Merchant Archive

Yeah, Numtini's ideas sound good. Also, correction to my last post...buy vendors from merchants, not merchants from vendors!

p.s. buy my powerups

Simple Solution.

Move reduced bazaar fees to business 3, move vendor +1 to business 4. You need merchant exp to get novice merchant so you have to have some type of vendor in the business line.

Make business 3 have like a 10% reduction in fees and you can still keep efficency 1. Move the +10 hiring to Novice Merchant and make it +20.

Keep the vendors in the business line cause I definately DO NOT want to have to craft another 10k exp worth of general items to get merchant.

I dont care how its made.. just as long as I can sell it.

so here is what I suggest:

Business 3: Reduced Bazaar fees +10 (10%)
Business 4: Vendor +1, Hiring +10
Novice Merchant: Hiring +20, Vendor +1
Efficiency 1: Reduced Bazaar fees +10 (20% total)

So by changing the Reduced Bazaar fees to a skill modifyer like hiring it will work.

I agree with the removal of vendors from the Artisan tree. At this point there is absolutely no NEED forMerchants. Many other professions rely on each other in an interdependant design. No one requires the use of a merchant. I'm not suggesting that merchants be required to sell items, however I am suggesting that it be beneficial to crafters to sell their wares through a merchant. It would behoove the balancing of this class to remove the bazaar bonuses from the merchant line and place them in the artisan line. Vendors should be "class" defining of the Merchants, and most merchants (if any) use the bazaar at all, or would want to, when our experience gainis based on vendor sales, not bazaar sales.

If any crafter wishes to run their own store, by all means, let them learn the merchant skill to do so. A BE can make pets yet requires the CH skill to train them. This is no different. Artisans and crafters make items, let them require spending points in Merchant to utilize the sale tools.

More and more my business is hurt by the "casual" merchant who only uses the business 3 vendor to sell their own wares. It is too great a reward forso little the amount of work required. I have complete respect for any crafter that also spends points in the Merchant skill to develop their character and store.

As mentioned, this game is all about interdependancy. You need entertainers to heal your fatigue, and medics to heal your wounds. You should need merchants to sell your wares outside of the bazaar setting and its 3k cr limit. Anyone who says otherwise should be considered wrong and possibly silly. And while we're at it... you should be required to eat food/drink and also spice should be addictive rather than make you vomit after 500 seconds or whatever. (Only vomit when you try to quit the spice... theres a dose of reality for you, too.)

This is pretty much a total non-issue and I am sad to see that you are rallying behind a 'nerf that other guy' banner.

Work to enhance your own class, not screw other players. I would have hoped that EQ taught you at least that much.

sigh

<QUOTE>

This is pretty much a total non-issue and I am sad to see that you are rallying behind a 'nerf that other guy' banner.

Work to enhance your own class, not screw other players. I would have hoped that EQ taught you at least that much.

sigh

</QUOTE>

Wow! What a great post! Way to construct a valid logical argument! I love they way you took ideas from previous posts and countered their ideas with better more valid ideas of your own. The opinions and solutions you have offered to this discussion will be invaluable to all of us!You didn't take the easy way out and just try to lump this idea in with nerfs. I mean hell, anytime anyone has an idea now, all you have to do is call it a nerf. NERF NERF NERF. Lucky for all of us, you didn't take that kind of shortcut to thinking.

Im a merchant and I have no problem with Buis 3 allowing a vendor. A clunky vending machine in the living room is a nice way for a crafter to unload some of his goods....and I personally don't feel any threat to my buisness whatsoever. A merchant will likely have a full blown store, NPC vendors, and ambience. I like the tree the way it is....just my personal observations on my server. Yours might be different.

"It can be on the planetary map. The upkeep seems to be cheaper. It certainly looks nicer and creates a better look to a shop. I couldn't wait to get rid of the big ugly box. Oh! And with additional vendors you can split things between them to keep them sorted. That's a big big one right there."

Negative. You can ONLY do this by another skills. A novice merchant can't do this. Maintance is identical fornovice merchant as business 3. You only get a 2nd vendor at novice merchant. Oooo but a business 3 guy can see 250 items. Novice merchant can sell 250 items also but in 2 vendors. Wow I see all the people jumping n board the merchant class for that bonus. The issue is being ran around in circles and stones thrown at it. Merchant class has zero use for reduced bazaar fees. Those need to be moved to business line. The #1 reason to become a merchant isvendor management. Add the fact anyone can easily get one and merchant will be useless no matter what you add to it. This is a KEY thing that NEEDS to be unique to merchants for the profession to be worth 2 craps. What demand is there for 6 vendors that can sell 250 items when I can get business 3 and spend a month less time getting there and 100's of thousands of credits less to accomplish this same thing with 1 vendor? Sure you can add it to the map or get different looks.If weaponsmiths just got different color cdef's with different style looks as anoption I'm sure they'd be pissed too. Point is there isn't anything you can add to improve merchant really. You need to restructure business line to give merchant a reason. I'm sure this hurts your plans to skip merchant and sell 250 items yourself but ooo well. You'll live.

After you spend a month+ ofsolidnon-stop sales on multiple vendors to max merchant out you'll think differently Blode. I thought it was fine till I wasted the time, money, and engery getting the boxes for zero return but I'm hoping they fix it like all the other professions like commando.

After you spend a month+ ofsolidnon-stop sales on multiple vendors to max merchant out you'll think differently

Does this mean the next step will be to take them away from novice merchants? Do you really think that out of four lines, most of which are very messed up,grabbing merchants away from newbie artisans is somehow going to solve merchant problems?

Most artisans want to sell their own wares. They didn't go into the business in order to be pure manufacturers. People will buy up enough merchant skills to get enough vendors to meet their needs. I would guess that if you keep raising the bar, you'll force people out of artisan professions before you force them to let you retail for them. The answer to multi-artisan shops is going to be in vendor malls with artisans running their own vendors.

Also removing a vendor from business three is extremely punitive towards newbies. The reality is that most people don't stop at business three, they pick up novice and perhaps a few other merchant skills. The business 3 vendor is what allows them a leg up. Thats exactly what it's supposed to do. Just like being able to make travel backpacks at domestic 3 and black short sleeve jackets gave me a leg up on tailoring.

But you wanted even more suggestions on how to fix the merchant profession without trying to punish newbie artisans?

How about shops. Add shops to the architect line and make them ownable only by people with specific merchanting skills. How about allowing master merchants to build within the 1km border of a town? Maybe "shops" can have merchants out on the porch?

What about allowing signs on shops, but only for merchants -- perhaps advertising one just gets you a generic shop sign up to master merchant thatgets you a large sign with your choice of icons and a text display.

There are a million things that can be done for the merchanting lines that don't involve stealing skills from newbies and attacking artisan merchants as impure.

This thread isn't about broken merchant skills, it's about profession balance between artisans and merchants. And no one is talking about taking vendors away from novice merchants.
Of course most artisans want to sell their own wares, I'm sure a majority of people would like to be completely self-sufficient. When I first started playing in Beta, I played a Marksman/Scout/Medic/Entertainer/Artisan so that I could survive by myself outside of town indefinitely (stupid Battle Fatigue). Profession interdependence and the corresponding social interaction are what help to keep this game interesting.

But I'm glad to hear we are in agreement. "People will buy up enough merchant skills to get enough vendors to meet their needs." "The reality is that most people don't stop at business three, they pick up novice..." Sounds like there is no reason to not move vendors up to Novice Merchant. To expand on our position, let's take a Master Armorsmith example. With one of the marksman weapon trees full (for self defense), Master Armorsmith, and the three artisan trees besides business complete... That leaves 101/250 skill points remaining. Filling up Business and getting Novice Merchant takes up 20 more skill points, 81/250. Twenty points doesn't seem like an unreasonable amount of SP to spend in order to place your own vendors.

I feel the problem is that most newbies either go for Master Marksman or Master Artisan. All the Master Artisans get to place vendors. This creates a huge number of people putting bulky vendors in their houses and calling it a store. Of course they aren't really that interested in being a merchant so most the time they don't even keep it stocked. This means when I tell someone "Come to my store" or "I have vendors" they can not tell if I am a master merchant or just some Business 3 newb.

Basically, my belief is that if vendor placement was moved to Novice Merchant, people would NOT choose to go that route and depend on merchants more. Right now, artisans getting vendors is a side effect of people feeling the need to obtain Master Artisan.

I know lots of smugglers and medics who get artisan and business 3 just for 1 vendor instead of asking a merchant to sell their wares. JediPhr33k is right we need something unique to merchant class. Most "Newbies" in artisan tree would love reduced bazaar fees over a vendor. I've already talk to a number of them. Most of the peopleget business 3for a vendor aren't "newbies" they are masters in atleast 1 profession wanting to be self-sufficent which has no place in SWG. Removing vendors from artisan line won't hurt or punish artisan 1 bit. Moving reduced bazaar fees there will actually improve it. Tell me what can a Master Artisan sell that is over 3k? A crate of some master parts is only thing that might get close to 3k. Bazaar is fine for artisans. Then make bazaar give merchant xp to learn merchant.

Before suggesting a major nerf that definitely violates the continuity to some degree, let's be a little more creative. I suggest that instead of taking away Business vendors altogether, SOE should simply limit the quality of the vendors that non-Merchants get. Give them a fairly low limit to capacity, for example. And it'd help if we got more abilities that assist us in the acquisition of merchandise.

It's totally unreasonable to force players to interact with each other through a single class, and trying to change the economic mechanics on this scope will kill small crafters more than it will help Merchants. That's something that doesn't need to happen at this particular time on most servers...

The game's balance must allow big mercantile types like us to function without completely killing the little Mom and Pop stores. Mom and Pop stores which, by the way, often have to sell even simple items for over 3K, and in greater numbers than 25 items listed at a time, to get a good profit. They have their place in the game, and we have ours - which isn't a monopoly on significant commerce.

Right now, most Merchants are being idiots about the trade anyhow - I have no trouble obtaining merchandise for resale via understandings with individual manufacturers. Granted, I deal mostly in consumable items, rather than big ticket merchandise, but I don't struggle to make money. If you're having trouble functioning as a Merchant, maybe you should rethink your strategy, because some of us are doing excellently even in spite of the class's bugs.