Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendor Maintenance Fees coming – your input request
In my honest opinion i believe that SOE should focus more on getting things that are broken fixed (ie Vendors) before hitting us with more vendors.
For Example..
Fix ad barking, it works for one day if that
Fix planetary listing (see above)
Fix the bug where if you sell split reasources on a NPC vendor you wont be able to retrieve them ( i got hit with this 2 times and lost alot of reasources because of this)
Also i will have to agree with some of the other people here, as a weaponsmith/merchant and a casual gammer its challanging enough making sure all my harvestors, my house, and my vendor have the upkeep paid and be able to hunt for extra cash i need to keep things running. Not to mention working my way up the weaponsmith tree at the same time so i can sell things.
I honestly think you will seriously hamper the in-game economy. You should not pick on merchant to find some new money sinks. Actualy, the ONLY real advantage to have the merchant profession right now is to get those low maintenance fees.
The merchant profession is so badly designed that take outthefee advantageand you will see mostly every merchant drop the skills down to buisiness 4 which gives you the vendor with that crazy maintenance cost.
Personnaly, if you REALLY want to pick on the merchants before fixing what's wrong with the profession, I would go with fixed maintenance cost like harvesters and houses and limit what a vendor can do:
ex:
bulky terminal = 50 items, max cost per item = 5000, maintenance = 10/h
droids = 100 items, max cost per item = 10000 = 20/h
NPC = no limit 30/h
But my recommandation would be to hold on to that nerf until you fix (read revamp) the merchant profession. Check out this thread for what's wrong with it: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=merchant&message.id=5204
Yay, someone likes my idea, hehe, thanks Rohan.
>I think JoeDShadow has a good idea. Right now we can list items up to 3k credits on the bazaar. Perhaps >make the Artisan level vendor have a max price of 5k, Novice Merchant Vendors a cap of 10k. From then on >have the management line not only increase the number of available items, but also increase the max list >price of itmes. Management 1 can sell up to 30k per item, then 80k, 200k, and 500k as the skill progresses. >Maxing out the per item list price at 500k for management 4 and unlimited for Master Merchant will give a >little more meaning to the merchant class.
I do like the point as well about using the progression in the merchant tree to allow for more items on the vendor, as well as higher priced items... though higher priced items will hurt people like archetichs, ship builders, etc.
I think this is OK. I mean it isn't perfect but I think it is reasonable. Look at the real world. To start a business you expect to run at a loss for at least the first couple of weeks/months until things pick up. You front load things and hope to get your investment back. If you do things right, you get your seed money back and start to earn a profit. Why should it not be the same in SWG?
reasonable? Like real life?
Please point my wookiee (an imaginary race) to the closest small business loan officer on Tatooine please. Please show me where people can buy shares of my stock. Show me a company that pays its employees based on inventory and not sales or commissions. You dont turn a profit immediately, with these proposed changes you are going under and fast.
A real world business model doesnt work here.
Zannon
Eeekk....
Please remember.. most merchants who have vendor's already pay out major maintenance on factories / Extractors. These cost alone can be enormous!
Set up the vendors to work on a flat rate per day based upon your merchant skills.
Now comes the question though. Do newb merchants get less or more maintenance?
Here is the scenario:
Scenario 1
1. You are a newb low level merchant (novice). You start off with high maintenenace (500-1000) a day because you don't have the skills necessary to negotiate a lower price. As your merchant levels go up, you are able to negotiate and have your maintenance dropped (250-500) a day.
OR Scenario 2
2. You are a newb low level merchant (novice). You start of with low maintenance (250-500) a daybecause you are selling lower end items. These items are lower in price, so you get charged less for maintenance. As your merchant skills go up, your maintenance increases (up to a max (500-1000) a day), because your are selling the higher end merchandise.
What do you guys think??? Scenario 1 or 2?
Just my thoughts, not yours.
Novice Merchant / Master Artisan
Fetismo Bealor (Naboo on Naritus Server)
When determining the new formula, please keep architects in mind. If you charge a fee based on the total value on the vendor, then you need to remember that the items architects make often cost over 100k credits for a SINGLE item. Please don't make it impossible for us to maintain vendors with deeds.
It won't prevent overcharging at all. It will just limit your ability to buy stuff when you want to as people will just dump their vendors, get those skill points from biz and merchant back and only sell by request...
-Raven- wrote:
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I personally support this, I believe they should fix any issues with Merchants first however, But this will be a good step into insuring that noone over prices items! Which on MANY servers is a major problem!
"Ten thousand?! We could buy our OWN Star ship for ten thousand!"-Luke Skywalker...
Sorry Luke....10k Barely buys you a scout blaster...
As a purchaser of items I enjoy this idea, Because money goes into players hands combat professions etc. Then into the crafters hands, Where the majority of it remains.
And yet all the while Crafters are allowed to charge extraordinarily OUTRAGEOUS prices for their items, Making us the people who mission etc. for our money Pay Even More, So with this implemented Crafters will still make money, But they will be forced to sell at Fair prices, Imagine if Luke would have been there to buy an FWG5 from Han Solo....And heard 20,000c...He would have passed out.
I believe maybe like 500 pr hour etc. as with the calculations you recommended, Thanks Q This is awesome man!
*Rich people always hate paying money*
A great idea Noterac and simple!
ed
What you are proposing is far too harsh on merchants. Noterac's idea is simple, gives you a new money sink and allows the causal gamer to still have a vendor. Please give his idea some thought
I'm a very small merchant and just make enough to pay my current bills. Here is my take on the new vendor fee formula...
proposed formula: Total Listed Value of Items on Vendor / 1000 every 45 minutes
Now, lets say because I am small I sell only 10,000 credits of goods per day. At hour 1 I load up the vendor with my 10,000 credits of goods and go out to drum up new business or find new items to sell. Let's make the math easy, each item is selling at 1,000 credits. If nothing moves in a 24 hour period, I've lost 320 credits (right?) and will lose this amount everyday (or a fraction of it)until the vendor is empty. I can post them on the public bazaar for flat rate of 20 credits per item or 200 credits. My vendors are currently under 1km from a large city, but you have to go to my vendor to see what is for sale. But anyone can put something for sale on the bazaar and have it seen throughout the galaxy, for 20 credits.
What is to stop me closing my shop and using the public bazaar or these forums to sell my goods? Why not fill my bazaar with a 1 credit items that say "email me and I will deliver your items"? I might as well not sink any points into vendor related boxes and just get the public bazaar discount skills.Maybe I can spell out a message with mineral surveyers on the floor of my shop.Am I suppose to become a Master Merchant,I didn't think this game has specific paths that had to be followed.
Sales might be high now but there has to be an end, how many PA halls can one person buy? How many suits of armor does one person need? The game is still very new, there needs to be some time for the economy to balance itself out. Remove 10% of everyones current credits. (don't flame, i'm venting)
Whatever fix is put in place, make sure it promotes the use of vendors over the bazaar. There also needs to be a way to make buying from a vendor worthwhile. What if players got some type of bonus (xp maybe) for buyingfrom a player vendor instead of directly from a player or from the bazaar. I wouldn't hire a bounty hunter to make me a pair of boots.
The real question I have is were can I get some of this money that seems to be flowing out of some bubbling stream somewhere...can someone send me a waypoint, pls?