Merchant Archive

I am sad reading this thread. "If this change goes Live I quit!" is a pretty unproductive way of having an honest debate about change.

Instead of complaining about how the change will ruin your business when you are really a Master [some other crafting profession] and a Merchant on the side, why don't you offer up some constructive suggestions?

It seems to me that the Devs want to solve a few problems with what they're doing:

- Empty vendors on the planetary map result in a wild goose chase for buyers
- Empty vendors result in buyers not being able to find what they are seeking
- Vendors are a low cost means for players to sell/store an infinite amount of items in a very finite database
- Newer players are unable to break into the market dominated by people with huge stocks

How would *you* handle these problems (without arguing that they are non-issues and should be ignored so that we keep the status quo)?

All said, I think the Devs could have introduced this change differently. Yes, some of these thoughts have been mentioned before by the Devs but it happened quite some time ago and I think everyone was expecting Publish 10 to be for Force Sensitivity only and not a major Merchant change. It is impossible to get 100% player agreement particularly when imposing a new restriction (aka "nerf"), but if the Devs had communicated a little better the change wouldn't have been such a shock and we wouldn't be seeing some of the strong, shocked reactions we are.

Come up with some workable ideas to solve the problems the Devs are trying to solve and it'll go a lot further than "I'm quitting!"

nice try tstorm - but my shop has literrally 5000+ items in it... and its bad enough already that i only have 7 days ot relist them. some days i spend 2 hours relisting what has cancelled after the 30days. Why do i have all this? Because I serve many markets with 13 or so vendors, and I keep huge stocks of everysthing so that people can stop here and get whatever they need. if the cap goes down to 110 items, thats like 1 page. thats what i stokced on my lowest production item.

quite honestly if they developed a finite database then whoever did that should be fired for sheer incompetence. disk space and server space is cheap compared to the 30-120$/month some of us pay SOE.

I don't care about the vendor map crap, or any of that. as for the new guy who is having a hard time getting bussiness, i would suggest he do what the rest of us did, work hard and long hours at growing a business of wonderful customers.

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Mace33 wrote:

Macros gone, merchant nerf, combat and jedi , keeping fixing to get people out.........

Im struggling to find a reason. 2 accounts here or maybe not for long

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totally agree - if its broke fix it - if not get back to work on the real problems of SWG. SOE you keep taking away my hope for this game and that is to your detriment not mine as you depend on us (the paying customers). I can find a new game, can you find new paying customers? blah its summer out what am i doing here...

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Tstorm wrote:
I am sad reading this thread. "If this change goes Live I quit!" is a pretty unproductive way of having an honest debate about change.

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I don't think you understand something. The bean-counters in SOE need to listen up and realize that the money they refuse to spend on expanding their database is nothing compared to how much they'll lose in lost accounts. Is this change worth it to them? People need to speak up and let them know if they'll cancel or not. Sorry you don't want to hear it, but it's an important issue.

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Instead of complaining about how the change will ruin your business when you are really a Master [some other crafting profession] and a Merchant on the side, why don't you offer up some constructive suggestions?

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This change will ruin so many businesses, we have to let them know this. I honestly do not think that the people in charge of making these decisions play the game. If they are playing this game, they certainly aren't playing crafters. They should be made aware of the repurcussions of this change, as I don't think they're thinking about that at this point, only in saving SOE a little bit of money at the end of the month on database charges.

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It seems to me that the Devs want to solve a few problems with what they're doing:

- Empty vendors on the planetary map result in a wild goose chase for buyers
- Empty vendors result in buyers not being able to find what they are seeking
- Vendors are a low cost means for players to sell/store an infinite amount of items in a very finite database
- Newer players are unable to break into the market dominated by people with huge stocks

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Oh please, your only stating to pro's to what they are doing, and avoiding the most glaring change of all, the vendor limits. We all know about the changes to empty planetary map vendors. We all know that storing items on a vendor sucks, but is the only way to store items at this point due to the severe limits on storage space.

I really don't want to hear about the new players and breaking into a dominated market. I'm a new player! I've only been playing SWG for 2 months. I totally broke into the tailoring market and my business is doing great. Why, you ask? (heh) Because I'm one of the few tailor/merchants that offer a wide variety of clothing. People want that. Tailoring will be dead after this change. Trust me on that one. Ask any tailor around and custom orders, and I think most will tell you that custom orders are time consuming, frustrating and an unhappy time sink. I refuse to do custom orders except for people I know. There is a reason for that. That will not chance with the vendor limits.

A workable idea is that the Devs expand the database. I don't know how to do that, I'm not a database admin. But I do know enough about this kind of thing to know it CAN be done, and is done by companies on a daily basis. This is a money issue, pure and simple. SWG is one of the most expensive monthly fee games around. The software isn't cheap either. Add into the fact that many of us chose to have multiple accts to get around only having one character on each server. I have to agree with that rule, and I willingly chose to pay for multiple accts. I play by the rules of this game.I didn't pick up merchant and then drop it, I kept my points in that skill for all three accts. This is a slap in the face and people are insulted by this proposed change. In my opinion, short of cursing in the posts, all opinions are welcome.