Merchant Archive
Thread: Grandfather Merchant Vendors
I can understand wanting to make the Merchant class more viable, but it's going to hinder alot of people, and the economy like you wouldn't believe if all the vendors that are in place are removed, or disabled. They have to atleast grandfather in the vendors that are currently out there, to give players time to get back up to the Merchant level they are. Make it so they can still sell what's on their vendor, but can't put anything new until they get their level up.
If I have 500 items on my vendor, what do I do with them? I can only sell 25 on the bazaar. I only have room in my house for 150, and they only would stay in the stock room for a week.
As a Tailor I don't make much money as it is. The Bazaar prices are to low for most people's goods. Frankly there isn't going to be enough Merchants in the game to handle the demand if only Merchants can have vendors.
In the city I run, we have 3 shops with 8 vendors in each. We have a VERY high turn over. I sell about 50 items a day. As a Merchant, do you really want to spend your entire time just listing things to sell. Your going to run out of space on vendors even quicker. Even at Master level for Merchant, I know I have more then 500 items on my vendors already. And you want Merchants to handle goods for more then one person. Because they are going to have to, if they are the only ones that can have vendors.
They are also losing a major money sink in the game. And people will find a way around having to go through Merchants.
Basically it comes down to there, won't be enough merchants to handle what has currently been set up.
Anneke Rose (Mayor of Sanctuary)
EmperoressPalpatine wrote:
From what I read, disabling means not being to sell what's on the vendor either. Which means things go into the stockroom. If not in immediatelly but 30 days when you haven't sold things. Which gives you 7 days before they disappear.So what's the solution for loss of items?
And guess what. If you allow people to sell what's on their vendors when it's disabled you haven't still haven't solved your problem. People will get Merchant, drop a vendor, stock it up as much as possiable, and drop the skill. Only to pick it up again when their vendor is empty.
Your not fixing the issue of the playability of the class.
Anneke
That fix isn't about the playability of the class it is about preventing people from playing the merchant profession without actually using the skill points on merchant.
There is a whole list of other issues we have asked to be resloved about how vendors work and features we would like to see. And that is just in the top 5. There are numerous proposals for functionality changes some easy and some not.
I agree that allowing you to sell using your disabled vendor isn't acceptable. There will be item loss if you ignore the emails telling you that your items were unsuccessful and don't go and get them from the stock room, but that isn't a new risk that was always possible. That still gives you 30+ days to go and get your merchant skills back or have a firesale on the bazaar or sell your merchandise to a merchant for resale.
Will this change affect the economy? Yes but bloating the number of vendors available compared to the number of people who actually have the skills to operate those vendors affects the economy as well.
In another post you suggested that merchants were essentially trying to steal the hard work of artisans. This is a very interesting position. It isn't true of course. Merchants provide a service. They provide 24 hour a day sales with marketing tools like adbarking and global advertising and merchant tents. An artisan is free to sell their own merchandise. They need only get a bulky vendor at Business III to do so. They can sell on the bazaar or on the street corner without expending any skill points. You don 't have to have a merchant to be successful, but it can make thing easier on you and if you chose that route you pay for those services.. either in credits..or skill points..take your pick. For my money credits are easier to come by than skill points...unless of course the skill points are devaluled by allowing people to use skills they gave up to get other skills.
EmperoressPalpatine wrote:
From what I read, disabling means not being to sell what's on the vendor either. Which means things go into the stockroom. If not in immediatelly but 30 days when you haven't sold things. Which gives you 7 days before they disappear.So what's the solution for loss of items?
If you can't figure out what to do with your excess items in 37 days you wouldn't make much of a merchant anyway, luv.
DragonFire7 wrote:
I really don't understand why peoplem feel entitled to their vendors that they have via exploiting. I don't drop rifleman and expect to be able to use a T21 when I go hunting its the samething. Honestly I hope they remove the vendors without warning so these exploiters get what they deserve
I have to disagree. While I think that vendors should not be maintained beyond ones merchant skills, simply deleting all the items without noticeis not productive and will only serve to drive away players.
DragonFire7 wrote:
I really don't understand why peoplem feel entitled to their vendors that they have via exploiting. I don't drop rifleman and expect to be able to use a T21 when I go hunting its the samething. Honestly I hope they remove the vendors without warning so these exploiters get what they deserve
I agree in principle but 2 things make me change my opinion.
1) CSRs do not consider this an exploit so noone is banned. If it is not an exploit then it would be considered random deletion of items.
2) The devs have known about this issue since launch and probably in beta. But it has taken them 6 months and now will only change because they are having database issues. The devs clearly don't see this as a change in a the game, but as a possible help to the database issue.
The devs knowing about it for 6+ months and doing nothing, to me means they don't care. In which case they expect people to do this.
2) The devs have known about this issue since launch and probably in beta. But it has taken them 6 months and now will only change because they are having database issues. The devs clearly don't see this as a change in a the game, but as a possible help to the database issue.
The devs knowing about it for 6+ months and doing nothing, to me means they don't care. In which case they expect people to do this.
-Exactly my point. It's not a bug or exploit that the Devs have ever said anything about. No one will give us proof that it's a bug but the merchants want us to believe that it is. They refuse to realize how much removing of the vendors will hender the economy of the game. The devs need to limit the amount of items, to handle the database issues, (and delete things belonging to dead/deleted character), instead of trying to kill the economy.
Anneke Rose
This is true - just because something is a bug doesn't mean it's a priority.
For example: the ability to give inter-species hairdos had been around since beta. It was a source of contention for Image Designers - the general consensus is that none of us would do it because we believed it to be an exploit. It happened that people got interspecies hairdos, but it was extremely rare.
Enter hologrinders. Suddenly everyone is grinding image design, trying out coding, and generally trying to push the envelope. Every wookiee has an afro, every twi'lek has a bob. Then when it became a huge issue, it was prioritized and fixed in a hotfix no less! Something that didn't even affect "gameplay". At that time people argued the following:
This has existed since beta
+ the devs know about it
+ nobody has been banned for it
+ people have been relying on it for months when choosing race in character creation
= it's not a bug, but even if it is, the devs shouldn't take it away because that's not fair.
But the devs removed it anyway, and called it unintentional. Sometimes something has to reach critical mass to gain attention.
What I want everyone to take away from this anecdote is the following
-
Just because the devs know about a game feature/bug and haven't acted on something (yet) doesn't mean that their silence legitimizes the bug/feature in question -
The fact that we rely upon it means virtually nothing, if it's an unintended bug -
Just because the devs will not ban you for doing something, doesn't mean they want you to be able to do it.
Another note: stop telling active merchants not to lobby for what we want. It's our prerogative to tell the devs what we want, and to aggressively lobby for changes that will be best for our class. It's the devs' job to tell us whether it's reasonable to ask for, based on balance issues.
I have to agree. There are a number of known issues that the devs haven't addressed. That doesnt' mean they don't need to..or that they don't plan to, just that they haven't. Much like the image designer issue with hairdos the merchant vendor issue was largely a non issue..until scores of people started flooding the merchant forums asking us to validate their intent to surrender their skills without loss of vendors. Those questions have stopped..because it is now common knowledge that you don't have to maintain the skills. That means the practice has reached epidemic proportions which has a lot more to do with why they might be taking action on it now than anything that anyone in this forum has ever said.
I know on my server if this is enacted that will push just that many more crafters out of the game out of sheer frustration. No one is going to trust their goods to strangers no matter how much you want to make it so. Furthermore, there are not enough Master Merchants around by far to pick up all the vendor slack at 6 vendors and given these changes, there will be even less since almost no one wants to play this game simply to babysit vendors every day.
"Furthermore, there are not enough Master Merchants around by far to pick up all the vendor slack at 6 vendors and given these changes, there will be even less since almost no one wants to play this game simply to babysit vendors every day."
If nobody likes to babysit their vendors then why do all of you exploiters want free vendors?
In any case, since many of you don't bother to actually read what the game says, its Place, not Use, not Maintain.