Merchant Archive
Thread: Dropping skills (NOT another can I keep my vendors? thread :-))
DingoBoi wrote:
yup... /throws eggs.
Message Edited by theonebountyhunter on 05-30-2004 01:42 PM
DocSavag wrote:
I swear I am going to lock the lot of you in a forum all to yourselves till you get all of this out of your systems.
Are you kidding? These two are the only reason I come to this forum.
Glad to hear that I'm still "exploiting" merchant. To think that I thought I was okay with two vendors (one registered) at 3/0/0/0. Come to find out my Bank Terminal vendor and power droid vendor are breaking the game for the "real" merchants.
Yeah, hold your breath while I unstock my current vendors, create new ones, and restock. I promise I'll do it quickly.
DirthNader wrote:
Are you kidding? These two are the only reason I come to this forum.
Glad to hear that I'm still "exploiting" merchant. To think that I thought I was okay with two vendors (one registered) at 3/0/0/0. Come to find out my Bank Terminal vendor and power droid vendor are breaking the game for the "real" merchants.
Yeah, hold your breath while I unstock my current vendors, create new ones, and restock. I promise I'll do it quickly.
DirthNader wrote:
I'm sure there are armorsmiths on Shadowfire right now trying to figure out how they're going to compete with my "exploited" bank terminal vendor (as opposed to my non-"exploited" random NPC vendor). I'm sure it's been the true key to my success.
Message Edited by DirthNader on 06-01-2004 09:51 AM
If you say that your terminal means as much to you then the legal NPC's you dropped, then drop the bankterminal for another NPC vendor. They function the same as your bank terminal.
Ahhhhh... I see... you actually place more value in the terminal then the NPC's you drop. So there IS a greater percived value to you with the bank terms. Well shouldn't those valued items cost more to you (i.e. in skill points)? If you aren't paying for the higher cost, you must be exploiting something then.
Balkstar wrote:
Ahhhhh... I see... you actually place more value in the terminal then the NPC's you drop. So there IS a greater percived value to you with the bank terms. Well shouldn't those valued items cost more to you (i.e. in skill points)? If you aren't paying for the higher cost, you must be exploiting something then.
Another bad assumption. I place no more value on the bank terminal vendor, it was just the one I picked at the time. If there was a magic button to transform it into what YOU define as a legal vendor, I'd have no objection to pressing it.
What I do have an objection to is the hassle of unstocking, recreating, and restocking the lone vendor of my very large armor operation just to appease the whiners who interpret the rules of the game one way, feel that anyone who interprets them differently is wrong, and yet fail to provide any proof to back up their point of view.
Where's that dev post regarding the hiring line? To use another campfire analogy (you seem fond of them), I don't hear anything but crickets chirping.
DirthNader wrote:
There is a penalty. I'm no longer able to place those types of vendors. Obviously that's not enough of a penalty for you, you'd rather see countless players waste hours of their time unstocking an restocking vendors with the exact same functionality but merely a different skin. All of the examples you cite don't crete the huge timesink that changing my old vendors would.
What I want to see is equality in skills. Right now thats not whats showing. Anyone can drop their perfect looking vendor and then drop skill points without blinking an eye.
Any skill branch for any professions should not be a "let's see how fast we can run up and then run back down". That should not be the purpose of the game. Everyone needs to feel as if they accomplished something when they enter into a new skill box. Ibelieve that various types of vendors and custom clothingare afine skill to possess and that it should be something to stive for and not moved into to other lesser skill boxes.
For total equality, my hope is that once anyone removes their skill points from a box in the Management branch, their vendors that are attached to that skill box are automatically rerolled to a vendor that can be placed legally by the player. As it stands right now the inability to "place" any new custom vendors is far from an equitable cost for leaving a skill box.
That's fine. No need to bash those of us who don't want to waste hours of our life rerolling and restocking those vendors in the meantime.
Balkstar wrote:
For total equality, my hope is that once anyone removes their skill points from a box in the Management branch, their vendors that are attached to that skill box are automatically rerolled to a vendor that can be placed legally by the player. As it stands right now the inability to "place" any new custom vendors is far from an equitable cost for leaving a skill box.
p4Samwise wrote:
DingoBoi wrote:
It is a design flaw that enabled people to enter lairs and shoot critters harm free. It is also an exploit.
Wrong. Players and critters were not intended to be subjected to different clipping behavior. And players who shoot critters harm free are getting concrete rewards (XP and potentially credits/resources) for free, which is also clearly counter to design.
That makes this a "bug", not a "design flaw". And therefore, using the bug is an exploit.
It is a design flaw that let people 'fix' vehicles by using shuttle. It is also an exploit.
BIG wrong. Fixing vehicles with a shuttle was very very clearly a bug - you could tell by the duping behavior. And again, it gave a concrete benefit.
It is a design flaw that lets people shoot through walls. It is also an exploit.
Again - obviously not by design. It's a clipping bug. It gives a completely unfair edge in combat because it lets one side do damage while the other can't shoot back.
It is a design flaw that lets people keep their vendors after dropping merchant. It is also an exploit.
Not by design. The developers have said as much.
Just because something is a design flaw does not make it not an exploit.
Actually, it does. Thanks for helping prove the point.
Songe wrote:
Sorry to unburry this, but isn't a design flaw the same as a bug anyway?
No.
The "design" for a piece of software is an abstract description of how it's supposed to work. This description can be in the form of a design specification, product documentation, scribbles on cocktail napkins, et cetera.
The "implementation" is the hard code that turns it into an end-user product.
A "bug" is when "implementation" does not match "design". It's a programming error.
A "design flaw" is when the error occurs in the abstract design itself.
The difference between the two, in the context of this discussion, is that an "exploit" is defined as cheating by taking advantage of a "bug".
Bugs can be objectively identified as such, and the remedy is usually obvious (at least from the end user perspective - bring the behavior back in line with the design spec, and the bug is gone).
Design flaws are different because there is no higherstandard to objectively compare the design to. It might be generally agreed that a given behavior is not desirable, but the exact nature of the solution is not as simple as "bring it back in line with the higher authority", because there is no objective authority.
The behavior of the Management line is a bug, because it does not conform to design, insofar as we can ascertain what the design was.
The behavior of the Hiring line is not a bug, because as far as we can tell, it does conform to design.
Is the design of the Hiring tree kinda stupid? Unquestionably. Is the obvious fix for it to scramble your vendors once you drop the skills? Definitely not. There is no obvious fix. To my mind, the obvious fix is to scrap the whole thing entirely, and give all vendor owners complete customizability of their vendors, the same way we currently have unlimited customizability of our own appearance and clothing. This would allow the addition of a more economically useful skill tree to Merchant (hopefully enriching the profession), and would let the small-time shop owners have aesthetically pleasing shops that include appropriate-looking vendors.
To Balki's mind, the obvious fix is to sodomize everyone with a red-hot poker. Clearly,we havediffering opinions. Who's to say which of us is right?
The thing that goes beyond opinion, though, is that the current behavior, for better or for worse, is according to design, and that playing within the bounds of that design is playing by the rules of the game.
)And umm.. Deadra.. loved the post on design flaws vs. bugs/exploits. It is very true stuff that is used by game testers. But, you should really apply that to what you said on vendors as storage in another topic because it fits into the design flaw section of what you just posted, not the bug/exploit.
Songe's description: "For me a design flaw is when something happens that the designers didn't foresee, and as such they didn't do anything to prevent it."
p4samwise's description: "A "design flaw" is when the error occurs in the abstract design itself."
basically you two are saying the same thing. A design flaw is also something that they did see, but couldn't figure out any way to prevent it without scrapping the current idea/build and starting over (which happens in coding and can really suck sometimes, even if the new idea/build is much better)
And technically, you can exploit a design flaw, because that is really what is happening when people keep vendors after they drop merchant. The design specifically was made to prevent vendors from just disappearing. That is obvious, and the reasoning behind it is pretty clear. If there are mechanics in place to get rid of vendors, who knows what bugs might pop up to actually poof legit vendors which is probably why they stayed away from it completely. There would be a LOT more complaints from people losing vendors and thousands of items to poof bugs than complaints over people keeping vendors without the skillpoints. So that was a design choice. But, now it is causing another problem where people can get vendors without keeping skills, so now they are probably muttering to themselves and going dang it... time to scrap and rebuild completely. which is almost more scary, because it can mean new bugs and problems and lots of ugh. lol.
What they could have done? Is make vendors something merchants can create and sell, have them last a set amount of time, say 15-30 days, each would take up one lot, and then after that time, they stop working. Would be able to get your items off and then delete and buy another one or maybe buy a recharge card type thing from merchants (basically a lease) and get it working again. That is one way they could handle it. But that would only work if they completely rewrite the merchant profession and make vendors just a small part of what they are, not their sole reason for existing.
DirthNader wrote:
That's fine. No need to bash those of us who don't want to waste hours of our life rerolling and restocking those vendors in the meantime.
Not bashing you for not wanting to restock vendors in order to swtich, heck I wouldn't want to do that either.. However, just out of curiosity, if you really don't care what type of vendor you have at all, why did you go up the hiring line in the first place? Why not just take the vendor available to you at novice merchant if you don't care about what type of vendor you have?
I think the problem is that perhaps Balkster is assuming you have done what sooo many others have, and intentionally gone up the hiring line to get the vendor you want and then drop it right away.. That is to say the least, a bit irritating.. I can't speak for Balkster, but personally, I wish people who do that would just keep their fancy vendors and shut up about it.. We all know that merchant needs some major improvements.. When so many people come here to proudly announce that they helped themselves to the few benefits we have right now and then dropped the skill points, it's kinda a slap in the face..I mean really, for everyone who complains about the merchants whining about it, if you look at the forum, the majority of discussions on the topic are NOT started by a merchant..
Anyway, got off track there.. The point is that personally, I'm willing to give the beneift of the doubt.. Perhaps you had a good reason for going up the hiring line, getting the higher level vendor and then dropping the hiring line.. As far as I'm concerned (and I think there are a decent number of merchants who would agree with me), since there isn't really a reasonable way to swap vendors right now, I don't really expect you to go to all the work to do so.. However, intention is the issue at hand.. The question is what was your intention when going up the hiring tree.. So long as you didn't go up the hiring tree with the intention of getting the higer level vendor and then dropping it right away, I've no complains with it as things are now..
DirthNader wrote:
Another bad assumption. I place no more value on the bank terminal vendor, it was just the one I picked at the time. If there was a magic button to transform it into what YOU define as a legal vendor, I'd have no objection to pressing it.
I'm glad to hear that. I wish you would switch.
What I do have an objection to is the hassle of unstocking, recreating, and restocking the lone vendor of my very large armor operation just to appease the whiners who interpret the rules of the game one way, feel that anyone who interprets them differently is wrong, and yet fail to provide any proof to back up their point of view.
Shouldn't there be a cost or penalty for losing skills in a branch though? If I lost Underworld IV, my ability to buy fp would go away in an instant. If I lost Novice Pistoleer, won't my skills with a DX2 be worthless? Yet for some strange reason, vendors remain unchanged in all of its glory, untouched, as if nothing happened. When you leave a skill by removing skill points, you are supposedto be no better in the profession than someone who has never accessed the skill in the first place. Tell me how the existing systemcan be fair. Honestly. More than this "I'm too lazy." line you have.
Where's that dev post regarding the hiring line? To use another campfire analogy (you seem fond of them), I don't hear anything but crickets chirping.
Frankly they rarely respond to player run threads, if you haven't already noticed. Concidering you are an elder with thousands of posts, I figured it would be self-evident to you. They usually only respond to inquiries by the Correspondent. I suggest that Doc bring this up as a follow up to the initial question he posed to them during the 20 question session. I think all here would be very interested with the answer. And it would end this debate once and for all.