Merchant Archive
Thread: A new flare for the merchant profession
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Whaha
Mon Sep 06, 2004 4:21 am
#14
Man ,i think this is a great idea!!!
I think the devs should jump on this idea fast!!!!!!!!!
Bviper47
Mon Sep 06, 2004 8:30 pm
#15
I love the idea too. I however think there should just be standard matinence on it like a harvester. Also, muttiple ones should be able to fit together closely so lots of pepole can fit in a small area and you could set up like flea markets.
thanks NGE for nerfing loot!
Crile
Tue Sep 07, 2004 10:18 am
#16
Great idea. But I agree with what others said and think users would camp prime areas making game play harder for the rest of use - image thirty of these tents in front of Coronet starport with another twenty inside the starport!!!
Maybe have only certain areas marked for these tents? So you can't just drop them anywhere in a city, the city will have "zoning laws" and tents can only be dropped inthese areas. Maybe that area behind starports? Or better yethave the "zone" customized for each city depending on layout.
You will have a camping issue were one person will sit in one of the prime spots for days (first to login stay until reboot). But you see this in real life too - some of those open flea markets have first come first serve and if some guy sleeps in his van - he's the first to show and get that nice spot. But this also helps others - if someone invests time to build traffic to their tent. Most visitors will also look at other vendors too.
Again, great idea but I do think cities need "zoned" areas for these tents or it'll be a nightmare walking out of the Coronet starport and into a sea of tents.
MaDuece
Tue Sep 07, 2004 3:37 pm
#17
Herbsman wrote:
GonkSevenT3 wrote:
mhal9000 wrote:
What about making the stalls like scout/ranger camps? Disposable, and with a time limit? Since it will be the useable bynovice on up, give novice merchants the ability to craft them, with perhaps even more elaborate camps being available further along one of the skill trees? Like Advertsing?
Hey, that's a great idea. I never thought about it as an expendable single use object like a camp. And you could get merch XP perhaps for every person who come into the stall, similar to survival XP with camp sites. Hmmmm, but would setting them up like that conflit with the no build zones in NPC cities?
That's sorta why I thought they should be treated like vehicles, because you can call vehicles anywhere as long as you're outside. If it's treated like scout tents, then you won't be able to use them inside npc cities. That sorta negates the whole reason for having this.
Although I really like this idea, I see a few potential problems that need to be addressed before implementing something like this.
1) If you treat something like this more like a vehicle, then you are talking about something that is mobile. Maybe a "hot dog" cart looking thingy instead of a canopy looking thingy. But the point here is that a vehicle is mobile. For this to count towards the same functions/rules as vehicles it needs to be small and mobile. Otherwise:
2) There is a very good reason why players can not place structures of any type in NPC cities; its called griefing. There is potential for gltiches that could allow the placing of undesirable structures: covert faction scanners in Coronet Starport, houses in high traffic walkways, etc.
3) Limitations on the total number of non-mobile objects in one area can play towards the favor of people who can log into any one area first. Taking up space and not relinquishing it can become a huge problem depending on player behavior.
4) AFK recursive macro spammers will capitolize on something like this to muscle out competition if its a completely immobile object and it counts toward limited amounts of space in any one area.
Like I said, I like this idea, but it needs to be mobile and not count towards space or structure limitations to be fair to everyone.
MaDuece
Wed Sep 08, 2004 7:12 am
#18
Herbsman wrote:
I would like to clarify for everyone that the reason why I chose to use a vehicle as this option would simplify placement. As soon as you start talking about lot placements and such things then everything gets far more complicated and less likely of ever happening. If the devs have to go and divide npc cities into merchant zones and non-merchant zones then we're looking at a whole lot of work. Where as creating a vehicle with a movement of 0 and non-mountable that degenerates over time as normal vehicles do would be far simplear.
Maybe my use of the word "lot" is a bad way of expressing my concern. Perhaps "space" is a better term.
What I am trying to say is that if your proposal takes a space requirement where another player could not place their canopy thingy, then my only concern is crowding. Players that have the time to log in first will crowd out players that do not. That becomes a serious restriction on the player that wishes to participate but would have to set up his/her canopy somewhere else because of over-crowding. True, people already do camp the best spots to at starports and such. But if your proposal has a space restriction then it becomes a hinderance; especially on other merchants and doctors trying to buff.
On the other hand, if you don't have a space restriction but the "canopy" is fairly large, then we end up with a sea of canopies on top of each other and it becomes hard to tell who's is who's; not to mention a big contribution to lag.
My only suggestion to the idea was to make it smaller. Perhaps more of a "hot dog" cart size with an umbrella stand. Hell, you could even make it more of a droid than a vehicle. If you want to take it one step farther, you can have a compartment in the "cart" to store your goods. That way, it wouldn't count against your personal inventory to carry say an erxtra 50 crates of goods to sell. Abuse of the cart as an enormous storage droid would be to restrict the preparation of the deed of the thing for onlymerchants that possess the proper skilllevel to operate it. If someonedrops their skills, then he/she would not be able to pull it from their datapad; similar to not being able tocall faction pets without being overt.
Snadroj
Wed Sep 08, 2004 9:09 am
#19
Great Idea, but like many of you I think we need a special 'flee market' area within a city so that our cities don't become full of carts / tents, and I would also like to see them setup like a scout camp.
If they were like a camp kit, maybe they could have a single NPC vendor with a small item limit, no barkingand a time limit of say 1hr and no return within 24hrs.
Items could be loaded up from your inventory in advance of placement (like a container), anything unsold is returned to you in a container when it 'poofs'.
The other way to approach this would be to have'vendor droids', which can be called and stored in the normal way, but have a simple vendor interface for the customer.
Elyssa
Wed Sep 08, 2004 10:10 am
#20
Maybe instead, the functionality of the barker droid could be expanded to provide a vendor interface similar to the "this region" filter.
Customers could shop all of your nearby vendors and then go pick up the merchandise.
This way you wouldn't have to worry with the potential for griefing that a first come first served system for space would cause.
Herbsman
Wed Sep 08, 2004 12:43 pm
#21
I would like to clarify for everyone that the reason why I chose to use a vehicle as this option would simplify placement. As soon as you start talking about lot placements and such things then everything gets far more complicated and less likely of ever happening. If the devs have to go and divide npc cities into merchant zones and non-merchant zones then we're looking at a whole lot of work. Where as creating a vehicle with a movement of 0 and non-mountable that degenerates over time as normal vehicles do would be far simplear. Heck they even have the models, it would take them a couple of hours to add this if they decided to do so.
As for those of you who have mentioned that people will camp the best spots. Don't they do so allready anyway? With the stall degenerating over time as a vehicle does they would still have to pick it up maybe once per hour or two, take it to a garage, call it out there and repair it. That way nobody can stay in the same spot all day long.
As for having 50 people outside the starport in coronet and 20 inside, don't they do that allready spamming their shop locations anyway? Most of those guys are alts using a macro to spam a shop location. A booth like I'm proposing would bring absolutely no benefit whatsoever to an afk-macroer.
The roleplaying benefits as far as events and such could be huge. Imagine setting up a huge swoop race or something like that, having a large market square where onlookers can go to purchase tourist items, fastfood and whatnot. A great way for merchants to get some sort of publicity for their shops.
Message Edited by Herbsman on 09-08-2004 12:43 AM
nurTsunami
Wed Sep 08, 2004 5:02 pm
#22
Herbsman wrote:
The roleplaying benefits as far as events and such could be huge. Imagine setting up a huge swoop race or something like that, having a large market square where onlookers can go to purchase tourist items, fastfood and whatnot. A great way for merchants to get some sort of publicity for their shops.
Message Edited by Herbsman on 09-08-2004 12:43 AM
I can see it now! Tailors selling "Offical Swoop Race" T-shirts! 
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