Merchant Archive
Thread: Proposal for Updating Vendor Interface
blazed_fosho
Tue Aug 10, 2004 7:04 pm
#53
Couple Ideas...
First, I would like to see merchants be able to post not just items for sale but items to BUY also.. For example.. I would like to be able to post a BUY of organic->hide->wooly @10 cpu.. anyone could offer any type of wooly hide to my vendor and my vendor would automaticaly buy the hide at the set price..buylimits could be set by max units or credits.
Second, I would like to see better controls for vendors... give vendors permission lists much like those for houses.. If I intend a vendor to be for guild sales only I would like to be able to ban all but those wearing my guild:tag from using that vendor.. need to be able to restrict sales to only rebel or imperial too (ex. faction:imperial).
Arimah
Intrepid Server
Athello
Wed Aug 11, 2004 2:54 pm
#54
What is the deal with this Lowering the number of items Merchants can have on their Vendors? I go by the names Athello and Hel on the Wanderhome server. Hel is a Master ArmorSmith, Master Artisan, and Master Merchant. My shop called T&A (Abbreviations for original 2 owners of shop) sells Armor, Sliced Armor, Rarities, Attachments, and Resources. I currently am using 6 Vendors all of which have over 1000 items on them.
If this new policy comes into affect, I will either not be able to make anything new or loot any new items to sell for roughly 4 - 6 weeks until my vendors items decrease (that’s a Long Boring Time to be paying for a game I can’t use due to no space on my vendors.)
OR, I pick out the least valuable of all these items (roughly 340 items from each vendor to make even or roughly 500 items so I can make new items to load onto my vendor. That’s destroying (wasting) about 3000 items I worked hard to Loot and/or Craft. Wasting months of my game time over the past few months) this option is just not acceptable. I didn’t spend hours everyday playing this game to just destroy thousands of items I have obtained because SWG/SOE wants to limit the room on the vendors (most likely to increase room on the Servers for Jump To Light Speed). I have paid a lot of money (2 characters) to have SWG/SOE try to save money because they aren’t willing to purchase more servers (server space) for the Expansion that they promised to have out soon that WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO PAY FOR.
The fact is that Merchants are probably the most useless profession in the game. It offers no combat, no ability to make anything, just the ability to save some money if u are a Crafter/Resource Harvester. The main feature of being a Merchant is to have more vendors to offer your customers (since artisan offers 1 Vendor, which technically is all you needed. That is until this possible Up-er-Downgrade) and additional space for items that you use yourself, but if the price is right, are willing to sell (i.e. a Krayt gun that you use, but will sell for a certain price and your house with its small amount of space is full). Taking this feature away or reducing it to the level that is being discussed will severely damage this profession as well as all crafters that use this to offer their wears to other players.
If SOE/SWG insists to have a limit of some type on Merchant vendors, then it should be something reasonable that won’t harm the craters so Severely. A possibility is to have anyone that levels up to place a vendor but then immediately drops the profession or their level, since they now have the vendor(s) they want placed, is to make vendors not work properly if the owner has the vendor, but drops the profession(s) for the number of vendors they are supposed to have. That is the owner can take items off and takedown/destroy the vendor, but no one can buy anything from it, the maintenance can’t be accessed, the owner can’t put anything on the vendor, etc. making the vendor pointless until the character regains the level they are supposed to be to have that amount of vendors.
Another option is to limit the number of items on vendors, but not as severely as is being proposed and to give a significant bonus to Master Merchants. Possibly:
Artisan - Business III: Business Ownership: 100 Items per Vendor
Novice Merchant: 200 Items per Vendor
Management I – Additional Vendors: 350 Items per Vendor
Management II – Additional Vendors: 500 Items per Vendor
Management III – Additional Vendors: 600 or 700 Items per Vendor
Management IV – Additional Vendors: 2000 Items per Vendor
(Below 2000 for Master Merchants will be a problem for the players that offer a large selection which they should be able to do if they are willing to do that much Crafting/Looting/Harvesting. I took into account one Tailor I know that has such a variety that all 6 of her vendors have between 2000 – 4000 items on them I do believe.)
Novice Merchant: 200 Items per Vendor
Management I – Additional Vendors: 350 Items per Vendor
Management II – Additional Vendors: 500 Items per Vendor
Management III – Additional Vendors: 600 or 700 Items per Vendor
Management IV – Additional Vendors: 2000 Items per Vendor
(Below 2000 for Master Merchants will be a problem for the players that offer a large selection which they should be able to do if they are willing to do that much Crafting/Looting/Harvesting. I took into account one Tailor I know that has such a variety that all 6 of her vendors have between 2000 – 4000 items on them I do believe.)
This limit should work for most craters as well as make players that dabble in merchant (especially those that after placing vendors will drop the profession) limit their vendor items and/or make them want to become a Master Merchant.
BUT in doing this (making merchant Profession limited and less desirable) there should be a benefit to merchants. One benefit that I would love to see come into affect is selecting the option to, or no longer having, Vendors automatically withdrawal items from a vendor after a certain amount of time. With a limit imposed on the amount of vendor space, this isn’t necessary to help keep server space free, since if the Merchant Caps their vendor limit, they will have to take items off the Vendor before they can offer anything else to it.
Having Vendors Automatically remove items that have been it for a certain amount of time is EXTREMELY ANNOYING as well as (for us merchants that have large selections) time consuming. I have spent many many hours placing items back onto vendors that this auto remove feature removed while I was asleep.
This is what I think is fair for all, but that’s just my opinion
Athello & Hel
T&A
Naboo, Vicimus
T&A
Naboo, Vicimus
bradimere
Wed Aug 11, 2004 5:21 pm
#55
3. Improve Stockroom usefulness
Currently to place items up for sale you have to double click the item
to view the cost you bought it at (or the last price it was sold at) and then click sale,
then you either accept the default price or change it and click a button to confirm the sale. This
has to be done individually for every item. This is very time consuming and needlessly
repetitive.
Multiple items should be allowed to be selected and sold at the same
time. These Items should be presented to you as a list with an entry for the price you wish to sell
them for. You should be able to sell all of the items for that price by clicking on the sale
button.
Items that have been returned to the stock room from an expired sale
should be able to be selected in groups and returned to the sales screen for the original
price they were sold for. (Taxes need to be figured out because currently it defaults to the price
PLUS tax which will then be added again. the sales price should have the tax rate removed from
them when it goes into the stock room)
Currently to place items up for sale you have to double click the item
to view the cost you bought it at (or the last price it was sold at) and then click sale,
then you either accept the default price or change it and click a button to confirm the sale. This
has to be done individually for every item. This is very time consuming and needlessly
repetitive.
Multiple items should be allowed to be selected and sold at the same
time. These Items should be presented to you as a list with an entry for the price you wish to sell
them for. You should be able to sell all of the items for that price by clicking on the sale
button.
Items that have been returned to the stock room from an expired sale
should be able to be selected in groups and returned to the sales screen for the original
price they were sold for. (Taxes need to be figured out because currently it defaults to the price
PLUS tax which will then be added again. the sales price should have the tax rate removed from
them when it goes into the stock room)
Would you also beable to add in the Discription of items to tranfer over while reselling ?
When i sell Suits of armor or clothing sets, i have to retype the item discription.Its color, items in the pack, Base & Special resists, ect. ect.
That would be a great UI ability to save us time.
Message Edited by bradimere on 08-11-2004 05:21 PM
SpottyGekko
Thu Aug 12, 2004 5:34 am
#56
I think the planet-wide vendor search is a GREAT idea !
It will not neccessarily kill the small crafters, because if you can get an idea of what is available in which areas on the planet, you could always set up your vendors in areas where there is less supply.
People will often pay slightly more if it is convenient to get the product. It's sometimes worth it to just go to a local vendor who is perhaps a 1000cr more expensive than one that is in another city, when you take into account the shuttle time and ticket price for a return trip.
If the bazaar/vendor categories are cleaned-up properly, that should lessen the database hit on queries as well. Only the items that belong in the category that you want to view are retrieved from the database.
If the database queries do have a major impact, then possibly the planet-wide search can be restricted to specific items only, so that you would have to type in something like "brandy" in a search window, and then only the brandy from all the vendors on yourplanet will be displayed.
Twyst1
Fri Aug 13, 2004 3:54 pm
#57
I must admit I haven't read through all the posts, so if someone else already had this idea, I appologize.
With our impending doom... errr item limit nerf, I was thinking of anything that could help, this idea is rather small butuseful and maybe easy to implement.
Many merchants (including myself) will typicallyplaceany itemfor sale on our vendors labelled "READ ME" or something to that affect and when a customer clicks on it, it will have some info to read.
My idea is to add abig"READ ME" buttononto the vendor interface where we can enter info and our customer can clickto read. Whenever wechange the info, this "READ ME" button can blink or have a glowy border of some sortto indicate new infoand after the customer clicks on it once it will stop glowing and the title can change to "INFO" or somethingso it doesn't get annoying.
This button would be valuable, itwill supply our customers with our info,free up a vendor spot we can use to sell something, and we will no longer have to worry about relisting our "READ ME" itemas well asimprove a service many ofuse in a work-around way.
Lastly, I would like to mention, I have been a master merchant since the the first couple months after the game launch.
Thanks for your time 
KirrahVesthepe
Sat Aug 14, 2004 7:38 am
#58
It was mentioned: Items that have been returned to the stock room from an expired sale
should be able to be selected in groups and returned to the sales screen for the original
price they were sold for.
This would be a great help for those, like myself,who deal in large quantities of resources. The one thing that irritates me the most is the retrieving of resources and it throws them all back together. Then I have to split them back up to place them back on the vendor. I know about the resale button, but that is not as user friendly as it could be. I like stuffing things back in my personal inventory, setting the price on one, and then click and enter, click and enter (I have my pricesthe sameon many items). It makes it go quicker becausethe resale windowjust doesn't work that way since it doesn't bring up another item afterwards.
Being able to resale multiple items as they are on the vendor, in the quantities that are already there would definitely be a wonderful addition. I do have to say, though, I am disappointed in the talk of limiting vendor quantities. I have 1500+ items on one vendor due to clothes, weapons, etcetera. I try to carry noobie items like CDEF weapons, but I also carry items that long time players might want. IfI have to limit my vendors, then that means I'll have to get rid of a lot of the noobie items. They don't sell as well, but they are there as a convenience for players and priced with the noobie in mind.
I am a Master Merchant with all my vendors out and used... I'll have to rethink my vendors now, pulla fewup, and begin over on those. They are too generalized for what I will have to do when the limits come out, correcting this now might be my only option. Just keep in mind that some of us "hard-core" merchants have literally thousands of things on our vendors at one time due to the amount of sales we encounterand will need plenty of notice before this goes into effect so we can move our items down to the limit (since that has not been decided yet)and store what we need to elsewhere. I don't mind limits, as long as they are reasonable... I know Sears can't have all the stock they want to have due to only so much store space. I will only hope that the larger merchants will be kept in mind.
Thank you for listening,
Kirrah Vesthepe' (Starsider)
Wolfbane9999
Tue Aug 17, 2004 4:31 pm
#59
Only had time to skim postings. I'm sure all these have been mentioned before in some form or other but just in case.
1. Increase search functionality.
a) transfer all the vendor data to the home computer once. Make it persistant for 5 minutes or so. If the buyer checks another vendor and goes back the data doesn't have to be retransmitted.
b) make the search function search all the vendor data. There is no point to having restocked items spread out over every page
c) list one item type and a quantity available on the whole vendor, whether or not the database is upgraded to reflect this. Repetative items are just wasted space and time. This will take care of b).
d) KISS
2. Improve efficiency in Selling and Offering Items to the Vendor (for sale)
a) Allow multiselection of items from any window.
b) Allow pricing for a multiselection.
c) Allow a merchant to select multiple items and drop or raise the price by a factor. (% OK) Get rid of the clumsy withdraw/piece sell system.
d)Allow multibuy.
e) Get rid of the 5 or 6 inane messages and required mouse clicks on every transaction. Don't need to know that if we have room the item will be placed.... etc.
f) KISS
3. Improve Stockroom usefulness
A good place to add sales information statistics to allow sellers to better meet the wants of buyers.
4. Fix Ailing Category System
a) Absolutely. Give the merchant the option to define his own catagories and the option to make a help screen describing the categories to help his customers. The vendor catagories need to be individual to the merchant. The bazaar catagories can't apply since the merchants are selling much more specifically.
5. Add Sales Information to aid merchants in managing their vendors.
a) Need the list of buyers. Need statistics on sales items and prices. Breakdown by day/week/month
ALL THIS INFORMATION IS NOT VALUABLE AND CAN BE KEPT ON THE HOME MACHINES. It does not need to be transmitted once recorded. A local applet can generate the stats. (Warning about backup probably needed but not every time system is used.)
6. Revamp Email Notifications
Exxactly what Chataka Windae wrote.
Exxactly what Chataka Windae wrote.
Sori
Tue Aug 17, 2004 9:02 pm
#60
I agree whole heartedly with point 4, EVERY RL shop has a stock room, as an Architect and Artisan, I only have 1 vendor, I do not have the skill points to be able to pursue Merchant, but... without that vendor I would have no way of selling my goods to the public. Storage is a VERY big issue tome due to the amount of items needed to make the deeds etc,I have fallen foul of disappearing items from the stock room due to them expiring without me being aware of that "feature"
In RL if we were to take that as a model, an Architect would be able to create a storage system into his/her building, why not on SWG? If someone has a crafting trade, whydo they only have the same amount of storage as a player who concentrates on fighting and doesn't need loads of storage? Yes they could build a big house for storage, but that uses precious "lots" which are needed to harvest resources. Can't crafting professions be granted more lots for houses, storage sheds, harvestersetc which would be lost if they gave up the trade?
I agree that if the profession is given up, then the vendor should be removed, but don't limit the number of items, or times on a single vendor under Artisan.
This is my first posting, I don't have the time due to RL commitments to be able to read through all the info so I maybe unaware of missions for architects etc, but I feel its VERY important for all crafters to shout out about the mess SWG want to make of crafting professions. I know there are issues with empty vendors etc. I have seen too many of them, but there are other ways of resolving these issues without hurting other non-merchant based crafting professions
Zhentarim
Wed Aug 18, 2004 5:37 am
#61
Hmm... I'm not sure this fits 100% under the merchant category but I'll give it a shot:
At the moment I have the impression that merchant is a very "underpowered" class compared to other artisan classes - We are supposed to live from selling other players items, but somehow SOE has decided to make this as inconvenient as possible for us. Changes need to made to make merchant worthwhile, especially with the new vendor item limits that are more than likely to be implemented and make life even more difficult for people of our trade. I have, based on above mentioned arguements and suggestions as well as my own ideas,thought of several thingsthat in my opinion could be a step in the right direction:
1. Improve the planetary advertising campaign: An improved GUI menu for examining vendors on the planetary map would make it much easier for consumers to find what they need where they need it. This would include easy item category browsing (ie. remove the item category from GUI menu if no such item exist on the vendor), the ability to make bids on vendor specific auctions (new feature to be implemented) and a box for the vendor owner to write info about contact and prices on custom made items.
This should hopefully make the process of finding items more enjoyable for the consumer and make selling items from other artisan classes easier - after all this is the purpose of the merchant skill trees. In addition, empty vendors should be unregistered from the planetary map after x amount of days and would have to be reregistered if the owner would wish to continue his advertising campaign.
2. Improved Vendor control: At the moment a merchant often have to reroll his vendors 20+ times to find one that she thinks would fit into her shop. This is in my opinion unacceptable because it just adds another needless and tedious timesink - in real life you'd be able to hire the people you want and dictate a dresscode. The dresscode (ie. ability to give vendors uniforms) is already implemented but allowing Image designers to customise merchant vendors would not only make it easier to find a proper vendor for your shop, but it will also add another pupose for the image designers. In the end this should add to overall image of a shop that would otherwise be ruined by an inapropriate vendor. (I for one like to come into a nicely decorated shop with nice clerks who look like they actually want to sell something)
3. More useful merchant areas: At the moment the merchant can place a merchant tent, which signals to passers by that there are things for sale. The merchant tent is a nice structure but I for one would like to see more advanced structures placeable by merchants - for instance specialized shop buildings in each planetstyle would add diversity to player cities and would at the same time draw attention from people passing through town. Furthermore, a placeable billboard structurefor information purposes should be available to merchants where the vendors ofa town could buy advertising spots with optional WP storage at a price. This should hopefully make it easier for visitors to find the vendors in the town, without needing the artisans to place them all in artificial malls as it is mostly done today. This would also largely eliminate the need for special "readme" items on vendors since that could be covered on the billboard. (Doesn't mean there shouldn't be a specialreadme section on a vendor though)
I have no idea whether it is possible or not to bring these things into code and let alone the game, but I think it could add a huge potential to the merchant class. After all, most of us might not have any items of our own to sell and rely heavily on the goods of our costumers to make a profit. Thus our job should be to make the consumers aware of where to buy the specific goods they are searching for.
Btw.am I the only one who thinks a public billboard (like in 3.)should be added to cities like Corolag and Lagstine, so we could get rid of all those annoying barker AFK'ers? I know they are trying to sell their goods, but due to the fact that people have no place to list their shops other than the forums they are forced to annoying everyone else and cause major lag in front of the starports. Ijust got 2 LDs alone from running about Corolag trying to get on the shuttle
Ps. Pardon me if I have stolen anyones ideas, but I thought I'd post my suggestions as a whole.
Vrond
Wed Aug 18, 2004 6:42 pm
#62
Top Issue has to be all the stock room issues. Fixing that alone wiuld asve me hours of tiem per week. I buy and sell alot through my vendors and the offers list poofing drives me buggy.
Aeja
Wed Aug 18, 2004 7:13 pm
#63
mattpost wrote:
I
SOE what am I suppose to do? You told us this was an ok policy to use these vendors like this. Now some of us stand to lose Millions of credits worth of items. At the risk of sounding cliche - I have no idea what im going to do and there is a strong possiblity of leaving this game do to the nerfing and our personal loss of items.
Really a none issue since items in packs still count as 1 item.
Supply and demand if supply is up cost is down. OMG simple economics. If supply is low price goes way up.
Please dear God tell me you DEVS covered stuff like this in college.
Ah perhaps theymissed that day or theystayed inclasslong enough to knowthat along with sound economics thereis also a need for companies tobetter handle inventory (ie Having to Many Items that dont sell). Thismight not be econimics but itwas in business management.
This is nothing more than an attempt at a COMMUNIST SOCIETY. A small group of rulers do what is best for the people.
WE live in democracy. WE THE PEOPLE pay your salary. DO NOT DO THIS NERF
Grisbilen
Tue Aug 24, 2004 3:24 pm
#64
All good stuff
As someone earlier pointed out, factory crates in the correct category would be nice (i.e. a crate of t21's in Weapons/Rifles instead of Misc/factory crate)
The idea to not list empty categories should be implemented.
What would really make me happy is the idea (suggested many times) is that identical items (same serial) should stack in the vendor and when clicking buy the buyer should get a dialogue on how many he/she wishes to buy (out of the total amount). This cant be *that* hard to implement. All the items should ofcourse still add to the vendor limit (pub 10)
This would make the annoyingness of being a merchant go away completely (well..)
Only downside i can think of is my merchants friend would spunk out from the altered mails from buying more than one item of the same serial 
Message Edited by Grisbilen on 08-25-2004 12:30 AM
Quizz
Fri Aug 27, 2004 10:46 pm
#65
Let me be the first to say these new changes that are happening about vendor limit is all about making more money for the greedy SWG corporation. No one was complaing about the vendor limits and therefore no changes should ofcame about. Bottom line is the greedy SWG corporation figured they could keep the costs down if they didnt have to spend more money on a bigger database. So when they try to tell u that its all for better game play, they are ful of it. ITS ALWAYS ABOUT MONEY!!!!!