Merchant Archive
Thread: Please post here to tell the Devs how you feel about remote purchasing
DocSavag wrote:
There is nothing balanced about 10,000 items in an unsortable database.
Remote Purchasing is filled with potential grief and it devalues most of the skills in the merchant profession. It promotes one vendor with as many items and you can stuff on it since no one cares what else you have at your shop they have already purchased all the items from the bazaar. Ther is no point to even having a vendor system. Just uncap the bazaar and be done with it.
That pretty much sums it up. Why have Advertsing or Hiring if no one needs to, or would even want to, go to your shop. I think this is taking the emulation of WoW too far. Are some players going to want the convenience of remote shopping? Sure. But you'll make all of the work merchants have put into their profession and shops pointless.
Please don't shaft our profession.
Regional at AD-1
Planetary at AD-4
Galaxy-wide at Master Merchant
I know that I feel that being able to list your vendor on the bazaar should be a skill gained in the Advertising line of Merchant.
As a customer: I prefer to go directly to the vendor to make my purchases and won't buy directly off the bazaar if they keep that feature in when it goes live... and since you have to go there to pick your purchases up anyway, why not make it so you have to go there to buy? Many people brought up what I thought were viable arguments against buying on the bazaar in the original thread on this. I do like being able to search for that particular item that I have been looking for for weeks (if not months) with no success (all too many vendors that I have gone to have only a handful of items in stock... none of which I want). I also tend to browse any other vendors in a shop where I have gone to buy something. That is my take as a customer.
As for my characters that have Merchant skills, I like this. I believe that it will expand my customer base... and none of my characters that have Merchant have big shops... my shops are more like the Mom & Pop store on the corner. I like that I will be able to MOVE my shops from Vendor Ally outside of Coronet to my home town and people will still be able to buy from me. Not to mention that it will bring those who do buy from me TO MY HOME TOWN in order to pick up their purchases. I see this as also benefiting my neighbors in my home town who have shops near where I would place mine. I do think that people should not be able to buy the items on Vendors from the bazaar... though for different reasons than my perspective on this as a customer. Many Merchants don't want someone who has been banned from their shops buying thier items on the bazaar... and I agree with this. That is my take as a Merchant.
All in all, there are valid reasons to NOT be able to buy vendor items from the bazaar, from BOTH sides of the transaction... but the search tool is great!
As for where the skills should go:
The idea of having planetary and galaxy listings at different points of the Advertising line is reasonable. Regional listing (as suggested by one poster) would not make any sense, however, as no one can place a vendor in an area covered by the bazaar's regional listing. Go to Test Center yourself and you will see... on the Vendor Page, you MUST go to at least Planetary Listings before you will see ANY items no matter how close a listed vendor is placed. Personally, I think that the default of the Vendor page should be Planetary listings for that very reason.
I like the fact that;
- My wares now have a chance to reach a broader market than before
- I can now search for what I need without going to vendor after vendor marked Resources only to find sub-100 unit stacks of crap
I dislike the fact that;
- This isn't tied into the Merchant portion of the tree...waaaay up the tree
- Remote Purchase allows griefing
- Catagories are not being improved with this change
DocSavag wrote:
The power driving this feature is apparently SOE has data that suggests that the difficulty in finding items needed to play the game on the vendor system is one of the primary frustrations that people leaving the game have. This is probably true and is the whole reason why global searching ( in a form that doesn't damage the merchant community ) is a good idea.
Message Edited by Hobbytla on 03-17-2005 08:23 AM
DocSavag wrote:
The power driving this feature is apparently SOE has data that suggests that the difficulty in finding items needed to play the game on the vendor system is one of the primary frustrations that people leaving the game have. This is probably true and is the whole reason why global searching ( in a form that doesn't damage the merchant community ) is a good idea.
Unfortunately, I see the actions to this plausible data executed out of context. I've seen not one piece of evidence that anyone on the development or the communications teams has ever played a crafter, much less a merchant, as their primary role over an extended period of time. They've locked the requirements into a separation of powers medium, and never given us an ounce of feedback in a forum I have access to note.
I really appreciate the perks we received for surveying, but they do not address the difficulties that people endure to be successful in player-developed crafting and the specific commerce aspects that revolve around those activities. In essence, they are treating a symptom, but the problems are still going to be there. I've seen the *best* on three servers burnout from trying to fill the supply chains. On top of that, the lack of any cognative communication between crafting communities (merchant inclusive) and the devs continues to widen the divide.
We need a crafting/merchant community relations manager that specifically addresses our needs and will initiate a process whereby the players that provided them with the afore-mentioned data are satisfied because we would get the tools to allow them to find the products they desire without turning the commerce side of the house into a molding fish.
Fivo Asia