Merchant Archive
Thread: Focus Thread: Galaxy-Wide Vendor Search
Stormwatch
Fri Feb 11, 2005 9:11 pm
#118
Ummm, ok when did the technology become available to transfer an item or many to a customer at the other end of the galaxy??? The technology that could do this even goes beyond an Star brand named scifi institution.
This will in effect kill off alot of aspects of SWG which isn't good as the general SWG member has other concerns which are being failed to be addressed. It'll make anyone that plays SWG lazy, well gees I can just stay on Dath or wherever I am and get it auto delivered and won't have to visit anywhere, which will cause camping in the extreme. In addition this will squeeze the life out of an already struggling Player City base, with the addition of the negative changes made to the Poli profession.
So, as it goes in a popular Country song, SOE "what were you thinking???""
This is not a good idea in the least and in the most a ludicrous idea.
Poldano
Fri Feb 11, 2005 9:16 pm
#119
The latest word from Tiggs is that auto-delivery is being removed. I think it can work but only if some kind of cost related to value and distance is added. I also think it would be highly cool for auto-delivered items to run the risk of loss to piracy (mwahaha) and be recycled as loot.
Comments?
Saego & Ambrus
Wanderhome
Seilyn_Nox
Fri Feb 11, 2005 9:40 pm
#120
Anything beyond this being a basic, galaxy-wide item search function onlyhas the potential to negatively effect how the game is played and enjoyed by a large portion of the merchant/crafter community.
I'm just really, really worried about what I would do to keep the game fun for me. I know most ofthe people I play withthink I'm nuts for even enjoying crafting and merchant the way I do - but it's the truth. I love doing it. Without that element of having a shop and keeping my customers happy and loyal, and building up a business entity in game (not just constantly churning out mass merchandise and counting my creds), there's not that much to keep me interested. I don't really care for combat or earning badges or being a Jedi. Simply stocking vendors to sell off some remote terminal endlessly - not to mention having to constantly monitor market prices galaxy-wide and modify pricing as needed - and then still do the same old "fun" stuff like restocking vendors when sales expire... just after a while I see that grinding on me to the point of just not wanting to play. Whereas right now, the fun elements of shopkeeping outweigh the boring elements of what I do.
Mor-Dan
Fri Feb 11, 2005 9:43 pm
#121
i agree that people should still have to travel to pick things up, but i have been in favor of a searching system that includes player vendors since october 03, and i AM a merchant. i hate walking into 800 shops looking for something and not finding it. this will eliminatesome of the spammers as well, and the biggest problem right now is that aside from word of mouth spamming is the most effective advertising tool.
the advertising tree has very little to do with advertising, and "world map adv" has outlived its usefulness. one of the few remaining time sinks is "shopping". SOE is trying to elimiate non story or non combat time time sinks because the majority of the player base doesn't like them.
the short, RP merchants will hate this. people just trying to sell their wares will love it because people can shop their stuff from anywhere.
the advertising tree has very little to do with advertising, and "world map adv" has outlived its usefulness. one of the few remaining time sinks is "shopping". SOE is trying to elimiate non story or non combat time time sinks because the majority of the player base doesn't like them.
the short, RP merchants will hate this. people just trying to sell their wares will love it because people can shop their stuff from anywhere.
Bhasayate
Fri Feb 11, 2005 9:43 pm
#122
Poldano wrote:The latest word from Tiggs is that auto-delivery is being removed. I think it can work but only if some kind of cost related to value and distance is added. I also think it would be highly cool for auto-delivered items to run the risk of loss to piracy (mwahaha) and be recycled as loot.Comments?Saego & AmbrusWanderhome
if they don't, they SWG will be fubar.
Phaelyn
Fri Feb 11, 2005 9:50 pm
#123
Mor-Dan wrote:
i agree that people should still have to travel to pick things up, but i have been in favor of a searching system that includes player vendors since october 03, and i AM a merchant. i hate walking into 800 shops looking for something and not finding it. this will eliminatesome of the spammers as well, and the biggest problem right now is that aside from word of mouth spamming is the most effective advertising tool.
I have no problem with a player using my Vendor as an interface to seek out other people's goods - That is a drastic need to eliminate needless travel. But to buy from my terminal as well is a slap in the face.
Imagine yourself as a Pizza Delivery place. Inside your store, you offer free Internet access. Would you really like it if someone came into your shop, ordered a pizza from someone else, and left? Or even worse, had it delivered to your store? This is what is being proposed - People will enter my place of business, and buy from my competition.
the advertising tree has very little to do with advertising, and "world map adv" has outlived its usefulness. one of the few remaining time sinks is "shopping". SOE is trying to elimiate non story or non combat time time sinks because the majority of the player base doesn't like them.
the short, RP merchants will hate this. people just trying to sell their wares will love it because people can shop their stuff from anywhere.
No offense, but come back to your post after this is implemented, and tell me if you still like it when you have constant traffic into your shop - And nobody ever buys a thing because they found someone else with a lower price, and merely used your shop as their personal Internet feed.
Messiah78
Fri Feb 11, 2005 10:04 pm
#124
Barker droid ? What for ? People will browse bazaar outside starport.
Decorating your shop and wait there to give advice to customer who needs it ? What for ? Your shop will just be a storage, the back-end of the bazaar being the front-end. Just place an empty small house.
Placing several vendors ? What for ? They cost maintenance and having one or several, people will see their contents through the bazaar. Just place one. Not even needed to get hiring IV to dress it and so it will just become an "item retrieval terminal".
With such a change only 2 kinds of crafters will sell : a) The 'uber crafters' (12 points, those having a stock of really uber resources collected over 6 months) b) The ones selling the cheapest for quality items. Where does that place a) not yet master crafters b) average to good crafters c) people not having millions units of resources in stock ?
Mystyrys
Fri Feb 11, 2005 10:15 pm
#125
My knee-jerk reaction upon first reading about this Galaxy-wide vendor search proposal was shock, panic, anger and disappointment. Walked away to cool off and have a think.
Removal of auto-delivery = good. But only if they alter other aspects too.
For one, this will turn every vendor with the search feature turned on into a global bazaar terminal. On the surface that looks good. But not to a merchant/crafter. And if they stop and think about it, not to the customer either.
Now not only would we crafters/merchants be competing with all the looted and crafted items on NPC city bazaars, but with the price capped at 6k, now we would also be competing with every other vendor of like goods, with NO price caps. And all of that buried in thousands upon thousands of other items listed for sale on every bazaar on every planet and every vendor that is opted-in to the galaxy search. What of merchants who don't opt-in? Do they essentially cut themselves out of the global market and become merely a local vendor? Only time will tell how all that will affect merchants and customers.
Do I, as a crafter, merchant, mall owner, mayor, like the idea of having visitors in our town, our mall, our vendors, buying items they find somewhere else, but via our vendors? No, I don't like that. Free advertising for the competition. But don't customers already do that to a degree? They browse the bazaar and buy from remote locations and go fetch it. And while there, they may shop some more. They stop by one shop in town, then may stop in and buy from others. They comparison shop. They price check. They complete sets of items by buying a little here and a little there. Impulse shopping.
So how is that any different? It's different because as it is now, the customer has to decide if what you have is what they wanted, at a price they are willing to pay, or if they want to keep on looking. With the galaxy-wide system, they can keep looking from your vendor, and then buy it cheaper somewhere else. Amaster crafterwith Business 3 would have the same selling power as a master merchant. What will set the master merchant apart?
But as a customer, do you really want to have to slog through a bazillion more listings of whatever it is you are shopping for than you already do now? A better item search feature would be needed. The ability to search for just pistols that start with the letter T for instance. Or just pants or just vehicles or just art. The categories are too broad and encompassing as they are now.
The average shopper isn't out bargain hunting so much as just hunting. They tend to buy theitem as soon as they finally find it. No matter what it's price is. Or where they have to go to get it. They want it, you have it, they buy it. Price usually isn't what mattered, that you had it in stock did. The merchants that reliably have what the customer wants are the ones that get the repeat business and loyal customers. Price isn't as important as having the item in stock. And personal customer service also keeps them coming back.
However, to protect the customer from getting scammed, I do think they need to remove the Access Fees on structures. No customer should arrive at the vendor location only to find out they have to pay a large fee just to get in the door to retrieve their purchase. Either remove it, or give all remote purchasers a "free pass key" to enter that vendor location for purchase retrieval.
Removing the prices and the ability to buy the item from the global listings would just frustrate customers I think. But if the listings showed Item A was in stock at locations B, C and D, at least the customer didn't have to spend hours in frustrated searching of empty vendors or ones that didn't have that certain item in stock.
I imagine the system will get some tweaks, and it's something we'll have to adjust to. As we did house item limits, vendor item limits, and all the other nerfs and fixes to the game that most thought painful.
MeSleep
Fri Feb 11, 2005 10:17 pm
#126
I like the idea of remote searching, but to purchase and retrieve the item remotely seems a bit much. The advertising branch would be useless - unless it replaces the global registration.
As a consumer, all I really care about is finding the item I want.The most frustrating part of shopping is finding a shop that has what I want in stock- give me a waypoint to the store and I'll go to the shop and purchase it myself. I don't need to know the price, and I don't need to purchase it remotely. All I need is a waypoint to the shop that is stocking biomods, weapon powerups, or whatever else I'm looking for.
PsionicHawk
Fri Feb 11, 2005 10:43 pm
#127
This entire affair leavesme with asour taste and a bad feeling.
I also feel that Test Center isn't a valid testing place. The economy there is completly differant then live servers. I'm not saying it's entirely bad, but there is a merchant profession for a reason. This isn't WoW and it almost seems to make a merchantobsolete.
/shrugg
We shall see.
Elyssa
Fri Feb 11, 2005 10:44 pm
#128
Here's a testament to the power of "impulse buying"
As I sit here in the fog so I can hide from the Sith Shadows, I've been watching the emails roll in from a couple of people spending money in my store.
#1 looks like he might have come to buy a vehicle since that was his first purchase.
#2 looks like he was after some furniture and found a few of the looted schematics I had assembled.
Over the next 8 minutes (according to the email timestamps), they both proceeded to buy a mixture of furniture and random looted things.
#1 looks like he might be gathering for a decorating project.
#2 has bought some things that I was honestly beginning to think would sit on my vendor for all eternity.
THEN they both found the paintings vendor and had a field day.
The emails were rolling in so fast that I was starting to think they were the "unsuccessful" notifications.
That was 25 sales in 8 minutes. Nothing less than 1k, many things in excess of 10k.
With the global search system as proposed, the only sale I'd have likely seen from both of those people was the first one. Two sales for a total of 66k.
I'm fairly certain that their total purchases were easily equal to three times that amount.
I got all that money for no other reason than the fact that they were in my store to see what I had for sale.
Mystyrys
Fri Feb 11, 2005 10:54 pm
#129
Elyssa wrote:
Here's a testament to the power of "impulse buying"
...............
With the global search system as proposed, the only sale I'd have likely seen from both of those people was the first one. Two sales for a total of 66k.
I'm fairly certain that their total purchases were easily equal to three times that amount.
I got all that money for no other reason than the fact that they were in my store to see what I had for sale.
Exactly Elyssa!
I have always gotten most of my sales from impulse shoppers. They stop in to buy something from the armor vendor, or the chef, or maybe even a shirt or backpack. Then they see I have other stuff. Lots of other stuff. Stuff they didn't even know they wanted. They buy it. Why? Because it's there. They didn't have to go looking. They didn't even know they were looking. Impulses. Gotta love 'em.
The only way you get those kinds of sales is if you can get them in the door.
Elyssa
Fri Feb 11, 2005 11:02 pm
#130
And that doesn't even include any sales that my associates might have made while these two people were in my store.
It *is* my store and I have the dominant vendor presence there, but I mostly deal in just furniture.
In fact, I don't know that they didn't end up in my store because they were looking for something that was on one of the other vendors in the building and then wandered over to mine.
The only thing I know for sure is that they bought a lot of things because they were AT the store.