Merchant Archive
Thread: Merchants Unite! We must get devs to take away vendors from Business 3 and 4!
If I want a sword I seek a weaponsmith. If I want a shield genorator I seek a armorsmith. Why then do people who seek a vendor not have to see an elite class EVER?!?!??!
If you want a sword or shield generator, if you're taking away everyone's vendors, aren't you going to want to go to a merchant? 
People who want clothing, personal harvestors, stim packs, entertainment healing and many other things don't need to go to an elite class either. Merchants are hardly singled out. The entry professios are alldesigned to offer a little of everything. Artisan lets you make your own clothes and your own harvestors. If you want better, you need to go to an architect or tailor. It also lets you put a single big ugly box in your living room and sell things. If you want better you need to become a merchant. I don't see what the difference is.
And people seeking a vendor can't go to a merchant and get one. They have to become a merchant to get one.
"And people seeking a vendor can't go to a merchant and get one. They have to become a merchant to get one."
Bingo. That's how the economy works. If you can't do it yourself find someone who can. Thus that spawns a use for merchant class. Artisan then sells wares to a merchant and makes all their cash upfront thus saving them time and money from a shop and vendor fees and wastes time to sell. The merchant gets products to sell to keep his vendors full and everyone is happy. 
Bingo. That's how the economy works. If you can't do it yourself find someone who can. Thus that spawns a use for merchant class. Artisan then sells wares to a merchant and makes all their cash upfront thus saving them time and money from a shop and vendor fees and wastes time to sell. The merchant gets products to sell to keep his vendors full and everyone is happy
Great! But let's make it even. No more clothes in the artisan line. No more backpacks in the artisan line. No more harvestors in the artisan line. No more weapons or food. No more artisan line.
I can see that argument. What I don't see is whyonly the merchant line should be exempt fromsharing it's lower end with the artisan.
DarkJurai wrote:
I'm sorry, this is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. In order for me, a BE/CH, (non-combat, trade oriented), to sell anything, I need a vendor, and I dont have the skill points after master to become a merchant, and a lot of other people will have this problem. This is a horrible idea.
DarkJurai you miss the point. Merchants can and will sell your merchandise for you. You just find one and offer to sell to them at a discount and they work for you selling your items. If you find a good merchant or a couple of them (or one on several planets) you will increase your sales and your exposure and both of you will benefit.
That being said I again state that I am NOT for removing vendors from Artisan class (I am a Master Artisan and I am approaching Master Merchant) I am limiting the number of items that you can put on a "Artisan" vendor and for making it fairly expensive to operate. This should help make more people look to the merchant profession.
DarkJurai you miss the point. Merchants can and will sell your merchandise for you. You just find one and offer to sell to them at a discount
I think one of the issues is that the people who are most likely to stick with the business 3 ugly big box are mainly looking for "convenience vendors" for small jobs. The people I know who want them and don't want to go further are miners and scouts who are looking for what are little more than drop points for a few clients. They're the exact opposite of the type of people (industrial producers) who are going to look to sell through a merchant.
That being said I again state that I am NOT for removing vendors from Artisan class (I am a Master Artisan and I am approaching Master Merchant) I am limiting the number of items that you can put on a "Artisan" vendor and for making it fairly expensive to operate. This should help make more people look to the merchant profession.
This I agree with completely, but I think most of the people want them removed not just altered. I think the entire lines of merchant need to be redone, including pricing of vendors. (Which let's be honest, isn't even in the game sinceanyone who's hit novice is usingwhat are essentially free NPC merchants.)
Ok, I must relent on my initial title of this post. I am not dead-set on removing vendors.
I would just as happy with altering them in certain ways. The best waythat comes to mind is to limit them to 3K price limit for Business 3. That way its a "convenient vendor" that allows an artisan to sell separate from the bazaar. And then Business 4 can lower the maint. costs of the vendor.
How does that sound?
How does that sound?
It sounds better than taking one in the first place, but still damages my friends who are in the position of using business 3 vendors.
And I guess at the bottom of it, I'm a merchant. How does this help me?
Not at all.
This change does nothing more or less than hand PAs a monopoly over all significant trade on most servers. Only occasionally do you see merchants actually acting like merchants rather than functioning as an outlet for their PA's producers. If you kill the ability of the small crafter to manufacture items with their limited resources and sell them out of their homes, you kill the majority of small crafters. I can't believe that this would be SOE's intent. It lacks business sense to give <1% of the people a monopoly on major commerce, while 5-6% of the people are driven out of business.
I repeat again, the terminals a Business 3 person gets are no threat to me, and shouldn't be a threat to anyone else. They need no limits except perhaps a moderate(say 50 items) cap on the number of things that they can sell at once. No price caps, just a basic method of regulating the volume of sales to a lower level - that should be enough to drive people to get Novice Merchant so that they can sell in bulk.
After Novice Merchant, there's a lot of work needing done. But you'll never convince me that the best way to help the tiny number of real merchants is to cut the throats of the many small crafters.
Howdy,
Well, first off, you have to have 5000 Merchant XP to even train Novice, so you technically can't remove the artisan vendors. Secondly, removing vendors from the business branch means that they should also remove all armor, clothing, guns, and harvesters also? It's one big clunky vendor. You can't make every crafter dependant upon Merchants, or force them to take the skill themselves. I don't really know about changing the vendors from Business 3, but I do know they need to revamp/fix/add uniqueness to Merchant Vendors. I myself have Hire 2, Ad 2, and am planning on Mastering, so I am by no means trying to bypass anyone. I just don't think the best way to help a class is by aiming the nerf bat at others.
Frankly I'd rather see vendors stay at business III and instead nerf the bazaar.
Artisan aren't our enemies, the bazaar is, specially when ANYONE can dump product on it for a lousy 20cr fee.
Plus it keeps people in the towns rather than coming out to our shops.