Merchant Archive
Thread: Should they reduce skill point cost for merchant?
They certainly need to do _something_ and I cant seem them fixing us (read: making all our boxes worthwhile) anytime soon (if vendor search was anything to go by anyway)
Whats ironic is that those with the highest merchant skills are punished the most...........by the largest number of items they have to manually restock!!!!
My only concern about incorporating Merchant into the crafting trees is that it denies a player to be a pure (or at least semi pure) merchant. I was a merchant long before I got myelite crafting profession, but a reduced skill point (across the whole profession) makes it easy for people to just use vendors for storage.
Perhaps the best suggestion (that I believe has already come up) is to reduce the costs of the hiring and advertising trees (hell the advertising tree ispractically worthless now!) significantly (because hiring isnt really any use without vendors)
Leafgreen wrote:
I'd vote for reducing the cost. But not making it free.
From a noob's perspective (less than a month) I've never seen it where you could not search galaxy-wide with the bazaar. It seems that merchants had some key advantages taken away from them, and nothing to replace those as of yet. However I do find that the best items aren't advertised witha vendor search at a bazaar terminal.
The classes are pretty balanced right now so that if you master 2 elite professions you barely have anything left over, which is as it should be. You don't want master Bounty Hunter/master Pistoleer to be able to get the merchant class for free to use as storage. Combat types just don't have many skill points left over if they want to be level 80 - and almost all of them do. Reducing the cost of merchant would still keep most of it out of reach of the combats, but allow merchants to do more.
As a pure crafter... I got tired of being killed every day. I was killed twice inside of five minutes the other day, right inside my city. You get shot at by peon thugs in towns, killed when you check your extractors... and the official reply is to 'hire a bodyguard'.
Yeah, I'll get right on that....
So I streamlined down to master artisan/armorsmith and some combat, so I could have the option of not being a one-shot kill to everything in the game. But that seriously cut down on my merchant skills that I could take, and shouldn't crafters be one of the prime merchant types in the game?
Unless they brought in consignment type vendors.
I dunno ...but I have a toon with MBH/Master Pistoleer (CL 80) and still have Merchant 0004 (I can store/sell 2750 items and operate 10 vendors), Seems like most of Merchant is a total waste of SP's in my opinion when anyone can function quite well with just the last tree.
Regards.
_Monroe_ wrote:
Pappi wrote:
personally it's important to me that I have a nice shop and offer a variety. I chose to put my sp into master merchant, and am fine with the sp cost. I even get to sell my fiance's stuff with those extra vendors
as I've already told the politicians, I would much rather have them add content to the profession instead of reducing sp requirements. 0sp is a mixed blessing, and it's one that I hope isn't given to the merchants
QFE!
One of the coolest things I think they could do for merchant is grant the ability to dropvendors for other people and take a percentage of the sales. Master merchant only I think. Drop a vendor, give "concessionaire" rights to a player (so they could stock and get the sales from the vendor) and seteither apercentage or flat fee to be charged.
Nice idea. It would bring merchant closer inline with what they originally intended - before solo, solo, solo took a firm grip. At least, I believe that orginially merchant was intended to sell other peoples wares, never (or rarely) their own.
AudioOrgana wrote:
Merchant needs to be 0SP.
...
This will never happen because it would mean giving 5000 free storage slots to anyone.
There are too many vendors full of junk even now when it costs good skill points to get them. Could anyone imagine how the overhead map will look like after each player places his 12 (or whatever) vendors?!
Message Edited by Orew on 05-26-2005 07:35 AM
Orew wrote:
AudioOrgana wrote:
Merchant needs to be 0SP.
...
This will never happen because it would mean giving 5000 free storage slots to anyone.
There are too many vendors full of junk even now when it costs good skill points to get them. Could anyone imagine how the overhead map will look like after each player places his 12 (or whatever) vendors?!
Message Edited by Orew on 05-26-2005 07:35 AM
If you'd read my posting fully (past the first sentance), you'd see that I acknowledged this and said this is why I'd gate it at crafter-only to begin with. It wouldn't give them to "anyone", it would only give them to crafters.
The pure merchant intention of the game is lost - it's not gonna happen. Instead of a full profession, merchant just needs to be made a add-on for crafters to sell their wares. I'm saying this as someone that has merchant skills in most of my templates, including a Master Merchant who has been so since 2003.
They have absolutely gutted what need we ever had for our profession. It's time to suck up the losses and move on. GVS was the final nail in the merchant coffin.
Perhaps make each box 1 point. I don't know. It's just clear something needs to change. Merchant right now is a desolate, empty profession. Not for lack of anyone trying, but that's just the sad facts.
I was as pure a merchant as one can be - I was a merchant/smuggler who combed the galaxy looking for deals and reselling at several shops. Of course, this irritated some people, but in terms of the game it was about as organic as you get. Then global vendor search did my job for me - no longer would me spending hours going to every player city in game be a use of my smuggler/merchant skills or role playing - now that service was moot because all someone has to do is dial up what they want and pick the cheapest one.
I also have a crafter who has a good deal of merchant. It is utterly useless in just about all cases except for the addition of more vendors and more storage space.
Merchant should be a single line, like a force skill, and fit what's left of the skills in there. Make it a line of six boxes, each costing more SP if that's what floats the boat.
I just don't see how any additions can be made to the profession at this point - GVS just took the end of the not-so-sturdy-in-the-first-place rug out from under us. Advertising is completely unnecesary when any shmoe with a vendor can give a total complete list of his wars galaxy-wide, efficency's only draw is that you can place a tent - the savings are minimal, and all hiring is are customization skills that ID's have been begging for since beta. It's just not worthy of an elite profession, and the current climate of the game doesn't lead me to believe there will be a need in game to make it better.
AO
You're right, I didn't read all your post... sorry. Now I'm glad that I didn't flame and make an ass of myself.
AudioOrgana wrote:
...
If you'd read my posting fully (past the first sentance), you'd see that I acknowledged this and said this is why I'd gate it at crafter-only to begin with. It wouldn't give them to "anyone", it would only give them to crafters.
...
Then sell back some of your merchant skills
LeProfesor wrote:
I agree Merchant should be part of a crafting proffesion.
Its taking up vauable points for no reason.
no body has over 2500 items in their vendor to sell at anytime.
Most people dont care much about the Hiring line
---------------> Merchant should be divided 50% to Artisan and the other 50% to Crafting elite proffesion to add up all of the skills.
I was limited to 3k items (no longer a Master) and found myself having to remove non-selling items in favor of those that were moving. Now, its down to 2700 items, and I'm still bouncing off the limit even though I dropped an entire crafting profession to concentrate on one and pick up the combat skills I need to survive the wilds while harvesting.
As much as I'd like the extra skill points to place elsewhere, I don't thing the Merchant community as a whole would be terribly pleased to have their profession made so easy.
Besides, we'd see all those DB issues again as every Tom,Richard (won't let me typethe D name)and Han would own vendors to store stuff in.
I would love to see the skill points be reduced for Merchant. Merchant was my first mastery, back when I played the game pure crafting with a hint of entertainer to be profitable. Now that I've had to drop entertainer and pick up Scout to defend myself in the wild....well, I'd like to be able to go a little further than 4-0-4-1. But I still want to be a Master Chef/Master Artisan.
Even better would be if they had separate sp pools for fighting and crafting.
Liria
Fortunatly I am also a miner so can sell resources.