Merchant Archive

You do not need a house to place a vendor. So your assumption about more vendors than players is not accurate. You put someone on the Admin List and they can place a vendor in your house. I have 3 different people doing that now and had up to 5 at my peek.

---

SeaRaptor wrote:

Also remember that the game code is (poorly) written so that a character who has placed a vendor, but subsequently deleted the toon and canceled his account leaves his vendor behind in the world. I imagine that at least some of the vendors in that total are from people who no longer even play the game.

---

And the toon's houses remain too

Message Edited by ZallusNuranxis on 06-08-2004 10:34 AM

---

stanbize wrote:

Why should u guys be so critical towards the "managment" of vendors by ex-merchants? Without "tolerance" for the so-called "illegal vendors", there could be over a thousand spammers outside each and every starports. Be frank, if the vendors need to be exclusive, they should be made harder and far more costy to acquire. Otherwise, they just like a simple med droid that can be owned by almost everyone.

I would say that you guys should press for better abilities like making cross-border delivery or even bigger discounts for maintainence.Besides if the number annoys u, what u should ask for is rather an auto "explosion" of them or even a penalty of a few thousands per hour.

From:-

An Ex-merchant who keeps vendors update and restock every two days.

---

Your arguement seems to chase itself a bit. Vendors will be harder to KEEP when these changes are implemented. Right now they are easy to get and keep because they aren't protected by skill points. When this is changed not everyone will be able to have one.

Spammers in the starports right now are almost all spamming for vendors. How many of those are "illegal?" we don't know. I suspect the number of spammers won't change all that much with this but if it does it does there are many calls to reign in the spammers anyways though they don't bother me and I consider it just part of the atmosphere.

assuming that the players without houses make up for the players with multiple houses we're saying that there are 305,890 players.
2% of players have novice merchant (if we're generous and say that all those novice merchants at least have management 4) then we have 6117 merchants with 6 vendors each = 36706 vendors

36706/388,165 *100 = 9.4% of vendors are legal (at the very most)

Obviously there are a lot of assumptions there that would have to balance out for the figure to be accurate. It also doesnt take into account artisan vendors.

---

NancyJ wrote:
assuming that the players without houses make up for the players with multiple houses we're saying that there are 305,890 players.
2% of players have novice merchant (if we're generous and say that all those novice merchants at least have management 4) then we have 6117 merchants with 6 vendors each = 36706 vendors

36706/388,165 *100 = 9.4% of vendors are legal (at the very most)

---

You get a vendor in the Artisan class, so you're numbers are a little low. But good point showing the huge gap. I hardly think all the rest of the vendorpopulation belongs toArtisans

---

NancyJ wrote:
assuming that the players without houses make up for the players with multiple houses we're saying that there are 305,890 players.
2% of players have novice merchant (if we're generous and say that all those novice merchants at least have management 4) then we have 6117 merchants with 6 vendors each = 36706 vendors

36706/388,165 *100 = 9.4% of vendors are legal (at the very most)

---

This fits with my impression, though as many vendors may belong to former players as to currentformer merchants. Houses evaporate eventually, mall vendors don't.

If they correct the poaching problem, every other crafter is going to see it as a giant nerf. Expect goods to become hard to find, especially medical supplies,Smugglerand BE products. Those classes can't afford the skillpoints for Merchant, or even Bus 3. The only mitigation is most of them know they are exploiting.

I can't wait for the day when 90% of the vendors poof.

'true' merchants might only be 2%. but dabblers, especially people who craft for a living, still have enough points to easily make novice merchant and that gives them 2 vendors right there. You can master 3 elite crafting professions in the egineering tree, and still have points to get to advertising 3 in merchant. That changes that figure just slightly.

Crafters are what? probably 50ish% of the population? So, going on your estimate of people being 306k rounded up for ease, that would mean 153k are crafters? right around there. so, each one of those, most likely, has their own personal vendor. Then add in that some people are likely to get novice merchant and advertising 3, so now you have 2 vendors per crafter. maybe not all of them, but enough that it is significant, and then the numbers start to add up a bit more clearly.

But, it is guess work on both sides. I am sure there is a significant portion of undeleted/left the game vendors. And I am sure there are quite a few poached vendors. But to claim that there are 300+ thousand poached vendors in a game where it is fairly easy to get 2 vendors for any crafting profession, is just not thinking the issue through.

---

DragonScout wrote:
'true' merchants might only be 2%. but...[snip]... quite a few poached vendors. But to claim that there are 300+ thousand poached vendors in a game where it is fairly easy to get 2 vendors for any crafting profession, is just not thinking the issue through.

---

The 2% was from an old listing of profession popularity, and counts Novice to Master. Besides when was the last time you saw a terminal vendor in a (non-newbie) merchants shop.

Now it is true that most Artisan based crafters could keep some merchant skills, but they don't today because they are worthless compared to getting somedabble schematics like Tailor for Armoursmith or Chef. Those 20 skillpoints for Bus and Novice merchant go a long way toward making your own components.

The ones that really hurt are the ones I mentioned that don't need Novice Artisan. If they don't survey, the first vendor is a pure cost of 24 skillpoints, which could buy an elite profession with a full tree and more. For them to go to Novice Merchant is 35 points or two fulltreesof an elite profession. A two tree combat elite gives an awful lot of value compared to Merchant today, as does Scout 2/0/4/0 if you want to hunt your own meat. Losing either is a huge nerf.