Merchant Archive
Thread: Merchant Top 5 Issues
I really like these 2 ideas alot, faster sales for our clients and limiting the amount of sales on vendors with lower merchant skills. However, we need to be careful that the bazaar does not start forcing players to sell items at just 3000 credits and undercutting the others in their professions.
What we need is abilities that will be seen as a time saving service, so that when we profit on something, the creator of the item will se that profit as payment for the time we saved them.
The only "quick" thing I can think of, that accomplish this, would be to limit the number of sales one vendor would have. And then have that number increase along with merchant skills, a bit like CH and thair pet levels.
I just got another example from another post and I don't know that this isn't already in place..I'll test it in TC tonight if I get the chance.
If a player gives up AdvertisingIII his vendors should remove themsevles from the Global map as soon as it is possible to check that the merchant doesn't have the skill anymore.
If a player gives up Advertising I and II then the adbarking should be stopped as soon as it is possible to check that the merchant doesn't have the skills anymore.
Hmmm..what if the Merchant who gives up skills gets an email immediately upon surrendering the skills that tells him exactly what he is going to see happen to his vendors?
Whoops hit enter too soon. Wanted to add my comments on the other ones up there.
#4 I like the commission idea myself. I host vendors for selling things from guild to others and its quite costly for me to do this atm. I would almost prefer seeing a system where its like the bazaars in town, person goes up and "sells" item and is charged for the sale some # of credits that the merchant sets. Those credits go to the merchant and the item goes up for sale as normal. When sold, the money earned is directly deposited to person who put up the sale. The code already exists there as that is what they are using for bazaars... so could they give that to us to? Maybe make it something that only Master Merchants can do? Give us something to do specific in Player cities.
#5 I agree with no skills, no merchants. But please don't leave the vendor sitting around even if the person doesn't have the skills to use it any longer. The issue with that is no one else can remove that vendor. I have one shop where a person isn't even an admin any longer in the building and that vendor is still there! I don't know how many credits they put up on that thing but I can't get rid of it and its definitely hurting business. 
The first time they put this into action, I could understand a grace period for folks who currently have vendors but after that, I'd like to see that as a risk, you give up the skills, you lose the vendor. Or maybe they could adjust it so that maintenance rate of vendor is proportional to skills as a merchant. Aka, if zero skills, vendor scoffs, "You couldn't pay me high enough to work for you." Nothing would initialize for those vendors and perhaps if they remain with this sort of flag for a week they disappear.
Anavlis
my #1...remove the vender from biz 3....that would make us more usefull.
also....ill see if i can find it but i think its time to digup that thread with the realy great "commision" idea in it
Allow merchants to do two new things with vendors:
Sell items on Consignment for other players.
This would require the merchant to enter two additional bits of information on a listed item.
The name of the player for whom you're making the sale. The percentage of money that will be sent to that player's bank account when the sale occurs for the vendor. (So setting PlayerA to make 75% of a 1000c sell would result in 250 credits going to your account and 750 credit going to PlayerA's account once the item was sold.)
List Special Order Items for a named customer.
This would allow the merchant to put certain items on their vendor with special prices for preferred customers. Other players visitting your vendor would not even see the item, much less see lower than ordinary prices and take advantage of the sale.
Item 4 really really has to support consignment sales. There is significant new code needed, it might as well handle more that we want with one update.
The resale vendor transaction has 4 steps if it is a concession sale.
1) Original owner (often Manufacturer) delivers item (Offer to vendor)
At this step the owner's name should be captured, and the owner should specify what they expect to get from the sale. They should also have a check box for whether they are willing to accept a consignment (of up to 30 days) or if they insist that the merchant take ownership of the item.
2) Merchant accepts or rejects the offer.
Merchant must be able to reject even a consignment offer, as I don't want a chance cube labled "Jedi Holocron" on MY vendor. Rejected items (as now) drop to owner's "available items" list.
If accepted, the item goes into stockroom, but visibly retains owner name and wholesale cost if consignment. Non-consignment sales make Merchant the owner. Whether accepted or rejected the offer generates an email.
3) Merchant puts the item up for sale, owner and wholesale cost are retained but not displayed for customers. Merchant selects the retail price, and provides a (or perhaps edits an owner provided?) description. The 30 day clock should start from the time of the offer on consignment sales, so the owner knows what the timing is. Sales from the merchant's inventory might allow the Merchant to set a wholesale price as a cost memo.
4) The item is sold. The owner gets the wholesale price, and the merchant gets the difference as bank deposits. Both get email but the owner is not told the selling price, the merchant's shows both. No owner email is generated if the Merchant is the owner.
There is enough change to the code and forms here, so they might as well combine that with some other features.
A list of buyers with % of base price, and a check box to allow/refuse sale. The buyer list is processed from the top down, and consistes of an individual name, a guild, a faction, or "All". The first match applies, and an empty list defaults to All/100%/allow.
So if the list reads:
John/100%/Allow
All/100%/ Refuse
Only John could buy the item and he would be charged the stated price.
If the list read:
John/50%/Allow
Tom/100%/Refuse
guild:XXX/75%/Allow
Rebel/200%/Allow
All/100%/ Allow
Then John could buy the item at half price (whether or not he was a rebel or guild member), Tom couldn't buy it at all, guild XXX members could buy it at 75%, rebels would have to pay double (unless they were in the guild), and everybody else would be able to buy it at the stated price.
That feature handles pre-arranged sales on the same vendor with other items, as well as all the selectivity anybody might want. The list entries should be done in a way that makes cut&paste easy, since many items would be the same. If the feature isn't used, the default is how things are today.
Haruspex77 wrote:
Item 4 really really has to support consignment sales. There is significant new code needed, it might as well handle more that we want with one update.
The resale vendor transaction has 4 steps if it is a concession sale.
1) Original owner (often Manufacturer) delivers item (Offer to vendor)
At this step the owner's name should be captured, and the owner should specify what they expect to get from the sale. They should also have a check box for whether they are willing to accept a consignment (of up to 30 days) or if they insist that the merchant take ownership of the item.
2) Merchant accepts or rejects the offer.
Merchant must be able to reject even a consignment offer, as I don't want a chance cube labled "Jedi Holocron" on MY vendor. Rejected items (as now) drop to owner's "available items" list.
If accepted, the item goes into stockroom, but visibly retains owner name and wholesale cost if consignment. Non-consignment sales make Merchant the owner. Whether accepted or rejected the offer generates an email.
3) Merchant puts the item up for sale, owner and wholesale cost are retained but not displayed for customers. Merchant selects the retail price, and provides a (or perhaps edits an owner provided?) description. The 30 day clock should start from the time of the offer on consignment sales, so the owner knows what the timing is. Sales from the merchant's inventory might allow the Merchant to set a wholesale price as a cost memo.
4) The item is sold. The owner gets the wholesale price, and the merchant gets the difference as bank deposits. Both get email but the owner is not told the selling price, the merchant's shows both. No owner email is generated if the Merchant is the owner.
There is enough change to the code and forms here, so they might as well combine that with some other features.
A list of buyers with % of base price, and a check box to allow/refuse sale. The buyer list is processed from the top down, and consistes of an individual name, a guild, a faction, or "All". The first match applies, and an empty list defaults to All/100%/allow.
So if the list reads:
John/100%/Allow
All/100%/ Refuse
Only John could buy the item and he would be charged the stated price.
If the list read:
John/50%/Allow
Tom/100%/Refuse
guild:XXX/75%/Allow
Rebel/200%/Allow
All/100%/ Allow
Then John could buy the item at half price (whether or not he was a rebel or guild member), Tom couldn't buy it at all, guild XXX members could buy it at 75%, rebels would have to pay double (unless they were in the guild), and everybody else would be able to buy it at the stated price.
That feature handles pre-arranged sales on the same vendor with other items, as well as all the selectivity anybody might want. The list entries should be done in a way that makes cut&paste easy, since many items would be the same. If the feature isn't used, the default is how things are today.
This is good stuff. That description of the Consignment sales is the best I've seen that uses mostly the existing system while adding the functionality we need.
- When a merchant gives up efficiency 4:
- Tent costs an extreme amount of money to maintain
- Vendors inside the tent, including other people's vendors, are immediately disabled. People can pull items off the vendor and that's it. The items should immediately bump to stockroom and be deleted in the normal time (whatever that is).
- **HOWEVER - to mitigate storage concerns for those who have incredibly large stock, any vendor that has been disabled should no longer "count" as one of the vendors owned. Therefore, the vendor owner (i.e. someone with ad 3 who has admin to the tent in question, or someone simply who does not have an extra slot) can place a replacement vendor so that the items can be easily transferred to the new vendor once the old vendor has been disabled. If this provision is not put in, then those people with admin who put coke-bottle vendors into others' merchant tents get screwed because they have a vendor disabled, through no fault of their own, and no place to put their stuff.
- Buildings that have 20% modifier will revert to normal rates (may be difficult to track that one)
- When a merchant gives up management 4 /3/2 etc
- there should be a pop-up window that immediately demands that the merchant choose which vendor will be disabled or, alternatively,a pop-up window that forces the merchant to choose which vendors he or she wishes to remain functioning. This way, the merchant at least gets to choose which vendor is disabled, and it does not default to the last one placed.
- the disabled vendor should keep items in stockroom for a certain number of days, then delete them.
- When a merchant gives up hiring 4
- vendors should go back to noob clothing
- wookiees should go back to nothing
- When a merchant gives up ad 3
- immediate delisting of items from planetary map
- cessation of ad barking when ad 2/1 given up.
I realize I'm taking a hard line on this, but there must be a reason to keep all the points in merchant. And in case you're wondering, my other account is a merchant, who sells my clothing and my fiance's armor, vehicles etc. Yes, I could have left up my vendors when I dropped merchant, but I didn't. I unloaded them, transferred the items to the new vendors, owned by the other character, and deleted them before I dropped it. My items are too precious to depend on a system which could any day now be fixed. Because indeed it is unintended that those without merchant skills have vendors, and indeed it should be fixed.
Just a suggestion.
I love stipulation 5. It would be so nice to eliminate the ability of morons to use vendors granted only temporarily to themselves. They can'thavethe cake and eat it too.
I know everyone that posts on this board really works on keeping their skill points locked up in a very broken profession like this. We all have this ideal that the only direction this profession can head is up. Also believe that the nerf bomb will always steer clear of this profession.
Tarloth wrote:
There's some really good stuff in here. 1 problem I see by getting the vendor at buisiness 3 removed is the amount of time and XP required to increas to Novice Merchant. As access fees and premium sales are of extremely limited use you wouldn't have an effective way to gain Novice Merchant. Although I think someone else mentioned a limited vendor, which I think is a excellent idea. Cap items to 20 or so for this type of vendor. Otherwise there's some great idea's in here
I seriously doubt the Devs would consider such a huge nerf to the artisans as this point in the game. I do wish they would consider making running a vendor at Artisan more expensive to incourage more Artisans to use merchants. The real key though is making using a merchant more painless. Right now it is a huge hassle to do it from both sides.