Merchant Archive
Thread: Allow Merchants to hire vendors to non-merchants... otherwise a nerf will kill this profession
The bottom line is: the whole economy relies heavily on vendors to function... limiting vendor functionality to a handful of people who may or may not quit/get bored is going to totally trash the economy (again) and make this game even more tedious and boring that it already is by relying on human intervention to keep commerce running.
The economy will work just fine when most of the exploiters pick up merchant skills. If you think this game is so boring andtedious maybe you should quit?
Before the devs swing that nerf bat I am going to tell them that they owe it to themselves (for their own revenue) and the virtual economy to think of OTHER solutions before they swing the nerf bat.
- Vendor admin grantable to other players
They can do that when they let commandos give admin to flamethrowers and doctors give admin to buff packs.
- Second character per server
Do you want to shoot the player economy in the head or should i?
- Add +1 vendor to Master Medic
Lol this prooves your are a greedy ****. Someone who was looking out for the economy and all the other players would say "Add +1 vendor to every Master box". All you care about is your own greedy self and staying uber pvp and uber crafter.
IMPROVE GAMEPLAY BEFORE NERFING
FIXINGTHE EXPLOITWILL IMPROVE GAMEPLAY FOR EVERYONE EXCEPT THE EXPLOITERS
Footnote: I've had so many friends in this game quit already, the last thing I want to see if half my crafting contacts quit in frustration and boredom because a handful of people want to play middleman.
Tons of people always quit in the first few months after release. Lol if you think more than 5% of people who are exploiting this bug will quit SWGyour WRONG. They nerfed CH and everyone is still here.
Hehe ok I just wanted to say the ALL my master creature handler friends have dropped CH in the last 3 weeks 
Nerfed to extinction.
Hmmm not sure I agree with the 'crafters using merchant skills for their own profit and pleasure' sentiments....I can't imagine being a master tailor and not having the ability to sell my stuff. Nothing wrong with being a merchant/crafter....nothing wrong with being a pure merchant/retailer.
And I am tired of the 'all you crafters are millionaires' rhetoric. A) some are, but many are not. and B) the millionaires I know are people who sit in front of starports hawking their houses/mounts/vehicles/resrouces/armor an never have a store. So wealth is a moot point here.
Anyway, I unlearned all my dancing boxes and I can't dance anymore. I unlearned rifle and unarmed skills and I can't use those weapons anymore. I unlearned organic chemistry and first aid and I can't use wound/action stims anymore. Why someone should get to use a vendor after unlearning it--and that half of the merchants here think they should get to keep it--just boggles my mind.
Yolmer,
Since you have appointed yourself Official Pro-Nerfer for the Merchant Class let me remind you of three things:
1) Like the vast majority of creature handlers who dropped the class.. YOU are a dabbler (3-0-0-0) in the Merchant class.
2) When the nerf bat strikes... it strikes without reason.. and it will nerf your Master Weaponsmith/Master TKA template as well. Dabblers have been getting nerfed for the last 3 months.
3) To call something an exploit is a matter of perspective. Having the ability to sell your product is not the same as sharing a commandos ability to use a flamethrower or any other major balance issue.
Yolmer... my friendly dabbler... I strongly suggest you start to back down just a little and look for some compromise otherwise you are going to get hit just as hard as everyone else.
When you stare into the nerf-abyss... the nerf-abyss stares into you.
Yolmer,
At least get one thing right in your whole post.
Since you have appointed yourself Official Pro-Nerfer for the Merchant Class let me remind you of three things:
I didnt appoint myself anything. I simplyrefuse to allow a bunch of exploiters to decide what happens to the profession that i enjoy playing.
1) Like the vast majority of creature handlers who dropped the class.. YOU are a dabbler (3-0-0-0) in the Merchant class.
What? I am a mch and a master merchant on different characters. Whats wrong with dabblers anyway? The devs designed this game to allow dabbling
2) When the nerf bat strikes... it strikes without reason.. and it will nerf your Master Weaponsmith/Master TKA template as well. Dabblers have been getting nerfed for the last 3 months.
Its not my template. I just made it up to show that u can craft and fight without exploiting. You can use any combat prof so even if tka gets nerfed you can just change it to swordsman or whatever.
3) To call something an exploit is a matter of perspective. Having the ability to sell your product is not the same as sharing a commandos ability to use a flamethrower or any other major balance issue.
Yes if your an exploiter you dont think its an exploit because your a greedy ****. Having the ability to make millions of credits while your at work or sleepingis much worse than someone having admin to a flamethrower actually.
Yolmer... my friendly dabbler... I strongly suggest you start to back down just a little and look for some compromise otherwise you are going to get hit just as hard as everyone else.
Get your facts straight before you try to insult me NOOB. Master Merchant/Master Weaponsmith/Master Artisan
Dabbler my ass
When you stare into the nerf-abyss... the nerf-abyss stares into you.
Soren_dVinn wrote:
There is only ONE solution
Allow merchants to hire vendors to non-merchants
We were discussing how to implement a vendor Admin List in another thread and we were trying to figure out all the different points of trying to add features where the vendor owner and item owners could access the vendor and add items and all that.
This idea would actually make all that other junk unecessary. It simplifies everything!
If the vendor owner can only add one person to the Admin List and then that one person has complete control of the vendor there would be no need to add any other features to vendors except the Admin List.
Vendors would work exactly as they do now except instead of the vendor owner controlling it, the person on the Admin List controls it.
The only other issues that need to be figured out would be:
1) How does the vendor owner cancel 3rd party control? What happens to the items on the vendor in that case?
What if when the vendor owner removes the person from the Admin List all items on the vendor fall to the stockroom.
The item owner is notified by mail (as the current system already does),and then the person has the normal period of time to remove the items from the vendor (currently 7 days).
After all items have been removed from the vendorthe vendor owner can remove the vendor.
2) The vendor owner setting up the commission amount or rate.
That could be just one item on the vendor radial or in one of the existing menus.
And one dialog box to enter the amount or rate.
3) Forwarding the commission amount or rate to the vendor owners bank account and the remaining amount back to the item owners bank account.
4) Ensure that anyone on a vendor Admin List cannot be excluded from accessing the vendor or the items on the vendor.
I think that this would only affect the /ban command (/eject is what you do to yourself to exit a structure isn't it).
While it sure would be nice to be able to add several people to a Vendor Admin list the way house and structure Admin Lists work, allowing just ONE person to control the vendor would greatly simplify implementing the feature and would probably get it into the game since it doesn't involve that much desgining, coding and testing.
Perhaps they could expand on the feature later. But for now, we could get it into the game so we wouldn't have to waste so much time posting and keeping track of Offers.
Excellent idea!
Jebwa wrote:
The resellering/distribution aspect of merchant is not working because there are very few people who are focussed enough on merchant to actually do this job properly.
You are totally wrong. There are 2 main reasons why this isn't working like it should.
#1. People are using the merchant skill to get the vendors themselves and then dropping the class. Which means they are actually degrading the merchant class and making it useless. Why work with a true merchant when you can get the benefits of being a merchant without using the skill points?
#2. People are not being social and becoming friends with true merchants. This is a MMORPG so why not make friends with a merchant so he will sell your stuff for you? I know a lot of novice merchants would be happy to sell your stuff because the more stuff they have the more business they will get which means more xp for them to go up the tree. This isn't happening because of reason #1; people have no reason to seek out a merchant to sell their stuff when they can go up the merchant tree, place their own vendors, and then drop the tree completely while still having all the benefits.
There's also a 3rd reason.Vendors don't do a very good job of handling 3rd party sales.
I agree that the typical vision of a reseller is someone who goes out and purchases items from a producer and then resells them.
But many times that requires large amounts of money to fund, and as has been stated before, once a merchant goes out and spends all the money buying stock, there's no guarantee that the items will sell.
So a) they've tied up large amounts of cash, and b) they may end up eating the stock if they can't get rid of it.
The Offer feature allows people to post items on your vendor for you to resell, but still has some of the same drawbacks.
Plus, it requires so much extra work, if you do have a relationship where you're just selling items for someone else rather than outright purchasing the items from them, that even for dedicated merchants it's not a very beneficial arrangement.
If there were a better way for vendor owners to post 3rd party items for sale, it would alot more people to seek out merchants and make agreements with them.
But as long as ANYONE can get vendors just by dropping skills, there will be NO reason for ANYONE to deal with merchants.
Yes it does make you 1337 because crafting profs make millions of credits.
-I wish I made millions of credits. I'm lucky if I have over a million a credits. I'm a tailor and sell my clothes for reasonable prices. Shirts take 50 resources to make, I sell them for 100 credits. Unlike some Tailors who sell them for 1000 credits. But I'm far from rich. The only reason I even have close to a million credits is because of friends in my guild who give me all the resources I need.
Well then find a good merchant. They are out there and there will be a LOT more of them when this bug is fixed. So your problem should go away with the death of the vendor exploit.
-This is not true. Look back at Politican, when it came into the game. There were people who wanted to be Politicans (like me), who love the admin stuff. But there were alot more problems with people needing a Politican. And the numbers of actual 'active' politicans on a server is very very low. There is a need for politican, but there hasn't been a magical increase in people wanting to do an admin position in the game. Alot of politicans are just people's secondary accounts. The same will happen with Merchant.
As for buying in bulk. Good idea... EXCEPT you have crafting professions such as Tailor or Architect that you don't mass produce items for. I would love to see that weekly order. (I would like 2 grandball gowns white, 1 blue and white, 1 red and green, 1 yellow. 1 doctor's dress black, 1 green/brown, 1 white/blue, 1 purple/yellow.) What a nightmare!
I think the idea of hiring out merchants is a great idea. Create a special building called a shop or a mall. The Merchant places the vendor, dresses them, gives them ad barking, places them on the planetary map, names them, etc... The crafter then can rent the vendor. The Merchants get money, and the crafters can have interaction with the merchant. Which would give the merchant far more 'game play'. People would be forced to deal with/play with a merchant to set things up, but they wouldn't be forced to wait on the merchant to update the vendors.
Maybe the Merchant can have a sort of Master Vendor that would give them the ability to see what's in stock on all the vendors in their shop, so they can contact the various sellers to see about increasing their inventorys.
Maybe give Merchants the ability to have a vendor be admin-ed by multiple people. So that several weaponsmiths could stock the same vendor. Merchant can 'manage' the vendor by removing things from sale that they think are to expensive, but they can't set the price. But the crafters would put the items up themselves. Maybe only crafters can put things for sale onto a vendor, but it requires a merchant to take them off, or to take them from the stock room. That will give you merchants something to do. You would have the interaction you so want. While, the crafters will be able to still have items listed instantaniously without waiting for a merchant to be on, they don't have to worry about the merchant jacking up the prices of their goods either.
I think the person who created the post has some good ideas.
More thoughts on the 'Store' idea, to allow Merchants to rent Vendors.
Merchant Shop.
A building only a Merchant can place.
Inside the building will be slots for vendors to be placed, and a Vendor Management terminal.
The Merchant can hire and place Vendors, dress them, name them, put them on the planetary map, etc...
They then can rent out the vendor to one or more crafters. The crafter would have the ability to put stuff onto the vendor, and set a price for it. The Merchants would have a command like /grantzoning rights, where they /grantVendorAccess to a crafter. So the Crafter has 24 hours to place stuff on the vendor.
After 24 hours they would have to talk to the merchant again to be able to place more things on the vendor again. (The 24 hours things is important to deal with time zone differences).
The Crafters can place things on the vendor, but can not remove them from the vendor. If something doesn't sell, it goes to the stockroom. Only the Merchant has access to the stockroom, and they have to either /grantaccessToStockroom or get the items out and hand them to the crafter. This gives the Merchants more chances for interaction. (*The only thing to worry about is the Merchant stealing the items. Maybe a transfer back to creator command...)
The Merchants would also have the ability to remove items from a vendor. If it's priced to high, they can move it to the stockroom, and later return it to the Crafter. This will allow the Merchant control over what's placed in their vendors. Again another chance for RP. They knock things off their vendor because something less expensive comes in.
The Merchant Vendor Management Terminal, can also be used to see what's been selling well, and what hasn't. What's empty, so they can request more to be stocked. Again more 'Merchant like' stuff, and RP ability.
*Think of it like a small wine maker. They actually rent space on a shelf in a store. The actually go to the store and stock the items on the shelves themselves. The owner has the choice of removing the item. The decide the next week if they want to carry the item again (/grantVendorAccess), or if they don't want to carry the item any more. Those players who want to play Merchants, will be able to. Those who will just set up secondary accounts, will still do that.
I think this is a good compromise that gives the Merchant class needed game play, control of vendors, management of vendors and a store, without screwing up the economy we have. The crafters won't be completely dependant on the merchant class (because they can list the items themselves), and they don't have to worry about the Merchant taking credit for their goods.
Merchant = Shopkeeper.
The purpose of the class is to maintain shops, not to be a re-seller. Yes you can go out and find goods and list them, and sell them still, but it's still no the reason for the profession.
Merchants are not resellers!
Another example: that same little Wine Maker can have a store on their lands were they also sell the wine to people. They arn't reselling wine they bought somewhere else, they are selling what they created.
(When it comes down to it, the bigger shops will not be affected. We will have our secondary accounts with our merchants and you will not get any new game play from us. The little sellers will have it harder, as they will have to now find a merchant to list their stuff. If people are forced to go through Merchants they are only going to want to deal with Master Merchants most of the time. Making it harder for new merchants to enter the field. Don't believe me? Want to know how many times I get asked if I'm a Master Tailor, that the person needs a Master Tailor, only to find out they want a clothing item that a novice Tailor can make.)
Anneke Rose
No, you can't have your cake and eat it too. I'm a master merchant and don't want to see vendors hired out. If I find someone I trust and wish to run a vendor for them so be it. I have control over what is done with that vendor, where it is placed and so forth. And, if the crafter does not keep the vendor stocked then they lose it. Since I gave up skills to achieve this status it is my right to do so.
I don't buy the argument that merchants will have to expend huge amounts of cash to stock their vendors and then be left with items they can't sell. A good merchant knows what's moving off their vendors and will buy accordingly.
Nothing is stopping crafters (I am one) from selling face to face. Put your master tag on and make yourself searchable. Get a crafting droid and hit the road. This is how I built enough cash to afford my own shop.
Since my points are tied up in Tailor, Artisan, and Merchant I am useless to my guild on raids and hunting parties. However, they know who to come to when they want to know where the best resources can be found, or when they need specific items.
Crafters are not going to quit crafting because they can't keep their exploit vendors, nor are they going to lower their prices and put their items on the bazaar. I don'tknowanydoctors who would sell theirbest stims at 3k.They will either stand outside the starports hawking their items, or they'll find a merchant to resell their goods. I think what is really behind this push is that some crafters don't want to lower their prices to allow merchants to make a profit. But, if you think about it less time spent in face to face sales, or in front of the starports means more time running missions and making money for yourselves.
A smart producer that can make tons of volume would sell WHOLESALE to various reseller merchants, if possible. What is so unreliable about selling stuff at retail less 30% (standard markup) in bulk to some merchant? If the merchant doesn't want to pay up front, find another that will. A smart merchant will realize that it takes money to make more money, and plan accordingly. Buy more of stock that moves faster (what a concept!), and buy less of stock that moves slower. The producers will get the hint, and produce less of the slower moving stock. Supply and demand.
As both a producer and a merchant who has just recently got into reselling, I can say that people that are trying to do consignment sales are just doubling their effort for little return. Buy at wholesale prices, and mark up accordingly. If a producer doesn't want to sell large volumes at a discount for resale, then find another producer. There's always someone out there that will.
Meds and resources are probably some of the best producer-resale market you can possibly get into. High demand, low cost, great margins. Sure I'm not a super multi millionaire like some weaponsmiths or armorsmiths, but I make a nice comfortable living with medium to low effort. =)
Im a Merchant, and a reseller. I have no other Elite profession.
I have good relationships with several suppliers i get a discount from them big enough that i can resell items on my 4 vendors at normal price and still make a profit.
I work on a 20% profit on other peoples goods.
So if that Architect normally sells his rate 10 medium harvester at 50K .. i buy it at 40K .. resell it at 50K and make my 20%
This works well and we all win. My suppliers get all my business in addition to their own, still makes money, and so do I.
But I would never hire out a never exclusively to another player as i would loose the ability to sell my own stuff.
However, if it were possible to allow another player to use my vendor at the same time as i do, perhaps in a similar way to the bazaar.. then i would do so if i can make 20% profit on every sale.
That would in fact be wonderful! .. because then i wouldnt have to invest my money in the product in the first place .. the risk would fall entirely back onto the original crafter.
Mmmm .... that being the case maybe i'd be happy with 10 percent ... no risk ... still make some money.
I like it ..
Jebwa wrote:
#2. People are not being social and becoming friends with true merchants. This is a MMORPG so why not make friends with a merchant so he will sell your stuff for you? I know a lot of novice merchants would be happy to sell your stuff because the more stuff they have the more business they will get which means more xp for them to go up the tree. This isn't happening because of reason #1; people have no reason to seek out a merchant to sell their stuff when they can go up the merchant tree, place their own vendors, and then drop the tree completely while still having all the benefits.
That isn't happening because there is no way for a crafter to sell through a merchant without the merchant first buying the product. No novice merchant is able to buy 2million+ of wares from me before they see a credit come back to them through a sale on their vendor.
Gaining exp is a joke for this profession. I can sit in my house for a few weeks and be a master. Noone going up the merchant tree has any interest in selling other peoples goods just for exp.
IMO the changes are still good, but this doesn't fix the merchant profession. It is still horribly broken. A merchant offers me next to no bonus to sell through them. As you pointed out this is a MMORPG. A person that makes a good should be able to come to a merchant and sell things through you. Thus creating more player interaction. This doesn't and won't happen with the current system when vendors are deactivated because it is way too much of a hassle to come to a merchant and deliver things to you. I can deliver 25 things at a time total to all merchants. What crafter only makes 25 items?
The biggest problem I have with this is the timing. this is a known issue for 6+ months and now the devs only fix it because they are having database issues. The merchant profession has gotten screwed for 6 months because they don't even care about you. But maybe it is because no reason for crafters to use a merchant to sell their goods was ever given full weight.