters. I can understand your concern over people who place vendors like, "Loot" and then regain all of their combat skills and do absolutly nothing for the crafting professions. I, for one, do not wish to sit on a bunch of skill points I can be using to make a better product for my customer just to satisfy a requirement that allows me to sell my wares conveniently for myself, my customer and the poor folks in the starport who do not need to see me spamming day in and day out.
Wire3k: Hear, hear! A voice of reason. You can take away my advertising! You can take away my uniforms! But, you can't take away my vendors!
(of course, admittidly, I would likely drop the vendor skills having placed my vendors and pick up advertising 3 and hiring 4 again, retaining them. I don't see the point of entering a debate if I'm not going to be honest about it.)
The biggest problem lies in that the Merchant Profession (which i agree should never have developed like it did) is the ONLY ONE where you can retain the advatages of the profession after DROPPING the skills that granted you those advantages. If the Devs decided to remove the Merchant profession entiterly and put all the skills into the Business and Domestic Arts tree's, I woudl agree whole-heartedly. Business tree deals with Vendors and advetising, Domestic Arts with Hiring and Customizing. But I find it *very* lkely this will never happen.
So we're stuck with it the way it is. Artisans are 95% crafters...the odd 5% or so are those who just survey for resources. Artisans need to sell stuff. The issue seems to be in what manner they do so. Do they sell it on their own, maintaining their own store? Or do they sell it to a Merchant, who by definition is a business-being. The answer to this question has already been answered by SOE, and they coded it into the game......Artisans can drop a vendor at Business 3. 12 skill points, right? It aint purty, and its bulky (pun intended), but it serves its purpose. If the Artisan cares about the shop appearance and vendor variety...and wants to be able to make the NPC look nice, and advetise on the (broken) planetary map, etc, etc....that has been coded into the game as well. Merchant!
Let me respond to a few of Wire3k's comments: ...If you create something, there is every reasonable expectation in the world to be able to sell it... Absolutely!! Couldn't agree more!! So whats the next step? How do you sell it? See above paragraph about the manner in which they do so...
...resent the change (and merchants especially) and take merchant back up... Resent Merchants? More like resent having to play the game as it was intended. I wonder how many of those resentful people who are taking advantage of the system would be resentful if several hundred people took up skills in their crafting profession so they could make stuff, then dropped the skills *but were able to continue making the items* !!!
...what about all those vendors that are out in the boonies that have great deals?... They would most likely poof for a bit...and good riddance! I wonder how many times when browsing in the boonie you have come across empty vendors? I would GLADLY miss a few deals in order to clear out hundreds of empty vendors. If they dont have the gumption to keep the vendor stocked, they shouldn't have a vendor. If they dont have the gumption to keep a vendor stocked, they arent a "Merchant". Then you have the fact that a Merchant can have a vendor in multiple locations. Why not have 2 on Naboo (one near Theed, another near Kaadara), 2 on Corellia (both on either ends of Coronet), 1 on Tatooine, and 1 on Dantooine? You can specialize these vendors too...you can put them in with several other vendors, filling a needed "niche" the structure (read:Mall) owner wants.
...most merchants seem to think everyone else should come to them and all they need to do is stock vendors... This is the very DEFINITION of Merchant:
mer·chant ( P ) Pronunciation Key (mûrchnt) n. One whose occupation is the wholesale purchase and retail sale of goods for profit. One who runs a retail business; a shopkeeper...where do you think you are going to STORE enough to put on the vendors?... You only get stuff when you order it. If I dont need any more Swoops, I wont commision them, and their storage will not be an issue. Also, higher Merchant skills was supposed to mean better storage. I still think the suggestions they had for the item cap was WAY too low, but the fact remains that if you had higher skills, you could list more.
...one of the driving factors for many crafters is being able to interact with customers. The running a small shop part is important to them as actually creating the items... Then it seems like they might be a Merchant.... Really, this does not mean crafters can no longer interact with customers...it simply means they no longer need to mass produce stuff and manage the pricing and listing of all that stuff. Custom work, by all accounts, is the bread and butter of most crafting professions. Custom work can not be done my a standard Merchant (not without significant delays). So your neighborhood Armorsmith makes suits of custom armor, by hand, for people who order it, but they sell, say, 20 suits of Ubese to the local Merchant each week too. Those can all be done in factories, and leaves the Crafter with more time to interact with their customers, and play other aspects of the game.
...You have to stop thinking that having a monopoly on selling is the defining feature of the merchant class... I cant speak for anyone else, but I never intended to have a "monopoly" on selling things.....but I DO want to have a monopoly on the advantages granted to me as a Merchant. AKA advanced vendors types, advertising, etc.... Once again - Is if fair for Smugglers to have a monopoly on Slicing? That is a skill granted to them through skill point expenditure...and they lose it if they drop the boxes.
...While vendors may indeed be a tool - it's far from the most important one that could be given to merchants that retain skill. There are a TON of tools that merchants need to give them an edge - and those can absolutely be revoked if skill is given up. There are ALREADY benefits that are given up when the skill is dropped... I refer you to your Artisan SKill tree....as I stated just above, Artisans do indeed get a vendor, and so DO have access to this tool....the problem is in them getting more vendors than was designed and being able to enjoy other Merchant "only" perks like advertising. I agree that we need more tools....better vendor interface, larger factory crate stacks, etc. The only "benefits" I know of that you lose when dropping Merchant are Tents and the pitiful Vendor/Bazaar and Maint reductions given in the Efficiency tree. Everything else you get to keep...and frankly, it ought to be the exact opposite IMHO. Keep the maint and Bazaar reductions and lose the vendors and advertising.
...will not mean you can sit on your laurels and rake in cash, which frankly - is what most posts of this nature strike me as requesting... I dont see how operating as a Merchant is sitting on your laurels. It takes time and energy to find and commision products. If you dont have anything to sell, you aren't really a Merchant, are you? It takes lots and LOTS of credits to aquire stock. Have you ever asked how many dollars it takes to fill up a grocery store, or a Wal*Mart? That money all comes out of your pocket. After you get the suppliers, you have to make a deal that will be profitable to you and them...this negotiating will directly affect your financial success. Then you have maintenance stuff...like shopping around to see what other stuff is selling for...buying cheap stuff you find in little shops to resell....discovering new crafters or a new outlet for your wares....the list goes on.
...What tools can be added in the advertising line however would be top of my list of needed things for merchants as a class. It's not whether you have something up for sale - it's whether folks can find you to buy it. This is a natural edge - and probably the ONLY edge that's needed to insure that merchant as a class is viable... So I have a question....are you assuming people will be able to get the benefits of these new advetising abilities without maintaining the skill boxes that granted them? Are you thinking it will work just like it does now with these new abilities? And I wonder if you shoudl indeed call this a "class" since you seem in favor of giving away all the benefits of the class to people who have only briefly visited it?
...merchant was put in as a skillpoint sink so folks couldn't or wouldn't dabble in too many crafting professions... I dont think so, because I could still get that 3rd crafting prof....all I'd need to do is find someone willing to re-sell stuff. Not too hard if you are a quality craftperson.
...So, you are looking at a class that was designed to do something it doesn't ... I disagree. I think the profession was implemented exactly how the Devs *wanted* it to be played, but we found out we can get, in essence, free skill points by dropping the profession after raping it of all useful advantages.
There is fairly easy fies for these problems...all of which have been posted over and over on these forums. Honestly, it doesn't matter to me what road the Devs take. Leave it as is and I will keep only the Merchant skills I use regulary (namely Eff 4 and Hiring 4) and only get back the others when I need to register a new vendor or set up a new vendor. Change it so that only Merchants can benefit from Merchant advantages, and I will get Adv3 and Management 3 and EFF 4, and sacrifice some skill points elsewhere. Or they can blend Merchant into Artisan, I would just like to hear from the Devs what they think.....is this working as intended or not?