Merchant Archive

ed

"a nice 10% flat tax for anyone with more then x credits."

Will not work. It will actually result in people not selling things any more. once I have X credits, why should I as a master weaponsmith every make anything else? It will simply be income-taxed away from me at a steady rate of 10% per whatever time period that is charged, so once I reach X, there is ZERO incentive for me to supply anyone with weapons. All I would need at that point would be money to travel, which can be made back on missions. I would not have harvester costs, since I would not be making anything. We would end up with a world where people would stop making things.

ed

No way... Do you guys even play this game?

I play at least eight hours every day, usually more. This is just to give you an idea of what a struggle it is for people who play a LOT, never mind the people who have jobs and can only play two or three hours a day. I'm residing on Rori, which is probably part of my problem since it's sparsley populated, but I like the resources and it has a small-town charm.

I already worked my way up Droid Engineer and had to give it up and move to a different profession because the freaking maintenance on harvesters was killing me.... steady stream of missions all day long, just to feed my harvesters. And this was BEFORE you cut back on the payoffs for missions. I'd log on in the morning with maybe 89 credits to my name, hoping to GOD that my steel harvester hadn't run out of maint money or been damaged during the night and actually had something in it. I'd sell two or three droids on a good day... other days, I'd have hundreds of little guys on there waiting for a home. Then I started getting into more specialized items that needed rare materials from far-off places... and decided to quit droids. Only one or two droids did anything useful, and they were of a type that only one class could really use it.

So I moved on to Bio-Engineering... I figured, creatures are freely available everywhere, so I won't have to wait three weeks for a resource to pop up on my planet again, or spend obscene amounts of money to travel where the resource is, right? Oh no, then you throw in Talusian fungus, which costs me a 4k trip to the planet round trip just to check if there's any on the map at the moment! Thank you for patching in the eggs or I would have been throwing a tantrum at you fast and hard. I'm only now beginning to get a little nest egg for myself... if I hadn't had a friend who was an architect willing to make my house just for supplying the materials, I wouldn't even have one.

My point is, there is an awful lot of money sinks already in place. If you have people acquiring wealth too quickly, you need to look at where they're getting that money, and slowing them down... not looking for ways to milk it out of everybody. If you make that kind of change to the maintenance rates on vendors, I guarantee several things will happen:

a) Several people will just close up shop, probably myself included. If the proposed change to Vitality packs restoring pets to 100% vitality goes through, my pets are going to be sitting on my vendors for a long, long, loooooong time because no one is going to need to buy new ones. Ever. And there won't be any recouping of costs to hold inventory, because the more we raise our prices to offset increased overhead, the more it will cost us. I'm hanging on to what... 20 or so skill points in Artisan for this? When I'm wasting a bunch of points in Organic chem and Scout already just to have a science profession?

b) If they don't close up shop completely, they will move to a larger planet where there will be more traffic. The edges of no-build zones will look like manhattan, with everything crowded into as little space as possible... so much so that no one can even find a shop because the signs are only readable from one direction. Rural places like Rori will be deserted, except for the exploiters who already have 10 Gazillion dollars and who could care less about anything except where to put their mega harvesters. So basically you're going to have everyone on four planets, crowding the servers and complaining about the lag.

c) Casual gamers will give up product-oriented professions entirely and become all Bounty Hunters and the like, because it's all they will have time to afford to be able to spend on.

d) Prices on all house vendors will drop dramatically, leading to more people frustrated just as I was for never being able to get ahead a little and make ends meet. Frustration = person most likely to close their SWG account.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think I'm going to quit BE and just going Pistoleer. It'd certainly be cheaper. I was told this was a game that was friendly to the crafter types, but I think I was misled.

ed

I'm sure someone has touched on this before me, I'm just not going to go back and figure out who, so here's what I think should be done:

I think the vendor needs to have a low fixedmaintenance fee per 45mins, and then a percentage of each sale is taken, say 5%. This would penalize people who move a LOT of items quickly more than people who only make a sale every other day or so.

That way, casual players can still make a profit, since they know a set amount of money is going to go to the cost of the vendor. With a varying maintenance rate, you never really know how fast you'll sell out, so it's near-impossible to figure exactly what you'll have to spend. It could be considered Imperial Sales Tax, or call it commission for the vendor, but just don't penalize people like architects who already make very little money and move items slowly.

st

I hate you. I hate you so much. Can you stop **edit**ing with me please?

Why exactly is it based on how much I have in the vendor? Would it not make more sense to base it on what actually sells, or just have a flat rate that is increased. Or better yet, give the mother **edit**ing fighters a **edit**ing money sink. Make weapons decay faster. Make food necessary. Reinstitue insurance. Don't make it impossible for me to make any money.

stWant money to get out of the game faster? Make items degrade faster. It is just that simple.

edLike everyone else here, I loathe this. When I finally make Master Tailor, if I have ONE (1) of everything I can make for sale, at my low low prices, that's still265k on the vendor. That's charging me 8500/day. My shop doesn't get a whole lot of business, and I'm lucky if I can make 5k /day. I would gladly support a sales tax on every sale of 5% or 10%. I realize you need more money sinks in the game, but taking it from the already crippled profession of merchants is bogus. Not to mention, many of us merchants are also crafters, and I'm sure many of us have been hurt by the factory bug; I know I have. Please, please, please, work on FIXING things before you swing the nerf bat, and then say "oops, it might be broken, we'll look in to it for the next month."

st

Slowly reading through this monster thread and all so not sure if these ideas have been mentioned but maybe have a mix of ideas.

My personal Idea would be to have the MAintance based on value of stock for the terminal/droid vendros more of a cost in maintaing the machine. Thouh the 1/1000 is a bit high maybe stagger it so that its cheaper for the diffrent types of robo vendors. maybe tagger it to were the non merchant ones are the 1/1000 if you have to do it or even the non Master Artisan ones. Make being a merchant worth something then. They could become a clearing house for different people who did not wish to go into the merchant tree.

Also once you get into the merchant tree have the cost move to flat fees but then have the sale taxes go in place. Maybe even a discount for having a merchant force in play that cuts the cost to encourage the use of more clearing houses type of places.

I knew that the change was going to come at some point but this is a bit much but here is a chance to work on making the merchant the king of the vendors. While anyone with business 3 can get a basic vendor make it so that hiring gets you better employes not just diffrent looking employes. While I dont want to have the 6 y/o south american kid working like in a shoe factory, its possible to tie the maintance to the type of vendor. Then the vendor fees could affect the 'sales tax' This way you add more value to the merchant class and can keep the sinks in as not evry weaponsmith or architect or armorsmith or tailor will master merchant as well. Those people can then work with a merchant to sell their wares at best value adding more interaction between classes. Also if were able to work it so that vendors had access to their own admin lists a mastr merchant could 'rent out' his merchants to people. Let them add items and set prices like the bazaar and part of the tax money goes to the merchant for the sales.

Just a few random ideas as I wonder where I will have to put my stock when this goes in. Probably have to place 4 or 5 more smaller houses to store it since with the change and cause no way can remove and store all my items from my 4 vendors.

Oh and one more thing. Would the maintance fee be for items for sale or in the store room or both? And would there be a diffrence in maintance for store room items as they do not have a cost attached to them any more. Coul dleave things in the store room and bypass some of the storage problems if recycle them so often so they dont get eaten.

stFirst post summed it up I think.

st

Hi,

this is affecting a broken class, the Merchant, and should not be reviewed without the Merchant in mind. Therefore it is important to know what those "Reduced Vendor Fees" skills are worth. Does it mean costs are 20% cheaper each time, or 50%?

Vendors are still broken. My current Vendor Fee is travelling after reboot to every vendor and re-register it on the map. I would like to see this fixed, as well as other issues, before there is a (working) fee. I also would be happy if the vendors would be fixed to the point where a Merchant can allow specific persons to sell over his vendors and set a fee for those listed items, thats what they supposed to be for. A Merchant is the class to provide sales-points, and those who have not his skills should be able to use his skills as intended.

Another thing I am not happy with is the over time charging philosophy. At the moment, items which arent sold time out after a week, within that time, a 1000cr Item will cost 168 credits. The same Time, a 3000cr Item will cost 20 credits at the Bazar. Where is the advantage of a vendor? And how attractive will a merchant (I am sorry, but vendors and merchants are really one thing when it comes to game balancing) be able to sell, if there is a (possible) "tax" of almost 17% to pay, without any profit?

Well, you are asking for other solutions.......I say, first fix the vendors to create alternatives for those who want a vendor but not go for merchant by enabling the "sell through a merchant vendor" option, as they were supposed to work. If the Vendor-Costs for a Master Merchant are below 7%, which means almost at the level of the Bazar, I see no Problem with the "Charge over Time" thing. But to give us something more reliable to calculate with, I would prefer to equally charge everbody the same price of 5 or 10 per hour for a vendor, and charge a percentage of the Item when it is listed at the Vendor.

If a Business3 Player wants to sell a 10k Item he has to pay 1.5k to the vendor (15%)

If the same Item is sold through a low-lvl Merchant-Vendor let it be 1k plus whatever the Merchant charges

Same Mid-lvl 500Cr, Master Merchant 250Cr

This may seem to be more expensive, but compared to the Bazar fees for 7 Days its cheaper even for the lvl3 Business Artisan.

Just my 2 cents to this Thread.

And for those who wanna know what I am, I am Master Artisan, and soon Master Merchant and Master Architect. And yes, I am still looking for a reason why I skilled Merchant that far........

Read ya.

stAt that rate, Architects will take an enormous hit. We do not have the sales volume that Weaponsmiths and Armorsmiths have.

st

I just can't compete with the guys who are allready both master weponsmiths and ungodly rich.

Of course you can. You simply choose not to.

st

Iwould like to see percentage increased prices for vendor-Items (brokerage for the Vendor).

• You have your Credit-Sink


• It does not affect crafters who do not sell anything through their vendor (poor crafters )


• The Crafter has to decide wheter or not he shares that higher vendor-prices with his customers


• It won't end up in empty vendors or player using no vendors at all

Please, Vendors need to be placed in private buildings, in order to sell items (with special prices) for known customers (who where given access!)

st

Hi,

sorry, calculated wrong, Value/1000 per 40 minutes, not 60 minutes, likeI calced. 252 Credits would be the Price of a 1000Cr Item in the Vendor for 7 Days, thats 25.2%.....

Read ya.