Merchant Archive

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jefdenbeffer wrote:

I foresee...

This thread deleted...

Coz u outsmarted devs...

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Xeranx wrote:

I honestly don't believe there are any monopolies in this game. If I see a price I don't like I have the option to look for someone cheaper or ask around. There's always going to be someone undercutting someone else to get business and that's how it works.

If these changes go in I and others who aren't merchants will be at the mercy of merchants. Some may get upset at this, but it's true and the point is clear (at least I hope it is).

I already feel I'm gouged on prices for items as it is, but many people will increase prices so they don't have to stock their vendors as much. What this does is make us have to pay more money for items that are already overpriced, then we hit the mission terminals even more so and continue to print our own money which drives the value of a credit down even further than it is now. You in effect cause the economy to become worse. Right now a newcomer will see a basic d10?, I think it is, rifle for 5000 credits. I can't imagine how a newcomer will feel when they perform all those profession quests only to see that same rifle for 12k or more. Actually I doubt they would be able to see that rifle at all because many people don't cater to people with low level professions all that much any more. When I rerolled a character I had a very hard time locating an SG82 rifle and that's just in the marksman tree which is second tier if I'm not mistaken and the price most were charging for it (these happened to be the only people carrying them apparantly because I couldn't find them anywhere else) was more than I would have to pay for a laser rifle which cost me 6k.

I'm asking the developers to please not hurt the economy any more than they have done. You are targeting the end result of problems you put in and not dealing with what could be done somewhere between the beginning and end of that process. This game feels like work already. There's already too much of a stress level here and I'm paying to work. The added stress or anymore stress beyond this is unneeded.

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Hero_DarkJedi wrote:

Monopolies are not limited to a single company ... a group of companies that control 60% or more of an industry are considered to have a "collective" monopoly.

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What do you think would happen with these caps? You call a group of people maintaining 60% 'dominance' of the market as a 'collective' monopoly. What do you think will happen if such low vendor caps will be instigated?

Encouragement of collective monopolies.

It will be tough to run independent operations - those people who act as a 'collective' and set up gigantic malls will, in effect, be your 'collective monopolisers'. The drive is to have an establishment that people enjoy shopping at. It's clear what annoys people most about shopping is having to go from place to place. Clearly, a mall that provides everything will be the desired service.

Those people who cannot afford to play dedicatedly, who aren't part of a huge mercantile group, or who do not have multiple accounts with which to set up more vendors will be shut out. That's your monopoly set up right there. Do you think people will just suck it up that they can't hardly stock anything worth a darn? They'll group, consolidate, form super malls, got more accounts for more vendors, while those who can't are left behind.

I agree in principle that unlimited storage is wrong, especially combined with the fact vendors can be kept after skill revocation, and I believe that is the key problem more than anything else - but the caps as they are, while attempting to stop unlimited storage, is hurting everyone else.

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Gavvot wrote:
I didn't read the whole thread, but I just wanted to point out 1 thing :

It's about 5 days now that we hear again and again and again that master merchant with 660 items for sale will have to restock at least twice a day.

I have some doubt this is the majority of Merchant.

However, this isn't about pure monopolies but about the fact that some Merchant hold a very big part of the market.

Concidering some sell 660 items, including crates of 25 items, twice a day, according to what they say,
I have some difficulties concidering it's pure fiction.

People weren't whinning that much if it was pure fiction.

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Bermag wrote:

It is not about selling 660 items in one day, very few do that. But me as a ws I haveat least60 different models. Then I also sell powerups and resources. A limit of 660 items does not give me much room to have enough of each item (I usually stock at least 25 item of each weapon). What you want to do is to stock a reasonable amount of each item so they don't get sold out to quick anddon't need to check your inventory every day. One weapon can stay on vendors for a long time withou any sales and then in a day or two all are gone. It is not possible to predict demand so you need to have a sufficientquantatity of each model. Many people buy 5 or more of each model so they can get a good slice.

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Gavvot wrote:

Well, you just have to stock more of the items that sell often and less of the items that don't.
And keep a small stock of the low sellers somewhere like for exemple in crates in your factory.

As ou pointed out, lots of people buy several identical weapons to have them sliced.
why not sell them pre-sliced? Speed sliced doesn't sux as much as people say, overall in the game there are more people leveling than people being master in a combat profession, and when leveling, speed is always better than damage.

If you don't want to sell pre-sliced, and the majority of your customer buy items per 5, why not make your product available per crate of 5?

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Bermag wrote:

1) I also sell sliced (meaning even more items on vendors). But many people prefer buying unsliced either becuase they can get it sliced cheap, is smuggler or hoping for the perfect slic.

2) Also selling in crates of 5. For some reason not that many buy in crates (or might miss them, might need to inform them better). But there would still be people who want to buy singles so you end up with stocking even more items

3) I don't want to keep stocking every day. There are other stuff you need/want to do.

4) Yes stocking more of the items that sell often (T21, PH,VK) and less of items not selling well (none at all) will be the option

But I have another option will only make me and my business partner even more powerful on the market (and we are probably the largest weapon dealers on WH) than we was before. We are two ws that work togheter and share everything. We run our own shops, he is in Coro and I am in a player city on Naboo. What we will do is to put all our vendors in one location and have specialized vendors (one rifle vendor, one for pistols etc). So we will still be able to keep fully stocked vendors while our competitors will not be able to do this.

Thank you SOE for helping us becoming a monoply (no I really don't think that will be possible but it will at last increase our sales on the cost of the msaller smiths). Just like in the real world, mononpolies only exist with government backing.

I agree 100% with the original poster, both qabout the game and economy in the real world. Long live capitalism!

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We do this as well, 2 smiths together, we have 11 vendors dedicated to weapon sales where i maintain a VK vendor, a pike vendor, a 1-handed vendor, a 2-handed vendor, a powerup/repair tool vendor and an explosives vendor.

I guess we'll come out best on the entire server coz there isn't a shop that has so many vendors dedicated to weapons only.

Problem is without the item limit just maintaining the shop is already feeling like work, espescially after these many months. Maybe not a problem for u Gavvot, as u stated to me ingame that u don't sell much, so this nerf won't have much effect on your business anyway.

So just shut up about 'u have to specialise,... blablabla' coz LK-Tech has been specialised for a very, very long time now.

Message Edited by Gavvot on 08-11-2004 12:41 PM