Merchant Archive
Thread: Merchant Poll: Have Poachers hurt your business?
While I cannot point to any specific competitors who are vendor poachers, nor or any who wend elsewhere. I can say for sure that many a customer has not found my show due to the high number of empty vendors scattered around.
Fewer vendor registered on the map => Map registration being more useful for customers to find what they want => more player liking throe the listed vendors => more business to registries vendors.
As a master merchant, all my vendors are all listed on the map. Hence, I can say for sure that I am loosing business due to the vendor listed on the map where the owner does not have the necessary skills.
Message Edited by Tarnak_Archvold on 05-31-2004 05:54 AM
heck if I know how much I've lost, but no matter how much, it's a loss. I don't know how this should be fixed, but I sure as heck don't like someone else to own 6 vendors when they don't have to keep the skill points there, you know?
Greets ...
Hmm ... I have never really thought about it in "lost business" before.
You folks are making a lot of assumptions in this area with the biggest assumption of:
If poaching were gone, then my sales would increase.
That is probably not reality. Reality is that if poaching were gone, more folks would have to keep merchant.
In my profession (weaponsmith), my competition would not go away if poaching went away, it just means the other weaponsmiths would have less *other* game realted skills. (generally combat).
I see very, very small impact to my business based upon this.
Resource vendors ... hmm ... if the people are really making that many credits by 'stealing' your business do you think they are going to stop when they fix the poaching? I doubt it, they will just pick up merchant and keep right on selling.
Off the top of my head I would say 10% to 20% might quit ... but in this economy 10% to 20% is not a big deal ... it really isn't. how many times have you destroyed a ticket or case of something that you could have sold? Left a harvestor around for a couple of extra days cause you didn't have time to go grab it? bought a bunch of weapons or armour, sliced them up, and basically discarded the left overs?
I do agree they need to fix the system, but I don't agree that it will vastly increase anybodies income. In the case of large and her assuming her competitor would "vanish" and she would realize 200m-400m in credits ... for that kind of credits, that person(s) would either pick up merchant or hire one :-)
see? that's the problem with inviting hero here. He tends to comment on everything 
It certainly isn't just one vendor, but when you multiply those sales by several vendors, even 10-20% is a huge amount when you deal in millions.
I love the maint discount. Is it much per harvesters? not really, but multiply it by up to 280 harvesters at one time and it is quite significant. Multiply those that would exit the business and it is also quite significant over time. If it even wiped out 10% of my competition, I would be ecstatic.
Hero_DarkJedi wrote:
You folks are making a lot of assumptions in this area with the biggest assumption of:
If poaching were gone, then my sales would increase.
That is probably not reality. Reality is that if poaching were gone, more folks would have to keep merchant.
Exactly. I don't think I've lost a dime to poachers. I may have to spend a bit more time bringing my stuff to market since they may have enough skill points to get a few more boxes in artisan and/or tailor and be able to make their own subcomponents whereas I have to track down someone to do the schematic, but there's no doubt in my mind that the serious armorsmiths would (if they don't already) have merchant skills if they were required to keep vendors.
Frankly, I could argue that poachers have helped my business. So many of them are not serious about the craft, and let their stock fall to very unprofessional levels. This creates as much of a sense of brand loyalty as you can get in SWG, as my customers know that even on my worst stocked days they can most likely find what they're looking for. All of the bad experiences with unstocked vendors lead them to me, as they know I do everything in my power tokeep stocked.
DirthNader wrote:
Hero_DarkJedi wrote:
Reality is that if poaching were gone, more folks would have to keep merchant.
You know what paradise is? It's a lie.A fantasy we create about people and places as we'd like them to be.
But you know what truth is? It's the glass of wine, that bottle of tequila, those wine spritzers (ewww). They are always there for you.
I have no idea what this has to do with anything.... but I'm working on getting drunk so we can get back to our good old flamefest.
DirthNader wrote:
Exactly. I don't think I've lost a dime to poachers. I may have to spend a bit more time bringing my stuff to market since they may have enough skill points to get a few more boxes in artisan and/or tailor and be able to make their own subcomponents whereas I have to track down someone to do the schematic, but there's no doubt in my mind that the serious armorsmiths would (if they don't already) have merchant skills if they were required to keep vendors.
Frankly, I could argue that poachers have helped my business. So many of them are not serious about the craft, and let their stock fall to very unprofessional levels. This creates as much of a sense of brand loyalty as you can get in SWG, as my customers know that even on my worst stocked days they can most likely find what they're looking for. All of the bad experiences with unstocked vendors lead them to me, as they know I do everything in my power tokeep stocked.
You get a cookie. I'd have never thought to try making an argument that poachers HELP business.
*puts on safety goggles*
*waits for Balki's head to explode*
I don't think they help business at all... If they had to get the skills they would prolly not have a vendor in the first place anyway, and wouldn't sell anything, it would be just the same, people would just buy from someone else and preferably well stocked vendors. If anything, all they are doing is hurting the profession as a whole so that most players don't even want to bother checking the planetary map anymore.
Will poachers really just pick up merchant? I doubt it. Most of them prolly don't even need the money anymore, don't really care for vendors except to make money anyway andwill just use the trade forums or bazaar to sell their stuff.
Hero_DarkJedi wrote:
Reality is that if poaching were gone, more folks would have to keep merchant.
In my profession (weaponsmith), my competition would not go away if poaching went away, it just means the other weaponsmiths would have less *other* game realted skills. (generally combat).
Resource vendors ... hmm ... if the people are really making that many credits by 'stealing' your business do you think they are going to stop when they fix the poaching? I doubt it, they will just pick up merchant and keep right on selling.
You said the 2 magic phrases to prove my point. And thank you for pointing them out:
1.More folks would keep or getmerchant
2.Exploiters would have to decrease skills in other professionsto keep merchant skills if they wish to remain competative.
They become merchants and stop using stolen skills. They become a contributing member of the Merchant profession. They will actually give a damn about the profession.
It has never been my intention to make Merchant exclusive to anyone. I only wanted to relegitamize this profession and create a great professional base, so long as we were all playing on a level playing field of equal skill pointusage. If I was drowned out by a mutlititudes of vendors advertised on the global map, I would be a happy man, so long as I knew it was 100% exploit free.
p4Samwise wrote:
DirthNader wrote:
Exactly. I don't think I've lost a dime to poachers. I may have to spend a bit more time bringing my stuff to market since they may have enough skill points to get a few more boxes in artisan and/or tailor and be able to make their own subcomponents whereas I have to track down someone to do the schematic, but there's no doubt in my mind that the serious armorsmiths would (if they don't already) have merchant skills if they were required to keep vendors.
Frankly, I could argue that poachers have helped my business. So many of them are not serious about the craft, and let their stock fall to very unprofessional levels. This creates as much of a sense of brand loyalty as you can get in SWG, as my customers know that even on my worst stocked days they can most likely find what they're looking for. All of the bad experiences with unstocked vendors lead them to me, as they know I do everything in my power tokeep stocked.
You get a cookie. I'd have never thought to try making an argument that poachers HELP business.
*puts on safety goggles*
*waits for Balki's head to explode*
As much as this will amaze you Sam, I can understand Dirth's point. It was one of your defining points in our arguments that empty vendors are much more of a threat to the profession then poached vendors. However they are intertwined since the vast majority of these emptyvendors are laid down by people that no longer invest in the skill boxes that provide the vendors in the first place.
Does it help Dirth that he has well stocked vendors? Yes. Isn't that all we are striving for as merchants? To satisfy the customer's needs? I don't need to imagine most people's frustrations, since I run into the same situation as most customers going fromempty vendor to empty vendor that are advertised on the global map, watching my blood boil in frustration along the way.
Hero_DarkJedi wrote:
That is probably not reality. Reality is that if poaching were gone, more folks would have to keep merchant.
In my profession (weaponsmith), my competition would not go away if poaching went away, it just means the other weaponsmiths would have less *other* game realted skills. (generally combat).
I see very, very small impact to my business based upon this.
Why is it that so many people, crafters and non-crafters alike seem to think that anyone who makes stuff needs to be able to sell it to the general public?
You can be a manufacturer without being a shop-keeper, you make the product, you sell it to a merchant at a wholesale price, they sell it to the public in their shops at the retail price. Thats the whole point of the merchant profession, buy from the crafters sell to the public.
Hero are you a merchant or a weaponsmith who simply sells your own products? if you are a weaponsmith then why not drop merchant and sell your products to a merchant to retail on your behalf? Or do you actually want to be a merchant, wheeling and dealing, sourcing goods from other manufacturers to sell in your shop etc?
Disclaimer: I know there is a problem with this vision, the lack of credit facilities of any sort within the game, so merchants can't obtain start-up cash to buy their initial goods to be able to resell them. So either the merchant needs to be rich or the crafter needs to trust the merchant to pay them upon sale of the goods.
Im not trying to flame here but havent we complained abt this enough? The devs know of the problem and have stated that they are going to address it in a future patch.
Personally i cant wait to see what happens when all the flags disappear off the planetary map. HeHe.