Merchant Archive
Thread: Proposal for Updating Vendor Interface
Moepple
Tue Jul 27, 2004 5:24 am
#40
Iam still missing the Bazaar-Functionality of a Vendor where I can define sales-cost and give others the right to sell through my vendors, which is one of the features that never worked, but obviously were planed (thats why you could define admins in the vendor radial-menu in the first few weeks).
Looking at the Merchant from a crafters perspective, where only crafters use the Merchant for selling their own stuff is a wrong aproach. The Merchant is a standalone Professionand needs more Vendors to place the same time, granting access to others so they can sell and buy, gain reasonable benefits at the normal Bazaar, higher sales cap and more items.
SpottyGekko
Tue Aug 03, 2004 6:36 am
#41
Great ideas here, and I really like point 5 (2), concerning the sales reports. Atm, I am manually entering all my sales data (from the emails) into an Excel spreadsheet so that I can get a handle on my sales activities. It takes ages...
Of course, there is so much more that can still be done with Merchant... I'm sure these points have been covered a million times already, but here goes anyways:
If Merchant is to be a truly standalone profession (as I believe it should be), then there needs to be some fundamental changes:
- Only Merchants can operate vendors
- OR, as point 1 will probably never fly, crafted items should NOT carry the manufacturers name in the stats. This will allow a Merchant to re-sell items without fear of the customer going directly to the manufacturer and buying at wholesale prices.
- OR, Merchants should be able to give other players (crafters) admin rights to the vendor, so that they can use the vendor as their own (subject to a sales commission price set by the Merchant)
- Merchants should be able to change item descriptions on the wares they place on the vendor.
At present, the benefits gained from mastering the Merchant profession are severely limited, and I doubt that there are any Master Merchants that do not have at least 1 master crafting profession. In RL, this would mean that as a manufacturer, u would also handle all retail distribution and marketing functions for your product, which is not a common phenomenon.
This could be a really powerfull and rewarding profession if it isfully implemented, and allowed to do what it is intended to do, i.e. TRADE !
Radone
Sat Aug 07, 2004 12:51 pm
#42
DocSavag wrote:1. Increase Search Functionality (For Sale Tab)
Searching for items currently in the vendor and on the bazaar involves selecting a category and scrolling through the various pages of data until you find what you are
looking for. The pages are all independently sorted and finding a particular item is very
difficult.
I would prefer it would work a bit like the surveytool:
You can break down to every type of resource. Why not that for resources on the vendor? I can check that way for all creature resources, all creature food, all insect meat, untill i land at all dathomir insect meat...
Or same for weapons: All weapons, all ranged weapons, all Carabines, all EE3 Carbines...
That would be helpfull.
Would be especialy great if that is combines with your sugeestiom "4. Fix Ailing Category System" I can spot fast if a vendor have the stuff i want - because only the categorie that have something inside are shown.
Best
Belisama
LVDogma
Sat Aug 07, 2004 5:21 pm
#43
It’s going to be hard to focus on your proposed solution when many of us are curious if we need to quit the game outright. I am in a guild of 100 or so merchants, in a city with 88 shops and some 350+ vendors. If the proposed item limit on vendors is removed from this publish then yes, your ideas listed here would improve my game play.
Bamboozle
Sat Aug 07, 2004 5:39 pm
#44
Let us mark several items and put them all up on the vendor for the same price.
That would make stocking a vendor SO much easier.
That would make stocking a vendor SO much easier.
Deornwulf
Sun Aug 08, 2004 10:38 am
#45
Master merchants should be able to register the planetary location of their vendors on a data terminal accessible in the main cities or barring that, in Player cities. This data terminal would allow players to search out and even purchase goods but would still require players to physically go to the location of the vendor to pick up his or her purchase.
DarkDeathDude
Sun Aug 08, 2004 10:59 am
#47
I put this proposal in other threads , but this seems to be the correct one, Its a complete rethink to vendor interfaces, but to me, its a kinda cute idea 
Shopping is supposed to be fun, when i shop, i like to go to my local town, browse a coupleof shops, get what i need and come home.
I do not get there find I cant get what i need, so then head to the airport, to fly to the nearest starport (Cape Kennedy i guess) then get a shuttle to Mars just to buy a crate of brandy!!!, my localshops should stock it !
Proposed changes will make more empty vendors than ever before since they will clear out in minutes
DATABASE CLEAR UP SUGGESTIONS
- Stop giving out crap junk like broken sandstats, small ball, splinters, rebel plans (3/4) etc, yes its nice to havelots of different items, but since your badly designed database cant take the multitude of items that your game design created, stop handing them out, loot kits only added to junk floating about in houses and inventories.
- Increases stack Sizes on all resources, LOTS of people have suggested this and it so makes more sense, i can put my 10x100k stacks of similar resources into one large 1mill stack.
- Make 'like' resources mergeable.2 types of dolovite iron? 2k of OQ 950 and 8k of OQ 100. using stats and amounts , you can calculate an average stat, from the combined resources, calculated using the same code that is used in determining products power when crafted. So i would end up with 10K of Iron with an OQ about 300-400 ( in this example) , as for the new 'name' it would just be called 'mixed' or 'unknown' or something. This makes sense since I know chefs in real life mix it up, im pretty sure metals all get put into a big melting pot in industry in RL, can u imagine Ford cars going, sorry no more cars we need steel only from lower regions of the congo, nothing else works.
- Items that have 0/1000 should automatically be deleted, they are broken and rubbish, why keep it hanging about?
- Purge dead accounts - wellyou know about this one, should have been part of the regualr database maintence, do you people use DTS packages at all?
- Make crates repackable and larger stacks, why have 20crates of 50 when u can have 1 of a 1000 items, and the number of times this game locks on my, then i endup getting one item out of the crate when i was trying to get a split of 5. simple drag the item back into the crate! woohoo.
- Dump the bazaar, its crap, you should have small 'market ' vendors in player cities that mayors can place if they have the skill and make the limit 10k.
- List resources in vendors as a full stack and let purchaser purchase 1k or 100k stacks according to their needs. (owner of vendor sets cpu prices and lowest increment for sale) immediately a resource vendor goes from 4pages to 50 lines, since stacks no longer need to be split onto the vendor.
- Same goes for any crated and crafted item.
DROP MERCHANT COMPLETELY
There is no real need for this class of prof, instead you offer vendors in the professions that are for crafting, just like Business in Artisan tree.
Let anyone have a regualy 'coke machine' vendor via business III as usual, and have a ground limit of 1000 items, more if u get Business IV (2000) both are low really, 5000 items is much better. this would be like a regular vendor is now, thus allowing any player to sell stuff, like loots, resources etc. That covers the Mining companies that are out there (probably need refining, but I dont get paid to do this, YOU, SOE DO, its YOUR JOB, we PAY YOU, YOU Cripple US, THATS WRONG).
Have instead vendors available to Masters of the crafting profs. These vendors would be logically vendors specific to that profesion.
You would have to re arange the vendors GUI to that of a crafting tool of that profession. These vendors would be Map registered ( the bonus for being master of prof)
I am using Doctor as my crafting example cos thats what I am, and therefore what i know. (it counts though for AS,WS,Artitect,Artisian, DE, Tailor,Chef, Medic, did i miss one?)
- So a MasterDoctor vendor lists all the available craftable medicines, and will flag up if there is stock in the vendor or not.
- Each craftable end item should be allowed to have up to 1000 items loaded into it, and upto 5 makes of that product instock, not totalling over the 1000 item limit. EG I come to my doc shop, i fire it up, and drill down to enhancepack Ds ok so they have 5 types of buff here, 200 32/920 kits at price X, 200 med 90 30/910s, 200 x35/870s. Then i want some stim Es, I check , there are 500 stims in stock, 2 types, some with med use 40, less charges, or master docs ones wth more. You select your product, and the number of items u need, and they split that number from the stack and hey pronto happy shopping experience
- Vendors can carry up to 1000 of each craftable Item and component (if this is too much, dont give us so much to make in the first place, if it wasnt availablein the first place, no one would want to buy it)
- This 'Master Prof' Vendor is only available to Master of said professions, perhaps have a light wieght vendor as you grind the profession, the vendor acting like the crafting tool again, once you have the ability to craft it, you gain the ability to sell it too.
- Listings should not have to be long winded like now, as u select the amount u need when u purchase (like split option on resources -the code is there already, chuck it onto vendor GUI!)
- TAILORS - items should not have to be coloured in mass produced runs, its not realistic to life, but imagine how many less items you will have. You choose the colour at purchase, so then that tailor has alot more timeto have fun , rather than make 50 of each item in each colour. A run of 1000 shirts, the 'no-colour' box is ticked and produced. Loading into the Prof Specific vendor for tailors. The buyer comes along and drills down to tee shirt in the selection, chooses to buy one, then an option for colouring comes up. Options on colour are limited, hand produced items have better colour options and are made by hand by the tailor.
Original post is here::
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=merchant&message.id=35718
Apologies if i posted this in the wrong thread, but the proposed changes make my blood boil
Message Edited by DarkDeathDude on 08-08-2004 09:00 PM
mattpost
Mon Aug 09, 2004 6:20 pm
#48
I have5 vendors total
One - has over 250 items with all my resources in it totaling 45 MILLION, that is only at 3 cpu max most is 2 cpu.
Two - has about 165 items with all droid items, batteries, heal packs, droids, paint kits so on.
Three - has about 110 items with droid and weapons on it on a different planet.
Four - has over 900 items ALL LOOT ITEMS that sells at least 100 items per day. All for cheap prices.
Five - only 40 back packs, all packs have 50 items in it, this is my storage vendor WITH EVERYTHING I OWN WORTH EASY -
20 MILLION - in armor weapons crystals furniture harvesters loot kits ( ie rugs gongs ya know) Loot galore
There is no way i have any room any where for all this stuff.
SOE what am I suppose to do? You told us this was an ok policy to use these vendors like this. Now some of us stand to lose Millions of credits worth of items. At the risk of sounding cliche - I have no idea what im going to do and there is a strong possiblity of leaving this game do to the nerfing and our personal loss of items.
Here is the ironic part. Where is all this stuff going to go. Im not talking about the loss now. Who is suppose to take it. Think about it if i sell it someone else has it. That means the totla number of items is still the same just not with me. when you lower the total number of items you bring the product to a lower level..
Supply and demand if supply is up cost is down. OMG simple economics. If supply is low price goes way up.
Please dear God tell me you DEVS covered stuff like this in college.
This is nothing more than an attempt at a COMMUNIST SOCIETY. A small group of rulers do what is best for the people.
WE live in democracy. WE THE PEOPLE pay your salary. DO NOT DO THIS NERF
thegadgetmaker
Mon Aug 09, 2004 8:01 pm
#49
That is true, if there are 10 billion items on my server and all of a sudden theres only room for 1 billion, where are the other 9 billion items supposed to go? Any crafter who's worried about this situation has 0 free lots already Im sure 
Solitiri
Mon Aug 09, 2004 9:21 pm
#50
Doc:
I was thinking more of putting the search function on the bazaar vendors for the area/region/planet. Fix the catagory and itemization but let it report a list of the items of all vendors from the bazaar. That would be a central place for everyone to check on things and go to where they want to buy the item by the waypoint. Maybe put it on all vendors but I was thinking it would lend more to the bazaar than anything else. I had envisioned it similar to the bazaar in EQ but retrievable from the city bazaar.
Perhaps that would work into the Merchant class that you need advertising 3 to get your vendor on this feature.
A buyer would still have to search on each planet.. or not... depending on if it would work.
That was just my thoughts on it *shrug*
Bermag
Tue Aug 10, 2004 5:08 am
#51
I think having a search function on bazaar that would list all vendors would be a bad idea:
1) Take away the skill (not talking about profession skill but personal skill) to market your stuff
2) Those queries would kill the database more than anything else
Solitiri
Tue Aug 10, 2004 10:03 am
#52
I am a little more awake now. I will try to say this more detailed. If you guys don't think it is a good idea that is okay, I just want to know I explained it fully
Let's say you want Rainbow Gemstone, a rare item. Currently you have the following options:
1. Search the bazaar.
2. Look at the planetary map forresource shops and go to each one. You don't findit so you have to go to another planet and try again.
3. Survey for it but you would still have to survey on every planet and then most likely come up empty.
This is exhaustive and frustrating to me. Spend your whole gaming time trying to find a particular resource to make whatever it is you needed to make with this stuff. Then not find it for any number of reasons but the bottom line is, you didn't find it.
The Master Merchant line has on the left column, third up (sorry can't remember the name of this tree), global listing of your shop. But it still does not tell anyone what you have on the vendor. The buyer is still having to travel all over the galaxy to look at each and every single shop. The global listing should be the items on the vendor and shown on the Bazaar.
The buyer would see who on the planet has this item and the prices. They can buy it there or go to the shop and buy it. If they buy it from the Bazaar terminal, they would get the email to the shop waypoint. They would still have to pick up the item at the shop.
What is the benefit of this?
1. They buyer can see if the item is available for sale throughout the planet. Globally might be too much so I am saying just a planet list. You would still need to jump planets to check all the vendors on that planet.
2. People are saying the item limits on the vendors will drive out the little guy and drive up prices. With this system, the little guy has just as much of a fair chance as the person with 12 accounts and a huge mall. Prices will have to be competitive if you want your product to sell. This will save the economy. The item limit is still too small but perhaps that could be adjusted.
3. The empty vendor would not show up at all with this system because it is the products listed, not the vendor. The customer would not have to waste their very precious gaming time searching for a non existant resource or piece of clothing or whatever.
Is this too much for the database? I don't know, I am not a programmer. If it is then the idea will not work, I guess. All I know is as the buyer and the seller, this system would be more streamline and would give more meaning to master merchant. It does not eliminate the need to have master merchant. There is still a skill point issue that may or may not need adjusting.
That is my thinking about my first post on this thread.