Merchant Archive
Thread: Focus Thread: Galaxy-Wide Vendor Search
nikko11 wrote:
I strongly support this change as a welcome and neccesary change for the game. I agree it harms the merchant community, but I believe that with this change, merchant should be folded into the crafting classes and their abilities distributed with master crafting abilities.
Well, he's right. If this doesn't get scrapped (in an effort to sell us on a "less bad" version), we might as well just scrap merchant. The only ones that could possibly be entertained by it now are those that are too new to know what they're missing. (That and those with no strategic ability as they'll benefit by default.)
....ah, screw it. *picks up a rifle and starts looking for a saber* <-After this gets old in about a week, I'm sure I'll be able to find another MMORPG.
No.
nikko11 wrote:
I strongly support this change as a welcome and neccesary change for the game. I agree it harms the merchant community, but I believe that with this change, merchant should be folded into the crafting classes and their abilities distributed with master crafting abilities.
Anothering thing I just realized about this that I hate is the way it has turned crafters vs. fighters. These two "sides" (as they have become) were designed to help each other, the crafter provides the needed gear to fight, the fighter buys the gear he needs from the crafter. The fighter goes out and find item enhancing loot, fighter either sells it to crafter or has crafter use it to make fighter a more powerful item. The fighter makes money from missions(don't jump on my saying solo mission nerf, I know all about it)/looting/selling loot and buys crafters stuff to be able to adventure farther, higher.
What is needed is a improvement that does not hurt either side, as it stands, basicly this whole idea wrecks an economy that is unlike anything MMORPGs have ever seen. And hurts most crafters. An improvement is needed no doubt, but it needs to not be a destructive one.
Message Edited by Strongbow on 02-13-2005 03:25 PM
Message Edited by Strongbow on 02-13-2005 03:26 PM
Strongbow wrote:Radical suggestion that I just made in the Development forum (after I took time for initial shock of this change to wear off):Take the Bazaar completely out of the picture for this. Leave it as the separate system it is, designed squarely to be the selling tool for non-Merchants. Do not link it in any way to merchant vendors.Now, the Merchant's advertising arena is the Planetary map. Instead of just listing categories and Vendor names, bring the Item category lists into that interface such that if you are looking for a 1-Handed weapon (or even a Survival Knife if you want to get that specific), then you get a listing of the vendors that have those items in stock and how many are currently there. If the vendor does not have anything in that category then it will not be listed. One area that would need to be tweaked is factory crates, those items should be categorized by the items in the crates not as crates themselves.The customer would still have to travel to that vendor to see prices and what not, but it does remove the problem of vendors that only have a single item on them, simply to keep the listing.This keeps the Merchant Skill Tree viable and removes one of the major complaints from the customer base.How many people do you see shopping at Best Buy and using the cash registers there to check prices, and make purchases, from Computer City? That's essentially what will be happening if a customer can browse my competitors' prices using *my* vendor in *my* shop.Message Edited by Strongbow on 02-13-2005 03:25 PM
Message Edited by Strongbow on 02-13-2005 03:26 PM
Not a bad idea, but a lot of work for the devs I would guess... especially with armor being sold in back packs and as you mentioned food and other things in factory crates. But I like it, make the planetary map go into the sub catagories... 1h melee weapon, and then into actually weapons of that type, gaffi stiack, stun baton and so on. But as I said, a lot of work to do that I would guess.
Jade92 wrote:
But as location is removed from the scheme of things, quality and price become the two competing points. It's argued that such a deep quality and price competition is bad for new crafters, but what's worse? quality+price or quality+price+location+existing customer base? Honestly, I feel like I have a fair shot in any crafting business now. I hate the fact that the economy is made unfair be these artificial means, and I see in a lot of the arguments here that people are trying to cling to their artifical advantages in the economy.
I can't help but think this just makes the economy more fair. Sure, we may have fewer crafters, but only as supply and demand dictate. The change acutally allows supply and demand laws GREATER control over the economy. Prices will better reflect supply and demand. Excess demand can more easily filled by new crafters. Sure it hurts new crafters going into markets with excess supply, but it greatly helps new crafters going into markets with excess demand.
Feel like you've got a shot? Not unless you've got my 9 month's worth of harvested, purchased and hoarded resources you don't.
Let's take a Novice Marksman weapon as an example: the D-18. With the resources I've got, I'm gonna spank any new WS by at least 10 points of damage and better speed. The more complex the weapon, the worse the comparison is. Who in thier right mind is going to pay the same money for an inferior product? "I'll price mine lower than yours", you may say. With my millions of units of self-harvested resources collected over the months, my overhead is pretty low....I'll be willing to bet I can outdo you in price too.
Now, If you were selling that same gun made by a Novice WS at your great location outside C'net then yeah, you'll probably make some sales. But sitting next to my gun it doesn't look like such a great buy. And BTW, it's gonna be named "AAAAAAAAAAAAA D-18", so they'll likely never see your gun.
The current implementation will discourage, rather than encourage new blood into the crafting professions. My stuff is 1-2 points lower damage than the Big-Guys on the server, and I don't see how I'm gonna compete.
If the patch goes through, I'm activating my loot vendor and sticking everything on there with a 1 credit price tag. Hopefully those who come will notice my weapons vendor sitting next to the junk vendor. OH, and I'm using it as a galaxy-wide, easy-access storage vendor: My alt's out of brandy hunting on Dathomir? Just pop over to the vendor and buy that pack labelled "2 cdef pistols--100k" that I'm selling and get my goodies out of it. Put it back on the vendor when I get home. Rinse and repeat.
At least I can regain some of those skill points.../sigh
I think it leverages a lot of what we already have in the commerce module of SWG to begin with. On the Planetary Map, move the Vendors grouping to a second tab, then under that group on the second tab list our Item Tree just like it is on our Vendors. The data already exists in the database so querying it up to the Map should be no problem (very simple queries that already exist for the Vendors). THere would have to be some work done on the User Interface however. I have developed a number of software systems that use dynamic Treeviews for navigation and the U.I. can get very hard to interpret when you get 4 and 5 levels deep.
GreenLeaders wrote:
Not a bad idea, but a lot of work for the devs I would guess... especially with armor being sold in back packs and as you mentioned food and other things in factory crates. But I like it, make the planetary map go into the sub catagories... 1h melee weapon, and then into actually weapons of that type, gaffi stiack, stun baton and so on. But as I said, a lot of work to do that I would guess.
GrooperNugent wrote:
Jade92 wrote:
But as location is removed from the scheme of things, quality and price become the two competing points. It's argued that such a deep quality and price competition is bad for new crafters, but what's worse? quality+price or quality+price+location+existing customer base? Honestly, I feel like I have a fair shot in any crafting business now. I hate the fact that the economy is made unfair be these artificial means, and I see in a lot of the arguments here that people are trying to cling to their artifical advantages in the economy.
I can't help but think this just makes the economy more fair. Sure, we may have fewer crafters, but only as supply and demand dictate. The change acutally allows supply and demand laws GREATER control over the economy. Prices will better reflect supply and demand. Excess demand can more easily filled by new crafters. Sure it hurts new crafters going into markets with excess supply, but it greatly helps new crafters going into markets with excess demand.Feel like you've got a shot? Not unless you've got my 9 month's worth of harvested, purchased and hoarded resources you don't.
Let's take a Novice Marksman weapon as an example: the D-18. With the resources I've got, I'm gonna spank any new WS by at least 10 points of damage and better speed. The more complex the weapon, the worse the comparison is. Who in thier right mind is going to pay the same money for an inferior product? "I'll price mine lower than yours", you may say. With my millions of units of self-harvested resources collected over the months, my overhead is pretty low....I'll be willing to bet I can outdo you in price too.
Now, If you were selling that same gun made by a Novice WS at your great location outside C'net then yeah, you'll probably make some sales. But sitting next to my gun it doesn't look like such a great buy. And BTW, it's gonna be named "AAAAAAAAAAAAA D-18", so they'll likely never see your gun.
The current implementation will discourage, rather than encourage new blood into the crafting professions. My stuff is 1-2 points lower damage than the Big-Guys on the server, and I don't see how I'm gonna compete.
If the patch goes through, I'm activating my loot vendor and sticking everything on there with a 1 credit price tag. Hopefully those who come will notice my weapons vendor sitting next to the junk vendor. OH, and I'm using it as a galaxy-wide, easy-access storage vendor: My alt's out of brandy hunting on Dathomir? Just pop over to the vendor and buy that pack labelled "2 cdef pistols--100k" that I'm selling and get my goodies out of it. Put it back on the vendor when I get home. Rinse and repeat.
At least I can regain some of those skill points.../sigh
Yeah, this idea keeps looking better all the time!
/sarcasm off
Novock wrote:
Anyword yet Elyssa have they responded to you at all?
As I said earlier, the outcry has been heard.
However (and this is strictly my opinion), I doubt we'll hear anything official before they've all had a chance to come back together on Monday and have meetings about it.
