Merchant Archive

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Artiman wrote:

Artificial production caps (vendor limits) isn't going to help you break into the market, but it will limit what you can eventually achieve.

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Which is one of the reasons why I specifically stated that I am not in favor of vendor caps. The problem that newer players face is ONLY that it takes MUCH more time to buy from a scattered array of new players with high quality goods than from a long-term player with a large stock of high quality goods. The solution is NOT caps.

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/lick

The solution is a Bazaar system that lets you search and buy from (but not necessarily take delivery from) PC vendors, from any Bazaar terminal on the planet or (preferably) in the galaxy.

Five stars for the original poster.

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Artiman wrote:

Which is one of the reasons why I specifically stated that I am not in favor of vendor caps. The problem that newer players face is ONLY that it takes MUCH more time to buy from a scattered array of new players with high quality goods than from a long-term player with a large stock of high quality goods. The solution is NOT caps.

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This, by the way, is something that the merchant community has been asking for (as both merchants and customers alike) for months.

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joined42904 wrote:

How many top quality weaponsmiths are there on your server? Docs? Chefs?

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The solution is a Bazaar system that lets you search and buy from (but not necessarily take delivery from) PC vendors, from any Bazaar terminal on the planet or (preferably) in the galaxy.

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I suspect this would actually make it worse for new crafters, asit creates a perfect market where it would be extremely easy to find the absolute best goods, which new crafters won't be able to create for a while. It would make entry into the marketharder rather than easier. Perfect markets don't exist in real life, I'd be really leery of creating one in the game.

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VarnaxDespin wrote:

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joined42904 wrote:

Varnax,

The folks who will consider it a time consuming pain are the present oligopolists.

For those who claim there are no oligopolies,

How many top quality weaponsmiths are there on your server? Docs? Chefs?

How many of you can name more than 3-4 such folks on your servers? If you can't....how do you contest my valid claim of oligopolies?

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ok well lets see, now you will have to remember I am only one person and I havnt bought food, meds or armor in a long time, and Iknow thereare a ton of crafters I dont know of or have never met ....remember just because you dont know someone, doesnt mean they arnt succesful

Valcyn big, successful crafters by field that I know of:

Armorsmiths: Rasta, Rilos, Makkir, Skinnymado, Franchize, Dstryka, Darvell, Nocta, Nighthawk, Guzzer, Voro, Gorby, johnny-cash.

Docs: Docbill, Ledao, Psy, Ges, Prodimesterio, Hurri, Lium

Chefs: Carg, Chairman, Miso, Johnney-jones, Lok

Weaponsmiths: Tuckiee,Arox, Ravage, Azeal-Zed, Guzzer, Wilju, Xea, Jar

There, I named more then your 4 to make a point. I know there are many many more successful crafters out there....period.

Ask yourself this, How many "1" big top crafters in proffessions have we gone through since launch? good lord the mind boggles... just because "x" might be the name on everyones lips today doesnt mean tmw they will contiunue to be so.... I cant think of many crafters from launch that still play the same crafting role.. people get burnt out and quit... people change proffesions and new people take their place.. this is nota RL jobwhere we work to pay our bills... here we play to have fun.

Message Edited by VarnaxDespin on 08-10-2004 12:04 PM

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I didn't read the whole thread, but I just wanted to point out 1 thing :

It's about 5 days now that we hear again and again and again that master merchant with 660 items for sale will have to restock at least twice a day.

I have some doubt this is the majority of Merchant.

However, this isn't about pure monopolies but about the fact that some Merchant hold a very big part of the market.

Concidering some sell 660 items, including crates of 25 items, twice a day, according to what they say,
I have some difficulties concidering it's pure fiction.

People weren't whinning that much if it was pure fiction.

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Avair wrote:

Given the upcoming changes to the vendors and the merchant profession, as good capitialist I need to take issue with what has been stated/implied as a desire to 'break up' monopolies with SWG. First, off let me start with following premise,

A coercive monopoly cannot exist without government interferance.

What this means is that unless the government (SWG) gives advantages to certain business (players), that give them an unfair advantage against other businesses, there is no way a single company can control the market.In atruly free market, no single company can drive the price up (hence the word coercive) without making it possible for other competitors to come in and undercut them, driving the price back to the 'market' levels.

Now SWG isn't truly a free economy, as a business can only become as efficient and offer the producst that the game rules allow. But there are a number of game rules that prevent monolopies from occuring, and why having crafters whoare preceived as 'monopolists' (i.e. the rich and successful) isn't necessarily a bad thing.

1) A player cannot be 'forced' out of business. A powerful player can't 'buy out' his business. Any player would puts the time and energy into mining, crafting and running a store in a good location will be able to stay profitable. Not as profitable as but 'ubercrafter', butunless you are Bill Gates, somebody is always going to have more than you, so stop worrying.

2) Successful crafters providing top quality goods at reasonable prices improves the quality of life for all players. Nobody want to spend 2 hours a night running around only to find a crappy FWG-5 pistol and pay too much for it. The successful crafters have built name recognistion by delievering quality goods. Gimping them by making the interface more cumbersome hurts them and everybody else.

3) It's a game, and players have more money than time. Everyone can be successful, with right amount of time and energy. If you have a consistantly well stocked vendor, in agood location,charge appropriate prices, you will sell stuff. Finding a well stocked vendor even now is a rarity, and I would rather spend my time shooting stormtroopers than running around looking to save 2k on better bargin.

4) Businesses require capital to grow, and everyone can print their own money via missions. Unlike the real world, you can raise your own capital without any buisness plan by running missions. While it may feel impure to finiance a buisiness by shooting stuff, it's available.

So if we conclude that monopolies cannot exist, but are fictional concept which isaimed athurting successful crafters/merchants, why do we want to impose a nice socialist controlled economy which will hurt the majority of players? Jealousy? A easy hack to get around bad vendor interfaces?

The game already has enough unfun roadblocks for crafters, in the form of clunky vendor interfaces (i.e. since seeing more than 100 items is pain, let just cap the vendors at that), unfun inventory management (too small crates and stacks, 5 storage houses) and silly spamming in starports, which is what passes for advertising.Controlled economies always haveway of coming back to bite people despite what are 'good altuistic' intentions.

Let's instead focus on streamlining the interface to make it easy for new crafters to get started, with less cumbersome interfaces and better inventory management. The game world is big enough for everyone who 'really wants it' to be successful, lets give them the tools instead of dragging down those that have fueled the growth of the game economy so far.

P.S. For further reading, check out Ayn Rand's Capitialism: The Unknown Ideal, where our current Federal Reserve Chief, Mr. Alan Greenspan some very nice articles on Monopolies and Anti-Trust.

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Monopolies are not limited to a single company ... a group of companies that control 60% or more of an industry are considered to have a "collective" monopoly.

The issue here is "monopoly powers" and their effect on the economy. There are "monopoly powers" on the eclipse server ... there was an instant where 1 person basically had monopoly power over a particular market. This was directly due to and facilitated by the "governement" of this game giving "free rent" for unlimited storage ...

Most of your free market arguments take for granted "natural" free market restrictions ... such as storage of products, wages, and other "cost of business" assocated issues.

I am not going to deal with this post at the end of2 pages ...

Suffice it to say ... there can exist monopolies and monopoly powers in this game. I have a proven case of it... which shoots your entire theory to pieces and needs to be reworked.

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Hero_DarkJedi wrote:

Monopolies are not limited to a single company ... a group of companies that control 60% or more of an industry are considered to have a "collective" monopoly.

The issue here is "monopoly powers" and their effect on the economy. There are "monopoly powers" on the eclipse server ... there was an instant where 1 person basically had monopoly power over a particular market. This was directly due to and facilitated by the "governement" of this game giving "free rent" for unlimited storage ...

Most of your free market arguments take for granted "natural" free market restrictions ... such as storage of products, wages, and other "cost of business" assocated issues.

I am not going to deal with this post at the end of2 pages ...

Suffice it to say ... there can exist monopolies and monopoly powers in this game. I have a proven case of it... which shoots your entire theory to pieces and needs to be reworked.

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There are definiaty loot monoplies... as certain players/guilds camp out varoius locations in the game. Crafters monoplies are at best temporary. I would say on Valcyn there hasnt been a single crafter monopolizing a craft since perhaps last Sept/Oct.... in fact it has become the exact opposite.

As far as a collective monopoly, Ok.. so there are prob. 20 Armorsmiths that currently control the market share on Valcyn..... but they seem to be constantly changing as more pop up and others disappear, most seem to stay 3-6months before going off in another direction..

You mention there was a monopoly on Eclipse, but you used that in the past tense. I assume that is no longer the case? That would imply that the monopoly was fictional and that other players some how broke it? Am I correct?

Message Edited by VarnaxDespin on 08-10-2004 02:40 PM

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Artiman wrote:

Uhm.. hello? What I want is an open market. I don't want to force anything on anyone. I don't want vendor caps. I want a place that people can easily compare my product to other products and choose.

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Sorry bro, "you" the person was meant to be "you" the group of players whining over conspiracies that aren't there. I read that you were against caps, I should have been more careful with my words there.

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Gavvot wrote:
I didn't read the whole thread, but I just wanted to point out 1 thing :

It's about 5 days now that we hear again and again and again that master merchant with 660 items for sale will have to restock at least twice a day.

I have some doubt this is the majority of Merchant.

However, this isn't about pure monopolies but about the fact that some Merchant hold a very big part of the market.

Concidering some sell 660 items, including crates of 25 items, twice a day, according to what they say,
I have some difficulties concidering it's pure fiction.

People weren't whinning that much if it was pure fiction.

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First - those 660 items are spread out into 6 vendors. Often these vendors will have certain categories (ranged, melee, heavy, powerups, etc.)

Second - These vendors are often on 2 or more planets. So if I carry 12 each of the 9 different basice rifles (never mind stocked/scoped variations) and my lasers sell out in Coronet (I live on Dantooine) I have to run out and restock that item or the combat type looking for lasers will be looking somewhere else.

Third - People don't come to my vendors because I'm a Master Merchant. They come because I'm a Master Weaponsmith and make damn fine weapons for very reasonable prices. I'm small fry compared to the huge volume weaponsmiths on my server. People know me and I have my regular customers. I pride myself in stocking virtually everything I make so you never find my vendor without the weapon you need. Typically this means 300+ items on each vendor.

This limit will force me to drastically reduce the variety of what I stock and if I want to make decent credits limit those items to the most profitable and big sellers. No more powerups, no more silly low volume items like fishing poles or vehicle customizing kits. Too low a volume and not enough profit. Who suffers here? Me? Nah, I can make stuff for my guildies and I and go do other things. If keeping my vendors gets to be too much of a pain I'll just drop it and do something else. Again, who suffers? Not me. The customers are the true losers in this nerf.

Oh, and for the egalitarian proponant.
/RantOn
Why not just remove all crafting from the game. SOE can supply NPC vendors that all sell the same quality product at a set price. Everyone is equal. No advantages, no disadvantages. Docs buff packs are all the same quality. Clothing can all be the same color (perhaps a nice Mao shade of brown). It would certainly solve the spam problem at the Coronet starport. You could stand in the square and listen to the wind whistle through the buildings. BECAUSE NO ONE WOULD BE PLAYING THE FREAKING GAME!
/RantOff
Peace

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Kharn_JB wrote:
The only real barrier to entry in any of the crafting professions is simply whether or not the crafter is willing to commit and put enoguh time, effort, and patience into their business. New crafters don't have a chance? that's nonsense. If they commit long enough they'll get the credits for the harvestors they need, they'll catch the spawns of good resources they need to make high quality goods if they pay attention, and they get the business if they work to make good items, that are reasonably priced, well stocked, and advertise them. I went through this exact "struggle".

I entered a crafting market which was already highly estabslished by other crafters of that same profession having their shops set up and goods well stocked. I didn't whine r complain that these crafters were takign all the business. I saught out business opportunities by finding what I could make well with what I had and there was some slack of the other crafters in that area I could take advantage of. Any other crafter can do the exact same thing, but they have to be commited and work at it. The only reason a crafter wouldn't be successful is if they didn't work hard and long enough, because the game is big enough that anyone can drop a harvestor on a good resource spawn, anyone can pick up a crafting profession of a certain type, anyone can set up a shop and sell their wares. The big crafters are limited now anyways, with 10 lots and maximum 6 vendors if they pick up master merchant. Don't have the experimentation SEAs? Well, then make money selling other stuff to get those SEAs, it's impossible, it just takes work.

There's absolutely no reason why a new crafter cannot become successful. The only reason why crafters would not be able to break into a market would be because they were not willing to commit the time and effort into doing so. What fun would the game be anyways if there was no challenge? It wouldn't be very fun at all, I can tell you that. Nerfing the vendor item cap will only hurt the good crafters and all of their consumers. And then what about those newer crafters if they achieve the quality and level of the other crafters? Doesn't matter much anyways because they'll be grossly limited in running their bussiness from the disgustingly low caps, so what's the point in 'being successful', when you can't even be successful?

The system is fine as is. Any complaints of monopolies are simply complaints from people who are too lazy to commit. I know, because I've worked past the "monoploies" and become very successful in my crafting profession. It was a lot of work, but I did it, and it's much mroe reward to have succeeded after puttign so much work into it. And to simply have all my, and every other commited and successful crafter's, work tossed aside because some new crafters want instant gratification and be 'successful' without the commitment is just absurd.

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Agreed 115%. It takes effort to break into a market, which when you compare the loosely termed 'effort' it is to master professions in this game seems such an insurmountable obstacle that people fold or cry foul.

You could master architect faster than it takes me to do a round trip from Tatooine to Dantooine and back if I got horrible connects. The others aren't that much harder to do. With the advent of mountains of cheap 'grinding' resources and macros, mastering a crafting profession is cake.

The true barrier to entry is commitment and I personally think that's a good barrier to entry.