Merchant Archive

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Tirranus wrote:

Now that we have some breathing room with this thing, let's think about ways to make the whole buying/selling experience in SWG better.

Goals of the System

• Make it easy for a buyer to find what they want without spending hours visiting empty vendors.


• Keep the actual shops and player cities useful.


• Make listing items easier for Merchants.


• Making auctions viable for auctioning.


• Enhance the Merchant profession, instead of it being a point sink.

Vendor Search

• Create new Merchant Terminals that can be placed in player cities (and willonly be in player cities.)


• At Advertising I, grant a skill to list your vendor and items on Merchant Terminals in your city.


• I would push this ability all the way down to the basic Artisan terminals, but only allow the name/category of the vendor to list below Advertising I.


• At Advertising II, grant a skill to list your vendor on Merchant Terminals on your planet.


• Move this to Advertising III. At level II, substitute "same region"


• At Advertising IV, grant a skill to list your vendor Shop on all Merchant Terminals in the galaxy.


• To prevent database lag, less information is provided at the higher levels. This is also more immersive, since a vendor couldn't instantaneously updatewhat acustomer seeson Roribut is stocked on Dantooine.


• Items listed for a city can be bought from the terminal, but must be picked up at the vendor.


• If a player is banned form a house, they cannot see items on the terminal. If they have already bought items, they will be delivered upon attempting to walk in the door.


• Vendors are listed with the following stats: Planet, City (if applicable), Region,Items Listed, Sales in the past 7 days, Average Price Per Item. (Due to processing concerns, the last3 categories will be calculated once per day.)


• Really don't see a point in the Sales, and AP/item could be manipulated, further, it's not that relevant in some classes. Structure deed average could be skewed by a single city hall, for instance.


• Drilling down through categories will update with stats per category (i.e. how many Ranged Weapon Powerups listed/sold/avg price.)


• Ditto above, plusthis information is "Nice feature, butwhy?"


• Add to terminal ability: Record Vendor Waypoint. Clicking this button will result in you being sent an email with the currently highlighted vendor's location.


• Vendors with no items drop off allBazaar listings. Withless than ten items for sale will drop off all listings above the City level. With less than 25 items for sale, will drop off listings aboveRegion level. With less than 100 listings, will drop off Galaxy level.

Auctions

• Remove Auctions from the Bazaar.


• Create new Auction Terminals that can be placed in player cities (and willonly be in player cities.)


• Just make this a tab of the regular PC bazaar; no sense in making it a new item/feature/art.


• Allow Novice Merchants and up to create auctions


• Disagree. All players, so combat-only classes can auction loot. However, they can not auction asoften (number of items per week is capped). Possible variation: non-merchants can designate a Merchant "agent" who automatically gets a cut off the sale. 2nd variation: City receives sales tax on the auction.


• Auctions do not have a price cap, but they may have a buyout set by the seller.


• Auctions cannot be cancelled once they have been bid on.


• May be canceled freely in the first hour, thereafter only if no bid. Auctions can last no less than 12 hours, no more than 48.

Vendors

• Allow multiple items to be selected and sold for the same price, this would reduce a lot of redundant clicking.


• Add ability to restock at same price with one click.


• Add ability to change prices on 1 or all items of a type without withdrawing the item. There must be a delay of a few minutes for this to become effective, to prevent griefing. If the player wants an immediate change, then they can remove/relist the item.


• Don't send me email when I manually cancel a sale or buy an item that was offered to my vendor. I know I did, I was there.


• Do send me an email when someone offers an item to my vendor. I actually need this information.

Vendor/Bazaar Interface

• Read my Category Revamp thread. Redo the broken category hierarchy.


• Haven't read the thread but if it's not mentioned there, extend the category revamp into the Register Vendor and Vendor Barking features.


• Create a search feature, which at a bare minimum is a min/max price.


• Disagree. Limit this to the City Bazaar search only. Category revamp +next suggestionwould remove most of the need for this.


• Fix sorting so results are actually sorted (i.e. the first page is A-B, not just A-Z of the first page.) Allow users to jump to a page.


• Fix the bug where some items show up on many, many pages of the listings. This simply creates clutter. Making sort work would probably do this for you.

Advertising Terminals

• Create newAdvertising Terminals that can be placed in player cities (and willalso be placed inNPC cities.)


• Need for new item/art eliminated by changes below.


• Ads for individual items will display on a screen viewable by passers by.


• For technical reasons, I do not believe this will be possible. At the least, itwould be extremely difficult tocode. Alternately,when passing through any starport, a tabon your datapad is updated with the latest ads from that planet & galaxywide; you can check it at leisure. (the update would be handled as part of the character load-in). Also, city and regional lists could be created and handled similarly when traveling via shuttleport.


• The ads would contain the image, name of the item, the name of the vendor, and the coordinates.


• Advertising I, II, III, or IV required, depending on whether the ad is City, Region, Planet, or Galaxy.


• Only local vendors can be listed, based on the level. i.e.:Naboo vendors couldn't advertise on Corellia, one player-city's vendors coudn't buy up the city advertising slots in another city.


• Note a corollary: you have to place your vendors in a city to get on it's listing! Not in some shop in the "ring" around a major city.


• Details on the items could be obtained by accessing the terminal. All advertiseditems listed in that city could also be viewed.


• Too simliar to the Bazaar as conceived. Just drop this ability; it's only an advertisiment anyway.


• Up to 15 spots would be available on the ad terminal, rotating every 60 seconds.


• Altered by the prior suggestions.


• Players would bid on ad space,with the top 15 bidders getting a 7-day ad. (This would be a great money sink if placed in Coronet or Theed.)


• As noted above, regional & city lists should also be available, but part or all of the money bid goes into the City's treasury as an additional source of income. Additionally, mayors can place up to threeads or announcements for free (these appear on all listings, up to & including galaxy). Regional advertising income is prorated among cities in the region.


• Additional semi-related change: shuttleportsshould bepushed down the size list to make it easier to get to player cities/vendors.

I'm waiting to hear comments, suggestions, cirticisms. What do you think?

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