Merchant Archive
Thread: Are Merchants Resellers or Shop Keepers?
It sounds like alot of people believe that 'Merchant' means Reseller of goods. I always saw Merchant to be a Shop Keeper in the game. They don't have any bonuses for buying and selling goods. They only have 'skills' that help to improve the look of a shop. To get more buisness to a shop. Yes they can list things on a bazaar for less, but there is nothing that lets the Merchants buy in bulk at a discount or anything that gives you any idea that your a reseller. Sorry but Merchants are just shop keepers.
Merchant: This Elite Profession combines skills from the venue and vendor management disciplines. A player in this profession can operate vendors and run player-venues.
No where does it say that they are meant to be resellers. Feel free to discuss...
Anneke Rose
Now here's an interesting topic. I considered your other threads trolling, but this is a good one. I can see your argument here.
Herein lies the problem. There are no mechanics for being a reseller (not to mention not having many abilities in the Merchant profession at all) but if they didn't intend merchants to be resellers and only to be shopkeepers for their own wares, then why did they create an entire profession for it rather than putting it all in Business? A merchant could sell all of their own stuff off a robo bartender. Other than advertising on the map, you really wouldn't lose much by never being a merchant. The addition of additional vendors for merchants to me appears that they wanted merchants to have multiple locations around the galaxy. What good does 6 vendors in the same place do for you. Assuming no item cap on vendors, you could sell everything on one vendor.
Perhaps Merchant was created simply to create a Skill Point sink for crafters, so a crafter couldn't master 3 actual crafting professions?
Not being able to read the devs minds and the absolute lack of communication doesn't give us much hope in figuring these things out.
I figured they had multiple vendors so they could have multiple shops. Again not to be resellers. I personally use Vendors as NPCs. They don't sell anything, they just flesh out the area.
Merchant is more a class I thought for the big time crafter who has so many items they need to have a way to list them all themselves. Again, not a reseller.
Anneke Rose
Thre is nothing that says they have to be resellers. There isn't anything that says they can't be either. And while the offers screen is woefully inadequte it is designed for reselling merchandise.
There is nothing keeping Elite crafters (or even just Novice Artisans) from running their shop and doing everything for themselves. To do so they are required to spend skill points to do so. That is fair. If you want to be independant you have to give up other activities you simply won't have time to pursure because of your desire to run your own business and make all the widgets too.
If you want to make items and pursue a combat career or another crafting profession you are going to have to give up some control over the selling of those items. This is where a reseller comes in.
A merchant is a SELLER of good. Whether that is his/her own goods or someone else’s is up to the individual merchant.
I am a weaponsmith. I build weapons. I sell my own weapons. I have a shop.However, Iam also a master merchant.
At my shop, in addition to my weapons,I also sell stimpacks, spice, fishing poles, bait, camp kits and pet food. Basically a one-stop shop for adventure supplies.
So I am a shopkeeper. I sell my own weapons. But I also resell stims, spice, camp kits and bait.
This is the flexibility that the game allows.
But this addition would never be worth a complete own character class. Some players tend to choose a main class and focus it, regardless of any other professions they might have. A carbineer can easily be an artisan as well, but actually use his artisan part only a few times for own use i.e.
This is where reselling comes in - for those players that chose Merchant to be their main class. These people would not have much to do, if they were stuck to selling their own goods. They have none. Instead their only way is to resell things to earn some money - either on request by a customer or to earn money on their own.
On the other hand, if merchants ran player-venues instead of just keeping their shops (to sell whatever), there would not be much difference in what they are intended to do compared to a reseller - maintaining THEIR vendors on a shopping center where OTHER players sell their goods. This is resale.
Things are only as hard as you want them to be, seriously. If you want to be a re-seller, there's a bigger involvement in the SOCIAL aspect, which I think a lot of players seem to miss. 'What good is being a merchant if I can't buy anything?' Simple, buy WHOLESALE from other players.
While not every armorsmith, weaponsmith, chef, doctor, etc, may want to enter into a business deal like this, it is possible to form a relationship with real crafters to buy bulk goods and resell them at a standard markup. This is especially advantageous to crafters that don't have merchant skills, but want large volume of sales. Even crafters with some merchant skills for local vendors can work out wholesale deals with off-planet merchants for reselling. This ultimately what the master level merchants were designed to do.
For me, the only problem is that all business deals would have to be on good faith, or agreements would have to be made to ensure one side doesn't screw the other ones. There's no courts to help arbitrate disagreements. This isn't so much a problem, though, as an inconvienience. It just makes you choose carefully who you do business with.
To be honest, I've been the first type of merchant for the longest time, a shopkeeper selling the goods my other account has been making, but I'm starting to dabble in reselling. I tell you, if you can get some good deals worked out, it's actually much easier to manage. The only thing is that you have to deal with reliable people, or be constantly working out deals of some sort. I like that though, so I'm starting to do it more.
As for the merchant class itself, I'm perfectly happy with a template of 3/4/0/4 right now though. They need to make the Hiring Tree and Master Merchant mean more than it is right now. I'm guessing they will probably tie the upcoming vendor item limits to that tree, which sucks in the sense that I have to get it to increase my vendor capacities, but it justifies getting it past a purely aesthetic appeal.
There's nothing wrong with that at all. For improvements to our class, all we really need are more tools to make playing the class, in either form, easier. Oh, and bugs fixed, of course. =)
EmperoressPalpatine wrote:
Sounds like that people aggree that Merchants are Shop Keepers. Yes you can resell goods, but so can any other class. Right now the problem is other classes are able to run shops, something that the Merchant tree should have by it's self. However running of such shops should not interfere with the established economy.
Anneke Rose
Assuming that is true. How do you reduce the items availble on vendors without affecting the economy?
Zalmun wrote:
The thing I'm always surprised to hear is that people think that it's hard to be a re-seller, and that the lack of in-game tools restricts this practice.
Things are only as hard as you want them to be, seriously. If you want to be a re-seller, there's a bigger involvement in the SOCIAL aspect, which I think a lot of players seem to miss. 'What good is being a merchant if I can't buy anything?' Simple, buy WHOLESALE from other players.
While not every armorsmith, weaponsmith, chef, doctor, etc, may want to enter into a business deal like this, it is possible to form a relationship with real crafters to buy bulk goods and resell them at a standard markup. This is especially advantageous to crafters that don't have merchant skills, but want large volume of sales. Even crafters with some merchant skills for local vendors can work out wholesale deals with off-planet merchants for reselling. This ultimately what the master level merchants were designed to do.
For me, the only problem is that all business deals would have to be on good faith, or agreements would have to be made to ensure one side doesn't screw the other ones. There's no courts to help arbitrate disagreements. This isn't so much a problem, though, as an inconvienience. It just makes you choose carefully who you do business with.
Your last 2 paragraphs point out 2 flaws in the system as to why the game mechanics aren't there. The purchases either have to be in good faith or the merchant has to buy everything up front. Neither of these are good system and therefore is a bad game mechanic. The next is the ability for the crafters to get you there products. The offer screen is far from a perfect system. 25 items limits crafters to basically crates. This takes out architects, tailors, armorsmiths from reselling. Weaponsmiths can easily. Docs maybe because of the ability to split crates. But putting massive amounts of stims for sale on a reseller isn't possible.
I might want to make 150 crates of stim packs. I don't want to have to restock the reseller everytime they run out if they are just sitting in my house as crates of stims take a while to make. I'd rather they list all 150 at once and tell me when it goes to to 50 or so and I make some more. But then they have to buy all 150 at once. How many merchants are going to front 10-40 million credits?
A wholesaler is a lot different than a regular merchant. A wholesaler is one that only sells to other merchants. That option is not possible in this game. Wholesalers deal with massive amount of inventory, and there is no ingame mechanism that can distribute that except for having their own vendor which we have already ruled out, otherwise they wouldn't be a wholesaler.
I produce a lot. I have two accounts, one of which is a combat class and the other of which is a crafter. I run, in parallel, 12 factories. It's trivial for me to produce 1,000 crates a day. Literally, my factories are operational very nearly 24/7.
My products are expendables, and in high demand. My tracking droids leave my vendor usually less than an hour after I put them up. The Chef foods go almost as fast. The massive stock of powerups goes slower, perhaps a few days. Vehicles usually sell within a day or two. Crates of Master Artisan item also vanish quickly. I could probably add 2 more factories and still not be able to keep up with demand.
Obviously, my production doesn't stay on the vendors for long, and a lot of it is bought by merchants and shipped elsewhere, but I simply could not afford to have the 25-item offer limit crimp my distribution like that. Even warehousing isn't probably going to work, because you'd need about 20 lots worth of warehouses to actually hold a major day's production for me. And delivering to all of those warehouses... forget it.
I hate the idea of warehouses, because it'd be too easy to rip me off, and I'd have no recourse. I don't trust anyone not to walk off with the million or more credits of production investment which would go through the place daily. The only feasible mechanisms for me must ensure payment on delivery.
The sole two mechanisms by which I can do that are by having a vendor myself or selling to their vendor. Selling to their vendor has significant liabilities - first, I have to assume all of the costs of transporting it to their facility. Second, I can only offer 25 items TOTAL, across the whole galaxy, at any given time. That simply is a huge issue for me - they need to be there to immediately accept the offer or else my distribution chain comes to a screeching halt.
So that leaves having my own vendor. And unless SOE does something to permit industrial-scale production and wholesaling, they're going to end up shooting the economy in the face...
Im a Merchant. Its my only Elite Profession.
I used to be a Droid Engineer but i dropped it because it took me a month to get 1 skill level and i hate grinding. So i made Merchant my thing. Selling resources mainly, but not exclusively.
I also offer a service to anyone. Basically i find whatpeople need. Almost anything (Dont ask me for Krayt Tissue or Holicrons).
I developed good relationships with several elite crafters. For example, I would give one Droid Engineer all my business. For that he gave me a good discount. That discount allows me to resell at a normal and competitive price, and still make a profit. I promise all my suppliers i will not undercut their own prices.
I also regularly cruise merchants who advertise on the map looking for bargains to resell.
I became a one stop shop. If i dont have what a customer wanted i find it for them and normally have it within a couple of days. I work on a 20% profit on items i resell.
I have 2 shops, one in a Player city on Dant, and one near Kor Vella. I also have a bar-maid vendor in the city Cantina, and she sellsLOTS of beer and snacks. I have3 vendors in my own buildings in the same uniform, and the 4th is the barmaid, in a skimpy dancers outfit cos thats whatpeople wanted.
Of course i sell vehicles and electronic stuff and crafting tools etc. that i make. But i am a reseller too, and good at it.
I dont need a skill tree for it ... the skill is my own real-life skill in dealing with people, and a dedication to good customer service.
Sounds like that people aggree that Merchants are Shop Keepers. Yes you can resell goods, but so can any other class. Right now the problem is other classes are able to run shops, something that the Merchant tree should have by it's self. However running of such shops should not interfere with the established economy.
Anneke Rose