Merchant Archive

Consolidated Vendor sales emails on a daily basis (maybe let us choose 1, 2, 4 times a day) so we do not get our mailboxes filled.

I really like Merret's post.

I agree with the list, for the most partas is. I'd like to offer a couple of trivial things for thought.

We might want to rethink the 7 day expiration. Not because its not wanted or needed, but because since they are already are having data base problems, IT WILL NOT HAPPEN. Sad but true.

I would like, when I'm in my vendor checking offers ect. the default is "this vendor" as apposed to region.

We need some active advertising, not just passive( or it might be visa versa), anyway, we need some forms of advertising that stuffs our names and wares down customers throats. Relying on world map sucks for a couple of reasons. 1) We have to reset it daily (and this is the smaller of the two reasons) 2) Hardly a person anywhere USES it.

Finally and this one should be real easy, I'd like to see the title of efficiency 4 changed from businessman (already in game) to MBA.

I would like to have the title Tycoon for Master Merchant

I would like to be able to sell more than one item at a time for the same price.

More lots for Master Merchants, or the ability to place other structures (tents) without using lots.

Signs, banners that you can write on! I want my customers to see whenitems get restocked or if I run a special on something. or fix custome add barking...

I would like to add my SHOP to the map not just each individual vendor.

Remove the 7 day kick out thingy, make it at least 14 days

Better lighting in my shops, maybe special lighting, and special furniture for merchant shops.

I also don't need an email when I purchase an offer from my own vendors. I think I know where I bought the item and where. It only adds mail spem. LOL

Chiana

Okay guys I will compile the list and post it later (sat morning I suspect)

Marqie,

You've got great stuff here, and I agree with the issues and the ideas here, but I think you need to fight the most important battles first and then move on to improvements.

Number 1 Merchant issue: The entire class is nothing but window dressing. Add real monetary incentive to being a merchant and more people will choose it. Cool looking vendors, talking vendors, Waypoints on the planet map, all useless because the net and these message boards make communicating with more than enough people to sustain a business too easy. I'm usually cleaned out of my primary product (armor) every night. Better merchant skills should mean real monetary advantage. The lower maintenance fees is a good line of thinking, but there is so much more that could be done to make Merchant worthwhile.

Number 2 Merchant issue: Bugs with vendors and factories are killing us, period. They have to be fixed, from vendor maintenance to vendor items to disappearing items, they are just killing us!

Keep it simple, loud and repetitious and you'll get noticed!

My ideas for improvements to our skills:

1. I want to buy and sell items from the bazaars remotely. There should be a shipping and handling fee based on distance. A skill should let you "link a vendor" into the nearest bazaar terminal.

2. I want to be able to research average prices for things I sell through the bazaar and through all "linked vendors." This will greatly aid newbies and "casual players" that simply don't have the time to comparison shop or develop a spy network. If someone opts to not link their vendor, then their prices won't be reflected and they won't be able to shop remotely.

3. I want automatic cost savings on transactions for better merchants. That means anything bought or sold through my vendor should give me some percentage of credits (in my favor) based on skill. So yes, if someone puts in an offer for 500 credits I should be able to buy it at a reduced price and still pay the person 500 credits. There is potential for abuse here, so a limit on the number of credits is in order, but this way "casual players" don't have to spend 5 hours arguing about buying some hide. Expert merchants should be able to "swindle" credits out of customers and still make them think they are getting a good deal. Doing this manually takes too much of my time. This is a game, I have a real life, and no I dont want to try another profession. Let's make this one fun and meaningful and useful for someone who plays 2 hours a night, maybe.

4. I want a /kill command for my shop. Not /eject, I want /kill. I deal with so many people every day who just need to die that a simple /kill command will make my life and their life so much easier. Oh yeah, and /kill should encompass and automatic /ignore and /ban too.

All great points, but until my customers (and me) are able to retrieve items from my vendors I see no point in discussing the future. I am losing credits, materials, customers, and my reputation as a merchant.
I (and my customers) have submitted multiple bug reports and the devs have yet to address this vital issue affecting the much-advertised player-driven economy.

So working vendors would be my #1 issue. Anything else makes for good future discussion. IMHO

Has there been any thought in having items able to be shipped from one vendor to another? If I have shops on 3 planets, it would be nice to be able to sit in my main workroom and grind out new clothes that need to restock what's sold on various planets. I can't carry it all with me, so I currently have to goto each planet, create the items, put them on the vendor, clean up the emails from that planet's vendor, move to the next planet, repeat.

I would love to use skill points on a tree that would allow me to drop-off all my items at one of my vendors and mark them to be shipped to another of my vendors off planet or in another city. The time it would take for the item to show would be tied to the distance and your skill in the tree. Maybe an hour or two off planet, 30 min across planet, not sure the best balanced times.

Add that and the ability to remotely control my vendors from one of my locations, and I could control restocking unsold items, repricing items, and putting up new items for sale from one place. Then I could pick my favorite shop of the day and do custom orders there. This is the space age. Even today, store managers do not fly around to every city in the US and drop off their new merchandise.

Ok I've had a few thoughts regarding Bazaar and how Mechants operate with it.

Reduced fees are just a joke, 20 credits for a sale is nothing, reducing it is of no use to anyone.

What I think is that Bazaar has a price cap to make sure thet Player Vendors actually have value or anyone could sell their items as they liked. But if I am a qualified Merchant shouldn't I be allowed to charge what I like on Bazaar?

It would be part of the Efficiency branch, you could be given extra sales, say and extra10 Bazaarsales to add to your original 25...but then you would get 5 Premier Salesthat you could use to sell an item for whatever price you like. This would mean Vendors were still useful, but you could give a little sample of your products to the masses to tempt them to visit your Vendor.

Merchants should also be able to set-up a 'Bazaar Profile' that would perhaps give a waypoint to their Vendor and a signature - part of the Advertising branch.

Honestly, I don't think asking for NEW merchant abilities and features is what is needed, although many good ideas have been presented here.

My God, a full 90% of our existing skills are BROKEN! Many of us would be happy to just have what we are SUPPOSED TO HAVE.

And judging by how long it takes them to fix even crucial bugs, I'd say they have enough work in front of them for a year at least.

That maybe true Bashful, but the Merchant profession is not worth 63 skill points, period. While it's a pain dealing with the current bugs, the profession really lacks any reason to master it.

Merett, Lowca

marqie even though in the response q3po said ad 2 was working. it still erases itself after a server reset so u have to retype all the time. maybe u should inform them of this. based on q's response they might not be aware of it. thanks

On the topic of multiple stores, I do like the idea that merchants should have access to some kind of goods transportation. Perhaps for a set fee (per item, I guess), you can have items shipped to another location--perhaps vendor to vendor. That would alleviate some of the problems some folks have with stocking multiple vendors in different locations.

I do hope that they crunch out these bugs, though. I've had retrieval problems with my vendors, too, (as have customers) and I'm currently happy with the NPC vendor fees being the way they are. I think they should rethink the fee structures overall, since the current structure will definitely adjust howmany things I put up forsale and at what price. (We need all of the stuff to work properly AND have more avenues to advertise before the existing fee structure is anywhere close to being needed to rein in overweening merchants.) Also, it'd be nice to have some form of temporary "ack! I can't retrieve" panic button as an option on the vendors so that customers can see what they need to do until this bug is fixed. It could auto-fill out the bug report (if the customer can't get the current workaround to work), too, and even capture some info about the vendor affected and items affected. Of course, it may be easier to simply track down and fix the bug than to add new "Can't Retrieve?" functionality to the vendor reticule. (I stuck an item on a wall near my vendor and gave the workaround plus advised customers to bug report the problem if they have it. It's not very immersive game-wise, but then stumbling over a retrieval problem with an NPC seems anti-immersive, too!)

I've seen a couple of posts about these database problems. Where is the main post about that? I'm curious to see what's wrong and how widespread it is. (Some theorize that factories are affected by the database thing, from what I've seen.)

Oh, and I apologize for chiming in late. I've only just started coming to these boards. I've realized in the last couple of days that you HAVE to visit these boards if you want to know certain things. For example, I thought the factory problem was just me. As it turns out, it's not. In a rather big way, even.

I will be happy to look back on these early days of the game in later months and say to friends who finally start playing, "Ah, but you weren't here when merchants needed help, factories didn't work, droid engineers felt left out in the cold, chefs had UXP issues,and vendors wouldn't let you pick up that item you just bought!"

--Brellian, young merchant and chef

My claim might sound odd, but please RISE vendor fees. Make it hard for vendors to maintain a vendor without merchant efficiency skills. This also means giving REAL cost advantages to the merchant tree...up to 80% off for a master merchant. There is an URGENT need to make give REAL cost advantages for merchants that compete with crafters that dont take the risk to make a loss on a sale and can afford 1000% margins.