Merchant Archive

Per jbeck's request... Incentives for item deletion.

There are rumors floating about that the SWG item database is overloaded. Some even suggest that item decay and the new proposals for vendor item limits are attempts to reduce the load.

Now, I don't know if these are true, but if they are I have alternative suggestions for the devs.

If you need less items in your database, then you need to provide INCENTIVES for players to delete them. Incentives give players valuable and tangible rewards for getting rid of old junk. Without these incentives, players hang onto many things on the hopes that they will become useful, or that they will someday be able to decorate their house better. They destroy it when they run out of storage space OR more often they just find a way to get more storage space (additional houses, lot rentals, etc.)

Here are some sample incentives that might help to reduce the item database load:

* Make loot junk drops worth more to junk dealers. This might break the economy worse, so it's probably not the best idea. Maybe instead award small amounts of faction or keep a total and display a badge "Has recycled XXX junk items".

* Make loot junk drops components for schematics. This causes looters to sell junk to artisans, who then combine the junk into a different item. Okay, it may not reduce the item load, but it is a place to dump loot items. Of course, if schematics used two or more loots, then the net effect on the database would be a reduction.

* Make junk items recyclable. Grinders and starting artisans would both benefit from the ability to turn their useless junk into a little bit of resources. Of course, they should get fewer resources out than they put in to the original item.

* Make resource stacks combinable. Grinders and starting artisans -- and even a few masters -- would like to combine small stacks of similar materials together. When my schematic calls for 250 identical steel, and I have two stacks of 249 in my inventory, I would quite gladly put the two stacks together if I could, even if the resultant amount were less than the original total or the resultant quality somewhat less than the average. This would help to get rid of old resource stacks faster and make it easier for novices to get the cheap grind materials they need to get established.

* HaveNPCs (or virtual NPCs)occasionally buy things off of the bazaar or overloaded vendors. It shouldn't be too frequent, and they should have at least some degree of detecting good pricesfrom BS prices. But when it happens the seller still gets the money desired and the world gets rid of unwanted junk. If the NPC buyers are particularly shrewd, they will quickly retrieve all of the underpriced grinder sales (houses and statuesfor 3000?) and thereby help bolster the market for real artisans. You could even tune the frequency of sales based on the amount of database load.

In short, trying to alleviate database pressures with artificial limits and "threat of loss" of items won't work in the long run. Providing reasons for players to voluntarily destroy items, and rewards for items being automatically destroyed,may work better.

I’m not sure what these proposed changes are going to do to the merchant class. Basically it comes down to if you are not a Master Merchant, your going to have a lot less to work with. Even being a Master you will have less ability then you have now. I know this problem seem to be twofold. First most merchants want there skills to mean something. And this seems to be an opportunity for that to happen by having non merchants (business 3 & people who gave up there skills after placing vendors) to have there vendors disabled.*** (I personally don’t share this viewpoint, but I understand why others do.)

In addition there considering nerfing merchants with the new item mins at different levels, as it looks like TH likes Draznar’s idea. But if the real problem is with database space, disabling the non merchant vendors should be a really HUGE chunk of it. Why go further and propose more restrictions to our own class? Maybe we could propose they do the disabling first to see how much it cuts down on DB space, and then use the next step of adding min items to our vendors as a last resort only??? I believe the point should be asking for more than we have, not less.

And secondly, upping the bazaar to 6K hurts us yet again. More products types will now be available on the bazaar, which means less need to go out and find a merchant vendor. Honestly I don’t believe upping the max price to 6K will cut down on the amount of ads listed, but increase the types of products that can be sold there.

***On a side note: I think if this were to happen “disabling” vendors is the way to go. They shouldn’t just disappear and have people loss all there stuff, that’s just wrong. They should be disabled from selling and viewing to customers, the only option would be to remove items and destroy the vendor within a reasonable amount of time.

Wow, I’m usually such a quit person. Somehow today I had a lot to say.

~Prinethea

(Master Merchant, Master Artisan, Master Architect, Pistoleer 0-3-0-0)

Princess Thea, it's worse than you think. With bazaar items being 6k many more things are going to be cost effective to sell on the bazaar besides single hits of things and resources. Which means a lot of things are gonna get price fixed at 6k because the bazaar is just more convenient and widely seen. Why would they travel to our vendors to pay more when they can get it on the bazaar for 6k? And there's products out there which are NOW being sold at 6k that 6k will become the norm for, which sucks because the only way to make a profit selling these items at 6k is if you mine your own resources. So the only way to make money AT ALL selling these goods is to mine your own resources, which cuts out the casual crafter AS WELL as us merchants.