Merchant Archive

Oh man..... the ad barking coupled with all the shouts from players would get annoying!

First off... let Image designers modify our NPC vendors, it is a one time event anyway and hiring a ID to modify them would create some cross-class-dependency. And I personally think the look of my vendors is imported.

So what kind of things could merchants get in the efficiency line? Well I have a few ideas.

- Cheaper Transport.
Cheaper shuttle fees when using the shuttle. Merchants are about buying and selling, and buying low and selling high requires travel.

- Freight.
As forth mentioned idea, but between town bazaars. This should be for both items bought and sole on the bazaar. (the ability to sell in another town then the one you stand in)

- Restricted Sale.
* The ability to enter a name on a vendor sale to whom you wish to sell an item, kind of a reversed offer.
* The ability to make a vendor sell only to a certain group. Adding faction, PAs, or individual names to an access list on a vendor.
* The same as above but only as a "do not sell to" list.

- Unit Sale.
* The ability to put up crates of items for sale on the bazaar or vendor, and set a unit price. The buyer then have to type in how many unite he/she wish to buy, then getting a crate of that amount.
* Same as above but for resources, and the ability to adjust the price by 1/100 of a credit (buying price will be rounded up)

- "Yellow Pages".
A register where merchants can add a description to a house, and a list of categories of items that is sold there. All players can then look in a register under a category, and se a list of house names on the planet. Viewing details will show the description and give to option to get a waypoint.

- Market research.
The ability to get se a list of all items of a specific type sold, with the details and price available, so as to spare a merchant for running around to every vendor on a planet.

- Data Transmission.
The ability to drag a item to the data field of an email, so the receiver can view the details.

- Guild Vendors.
Allow merchants to share vendors with fellow guild members. Each person given access to a vendor will increase the hourly fee.

- Trade of Services.
* Creation of entertainment missions for cantinas in player towns. The Merchant can create data object that the cantina owner can use to activate the mission.
* An official lot rental system.

- Music in Houses.
The ability to activate any a peace of music to play in a house. Not the player music, but the cinematic one that play at certain locations. (such as imperial theme that plays at some imp NPC bases)

- Add barking on houses.
Make add barking available on house signs.

I think that will do for now.

what he/she said

Also, the ability to give admin rights to my vendor to someone in case I want to go onv vacation or something.

I guess I will add my thoughts since I have been a master merchant for 5 months now.

---I don't care anything about how my vendors look,,,, sorry as a guy I never was much into dressing barbie(as far as this goes they should have put it in the ID tree and had merchants pay the IDs for this service)

---As a merchant who can own vendors, why would I care about using the bazaar and having the reduced bazaar cost when it only cost pennies to put stuff on it in the first place(I am sure all other professions are jealous of us for that 5 cr or so saved)

---Same thing with reduced advertising (sure am glad I save those couple of cents)

---The only thing really and truly useful is the reduced maintenance on harvestors

---Having multiple vendors is also a little useful for organizing or if you have multiple shops

What should be kept for merchants:

Ad barking

Map Advertising

Reduced maintenance Fees on harvestors only

Hiring multiple vendors

Placing Tents and having shop signs

In general, the Merchant skill tree needs a re-think - there are too many steps with very weak, if not meaningless skills. Here's my two credits, in no particular order.

Hiring - it's funny how the tailors shoots straight up the Hiring branch first (so they can dress their vendors), like the miners shoot straigt up the Efficiency branch (to get the 20% maintenance discount), while all the full-time merchants build up Management first to get the extra vendors. While Hiring IV is essential to Tailors, I agree that it's value is very limited for the rest of us. Who cares if I can select between a groutesque aqualish or a grouteque ishi tib? Personally, I don't care for the NPC vendors anyway. My only reason for having NPC vendors is because machine vendors won't bark - and I turned off ad-barking anyway because my barking vendors always turn towards the front door of the house instead of the entry to the room they're in. I have dressed all of my vendors in matching uniforms now and they look great! Was it worth 100K in xp to get that.... nah...

Advertising - Planetary Ad Campaign is nice, and once everyone gets used to using it it will be indispensible!But now that vendor maintenance is cheap, which makes Planetary Ad cheap, Advertising IV is almost, just not quite, worthless. What does Ad IV save us now...3-4 credits per hour....golly, stop the madness *yawn.* There's 40K of xp going towards nearly nuttin'.

Efficiency - If you run havesters, you love Efficiency IV, but I don't know any merchant that places any real value on Efficiency I-III. Again, now that vendor maintenance is a constance, and pretty cheap, Efficiency II is almost pointless. And as for the reduces Bazaar fees - does any serious merchant have time to post bazaar auctions too except as advertisements? And doing the math...25 auctions per week x 8 bucks per auction = 200 credits per week! Hold me back, lest I injure myself in the excitement...

Master Merchant - Golly add a non-speaking protocol droid painted red, and give up your ability to ad-bark in the process. Even if it wasn't wothless, the 'master-only' status of the red protocol droid makes it too pretentious for me to use comfortably.

Thanks for your thoughts people, after further review i take back a little about hiring tree. Yes your correct for tailors it is important to dress vendors, never thought of that.

With that said:

1. Idont think we need 4 skills just to put a dress on vendor


2. I agree with lots management 1-4


3. I agree with allowing other players to manage vendors

Ok ideas here.....

For #1 - perfect example....management tree 1-4 allows you to place extra vendors. Wellmove the hiring tree in there as well. Simple enough.

For #2 - moving from 1-3 should grant the merchant discount on structure cost, house cost and lot cost. At lot management 4 or master merchant should grant you (1) FREE MERCHANT TENT LOT. (not to be used for a harvestor)

For #3 - It all comes down to the person, if there is trust between people which there already is, a huge part in this game is trust, why not be able to allow others to manage vendors.

Keep it going i like the ideas here.

Shared vendors would be a great boon. I can think of a few ways that I could use that right now! Please note that this is also another excuse for me to complain about offers to vendors having city sales tax in player cities!

The yellow pages idea is great. I'd love to see that extended with maybe a stock ticker like object that has short messages from Merchants (maybe 20 words or so... like I said, SHORT), followed by the location of the vendor it's advertising. Such as object would be near the starports or shuttleports, maybe over the entrances. This would stack on the Global Advertising skill, as people would still need to check the planetary map for your vendor. I would recommend a 1 vendor limit per Merchant for this sort of advertising, though.

Speaking of Global Advertising, it still needs to be fixed. At the present moment, your vendor only appears on the global map if someone enters the building a vendor is located in. It stays until the next server reset.

---

DocSavag wrote:

Understand that ultimately I take whatever the majority wants to the devs on issues like this but I warn you any lot increase plan will be shot down. EVERY player in the game wants more lots. Lots = storage = more items in the galaxy.. it isn't going to happen to one profession. It simply isn't.

---

Lots = SHOPS

It's one thing when you're really successful and can buy all your resources from other people.

And that IS a good thing (IF you can find a reliable supplier) because it helps drive the economy.

More resource suppliers would help all crafters.

But until you reach a point where you can become self sufficient, you're probably stuck with just one shop on one planet.

I'd LOVE to open shops on other planets, but I joined a player city (2 shops now - sales about the same), and pulling enough resources to actually CRAFT the products I would need to STOCK those shops is limited by the number and types of harvesters I can put down.

Every business hits that plateau where, if you could sell just a little bit more you could expand, but you need to expand to sell more.

An extra lot (or 2) would allow me to open either place another harvester or two, or open a shop near another city or on another planet.

We're being limited by the game's hardware/software infrastructure again. I hate that.......

As a merchant who runs vendors for other people, I really wish there abilities that allowed me to pay them directly for their sales, minus a consignment fee. I spend about 30 minutes every few days adding up all the sales from the different people and getting them their money. With millions in weekly turnover, I don't use /tip, because I hate losing 5% - would love to have something in our skill tree that lets me manage consignments from others better.

---

DocSavag wrote:

Understand that ultimately I take whatever the majority wants to the devs on issues like this but I warn you any lot increase plan will be shot down. EVERY player in the game wants more lots. Lots = storage = more items in the galaxy.. it isn't going to happen to one profession. It simply isn't.

---

Doc, every player wants more firepower too, or more healing ability, or more buffs, etc., but those are limited to the classes for which they're appropriate. I think one or two extra lots for the merchants is a reasonable request.

Or...how about this. Any structure with a vendor inside counts as half the number of usual lots (not cumulative for additional vendors).

Or...how about a storage bonus. Merchants can store extra items in the structures they own.

---

Faellyn wrote:

---

DocSavag wrote:

Understand that ultimately I take whatever the majority wants to the devs on issues like this but I warn you any lot increase plan will be shot down. EVERY player in the game wants more lots. Lots = storage = more items in the galaxy.. it isn't going to happen to one profession. It simply isn't.

---

Doc, every player wants more firepower too, or more healing ability, or more buffs, etc., but those are limited to the classes for which they're appropriate. I think one or two extra lots for the merchants is a reasonable request.

Or...how about this. Any structure with a vendor inside counts as half the number of usual lots (not cumulative for additional vendors).

Or...how about a storage bonus. Merchants can store extra items in the structures they own.

---

Don't get me wrong. I dont' think it is unreasonable. I just KNOW it will be rejected because they are unwilling to increase the lots in the game. This has to do with the database and the number of items it can store. We actually already got a break because they went with the flat rate maintenance plan and not the per item maintenance plan they wanted to go with to limit the number of items people placed for sale on their vendor.

As I said I'll pass on whatever ideas are generated, but I don't have any hope of convincing them to increase lots for anyone.

Instead of asking for more lots. We could ask that merchant tents not count toward our number of lots.

Go ahead and add the request for more lots. It cann't hurt to ask. Or better yet the ability to purchase other people's lots for a period of time. I would love to have someones lots transfered to me for say 7 days or 30 days.

---

Korrack wrote:

---

DocSavag wrote:

If I was asked to identify quick ways to fix our skill tree I would say Eff I-IV and Ad IV could be merged into the mgmt tree and give us something else..what would that be?

Master needs something special.. maybe another vendor but there has to be a reason why it isn't there already but SOMETHING.

But what would you do with another four boxes where efficiency is?

---

Real Estate (lot management)I - IV
+lot (1 for each level)
-maintenance%

Master Merchant
+lot (1 or 2)
+vendor (1 or 2)
Some sort of vendor scroll to select vendor type like doing ID. Being able to design a vendor graphically instead of luck of the draw.

---

Dude, don't do that to me. I actually thought someone might give us another lot for half a millisecond and got a happy on!

Fivo Asia
Asia Brothers Industries
Master Artisan - Master Architect - Merchant 3/4/2/4
Tempest - Dantooine - Vesnia