Merchant Archive

If it gets anywhere close to half your attention it doesn't count as a mule in my book.A mule is a mindless character that doesn't carry on conversations, join groups, or act as a focus of social interaction. It is a thing, used for a purpose by its owner.

However, Chataka's growth emphasizes my point. In order to enjoy the fruits of the game, you had to give up almost all your non-combat skills. But clearly you have more time for the game than the majority of players.

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Naufragus wrote:

doc i really cant believe you nor the devs have this figured out.....

1. ok you take your lot mule or do a vendor trade witha new person....give him supplies to craft until he gets biz three...


2. give him admin rights to your shop or house


3. he drops bulky vendor


4. you offer the items you want to sell on his vendor.


5. he takes the items, buys them with money you supply (hello 1 credit a piece) and lists them


6. at first you can just offer anything as you will just be buying it back..you look at the vendor every 1/2 hour and buy something giving him merchant XP


7. after you have done this enough to get him to novice, you place more vendors and rinse and repeat until you have as many as you need


8. then you simply offer the items to the vendor, he logs in once a week to list the items and tip you what ever money the vendors have made

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That is funny....there is nothing to "figure out" You are describing a consignment system using another merchant. I made millions doing that for a weaponsmith taking 10% of the sale. Merchants are using this method all day on every server. What is different about yours? You are talking about swapping merchant accounts across server? That is a total waste of time since you can get someone on your own server to do it for a small fee per transaction and be sure they will be online handling business a lot more often than 1 time a week.

And btw if you are going to use this method to get around the item limits you need to be with us on the changes we are asking for in area of making consignment sales easier to do.

yes i am talking about x-server trades....

i would not ask a real player to waste his skill points and i know few who would want to be your mule or want to waste 20-50 points for nothing in return.

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DocSavag wrote:

And btw if you are going to use this method to get around the item limits you need to be with us on the changes we are asking for in area of making consignment sales easier to do.

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i dont care about consignment sales...like 99% of everyone else with a vedor i sell my own goods...i dont really care aboyt selling other poeples goods

i dont want people offering things on the vendor...i dont want to have to deal with the vendors any more than a couple of times a month...i load them then go other things.

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JTGAlpha wrote:

In order to enjoy the fruits of the game, you had to give up almost all your non-combat skills. But clearly you have more time for the game than the majority of players.

I disagree with "enjoying the fruits of the game" comment. The skill system EXISTS so that players can master up to 3 full professions and then, if they decide to, surrender all those skills, so as to try OTHER professions. Chataka did the crafting thing for a while. He wanted to try something new. So he dumped the skills and went to combat. A combatant could just as easily decide to dump their combat skills to give crafting a whack. So it's not a failure of the game, or the profession that he decided to dump his crafting skills to take up combat. That sort of tactical desicion making is an integral part of the game. Always was, always will be.

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I would agree. Chataka decided he wanted to be more efficient in combat so he gradually gave up crafting skills. The real breaking point was politican because I had to have that to build the city. Adding that to the mix meant that I wasn't going to have much left for merchant and none left for any kind of crafting profession. He is now a Master Medic and Novice Doctor as well to keep him alive since he doesn't have the points to spend on being a TKM

Chatlana grew into a crafting template. Master Artisan, Master Architect, Master Merchant, Novice DE, and Novice Entertainer (a perfect fit for her brother the Doctor)

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DocSavag wrote:

It is all so unecessary. It can be done much more efficiently with real players rather than just mule accounts. Players who have a vested interest (profit) in performing this service.

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DocSavag wrote:

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JTGAlpha wrote:

In order to enjoy the fruits of the game, you had to give up almost all your non-combat skills. But clearly you have more time for the game than the majority of players.

I disagree with "enjoying the fruits of the game" comment. The skill system EXISTS so that players can master up to 3 full professions and then, if they decide to, surrender all those skills, so as to try OTHER professions. Chataka did the crafting thing for a while. He wanted to try something new. So he dumped the skills and went to combat. A combatant could just as easily decide to dump their combat skills to give crafting a whack. So it's not a failure of the game, or the profession that he decided to dump his crafting skills to take up combat. That sort of tactical desicion making is an integral part of the game. Always was, always will be.

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I would agree. Chataka decided he wanted to be more efficient in combat so he gradually gave up crafting skills. The real breaking point was politican because I had to have that to build the city. Adding that to the mix meant that I wasn't going to have much left for merchant and none left for any kind of crafting profession. He is now a Master Medic and Novice Doctor as well to keep him alive since he doesn't have the points to spend on being a TKM

Chatlana grew into a crafting template. Master Artisan, Master Architect, Master Merchant, Novice DE, and Novice Entertainer (a perfect fit for her brother the Doctor)

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PadreBook wrote:

So two characters to get adequate enjoyment out of the game? Doesn't that place things out of context for people that only have access to the solitary character experience?

Padre

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Even with 3 characters I have to make skill point choices on all three all the time. I can't be everything at once..even with multiple characters

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DocSavag wrote:

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PadreBook wrote:

So two characters to get adequate enjoyment out of the game? Doesn't that place things out of context for people that only have access to the solitary character experience?

Padre

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I actually play three characters on live but I don't think it has as much to do with "adequate enjoyment" out of the game than it does with my distaste for discarding my template to try other things and the fact that my wife and I have no children so we are free to waste $75 a month on SWG.

Even with 3 characters I have to make skill point choices on all three all the time. I can't be everything at once..even with multiple characters

T

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i dropped them because they really where not useful....

most of my business is by word-of-mouth, foot traffic and people just sending me a tell...

the planet listing really didnt have a big effect on biz...

addbarking i really never used because i find it personally annoying and it just causes more lag

signage is really of no use

hiring is used basically once...choose NPCs, dress them and never use the skills again

discount was ok, but not really enough to keep it...i mean i put 50K in at maintence at a time..money is not really an issue

premium bazaar listings are the biggest joke and really of no use

reduced bazaar fees a joke..20 credits is nothing to begin with

More vendors....dont really need them i do fine with 4 and could really get by with 3

There was really just no reason to be master or hold on to most of the skills...vendor tents would have been cute but i dropped all this before they where availble and the small house are nice because of the storage.

People drop the Merchant skills because they are of limited usefullness.

In fact i would say i made even more money since dropping most of the skills.

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Naufragus wrote:

i dropped them because they really where not useful....

most of my business is by word-of-mouth, foot traffic and people just sending me a tell...

the planet listing really didnt have a big effect on biz...

addbarking i really never used because i find it personally annoying and it just causes more lag

signage is really of no use

hiring is used basically once...choose NPCs, dress them and never use the skills again

discount was ok, but not really enough to keep it...i mean i put 50K in at maintence at a time..money is not really an issue

premium bazaar listings are the biggest joke and really of no use

reduced bazaar fees a joke..20 credits is nothing to begin with

More vendors....dont really need them i do fine with 4 and could really get by with 3

There was really just no reason to be master or hold on to most of the skills...vendor tents would have been cute but i dropped all this before they where availble and the small house are nice because of the storage.

People drop the Merchant skills because they are of limited usefullness.

In fact i would say i made even more money since dropping most of the skills.

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But they want to keep the perks they got while they had them and that is a problem. If they dropped the 6 vendors or unlisted from advertising or stopped adbarking or removed their merchant tents we wouldn't have a problem with people who decided they wanted to do something else with their skill points.

Padre-stop it, yer givin' me flashbacks to the old hellstorm that broke out over the MCS/SCS debates! Heh. The dev's allow for mulitiply accounts. Just imagine what it'd be like if the literally THOUSANDS of players (one of them being Thunderheart, mind you-heh) who were REALLY campaigning for Mulitply Character Servers. The thing is, you can't stop people from buying more than one account and using it. It's a way to get the best of all worlds. And NO business is gonna say, "No, please don't buy more than one of my product, whatever you do." Can it lead to muling? Sure. Can it pose an unfair advantage to those of us who don't have the time or money to develope 2 or 3 separate characters at once? I don't know. After all, Doc's paying 3 times what the rest of us are paying and is splitting his attention 3 different ways. So maybe he deserves the advantage, because people who put more time and energy into this game are ALWAYS gonna do better than the rest of us. /shrug. Merchant is a particularly easyprofession for that I grant you, but like ANY profession who's real meat is largely social, like dancer or entertainer or ID, people are either going to have fun by being committed to it, or just have an empty bot-monkey that makes money. It's hard to punish one without punishing the other. And if you don't believe the social aspect is important, just go see how many peopel on the Intrepid board are upset that Sirii, our premier entertainer (complete with audience following and her own TOUR that stopped at places for a million credits a pop), quit the game.

The problem with professions like merchant is, while they are facilitating professions much of their meat so to speak is from the social aspect of making deals and interaction, which is not something that developers can easily code content to support.

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DocSavag wrote:

we wouldn't have a problem with people who decided they wanted to do something else with their skill points.

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