Merchant Archive

I know I'm very, very unhappy about this change. I'm one of the "small-timers," and I produce mid-price, mid-quality products. I can't even begin to compete on an economy of scale, and I've made up for this by stocking unusual items, keeping my vendors stocked and conveniently located, and designing an attractive, easy-to-browse store.

If it goes Live like this, it does... But I foresee my sales reducing to almost nothing if it does -- and I expect I won't be alone.

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Akaara wrote:

This will probably hurt the little mom and pop stores who cannot compete price wise from the huge PA's who can sell things at rock bottom prices.

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Its not really that I fear this will damage the economy. I don't. I think it will ruin the play experience of 1000's of merchants who have fun designing their shop, and chosing a location, and building a client base, and advertising. Players who take pride in having established something tangible in a virtual world. Those people will be devastated by the lack of connection to their customers. They will be frustrated by the fact that people will run into their shops and pick up an item from the available tab and dash out again. Or worse hear comments like: " Oh..damn I didn't know you sold vehicles..too bad I already bought one from someone else from the bazaar before I got here..."

This playstyle appeals to a lot of people. There are entire trees in our profession designed around the idea of building a business relationship with our customers. That is damaged by this change. It is damaged needlessly since we had given the devs alternative methods for accomplishing the same funidmental goals without damaging the profession or making our playstyle obsolete. In the end there is no way to know whether they found our wants and needs unimportant or just inconvienient. There was no feedback this time around except to say "here is the final version."

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DocSavag wrote:

Its not really that I fear this will damage the economy. I don't. I think it will ruin the play experience of 1000's of merchants who have fun designing their shop, and chosing a location, and building a client base, and advertising. Players who take pride in having established something tangible in a virtual world. Those people will be devastated by the lack of connection to their customers. They will be frustrated by the fact that people will run into their shops and pick up an item from the available tab and dash out again. Or worse hear comments like: " Oh..damn I didn't know you sold vehicles..too bad I already bought one from someone else from the bazaar before I got here..."

This playstyle appeals to a lot of people. There are entire trees in our profession designed around the idea of building a business relationship with our customers. That is damaged by this change. It is damaged needlessly since we had given the devs alternative methods for accomplishing the same funidmental goals without damaging the profession or making our playstyle obsolete. In the end there is no way to know whether they found our wants and needs unimportant or just inconvienient. There was no feedback this time around except to say "here is the final version."

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Exactly, the ones who are Merchants..not the folks who have merchant skills.

I do so want a search function, and have stated what I agree with.
But where is the tie in with our own skills and choices.
It should be within region, planet, galaxy for listing
It should require us to turn it on same as registering on the map(including the fee)
and some how we need to still be able to block banned guilds/people from purchasing.

I am happy they still have to travel
I know that most wont browse while there but just snag and go.

I am happy that prices are not listed at first glance
I cringe that you can still purchase from bazaar.

I am happy to see a serch function come into game
I shudder at the lack of sorting and defintion it has.

I dont mind the idea of a vendor search. I dont mind customers being able to see whats in stock before they go out to a shop. Trying to find an item amongst dozens of poorly stocked vendors sucks.

I do mind people being able to see the prices and buy the item before they go there. I do mind the fact that this will completely destroy the little crafter working his butt off for a market share. I do mind that this will turn crafting from an enjoyable way to spend your ingame time into a RL retail battle where the big crafters are wal-mart and the little guys are ames and kmart. The ones that went out of business.

Take out prices. Add convience, keep enjoyability. Think though your game design desicisions for more than 30 seconds.

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Dovakic wrote:
I dont mind the idea of a vendor search. I dont mind customers being able to see whats in stock before they go out to a shop. Trying to find an item amongst dozens of poorly stocked vendors sucks.

I do mind people being able to see the prices and buy the item before they go there. I do mind the fact that this will completely destroy the little crafter working his butt off for a market share. I do mind that this will turn crafting from an enjoyable way to spend your ingame time into a RL retail battle where the big crafters are wal-mart and the little guys are ames and kmart. The ones that went out of business.

Take out prices. Add convience, keep enjoyability. Think though your game design desicisions for more than 30 seconds.

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And I beleive prices should be there,
going to a vendor only to find an outragouse 9999999 price would be no different then walking in to a empty one, useless.
I do think the current veiw for prices is a ok compromise,
it is not front page listed, players DO have to examine and do some work themselves to compare prices.

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DocSavag wrote:

Its not really that I fear this will damage the economy. I don't. I think it will ruin the play experience of 1000's of merchants who have fun designing their shop, and chosing a location, and building a client base, and advertising. Players who take pride in having established something tangible in a virtual world. Those people will be devastated by the lack of connection to their customers. They will be frustrated by the fact that people will run into their shops and pick up an item from the available tab and dash out again. Or worse hear comments like: " Oh..damn I didn't know you sold vehicles..too bad I already bought one from someone else from the bazaar before I got here..."

This playstyle appeals to a lot of people. There are entire trees in our profession designed around the idea of building a business relationship with our customers. That is damaged by this change. It is damaged needlessly since we had given the devs alternative methods for accomplishing the same funidmental goals without damaging the profession or making our playstyle obsolete. In the end there is no way to know whether they found our wants and needs unimportant or just inconvienient. There was no feedback this time around except to say "here is the final version."

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I am afraid I have to agree with this. The merchant or a crafter/merchant has been an interesting sub-game in SWG. It involves knowing what products the customer wants to buy, figuring out how to let the customer know you have those products, knowing what the customer feels is the right amount to spend, being knowledgable about your products, great customer service and having a nice personality and overall making the shopping experience enjoyable to the customer. Thats a pretty challenging game and I think that most of us crafters and merchants really enjoy it no matter how much we complain about the occasional rude customer.

I feel that the vendor search option that is on TC fundimentally changes and simplifies the game. All of the things I mentioned above are no longer so important anymore. What really matters is if you can get the resources (if you are a crafter) or the final product (if you are a pure merchant) cheap enough and in enough quantity that you can sell the same product as your competitor for less. That game doesn't sound nearly as appealing to me. It is like going from a little boutique where you know and interact with your customers and build relationships with them to becoming the general manager of a Wal-Mart store where buying for low prices and selling in volume to increase the bottom line is the only goal.

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Gyopi wrote:

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DocSavag wrote:

Its not really that I fear this will damage the economy. I don't. I think it will ruin the play experience of 1000's of merchants who have fun designing their shop, and chosing a location, and building a client base, and advertising. Players who take pride in having established something tangible in a virtual world. Those people will be devastated by the lack of connection to their customers. They will be frustrated by the fact that people will run into their shops and pick up an item from the available tab and dash out again. Or worse hear comments like: " Oh..damn I didn't know you sold vehicles..too bad I already bought one from someone else from the bazaar before I got here..."

This playstyle appeals to a lot of people. There are entire trees in our profession designed around the idea of building a business relationship with our customers. That is damaged by this change. It is damaged needlessly since we had given the devs alternative methods for accomplishing the same funidmental goals without damaging the profession or making our playstyle obsolete. In the end there is no way to know whether they found our wants and needs unimportant or just inconvienient. There was no feedback this time around except to say "here is the final version."

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I am afraid I have to agree with this. The merchant or a crafter/merchant has been an interesting sub-game in SWG. It involves knowing what products the customer wants to buy, figuring out how to let the customer know you have those products, knowing what the customer feels is the right amount to spend, being knowledgable about your products, great customer service and having a nice personality and overall making the shopping experience enjoyable to the customer. Thats a pretty challenging game and I think that most of us crafters and merchants really enjoy it no matter how much we complain about the occasional rude customer.

I feel that the vendor search option that is on TC fundimentally changes and simplifies the game. All of the things I mentioned above are no longer so important anymore. What really matters is if you can get the resources (if you are a crafter) or the final product (if you are a pure merchant) cheap enough and in enough quantity that you can sell the same product as your competitor for less. That game doesn't sound nearly as appealing to me. It is like going from a little boutique where you know and interact with your customers and build relationships with them to becoming the general manager of a Wal-Mart store where buying for low prices and selling in volume to increase the bottom line is the only goal.

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There's a reason that Eve Online never succeeded and you just outlined ever point for its failure above. I implore you to be an advocate against this change in the correspondents forum.

Fivo Asia

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Ani_cul wrote:
And I beleive prices should be there,
going to a vendor only to find an outragouse 9999999 price would be no different then walking in to a empty one, useless.
I do think the current veiw for prices is a ok compromise,
it is not front page listed, players DO have to examine and do some work themselves to compare prices.

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If they will remove the forward and back buttons from the details box to make browsing by price at least slightly more inconvenient then I would have less of a problem with prices being listed. Right now it is just a little too convenient to sort by name, go to the section where the items you want are (ignoring those who came up with new names for the item because of sorting problems), bring up the details and keep hitting forward until you have browsed through them all.

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Cafa wrote:

There's a reason that Eve Online never succeeded and you just outlined ever point for its failure above. I implore you to be an advocate against this change in the correspondents forum.

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Umm... I have every time this has come up, but I think you overestimate my influence.