CUEmu - Thread Posts

Indene

Sun Feb 20, 2005 3:45 pm

Oh and the origional idea of delivery as well would put my Import/Export business right out of business
and no ammount of "optional" would be able to fix that.

-Indene-

Master Creature Handler - Kettemoor Nov 2003, Radiant Nov 13, 2005
http://www.swgcreatures.com/forums/phpbb2/index.php
Once Happy contented successful Master Merchant. (RiverBend, Naboo.)
Then came the dark times. The NGE
"its as if i heard a million pets cry out in terror...and they were suddenly silenced...i feel a great disturbance in the force"
We're the few, the proud, the Creature Handlers.
Creature Handler Memorial at -1419 283 Mos Mesric, Tatooine, Kettemoor
BE and CH museum at 6627 5365 Tatooine, Chimaera
Find me on MySpace

SpawnUSAF

Thu Feb 24, 2005 2:49 am

#379

IMHO, if this is going to happen, then the categories should become more specific or maybe better organized...like if someone looking for a factory crate of repair tools, then they should be able to look under tools/repairtools instead of misc/factory crate, because the factory crate category under the Entire Galaxy will bring up thousands of items to sift through, which'll deter people from using that feature...

Also, what about stuff in bags?? Like full runs of BE Additives sold in bags? Shouldn't someone be able to search for what's in bags rather than just a bag by itself? I also think people should be able to view a bags contents on a vendor rather than us having to name the bags and the person trusting that they are purchasing what the bags name is...this would help a great deal...

Summary:

Better Categories/Organization

Crates in 2 categories

View items in a bag

___________________________________________

||UUUUUUUUUSSSSSSSSAAAAAAAAFFFFFFFFFF||

|USAF Spawn:Good Bye Kauri. Hehop: Best BE Ever|

Cafa

Thu Feb 24, 2005 3:23 pm

#380

DarkJedi49 wrote:

I know someone will rip me a new one for this statement, but I just wanted to say that we already have this in real life, it's called the internet, and I don't think many complain about that. I know a lot of people would rather sit at home in their scivvies searching the internet for the best deal, then having it shipped to them, rather than running around town wasting time and gas.

I really thought about your post for a bit and wanted to revisit it.

The difference in a SWG reality and Real Life reality is that there are consequences to your actions in Real Life that cannot and will not emulated in the game. The Internet is the perfect example.

The Internet "Boom" caused people to pay outrageous amounts of money on stocks that would have taking (projected) 20+ years to actually get the companies in question "valued" at their stock worth by professionsals. That's because people in the biz have seen these "booms" time and time again. Maybe not to the level of real dollars during this "Net Bubble". But on a inflation projected scale the dollars were not that far off from when oil companies started consolidating.

Even today, there are literally thousands of small undercutting computer sales companies on the Internet. They pop up every day on Ebay and disappear the next month. They try to exploit a market, get their cash and usually run out on vendors, customers and others in the supply chain. SWG is a perfect reflection of the use of the Internet with this method. The people that come undercutting do so to either take a market or destroy a market. Trying to take a market through drastic harm to competition finds yourself unable to purchase resources at some point without lying to other people in the game or gaining another source of credits. When a business fails to make a profit, it becomes a hobby, not an income. If you get into a product line in SWG to destroy a market, you will eventually hurt the customers because there is no way that one person or group can supply consumption for a whole server.

Finally, I am against major changes in the game that enable this undercutting WITHOUT using the same technology available TODAY in real life to find resources within the game, much less on a fictional genre that has hyperspace but no apparent means to analyze resource locations out side of 320 meters. If personable sales are going to be changed into that completely idiotic process in EQ2 the database you so fondly want to search will be nigh useless since everyone will just throw crap on there.

We got rid of the thousands of illegal vendors and things have stablized well. Rework the UI and profession skill set before making 75% of Merchant skills completely useless in the sales process, please.

Fivo Asia

- Strength In Numbers - Loyal Subjects of the Empire
Asia Brothers Industries - Asia Hall SiN CiTY, Dantooine (Offers Vendor at -4703 -1404)
A player bodyguard can't protect you either, something agroes you, you are dead. The
only difference between a pet and the person, is you pay the person to stand there
and watch you die. -- Straker Atrella

Cafa

Thu Feb 24, 2005 3:31 pm

#381

R0ZM4N wrote:

Bhasayate wrote:

[snip]

Yes, buying stuff like that is so very convenient, but your convenience is the death of another profession. I The point where you have people working hard to get thier products known no longer exists. I disagree completely, the best qualitygoods will stillmake a name for a crafter and those crafters who give good quality at great prices more so, it's about time we had a system that promotes that kind of economy openly without Famous Names hiding their overinflated prices behind the resistance factor of not actually being able to find anyone else. No reason for people to compete over space for thier shops anymore, they can sell from across the galaxy. Great! Now newcomers to professions can work on a level playing field No reason to even advertise, Fantastic! Reduced starport spamming! ...as the only way to compete will be to lower your prices, put a few A's at the beginning of your product's name, and toss it on the vendor. Ha, yeah, that's a good point, AAAAAAT21UBER lol, I guess naming will become an art unto itself

Merchant is not a combat class, but the competition between people peddling thier wares can be just as tight as a duel between PvP people who actually know thier profession. It can be, you're absolutely right but now I see this developing as not between a couple of crafters who everybody knows, while the less famous wither and die in the wilderness of empty vendors; but good crafters backed by good playing time (you can't sell what you don'ttake the time to make). Older crafters will mantain respect as they have the resources that keep them on top. I can only see this change benefitting Classic, hardworking, well stocked crafters as well as giving newcomers a level playing field on which to compete.

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to some new and interesting comments flower.

Sincerely

Cass
Message Edited by R0ZM4N on 02-15-2005 12:08 PM

Just the fact that you would classify "AAAAAAT21UBER" as a reasonable alternative shows me that you have zero respect for the people that ultimately support all fundamental economics in this game.

Fivo Asia

- Strength In Numbers - Loyal Subjects of the Empire
Asia Brothers Industries - Asia Hall SiN CiTY, Dantooine (Offers Vendor at -4703 -1404)
A player bodyguard can't protect you either, something agroes you, you are dead. The
only difference between a pet and the person, is you pay the person to stand there
and watch you die. -- Straker Atrella

Cafa

Thu Feb 24, 2005 4:30 pm

#382

Cephalo wrote:

Andymantium wrote:

Cephalo wrote:
I've always been against having a merchant profession in the first place. I think its more of a basic game function. It's like having a 'driver' profession just to use a vehicle. Therefore, I don't care what happens to the merchent tree.

Then why are you posting here?

Because I wanted to weigh in on this particular issue that is important for everyone. I am a merchant BTW, not that I wanted to be one! but I HAD to be one in order to function. It's a very painful subject for us BE's.

Too funny.

I'm a not a BE btw, not that I ever wanted to be one. But making my Chef foods marketable requires that I have access to the lowest cost food additives without paying some 'sploiter that simply wants to gouge me for so I bought another account and made a BE.

What can't BE just be free!?!

Amazing

- Strength In Numbers - Loyal Subjects of the Empire
Asia Brothers Industries - Asia Hall SiN CiTY, Dantooine (Offers Vendor at -4703 -1404)
A player bodyguard can't protect you either, something agroes you, you are dead. The
only difference between a pet and the person, is you pay the person to stand there
and watch you die. -- Straker Atrella

StimOrb

Sat Feb 26, 2005 7:54 am

#383

I think its a great idea, and will create real market pressure on the prices

- I support moving forward Save SWG!

Drop Off Vendor Fort Blood Talus wp 3232 660

Ahnlida

Sat Feb 26, 2005 6:33 pm

#384

Anyone still thinking this is a good idea obviously hasn't read the associated posts... or is working on junior high level economic theories. Next thing you know we'll be discussing Darth Reagan Trickle-Down theories.

Read the posts. The reasons against a galaxy-wide vendorare rational and clear.

Haruspex77

Sun Feb 27, 2005 3:16 am

#385

I think it could be made to work if:

It were a perk of Master Merchant

The options were per vendor, and included hiding prices as well as hiding all items

Delivery optional to both vendor and buyer, and expensive (at least 20% of price)

I have always thought that competition between a Master and Novice Merchant should be like that between corresponding levels of combat classes -- the master always wins, and the novice has to play somewhere else. Merchant is a PVP class by design -- at least until they invent NPC customers. Somewhere else in this case means in your guild town, or at least with friends as customers.

It allows Master Merchants to dominate the market. It forces even the big time crafter to either master Merchant or sell through one. Master Merchant would no longer be a waste of skill points. I was MM for about 30 minutes -- I wanted the badge, but it offered nothing useful. Today I am 3.4.0.1 and feel I get all the benefits available to my business, and have doubts about advertising.

The option to restrict delivery allows a stronger pull to your shop (for valuable items) for those accessory sales. Of course the "better prices on other vendor" comment works fairly well too.

Hidden prices are needed for big ticket items. Public auctions aren't really appropriate for retail sales of those, any more than putting them on vendors at wholesale prices.

Reaching Masteris hardlya challenge,as you can always wait out the vendor experience. It is mostly a skillpoint sink. Crafters can keep their vendors for regular customers and order pickups, but all volume sales would be through a Master Merchant. Not many crafters can afford the whole Merchant tree in skillpoints, unless they start buying components elsewhere.

As a Master perk, I could even accept the original proposal. As a novice perk it would be a disaster.

EdOWar

Sun Feb 27, 2005 9:43 am

#386

I haven't read all 17 pages, so if someone has already proposed the following, then just consider this post as a 'second' of the proposal:

In my view, an acceptable alternative would be the following:

1) Make it so you need to register the vendor on the "galactic exchange". Make this ability available no sooner than Advertising IV, and maybe even make it a master merchant ability. Registering increases the vendor maintenance by an appropriate amount (say 4 or 5).

2) Players access the galactic exchange through the public bazaar...not through player vendors.

3) When the bazaar is accessed by a player, they can search through it normally, as they do now. Or, they can click on a new tab, called "Vendors" or "Galactic Exchange"(or something like that) that would allow them to access player vendors that have been registered on the galactic exchange.

4) When perusing vendors on the galactic exchange, they would be organized in a manner similar to the way vendors are advertised on the planetary map (instead of just mixing in everyone's items within dozens or hundreds of pages to search). Players would have the option to sort vendors by planet, or see every vendor of a particular type for the entire galaxy (for example, all Weapon vendors for the galaxy).

5) The player could then click on a particular vendor, say mine for example: Vargo and Prophet Precision Arms. They would then be able to see everything that was on my vendor, and only my vendor. They could then click over to a different vendor (say, Snuffy's Uber Gunz, for example), and see what was on that person's vendor.

6) They would be able to purchase a vendor item off the bazaar (deducting appropriate city taxes as well), but they would have to travel to the vendor to pick up the item.

7) The galactic exchange mode would alsoshow a map of the particular planet that a vendor was located on, displaying the location of the vendor on that planet (in a manner similar to how planetary advertising works now). That way, the buyer can tell where the vendor is located and make a decision about whether they want to travel that far to pick the item up before making the purchase.

8) You would not be able to do a galaxy-wide search by item...you could only do it by vendor.

The way I see it, the buyer benefits because now they can do all their shopping from one location, without having to spend hours riding around. Also, they won't have to tediously comb dozens or hundreds of pages of the same type of item. With one click they can see what's on a vendor, and if they don't like what's there, they just have to click on the next vendor. It may take a little more effort to do comparison shopping, but still much easier than riding around visiting dozes of vendors to find the best deal.

The merchant benefits because they'll still be able to differentiate their vendors/shops from other vendors/shops (instead of having their items jumbled in with hundreds of similar items). Location will also be important still, as will maintaining a good selection of merchandise. Galaxy-wide searches becomes an expanded version of planetary advertising, rather than one massive bazaar mixing in items from every vendor at once. And because the purchaser has to travel to pick the item up, they still pass through player cities, and it increases the odds of an impulse purchase when they get to your shop (especially if your vendor is located in a good mall).

Well, my 2 creds.

Slim Vargo, Corbantis

Rowgue

Mon Feb 28, 2005 12:10 am

#387

The whole things a terrible idea. It is being done to appease people because they don't like to spend time looking for good vendors. I can understand that as I have put more than my share of time into searching through empty vendors, but this is just stupid.

These changes will render merchant completely useless unless you have need for more than 2 vendors. And then it is a punishment since you will be required to waste skill points on a profession that is utterly useless other than to add more vendors. It would be as if you had to level up home designer to be able to place more than 2 pieces of furniture in your home.

All of the pride merchants take in setting up a professional looking shop, taking the time to take care of customers needs, being able to advertise on the map, and making sure all advertised vendors actually have the advertised items in stock will be eliminated in one fell swoop.

Sure it will be good for people who don't want to put in the time and effort to set up a good shop, or keep their vendors stocked as best they can, but this will take away everything that is unique to merchants except for the ability to use Spam Bots. Woohoo I'm a master merchant I can use a droid to spam for me so I can still chat with my guildmates.

Cafa

Mon Feb 28, 2005 12:18 pm

#388

Rowgue wrote:

[snip]

If people think the economy is inflated now wait til they see what happens when 90% of the crafters and merchants leave the game and there is one godlike guild controlling all commerce on each server. What do they think will happen to prices then.

Most of the people I know capable of being the few that survive don't want that to happen.

Fivo Asia

- Strength In Numbers - Loyal Subjects of the Empire
Asia Brothers Industries - Asia Hall SiN CiTY, Dantooine (Offers Vendor at -4703 -1404)
A player bodyguard can't protect you either, something agroes you, you are dead. The
only difference between a pet and the person, is you pay the person to stand there
and watch you die. -- Straker Atrella

Nitwit

Mon Feb 28, 2005 12:38 pm

#389

Economic theory aside, this idea would...

1) Will deflate the economy. Increased competition will lead to lower prices. Lower prices leads to people buying more. People buying could actually lead to an increase in the profit of the crafter. This not only includes prices for combat related items (weapons, armor, and food) but for the crafter items too. If a resource collector or master ranger can display his products for all to see, he will lower his prices to beat out the next guy. So the initial costs will be lower for the crafters too because they can purchase their resources easier and cheaper.

2) Large collectives of crafters will not be able to overcharge because a single small crafter who can sell his items for cheaper will bring down the large crafters. Anyone with half a business sence can destroy a huge collective of crafter because the small guy can work on two things. Price and Customer Service. Price because he isn't established in the market and doesn't think he is "owed" an amount for his products (as most establish crafters feel now). He or she is flexible enough to work around obstacles which come up. Secondly, he or she can work on Customer Service. This definition would change from its current form of location to quantity and custom orders. Crafters will have to make large amounts of products because in order to successfully lower prices, a crafter has to mass produce. Also, once the crafter is noticed on the bazaar as a great guy who can not only produce great products, large quantities of products, but also someone who people will take special orders too.

3) Crafters would begin to see the benefits of guilds. Again related to price, if the crafter can get his or her resources cheaper, faster, and in larger quantities, the crafter can lower production costs. Yet, this also benefits the little or new crafter because the established guild crafter will be forced to specialize. In order tomaximize efficency, onlyone or two groups of items could be marketed. This leaves holes for the new members to fill in. New crafter will not be left out in the rain, unable to find a nitch to fit in. Over time, this new crafter will eventually join a guild or association of players, and be forced to specialize too. The process would repeat again.

Not doing this is effectively castrating the economy. Limiting choice limits the ability of the market to self correct. And then we will continue in the current economic fashion for a long time.

Message Edited by Nitwit on 02-28-2005 11:44 AM

Nitwit - The Enclave
In Template Limbo - 2 Million FS Away from Padawan...
Never to get it because of the CU

-I support keeping & balancing the OLD combat system
Account Terminates on May 22. Later all!

Rowgue

Mon Feb 28, 2005 1:32 pm

#390

Just read through some more of the 17 pages and had to agree with a couple of points already made.

Most people are saying they agree with being able to search and purchase from the bazaar, but not the ability to have the item delivered. In light of all of the good points made in these posts I reiterate that I think the entire thing was poorly thought out and every aspect of it is pure destruction as far as crafters and merchants are concerned.

1) I think just about everyone agrees that instant delivery is just not an option, because it then causes price to be the only selling point and if your stuff is 1 point less on damage than someone else's geuss what you make zero sales.

2) Allowing purchasing from the bazaar (or other vendors) presents the building entrance fee problem. I do not want to run into a situation where I purchase something on a vendor for 1000 credits only to go to that vendor and find that they have a 20000 credit entrance fee on their house.

3) Even being able to search all vendors from the bazaar should realistically cause some horrendous lag when accessing the bazaar (or other vendors).

4)As previously statedif thissystem were implementedprice would be the one and only way to effectively compete with other crafters/merchants. Given that then we would have to spend hours upon hours every single day browsing all the vendors of the galaxy just so we could see where we have to price our goods to stay competetive. That would mean almost all of my time would now be spent constantly delisting and relisting items to keep on top of price wars on the bazaar. I'm just not going to do that, and I don't think many other crafters/merchats would either. If this happened I would be forced to either leave the game or just play a Jedi, and considering that the reason I play this game instead of the many other options I have is because it allows me to play my style more (which is a little bit of combat, but mostly interaction and community development) then I would probably choose the former option.

If people think the economy is inflated now wait til they see what happens when 90% of the crafters and merchants leave the game and there is one godlike guild controlling all commerce on each server. What do they think will happen to prices then.

Merchant Archive

Thread: Focus Thread: Galaxy-Wide Vendor Search