Merchant Archive

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Before I became a merchant, even getting my own guildmate merchants to keep my medical vendor stocked was a nightmare. The vendor was always low or out of stock, some merchants were too busy or didn't log in enough to maintain stock offers (especially high volume vendors), emailing requests to change ad-barking each day was unreliable and due to timezone differences my vendor would sometimes go empty for 24 hours or more... which means I LOSE customers.

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Again what you are describing here is you trying to run a vendor with out the use of skill points, just throe another player. But you wanted a suggestion?
SELL you products to a merchant, and then forget about them. When ever you wand some credits make a batch of stim's and sell them to the merchant. Problem solved!
If the merchant cant keep the stim's in stock he can raise prices or get more suppliers, and non of the doctors/medics have to worry abut the merchant type of game play.

Hi There,

I'm coming from a stand point where I would like to see the merchant's happy but be able to have a vendor as well. I can see how selling an item to a merchant at low cost to resell at a higher cost can be a strain on both the merchant (who may not want to buy your whole stock of furniture or clothes) and the the crafter (who wants to keep a fully stocked vendor that they can access on a regular basis.)

Right now of course anyone can keep their vendor and drop the merchant skill, but what I propose is that a crafter maybe able to rent a vendor from a merchant for a % of their sales (or possibly a set amount) or that a crafter may access a merchant's vendor for a % of the sales. Of course the latter would mean that their would be fewer specialized shops on each planet and that vendors would carry almost everything, but perhaps that would be a good thing

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Enix_Dayspring wrote:

Reselling / Distribution aspect of Merchent isnt working because every crafter can stick up his own vendor without investing the skill points for it. If everyone can sell their OWN products, they have no need to sell them to merchents.

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That's part of it, but I would also say that the interfaces for reselling need to be made significantly easier to make reselling work. Putting something up for sale directly from "offers" would be a good start.

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Soren_dVinn wrote:

Merchants can levy a charge/sales tax based on the abilities of the vendor (e.g. a novice merchant with a droid vendor and no plantetary advertsing might charge100c/day, but a master merchant with an NPC vendor, ad barking and planetary registration might charge 1000c/day or 2% sales tax

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You really don’t get it do you.

By you same logic, I should be able to hire the FLAMETHROWER skill from a commando? Gee, for only 1000cr a day, I should be able to get all the benefits of a commando?!?! Get real.

We invent skill points into merchant profession for a reason, because we want to be able to maintain and use vendors. I see no benefit to my profession by being able to hire our skills to another player for 100cr a day. If you want to sell stuff, find a merchant to do it for you. Or invest the skill points yourself. Don’t expect to be able to get the skills of a different profession for the cost of a 100cr a day.

lol y the hell would anyone want to be a merchant if all u do is give ur vendors away to someone else and make a 'HUGE' profit of 1000 credits a day. that would screw the merchants so bad.

wow a whole 1k per day!!! Now i can afford those 3 powerups i always wanted!! YAY

Honestly I don'tknow and I don't care what kind of interaction the devs would require of merchants hiring out their vendors.

If you want to click buttons and fiddle with settings to maintain your hired vendors then feel free to ask the devs for content.

But if this nerfs goes through.... you are going to see a lot less stuff for sale... prices will be driven up... and at least a few people will quit this game because people want combat and crafting on the same account.

Being forced to buy a second account so you can sell stuff and do combat is not an option. Forcing people to interact with other people to sell stuff is going to drive people mad.

No offense meant, but I for one don't have the time, patience or energy to deal with merchant player characters to sell my medical products. It's too complicated, too consuming just the way it is.

Adding another layer of complexity, delay, and annoyance is going to make it a no-brainer: quit crafting for re-sale.

Honestly I don'tknow and I don't care what kind of interaction the devs would require of merchants hiring out their vendors.

If you want to click buttons and fiddle with settings to maintain your hired vendors then feel free to ask the devs for content.

But if this nerfs goes through.... you are going to see a lot less stuff for sale... prices will be driven up... and at least a few people will quit this game because people want combat and crafting on the same account.

Most sellers have merchant skills andthis is afree economy so prices will probablystaywhere they are now. If people want to be ubah 1337 fighters and ubah 1773 crafters on the same char they should look at EQ.

Being forced to buy a second account so you can sell stuff and do combat is not an option. Forcing people to interact with other people to sell stuff is going to drive people mad.

Your not forced to buy a second account unless you want to beAMAZING at both and thedevs designed the game to prevent that.Heres the template that lets you craft and kill almost anything in pve:

4044 Artisan

3000 Merchant

4000 Brawler

Master Weaponsmith

Master TKA

2000 Medic

You can replace Weaponsmith with a crafting prof of choice and TKA with any combat prof of your choice. What elsecould you want in a single char?

No offense meant, but I for one don't have the time, patience or energy to deal with merchant player characters to sell my medical products. It's too complicated, too consuming just the way it is.

Why do you need patience, time, energy when all you have to do is drop a few crates on someone's vendor every few days? Just agree on a price and all you have to do is run your factories and make a delivery every week. Problem solved.

Adding another layer of complexity, delay, and annoyance is going to make it a no-brainer: quit crafting for re-sale.

What complexity? Do you know how to run your factory and the offer to vendor button? What delay? Selling to a merchant is a lot easier that wasting your time with vendors. What annoyance? Merchants actually save you the pain of dealing with every dumbass customer who wants 20 med use Buff Packs and 600 heal Stim B's.

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Yolner wrote:

Honestly I don'tknow and I don't care what kind of interaction the devs would require of merchants hiring out their vendors.

If you want to click buttons and fiddle with settings to maintain your hired vendors then feel free to ask the devs for content.

But if this nerfs goes through.... you are going to see a lot less stuff for sale... prices will be driven up... and at least a few people will quit this game because people want combat and crafting on the same account.

Most sellers have merchant skills andthis is afree economy so prices will probablystaywhere they are now. If people want to be ubah 1337 fighters and ubah 1773 crafters on the same char they should look at EQ.

Having the ability to sell your goods does not making your"l33t". It's a logical extension to a crafting profession and the penalty is just too high.

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Being forced to buy a second account so you can sell stuff and do combat is not an option. Forcing people to interact with other people to sell stuff is going to drive people mad.

Your not forced to buy a second account unless you want to beAMAZING at both and thedevs designed the game to prevent that.Heres the template that lets you craft and kill almost anything in pve:

4044 Artisan

3000 Merchant

4000 Brawler

Master Weaponsmith

Master TKA

2000 Medic

You can replace Weaponsmith with a crafting prof of choice and TKA with any combat prof of your choice. What elsecould you want in a single char?

I am a Master Doctor and want to be a Master TKA. I CANNOT achieve that. I don't want to be weaponsmith.

So your awesome template only works for you... which all your posts seem to be about, What about me? And all the other crafting/combat profesisons?

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No offense meant, but I for one don't have the time, patience or energy to deal with merchant player characters to sell my medical products. It's too complicated, too consuming just the way it is.

Why do you need patience, time, energy when all you have to do is drop a few crates on someone's vendor every few days? Just agree on a price and all you have to do is run your factories and make a delivery every week. Problem solved.

Because people playing games are about as reliable as my butt I've tried that route. They dont log in for days... weeks. Your customers get frustrated. You get frustated. NOT FUN.

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Adding another layer of complexity, delay, and annoyance is going to make it a no-brainer: quit crafting for re-sale.

What complexity? Do you know how to run your factory and the offer to vendor button? What delay? Selling to a merchant is a lot easier that wasting your time with vendors. What annoyance? Merchants actually save you the pain of dealing with every dumbass customer who wants 20 med use Buff Packs and 600 heal Stim B's.

Because player merchants are unreliable.

I know you are not going to agree with me because YOU are probably reliable. But please accept my assertion that MOST people in this game... in any game.. are unreliable, twitchy, difficult to deal with and totally lacking in any business sense.

I've tried it. It doesn't work. Myself and my customers just end up frustrated and move on.

Having the ability to sell your goods does not making your"l33t". It's a logical extension to a crafting profession and the penalty is just too high.

Yes it does make you 1337 because crafting profs make millions of credits. Thats 1337 right there.

My initial reaction to this was OMG serious nerf bat.

But then I've been reading everyone's comments and thinking about it.

I'm a master merchant and I was going to give it up to holo grind while keeping my crafting profession, if this 'bug fix' goes through, then I guess it's a sock in the eye for such holo grinding, ho humm, no FS slot for me.

But I think the REALLY BIG ISSUE with this, is not so much people without Merchant not being able to have vendors, but this bug fix, coupled with the item reduction nerf to 150 items, DOES become a major issue.

If the devs are going to do this, then they have to drop the item limit nerf (and nerf that certainly is).

The more I think about it, the more I quite like the idea of putting signs up saying how much u will buy certain goods for, for resale, and walking in the next day to see what has been offered for you to re-sell. It's quitea nice idea and hopefully will reduce the 100 vendors sitting in every mall so you can actually see what vendor sells what and know it will probably be well stocked, as fewer vendors in the world.

Of course a 'bad' alternative is being a poor merchant... since you have to buy upfront, I hope you have good cashflow

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But I think the REALLY BIG ISSUE with this, is not so much people without Merchant not being able to have vendors, but this bug fix, coupled with the item reduction nerf to 150 items, DOES become a major issue.

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I agree with this! Many vendors will be going bye-bye, so why implement such a low item cap? Before swinging the nerf bat at the Merchant class, how about seeing how vendors operate (DB issues) after nonmerchants lose their vendors?

I am not sure I would ever hire out a vendor (I need everyone of mine), but it should be a choice available.

Crafters come and go, so an active merchant will always be trying to find suppliers. That is part of being a merchant. I would suggest to anyone starting out in the merchant class is to be a crafter/miner first to supply yourself, make some money and learn the trade. Cashflow is usually not too much of an issue with established players.

Uber templates come and go... but at the end of the day I am a crafting profession that is already nerfed because I have to spend 15 extra skill credits to even get Artisan.

You know, at the end of the day you can argue back and forth about who deserves what skills.

The bottom line is: the whole economy relies heavily on vendors to function... limiting vendor functionality to a handful of people who may or may not quit/get bored is going to totally trash the economy (again) and make this game even more tedious and boring that it already is by relying on human intervention to keep commerce running.

Before the devs swing that nerf bat I am going to tell them that they owe it to themselves (for their own revenue) and the virtual economy to think of OTHER solutions before they swing the nerf bat.

1. Vendor admin grantable to other players


2. Second character per server


3. Add +1 vendor to Master Medic

IMPROVE GAMEPLAY BEFORE NERFING

Footnote: I've had so many friends in this game quit already, the last thing I want to see if half my crafting contacts quit in frustration and boredom because a handful of people want to play middleman.