Merchant Archive
Thread: Merchant Item Limits Focus Thread: Please try to be constructive and rational (Pt 2)
MrElmar
Wed Aug 11, 2004 7:48 am
#144
>Hopefully I'm not using any of the products that you
> develop, MrElmar. With your rather obvious sense of
> responsibility to the customers, I'm pretty sure you
> aren't working for National Instruments, or any of
> the more reputable, dependable companies.
nope you aren't using any as they are proprietary in nature ... and if you did you wouldn't for long as we don't explain internal decisions to customers any more than any other fortune 500 company that we are listed with.
> develop, MrElmar. With your rather obvious sense of
> responsibility to the customers, I'm pretty sure you
> aren't working for National Instruments, or any of
> the more reputable, dependable companies.
nope you aren't using any as they are proprietary in nature ... and if you did you wouldn't for long as we don't explain internal decisions to customers any more than any other fortune 500 company that we are listed with.
Iago_C
Wed Aug 11, 2004 8:20 am
#145
Now that I've calmed down a bit, Read that have been tied to a chair, had my eyes propped open, and been forced to watch scenes of horrible violence whilst blasting Beethoven's 9th (Ludwig, my wonderful Ludwig) to be... readjusted.... I can respond more rationaly
Item Limits: With all the new stuff coming in, we'll need something to free up room on the DB, but there is no way that the merchant community can live with the draconian cuts the devs want to make. Dear God, imagine all the subcomponents we'll need to create a starship. We'll probably end up clearing out someones full vendor for just one ship!!! Here is my suggestion
Item Limits
*Dabblers get to play
There should be a hard cap on total items, but not on items per vendor. That way, a Med Vendor could have 3000 items on one vendor, instead of having to have multiple vendors.
Resources
STANDARDIZE THE RESOURCES!!!
Keep All the subcatagories of resources, but let there be only one or two of each. That way, there is a low, middle and high grade of something, instead of finding 1200 different kinds of a single type of resource. I don't know how many times I've gone into one of my factories and found small ammounts of a resource that I can no longer use.
Factory Crates
Allow sales directly from factory crates. Although it may be a little more difficult (Maybe not, we could have a system similar to removing resources from a harvester, a nice little slider bar for how many items you want from the crate) I'm sure it would free up room in the DB.
Serial Numbers
Why do we even have them? Is theft really that much of a problem??? Or are they used in crafting idetical items? Any way you cut it, if they were removed, the developers would save 2 - 4 bytes per item (Which might not sound like a lot, but with I'm sure millions or even BILLIONS of items floating around...)
Removing Empty Vendors
As long as the player gets her maintenance back, I see no problem with taking empty vendors off the map or out of the game. Nothing aggrivates me more than looking up something I need on the planetary map, traveling to a distant waypoint and then finding that the six vendors someone has are all empty. Get rid of em.
PhoenixOrion
Wed Aug 11, 2004 8:52 am
#146
Iago_C wrote:
Item Limits
Business 3 - 25 Total Items (1 Vendor
Novice merchant - 300 Total Items (2 Vendors )
Management 1- 1200 Total items(3 Vendors)
Management 2 - 1600 Total Items (4 Vendors)
Management 3- 2500 Total Items (5 Vendors)
Management 4 - 3600 Total Items (6 Vendors)
Master Merchant - 4900 Total Items (7 Vendors)
25 items at business III?!? Are you NUTS? Clinically INSANE?!?!?!?
1 star for idiocy.
ResourceMonkey
Wed Aug 11, 2004 9:23 am
#147
Is it the general concensus of the Merchant community that theywant restrictions on the number of items sellable? If so, then disregard the rest.
Would it be too difficult for the system to check your vendor count when you surrender a skill and deny you the ability to surrender itunless you remove the vendor? So, you go to surrender Business III but still have a vendor up. The system replies "You cannot surrender this skill until you remove a vendor."
After implementation, a warning email should be sent out to anyonewho can't supporttheir current vendorsstating that in 15 days, anyone without sufficient skill to support their current number of vendors will have ALL vendors removed. This will give them 2 weeks to consolodate and remove vendors until they are at their minimum requirements.
Or are there other reasons for the item cap? I haven't read any in the patch notes - just that it is being done. Taking up room in the database is a lame excuse. Add another hard-drive. 
Message Edited by ResourceMonkey on 08-11-2004 09:32 AM
Ackehakka
Wed Aug 11, 2004 9:27 am
#148
I am a master merchant. I currently do not practice ANY crafting professions. I wholeheartedly disagree with the propositions to tie vendor limit to the number of items a player is able to craft. I as a master merchant / non-crafter would have a very low limit, which would make it impossible for me to continue to play a master merchant.
Currently I am the sales end of a large resource mining operation. We have no need to do advertising, as our fully stocked vendors have gained a reputation of having a large selection and we get new customers on a regular basis simply due to word of mouth. There are often single days when 70+ items are OFFERED to a single vendor, never mind cut into 10k, 20k, 50k, and 100k stacks in order to market to different volume needs of customers.
I for one CANNOT comprehend why a process like the following is NOT being proposed by SOE:
1) Delete all the old/cancelled accounts and all of their posessions
2) Let the change bake, and see the effect
3) Delete all the vendors of players who do not have the skill to place a vendor of that type (or a vendor at all)
4) Let the change bake, and see the effect
5) CONSIDER THEN what further changes need to be made in order to handle the request/response/dataStore volume on the database.
I am a computer engineer in real life. Making the wide-sweeping changes SOE is proposing all in one fell swoopwould beconsidered wholly irresponsible in my real life profession. Why are they not making these changes incrementally?
Normally when there is aperformance problem, some TUNING is involved, not rampant re-engineering of the system.
What SOE is proposing here would be referred to as "engineering on the fly", and as I said....is a wholly irresponsible practice.
To SOE, and our extremely competent merchant correspondent: Please make these database changes incrementally. Start where you KNOW you will get the most gauranteed benefit with the least impact.
ArcadiusPryde
Wed Aug 11, 2004 9:46 am
#149
First, let me say I am admittedly not a crafter (Though I did master Artisan, Droid Engineer, and Tailor), and as such I'm not trying to say I'm right or wrong (These are merely my views). The changes to merchant, here after referred to as "the nerf", are definitely changing to our current gameplay. I also see that this will undoubtly cause havoc in the short term as far as the economy goes.
That being said I think many are jumping the gun saying it will destroy their business, the economy, and what not. I will agree that the nerf will change how many of us do business either as a consumer or seller. In many respects the "forced specialization" will be bad in that many of us will have to hop to several stores to get what we need for that day/week, and as such will be a pain.
That being said heres a few ideas I'll put forth.
- Add a search option into the bazaar so players don't have to sort through pages of junk
- Allow Master Merchants to link their vendor to the global bazaar
- Allow players to purchase and receive items from the bazaar terminal regardless of distance
- Allow the storage box to be accessed from any planet (This will allow crafters more flexibility in doing custom orders on remote planets like Talus, Lok, and such)
-Arc
Erann
Wed Aug 11, 2004 10:21 am
#150
This is rediculous!!!
I'm master rmerchant on Bria and I do not want to put all my vendors in my shop because it makes thing crowded you need to label them you nee to dress them you need to stock them you need to pay for paintanence when items expire.... you need to collect and repost them... I had all the vendors I had to scale back!
Now you want to hanicap my ability to sell and store resources onthe vendor buy limmiting my sales??
Yet I'm still dealing with missing items when they expire and I forget to collect them from the stock room?
All this Merchant tree will be good for is the reduced equipment maintenance costs! What is the benifit to being a master merchant again? A fancy pink cpo driod vendor that can't talk and can only hold 119 items????
please rethink this nerf. the merchant is already pretty silly as is.
SeaRaptor
Wed Aug 11, 2004 10:34 am
#151
Unless the vendor interface changes drastically, I think 500 per vendor should be more than adequate.
Weatoch
Wed Aug 11, 2004 10:42 am
#152
Plz dont nerf Merchant. If you do it will affect everyone and lots of ppl will leave the game. If you can take into consideration some of these ideas then i will be happy and i think others will be satisfied too.
LonelyGhost
Wed Aug 11, 2004 11:05 am
#153
Bus 3 - 50 items
Bus 4 - 75 items
Novice Merchant - 100 items
Each Tier1 box - +10 items
Each Tier2 box - +15 items
Each Tier3 box - +20 items
Each Tier4 box - +25 items
Master Merchant - +120 items
Master Merchant gets a 7th vendor, and 500 items per vendor.
My lowest counter=proposal.
OR
Give us 100 items per lot storage, AND remove the cap so a Pa Hall can hold 900 items, a Large house 600, etc.....
Stop trying to force us to have less stuff.
LonelyGhost
Wed Aug 11, 2004 11:31 am
#154
Also, there seem to be a group of players, non-Merchants of course (even if they claim to still have the skills, I bet they dont) who want to see the crafting professions get vendors, and essentially get the abiliites and skills and functionality of the Merchant profession with being a Merchant.
The ability to craft something does not grant you the right to sell it using Merchant skills or tools. You get that right from spending skill points on Merchant. You have every right to sell your product. And there are tools in game to assist you in this. But it is a pipe dream to hope that the Devs will remove the Merchant profession.If your suggestions are used, and non Merchants get to drop vendors and have nice, high, item caps, then the Merchant profession would cease to exist. Good! some of you say. I admit, if I could drop Merchant and still legally get the benefits, I would. I would love to get a third Elite crafting mastery. But its not gonna happen. So why bother posting it?
If the Merchant profession is going to stay in-game, then it needs the tools to do what its designed to do. There is a solid and well-established link between the Producer of goods and the Seller of goods. They are different skill-sets. Not everyone is able to do them both well. Maybe one day the Merchants will get some needed tools like Consignment sales, admin rights, "real" stock rooms, more flexible advetising options, etc... Until then, we have to work in the environment that is provided for us, and removing Merchant is about as likely as them removing Politician (something else people wouldn't mind them doing). Heck, we need MORE professions in this game! I get pretty tired of seeing people all over the place with the same skill-set I have. Shipwright will be great for only 1 thing, getting people to drop Architect and Droid Engineer! hehehehe
Trab
Wed Aug 11, 2004 11:49 am
#155
This was on the other thread posted by Doc...
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Ok. Its a no brainer that no one in this forum likes the vendor item limits as they currently exist on TestCenter. I need rational discussion about that to take back to the devs.
I don't want your rants, your flames, your threats to quit or anything not helpful. Give me your thoughts about how this will affect your business and lets discuss compromises."
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I was thinking of the community backlash when the crafting experimenting changes went in, they sure broke thier necks to get that changed back. Show your outrage, make your threats, because in the real world people who get ugly get results.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Ok. Its a no brainer that no one in this forum likes the vendor item limits as they currently exist on TestCenter. I need rational discussion about that to take back to the devs.
I don't want your rants, your flames, your threats to quit or anything not helpful. Give me your thoughts about how this will affect your business and lets discuss compromises."
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I was thinking of the community backlash when the crafting experimenting changes went in, they sure broke thier necks to get that changed back. Show your outrage, make your threats, because in the real world people who get ugly get results.