Merchant Archive
Thread: can this be addressed w/o being flamed
"we want to upgrade vendors" does not equal "We are revamping the vendor system".
upgrades are add-ons to improve the existing system, revamps usually mean cleaning out most of the old to make way for something that works better. And either way, them wanting to add upgrades does not mean that it will happen at the same time as a fix to the vendor poaching problem.
You are also really having problems with understanding what we are saying.. neither p4samwise nor myself care if they fix poached vendors. I think it should be fixed. I just don't necessarily think it is the most important thing to be fixed.
Saying things in all caps really gets your point across too
You can claim all you want, but until you show a link to a post, I can't help but assume you are making things up. Especially since the posts you have shown have done nothing to support your views. There is zero reference to any 'revamp' for vendors or merchants.
Where is it said that merchants are on the schedule for publish 11? Are you sure you aren't thinking of the post that said empty vendors will no longer be shown on the planetary map? Because that is the only thing specifically pointing to a time frame that I have seen regarding merchants.
And I wouldn't believe anything jesus or anyone else said unless they could back it up with facts. Just because someone could write their opinion in fire doesn't mean it is true. lol. Hell, you don't even need to be jesus to write things in fire. I could do it with some gas and matches.
If I did so, would you believe whatever I wrote? Or would I have to be jesus? I know a jesus a few streets over that could say/do it for me... would that count? oh.. and I have yet to see p4samwise fan the flames. But you do, every time you post telling everyone to shut up and not talk about it anymore. lol.
But, with that in mind. Very cool.
Now we can get back to my whole point, which is revamping the Merchant Profession to making it something more than just vendors
Still using capital letters and accusations. Try again.
JTGAlpha wrote:
And p4, well I'll tell you one thing that WOULD help stop the flames...you not fanning them. But you wanna know what would help? Telling eveyone it's going to be fixed and that the devs know about it instead of whatever the hell it is you think you're doing.
Message Edited by JTGAlpha on 06-17-2004 06:06 PM
JTGAlpha wrote:
No. Do what ya want. You will anyway. And Scout...we HAVE been talking about upgrading vendors. Why do you think Doc's got all those newer threads stickied at the top.
And no. I'm not posting the link. Believe me or don't.
Much better. Not quite what I'd call "civil", but you're getting there.
"Believe me or don't" doesn't tend tobe veryconvincing topeople who doubt your veracity, and it's definitely not the best way to try to end a heated argument. Here's the link Scout was asking about:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=merchant&message.id=26678&highlight=answer#M26678
And no... I have been talking about a Merchant Revamp. you just got us sidetracked for a few posts with badly constructed arguments.
You are still missing the point. You keep wanting what issue to die?
Poached vendors? I think it is dead. If you stopped posting about it, it really would die. Just ignore any new questions people post about it.
A vendor revamp? I don't think that until maybe 10 posts ago that was an issue. I still don't think it is as necessary as an overall merchant revamp, but that is my viewpoint. And if it is already scheduled to be put in, great. Somewhat interesting to me though that, going with the timeline of those posts... doc gets an email saying vendors are listed in publish 11? then a few weeks later he gets that question answered.. and within that answer it says that they want to do some upgrades to vendors, but it is too early to start talking about that? To me, that isn't a 'good' sign. Perhaps the item in that publish 11 is the fix to poached vendors?
A Merchant revamp? So that merchants aren't centered only on vendors? That is what I have been arguing overall. I will admit I get sidetracked by pointing out bad arguments. But this is something I don't plan to let die, because I would like to see the merchant profession as a viable stand alone profession that doesn't require anyone else to be able to earn money.
DragonScout wrote:
where to start... Lisasdarren.. Let me try to explain why tools are important to me. To me. Tools/abilities make up a profession. It is why you ARE that profession. To sit there and say that vendors are your tools/abilities is a very sad state of affairs in my opinion, because 1. They do all the work and you don't even need to be in game to run them. 2. They are on the same level as item schematics for crafters or weapons for combat professions. If, as a fighter I could just set my T21 to go hunt without me... what would be the point in playing? If, as a crafter, I could set my crafting tool to make a dozen sets of unique armor.. what would be the point in playing? Tools, and the varied ways -- backed by mechanics/abilities -- are what gives professions life. Now, look at Merchant. What tools or abilities does it have? the only thing I can point to that is actually ACTIVE, is the structure fee reduction, and that could be argued as an exploit. The only way you can use vendors, is by stocking them. Everything else you mentioned, if you took away merchant and gave everyone vendors, you would STILL be able to do because those tools are not hard-wired in. Which is why I have a problem with saying that merchant is a 'real' profession.. because in my opinion it isn't. It is a utility profession that encourages you to be other professions or to not play at all.
The vendor is just the store front, it makes running a 24/7 shop possible and leaves the merchant player with the time to do all those other things that make him a merchant.
I agree that having tools/ skills to do all those other things, seeking out crafters with the right products, advertising your store, customer service etc, would be great, though I am not sure how many of them could be implemented.
And yes as things stand it wuld be equally as possible to do all those things if everyone could have vendors without any skill point expenditure, however so long as anyone can have a storefront of their own there will be no real demand for 'merchants' to act as the middle men between crafters and the customers.
As for using merchant as a supporting profession, this is also true i am currently a crafter who runs his own store, though i have plans to expand my store to other areas once I have got established. But each of us who uses merchant this way are not 'real' merchants, we are manufaturers who also have a retail outlet.
Also, the beauty of Multiplayer games is that you can do both, PvE, and PvP. It is very obvious from the way this game is set up that PvP is not something they wanted to force upon players (no game does.) They encourage it, yes. And will your play be enhanced? yes. But it is not limited to PvP or player interaction. And, if the rest of the game can enjoy PvE, why should merchants be any different?
If we can add in PVE interaction in a meaningful way for merchants then this is great, however i think that getting the systems and need in place for merchant as a salesman for the crafters of the game is more important.
And, in closing.. it is nice that merchant isn't anything but vendors to you. That is your right to have that opinion. I will eventually post a more fully outlined proposal for ways to expand merchant from being so dependent upon vendors... and we will see what the rest of the people that read the boards think.
I don't think that merchant is only vendors, i think merchant is all about the other aspects that go with being a merchant, and as i said above more tools to do these other things would be fine, but I don't think they are essential, what is needed urgently is a system of secure loans, or consignment sales so that merchants don't need to have lots of credits, and some improvements to the vendor interface so that stocking becomes a quik easy job rather than a chore.
And i do think merchants should be dependant upon vendors for selling things as they are the most efficient way of running a store, but selling is only the end result of lots of other things that a merchant should and needs to do to run a successful business.
This is the link to the developers statement on when there would be a merchant vendor revamp for those fo you who were asking for it.
I think that improving merchant in any number of ways is laudable, but to me the first priority is making it possible for merchants to be the main point of sale in the game, so many crafters will sell to the and many people will buy from them. At that point it is a viable and necessary profession. This will also allow those same crafters to have some combat skills or doctor skills, or maybe just master an extra crafting profession. Since not being able to do this is one of the big complaints about having to have merchant skills to have vendors.
lisasdarren wrote:
DragonScout wrote:
where to start... Lisasdarren.. Let me try to explain why tools are important to me. To me. Tools/abilities make up a profession. It is why you ARE that profession. To sit there and say that vendors are your tools/abilities is a very sad state of affairs in my opinion, because 1. They do all the work and you don't even need to be in game to run them. 2. They are on the same level as item schematics for crafters or weapons for combat professions. If, as a fighter I could just set my T21 to go hunt without me... what would be the point in playing? If, as a crafter, I could set my crafting tool to make a dozen sets of unique armor.. what would be the point in playing? Tools, and the varied ways -- backed by mechanics/abilities -- are what gives professions life. Now, look at Merchant. What tools or abilities does it have? the only thing I can point to that is actually ACTIVE, is the structure fee reduction, and that could be argued as an exploit. The only way you can use vendors, is by stocking them. Everything else you mentioned, if you took away merchant and gave everyone vendors, you would STILL be able to do because those tools are not hard-wired in. Which is why I have a problem with saying that merchant is a 'real' profession.. because in my opinion it isn't. It is a utility profession that encourages you to be other professions or to not play at all.
The vendor is just the store front, it makes running a 24/7 shop possible and leaves the merchant player with the time to do all those other things that make him a merchant.
I agree that having tools/ skills to do all those other things, seeking out crafters with the right products, advertising your store, customer service etc, would be great, though I am not sure how many of them could be implemented.
And yes as things stand it wuld be equally as possible to do all those things if everyone could have vendors without any skill point expenditure, however so long as anyone can have a storefront of their own there will be no real demand for 'merchants' to act as the middle men between crafters and the customers.
As for using merchant as a supporting profession, this is also true i am currently a crafter who runs his own store, though i have plans to expand my store to other areas once I have got established. But each of us who uses merchant this way are not 'real' merchants, we are manufaturers who also have a retail outlet.
Also, the beauty of Multiplayer games is that you can do both, PvE, and PvP. It is very obvious from the way this game is set up that PvP is not something they wanted to force upon players (no game does.) They encourage it, yes. And will your play be enhanced? yes. But it is not limited to PvP or player interaction. And, if the rest of the game can enjoy PvE, why should merchants be any different?
If we can add in PVE interaction in a meaningful way for merchants then this is great, however i think that getting the systems and need in place for merchant as a salesman for the crafters of the game is more important.
And, in closing.. it is nice that merchant isn't anything but vendors to you. That is your right to have that opinion. I will eventually post a more fully outlined proposal for ways to expand merchant from being so dependent upon vendors... and we will see what the rest of the people that read the boards think.
I don't think that merchant is only vendors, i think merchant is all about the other aspects that go with being a merchant, and as i said above more tools to do these other things would be fine, but I don't think they are essential, what is needed urgently is a system of secure loans, or consignment sales so that merchants don't need to have lots of credits, and some improvements to the vendor interface so that stocking becomes a quik easy job rather than a chore.
And i do think merchants should be dependant upon vendors for selling things as they are the most efficient way of running a store, but selling is only the end result of lots of other things that a merchant should and needs to do to run a successful business.
This is the link to the developers statement on when there would be a merchant vendor revamp for those fo you who were asking for it.
I think that improving merchant in any number of ways is laudable, but to me the first priority is making it possible for merchants to be the main point of sale in the game, so many crafters will sell to the and many people will buy from them. At that point it is a viable and necessary profession. This will also allow those same crafters to have some combat skills or doctor skills, or maybe just master an extra crafting profession. Since not being able to do this is one of the big complaints about having to have merchant skills to have vendors.
Broom wrote:
Well, for me it is quite simple. If they do this, I will be cancelling my accounts.I have one PVP toon and two crafting toons. The Bio-engineer does not have the SP to take merchant, the Master Architect needs her fighting skills (TKM)to be able to survive surveying on hostile planets. So end of story for me. My crafters need vendors with unlimited storage, even if only for the miriad of subcomponents and resources needed. And anyone who ever visits my sales vendors, will understand I am not interested in an item limit there either. I want to keep some of everything in stock. Has anyone really ever taken a good look what that means if you are a REAL and ACTIVE crafter? Furniture alone is 72schematics (excluding the loot schematics here). Add in the deeds, and you have well over 150 items. Even if I put in only one of each, I have more schematics than the vendor will hold. And no, putting down 10 factories is not going to work. For some silly reason we need RESOURCES to craft. That means harvesters. At the rate my architect uses resources, I never have enough harvesters as it is. And no, I am not going to buy them. Buying is prohibitively expensive.
I'm not going to get started in detail on the storage debate here, but I will just suggest one solution to you: If you only had one tenth of the number of each component and one tenth the amount of each resource you would still be able to craft everything you need to make and would probably lose your storage problem (if this doesn't work then you need to keep even less than a tenth and you have far to much stuff)
As to selling stuff (not storing), i quite agree that a limit on a vendor would be seriously problematic for most crafters.
As for using a merchant as an intermediate: don't be ridiculous. I have run a RL company for more than 10 years, and I can tell you FROM EXPERIENCE that it simply will not work without a major restructuring of the way the entire game works. SWG does NOT have the infrastructure a real merchant needs to operate.
For starters, we would need warehouses with a huge storage capacity, where artisans could deliver their goods - face it, we simply are not going to be on line at the same times all the time.
Secondly, those artisans will need their goods paid. Soon, by preference, because they will go out of business otherwise.
Thirdly, there is no way to efficiently compare individual crafters, their goods and their prices. The whole technological infrastructure that supports making purchasing decisions in the real world, simply is not there.
Fourthly, this is WORK. I do not want more work, I play a game. I am not interested in having to puzzle each and every moment on how I have to manage my resources and goods in such a way that I can actually craft and sell without running out of storage.
Fifth, unless you are a master in several elite crafting professions yourself, you simply have no idea of what to stock. One of the things that is built into this game, is that all those professions need several things only another elite prof can make. Fun thing is, I have yet to find a list of who needs what.
Sixth, this is going to drive out all casual gamers. It's very nice if you have the time, money and patience to have several accounts, but most casual gamers haven't. And if you only have one account, you will probably have a mix of professions that enables you to experience several aspects of the game. Most often, this will be a crafter/fighter mix.
Sorry to have to say this, but I think the whole Merchant profession needs to be integrated into Master Artisan. That would at least make THAT profession worth having and keeping, for as it is, Master Artisan is severely lacking in money-making potential. A Scout can make millions going after the HQ meats (85-120 cpu being no exception). An Artisan can go run missions for a maximum of 1600 credits per till his/her nose bleeds.