Merchant Archive

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Mystyrys wrote:

From the In Development Forum post -- Tiggs Says:

1. We are going to change the auto-retrieve items when items are purchased from a remote vendor/bazaar. Buyers will have to travel to the vendor/bazaar to pick the item up.
   
2. It will go to Test Center in the next few days.

YAY!

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I hate to say it, but that's not really a YAY, that's a forgone conclusion.

To think that they already didn't intend to change #1 is naive. After the thread being up a couple of hours "they" made such a high-level design decision? BS.

It was one of their patented "Let's make it sound even worse than it is, and then take back the extreme and look like heroes". I like to call it a "hero pass" for short.

This was very calculated, especially since it's on it's way to TC and the correspondents didn't know anything about it.

I'm all for some form of global advertising, but this ain't it.

Honestly, they might as well remove the crafting professions and just have us sell resources to NPCs and let them make the products - the end result is going to be the same.

AO

I would echo what a previous poster said. One thing this will do is make it harder for the Industrialist to drive more people out of the crafting biz. There aren't too many people who can compete with a crafter who uses 5 or more accounts and cross-server swaps factories and hundreds of static harvesters. This person, running a dozen factories regularly produces TOP QUALITY goods by the hundreds. Due to the volume and the fact their cost to operate is so low, they can and do define the bottom end of the price swing for items.

Right now there are very likely hundreds of crafters in every Galaxy who make a decent living AND HAVE FUN selling those same items for more than 20% more than the Industrialist. They can do so because they get sales from people who know them and like the service they provide, or through random drive-by's when people need something right away in that area and dont have time to go to the Industrialist's shops.

If this goes in showing prices, it will be harder for this small-time crafter to make sales, since people will be more likely to see the cheaper goods made by the Industrialist, and decide they just cant resist saving a few thousand credits.

Well, now we know why they have been ignoring us on the CURB boards....they have been cooking up all this stuff instead of focusing on what was supposed to be the first priority for the game. All this time, a couple weeks at least, and not ONE Dev bothered to ask ANYONE on these boards about this. The Super-Tuesday crafting change and the uproar that caused is nothing compared to this.

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Novock wrote:

This change will regulate the merchant class back to what it was before the vendor revamp. Acceopt this time its not our vendor placing skills being thrown out the window its all our other skills disappearing. Barker droids after change useless. Advertising planetary map after change useless. Hiring tree useless (other than for our own kicks). Mutliple vendors useless. why pay the maintance for multiple vendors when you can throw it all on the one. Since it will all be on the bazaar anyway who cares if you have 12 nicely separate and stocked vendors or if you have 1 trashy droid vendor in a back room. Absolutley unbelievable if you ask me. I have been a BE/Merchant since the day I created my alt. Novock my main is combat but Oasis was created just so I cuold be a BE/Merchant. Now I guess I will either make him a combat proffession or give him up completely.

I Just can't believe that we got love not but a few months ago and here they are ready and sitting to trash our proffession again.

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Totally agree. And you know what's even worse? They still haven't fixed the bugs from the vendor revamp.

People who don't have the skill STILL get listed on the planetary map. There wasa bug preventing anyone from being listed (skills or not) and they quickly removed that check. So, to this day, people who don't have any merchant skill anymore still get their vendors listed.

This change just was not thought through at all. I mean, they supposedly make the "snap" decision today not long after the thread goes up to change retrevial - which is great. I don't believe they had any intention of it happening in the first place, but that's beside the point now. As far as we know, they can still purchase it, they just have to go get it. However, as people have pointed out, what about entry fees? Are they going to make buildings with vendors unable to have fees?

So many reprecussions, yet they have already coded it.

/sigh

I honestly believe they want to phase theplayer economy out. That's the only reason - and the obvious outcome - of this change. There are so many far-reaching impactful things that will happen, and in the end crafting professions are going to be rubble.

We need a way to globally advertise, and without instant pickup, without prices, this could be adequate. But as it stands right now, it's one big mess.

AO

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Elyssa wrote:

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Diona wrote:
I'm assuming that since this going to the test center they are going to implement this no matter what we say and how loud we say it

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Don't assume that.
The trick is to now say it in a constructive manner so that the developers can be made to understand what a blow this would be to our profession and give them reason to re-think their plan.

Ultimately, this is their game and they will do what they think is best to move it forward.
Our task is to show them that this will do more harm than good to a substantial number of the player base..

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Ok, Elyssa, here's my constructive thoughts:

Unfortunately, this change will phase out the merchant profession. WIth the ability to browse, galaxy-wide, every player vendor from a bazaar terminal, we effectively bypass the need for any notible skills merchants have:

1. Hiring: A novice artisan can place a vendor. Under the change, a crafter would only need 1 generic vendor to list all his items.

2. Advertising:The ability to register or vocalize a vendor will not be needed. Players can access items for auction from the bazaar terminal so no real need to advertise.

3. Management: The ability to have multiple vendors will not be needed. With players browsing all items remotely, only 1 or 2 vendors are really needed and only if you sell in large volume.

4. Efficiency: This is the only line that provides anything for a salesman. And even then, the efficiency it provides really helps more in maintainance reduction on installations than anything else under the change.

5. The ability to use barking droids are moot. What's the point when a player has a galaxy-wide browser in any bazaar terminal?

6. There are crafters who find it easy to sell for ridiculously low prices. Under this change, prices will hit bottom to become competitive with the sellers who like to give things away for nothing. The undercutting crafter will set the price for every item available for sale. The economy will certainly bottom out. Maybe this will make credits worth something again...or drive many crafters from their trade to makejedi. Yay...just what we need...more jedi.

I think if the devs plan is to remove the Merchant profession, then they're on the track to doing that. If they're plan is to weed out the number of merchants, this change will certainly make that happen. The changes in their current form are the death of a profession. Plain and simple.

If this is something that the devs decide to implement live, I would suggest a couple things:

1. Remove the merchant profession but incorporate the efficiency line of the merchant profession in the artisan profession. Most of it in the master box.

2. Remove price caps on bazaar terminals. Let anyone who wants to sell items just list them on the bazaar. Vendors are not needed. It seems in this change, the devs seek to save time for players. Why not save time for 2 groups. The sellers can just list their stuff on bazaars and players can just buy them from there. Then there won't be any of that silly role-playing going on.

My thoughts.

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AudioOrgana wrote:

I honestly believe they want to phase theplayer economy out. That's the only reason - and the obvious outcome - of this change.

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Yep, cost a lot of money to run servers big enough to handle all the items and resources.

Maybe the suits complained. "Most people like fighting, we won't lose much...."

I'm a drop in the bucket, I'll keep it short...


For well over a year, I've tended my shop/mall. We've grown quite a bit and many folks appreciate us... well, no sense in that anymore.

WOO-FREAKIN-HOO

I've thought about this for several hours. I can almost say for certain this isn't the case.

What I believe was intended was a reduction of vendor hopping. Specificlly people searching out vendors that were listed as one thing but were all but empty or weren't even selling the listed items. You could search vendors for hours without finding a vendor that sold what you wanted

THATS what the change was for. I think the Devs even considered the house fees, hence instant delivery, which was stated to be removed later.

Examine the last couple publishes. You will notice a great number of changes regarding TIME. TIME is what the Devs want to affect, travel faster, buff faster, heal faster, now gettingitemsfaster. I tend to agree with the way they handled the first three, it adds a more of a "jump in and play" style to the game. Having said that I must say there HAS to be a better way to accomplish finding items.

Message Edited by PsionicHawk on 02-12-2005 02:10 AM