Merchant Archive
Thread: Merchant Corrspondant (Week 6)
1. Obviously we need to make sure they know that the fixes they think they fixed aren't fixed. You know it all already.
2. On improvements, I'd like to see the following ideas that have been knocked around for a while pushed to the fore: The notorious "empty boxes" in Merchant (Efficiency I and III; Advertising IV; Hiring III, and Master Merchant) need some kind of systematic replacement. If that's going to involve player cities, I'd just like to know that, and if so, I'm prepared to just wait and see and listen. If not, I'd like those boxes (and maybe entire trees) to be given meaningful value.
3. I understand the devs' fears about vendors being used as storage. But as you point out, the stockroom serves that function well enough, and the only way to address that is to cause items in the stockroom to expire and delete. That could cause some problems. I don't have an easy way to deal with the problem, but I do know what one of the solutions is NOT: vendor maintenance fees set proprotionately to the value of goods sold on the vendor. Holo tried to defend that as being economically sensible, but it's not. It's why governments commonly have a sales tax, or tax revenues, rather than taxing total cash flow. If a merchant now had a vendor with expensive goods and very low profit margins, he'd get creamed by maintenance. So with the storage problem fully in mind, I would like the devs to think about an entirely new way to figure out what the maintenance fees ought to be. So here I endors marqie's list 100%.
4. The time limit issue needs looking at--not just the extension of the seven days, but a check to make sure it's not buggy as is. I'm seeing some goods expire after 7 days.
5. I'd desperately like to see the following interface changes to vendors:
a. Allow me to delete an item from the vendor and the game without having to withdrawn and retrieve it. (Just make sure I get a confirmation box).
b. Allow me to adjust prices line by line, without having to examine the item in detail.
c. Show me how long it is until particular sales expire.
d. Find a better way to notify me of sales and expirations than email. (I keep all of them right now just in case there's an issue later).
e. Allow me to identify goods that I didn't craft with a detail note visible in the main listing. (I sell over 100 skill enhancers in one vendor--the only way to know what each does is to call them up one by one.)
marqie wrote:1. Vendor Fees
Vendor fees are WAY to high, reguardless of how you slice it. Some vendors cost upwards to 10k + a day to maintain. This fee needs to be assesed at the time of the sale, or lowered outright, the marginal reduction on the fee in the eff line does not cut it.
Why is this bad...
- Vendors can still be used as storage, it is called the stockroom. I can place a large naboo house in my vendor for 1 credit, and them withdraw the sale, cost to keep it in the stockroom "Zippo". The only person that is punished by this fee structure is that of the real merchant. Not the ones looking to bump the system
- There are no ways to get people to the shops, or to even let people know they are there, so a large ticket item can sit in a vendor way to long.
I'll give an AMEN to this
Vendor maintainence as a whole needs a serious look. There are people using NPC vendors (which still have problems with resource crates as well as unretrievable purchases???) just to avoid the insane fees of the other types (as well as other unintended things such as storage).
I am not sure if this is just post update, but I have noticed over the past couple of days that people offering me resources on my terminal vendor cause me to essentially be double charged. For example, someone left me some ore for 18k credits. I got back to my vendor about 20 minutes after he'd left it, saw my vendor had roughly 20k of maintenance in it (I've been paranoid about maintenance lately so I check it often), purchased the item, saw my bank balance dip by 18k, then ALSO saw my vendor maintenance dip to about 2k. I repeated this last night with a 6k vendor offer where I was charged, then the vendor maintenance also dipped instantly by about 6k through the purchase. This is causing me now to tell people to either sell it to me in person (forcing me to carry around wads of credits) or leave it on my vendor for 1 credit and I'll pay them later.
We seriously need to get these vendor maintenance issues addressed. Regardless of the vendor you choose, there is some "gotcha" with it and I think we could use some serious loving from the Developers.
Did not see a mention of the ever so popular "keep making and destroying NPC vendors and your inventory will get full until you re-log" bug.
Did they fix that one with the last patch?
So in short, someone can also greif you by offering yo a melon for 50,000 credits, and you have to pay mains on it until you discover it being there!!!
OUCH!!
I don't just operate1 shop, I am travelling, buying & selling commidities, moving them from one planet to the next on the bizarre for a half-credit's difference, and always on the lookout for good deals for my shops. It is not unusual for me to make several trips an evening to various sites and planets.
Krupperift's points about remote managment is dead on. It is NOT FUN having to revisit every store every day for the sole purpose of putting it back on the map and resetting the stopped add-barking.Ienjoy visiting my shops and checking everything, it's why I'm a merchant I suppose, but stop the maddening inability to doanything remotely. One of the merchant skills should allow us to control shops remotely from just one of our shops. Maybe the skill tree moves upto regional/planetary/galactic. Maybe it should require a data droid, or acommunication antenna built like harvesters.Maybe Hiring IV and be store managers that allow this. We need to be able tocheck individual store vendors, change sales, move stock, pay maint fee's, etc, remotely. Heck, if Obi-wan can talk to Corosaunt from the far reaches ofCaminoin a wicked thunderstorm on a dinner plate, we ought to be able to geta message through toa store vendor on Naboo from Rori.
Another of Krupperrifts points was droids as shops/advertizing. I would actually prefer the ability to make one of my droids a mobile shop that sells to customers just like a vendor in a store. Travelling througha city, drop a store droid,setup waypoints in a city and have the droid travel about, stopping to sell to all who "USE" it until you pass back through and pick it back up. A perk, certainly limited space, but a very nice one. I couldgaldly accept none or very limited barking to keep down the noise polution.
Travel discount, as generally known and discussed,would be a nice perk and make deliveries cheaper.
Did not see a mention of the ever so popular "keep making and destroying NPC vendors and your inventory will get full until you re-log" bug.
Did they fix that one with the last patch?
No they did not fix it. I did not even know it existed until yesterday, which was after the latest patch. You inventory will fill up if you create and delete vendors to get the best looking NPC.
Could we have something that saves item descriptions? For example, when we relist (or in the future, reprice without removing, hopefully) something, the old item description vanishes. Similarly, it'd be nice if descriptions could (at user's option, preferably) "carry over" when you're listing a bunch of items from your inventory, the same way the "price box" carries over the price of the last thing you listed.
Even better still would be if you could somehow save default item descriptions for various base items. I used to try to write clever or funny item descriptions for all my clothing (trying for a sort of "J. Peterman" feel), but eventually gave up on it because of the clunkiness of cut/paste in SWG, and the fact that I have to spend hours of time every week to relist stuff, in which those descriptions are lost, and performing the cut/paste actions would make this pointless drudgery of a task even more intolerable and long.
marqie wrote:So in short, someone can also greif you by offering yo a melon for 50,000 credits, and you have to pay mains on it until you discover it being there!!!
OUCH!!
From what I've seen, I'm not charged maintenance on my terminal vendor for an offered item until I actually buy it. The amount of time it has been on the vendor doesn't seem to figure in -- only its price does.
Have someone offer up a 10k item on your terminal vendor and whether you wait 1 minute or 1 hour to get it, if you get the same behavior I've seen, when you buy the item, your bank account will be charged 10k (as it should), but approximately 10k will be reduced from the vendor maintenance pool as well.
Can I get a "ARGH!!!"?
Other than the bugs mentioned, the one where people stop getting hourly exp is pretty major.
For new ideas, I had some ideas about how to develop advertising. They're small things, but the small things might be easier to implement:
Special Shout/Say Bubbles: Some sort of special speech bubbles, that stand out and draw people's attention. Available as a ability for merchants only of course. Handy when you're selling something in town, or advertising a shop.
Visual Effects: Some sort of light effects or the like we can fire off, that draw attention to us. To be used with the above suggestion. Again aimed at giving something to the street-seller merchant.
Business Cards: An item that when people use it, it downloads a waypoint into their datapad. Make it use a small amount of resources, and a generic crafting tool, so merchants can make them easily. These can be handed out, sold cheaply on the bazaar, and all sorts. A ready-made waypoint always draws in more customers than giving them the coordinates.
Random Stuff: For hiring, the ability to imagedesign NPCs would be useful. At least the player-race NPCs at any rate. Possibly customising the droids the way droid designers are suppose to be able to do.
I think I'd just like a confirmation that what I suspect is true, that the Merchant profession is only going to be fully implemented when the player cities come in. If I was told that, I'd relax a lot about the profession and just tolerate its current state.
I really like the resource slider and pricing per unit suggestion.
Able to decorate outside our shops too. Yes! Landscaping and displays outdoors too, just like the in town buildings are.
Displays in houses - /move up and /move down. Please, please, please.
Allow vendors to be movable like furniture.
Planet specific and generic shop buildings designs in various sizes. From mall to tent.
Vendor admin permission list returned and NOT tied to house admin list.
Let people delete irretrievable ghosted items from (bazaar) Available and (Vendor) stockroom listings. ( have some ore and a loveseat I purchased over a week ago that I can not retrieve, and near as I can tell, never will be able to retrieve, yet they are taking up two slots on my "Sales" on the Bazaar while stuck in the ghosted available zone. Bah!)
Almost all the Merchants skill boxes have little real value to Merchants OR customers. The skills granted don't work - reliably, or as advertised - if they work at all. Our "skills" aren't enough gain for the work involved getting them and haven't enough benefit to the casual crafter-seller to make them want to use the services of a Merchant instead of just getting Bus III and setting up shop for themselves. The Merchant Class isn't defined enough nor advantage enough to induce other players to use a Merchant as intended by game design. We don't offer enough benefit in cost savings and perks to the non-merchant crafters.
Advertising in towns - via ad barking droids (or droids with special merchant names that blink on and off or something eye-catching) or City message boards (at starports, shuttleports, cantinas) or posters, banners... LOL, billboards! Oh dear, but please, only within specific market type areas, not all over a city or along the "highways."
Reduced travel fees for the Efficiency tree. Yes! Merchant having reduced travel fees would be incentive for non-merchant crafters to wholesale to Merchants for satellite shops. Sort of a frequent flyer miles discount! (I spent a ton of money planet-hopping yesterday, just to pick up purchases for myself, much less items I intend to use for crafting or bulk/resale items. Merchants should have a class benefit travel discount.)
Business cards! I love that idea. I would love to be able to have the datapad have folders like the crafting tools do too. (collapsible with default to collapsed) Planet folders with the ability to sort by waypoint type. That way business cards would not be so confusing and stacked up with waypoints to resources and other data. Or make a smaller business card waypoint wallet we can craft, buy, carry.
Ability to have several custom advertising "sigs" we can insert into the Seller's Description box via drag and drop like we can waypoints into emails.
Special advertising chat bubbles. I like that one a lot too.
Visual effects - like the entertainers can do. Would work well with craftable, placeable tents for temporary in town marketing bazaars. Little vendor stalls or something. Planet specific and/or generic.
