Merchant Archive
Thread: Focus Thread: Galaxy-Wide Vendor Search
Summerflame wrote:
please dont let this hit live in any form. Theres so many reasons why it shouldnt go live, but you have all made it pretty clear so Im only posting to support you all in that this is indeed a VERY bad idea.
QFE!
Hawk
I've thought about this for several hours. I can almost say for certain this isn't the case.
Then I guess we disagree.
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
Well, empty vendors no longer appear on the planetary map. They haven't for quite some time -that actually worked when they fixed it. I agree that searching vendors was a problem, but opening up the floodgates like this was NOT the solution. There are other ways - like attaching changable descriptions to the planetary map listings, or allowing us to change the name of vendors. 9 times out of 10 if a vendor is mis-named it's because we can't simply change the name/description without destroying the vendor and losing our place on the planetary map (it has an invisible ranking based on time in use).
Many times empty vendors are not empty. There is an item placed for 99999999 credits or a piece of junk that no one wants on it. Yes truly empty vendors not appearing was useful but it didn't help a ton. I agree with you this is NOT the solution.
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.
They always planned on removing it...don't tell me that decision was made hours after it went up like they had never thought of the reprecussions before. And if it did...well then it wasn't a very thought out decision in the first place.
I don't think it was well thought out. Unlike you I don't think the Devs actually want to hurt the game or "lie" to the playerbase simply topacify them with something else 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.
Of course there is a beter way than what we have now - and every business person/vendor wants it. People have posted and made many suggestions about advertising and searching vendors. However, they are throwing this in (at least on TC) without telling the correspondents, without any discussion with the player base (I must have missed the "In Concept" post - cause I didn't see one), and implementing a system that was rightly taken out during beta because of the economic reprecussions.
Once again your correct on these statements and as you well know there was no "In Concept" post. In my opinion they should have. Why they didn't ... Who knows?
Yes, on the surface it's about less time - as you say - but there are many ways to accomplish this without destroying the economy in the process. It's clear the reprecussions run far, far deeper than that - and if the Dev team thinks all this is going to do is save time they need to start looking a little deeper into things before they destroy professions and the game for many of us.
Yes I agree.
In the end, there will be three types of crafter - those that makezero on their products becuase they have to continually sell for less and less until they make almost nothing, those uber-masters who make the really high quality stuff and can charge still whatever they want beause other people don't have resource spawns from 2003, and those that quit (crafting, at least).
Tiggs should think back to her TSO experience and their implementation of stores. Besides the fact that players didn't craft the items, they bought from the game and resold, stores arrived DOA. Why? Because people put on their entrance page (you can globally search them) all their prices, which meant five minutes later everyone else was selling for slightly less, and this continued for a few weeks until the only people in business were those that sold for cost. The same thing is going to happen here, even with a crafting economy - we might as well just sell raw resources to NPCs and let them deal with it because the end result is going to be the same if this is implemented.
AO
PsionicHawk wrote:I've thought about this for several hours. I can almost say for certain this isn't the case.
Then I guess we disagree.
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
Well, empty vendors no longer appear on the planetary map. They haven't for quite some time - that actually worked when they fixed it. I agree that searching vendors was a problem, but opening up the floodgates like this was NOT the solution. There are other ways - like attaching changable descriptions to the planetary map listings, or allowing us to change the name of vendors. 9 times out of 10 if a vendor is mis-named it's because we can't simply change the name/description without destroying the vendor and losing our place on the planetary map (it has an invisible ranking based on time in use).
Many times empty vendors are not empty. There is an item placed for 99999999 credits or a piece of junk that no one wants on it. Yes truly empty vendors not appearing was useful but it didn't help a ton. I agree with you this is NOT the solution.
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.
They always planned on removing it...don't tell me that decision was made hours after it went up like they had never thought of the reprecussions before. And if it did...well then it wasn't a very thought out decision in the first place.
I don't think it was well thought out. Unlike you I don't think the Devs actually want to hurt the game or "lie" to the playerbase simply to pacify them with something else 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 getting items faster. 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.
Of course there is a beter way than what we have now - and every business person/vendor wants it. People have posted and made many suggestions about advertising and searching vendors. However, they are throwing this in (at least on TC) without telling the correspondents, without any discussion with the player base (I must have missed the "In Concept" post - cause I didn't see one), and implementing a system that was rightly taken out during beta because of the economic reprecussions.
Once again your correct on these statements and as you well know there was no "In Concept" post. In my opinion they should have. Why they didn't ... Who knows?
Yes, on the surface it's about less time - as you say - but there are many ways to accomplish this without destroying the economy in the process. It's clear the reprecussions run far, far deeper than that - and if the Dev team thinks all this is going to do is save time they need to start looking a little deeper into things before they destroy professions and the game for many of us.
Yes I agree.
In the end, there will be three types of crafter - those that make zero on their products becuase they have to continually sell for less and less until they make almost nothing, those uber-masters who make the really high quality stuff and can charge still whatever they want beause other people don't have resource spawns from 2003, and those that quit (crafting, at least).
Tiggs should think back to her TSO experience and their implementation of stores. Besides the fact that players didn't craft the items, they bought from the game and resold, stores arrived DOA. Why? Because people put on their entrance page (you can globally search them) all their prices, which meant five minutes later everyone else was selling for slightly less, and this continued for a few weeks until the only people in business were those that sold for cost. The same thing is going to happen here, even with a crafting economy - we might as well just sell raw resources to NPCs and let them deal with it because the end result is going to be the same if this is implemented.
AO
The main differance between yourself and I is that you think the devs were intentionally doing things to hurt the professions. I don't, but my prespective is differant then yours. I DON'T think they thought of all the reprocussions to merchant or the crafters. I think (and I have no inside knowledge of this) they came up with a list of things to make the "game" start faster, reduction of vendor hopping was simply one of them. The proposed system certainly does that, but it hurts the crafters/merchants. In my mind there was no evil connotation to the Devs plans example: ("How can we tick off every merchant in the game!").It's my hope the Devs scrap this current implementation.
Actually, I think I just figured it out. Their goal isn't one of evil but one of manipulation. This plan was/is never going to happen. They just want to get us all worked up. Then, they'll yank it and implement some other bad idea that's just a bit better. Instead of disagreeing with their little bad idea, we'll be thanking them for it as it's better than this disaster.
Elyssa wrote:
The following is my "as a player" opinion:
I disagree with any system that allows a player to see my prices or retrieve their items without visiting my vendor in person.
Being able to comparison shop from a central location will only favor those players who for one reason or another can afford to undercut everyone else.
Secondly, a significant portion of my business comes from people who look around while they're in my store and see other things they may not have been specifically looking for.
This "impulse buying" is extremely valuable to me as a merchant.
However, the ability to see *IF* something you are looking for is on a specific vendor and get a waypoint to go shop there is a very good idea.
QFE
QFE
QFE
I specalize in pre-packaged armor, full suits of armor already in a backpack. Nobody will ever be able to find that under a thousand "backpacks" in the normal bazaar system. And then, what's the point of having a shop anymore? I can put one big block vendor in the back of my warehouse on the middle of rori, and under cut every other vendor on the server, and put everyone out of buisness, all from the comfort of my own home.
Plain and simple, it kills our shops, and it will at the same time, kill our player cities, as that's the only thing really keeping them alive. No point in having a good location, or having a good shop, or having a good vendor, or even having items organized and easy to find.
Just way too many bads coming out of this then good. And I don't like how fast the devs decided to push this forward either.
Actually, I think I just figured it out. Their goal isn't one of evil but one of manipulation. This plan was/is never going to happen. They just want to get us all worked up. Then, they'll yank it and implement some other bad idea that's just a bit better. Instead of disagreeing with their little bad idea, we'll be thanking them for it as it's better than this disaster.
I don't think it's manipulation either. I hope it's not, I just think they had a bad idea. but there is no way to know for sure.
*note* All posts made on this subject is my posting as a player, not a correspondent.
LaurnaRose wrote:
did they even bother looking to see what the general concensis was with the profession that this is going to effect the most? i mean seriously, why not just totally do away with merchant all together and just take the price cap off the bazaars if they are going to do this. /cry I dont like this one bit. I love that my customers have to come to my shop and if they do this and i turn my vendor to the off status for this bazaar search crap then no one will come to my vendor. what would be the point ... there will be plenty of ppl who have their vendors turned on and why would anyone come to my vendor when they get their items delivered to them standing in coro purchasing a item from a vendor in "POS CITY, Naboo". This is going to further deter ppl from going to the player cities as what little traffic they get now depends alot on merchants. I think this is one of the worst "FIXES" that they have come up with yet!!!