Merchant Archive
Thread: Whats the real enemy for Merchants? Business III or the Bazaar.
how are you so sure you are visiting real merchants and not just crafters trying to sell their wares
Crafters selling their wares are real merchants.
Karai feel threatend by Merchants who take chances and put their fortunes on the line to build the global economy and (hopefully) make a buck.
There's always resentment for 'real' Merchants among artisans because we can take what they sell and sell it BETTER. I can get 4000 for the blaster you can get 3000 for because I actually can take the time to sell it better, market my vendors more agressively, and make deals because I buy and sell according to what sells, not what I choose to make next to advance my skills.
Real mechants are flexible. I'll remember to fly my freighter over your house..
The vast vast majority, perhaps 95%, of merchants are crafter-merchants.
Right now, as a Merchant, a Crafter Merchant, I would say the biggest danger to my playstyle is elitist pure merchants trying to nerf Crafter Merchants.
The biggest enemies of the merchant are buggy vendors.
When vendors/bazaareats items, or are terminally slow - people don't trust/use them nearly as much.
Crafter merchants ARE real merchants btw. Just because the game mechanics say I have to take a tree to have NPCs to sell my wares and it's called a profession - doesn't make anyone selling their own goods less a merchant.
For the few that want to buy low and sell high and play shopkeeper only, that's great - but your biggest obstacle is lack of storage space for goods waiting to sell.
I've run a successful business in one on line world or another for over 8 years. Whether I have a shop - or hawk my wares on the street, the mechanics are secondary to customer service, quality product, stock and fair and competitive pricing.
Whether or not I continue to run a store (or play at all for that matter) will depend a lot on what happens to overhead with vendors - what happens with total storage space in houses - and what happens with total sell slots in vendors.
If I can't store, display and offer my wares, I can't sell them.
marqie wrote:
What I think would help midigate this is the fix of the "vendor" menu in the houses. I think players want to come to one shop, and visit 3 or 4 diff vendors in one stop.
I really dislike the idea of shopping malls in SWG... they just don't seem "right". 
Small coops seem about the right level.
Perhaps limit the number of vendors that can be set up in a private structure:
A small house... 2 vendors, medium...4, large... no more than 6 (that's the max a single merchant can set up, isn't it?)
re: Bus3 vendor... perhaps if an item limit per vendor wereimplemented,rather than the item limit per structure (bug) we have now, we wouldn't find Artisan vendors so threatening? The efficiency line could grant merchants higher item capacity/vendor.
Bazaars account for 90% of my advertising for my shop, and 10% is word of mouth...it's a great way be able to fluctuate the price, reach different planets, and stick a small blurb for your shop in there.
Business III is a different matter.
I personally have nothing against the bazaar, it's fine.
I just am annoyed you go into a "shop" and consider it a merchant-run shop just cause it's got a vendor. This proves to me to take away vendors from business 3 more than anything.
You think miners were taken out because of artisans having a problem with them? Well they intend on putting them back in, they just had problems with the profession and decided in order to release the product in a more timely manner they had to get rid of a few professions and concentrate on smaller number. Miners will make it in, for no other reason that there are enough players who want it back, and even better, there are enough artisans who want them back. Want proof? There are people in the game who do nothing but set up harvesters and sell their wares to artisans, sound familiar? Don't use miners as an excuse to get rid of merchants it don't work except in your own greedy world.
In fact, merchants and miners (prolly industrialists as well) are good for the game because they are good for the economy. Most people won't grant this because they don't want to be dependant on other people, that's just human nature. If they are able to get away without it they will guard it with their lives. However the more steps you have in the production line, the better off the economy is because it keeps prices more stable and it spreads the money out more. Right now we essentially have 2 steps and a small portion trying to set up a third step. There should be more than this... miner/crafter/seller/user.
I'm ok with them getting rid of merchants, as long as at the same time we get rid of image designers, rangers, bounty hunters, chefs, tailors, carbineers, teras sekai artists, either dancers or musicians, either two-handed or one-handed sword users, and commandos. None of which really offer the world much of anything that isn't accomplished somewhere else or couldn't easily be accomplished somewhere else, or that just offer the world much of anything at all.
There's always resentment for 'real' Merchants among artisans because we can take what they sell and sell it BETTER. I can get 4000 for the blaster you can get 3000 for because I actually can take the time to sell it better
If that's the case, then I guess we don't need to nerf artisan merchants do we! 
And really there's no resentment, if you go and look at my posts you'll find I've offered up dozens of ideas for improving the merchant class. I am a merchant. A Real Merchant. I do a quarter of a million in sales a day. I'm about to open a second shop on another planet. I couldn't live without the tools available in the merchanting line and I'd love to see the weak lines (ie, everything but additional vendors) strengthened.
What I need to build my business from the 250,000 in sales a day that I do now to half a million ormillionis better tools to advertise, better tools to manage stock, the bug with vendor permissions on housing fixed, better reliability on vendors, tools for special orders, and better management of offers from my resource suppliers (being able to put out "buy" offers rather than just have them randomly offering or the price per resource unit idea--which if implemented is another thing i need my artisan level resource suppliers to be able to access).
I don't need to take the big ugly biz3 box away from the guy who's selling casual pants and short sleeve jackets. He's just no problem for me.
Merchants will continue to have some of the problems listed in this thread because...
Vendor Lists arenot working for houses/PA Halls. We can't currently set up mini-malls in large houses / PA Halls because of this. Of course, if they made this work, they'd also have to fix...
Items in Vendors counting towards total items in structures. Of course, if they make it so they don't count towards that anymore,they'd also have to fix....
NPC Vendors always having a maintenance rate of 1. Oh, and fixing all the other NPC vendor problems while they're at it.
I understand that this is how it is intended to work (I've been playing an artisan merchant since beta)... but if they remove the vendor/structure item limitation (which I understand is a bug) without putting something else in there, it WILL be taken to ridiculous, immersion breaking extremes.
The owner of the building can charge enterance fees... so he has little incentive not to stuff the house full of vendors from every merchant on the planet. Merchants get XP every time their vendors are accessed, so they have to go where the customers are.
Each planet will end up with two or three "supermalls" with 20 vendors stuffed ineach room.
Too much of a good thing can be just as much of a game breaker as any bug.
Grimjakk wrote:
"I really dislike the idea of shopping malls in SWG... they just don't seem "right". "
Sorry but "shopping malls" are not a modern day invention. They have been around since human beings started selling goods to each other, and will continue to be around for as long as there is such a thing as commerce. It’s simply the best way to sell your goods to customers. Lots of goods being sold by lots of different vendors in one convenient place. And that’s why they work, easy, convenient, and selection.
I’m a real life artisan. I sell my wares at temporary outdoor "shopping malls", AKA art festivals. I don’t expect my customers to come and shop at my out of the way studio. And the reason why people come to art festivals is because there’s a wide variety of other artisans there, also selling their wares, all in one convenient area.
My advice to Merchants is to set up one merchant town on each of the starting planets. Don’t place your houses with vendors scattered all over in that town but in one central commercial district. Only register one vendor on the global map. Give that one vendor a descriptive name that tells potential customers what all of your vendors in that house sell. Keep them stocked at all time with those items! Do Not, charge an access fee for entering your store! I will not pay, no matter how small the charge, to see if your vendors contain the items I’m shopping for.
If you guys really want the Merchant class to work you need to stop calling for nerfs to the bazaar and the Artisan Business skill tree. Ask for fixes to the Merchant class instead. The Merchant’s problems are not due to the bazaar or the Business skill tree. Some of your problems are due to how you are placing your vendors and the fact that you are not keeping them stocked. You also need to ask for the limitations with player vendors to be fixed before you ask for any more nerfs.
Ask for changes that make the bazaar work for you and your vendors. Stop asking for nerfs that force players to waste their time searching for items in sporadically stocked player vendors.
Reshkan wrote:
"It would be nice to have a terminal in town where players could view what items were for sale on nearby vendors, as well as their locations. Remote browsing is something that makes the bazaar very desirable."
This is a great idea. This is kind of ideas you should be demanding instead of nerfs to the bazaar. It would be great if you could shop player vendors through the bazaar, including the ability to purchase items in player vendors. You’d still have to go to their vendor to pick up the item, but, hey, you’d get that nifty little email with a waypoint to their vendor so you wouldn’t have to spend all your time searching for it.
Csin wrote:
"You need a good lesson in learning to walk a mile in other people's shoes. Perhaps next year your junior high should do some kind of workshop."
Why don’t you try walking in 99% of the players shoes. She how you like spending night after night searching for a stocked vendor. And, lol, nice attempt at an insult. Oh, it stings, it stings.