Merchant Archive
Thread: Time for customers to post, not the merchants!
joined42904 wrote:
ResourceMonkey,
I have no idea whether this is what the code would do, but when it searches vendors to tell the person searching...why not just let that be the point at which it checks whether there is stock? That is what I thought was programmed but I could be wrong.
You could put you vendor back on the map that way, but it still wouldn't show up without being stocked.
I am assuming that there will eventually be some coding where an empty vendor will be removed and that only someone that still retains the ability to post on the planetary map will put it back up. The idea is not to get the ability then forget Advert III and retain it. That's like me learning Last Ditch in Smuggler then forgetting Smuggler but keeping the ability to use Last Ditch.
I believe anyone who retains Advert III will be a 'reputable' Merchant and not mind if their empty vendor is removed from the map. It nets them nothing other than bad publicity when people announce that they travelled all that way and got nothing. Two mouse clicks when they restock their vendor and it is back on the map.
The only reason to fight this is for those who don't have Advert III anymore but want to keep their merchant up on the map. This, to me, eventhough it has been in place since the beginning of the game, is an exploit of the system.
Cidem_Relaeh wrote:
*dons asbestos suit*
Now, with that said I think there is an easy way to mitigate the impact of this change. Vendors should be crate-fed. I have already sent feedback about this and mentioned it on another forum, maybe it'll get picked up. Basically what you do is slot in a crate of any given item and the vendor interface will be smart enough to extract one when someone makes a purchase. You could go further and allow an option for players to buy multiple "copies" of the item and keep them in the crate. This would be useful for things like PSGs and especially for weapons and armor when people want several pieces in order to get them sliced.
This is indeed a wonderful idea, and has been proposed a number of times in this forum. However, the time for implementing such ideas is past, because they should have been implemented INSTEAD of this nerf, or, at the very least, BEFORE this nerf. There has been nothing done, up to this time, to try and make vendors, or the bazaar, more useful, user-friendly or practical. It appears obvious to me, that Sony cannot correct any of the problems that exist with vendors, the bazaar, or the database. They have no choice, therefore, other than nerfing vendors. My guess would be that it is a combination of really poor programming and hardware design and choices.
But, as to being a customer, I have found that when I need an item, I generally find it on a vendor that is well-stocked with a wide variety of goods. If I don't need to use the filters to specify what I am looking for, because of there being so many items, then generally the vendor will not have what I am looking for. I also appreciate those merchants that stock a number of low-priced, or low-quality, items. There are times that quality is of no matter, and there are times that I am looking for the best quality.
There are some merchants that keep crates of various items, that they sell for very reasonable prices. This would include synthetic cloth, reinforced fiber, GP modules, along with other electronics. These are not high-cost items, and are usually stocked as a convenience alongside more expensive goods. If space is limited, though, then these low-cost items will not be economically feasible to stock. But these items are used by crafters, and represent the interdependency that occurs amongst the crafting professions. It is a shame that we cannot choose between a vendor that can stock a few high-priced items, and a vendor that can stock many low-priced items. The cap on vendors should be either in number of items (with no restriction on prices), or on sale value of items (with no restriction on number of items), with the merchant being able to choose which one a vendor will fall under.
Let's say a vendor has crates of cloth, being sold for 2500 credits each. Let's say the maximum sales for that vendor is5 million credits. Then I could have 2000 crates of cloth. (Remember, this is simplified for the sake of presenting the idea)
Then let's say a vendor has sets of armor,everything soldseparately. This vendor can have a maximum number of 450 items. That would be 50 sets of armor. But no restriction on what the prices can be.
Then a merchant could have the combination of items that I see on good vendor, which is a limited number of really good quality items, and a large number of inexpensive expendable items. They would need two vendors to do it, but you could do that by allowing the one vendor for the artisan tree, and another vendor for any elite master crafter.
