Merchant Archive
Thread: Focus Thread: Vendor Search System on TC
Smuggler_Caylin
Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:26 pm
#14
Decided to give things a go as a consumer.
- Traveled to Theed, Naboo and located a Bazaar terminal.
- Separate tab for normal bazaar search
- It's labeled as "Vendor Location"
- Decided to find a weapon
- Clicked on Weapon and found it gathered everything it could from the
region.
- Changing it to a galaxy search worked fine.
- I was able to see the Item Name, Item Type, Location, Distance and
Entrance Fee.
- Price was not listed unless I double clicked/examined the properties
of the item.
- Custom Names were listed rather than the base item type.
- Example:
- Scout Blaster 52-150 yadda yadda yadda
- A Scout Blaster
- Scout Blaster 52-150 yadda yadda yadda
- Example:
- Price was not listed unless I double clicked/examined the properties
- Clicked on Weapon and found it gathered everything it could from the
- Separate tab for normal bazaar search
- Found a Scout Blaster that was located in 'Arch Mesa, Tatooine'.
- Was able to right click the item and get details where prices were
listed or get a waypoint.
- The text to get the waypoint needs to be altered. Looks more like
code.
- The text to get the waypoint needs to be altered. Looks more like
- Purchasing the item does not deliver the item. The player must travel to
the vendors location in order to retrieve it.
- Once purchased I received an E-mail. Giving me the waypoint and who I
purchased the item from.
- The e-mail did not give me the vendor name that had my item.
- The waypoint given in the emailwas exact.
- The e-mail did not give me the vendor name that had my item.
- Was able to right click the item and get details where prices were
- I traveled to Tatooine to see where I could pick up my weapon.
- Arch Mesa was obviously the general area, notthe
actualplayer city the item was located within.
- There was no easy way to know which player city it was until I
loaded up the waypoint and checked the world map.
- There was no easy way to know which player city it was until I
- Following the waypoint and hopping a shuttle to the player city, I was
able to successfully retrieve the weapon from the player's vendor from the
appropriate tab.
- Arch Mesa was obviously the general area, notthe
Then I discovered that player city shuttles were not working and I was
miles from civilization.
miles from civilization.
- I like that I'm able to search around the galaxy and find information that
is vital to me as a consumer.
- I do not like custom naming on items being listed.
- It can take an awfully long time to find something when this is on a
'live' server and hundreds of thousands of items are listed. There are only
limited ways to 'narrow' your search.
- Concealing the price encouraged me to find the statistics of the item,
prevented searching by price and I find it to be an excellant compromise.
- I would like to have the name of the vendor if at all possible in the
e-mail that was delivered. It would have given me something to look for
instead of measuring my steps by the waypoint numerical
representation.
One of the Four Horsemen of the Smuggler Apocalypse! 
DesktopSaki
Mon Mar 14, 2005 10:57 pm
#15
Novock wrote:
LOL you know its coming though and we'll have to wade through all that. I just thought maybe if it would use a defualt name or have a way to switch between would give us a tool to eliviate some unneeded aggrevation.
Thing is, that'd create a problem when looking for some items with specific qualities, like powerups, clothing or composite. Being able to go, "Oh, that's the shirt I want, in the color I want" or seeing at a glance what stats composite has is very handy. I don't want to even imagine sorting through powerups. 
One thing I forgot to check was if the overhead map vendor listing finally had an item tree that matched the one on vendors and the bazaar, enabling people to register their vendor more specifically.
neinnunb
Mon Mar 14, 2005 11:02 pm
#16
I can clearly see the wonderful benefit for customers (we are all customers and can appreciate this new feature). But I see a huge problem if they dont fix all categories. Its a total mess and many things are way too generalized, especailly the "Misc" "General item" section. This system needs a complete rehaul and it has allot of junk left over from beta that was never implemented (like armor powerups) and unused categories (like community project or something like that).
Its going to be crazy trying to find a needle in a haystack.
I think I would have prefered no price listing at all from bazaar (from a merchants point of view).
Im also concerned on what items will show up on the first page of the listings. What if your items always get dumped to the back end of the list? Nobody will ever reach them. I can just imagine items being renamed to: " ******** T21 Rifle ******* " or similar eye catching names. Maybe even put the prices on the item names: "T21 Rifle, 15k"
Its going to be crazy trying to find a needle in a haystack.
I think I would have prefered no price listing at all from bazaar (from a merchants point of view).
Im also concerned on what items will show up on the first page of the listings. What if your items always get dumped to the back end of the list? Nobody will ever reach them. I can just imagine items being renamed to: " ******** T21 Rifle ******* " or similar eye catching names. Maybe even put the prices on the item names: "T21 Rifle, 15k"
Feisen
Tue Mar 15, 2005 6:36 am
#17
I rather like the new system. I think putting the price in the details is a good compromise. I like that people have to go pick the item up. I like that distance to the vendor is given for those merchants who have worked hard to find a popular location.
In testing I found one bug (reported) so far. I put an access fee on my vendor house, but it did not actually show up on the bazaar. I gave it about 10 minutes to do so. I don't know if it takes longer than that to refresh the system. (House access is 100 credits. You can check again on TC if you like by looking under tools for "O-K" crafting tools. The shop is in Skystone aka Arch Mesa on Tatooine.)
Another potential bug someone else suggested, but I haven't tested...what do you do if you are banned from a town or from a player's structure, and you bought something through the bazaar on that vendor?
A third problem I foresee is people accidentally deleting their waypoint emails before they pick the items up. I have suggested a "create waypoint" button be added to the bazaar "available items" page to correct this potential problem. (bugged)
Yes, the category system needs work, but this change does add functionality to the bazaar and open up merchant markets.
I foresee many long hours of shopping in my future when this hits live.
In testing I found one bug (reported) so far. I put an access fee on my vendor house, but it did not actually show up on the bazaar. I gave it about 10 minutes to do so. I don't know if it takes longer than that to refresh the system. (House access is 100 credits. You can check again on TC if you like by looking under tools for "O-K" crafting tools. The shop is in Skystone aka Arch Mesa on Tatooine.)
Another potential bug someone else suggested, but I haven't tested...what do you do if you are banned from a town or from a player's structure, and you bought something through the bazaar on that vendor?
A third problem I foresee is people accidentally deleting their waypoint emails before they pick the items up. I have suggested a "create waypoint" button be added to the bazaar "available items" page to correct this potential problem. (bugged)
Yes, the category system needs work, but this change does add functionality to the bazaar and open up merchant markets.
I foresee many long hours of shopping in my future when this hits live.
Ani_cul
Tue Mar 15, 2005 6:55 am
#18
I am not seeing one thing yet, and that is what is waiting to be picked and what happens when vendor is deleted before it is picked up.
I really think before this goes live we {as Merchant} get some way to veiw was is sitting waiting availble and not retreived yet.
I am ok with double clicking for prices, I do think listing them in some form was important.
I am extremly happy with traveling to pickup item, but not with current WP..vendor name needs to be included.
I do agree with listing item by name, for what ever ruckus that may cause,
mainly because of backpack sells (outfits and items sold in backpacks)
but also because it will keep in check how popular this becomes over going and looking at the vendor itself.
mainly because of backpack sells (outfits and items sold in backpacks)
but also because it will keep in check how popular this becomes over going and looking at the vendor itself.
and I do think above all it needs to be implemented under our curent skills, like how 'far' you can be listed.
Coreena
Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:09 am
#19
When I first saw it in the patchnotes I didn't like it. But i just logged onto TC and played around with it a bit, and i have to say, its not really that bad.
Actually I think it might be a good addition.
Since you can't sort by price the chances someone undercutting everyone else is very small. That you can view the prices by double clicking is also good, I think.
If someone takes the time to click through 4000 crates of brandy to find the cheapest... well he deserves it
I actually think, that the sorting needs to be changed. Chefs for example sell 98% of their stuff in crates, which all show up under "Factory Crates" not Food or Drink. So do Powerups etc, everything that is sold in crates.
But thats an issue we're having for some time now.
I am not sure if I like the ability to buy on the bazaar. Its not an option on the main page, you have to go to the detail view.
This might be, because there are no prices listed, so people don't accidently buy something they don't know the price yet.
It might also be a bug, an oversight when the Devs reused the Details-GUI window from the normal vendors.
But since you can't pick it up over the bazaar and have to travel to the location of the Vendor, I think I can live with it.
Thinking about it, it might actually be a good thing. This way, the customer at least knows that what he found on the search is still there when he goes there, and noone has bought it just under his nose.
I agree that the Vendor names HAVE to be added to the waypoint. If you only get the house-WP and its a mall with 20 vendors in there, it will take a lot of time to find the right thing, which again could frustrate a lot of people.
But one last point!!
I think the option to list your vendors on the bazaar should be tied to the merchant skills! I think perhaps Advertising III (Planetary Ad Campaign) would be a really good choice. Its not too high up in the Merchant Tree, but it also gives it some real value.
Once a merchant drops Advertising 3 (or whatever skill it gets tied too) the vendors should automatically unregister from the bazaar (or at least items added after the skill was dropped should not be listed on the bazaar)!
All in all, I think the changes as they are now, are good ones, and I can live with it (and if they tie it to Merchant skills, I'll be perfectly happy).
Actually I think it might be a good addition.
Since you can't sort by price the chances someone undercutting everyone else is very small. That you can view the prices by double clicking is also good, I think.
If someone takes the time to click through 4000 crates of brandy to find the cheapest... well he deserves it
I actually think, that the sorting needs to be changed. Chefs for example sell 98% of their stuff in crates, which all show up under "Factory Crates" not Food or Drink. So do Powerups etc, everything that is sold in crates.
But thats an issue we're having for some time now.
I am not sure if I like the ability to buy on the bazaar. Its not an option on the main page, you have to go to the detail view.
This might be, because there are no prices listed, so people don't accidently buy something they don't know the price yet.
It might also be a bug, an oversight when the Devs reused the Details-GUI window from the normal vendors.
But since you can't pick it up over the bazaar and have to travel to the location of the Vendor, I think I can live with it.
Thinking about it, it might actually be a good thing. This way, the customer at least knows that what he found on the search is still there when he goes there, and noone has bought it just under his nose.
I agree that the Vendor names HAVE to be added to the waypoint. If you only get the house-WP and its a mall with 20 vendors in there, it will take a lot of time to find the right thing, which again could frustrate a lot of people.
But one last point!!
I think the option to list your vendors on the bazaar should be tied to the merchant skills! I think perhaps Advertising III (Planetary Ad Campaign) would be a really good choice. Its not too high up in the Merchant Tree, but it also gives it some real value.
Once a merchant drops Advertising 3 (or whatever skill it gets tied too) the vendors should automatically unregister from the bazaar (or at least items added after the skill was dropped should not be listed on the bazaar)!
All in all, I think the changes as they are now, are good ones, and I can live with it (and if they tie it to Merchant skills, I'll be perfectly happy).
Bermag
Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:45 am
#20
I don't think this change will affect shopping behaviour that much, people will probably still go to Coronet area (or whatever vendor hot spot on your server) and shop from the vendors they always have done and know have quality stuff. I am pretty sure that people will still send me tells "do you have XXX" like before (that was one thing I was hooping this change would get rid of lol).
Implementation of this was what I exptected, usign the same bad interface as we have today. Especially having items in crates listed under factory crates. Looking for a crate of Thermal grenades. Good luck start browsing the 10k of crates in the bazaar.
Summerflame
Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:48 am
#21
I still dont like this for many reasons, Ill list some belwo
1) Kills immersion.
I simply dont like the fact that I can now stand in Coronet cklicking at a stupid automate and get all my shopping done.
2) Kills impulse sales.
Noone will care to look thrue the other vendors at my shop, as they have allready done all their shopping before arriving
3) Kills the achievement.
Ive worked for ½ a year to become a wellknown crafter. THis has taken lots of dedication to my profession, lots of advertising on the trade forums and an enourmous ammount of word of mouth. People telling their friends and guilds about my shop. This will all die, when people can just find whatever they need right of the bazaar.
4) Kills malls and shops
Why bother to have more than one vendor stucked away in your basement. I know people will have to travel to your shop to pick up. Right now I have 10 vendors up spreed across differnet locations and dividing my stuff into different categories to make it easier for the costumer to sort through. With the changes it would actually make it easier for the costumer if I only had one, as they wouldnt have to figure out which one to retrieve from.
I know they want to speed gameplay up, but doing this at the cost of all crafters seems a bit out of tune to me... I like the immersion, I like the diversion I like the community consisting of different people with different ingame goals... Lately I feel swg has turned into a combattants game and frankly I dont like what I see
Lastly as it seems these changes will go through (they didnt really listen to the objections last time as the changes from the first idea ist really all that great) this should be a merchant skill. Master or advertising 4.
Dovakic
Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:48 am
#22
I'm fine with this except for one thing. Prices need to be removed from it in all ways, shapes and forms! This will make it even harder for new crafters to get into business because they simply dont have the volume of sales to allow them to charge the lower prices that established crafters do. It will turn the entire galaxy into a giant price war where instead of worrying about the quaility of our products were worried about whose prices are lower. We'll be forced to pull our entire stock and relist it at lower prices every time our competition lowers theirs or we simply wont make any sales. It'll eventually get to the point were we either sell stuff at a loss or simply quit crafting.
Washell
Tue Mar 15, 2005 8:15 am
#23
Why relist? Take a vacation for a month since you won't be selling and let the other crafter try to manage the resources, factory time and stocking for a whole server. Doubt he lasts a week before he gets the bright idea to raise his prices.
Ragnaat
Tue Mar 15, 2005 8:25 am
#24
I posted this in today's TC bug thread, but it is more along the lines of feedback and not bugs, so I'll repost here so it doesn't get lost (note: im' not interested in arguing any point and will not be back to this thread to discuss with anyone that might take issue with something i said.. just leaving it 'for the record' as it were)
Ragnaat wrote:
After chatting it up in game this morning I have to say I'm really not happy with vendor search right now.
And no, it isn't because I'm a grumpy merchant worried about how valuable my SP are worth or that no one will visit my shop - these will not be issues on TC - and most of my "merchant is a waste of SP" issues are far older then this patch.
But if you're going to do it, do it right.
And this frankly is beyond not right into downright sucky.
Some issues with the UI as implemented, some are "bugs", but most are design flaws.
* There aren't enough vendors turned on for search located near NPC cities on this server to know for sure, but we can't tell if the "This Region" listing is either useless (can never place a vendor in an NPC city region to get listed) or if that is going to be the trump card that in some cases is all you need to get sales.
* Age old issues of horrible categorization come back up 100000x now. Wearable contaienrs, Factory Crates, Weapons, Generic Items... Even on Tc after just a fwe hours of people logging on to register their vendors there were a thousand or two factory crates selling everything from grenades to food to power ups.
* Distances are USELESS, if not misguided. Setting aside the fact that in a galaxy search you're only going to see anythign listed occationally, in an age of 1min shuttleport waits the listings for distances are just a distraction and about as arbitrary as listing the house style the vendor is in.
* Categorization aside, the listings are still impossible to browse. There needs to be more distingusing marks that the user can pick up on. Consider trying to buy Locked Containers for slicing XP grind... what is important (aside from is it broken, which you're just not gonna get listed)? *1* Price *2* How many that vendor has, and only /then/ location. None are easy to gague with this UI, so i'm left staring at a sea of similar objects wondering or opening details and clicking next past hundreds of em.
* Price, price, price... I need it. Don't care if some may not want it there, but if i'm looking for resoruces or generic items, or deeds or anything that I don't need to see details on I need it. (for those who want to complain about people pricing to get listed first see my next item for why that can't happen.)
* I'm not going to rag on pagination or sorting by cloumn here. these have always been a problem with the UI and I'm sure done due to DB concerns (e.g. you're not going to sort the either galaxy wide player vendor DB by price and pump me out the first 100 "Misc" items, but realize that is hugely complounded now that you opened the itme count up. Know that you're grabbing a chunk of items first and then sorting (or caching or whatever magic you do back there) and work with it.
* Navigation: If i'm looking for soemthing /on/ the bazaar and don't find it searching player vendors should work like an extenstion just as checking all the bazaars in the galaxy does. UI wise i don't want to deisng anything for you, but I do think that whatever category you have selected in one "mode" should be selected when you switch over to the other mode and then back. If I'm looking for some "Energy (Gas)" then that is the most important thing to me.
* Text Searching! Categorization sucks. But I said that already. But there are thigns that categorization just will never get better at. To go back to my above example, if I need locked containers I have at least 18(?) places to look for them now - categories for Misc: Generic item, Misc - Container (if they're in a satchel) or Misc - Wearable container (if they're in a backpack). .. and then on the 3 location options on each of the bazaars and vendor tabs. Same thing for looted components [aside: why? when? god can you make these stack], buff packs in crates vs. sets vs. singles, etc. etc. The only way for me to brdge those divides is some method of text searching for "locked container" in the item name and just simply pulling up the items in a list however they come up.
* To those asking for just the generic item name and not the crafted name to be listed... you lost this fight long ago. I'll be damned if i'm going to have to click every 200pwer stim b crate listed in the galaxy to find one that breaks 400 just because you want to soemhow level the playing field. by doing so you'd make an already bad system worse.
BUGs, Bugs, bugs.... well the ones i found i posted above
Testing, testing, testing..... we need a TC-Galaxy-XXX server setup with vendors defaulted to *ENABLED* isntead of disabled to really test this... TC just doesn't have the bulk and a live mirror wont either because enough peopel wont log in to get a real feel for things. Know it means you're not testing rollout properly, bt with patches and stuff or botched conversions that never get reset/redone you never really do with the mirrors anyways.
Coreena
Tue Mar 15, 2005 8:28 am
#25
I agree with you on almost every point, except the prices.
Yes I know it can be useful for some times, but I think if the option to sort by price is added, it will cause more damage than good.
No i'm not a greedy merchant, but I don't want to be forced to sell below manufacturing costs just to sell something either (because then, i wouldn't bother to sell anything anymore)
Yes I know it can be useful for some times, but I think if the option to sort by price is added, it will cause more damage than good.
No i'm not a greedy merchant, but I don't want to be forced to sell below manufacturing costs just to sell something either (because then, i wouldn't bother to sell anything anymore)
Gyopi
Tue Mar 15, 2005 8:59 am
#26
Coreena wrote:
Since you can't sort by price the chances someone undercutting everyone else is very small. That you can view the prices by double clicking is also good, I think.
If someone takes the time to click through 4000 crates of brandy to find the cheapest... well he deserves it
I would agree, but the details box has forward and back buttons that makes it really easy to browse through items. This makes it really easy to shop by price. In fact, the prices come up almost instantaneously. The other details take a little bit to load in.