Merchant Archive

My Private Vendor was placed for two reasons:

1. Admin rights on houses were broken, so the Vendor gave me a way to let friends come by and pick up an item. Even with Admin right fixed, I may not want to give a friend full access to my house, so the Vendor will still serve as a means for me to give an item to a friend without having to meet him/her in person.

2. To allow friends to buy things at reduced cost. I don't want just anyone to be able to benefit from these reduced costs, but I don't mind friends coming by and buyinga Medium Harvester for 5k.

Mantyss Xin'Shou

Gorath

We were using our vendors for private sales to friends and associates, outside of the PA format.

It made more sense to us to have people harvestone particular thing instead of having to run all over creation to baby-sit their harvesters. We were using the vendor to share out the resultant resources, power and finished products to the benefit of us all.

Yea it would be nice to be able to set prices differently for guild members. The good thing about a private vendor inside the PA is that only guild members could access it and we could sell stuff at price or below for guild members and not have to worry about having someone come in andtake everything at a deep discount. Also it's nice to be able to have a central vendor for giving out resources to crafters ( i.e. you run around to your harvestors and instead of having to hunt down each crafter to give them resources you could just put it up on the pa vendor and didn't have to worry about others comming to take it.

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Holocron wrote:

Yeah, that's exactly what they are NOT supposed to be for.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that you want and needa PA vault and storage space. But that's not what vendors are intended to be, hence this change. We need to find an alternate solution to PA storage and distribution.

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It would be nice if the alternate solution is implemented before the current workable solution is removed. Otherwise, we're all left hanging with no way to do things we need to do in order to work together as a PA truly should.

Here's the great thing - having private vendors was one of the few reliable ways I knew how to get around the factory crate bug. Whenever I get a stuck crate, I would have someone buy it off the vendor and offer it back to me. Now, when you're dealing with power core units, you don't want someone to be able to come by and buy it at 1 credit for a stack of 10, so I would lock down the house while doing so. For some reason, going through a vendor was much more effective at freeing crates than waiting and/ortrading.

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gatekeep wrote:

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Holocron wrote:

Yeah, that's exactly what they are NOT supposed to be for.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that you want and needa PA vault and storage space. But that's not what vendors are intended to be, hence this change. We need to find an alternate solution to PA storage and distribution.

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It would be nice if the alternate solution is implemented before the current workable solution is removed. Otherwise, we're all left hanging with no way to do things we need to do in order to work together as a PA truly should.

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In general, I agree. However, you DO have a way now, which is the way that was intended--giving your PA members admin rights so that they can freely pick up and drop stuff in the hall.

Now,I can see that you want to have more granular permissions on the hall, which is fine, I think we can manage that.

Holo,

Setting aside the advantages some people consider in selling to PA Members only, one big thing about private vendors are for commission based sales. What happens is the crafter receives an order (particularly high level crafting, suits of armor, buildings, etc.) that may take a few days to fulfill. This may make it harder for the crafter to meet with the person "in person" to deliver the goods.

What often happens in this scenario is the following:

1) Crafter completes the order.

2) Crafter places the order in a travel pack named after the person who ordered it in the first place and puts it on his private vendor for the agreed upon price.

3) Crafter adds that person to their Entry list on the private house (set private so that not just anyone can come in and purchase the order that was commissioned for someone else).

4) Crafter sends an in game mail to the person telling them WP and that their order is complete and in the vendor.

The problem is that some types of sales people (doctors, bio-engineers, tailors, chefs, etc.) NEED to cater to the public at all times, but some times likeMaster Weaponsmiths, Architects who aren't handling furniture, etc. will want to use a private vendor to allow for pickup in that fashion. They often have TWO houses, one for public sales, one for private sales/discounts/commission pickups. There have been problems when the houses were set public with people just randomly buying other peoples commissions even though they were clearly named after the person who was supposed to get it.

I used the word "friends" in my post because we are not yet officially a PA. If you were to add PA pricing then that would not help me and my "friends" who are working toward creating a PA hall.

Mantyss Xin'Shou

Gorath

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Holocron wrote:

We plugged the grief hole short-term, but the long-term thing that needs to happen is probably having a PA-only vendor, if there's a big need for it. Can you explain to me what purpose your PA vendor serves? That would help me design the replacement.

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Well, I'd probably have two or three of these.

The first purpose would be to create a "Community" vendor, where members of the PA could just toss up free resources, hide, bones, et al, that they've picked up in the wild. So crafters of the PA are able to pick them up at a convenient location without having to hunt it down themselves.

The second purpose is for an "Equipment" vendor, as I supply and outfit my guild with guns. Currently, the way I do this is have them purchase the guns from my Sales vendor when I am not available. When I get online and check my auction e-mails, I see my guildmate bought a gun from me, so I tip him the cost.

Theoretically, with the new changes in, I'd like to just have both of these vendors in our PA Hall now, with everything priced at 1c, no worry of bored travellers coming in and buying out fine-quality wares for pennies that was intended for guildmembers.

Lastly,

Can you just make it so that vendors in private houses do not show up in the global bazaar terminals when searching for items?

That way no one could buy from it and get ripped off when they could not get into the house to pick the stuff up. You are a merchant and you set your house to private it immediately removes everything inside from the bazaar listings and drops the waypoint to your vendor from the planetary map.

I don't have a 'private' vendor but have used them many times to purchase/pickup a custom order of goods. I've had issues with placing a custom order, having it made, and going to pick it up only to find that someone else had purchased it off the vendor in a public house. The vendor was seperated from the rest in the house(all the way in the back room). It had a title stating that it was for custom orders and the sellers description stated that it was for me.

Someone posted this, but I'll reiterate....

What if I want to sell things from my vendor for reduced prices to a select group of people? I can't now. No private shops for a select group. How can I control to whom I sell, not based on faction or some other in-game tag, but based on a list of people if I can't have a vendor in a private home?

What I want to know is why? Why can't we have vendors in private homes? Why were they never designed to be this way? What's it hurt? If people are storing more than you want them to...well then wake up and realize people want more storage space and provide it.

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Holocron wrote:

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gatekeep wrote:

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Holocron wrote:

Yeah, that's exactly what they are NOT supposed to be for.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that you want and need a PA vault and storage space. But that's not what vendors are intended to be, hence this change. We need to find an alternate solution to PA storage and distribution.

---

It would be nice if the alternate solution is implemented before the current workable solution is removed. Otherwise, we're all left hanging with no way to do things we need to do in order to work together as a PA truly should.

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In general, I agree. However, you DO have a way now, which is the way that was intended--giving your PA members admin rights so that they can freely pick up and drop stuff in the hall.

Now, I can see that you want to have more granular permissions on the hall, which is fine, I think we can manage that.

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Yep, this is what I saw vendors in private houses used for. They were a workaround for the bug with admin permissions on houses basically. Better permissions on the hall would be nice. For instance giving members the ability to pick certain stuff up from storage or from the hall but not withdraw all of the credits. Just something between no privilege and full admin privilege.