Merchant Archive
Thread: Merchant Top Issues List (as of May 2005)
After Pub 20 goes live, I'm gonna make a pass through the list and re-submit it.
If you see something that is on the list that is no longer an issue, let me know.
Pub 20 is sure to bring its own set of bugs so everybody cross your fingers.
It is nice that they are finally fixing (or at least attempting to fix) the resource bug though. What did it take to get them to fix it? A bribe? Initiation to the Parsec High Club? Does Elyssa still have a soul?
Dimear wrote:
It is nice that they are finally fixing (or at least attempting to fix) the resource bug though. What did it take to get them to fix it? A bribe? Initiation to the Parsec High Club? Does Elyssa still have a soul?
The process went like this:
1) Community reported it.
2) I relayed it.
3) Devs received it.
4) Time passed.
5) Patch notes said it's fixed.
I would have liked some feedback along the way that they at least acknowledged it as a bug and were working on it, but that never came.
Can vendors be named after other professions? I'd love to know what's causing it to reject.
I know that the name filters are largely non-negotiable, but I wonder if they would be able to code in specific game-related exceptions.
So you couldn't name a vendor "Han" but you could name it "Enhancers"
Elyssa wrote:
Can vendors be named after other professions? I'd love to know what's causing it to reject.
I know that the name filters are largely non-negotiable, but I wonder if they would be able to code in specific game-related exceptions.
So you couldn't name a vendor "Han" but you could name it "Enhancers"
Yup,sure can. Always amazed that Architect wouldn't work. Can be Weaponsmith, Meds, Doctor, Bio-Engineer, but no Architect.
/cry
Remember this as you read this post. I started the game on third day of live, after playing beta. I have been a merchant since getting up the commerce tree of artisan in the first month. I have been through all sorts of hell with vendors, especially the worst lag, items missing and shuffling sessions that you can think of. I was there when cities and mounts came in, causing lag that nearly set my business back days because I was spending 15 minutes putting up one item. Then repeating the experience when vehicles came to live. And then early in 2004 I experienced a total loss of items worth more than 1 million credits from my vendors due to them sliding out the black hole called “time expired” to which I received no warning. I swore up and down that I would never play the game again. But after being away for a while (6 months or more) I was drawn back by the promise of space. Now after playing off and on some of late last year and some early this year I have decided to continue due to space being fun. I am a master merchant, master smuggler, 4444 pilot with a few leftover skill points.
I have some thoughts about Elyssa’s top merchant issues and so I will be quoting her in spots and adding my ideas or concerns.
#1 Gameplay - Vendor Interface Overhaul
- The vendor interface is very clunky and inefficient.
- The sales, offers, and stock room interfaces need fewer clicks and batch processing support to allow large-scale sale sand re-pricing efforts to be done with a minimum number of clicks.
Agreed, but then so are a lot of other interfaces. They should all be fixed, but as a merchant this would be the one I would most like to see fixed.
- A feature commonly referred to as the "magic relist button" which would allow the merchant to select multiple items in the stockroom and with the click of a single button, all selected items would be placed back on sale at their previous sale price with their previous player-entered description intact.
- Batch sales listing which would allow the merchant to select multiple items from their inventory and place each item on sale at a single price with identical player-entered descriptions by pressing a single button.
These 2 things and a few new features from below would make being a merchant worthwhile for me and save me game time.
- Give an option to disable offers on a given vendor to prevent random people offering unwanted items.
For the offers problem why not have an “administration list” where we can tell the vendor who is allowed to offering things to our vendors. This would allow our regulars to be on the list and we wouldn’t be inundated with useless offers from others.
#2 New Feature - Consignment Sales Support
#3 New Feature - Directed Sales
These 2 features and those in the requested items would be such a change to the way I do things. I agree with these entire 2 things whole heartedly.
#4 Gameplay - Vendor Email System Overhaul
- Email needs to be generated when a vendor's maintenance pool drops to zero.
Zero is a little late, how about 100 credits or something like 1 day worth of maintenance. Then I won’t have problems with damaged vendors. Additionally why do vendors decay in the inventory? I had stored one for a few days because the GH manager wasn’t available when I created it. When I placed I lost a few days of maintenance immediately when I placed it. And one other annoyance about this, why do we have to use a house to create them? Why not a button in our action dialog like any other professions abilities. Then I could have created the vendor on the spot while waiting for the GH manager to show up to give me rights to place it. No griefing cause I can’t place things in a building that I don’t have rights to, no wasted time or credits, everyone’s happy.
#5 Gameplay - Merchants are concerned that the Profession is being devalued.
This is one area that I have been very concerned about for some time. I have thought about it a lot and realized that the merchant profession is one that really isn’t necessary. Why? Because anyone can do it without wasting skill points. They could cut merchant from the game and there would be only one major change. All commerce would be happening in the NPC towns and there would be huge lag from all the people doing business in concentrated areas.
My biggest fear is that as more and more merchants realise the futility of trying to sell outside of the bazaar is just costing them hard earned credits for no reason at all, they will quit and go get a combat, medical or crafting profession and not waste the skill points on something they can do for 10 credits a listing. Imagine a game with no merchants. I have thought about dumping the profession myself. I don’t because I swore when I started playing SWG that I wouldn’t give up on the 2 professions that interested me the most, smuggler and merchant.
What’s the answer you ask? I think we need to go back a few steps. If all of the changes proposed by Elyssa in this thread were to come about, the one big change that could then be implemented is either the removal of the bazaar all together, or curtailing the ability of anyone other than merchants to sell items on the bazaar at more than 10 items and higher than 1500 credits. I believe that doing so would really make merchants feel useful and it would allow the players who are merchants to have more to do. I would be making more deals with “suppliers” and enjoy running a business. Right now I have a storage bin that sells stuff I don’t want to those who pass by. It feels more like a garage sale then a business. I know that one argument against this is “what if there are no merchants on a server?” or “the dev’s would never give a group of players that kind of control.” If it was thought out, I think the dev’s could make it work. I also tend to think that there are a lot of people who play merchant and feel the same way.
#6 New Feature - Image Design Support for NPC Vendors
- The current method for creating a vendor is cumbersome when your goal is to create a vendor with a specific look. You essentially have to create vendors over and over until you randomly get one that you can live with.
- Merchants would like the ability to have their NPC vendors Image Designed to customize their appearance.
- We believe that Image Designers are ideal for this job and would support a /consent system that allowed a vendor to be altered by an Image Designer.
- Note: The ID should be possible on vendors which are placed, initialized, and stocked or it will be of little value.
Yep. And this sucks big time. I also feel that the game is always randomizing them to give me old fat ugly twilek females. I have always tried to do something different than all the other players do with their vendors. I don’t like the labelling of them with “Hadec’s Great Sizzling Blasters” or some such thing. Instead I treat them like the sentient’s that they are and my toon’s “Sister’s” (vendors) get names. I think this is especially effective in merchant tents as I can use the tent to name it “Hadec’s Great Sales Mart” or some such thing. Spending hours to get the right NPC twilek female to represent my toon’s sisters is such a drag.
#7 Bugfix - Wookiee Wear
Just one comment in this section is due as well. It is my understanding that the vendor barking Wookiees use basic. Should this not be changed to speak shirywook?
#8 Bugfix - Barker Droids Auto-Store on JTL Travel
One comment I have about this. Why can we only have out one barker droid? I would like to have one running in Coronet and one in Theed. How about 3? More? I know that people are going to scream bloody murder over this, but think about the logic first. What if I have a merchant tent on Tatooine, a vendor in my house on Naboo, and a vendor in a GH on Correllia? How can I advertise with just one droid? Merchants should get the ability to have more than one droid out at a time according to skill boxes just like the number of vendors. These droids should not be allowed to have combat modules, or anything else that would make them “overpowered”. This would allow for merchants to create more advertising for their vendors on different planets.
#10 Gameplay - Item Category Revamp
I agree with everything in this one. But I think they might have this one fixed didn’t they?
#12 New Feature - Detailed Sales Reporting
- The addition of the /mailsave command has made creating offline sales data easier; however there is still need for in-game support of basic sales reporting. This feature would enhance the ability of merchants to manage their vendors and maintain relationships with their suppliers.
Hmm, I have no “suppliers”, so I have no relationships to manage. Why? Because no one cares that I am a merchant. This all comes back to number 5.
#14 New Feature - Per-Unit Crate/Resource Sales
This is desperately needed. Especially if the dev’s make merchants more useful as per the ideas presented in number 5.
#15 New Feature - Merchant Packs to Address Item Limits and "Pre-Packaged" Sellers
- This item should not be droppable in a structure but rather only used to package and sell items on a vendor. There should be no item count reduction while held in inventory, but once placed for sale on a vendor, the entire pack would only count as one item.
Why an item? Why not just a feature of vendors? Make it that you can select multiple items and “group” them in a sale. This would eliminate the need for the database to hold another item, graphics to be created, and programming would just be attached directly to the vendor system. Another reason for just a vendor feature is that limits the use of it to merchants. No one else could do this grouping and therefore we would be needed more. Crafting an item is acceptable, but then we would be making those for people so they could sell “grouped” items on the bazaar and we wouldn’t see much for our efforts. This way people come to us and we have to be the one to sell items that people want “grouped”.
- To prevent abuse, the item limit should be about 10 items. The container should also not hold more than one type of any specific item such that it could hold each piece of a suit of armor, several different stacks of resources, or a complete set of clothes but it would not be able to hold multiples of the same type of item such as crystals, components, deeds, etc.
Another reason I don’t like the idea of this being an item is that I want to be able to group various items like different spices together or maybe a gun, spice, and other things and sell a “smuggler pack” or a “hunting pack”. And there are sometimes when I have 50 items where I just want to get rid of them and I would like to group them to see if some one wants it. Worked great back when spice was valuable and I was grinding spices.
#17 Gameplay - XP Caps
I had no clue. We can trade XP for what?
#18 New Feature - "Bazaar Style" Player Auctions
Again this is something that only merchants should be able to do. This would make us worthwhile. I want to be sought out because I “know” how to wheel and deal. I want players to use me as a business resource.
#20 New Feature - New Structures (Malls & Shops)
- The merchant tent is a wonderful structure that indicates the high likelihood that there is a merchant vendor inside. The tent, however, lends itself to smaller operations or specific types of markets.
- New structures like a small store front shop and a larger mall like structure would enhance the merchant ability to have identifiable structures that indicate merchant vendors inside.
I like these ideas, but I think one other thing is missing. Why can’t we set up a vendor in designated buildings in NPC cities for a “tax” or “rent” type fee. It would be nice if there was a “shopping mall” in each large town, or even in the small ones, that allowed us to go to a terminal and register that we had a vendor in that building, like doctors can, but that allowed us to pay for the right to set a vendor in a designated spot or room. I leave it to the community and dev’s to think more on it.
#22 Gameplay - Stop Vendor Rotating During Ad Bark
- The merchant can manually rotate vendors for optimal placement, but the vendors themselves will automatically rotate to face a player to whom they're addressing their ad barking. This will frequently leave vendors facing the wall or other aesthetically displeasing directions. We request that that rotation during ad barking be disabled.
How about if it is only 180 degrees arc with the center of the arc where we placed them to face?
So this is justa few ideas to add to Elyssa's and a confirmation of those that I totaly agree with. I think that all merchants should be either adding toand confirming our agreement with this or offering alternatives to the ideas presented. Together we can get the dev's to listen and fix our class for the betterment of the game.
Message Edited by DawnTreader777 on 08-08-2005 12:04 PM
Hi,
I have requsts/issues that i'd like to see
1, The ability to RE-SELL stuff on my vendor without having to send them to the stockroom then sell them by either clicking each one or retrieving them and selling them via my inventory. I have written a couple of suggestions below on how the whole process can be made quicker when time runs out on items on vendors...
1a, my suggestion to fix the vendor stockroom problem occuring regularly on unsold items :- This would be to have a RE-SELL icon when you right click any item you have on your vendor, this way you can resell all items you have and save a lot of hassle re-pricing and storing stuff on the vendor again from stockroom or inventory.
1b, if you were able to place items on the vendor in Bulk this would help a lot too, in the current system you have to place items on the vendor one by one andprice them individually. It would be good to have an option where you could select (right click for instance) five to 10 identical items after highlighting themand an option comes up 'SELL ALL 5-10' in the list when you right click the highlighted list items,and then all you have to do is place 1 price you want all items to be listed for.
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2, Add the ability to change the name ona vendor, sometimes this would be usefull
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3, Add an ability for someone to hire a vendor from a merchant ;- Only catch will be that the vendor will count as one of the merchants maximum alowed, but would help some non-merchants sell things they have etc.
3a, Suggestion would be to make vendors similar to lots, when one is placed either for themselves or for a customer - the customer has sole responsibility to care for it from that point it's placed, should maintenance etc stop and it be taken away, the merchant gets the vendor lot back. One downfall will be that a merchant would never be able to give up his/her proffession untill all vendors were off the server, but the good point would outweigh the bad and you may have other idea on how this could be done.
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4, give vendors character, make am smile when you buy something from a npc vendor
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5, Add an option on vendors where you can compare your products prices with others in the galaxy. Either through a price check option on each item or a bizarre-like feature.
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That's all i have for now,
Kilomania
This isnt an issue, so much as maybe a suggestion to the devs. Alot of merchants dont want combat going on in their shops. They dont want valued customers being attacked, because when this happens, it takes away from the bottom line for said merchants. So on to my proposal.
How hard would it be for the devs to create a new vendor ability to prevent combat from happening within their store? This would give purpose to having master merchant again, or hiring 4. This would allow for a toggle on the owners store that would prevent combat from occuring in the structure. To offset this ability, it could also allow for an increased maintenance cost to the store. IE to resemble hiring guards or a protection organization.
Prior to this last patch, it wasnt much of an issue. Most of the gcw takes place in bases or large cities. However, with this patch you now have the new jedi/bh tef. Last night alone, I had 2 of my jedi customers attacked within minutes of entering the store. I dont want my store as a combat zone. I pride myself on trying to keep a neutral store, and if we could something like what im suggesting instituted, would fix this issue.
To keep this from being a griefing for the bh, there would have to be checks and balances. IE, allow this only at master merchant. Thus, if someone gets to master merchant, enters this and then drops master merchant, then this ability would be lost immediately. I know that this probably would mean alot of coding, but its just an idea.
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and here's how you - the devs - can do it
The droid detection deviceshouldblock npc's and droids (using a audible alarm that can only be heard by npc's)from entering a building, this should however still enable player characters and any creature handler petsto enter.
Maybe you could add another device that could block droid detection (i.e. BH droids) for 5 mins and a circle put on map for a BH saying JEDI is hidden and is within this 300m radius. Just an idea...
Kilomania