Merchant Archive
Thread: Focus Thread: Vendor Search System on TC
riotcontrol wrote:
DocSavag wrote:
Ok. The Current Test Center build has the "Bid" amount on the listing so you can view and sort by price. HOWEVER, the buy button is gone from the details screen. You can now only view the details and get a waypoint to the vendor. You cannot buy items remotely and pick them up.
Hmph, I unfortunately deinstalled TC because of lack of HD space. Are you saying that, after all the player feedback about price being removed even from the details screen, they decided to add the price column so you can sort the items? This is unbelievable.
To be fair I think they always intended it to be there and just didn't get added until today. The compromise seems to be prices but no remote buying. I can personally live with that. I understand the fears and I agree that it will have an effect on the prices in the game. I also though understand the issue consumers have with there being no prices. They don't want to show up and the prices be outrageous. I personally wish they would develop this a little bit more and give us a few more features in the process. Make the searching better, make the ability to browse the entire vendor once you have found something you like, fix the waypoints so it identifies the vendor by name, and a few other features that would make this less of a pain for merchants.
We can all agree that global searching is good for the consumer. Overall its good for the merchants too because it brings people to your shop that you would have missed. I wish the listing skills were tiered into merchant sklils somehow that would erase my 2 biggest issues with this change.
DocSavag wrote:
I wish the listing skills were tiered into merchant sklils somehow that would erase my 2 biggest issues with this change.
You said it Doc, that's my biggest beef right now too.
What they've basicly done is introduced a new attack called Head Shot 4, and placed it a Rifles 3 in the Marksman tree, thus negating the further need to invest skill points in Rifleman.
But overall, yeah this vender search is needed. Nothing sucks more than spending 2 hours searching venders that are listed on a planet (rightly listed by the use of the skill givin in Advertising 3 in the Merchant Tree, right Devs!!?) and hunting for a stack of decent quality Corellian Decidious Wood, cause everyone has stacks of that lying around 
.
EnigmaBSc wrote:
Isleh wrote:
No, The only way for everything to be exactly the same is to use the exact same schematic.
My 110 medical rated R2 droids with 99% experimented HAM are exactly the same as any other Master Droid Engineer's R2 droids with a level 6 medical module made with 99x oq chemical. My 10 item storage MSE droids are exactly the same as any other Master Droid Engineer's MSE droids with a level 6 item storage module. My merchant barker droids are exactly the same as any other Master Droid Engineer's merchant barker droids. My entertainer effects droids are exactly the same as any other Master Droid Engineer's entertainer effects droids. My crafting station droids are exactly the same as any other Master Droid Engineer's crafting station droids.
To be honest, I haven't made droids in a long time and when I wrote this, I was thinking more along the lines of the varations of weapons, armor and BE Pets.
Instead of not trying to impliment a good idea and living with these problems,maybe tha answer is to allow the manfacture process come into play as well as quality of materials . Giving the small time crafter an edge to produce high quality custom items as opposed to mass produced items.So adress, customtailored, would have a higher quality than a factory run.
If you ever picked up a pair of jeans real cheap at a discount store because they were flawed, you've experienced what I'm getting at. A factory run of items have to meet a quality control minimum to be sold while a master crafter creatinging a high end item would be aiming for a quality end of a maximum.
What could be facilated by createing a range of very high quality resources that are to difficult to work with to be used in a factory. That the crafter could run missions to obtain the locations of these resources semi-unique to that player. Kinda like a treasure map. Instead of a box usually full if useless items, a short term spawn of a rare resource barly large enough to placed a single harvester on
Of course, the whole thing is pretty much moot anyway since the current search system is woefully inadequate. If I did register my vendors on the global bazaar there would be over five pages of the "Droid Deed" subcategory just from my vendors alone. Add to that all the other Droid Engineers. Want to find something among that lot? And don't even get me started on the "Factory Crate" subcategory. Over 19 pages on Test Center yesterday. Want to guess what that'll go up to on a server like Bria? Then there are the issues with bannings, vendor deletions and access fees. Global vendor search is a wonderful idea and something I'd love to see implemented. But not like this!
EnigmaBSc
Ah, there in lays the problem. From most of the posts I've seen, it goes along the lines of "Search is bad" when in actuality "THIS Search is bad". It's an important point that I missed.
I tested this with Kyorlana yesterday with the Tirius sales tax at 10% on TC-5.The galaxy wide vendor search does indeedinclude the sales taxwith theitem price. However, as remote buying has been removed in the latest patch, then as far as credits gained going into the city treasury goes, we're back at Square 1 - the system still works (or rather, doesn't work) the same as it always has for purchasing items from vendors.
Khristen wrote:
I'm not really set up on TC in a way that will allow me to test some of my concerns with this change, so hopefully someone here may be able to help.
Does the new galaxy-wide search take into account sales tax in a Player City and put the credits gained into the city treasury?
I am painfully aware that sales tax does not work properly right now, and there has been no sign of it being fixed any time soon for whatever reason. It *does* work as intended and puts the tax money into the city treasury if set at 10%, though. My question is does the 10% rate (that has been confirmed by CSRs to work) actually work with the galaxy-wide search, too? Or does it end up in limbo-land like the shuttle tax does if bought coming into the city?
DocSavag wrote:
The compromise seems to be prices but no remote buying. I can personally live with that. I personally wish they would develop this a little bit more and give us a few more features in the process. Make the searching better, make the ability to browse the entire vendor once you have found something you like, fix the waypoints so it identifies the vendor by name, and a few other features that would make this less of a pain for merchants.
I wish the listing skills were tiered into merchant sklils somehow that would erase my 2 biggest issues with this change.
Only good thing is that remote-purchase is gone in exchange.
I'd rather have the price-option gone though.
Summerflame wrote:Just logged in to TC and saw they added the ability to sort after pricing on the front page... this idea just keeps getting worse and worse... Please Elyssa I hope you can be able to make the devs see how bad this would be for merchants and the overall economy of the servers.
I doubt she can. They seem to pretty much have made up their mind about this feature and they are going ahead with it. To my knowledge there hasn't been any red name even comment about this feature since it went to Test Center.
You would understand how much more like the average SOE MMORPG template this is becoming.
*unique playstyle such as:
No level skill based progression as oppossed to class levels which do not allow 'low' to group with 'high'
Merchanting with placeble vendors instead of having to sell from your own toon while stationary unable to go play
Ani_cul wrote:
I must say I kinda laugh when everyone refers any new changes happeing to SWG in comparision to WoW..
If you played Everquest, or have played/do ply EQ2,
You would understand how much more like the average SOE MMORPG template this is becoming.
And EQ was definatly around yrs before WoW 'came online'..so saying SOE is copying them..well not quite.
Im only using WoW as comparison as that game is highly praised by a lot of people, but also IMO lacks the diversity and depht provided by SWG. Im not saying theyre ripping of WoW Im merely stating that the game is moving in the direction of becoming the same type of game cathering o the combattans and with merchant and crafters as an odd commodity, something a hobby to be had on the side...