Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendor Admin Proposal
I am posting the link to this thread everytime I see people talk about the Merchant profession. I really want more Merchants to post their thoughts because then the devs will take notice.
I thank everyone for their comments. Although there is some disagreement on the exact details, there is overwhelming support and approval for this proposal.
Devs, please notice the distinct lack of whining and whinging in this thread. This is a consrtuctive idea with plenty of support. Plus, no one can argue that this concept will not make Merchants useful to crafters and get them properly involved in the Player Economy.
This is the best idea to come along in a while...
I believe this option should be at least halfway up the Merchant tree, minimum. It would make our lives a bit easier....
Now, is it doable?
"Mad" Vaylis Arturin, Mercenary Master Merchant and Master Artisan...COMING SOON! Mad Vaylis' Used Speeders
When the whole "offer" system was first explained to me, I realized that the way they were setting things up was just naturally made for merchants to be retailers and crafters to be wholesalers. It still is. BUT, people don't want to do it that way because it's awkward. That can be fixed to a large extent without changing the current mechanisms... simply by redesigning how we interact with the UI.
First off, we can post one item for sale at a time. This is insane. If I have 50 items in my stockroom, and all of them were previously for sale, each of them has a price and (optional) description attached to it. Yet, when I click on "sell item," this info doesn't get pulled in... I have to put it in manually again. For every item. I ought to be able to select all items at once and re-post them all with one click, using the data that is *still attached to the item*.
But let's take it farther. When I put a bunch of items up for sale, I put the same price on the same item type in almost every case, and the same description in most cases as well. I get really, really tired of staring at my price list and copying and pasting my blurb. Wouldn't it be awesome if this stuff could be configured by default? The obvious objection is data... that's a lot more data to be stored on the server if I do it that way. BUT... it's not, actually. Right now there are 85+ items in my vendor with the same three-sentence blurb tacked onto them. That's about 255 sentences, but with massive duplication of data. If there were *one* record with my default blurb in it that all of those pointed to, that would actually *reduce* the amount of data the server must store by a huge amount, and it would save me a ton of trouble. Perhaps as you go up the Advertising tree or something you could get more "default" blurbs stored.
Now, back to the issue of resellers. Why is it such a hassle to use "offer?" Because it's a multi-step process with a lot of time overhead. There should be three, not two, buttons on the Offer screen: "Accept-post for sale," "Accept-retrieve," and "Reject." (While we're at it, let's add a fourth: "Counteroffer." But that's another story.) If someone posts something in my vendor that I want to resell, it should be a matter of clicking on it, clicking a button, *maybe* changing some data (after all, if my default prices and blurbs are all stored already, they should come up after the first time selling this type of item), and clicking OK. And, if I don't need to change any data, I should be able to do this with a whole batch at once. And there is NO excuse for the whole "available items" step when I'm standing in front of my terminal.
Finally, the whole use of email to track sales is a kluge. Sure, you should be able to set it to send you emails when people buy things or when stuff expires. But the default should probably be a daily summary or something. And the idea that I get an email notifying me that an auction was unsuccessful when *I know that* because I'm the one who just withdrew the item is... well, annoying as heck. We need to have a better system to list the sales that have happened... currently, we can only view them one at a time, we can't copy and paste the info... it's just infuriating. A better system to view our sales would go a long way to making Merchanting less about bookkeeping and more about salesmanship.
Now, I definitely want to be able to add an admin to my vendor, and the partnership thing sounds like a great idea. But, I think that we might gain a lot more in the long run by asking them to fix what we have than by asking them to add new stuff, which will undoubtedly make the code more complicated and add steps to things that are already too awkward. Let's get our house clean before we get new furniture, in other words.
To be admin they should have the same skill requirement as to placing it.
I suggest two level of access : Admin and Partner
Admin is allowed to sell from, withdraw any sales, and add / withdraw maint money
Partner is allowed to sell from the vendor, but can only withdraw their own sales, and are only allowed to add to, not withdraw from vendor maint.
It should be a requirement to keep at least one admin with the skill required to place the vendor.
We do not want to be vendor dispensers.
Before the last big patch"beta 5" there was a "vender list" that was suppose to allow people to place vender and not be admin's. However it never worked, after that patch the list was removed. So there was a vender list but now there is not.
Way to go, Epoiisa. Wellconceived and well presented.
This should get Dev attention soon enough. How long it will take to get implemented is unfortunate...