Merchant Archive

#1 reason for elite artisan burnout = hundred of emails / thousands of tells daily

Depending on the elite profession, approximately 50-75% of this communication is essentially equivalent to "Do you have any blah on your vendor?" along with either "What are the stats?" or "What does it do/Who can use it?". Lastly, the plain and simple "I don't want to buy a ticket and run all the way to your shop for nothing, so that's why I'm asking".

A few elite artisans on Scylla talked this over and we feel that the best place for our solution to be implemented is in the Merchant profession. So I'm bringing it here in the hopes that we can get some development in this area.

Essentially the solution would work as follows, either Master Merchant or Merchants with Advertising IV would have the ability to link their vendor to the galactic bazaar. There by allowing any player to browse player vendors make informed purchases and then travel to the vendor for pickup sans griping to the elite artisans. This is essentially implemented alreadyin that I can browse the bazaar for the entire galaxy, make the purchase, and then travel for pickup.

If we can eliminate the need for all the useless communication that results in elite artisan burnout, we can help prevent the 3 weaponsmiths, 2 architects, armorsmith, and droid engineer that might retire every week.

Thoughts suggestions?

Thats the way I thought it worked when I started

I would like to see this

I'm creating a new character on my roommate's account who will be Merchant in order to sell my medecines, so i've been dabbling in the forum lately.

This is a great idea. As it stands, the entire distribution side of the game as a whole is...lacking.

/sign

This was in beta. Bring it back.

@ Draznar

Did not know this was in beta. Very interesting. I'm curious as to the arguments/reasonings that went into taking it out? Anyone know?

Bring it back indeed!

Yes this was in beta. No, there was never an official response as to why it was removed.

My guess? The database server takes an incredibly huge hit everytime a player loads up the bazaar with item tags on it spread across the whole galaxy.

I believe it was removed due to people buying things on the bazaar, which were on private vendors. when trying to retrieve their items, they found the house with the vendor locked.

This is a moot point now that vendors cannot be in private buildings anymore.

Actually the BACKGROUND for removing the ability to have private houses with vendors is just this - apparently some items somehow got listed on the bazaar :

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=merchant&message.id=4261&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

It can still be a problem if the linked vendor is in a house with a 10,000 entry fee.

I can see the scam now ... armor and weapons that list for 50% normal ... but to get in the house to pick up costs 50,000 credits

But yeah ... I remember this in beta and it was nice but too many gried issues and the database has to take a nasty hit with this in operation

should be a skill available to master merchants, people who made a purchase on the vnedor should be able to bypass any entry fee until they retrive their item. and it wouldn't cause db load because the bazaar window only lists 25 items at a time, and there is no sorting between pages so each time you click next it's a new query anyway.

Juht,

While I feel you pain here, I also see it as a two edge sword. Example take Large Harvestors: I didn't know the specs. I searched the weband found4 different specs for a large mineral harvestor. The question becomes then is it more efficient. I dont know so I have to ask. I do a search for any title with architech. I send tells out to try and get the stats and the prices to see if I want one. I know that I am doing just a few tells but multiply that but 500 that begins to get annoying.

I dont see this going away even if they fix merchants since I cant get the stats on a deed. Just posting on this board will generate a few email and tells in game if you include in your signiture master builder of Item X. I think what is realy needed is that Vendors need to be moved to merchant line That way Merchants and crafters work together and making the merchant a needed class as well as shieldingcrafters form TONS of tells (unless they put thier specialties in their signatures )

Lol Grr'Tak I'm gunna go to your shop and pester you for this! JK

In all honesty, I didn't think about the privacy thing, and yes that's resolved... the entry fee though. Good point. But its discussion like this that really brings out the flaws in an idea. I still think the idea is sound, we just need to figure out all the possible scams, to make this a working model. So far, Vendors would have to be accessible to people sans privacy and entry fees.

And Grr'Tak, I enjoy explaining my craft to people, in fact, I'd do more of it if we could reduce the kind of communication I described above. But good point!

Ok I think we should discuss asimilar possible solution, as there may be other reasons why this feature was removed during beta.

I still think the ability should be earned as Master Merchant or Advertising IV and parallel the world map waypoint ability. Basically have a virtual vendor interface (like world wide web) where players could browse items on the merchant's vendor directly, check stock, stats, etc... This interface could be available through the Holocron or somewhere related. Although when George was writing Star Wars the Internet's closest ancestor was ARPANET, which might be why R2-D2 had to carry a simple hologram message all the way to Ben Kenobi on Tatooine. But he later (or earlier? lol)incorporates interplanetary communication in Episode I and II, so my guess is that Star Wars was never intended to be technologically limited. That being said and given the current state of SWG, an "Internet" of sorts isn't really out of line.

So... "Online" Vendors... for Master Merchants or Advertising IV... Thoughts? Interesting ways to implement this interface (e.g. Holocron)?

>So... "Online" Vendors... for Master Merchants or Advertising IV... Thoughts? Interesting ways >toimplementthis interface (e.g. Holocron)?

Would it be too confusing to just add an option to 'view stock' in addition to 'saving waypoints' via the planetary map to access the vendor itself in a read-only fashion? So to actually purchase you'd have to visit the vendor.