Merchant Archive
Thread: Focus Thread: Galaxy-Wide Vendor Search
PsionicHawk wrote:
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
Message Edited by PsionicHawk on 02-12-2005 02:10 AM
Isn't that what this is anyways? Just putting your stuff on the baazar through vendors, except(I would guess this is a merchant skill) we have to spent many of our few 250 skill points to do this. And so much for merchant tents or shops at all (basement vendors anyone?) right? Or the need for two out of four of our skill trees? Or it could be put in master! Where I sure hope you like to do nothing other then craft or are using a second account
Because you sure won't make it in the looting game or the fun high level content 
Sarcasm aside (of which I almost never dabble in), this only positively impacts the pure fighters, and the mega backed crafters.
Message Edited by GreenLeaders on 02-12-2005 01:15 PM
GreenLeaders wrote:
forum trade boards are a good way to ask for what you are looking for, there are ways to find what you are looking for. A MMORPG should not put everything at ones finguretips, we are trying to make this semi-realistic right? If you use this thing shouldn't it take days for the item to be delivered? And its all in a warehouse so you can just go buy it from the vendor to save time? I just don't like the way this steps on the little guy trying to craft or start crafting.
Just my thoughts on this...
I've been looking to buy parts of recyclers or recyclers since they came out. I've used the boards. No luck. Not enough people use the boards. It's too difficult to update and vendor and then update the boards with accurate stats.
I have the same problem with resources.
When I started crafting I was always able to sell. You would be suprise how fast a wooden staff goes on the bazaar for 200 credits.Do you know how frustrating it is for a starting marksman to try to buy weapons in the 2222-3333 skill range? It's nearly impossible because all the weaponssmiths only make the most advanced weapons and they stop selling on the bazarres. Unless you know a weaponsmith, your out of luck.
Now with this, that low level weaponsmith can fill that demand.
As a 3322 shipwright, I am the little guy and I want this.
I have many of the same concerns as others here. I think the majority do not want consumers to be able to buy straight off the bazaar. But most here do want to use the bazaars to advertise their vendors goods. There will be price wars. There are now on bazaars, just on a smaller level. It's good for the consumer and good for the merchant.
I couldn't agree more with all points above!
Novock wrote:
Elyssa wrote:
Tiggs posted some information about a new vendor searching system over in this thread.
Please use this thread to post your feedback on it and I will point the devs toward it.
I have to say as I have already said so many times I am against this completely in its current form. BUT..... if insta-buyis in the cards and Elyssa cannot get them to back off that then what a bout a 20% premium paid on all items bought from a terminal other than the vendor its listed on. If that were the case I can even see giving back the insta-deliver. This is why I say that.
1. It gives the instant buy that a lot seem to want, but with convience comes a price. Everybody knows that a bottle of asprin is more expensive at a convience store than it is at the grocery store.
2. It gives us a reason to have a well maintained store. If you know a store that has what you need its a lot easier and cheaper just to vist the store.
3. We would then get a advertsing perk if they keep seeing our name on the bazaar we build name recognition and we build on #2
4. It increases competition but doesn't make competition the sole denominator. Again location, stock and avaiablity all remain factors.
One other mandatory piece though would be to remove the galaxy wide search function from our personal vendors. Thats just a kick in the shin.
I believe I could live with the change if the premium was put in.
EDIT: Opps I forgot a SOE advatge in my list. This would give SOEa place to absorb a little bit of revenue out of the system to help keep inflation in check.
Message Edited by Novock on 02-12-2005 11:38 AM
Now you may think that people will still be able to run a business just as well after this change. You are wrong. Now it wont matter if I have 300 items on my vendor. If one person has a cheaper version of equal quality, then that version will be bought. You may think this is good, giving the new guy a chance, yet it isn't. Once the undercutting starts, it will never stop. One person selling at 2 cpu profit will leave only to be replaced by another.
New crafters should be able to compete as well, yet they should have to work for it, just like the rest of us did. I'm sorry, butXX hours a week for a year, should give somebody an edge over somebody just starting. This will destroy that. All a new crafter has to do, especially with items that quality doesn't matter on is toss a bunch of stuff together, and they will be on 100% equal footing. This is wrong. Part of whats good about running a succesful business is the work involved and the achievement as you suceed. New crafters should work just like others, it's part of the fun. You are destroying the whole "Business" side of SWG, the one truly unique thing it had.
Now again, you may feel that price competition is good, it's not it's bad. The more prices drop, the more money that combatents will keep to themselves and not spend. This will lock crafters out of competing with them. You are stopping a whole group of people from playing the game they want. We want to run a business, the better we run our business, the better we do. We want the profits from this business to put us on equal footing with those who choose to earn money other ways. Now I'm sure a lot of combatents will read this and one star me, that's fine. I don't hate combatents, I am one. Yet I choose to make my money from crafting, not missions. Both should be equally viable.
Now, I understand that the point of this idea was to actually make it easier for people to find items. People are lazy, they want tings to be as easy as possible. I'm not saying this as an insult, I get it, this is a game, it should be fun and not work. The problem is that in an effort to make it easier, you are making it harder for others. Are shoppers really more importantthen crafters? That is what you are saying.
It is 100% possible to make both sides happy. First, scrap the current idea, I know this is brutal, you worked on it, yet let it go. Sure revamp the bazaar, but leave Vendors off it. The answer is the Global Map. Make it so when you select a vendor on the global map, you can see how many items are on the vendor. If the vendor is named "Joes Weapons," and has 200 things on it, you may want to check it out. If it has 10 items, you may or may no want to make the trip. Heck simply make the vendors on the global map a different color based upon how many items are on it.
This would make the Global Map and Merchant MORE valuable, not less. Yet at the sametime, save shoppers the work oflooking for empty vendors.
My biggest question is honestly, why wasn't thecrafting correspondants consulted before this was even started? Isn't that what they are there for? This was a huge surprise to them as well. Any idea likethis should be bounced off of them before work is started.
I'm a crafter and a consumer. Your global map would not work when I am searching for a part for a recycler or if I am looking for the cheapest swoop. I'm seen vendors with 10 things on it where those 10 things were useful. I've seen Vendors with 100 piece of crap on it.
mpdivo wrote:
GreenLeaders wrote:
forum trade boards are a good way to ask for what you are looking for, there are ways to find what you are looking for. A MMORPG should not put everything at ones finguretips, we are trying to make this semi-realistic right? If you use this thing shouldn't it take days for the item to be delivered? And its all in a warehouse so you can just go buy it from the vendor to save time? I just don't like the way this steps on the little guy trying to craft or start crafting.
Just my thoughts on this...I've been looking to buy parts of recyclers or recyclers since they came out. I've used the boards. No luck. Not enough people use the boards. It's too difficult to update and vendor and then update the boards with accurate stats.
I have the same problem with resources.
When I started crafting I was always able to sell. You would be suprise how fast a wooden staff goes on the bazaar for 200 credits. Do you know how frustrating it is for a starting marksman to try to buy weapons in the 2222-3333 skill range? It's nearly impossible because all the weaponssmiths only make the most advanced weapons and they stop selling on the bazarres. Unless you know a weaponsmith, your out of luck.
Now with this, that low level weaponsmith can fill that demand.As a 3322 shipwright, I am the little guy and I want this.
I have many of the same concerns as others here. I think the majority do not want consumers to be able to buy straight off the bazaar. But most here do want to use the bazaars to advertise their vendors goods. There will be price wars. There are now on bazaars, just on a smaller level. It's good for the consumer and good for the merchant.
Be no means did I mean to say forum boards work really really well, and sometime they don't work for finding some things. But one can ask, and usually get an answer (I'm not saying merchants should post there stock on the boards).
Granted, this would be great for finding somethings, mainly loot... resources to. But for most products it is distructive, when you master SW what if you can't make ships/parts as good as say three people on your server... or you can make them just as good but must charge say 5% more because you don't have the kind of backing they do. Unless these three people are sold out of what you are trying to sell, you have no sales. Consumers will buy the best/cheapest product available, this system will be great for consumers and good for a limited few merchants.
This system takes away any amount of customer relations/loyalty/word of mouth that was there to begin with. Doesn't it seem cold to just go to x bazaar and buy the best/cheapest outthere. Even if you have to travel to pick up the item (which will now be in the basement of a storage house), this has a negitive impact on the economy and enjoyability of the game (I think). It would be enjoyable to spend no time comparison shopping and have more time to do other things, but only for those that are not trying to make a living crafting (and when you are doing that chances are you can't compete in any loot races, so no money there)
:EDIT: For this comment
I agree that its not good the way its hard to find low level weapons (of good quality). But I just don't think the ups outweigh the downs
Increasing the bazaar price limit to a higher amount (dunno maybe 10k) would help this is some ways.
Message Edited by GreenLeaders on 02-12-2005 03:23 PM
MasterARP wrote:
not sure if this has been covered yet--what about people that are banned from your shop? one of the ONLY ways we can punish griefers or cheats in the game is to make sure they dont have access to your wares--this wont be possible now if they can remotely buy things. Sure we can choose to not have the vendor be searchable--but if you do you are excluding yourself totally from a global market. Basically we have NO choice but to list our vendors otherwise we wont be visable at all
You bring up another thing I don't care for, we really are forced to enable this. Anyone would be crazy to disable it, because no one or next to no one will actually shop the way they are now.
GreenLeaders wrote:
MasterARP wrote:
not sure if this has been covered yet--what about people that are banned from your shop? one of the ONLY ways we can punish griefers or cheats in the game is to make sure they dont have access to your wares--this wont be possible now if they can remotely buy things. Sure we can choose to not have the vendor be searchable--but if you do you are excluding yourself totally from a global market. Basically we have NO choice but to list our vendors otherwise we wont be visable at all
You bring up another thing I don't care for, we really are forced to enable this. Anyone would be crazy to disable it, because no one or next to no one will actually shop the way they are now.
There will be some because the searching through the bazaar will be tedius and frustrating. 1000's of items all jumbled up with no way to sort the list globally (it only sorts per page) no way to find specific merchandise in crates or backpacks without spending hours looking at items you don't want. The whole system will be a nightmare so there will be some people who just avoid it. But it will still damage the profession quite a bit.
DocSavag wrote:
There will be some because the searching through the bazaar will be tedius and frustrating. 1000's of items all jumbled up with no way to sort the list globally (it only sorts per page) no way to find specific merchandise in crates or backpacks without spending hours looking at items you don't want. The whole system will be a nightmare so there will be some people who just avoid it. But it will still damage the profession quite a bit.
If the change goes through, I plan on staying off the system. I'll rely on my established customer base and friends for business.
I still can't believe how short-sighted this change is.
/sigh