Merchant Archive
Thread: Mailbox
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Javac
Thu Aug 19, 2004 12:09 am
#14
Us Droid Engineers have supported the idea for a "delivery droid" that can take items to customers offline.
SpottyGekko
Thu Aug 19, 2004 12:24 am
#15
Yes, a mailbox/dropbox is a great idea. I'm a UK-based player, which means my prime playing time in the week ends before the majority of the US players have become active. It would be great do be able to deliver items to someone that they can pick up when they log in,by which timeI'm fast asleep already.
This dropbox can possibly even be made part of the bank function, so that it is accessible from anywhere on the planet. If it would be seen as a threat to player interaction, then make it only accept deliveries when the player is offline.
joined42904
Thu Aug 19, 2004 12:25 am
#16
I really don't want a delivery droid unless it's certified in the merchant tree. It's too easy a way around the use of vendors. If no one has to travel whatsoever when this droid is used, I can see how some people would prefer to use droid deliver to vendors.
Hmm...maybe it would be ok if there were a very low limit on the number of unaccepted deliveries you could have at a single time. I can't see how 2 or 3 would interfere too much with merchant control of commerce. If it were unlimited though and folks had COD mailboxes...non-merchants could run a mail order business without using vendors that would actually be MORE CONVENIENT for customers than going into the shops folks paid so many skill points to have.
joined42904
Thu Aug 19, 2004 12:27 am
#17
SpottyGekko,
Even the bazaar isn't accessible everywhere on the planet to pick up items. I think mailboxes should be tied to structures like houses or ships and should only be accessable from that location.
Fhtagn
Thu Aug 19, 2004 9:45 am
#18
make it even simpler... tie it to the character's bank vault.
if there's space available, it can be offered through any banking terminal on the character's "home planet", the item (or bag of items) counts against the safe deposit box total, just like something put in by the character. just add on a "COD" option for auction deliveries.
eliminates the need for keeping a house, eases the travel burden for the person making the delivery as they'd only need to hit a spaceport on the target planet rather than going all the way to the character's home.
BoberFett
Thu Aug 19, 2004 10:23 am
#19
Great idea Fhtagn.
Let's keep this one at the top. I think it would be an appreciated gesture from most of the playerbase if we pushed for something like this now that poached vendors are being removed. Yeah, we could be stubborn and say that they've been devaluing merchant all along, so forget 'em. But why keep the resentment going? Let's move past it and make the game better for everyone.
Warryyr
Thu Aug 19, 2004 10:53 am
#20
Maybe a Delivery Droid would be single use, and each would require a "Merchant Droid Storage Module" in the Droid Crafting process to provide a place for the delivery items to go? Of course, this MDSM would only be be craftable by Master Merchants - and you'd probably get free delivery droids from Droid Engineersin exchange for a schematic for the needed part. The required resources should be kept simple, with no experimentation needed. Similar to the Dual Wave Synthesizer that DE's need to make playback modules for Musicians - DWS's are only craftable by Musicians and they're pretty easy to make, with no experimentation necessary.
Just like Detonation droids (usable only by Smugglers, commandos and bh's) or Merchant Barker droids (usable by merchants with advertising IV) these new droids should only be usable by Master Merchants. Then, if you need a package delivered, you find yourself a Master Merchant and they send it on it's way (for a fee, most likely).
To facilitate easy deliver of packages, each house and bank account gets a new unique 8-digit code (2 groups of 4 numbers, like 2533-7182) which you could give to someone as the delivery "address."
Like Maintenance Droids or Interplanetary Survey Droids, these things could be launched anywhere and would shoot you a confirmation email once they arrived at the house or bank account specified.
I really like this idea, and I've mentioned it before and seen it mentioned before, it would add a lot of convenience to Merchants.
Message Edited by Warryyr on 08-19-2004 10:58 AM
joined42904
Thu Aug 19, 2004 11:11 am
#21
Warryr,
That's a good idea. Let the delivery droid be something only merchants can use.
I still think it's better to tie mailboxes to structures rather than bank accounts. My bank is usually full of resources. And the ones there are my best resources. That's because I trust the bank not to poof the most of all the places I can put stuff. And there shouldn't be a massive penalty of not being able to receive goods just because your bank is full.
Corsican_Ogre
Fri Aug 20, 2004 1:39 pm
#22
hmm would the summon driod bug cause you to be charged by the empire with interfering with the imperial post?
Ejai
Fri Aug 20, 2004 4:37 pm
#23
Fhtagn wrote:
make it even simpler... tie it to the character's bank vault.
if there's space available, it can be offered through any banking terminal on the character's "home planet", the item (or bag of items) counts against the safe deposit box total, just like something put in by the character. just add on a "COD" option for auction deliveries.
eliminates the need for keeping a house, eases the travel burden for the person making the delivery as they'd only need to hit a spaceport on the target planet rather than going all the way to the character's home.
Not sure this one will work as stated... I believe you have to declare residence in a home before you get a safe deposit box. That being said - I think this makes sense... as how would FedEx deliver anything if you didn't have a home address? So... if you have a home, and set up your Safe Deposit Box, why not allow package delivery to go there? Use the banking terminals to manage the delivery, and make them reject if there's no room. Wouldn't even be too difficult to make it so you could send things "COD" (cash on delivery). Now... there is great potential for abuse. I could send 1 million units of grind quality resources split to one unit each to everyone I could identify, charge 1000 credits each, and count on the odds for some percentage of the recipients to pay the fee to get the item without paying attention. My point being, there would have to be some built in limit to allow 1-5 deliveries in transit at any given time. Just thinking out loud here...
BoberFett
Fri Aug 20, 2004 5:06 pm
#24
Ejai wrote:
Fhtagn wrote:
make it even simpler... tie it to the character's bank vault.
if there's space available, it can be offered through any banking terminal on the character's "home planet", the item (or bag of items) counts against the safe deposit box total, just like something put in by the character. just add on a "COD" option for auction deliveries.
eliminates the need for keeping a house, eases the travel burden for the person making the delivery as they'd only need to hit a spaceport on the target planet rather than going all the way to the character's home.
Not sure this one will work as stated... I believe you have to declare residence in a home before you get a safe deposit box. That being said - I think this makes sense... as how would FedEx deliver anything if you didn't have a home address? So... if you have a home, and set up your Safe Deposit Box, why not allow package delivery to go there? Use the banking terminals to manage the delivery, and make them reject if there's no room. Wouldn't even be too difficult to make it so you could send things "COD" (cash on delivery). Now... there is great potential for abuse. I could send 1 million units of grind quality resources split to one unit each to everyone I could identify, charge 1000 credits each, and count on the odds for some percentage of the recipients to pay the fee to get the item without paying attention. My point being, there would have to be some built in limit to allow 1-5 deliveries in transit at any given time. Just thinking out loud here...
Yes, you could fool people into buying things that are misnamed or misrepresented if they're not paying attention. That can happen with the current vendor offer system, so it's nothing new there. Caveat emptor.
I actually wouldn't even mind if this feature were larger than 5 items. It could have a limit of 50 to 100 items and not be tied to the bank, simply to prevent griefing. If it had a low limit or were tied to the bank and it's available space, somebody could very easily jam peoples mailbox with junk so they weren't able to receive mail.
Another reason to not to tie it to the bank is that banks are planetary, so a package could be delivered to numerous people on the same planet quickly. A crafter could easily take orders by email and make deliveries to every planet in under an hour. I know this is true, because I can currently survey the entire galaxy in 30-45 minutes. I update SWGCraft with mineral, chemical and gas data every day or two, and with the 5 minute shuttle times, I can very quickly cover the entire galaxy.
Instead, I'd tie the mailbox to the the players declared residence. If it's tied to a residence, then the travel requirement would be enough of a deterrent to somebody using this as their sole sale mechanism. This way it won't replace merchants. Unless some weaponsmith enjoys making deliveries for 3 hours a day, the preferred outlet will still be a merchant, either themselves or another player.
This feature would be accessed from the standard building terminal. This means that people can have security features over their mailbox. Simply make a building private with access permissions, or make it public with and ban known enemies. The interface could look exactly like the current vendor interface, but without the Buy/Sell interface. It would only have the Offers and Stockroom interface available. If you simply hide the Buy/Sell interface portion of the vendor interface, that gets rid of any possible functionality for selling, it's only for delivery.
Yes, Sony should hire me as a designer. I'm that good.
Just kidding. Lots of great ideas here. Maybe we can get Doc to approach the Merhcant dev with some of them. I honestly don't think something like my idea would take long to implement. I say that as a professional software/database developer myself. Since it's using existing interfaces and systems, those objects can just be tweaked and called with different parameters.
LonelyGhost
Fri Aug 20, 2004 10:40 pm
#25
joined42904 wrote:
Warryr,
That's a good idea. Let the delivery droid be something only merchants can use.
I still think it's better to tie mailboxes to structures rather than bank accounts. My bank is usually full of resources. And the ones there are my best resources. That's because I trust the bank not to poof the most of all the places I can put stuff. And there shouldn't be a massive penalty of not being able to receive goods just because your bank is full.
I agree, as I stated inmy post farther up, having it on a structure would be nice. It presents some problems, but nothing that cant be coded around. Of course, they could track down and kill the hyper-time bug that keeps killing structures. 
Tarnak_Archvold
Sun Aug 22, 2004 1:07 am
#26
The easiest thing to do would be to just make the "mail box" just like the offer part of vendors.
Anyone using it for sales would just be able to sell 25 items at the time and the new upcoming backpack rules would further promote this.
It would not be possible to "jam" someone else's "mail box" as all items would count as belonging to the person who offered them until they are accepted.
It would be the perfected solution for a custom order, or for a hunter who just wand to deliver his avian meant of the day to his usual doctor who is ofline.
Anyone using it for sales would just be able to sell 25 items at the time and the new upcoming backpack rules would further promote this.
It would not be possible to "jam" someone else's "mail box" as all items would count as belonging to the person who offered them until they are accepted.
It would be the perfected solution for a custom order, or for a hunter who just wand to deliver his avian meant of the day to his usual doctor who is ofline.
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