Merchant Archive

Now they have re-introduced another new problem though.

I operated a mall at one time, shut it down due to empty vendors that would stand there annoying people and driving repeat business away.

I re-opened it with the new Merchant changes, assured by the 14 day rule.

Now it's 100 days - uggh.

14 days was fine with me, it was fair. You were alerted by email. It poofs, it's your fault.

Now I'll probly have to close the Mall again in a few months, cuz it'll be half full of empty vendors from people who quit the game in disgust as they have in the past......

If this stands, I'd like to see a way for a building owner to 'hide' or 'invis' an unused vendor (one with nothing for sale, because it is all in the stockroom). Make it owner viewable only at that point, with email alerts.

---

GraySeven wrote:

First, most of the changes involving the vendors are good. We are seeing empty vendors go away, and the clutter of illegal vendors thin...

But today I realized that, as a casual player, I'm getting screwed. Having been away from home for two weeks, I come back to two system messages saying that one of my vendors hasn't seen any activity and is in danger of being deleted...

...deleted with over 50 droid deeds and crates and a months worth of maintenance. Why? What problem does my full, legal vendor cause that puts it in danger of being deleted just because no one needed a droid over that period of time? What issue can this un-fun and discriminatory practice possibly be fixing?

Discriminatory? You bet. As a casual player, I'm being unfairly targeted with a nerf that can invalidate months of my game time by deleting a vendor filled with droid deeds. I don't have the luxury of playing games 10 plus hours a day, and my job takes me away from my computer for a week or two at a time.

I fully agree with all the other changes, but this one makes absolutely no sense. If the vendor was empty, thats one thing, but just because no one needs what Im selling from it for more than two weeks doesn't invalidate it. This needs to end.

---

Totally agree with you on this, just said that in another post myself, as im gone a couple of weeks at a crack, setting up the company in new territories.

---

lisasdarren wrote:

To many of you to respond to to do each post so i will jsut stick them all in one...

Dragonscout -do you understand the difference between right and wrong? word play and semantics can't change the underlying essence of the fact that doing something that clearly wasn't intended is wrong.

I am not trying to make people play 'my way' or am i having a go about people not playing 'my way' If you do something that is clearly not intended (if you can't see how poaching vendors falls into this category then i feel sorry for you) then you are cheating the system.

Cafa - This is a game, anything you do with your character (other than testing) is not work, it is play the fact you have created things and lost them doesn't mean that you have lost work. You may have lost the result of some time at play, but since it is only a game it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, it won't cost you any real money.

As to the rude CSRs, what you describe i would consider rude, and I would have emails the idiots supervisor about it, i however have never had such a poor experience with a CSR they have always been polite and helpful even in chat.

As to paying money to play this 'game' yes we pay for the privilage of making use of their hardware and software and maintenance staff while playing the game, this doesn't say to me that if a bug causes something to get deleted they must replace it, if you really think that they havn't been working on bugs then you can't be watching the publish notes very carefully. This game is very complex and like any complex software there will be bugs and it can take a long time for the programmers to find these bugs.

With teh nature of items in this game replacing those that have been deleted (even just a vendor) is not likely to be an econimcal use of the time of the personel needed to do it, thus they simply state that in general lost items won't be replaced, after all these items are only toys used in playing this game.

So yes i agree that rude customer support is bad, and i am sure that SOE could do more to improev their customer serice, however that doesn't seem to me to be the major complaint, you all seem to be taking the loss of an in game 'worthless' item as critical to your wellbeing and it just isn't, if you feel it is go see a shrink, you need help. And that isn't an insult or a flame, but a serious point, if in game stuff is getting to you that much then you really need to get it sorted.

---

Your answer continues to be poor in the fact that ultimately you blame whether I am disturbed or irritated by sub-par service on me/players. If something "gets" to you then you DO something about it to the best of your ability to fix it. You do not quit.

Fivo Asia

How can you possibly deny that it was en exploit? EnigmaBSc made it very clear, but maybe there were too many words for you. I'll sum it up: TH says it "poaching" was not intended to be possible. The community standards say things that give you an unintended benefit are exploits.

Maybe you're saying TH was lying? Or just misinformed? (Hmm.. Actually, I might be able to buy that.)

---

DocSavag wrote:
This whole exploit discussion is off topic..and moot. That train has left the station.

As to the concerns about the 100 day change. This doesn't change the empty vendor code so Mall owners still only have to wait 28 days for their deadbeat vendors to vanish.

---

Bah. You're right of course, sorry for drawing it out.

Message Edited by Malitevv on 09-24-2004 01:51 PM

---

Malitevv wrote:
...but it did not say that it was an exploit or violation ofany officialpolicy in the FAQ. And quite frankly, if SOE's official policy was that it was an exploit they would have allowed the Merchant community to say so in their FAQ.

---

SOE had no editorial control over what I wrote in that FAQ those were my opinions and obvservations about the game and the profession. I didn't ask for their permission to write what I did about the skill point issue nor did they review it prior to me putting it up. I didn't say it WAS an exploit because I dont' have that responsibility or authority. I don't see the point of worrying about it at this date however. The community by and large agreed that it was bad idea for people without the skills to be using vendors. The devs agreed and the developer who wrote that code admitted it was an oversight on his part that it ever worked that way.

You know Doc.. I have no problem with logic like yours just stating that compared to this this and this... this doesn't seem to be lining up correctly.. and suggesting the DEVs bring it more in line with the overall view for the game.

What I have problems with are people like Dingoboi who go out of their way to insult and attack others for playing the game in a legitimate way. Regardless if the community thought it 'bad' that doesn't mean anything. It was acceptable by the rules of the game, and wasn't a bug that was being exploited. It was the way the system worked... they changed it.. great.. but that doesn't mean that it was wrong before. And you can STILL do it. So it isn't a dead issue.

---

DocSavag wrote:

---

Malitevv wrote:
...but it did not say that it was an exploit or violation ofany officialpolicy in the FAQ. And quite frankly, if SOE's official policy was that it was an exploit they would have allowed the Merchant community to say so in their FAQ.

---

SOE had no editorial control over what I wrote in that FAQ those were my opinions and obvservations about the game and the profession. I didn't ask for their permission to write what I did about the skill point issue nor did they review it prior to me putting it up. I didn't say it WAS an exploit because I dont' have that responsibility or authority. I don't see the point of worrying about it at this date however. The community by and large agreed that it was bad idea for people without the skills to be using vendors. The devs agreed and the developer who wrote that code admitted it was an oversight on his part that it ever worked that way.

---

That is true. Maybe I overstated on that side point. but the primary point remains the same: it was an acknowledged problem that they took their time about fixing, but it never was considered cheating or against the rules of the game in any official fashion prior to the time it was fixed.

---

DingoBoi wrote:

obviously you have no sense of what is 'right'. "Fairness" is also a foreign concept to you.

---

lol. in that context, the only thing that i see as obvious is that our individual senses about what is 'right' and our individualconcepts of 'fairness' have absolutely nothing to do with this dead issue of whether or not "poaching" was an exploit prior to publish 10.