Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendor Admin Proposal
Been thinking about this some more. Here is a summary of my thoughts so far.
Need to make Merchants more useful:
Merchants are not very useful to other players. The current process required for a non-crafting Merchant to be a re-seller is cumbersome and inefficient. A Master Merchant should be efficient at these things and this should be reflected in the high level Merchant skills. Buildings and Harvesters have Admin lists so others can use and manage them. It is totally ridiculous to argue that Merchants should not be able to do the same with their Vendors.
Level of involvement in resale activities:
Merchants need to interact with their suppliers. There is supposed to be interaction in this game. However, Merchants should not have to personally and manually exchange every single product they resell. That is not what a Manager does and after all, Management is one of the Merchants skills.
NEW SKILLS
Supply Contracts (Management III) - allows a Merchant to add other players to a Vendor admin list so they can sell items. The supplier gets 80% of the credits for the sale. The Merchant gets the remaining 20% as a standard commission rate for all sales thus made. Both the Merchant and the Supplier receive an email when an item is sold.
Partnership Contracts (Management IV) - allows a Merchant to specify individual commission rates per player, per vendor. Commission can be set 0% - 100%. Supplier is given noticeof the commission rrate prior to placing an item for sale.
Private Business Contracts (Master Merchant) - allows a Master Merchant to create Vendors in Private houses. I added this one because in my PA we need a way to make inter-member sales secure. If anyone can explain why Vendors cannot be placed in Private houses please let me know. It seems totally stupid and I don't know why that was changed.
Artisans should keep the Vendor in Business III. It is not a very functional vendor and it is the Business discipline so they should get something. I agree with marqie that a skill check for access to Vendors through admin lists would be a reasonable thing but if it is only included in the Business dicipline then Medics are left out. Smugglers as well. They are potential suppliers as well and should not be left out.
Also, signs are a form of advertising. Signs should be moved outof Management and into the Advertising discipline.
After I saw crafting in SWG go down the drain during Beta I vowed never to become passionate about this game again. However, it seems I still have sufficient vested interest in this game
Devs, don't be cold hearted. We are the players, we know what will improve our gaming experience. Please listen to us. Crafting didn't turn out to be the fantastic revolution in MMORPG's I was hoping for but it is still pretty **edit** good and far more advanced then previous implementations of crafting. I gave up on all hope of improvement in the crafting system about one month before release. I am not talking small improvements, I am talking major overhaul and a complete rethink of the system. I tried a few crafting professions out but my fears were well founded so I quit crafting.
I have since become a Miner (wish it was an actual profession) and a Merchant reseller (currently not working out well). Please help us by improving the Merchant profession to a reasonable level of usefullness and enjoyment. I would really enjoy the contract negotiation of setting up my suppliers. I very much dislike having understocked Vendors because I don't have time to manually keep them all fully stocked.
Oh, and on that point. A Master Merchant gets 6 Vendors. There is simply no way that a non-crafting Merchant could possibly hope to keep them all fully stocked. Even a team of 6 crafters would have difficulty keeping them FULLY stocked. Why give us so many Vendors but not give us the ability to manage them properly. I am the Manager, I manage the Vendor and the contracts not the individual sales.
/calm self
/sit
Wow, this idea would actually make the Merchant profession useful!
Incredible idea!
/sign the petition
Whoops. My proposal is much like the one a couple posts above it. This is what I miss in the early morning. :>
New proposal! I notice our correspondent approves of this idea, and is very active in the community. Perhaps we can start a thread on the main boards (started by the correspondent) and keep adding ideas to it and not let it die (as was suggested for merchant fixes earlier) It was pointed out that smugglers did this and got results. We need to present our ideas more blatantly and urgently, or they're just going to get pushed aside in the grand time table of response.
This is necesary and urgent.
Epoiisa wrote:
Been thinking about this some more. Here is a summary of my thoughts so far.
Need to make Merchants more useful:
Merchants are not very useful to other players. The current process required for a non-crafting Merchant to be a re-seller is cumbersome and inefficient. A Master Merchant should be efficient at these things and this should be reflected in the high level Merchant skills. Buildings and Harvesters have Admin lists so others can use and manage them. It is totally ridiculous to argue that Merchants should not be able to do the same with their Vendors.
Level of involvement in resale activities:
Merchants need to interact with their suppliers. There is supposed to be interaction in this game. However, Merchants should not have to personally and manually exchange every single product they resell. That is not what a Manager does and after all, Management is one of the Merchants skills.
NEW SKILLS
Supply Contracts (Management III) - allows a Merchant to add other players to a Vendor admin list so they can sell items. The supplier gets 80% of the credits for the sale. The Merchant gets the remaining 20% as a standard commission rate for all sales thus made. Both the Merchant and the Supplier receive an email when an item is sold.
Partnership Contracts (Management IV) - allows a Merchant to specify individual commission rates per player, per vendor. Commission can be set 0% - 100%. Supplier is given noticeof the commission rrate prior to placing an item for sale.
Private Business Contracts (Master Merchant) - allows a Master Merchant to create Vendors in Private houses. I added this one because in my PA we need a way to make inter-member sales secure. If anyone can explain why Vendors cannot be placed in Private houses please let me know. It seems totally stupid and I don't know why that was changed.
Artisans should keep the Vendor in Business III. It is not a very functional vendor and it is the Business discipline so they should get something. I agree with marqie that a skill check for access to Vendors through admin lists would be a reasonable thing but if it is only included in the Business dicipline then Medics are left out. Smugglers as well. They are potential suppliers as well and should not be left out.
Also, signs are a form of advertising. Signs should be moved outof Management and into the Advertising discipline.
After I saw crafting in SWG go down the drain during Beta I vowed never to become passionate about this game again. However, it seems I still have sufficient vested interest in this game
Devs, don't be cold hearted. We are the players, we know what will improve our gaming experience. Please listen to us. Crafting didn't turn out to be the fantastic revolution in MMORPG's I was hoping for but it is still pretty **edit** good and far more advanced then previous implementations of crafting. I gave up on all hope of improvement in the crafting system about one month before release. I am not talking small improvements, I am talking major overhaul and a complete rethink of the system. I tried a few crafting professions out but my fears were well founded so I quit crafting.
I have since become a Miner (wish it was an actual profession) and a Merchant reseller (currently not working out well). Please help us by improving the Merchant profession to a reasonable level of usefullness and enjoyment. I would really enjoy the contract negotiation of setting up my suppliers. I very much dislike having understocked Vendors because I don't have time to manually keep them all fully stocked.
Oh, and on that point. A Master Merchant gets 6 Vendors. There is simply no way that a non-crafting Merchant could possibly hope to keep them all fully stocked. Even a team of 6 crafters would have difficulty keeping them FULLY stocked. Why give us so many Vendors but not give us the ability to manage them properly. I am the Manager, I manage the Vendor and the contracts not the individual sales.
/calm self
/sit
In my opinion this is the most important thing missing from the merchant profession.
As it stands stocking your vendors is next to impossible unless you make all your items yourself and surely that isn`t the intention of merchant?
Even if you aarange stock with a supplier you have to be online 24 hours a day waiting for it to arrive so you can add it to your vendor.
In my opinion merchant should be able to be like a mall, the mall owned by 1 person (you) and space inside it for use by other shops, your shop, your vendors (with map advertising etc) and their goods with you getting a cut.
Not being able to let others stock their vendor is a big drawback and makes being a full out merchant a right pain in the Le`ku.
Support, support, support. A good idea, well stated -- nicely done!
My sole concern would be that Merchants really need to be able to start making these kinds of arrangements right at thestart oftheircareer -- i.e., as a Novice Merchant. It ought to get easier to make big deals as Merchants go up the skill tree, but the basic capability to sell things for other people ought to be there at the verystart in some form.
Otherwise, I fully endorse this proposal!
--Flatfingers
Quote:
New proposal! I notice our correspondent approves of this idea, and is very active in the community. Perhaps we can start a thread on the main boards (started by the correspondent) and keep adding ideas to it and not let it die (as was suggested for merchant fixes earlier) It was pointed out that smugglers did this and got results. We need to present our ideas more blatantly and urgently, or they're just going to get pushed aside in the grand time table of response.
Agreed.
Also, I like the ideas in the last few posts regarding the Business line and Novice Merchant.
marqie, are you still there? Would you be willing to start this on the main boards? I think the thread would get more attention if the devs saw it was started by a Corresponent and supported by a growing number of Merchants.
i like the idea its not unlike the one i posted here
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=merchant&message.id=9064
but im for a Commision idea any way you slice it!
it how merchants work!
consider this my approvile!
This has probably been thought of elsewhere, but I don't recall seeing it, soooooo...
...how about a "volume discount" ability? If players were able to select items to buy in a batch, rather than one at a time, they'd be eligible for a volume discount of some kind if they bought sufficient numbers of the same complex item (i.e., resources would be excluded from this scheme).
For example, I might be better able to sell five ranged weapon powerups at once if I could offer a 5% or even 10% discount. I'd still come out ahead if that buyer would only have bought three or four powerups otherwise.
The downside is the significant change that would be necessary to the "player sales" code, but it would be a nice feature. Comments?
--Flatfingers
First. This is an excellent idea!
I'd like to voice an opinion against the skill check idea though. Why should I, as a merchant, be penalized if I want to sell medicinial goods, animal pelts, or any other item or resource made by non-artisan classes? Why should a character be able to create contracts with only one specific group of crafters and resource collectors?
A contract would have to be accepted by both sides. Not just anyone can walk in and start selling things on your vendors. Both you and thecrafter/gatherer would have to "sign" the contract before the crafter/gatherer could post items on the vendors for sale. So it wouldn't be just anybody who would gain the use of vendors. It would only be those players who have entered into a contract with the Merchant.
If you are worried that everybody will get vendor access. Set a limit to the number of contracts a Merchant may hold, and have that number increase as the Merchant advances up one of the merchant disciplines.
Just my $0.02