Merchant Archive

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Vaelorn wrote:

I think there's a possibility that if this change goes live, we'll see crafters selling items to customers of the same "level" as the crafter.

i.e.: Master Weaponsmith, Master Armorsmith, will only make Master level items, and those items will only be affordable by Master Elite combat people. They won't waste vendor space on low level items that aren't worth much money, so newbies will stay away from the extremely high prices.

i.e.: Novice Weaponsmith, Novice Armorsmith, will only make Novice level items of VERY poor quality (because that's all they have the schematics, resources, and experimentation points for), and they will only be purchased by low level poverty-stricken Novice combat people.

If this occurs, it won't change the high level game very much, because Master Elite combat professions can run high level missions for high pay-outs, so their income can keep up with the inflated prices on high-end equipment (this isn't including all of the veteran players who already have 50+ MILLION credits rotting away in the bank). What it will do is completely screw all the newbies, because the only equipment they'll be able to afford will be high-priced garbage from a Novice crafter who simply does not have the experimentation ability or the resource quality to craft anything even remotely close to what we've gotten used to seeing. With such low experimentation, even if the Novice used all resources with 1000 in every important stat it would be completely wasted because the best they could do on experimentation would be around 30%.

It's hard enough to get started in this game, as ANY profession, be they crafter or combat or utility/support. The last thing we need to do is make it even more difficult by forcing new players to use CDEF weapons to level up to their novice Elite combat class!

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It already works much like this.

I have become good friends with a female AS who got very tired as a novice combat player looking for new lower-level armor, so she saw a need and filled it. Over the next months, she worked very hard gathering materials and non-grinding up AS, she sold virtually everything she made on her way up. Newbies loved it. She started with Padded (remember padded armor?) and worked her to Ubese. Once she became Master, and had spent the required months it takes for any elite Crafting profession to gather the "best" resources, by this time all the noobs who bought Padded and Ubese were at the level that they wanted advanced composite, and she grew with her customer base. These days she still sells the best armor at prices that anyone can afford, and caters to all levels. She makes no money on the little stuff (Padded/Ubese) anyomore because she sells it so cheap - because no one else is selling it! If only everyone were as industrious as she was and will fill this need, she'd LOVE to stop making it. But very few people are willing to do what it takes to be a true Master Crafter in SWG, not just someone who gets a skill box and expects to be a millionaire.

Anyone that whines about not being able to compete wants instant-gratfication. Grinding your way to master is just the begining - being a Master crafter is MUCH more than that. You can't expect to macro-grind and suddenly become successful. They need to wait for resource spawns or expect to pay through the nose for them - both of which take time (waiting for the spawn or earning the credits to buy). They need to find a customer base. They need to refine their skills and learn what materials do what. They need business sense.

Regardless, this change will not help those whiners who aren't willing to put in the work. It's simply going to make it harder for those of us who have worked very hard to serve our customer base to continue to serve them. Harder, but not impossible. Those people are still going to make crappy products, master or not, until they DO put in the time and energy into waiting for/finding the best resources if they want to compete.

In the end, it's the vast majority of players in this game who are fully-combat that will be paying for this, in terms of credits and not being able to find the items and tools they need to play their game. If they have to wait for me to restock, they will - they don't want crappy items, they will wait until the best are available and they will hoard them when they find them. They see good guns, they will buy 10 or 15 instead of 5. Good armor? They will buy 5 sets instead of 1 or 2.

The tools are there for someone who wants to put the time and effort in, and if the intention is to make it easier for them to play the game by making it harder for the rest of us they will fail miserably.

AO

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Sigrun wrote:

If they want to give the "little guy" a chance against this sort of thing, the way to do that is NOT to eliminate the big guy's ability to sell.

It's to give buyers a way to easily find goods for sale.

Say I want to buy a Scout Blaster...

I walk up to the Bazaar terminal in Coronet and hit the "Search" button. Up pops the Bazaar's GUI that I use to drill down... I want a Weapon / Ranged / Pistol / Scout Blaster. I don't really want to travel off-world if I don't have to, so I select only Coronet from the list of planets. I could select multiple planets, I just chose not to because I don't want to travel. Then I click the "Do Search" button (or whatever).

After a moment's pause, the UI comes back with a listing of all the Scout Blasters on Coronet. Well, not all of them. It lists each unique type. Uniqueness is defined by a combination of serial number and vendor (so a vendor with 20 identical scout blasters shows up on one line). For each weapon, it lists the primary vital stats (speed, min damage, max damage), price, location, and quantity. I spin through the list and double-click on one that interests me. Up pops a detail window that shows all the gun stats. I don't like the HAM costs on that so I cancel out of the window and keep looking.

Eventually, I find one that I like so I buy it. I receive an email with a Waypoint to the vendor that's holding my gun for me (that sounded wrong!).

Time sink traveling to empty vendors? Gone.

One guy cornering the market? Only if he prices himself into it, I suppose.

Seems like a reasonbly level playing field, without nerfing our ability to actually, you know, sell stuff...

Message Edited by Sigrun on 08-09-2004 06:39 AM

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If only the DEV's would see this idea!

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DocSavag wrote:
You are right. There is more to the item limits than just database stuff. There is an economic concern. The devs think it is a serious concern to have too much of the economy in a small group of peoples control. Are they right? Probably though the people who have worked hard to get there obviously dont' see it that way and why should they? But those who are trying to break into those markets probably have a different view.

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There is a reason I have not taken up a crafing profession. It is too hard, and they have to deal with too much BS as it is right now. I gather resources and slice for the oldest active weaponsmith on the Flurry server. (He is also a master merchant by the way)

About once a week this weaponsmith bellyaches about how he would love to have an armorsmith in the shop. About once a week i want my smuggler to take up armorsmithing, but I can't. Resources, getting organic resources, and using skill pooints just to be able t sell something for more than 6000 credits is just not worth the trouble of me becoming a crafter. I've tried it before. I am very active in the combat medic comunity and at all times try to keep a list of combat medic mechants to send others to. I have 3 CM vendors that make very good stuff. I can also make meds with the same stats. I could make them in bulk. I have tried getting mechant skills and selling it to the public. Not worth the trouble. Period.

The problem is....I see, as a customer, that this will hurt the player economy, not help it. I hate nothing more than looking for a new suit of armor and sorting through all of the empty vendors. There are maybe 5 armorsmiths on the server where i can go and have a reasonable chance that they are not sold out. The reason they are not sold out is because the are able to store more than 110 items per vendor.

New smiths don't find it hard to compete because the older smiths sell too many items in their vendor, IMO. They have a hard time because of the resources. Look at the newest schematics that are out on TC. How many planet specific animal harvested resources do you need for the new wookie armor? Look at the new doc schematics.....Why do you need Lydium (spelling) intruse ore instead of just intrusive ore? You can take a small house, and fill it with no more than 1 stack of 1 type of resouce, and the house would be full before you have all the resources you need to craft medical items, weapons, or armor.

Points I'd like everybody to take home.....

1) if the 110 per vendor at master is being done because of database issues

• Why is there a type of fungus and wooly hide per server every 10 days instead of 3-5 different typers per server like the inorganics?


• Why the insistance on named resources for crafting schematics? Give smiths the ability to use that really good aluminum they have for everyting instead needing 3 different types of aluminum.

2) If the new chage is being done to help new crafters.......HELP the new crafters instead of Harming the old ones. IMO, there are a shortage of crafters around, because it's not fun to come home from a job to work another job in SWG

Thanks for your time in reading this,

Pahd