Merchant Archive

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LonelyGhost wrote:

1. Fewer vendors with more stuff on them




1. Crafters with no Merchant skills will have a vendor where they list ALL the crafted items they make (that they do not sell to someone for re-sale). Making it easier to find what you want from visiting fewer vendors.


2. Only Artisans have the ability to have vendors, so loot and combat-related items will get sold for less (because we wont pay top dollar for stuff...there is no room for markup theres no room for profit), and the crafters/Merchant will resell them...bringing those items in larger quantites in fewer places. Making it easier to find what you want and seeing less empty vendors.

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I wouldn't be totally opposed to more cost if they dropped skill - but vendors are ALREADY all screwy on fees - they really should get the system working before they go monkeying with it.

Fees in general can be weird, it may just be they don't pull funds regularly - but I kept track of my 6 vendors for a period of about 2 weeks, and I did indeed lose 'days'. I'm presuming that 24 hour days are used, but even if the time increments are weird, they weren't consistant. Go fine for awhile - then gobble up 2 or 3 days at once, and since I was tracking it - I could tell those days were 'lost'.

It's not easy to see - and unless you track it over several weeks, most of us probably don't notice it - but there is something funky goin on. Not talking about a heck of a lot of money in the longrun - so I've never raised a stink over it, but I can tell ya - taint right McGee.

( T ) 10k

starblade

Wire3k if you arguments are carried out to the fullest it will destroy this game. Let me show you.

"It's a win/win for customers - from a customer's viewpoint - the more vendors around the more options they have - this is a good thing. In a total playerbased economy, not being able to find essential items is gamebreaking. "
We could say that about weapons as well. The more people the make weapons the better for the customers, why should only weaponsmith make weapons for the masses. That way the customer would have a much better selection. And when the same was done to tailors, armour smiths, droid engineers, chefs, and so on the crafter would have a much better selection of good to make, as well and more skill point to spend on other stuff.

Is this the sort of game you wand to play?

And to RumblingSky. What was the benefit to the general population of the server when thair pet level was dropped from cl 15 to cl 10... and where was the benefit when the in the SAME change was restricted to 1 faction pet instead of 3?
It was non existed. If fact the ENTIRE redo of the CH profession was beneficial ONLT to CH's, and not even to all ch's.

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Tarnak_Archvold wrote:
Wire3k if you arguments are carried out to the fullest it will destroy this game. Let me show you.

"It's a win/win for customers - from a customer's viewpoint - the more vendors around the more options they have - this is a good thing. In a total playerbased economy, not being able to find essential items is gamebreaking. "
We could say that about weapons as well. The more people the make weapons the better for the customers, why should only weaponsmith make weapons for the masses. That way the customer would have a much better selection. And when the same was done to tailors, armour smiths, droid engineers, chefs, and so on the crafter would have a much better selection of good to make, as well and more skill point to spend on other stuff.

Is this the sort of game you wand to play?

And to RumblingSky. What was the benefit to the general population of the server when thair pet level was dropped from cl 15 to cl 10... and where was the benefit when the in the SAME change was restricted to 1 faction pet instead of 3?
It was non existed. If fact the ENTIRE redo of the CH profession was beneficial ONLT to CH's, and not even to all ch's.

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Sorry - not gonna bite on a red herring. The basic difference is between production and DISTRIBUTION. It's the difference between a many to one and one to many relationship. Merchants don't PRODUCE anything within the class themselves. Many people produce - many people buy. What you are asking for is the lion's share of all sales from many classes get funneled thru ONE class. I fully realize that's exactly what many people think of the merchant as a class as - but realistically - it's unfair to hamstring so many otherprofessions and playersfor the benefit of one, which truth be told - could be a good class as added skills, and to some worth keeping- but no matter what they do - makes a terrible standalone class unless a player's playstyle just happens to have a few quirks. You are still standnig there with a stick - instead of trying to entice people to keep their skills with carrots, carrots which BTW - the class desperately needs anyway.

You then go on to compare it to a combat change. MANY classes do combat, yet you pick up on pet changes as being for the benefit of CHs. I daresay - 15 to 10 was more an overall balance issue than anything for CHs.

The good of the many outweigh the good of the few - or the one.

"Sorry - not gonna bite on a red herring."
Well that answer do not surprise me... obviously from you posts you support a system where limited skills can be gained by one character and you have to choose what you wand to do. However only the skills you think is worth the points apparently.
"The basic difference is between production and DISTRIBUTION. It's the difference between a many to one and one to many relationship. "
If the argument were valid, in the first place then it would still be valid. In reality you do not care about the customers, because the customers would obviously benefit from 10 times and many armour smiths, weapon smiths, tailors, and so on in the game, and there are fewer crafter then users of crafted items. So why not cut out the useless crafter link between the resource supplier and the combat character? You cannot answer that can you, because it would mean that you would have to admit that you argument for giving vendors to crafters does not hold. Any argument for maintaining the crafters can be applied to maintaining vendors as a merchant only perk as it was mend to be (with the exception of the bulky vendor in business 3)
"Merchants don't PRODUCE anything within the class themselves. "
That depend on you view on produce is. Merchants definitely add value to the products they sell, if they did not you would not so desperately wan the skills.
"Many people produce - many people buy. What you are asking for is the lion's share of all sales from many classes get funneled thru ONE class. "
No I do not. That is what YOU claim will happen if YOU do not get you will. Any crafter should be free to use the business 3 vendor, the public bazaar, haggle thair wares on the streets, and do custom orders. Crafters have ample opportunities to sell thair wares with out merchants getting involved, but they all take TIME. Thoughts crafter who valued thair TIME over thair CREDITS, could them use merchant to do the selling for them and just concentrate on the crafting bit.
I do not se where the force is in that. No more force then a combat character is forced to get a medic to heal thair wounds or get novice medic them self, the wounds go away with time if you sit long enough in a medical centre.
"I fully realize that's exactly what many people think of the merchant as a class as - but realistically - it's unfair to hamstring so many other professions and players for the benefit of one, which truth be told - could be a good class as added skills, and to some worth keeping - but no matter what they do - makes a terrible standalone class unless a player's playstyle just happens to have a few quirks. "
So any skill that would be beneficial to a lot of players should not cost skill points? The ability to use stim packs-b and wound packs-b should be given to all? This is the essence what you are saying. The fact that you HAVE to be a novice medic at least to use them definitely hamper many combat professions templates, who's players would rather use thoughts skills points on something else.
No class SWG is mend to be a stand-alone class, perhaps with the exception of Jedi and BH. No one is mend to be pure merchant and nothing else, so arguing that it is a terrible stand-alone class is not a valid argument.

"You then go on to compare it to a combat change. MANY classes do combat, yet you pick up on pet changes as being for the benefit of CHs. I daresay - 15 to 10 was more an overall balance issue than anything for CHs. "
But the point is in this case the devs took something away from the MAYORALTY of players and gave to the MINORITY. They deemed that game balance was more imported that outweighed anything else.

"The good of the many outweigh the good of the few - or the one. "
Pease do not pull this ideological crap here, that "argument" can be used to justify almost anything, many of witch would be called atrocities and injustice by most people.
Yet you really wand that to be true do you not? It seams like something you desperately cling to. More often then not the many get thair "needs" reduced a little so the few can get a larger boost in thair needs. That is the way of life and by extensions of games as well, learn to live with it.

As has been stated: Either Merchant should work as intended and only allow you to use it's perks (i.e. multiple vendors, advertising) when you hold that particular skill box or everyone should be able to place vendors etc and do away with Merchant. The Devswon't do the latter for obvious database reasonsso they should fix the former.

Why do people who drop the skill box still have these abilities? It is an exploit knowingly done. Not one person who continues to abuse this broken game feature can honestly say they didn't realise it at the time of giving up the skill, or at least continued to use the abilities granted.

Whatever your chosen crafting profession you can Master Merchant with it too. If you choose not to invest skillpoints in a particular ability you should not be able to use that ability. To get one vendor as a crafter requires 9 skill points. If you want one vendor you should have to invest those 9 skill points and keep them invested. Same goes for if you want multiple vendors or any other ability from Merchant.

There is no need for an item cap to be introduced right now, and the stockroom feature could probably beincreased from the current 7 day limit if all the exploit vendors were removed. SOE can send an ingame mail giving a deadline on when this would happen, then everyone can remove their items. If for whatever reason you don't and your vendor goes with a stack of items on it tough, you were expoiting anyway. After this is done the devs can then look at introducing an item limit if it is still required.

We all have 250 skill points to use as we wish.

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Tarnak_Archvold wrote:
"Sorry - not gonna bite on a red herring."
Well that answer do not surprise me... obviously from you posts you support a system where limited skills can be gained by one character and you have to choose what you wand to do. However only the skills you think is worth the points apparently.
"The basic difference is between production and DISTRIBUTION. It's the difference between a many to one and one to many relationship. "
If the argument were valid, in the first place then it would still be valid. In reality you do not care about the customers, because the customers would obviously benefit from 10 times and many armour smiths, weapon smiths, tailors, and so on in the game, and there are fewer crafter then users of crafted items. So why not cut out the useless crafter link between the resource supplier and the combat character? You cannot answer that can you, because it would mean that you would have to admit that you argument for giving vendors to crafters does not hold. Any argument for maintaining the crafters can be applied to maintaining vendors as a merchant only perk as it was mend to be (with the exception of the bulky vendor in business 3)
"Merchants don't PRODUCE anything within the class themselves. "
That depend on you view on produce is. Merchants definitely add value to the products they sell, if they did not you would not so desperately wan the skills.
"Many people produce - many people buy. What you are asking for is the lion's share of all sales from many classes get funneled thru ONE class. "
No I do not. That is what YOU claim will happen if YOU do not get you will. Any crafter should be free to use the business 3 vendor, the public bazaar, haggle thair wares on the streets, and do custom orders. Crafters have ample opportunities to sell thair wares with out merchants getting involved, but they all take TIME. Thoughts crafter who valued thair TIME over thair CREDITS, could them use merchant to do the selling for them and just concentrate on the crafting bit.
I do not se where the force is in that. No more force then a combat character is forced to get a medic to heal thair wounds or get novice medic them self, the wounds go away with time if you sit long enough in a medical centre.
"I fully realize that's exactly what many people think of the merchant as a class as - but realistically - it's unfair to hamstring so many other professions and players for the benefit of one, which truth be told - could be a good class as added skills, and to some worth keeping - but no matter what they do - makes a terrible standalone class unless a player's playstyle just happens to have a few quirks. "
So any skill that would be beneficial to a lot of players should not cost skill points? The ability to use stim packs-b and wound packs-b should be given to all? This is the essence what you are saying. The fact that you HAVE to be a novice medic at least to use them definitely hamper many combat professions templates, who's players would rather use thoughts skills points on something else.
No class SWG is mend to be a stand-alone class, perhaps with the exception of Jedi and BH. No one is mend to be pure merchant and nothing else, so arguing that it is a terrible stand-alone class is not a valid argument.

"You then go on to compare it to a combat change. MANY classes do combat, yet you pick up on pet changes as being for the benefit of CHs. I daresay - 15 to 10 was more an overall balance issue than anything for CHs. "
But the point is in this case the devs took something away from the MAYORALTY of players and gave to the MINORITY. They deemed that game balance was more imported that outweighed anything else.

"The good of the many outweigh the good of the few - or the one. "
Pease do not pull this ideological crap here, that "argument" can be used to justify almost anything, many of witch would be called atrocities and injustice by most people.
Yet you really wand that to be true do you not? It seams like something you desperately cling to. More often then not the many get thair "needs" reduced a little so the few can get a larger boost in thair needs. That is the way of life and by extensions of games as well, learn to live with it.

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I'm not sure where you are getting non-ch pet levels reduced from 15 to 10 as GIVING to the ch class, it had very little to do with them, it was a balance issue of power.

Merchants add NOTHING but to price. They have some tools that let them run their businesses in a more successful manner - and need more tools - but merchants add nothing themselves. It's an administrative role which does NOT need to exist in and of itself. Crafters that do not care to merchandize their own wares already deal with merchants - those that care to sell their own, gee - I get this ugly red box - thanks a heap, that sure makes me feel a lot better about showing off the skills I worked so hard to develop.

Yes, there is the bazaar and hawking in public - both of which are NOT acceptable means of merchandising items for a great many people. I think I'm done here - folks that think just because there is a skilltree that they somehow have a god-given right to put the rest of the entire userbase over a barrel are starting to make me ill. Instead of spending these energies improving the class your answer is simply to try to have if not a monopoly - the lion's share of the ability to sell in a sensible manner.

Of all the professions - merchant is the most vunerable if players decide this is the last straw and take a hike. Unlike any of the other professions you are trying to compare to - without customers and without crafters - merchant by itself does NOTHING. It doesn't produce, it doesn't harvest - it does nothing. Trying to MAKE it do something while hurting the very people you by nature depend on and telling them to suck it up goes beyond lack of enlightened self-interest into the realm of suicidal.

Selling is an intrinsic to producing. Right now you don't HAVE to do both - it's an option. Merchant exists for those that don't care to exercise both sides of that option, but all options are open to them. You want to take away options so they feel they HAVE to deal with you. I'm tellin ya - if this goes in, and you are crying no one is crafting and folks are leaving cause they can't find basic goods to survive - come back and tell me how wrong I was then.

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RumblingSky wrote:

Being able to make one thing and not another has nothing to do with how, when or where you sell an item. That is the point. Every profession you mention, with the exception of Image Designer, has at least one crafting tree and those people should be able to sell their wares as they see fit. Granted, being a Doctor and Combat Medic have other more practical uses, but being a straight crafter does not. You make an item then you sell an item. You are trying to take away our SOE GIVEN ABILITY to market our wares. If it were such a game breaking bug, why are they TALKING about putting it off until publish 11? If it's exploiting a bug, why are all of our accounts not cancelled?

I have a real-worldanalogy for you. You are a farmer. You grow large amounts of produce and want to see that distributed to all the world, because you know it is the best. Yous spend so much time "grinding' away in growing it. You can sell it in one of three ways. 1: Sell it on the roadside using very modest and inexpensivemeans without advertising and hope someone stops their car long enough to investigate your wares. (i.e. one Business tree vendor in your house.) 2: Sell it in a community location that is well known but again with meager means, say a Farmer's Market. The community spreads the cost of the market between them. (i.e. one buisness tree vendor in a well known mall, with only word of mouth for advertisement) 3: Sell your wares wholesale to a distriutor that has the means to advertise and distribute your wares worldwide with the most attention to your product availible. (I think you know what this is) Yes, crafters have the right to sell your products, but the way that you sell your products is what is in dispute. What most crafters have been doing is taking the advantages of the distributor and calling it your god given right, when you did not legitimately spend the capital to make the distributorship or storefronts. In the real world, it amounts to robbery.

The reason that SOE is not banning people, is that by the time they realized what they did, it was too pervasive, thus they didn't want to piss off the 25% of the people that do it. Instead, they told the 1% of the players that are merchants to kiss off. It was easy. It was a buisness decision for them. All we Merchantsgot was " yes its a a bug, but you will have to live with it for the time being, wheile we decide how to fix our screwup diplimatically."

See, here is another point of advise (and as a "correspondent", I bet you would get more done if you followed it). When you want to institute a change that is going to affect more than half of a gaming server, you need to be ready to compromise. You need to have ideas of positive change all around so no one feels totally screwed. Right now, you are offering nothing but taking everything. If you wondered why you've been facing so much opposition over something that should be trivial, that is it.

Doc is also an advicate for Merchants as well as he can speak with members of SOE directly. He definetly is speaking for me. This is a large issue that the majority of us feel it is of top concern. And as for this "totallyscrewed" feeling, wasn't there an inner voice in any of the a-holes that stole our vendors that said, " you know, am I screwing over Merchants by doing this?" I have no sympathy for them.

I don't know how many times I've gone to a vendor off the map to find it empty. I don't know how many hours I have wasted in this fashion. It's gotten to the point that I don't even shop that way anymore. I either purchase things off the forums or by word of mouth. I sure as hell don't listen to the starport spam and I would never purchase from anyone who makes the game less playable for me by spamming and creating the lag. I HAVE MANAGEMENT 3 and enough vendors!

These problems that you mention, although very valid, are beside the point that this thread is making.

So why am I arguing against you? You are offering nothing but taking everything! You must know something about negotiation.. you certainly know about skirting a subject and speaking with circular logic. One thing you could do is promote what I've mentioned hating in the last paragraph. This will not be enough for most of your opposition, but it will be a start. Get with the program, please.. otherwise we're all just wasting our time and ultimately we're all going to be unhappy with the results.. you included when you have to drop merchant because you're not making any money either.

On the contrary, Doc has been very to the point. All I hear from the other side is justification for screwing over a "secondary profession". Doc has been very forthwith in his feelings that the majority of the population of the Merchants are feeling. He's just more politically asstute in dealing with these issues then I. He would like to have a grace period for all those that stole our vendors. I would rather see their good burn in hell when their vendors are deleted on the spot.

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