Merchant Archive

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R0ZM4N wrote:

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Calandryll_SOE wrote:

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DarkSmyth wrote:

I'll tell you why this is a great idea!

Right now, I'm on Bria.

I'm on Tatooine looking for a Large andMedium Tatooine House deeds.

I have about 35 vendor WPs on my WP sidebar scattered all across the planet.

I've been to about 15 already and haven't found what I'm looking for yet.

THIS IS REDICULOUS!!!

It drives me nuts. Every single time therehas beenany kind of proposed change that effected the crafters in this game in any way, they whine and b!tch and complain about it until the Dev team finally gives in and scraps it. I say HOGWASH!!! No one ever asked us our thoughts when we got hit with the solo-group nerf.

This is one of the SINGLE BEST ideas that have come along to bring our economies back down to a sensible level. So what, now you all will be in a galactic price war. THIS IS A GOOD THING!!! It'll make the market so that ANYONE can find exactly what they are looking for and for the right price. The only people this hurts (andobviously the ones against it)our those who care only about themselves and their own personal interests. You know what, greed sucks! I say it's about damn time!

TIGGS!

Relay this message to the Dev team for me will ya hon?

"There's two sides to every coin, and it's about time it turns up tails."

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One thing to keep in mind is that we ARE listening to both sides. Just because we decide to make changes to a design that doesn't mean we are ignoring one "side" over the other. It means that after reading ALL of the feedback we feel the design needs some more work.

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Dear Jon

I think the problem highlighted by Darksmyth is that although you may be looking for both sides, you're only really being shown the one.

I remember when I was a crafter and the merchant 'bug' was still inplay where you did not require skill points to use merchant skills. Everybody was happy with this arrangement... apart from the Merchant forum agitators who were so vociferous in their demands to have this fixed that it was changed, and all crafters lost dozens of much needed skill points. Some, only willing/able to run one toon and now unable to sell their goods and experience the combat oriented content of the game, left.

What did the merchants gain? Not a great deal, what did the rest of us lose? SP's, possibly the rarest and most highly prized 'resource' in the game. That, however, was an 'exploit', anybody posting on the merchant forums at the time begging them to leave things as they were was taken to pieces, so I kept quiet during that war of words. Not this time.

The following is a quote from this months PCZone(UK). It is a review of *cough* another online MOG.

"One of the most innovative features of [this other game], and one which works so well you wonder why it hasn't become a MMORPG standard long ago, is the in-game postal and auction systems...If you win the item is sent to you and the same goes for any profit you make. Simple, but it works like a dream'"

Now SWG is looking at a whole new level of that 'most innovative feature'. The possibility that *all* items can be reviewed, purchased and retrieved from a central system and the Merchants are at it again...

I've heard no good arguments against this system but I have heard these shocking non sequitur:

"I'll lose Merchant XP if people don't view my vendor or pay to enter my shop" - You are the *only* profession who get XP for doing absolutely *nothing*. If you place a vendor and then go sit on your backside in the cantina, those XP rack up regardless of if anyone uses them or not & I don't think there's a single player in the history of the game who enjoyed being dragged, jarringly, back to the shop door to pay a fee when she was half way to the vendor she wanted to view.

"The little guy will vanish and power Guilds will rule all" - Absolute nonsense. We have power guilds on our server, none of them dominate markets now when everyone knows exactly where their crafters can be found. If anything, this change will allow the 'little guy' the same access to the public that the big, well known player cities/guilds have now, level the playing field. As for guild crafters getting free resources from guildies thus lowering their costs; if it doesn't happen now, how will this change anything? It won't, pure and simple; unless some guild decides between themselves to make the concerted effort to work together to produce the lowest cost, highest quality items they can, in which case hey, best of luck to 'em!

"Nobody will see my shop" - fair comment, can't argue with that. Hardly worth holding up this monumentally positive new system though non?

It's about time someone stood up to the merchant bullies on these forums and I for one am not going to let them paint the dev's into another corner that cripples the whole community for the sake of their personal gain. If they want a fight, this time they've got one!

With thnx to the dev team for their extraordinary insight on this one and here's hoping they go with their gut instincts and publish what they know is a great idea.

Cass

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R0ZM4N wrote:

Hey a 1 star with no reply, that's constructive, well done.

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Message Edited by spatuluk on 02-15-2005 12:12 PM

Message Edited by R0ZM4N on 02-15-2005 12:08 PM

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Rhadida wrote:

I have read most of the posts here, but ONE point seems to be left out:

The fact that when you have ONE database (sorted from 1 credit to 99.999.999 credits) you will have to search even LONGER for your item. With the current vendor system, you simply look at the top 10 Highest Priced Items on the Sort you are looking for. And you know those are the best on that Vendor (E.g. a PH or a VK). When you have the Worldwide Search option you will get like 200.000 VK's listed from say 1500 credits (unsliced) to 60.000.000 350+ max damage Ultra Rare. All the Items in between will not be seen, unless you scroll through 2.000 pages of weapons (if you can even search per weapon). Or even more, say only option as today 2-handed, you will get 500.000 weapons or 5.000 pages

So you will never see the difference between, say mine 35% damage sliced 198 max damage VK for 100k and the 35% damage sliced 198 max damage sliced VK for 250k from some-one else. You will NEVER know what the stats of the weapons are until you examine them ONE BY ONE.Well good luck to the lazy to walk people, but scrolling and examining 500.000 weapons will take longer

I think no-one has looked at it from this perspective.....

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I *totally* agree that any new system would have to have some d a m n fine searching options and the hardware to back it up honey and I'd be on TC in a flash making sure that it did, but the possibility ofa shoddy engine is no reason not to let us try it, which is what's already looking likely... and is precisely what I'm trying to fight against.

BTW love your grenades

Kisses

Cass

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R0ZM4N wrote:

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Bhasayate wrote:

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R0ZM4N wrote:

Hey a 1 star with no reply, that's constructive, well done.

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I think someone one-starred you (wasn't me) because one could read your post and think "hmm, did this person actually read the degree to which this idea, if implemented as originally intended, would negatively impact virtually all crafters and merchants?" I mean, most every crafter and merchant, with rare exceptions, hated this idea.

So, yeah, someone one-starred you, probably, bz it looks like you've not been paying attention, and ignoring the obvious.

/shrug

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'Did this person actually read the degree to which this idea, if implemented as originally intended, would negatively impact virtually all crafters and merchants' - No, this person read this thread in it's entirity and the 'In Development' thread in it's entirity and found little evidence of what you suggest. She did however find a lot of people building supposition atop their fear of losing sales, when the resistance buffer of not having your shop on a city line or being known on the boards were removed. 'With rare exceptions' she found most posts to be devoid of any actual reasoning and made an attempt to redress this balance. Something, I note, you did not do in this particular post.

Unlike Nicolas who has raised some very interesting and some very new ideas, I'll respond 'in situ' if I may.

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Nicolas_Frost wrote:

I see what both of you are saying, and even though I'm not a merchant, I'm against the idea of purchasing an item and recieving it in a central location.

It takes all the personal contact out of Merchant. Why bother meeting someone new if I can just go to a bazaar terminal, find the cheapest thing around, buy it, and run off? I would have to say honey that if you want to meet people and let's face it, it is a multiplayer game after all, we all want to meet people; there are more common ways of doing so, guilds, cantina's etc and the greatest opportunity for what you're talking about ie making personal contact with an Artisan, will still remain. Bargaining for a special item to be made to your specific requirements, personal service for personal items will still exist.-Yes, I do want to meet people. So do several others. However, there are many, many with the solo mentality who want to "win" at MMOs, and in my oppinion, this is just going to seperate many players even further. This is already choking the life out of cantinas, the only people I can find in them that aren't AFK are the ones using the bots to heal/buff. I never use bots, 'cause in my oppinion, they're ruining a big portion of the game. This brings up an off topic note: I *hate* buffbots.

This effects player cities badly. These communities thrive off of new money coming in from the outside. If nobody needs to visit the vendors any more, much fewer people come to player cities. Only citizens and thier friends. This is a valid point I had not really considered, I will take it on board, thank you.-Part of this point I forgot to mention is that with reduced income from visitors, means reduction in the city's income, via impulse shopping, visiting healers, garage fees, shuttle fees, et cetera.

Merchant's shops will become a thing of the past. Who needs them when you can toss a bulky terminal in a spare room? I already understood this to be the case.. and even then I'm not sure it is completely true. There will still be a place for the 'Big Name' malls to show the wares of the particularly high quality merchants but that's just my opinion. The *facts* are that this system would radicaly reduce the time spent item hunting for anyone who buys anything and that has to be worth it, surely?-It would be good if you couldn't buy/retrieve from across the galaxy. If you could only search and get a waypoint to the vendor. Perhaps a moneysink built into the game, which charges fifty credits each time this is used to generate a waypoint for your datapad.

Entire branches of the Merchant tree become useless. Why would anyone need multiple vendors when thier products can all show up on the bazaar? Why would anyone need advertisement when all of thier products can show up on the bazaar? Why would anyone need a variety in vendors when the Business 3 level vendor, Bulky Terminal, would suffice. Nobody would see the vendor. Its only a temporary repository for merchandice, not the outlet from which merchandice is recieved. Nobody would need to dress vendors, or train barks(okay, the loss of barks wouldn't be so bad, I'll admit I hate not having the option to mute vendors/barker droids clientside), nor would anyone need to make vendors show up on the over head radar map. Well this particular point would only really be resolved in testing I feel. Most merchants don't take all 4 trees, only those who are really serious about running malls and large, impressive stores usually bother to go Master and personally, I still see a place for such malls even if this change goes ahead but I understand that that's purely an opinion and I think testing would be the only way to bear this out. If however you're right, then in that case, it would be up to the devs to make merchant more worthwhile under the new system. It hardly seems fair that the community at large should have this great idea and time bonus removed from them just to protect skill branches that might be replaced with something even more pointful.

It removes the reason to even visit some planets. Joe may be the best WeaponSmith to ever be in the game, and he may price his wares competively, but he lives on Rori. Rori used to get traffic from people because players from all over Server X would come to buy his weapons. However, now players can buy his weapons from Endor without ever setting foot on Rori. Hey, Joe still gets the same business, if not more, but now Rori is virtually dead. I'd put this along side your second point but with the caveat that few people build anything other than guild vendors on Rori and Talus, they're primarily guild planets designed for use in the GCW, but as I said, I take your point about player cities.-I used Rori as an example. You can replace it with Lok, Dantooine, or whatever. It was simply the first planet to come to mind.

Yes, buying stuff like that is so very convenient, but your convenience is the death of another profession. I The point where you have people working hard to get thier products known no longer exists. I disagree completely, the best quality goods will still make a name for a crafter and those crafters who give good quality at great prices more so, it's about time we had a system that promotes that kind of economy openly without Famous Names hiding their overinflated prices behind the resistance factor of not actually being able to find anyone else.-It would be so very easy for me if I were a Famous crafter under this system to keep you from finding other people's wares. Flood the Market and Undercut the prices. I could simply put a factory run on every second day to load out the market with my merchandise, and sell just above cost. Once I choke out the rest of the crafters for that type of product, I can then raise the price, and without competition, people will have to pay. No reason for people to compete over space for thier shops anymore, they can sell from across the galaxy. Great! Now newcomers to professions can work on a level playing field -Nope. Newcomers wouldn't be capable of competing, as the Big Guys already have the market cornered. Sorta like trying to open a grocery store fifty feet from Wal-Mart. Sure, you only sell groceries, but so does Wal-Mart, plus being a big retailer with loads of customers, they can afford to sell for less, because they'll make it up in volume. Plus, people will go there because they can also pick up bed spreads, furniture, and so on.No reason to even advertise, Fantastic! Reduced starport spamming!-While I do hate spamming, there are other forms of advertisement. An entire branch of Merchant is dedicated to that. ...as the only way to compete will be to lower your prices, put a few A's at the beginning of your product's name, and toss it on the vendor. Ha, yeah, that's a good point, AAAAAAT21UBER lol, I guess naming will become an art unto itself

Merchant is not a combat class, but the competition between people peddling thier wares can be just as tight as a duel between PvP people who actually know thier profession. It can be, you're absolutely right but now I see this developing as not between a couple of crafters who everybody knows, while the less famous wither and die in the wilderness of empty vendors; but good crafters backed by good playing time (you can't sell what you don't take the time to make). Older crafters will mantain respect as they have the resources that keep them on top. I can only see this change benefitting Classic, hardworking, well stocked crafters as well as giving newcomers a level playing field on which to compete.-While I do hate finding empty vendors and wasting my time finding out they're empty(or only have items set for 999999), something like this takes away from some of the key points in business. Location, strategy, who you know, and luck. Not only does this ruin the Merchant class, but it'll also make a mess of the player-based economy.

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to some new and interesting comments flower.

Sincerely

Cass

Message Edited by R0ZM4N on 02-15-2005 12:08 PM

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Message Edited by Nicolas_Frost on 02-15-2005 08:20 AM

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Rhadida wrote:

I have read most of the posts here, but ONE point seems to be left out:

The fact that when you have ONE database (sorted from 1 credit to 99.999.999 credits) you will have to search even LONGER for your item. With the current vendor system, you simply look at the top 10 Highest Priced Items on the Sort you are looking for. And you know those are the best on that Vendor (E.g. a PH or a VK). When you have the Worldwide Search option you will get like 200.000 VK's listed from say 1500 credits (unsliced) to 60.000.000 350+ max damage Ultra Rare. All the Items in between will not be seen, unless you scroll through 2.000 pages of weapons (if you can even search per weapon). Or even more, say only option as today 2-handed, you will get 500.000 weapons or 5.000 pages

So you will never see the difference between, say mine 35% damage sliced 198 max damage VK for 100k and the 35% damage sliced 198 max damage sliced VK for 250k from some-one else. You will NEVER know what the stats of the weapons are until you examine them ONE BY ONE.Well good luck to the lazy to walk people, but scrolling and examining 500.000 weapons will take longer

I think no-one has looked at it from this perspective.....

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If you have ever gone planet to planet, vendor to vendor, searching for one particular resource you would see why even a clunky database would be infinitely better, especially when you get to the "resource vendor" and pay to get in only to find 100 units of trash resource keeping the vendor on the planetary map.

A redesign of the catagories and additions of narrowing parameters (planet,region,city, price) would allow easier searches, but even without I'd rather the database over the endless business trip...

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GraySeven wrote:

If you have ever gone planet to planet, vendor to vendor, searching for one particular resource you would see why even a clunky database would be infinitely better, especially when you get to the "resource vendor" and pay to get in only to find 100 units of trash resource keeping the vendor on the planetary map.

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Which is why you develop relationships with merchants who are good. Which is why you ask people about who has a good vendor. Which is why you covet that great bargain vendor in an out-of-the-way location that nobody else seems to know about.

The current system is undoubtedly inefficient. But making it perfectly efficient will ultimately hurt the game because you will have less variety in product, less interaction between people, and fewer crafter/merchants. Yes, that's pure speculation. But based on the merchant response to this change, it's probably not far off the mark.

The combat players want Wal-Mart. The merchants want mom-and-pop shops. Which is ultimately better for a multiplayer game based at least in part of people interacting in avariety of roles?