Merchant Archive
Thread: Focus Thread: Vendor Search System on TC
RebelKangaroo
Tue Mar 15, 2005 11:15 am
#53
All of my complaints have allready been highlighted in previous posts. So I will simply say that I am opposed to the Galaxy wide vendor search and I would hope that the DEVs had learned from the first time they tried this that we didn't like it. I remember seeing several very good alternatives posted by merchants that would have been much better, however it seems the DEVs ignored those too.
People complain about it being hard to break into crafting as it is. With this it would just be that much harder. I really don't see any positive long term effects from this change.
People complain about it being hard to break into crafting as it is. With this it would just be that much harder. I really don't see any positive long term effects from this change.
Akaara
Tue Mar 15, 2005 11:37 am
#54
DocSavag wrote:
Akaara wrote:
This will probably hurt the little mom and pop stores who cannot compete price wise from the huge PA's who can sell things at rock bottom prices.
Its not really that I fear this will damage the economy. I don't. I think it will ruin the play experience of 1000's of merchants who have fun designing their shop, and chosing a location, and building a client base, and advertising. Players who take pride in having established something tangible in a virtual world. Those people will be devastated by the lack of connection to their customers. They will be frustrated by the fact that people will run into their shops and pick up an item from the available tab and dash out again. Or worse hear comments like: " Oh..damn I didn't know you sold vehicles..too bad I already bought one from someone else from the bazaar before I got here..."
This playstyle appeals to a lot of people. There are entire trees in our profession designed around the idea of building a business relationship with our customers. That is damaged by this change. It is damaged needlessly since we had given the devs alternative methods for accomplishing the same funidmental goals without damaging the profession or making our playstyle obsolete. In the end there is no way to know whether they found our wants and needs unimportant or just inconvienient. There was no feedback this time around except to say "here is the final version."
I know, I am a Master Merchant and own 2 tents, I dress my vendors and decorate my shops.
Akaara
Tue Mar 15, 2005 11:41 am
#55
Are they going to adjust the merchant xp for this for this change???
I like getting merchant xp for the fsxp and it usually guarentees me at least 20,000 fsxp every 2 days. With this 'feature' I imagine my merchant xp would be lowered quite a bit.
But then again, maybe no one will use the search feature if it's tedious to do so.
Happymob
Tue Mar 15, 2005 11:43 am
#56
I don't like prices showing in any form. I don't like the custom names showing in any form.
Making the economy more price-driven looks to begoodfor the mega-crafters and consumers, but be far more more damaging to the smaller crafters. Competing in this environment just doesn't sound like "fun".
_Monroe_
Tue Mar 15, 2005 2:34 pm
#57
Wonder what happens if you buy from a vendor in a building you do not have access to.
GraySeven
Tue Mar 15, 2005 3:14 pm
#58
Questions:
- By "Registered Vendor" does this mean registered planetary, or any vendor registered for Galactic Search? In other words, will this be something any Joe Artisan with Business III can use, or is it going to be a high level Merchant skill?
- Will Premium Sales mean anything on this manner of searching? Can we get it so that Premium Sales are pushed to the top, even on private vendors?
- Have the Dev's said ANYTHING about revamping the Catagories? I shudder to think about looking for a specific Miscellaneous Item....
Elyssa
Tue Mar 15, 2005 3:18 pm
#59
As of this writing:
1) Any vendor with the global search option enabled. As far as I know, there is no skill required to enable it.
2) There are no premium sales on player-owned vendors
3) Nothing of which I am aware.
mpdivo
Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:11 pm
#60
Summerflame wrote:
I still dont like this for many reasons, Ill list some belwo
1) Kills immersion.
I simply dont like the fact that I can now stand in Coronet cklicking at a stupid automate and get all my shopping done.
2) Kills impulse sales.
Noone will care to look thrue the other vendors at my shop, as they have allready done all their shopping before arriving
3) Kills the achievement.
Ive worked for ½ a year to become a wellknown crafter. THis has taken lots of dedication to my profession, lots of advertising on the trade forums and an enourmous ammount of word of mouth. People telling their friends and guilds about my shop. This will all die, when people can just find whatever they need right of the bazaar.
4) Kills malls and shops
Why bother to have more than one vendor stucked away in your basement. I know people will have to travel to your shop to pick up. Right now I have 10 vendors up spreed across differnet locations and dividing my stuff into different categories to make it easier for the costumer to sort through. With the changes it would actually make it easier for the costumer if I only had one, as they wouldnt have to figure out which one to retrieve from.
I know they want to speed gameplay up, but doing this at the cost of all crafters seems a bit out of tune to me... I like the immersion, I like the diversion I like the community consisting of different people with different ingame goals... Lately I feel swg has turned into a combattants game and frankly I dont like what I see
Lastly as it seems these changes will go through (they didnt really listen to the objections last time as the changes from the first idea ist really all that great) this should be a merchant skill. Master or advertising 4.
I think the devs deserve a hand for finding a comprimise between merchants like you and those like myself who wanted the ability to be able to search by price.
Helped solved some of the travel time that ends with finding nothing.
I'm still going to have all my vendors up. I don't think it is going to kill impulse buying. Nothing can kill impulse buying, especially for female toons...
JK! *ducks behind cabinet for protection*
I will bet you 1 million credits that this will NOT kill my shop, this will NOT stop me from advertising on the boards, and this will NOT stop good word a mouth, especially amongst friends and guildmates.
This change is a huge PLUS for crafters and merchants. I'm a Master Merchant and Master Shipwright. I relish these changes and happy that they have found a comprimise that most can agree upon.
RebelKangaroo
Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:30 pm
#61
I'll bet you that same million credits that this will reduce the amount of crafters and make it harder for new crafters to break into the field. After this pricing will go up and all the people that loved this patch will hate it because they have to pay more for items from a smaller number of crafters.
Meplorium
Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:36 pm
#62
There is a current shift in this country (USA) to have our public school systems teach a religious doctrine called Intelligent Design in our science classes. This is a clear example of why Intelligent Design is flawed. If the Dev that decided to put this change into place was in fact created by Intelligent Design wouldn't he also have some ability to do Intelligent Design himself?
There is a logical progession of how things need to be done for a system to be efficient. Case in point, I need high OQ/SR A. Crystal. I have been running low for a long time yet haven't been able to find any. For my part I don't use that much of it, so I haven't tried too hard. I do keep an eye out however. Currently I can post in the trade forums, ask around and go to a bunch of vendors. If I tried hard I could probably come up with some given enough credits in about 5 hours. Now everything has changed. I can now go to the bazaar and do a full search of the galaxy under 'Mineral'. I can look through pages and pages of steel and copper just to look at crystal which may or may not suit my needs. I am guessing that after about 5 hours of searching on the bazaar I could probably come up with some, given enough credits.
There is a logical progression of how things need to be done for a system to be efficient. The bazaar itself is a mess. The db tables need to be reworked so unused catigories are removed and over used catigories, such factory crate, is broken down in a logical way where similar products are actually grouped. If I wanted to find a crate of Nutricake, very hard to find, I would have to shift through listings of droid batters, molecular clamps, power ups, syncloth, brandy....... The point is this new system is not helpful without first fixing the current problems with bazaar searches. Simply expanding the db to include more items makes the situation worse, not better. What is sad is that brandy and droid batteries are already easy enough to find. I simply do not need to find more of them.
There is a lot to be said about high impact solutions. Simple things can do a lot. However they do need to make sense and be usable. This is like making all shuttle wait timesone minute, but having all shuttles arrive in lok. It is not useful.
Price Issue - This doesn't bother me so much. There are already mechanism in game for you to find out who is cheap and offers a good product. It is call /tell. There are also the trade forums. People already have their favorite crafters and ways of finding new ones.This system may add it that but it is simply nothing new. Given the fact that the system itself isn't usuable, this will be low impact in my opinion.
Skill Points - well if I need to look for a vendor on the map, I suppose I could go look on the bazaar instead. So yeah, I'll probably be dropping advertizing. Hiring too, since that is only useful when placing a new vendor. Although I already do that as is but now that I can easially drop advertizing, keeping master is a bit harder to justify.
Clicking to Find Price - I may just start having to put price on my product along with the stats. This won't happen untilor if this system actually becomes useful with better searching criteria.
Buying at the Bazaar - Well you can buy it, but then you have to go get it. I suppose this isn't bad. Even if you offer a lost leader, say cheap ahrisa, they most likely will still have a look on the vendor they got it off of since they are there. In retail, you just have to get them in through the front door. Malls will still work. Remote delivery on the other hand, would have killed malls and impulse buying. Any system can have griefers, so that concern, while valid, is going to be there no matter what, and will rarely happen. Removing vendors with items still needing to be picked up from them is already an issue. This will increase the issue, but it is the buyers responsibility to pick up their goods in a timely matter, not the merchant.
riotcontrol
Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:45 pm
#63
Meplorium wrote:Any system can have griefers, so that concern, while valid, is going to be there no matter what, and will rarely happen. Removing vendors with items still needing to be picked up from them is already an issue. This will increase the issue, but it is the buyers responsibility to pick up their goods in a timely matter, not the merchant.
Wouldn't pretty much all possible 'griefing' issues be resolved simply by removing the 'Purchase' option and just leaving "Get Waypoint' so you have to use the actual vendor to purchase the item, not just go there and pick it up?
Meplorium
Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:57 pm
#64
riotcontrol wrote:
Meplorium wrote:Any system can have griefers, so that concern, while valid, is going to be there no matter what, and will rarely happen. Removing vendors with items still needing to be picked up from them is already an issue. This will increase the issue, but it is the buyers responsibility to pick up their goods in a timely matter, not the merchant.
Wouldn't pretty much all possible 'griefing' issues be resolved simply by removing the 'Purchase' option and just leaving "Get Waypoint' so you have to use the actual vendor to purchase the item, not just go there and pick it up?
Probably, but I don't see this happening all to often. I see the other form of unintential griefing happening much more where you find the item you want to buy, get the way point then go all the way there only to see some other guy walk out the door right before you. You go in, no item. I would call that unintential griefing, you go all that way and still don't get want you want although no attack was directed at you.
The problem where some kid gets a vendor and sellssomething for 50k and then bans people from their shop so they can't pick it up is a CSR problem. Those people needa ban. If it really does become a strain on the CSR system they will change it in a hurry. I am just not sure preventing one form of griefing and allowing another is an even trade when there is clearly something that can be done to the intential griefers.
Ani_cul
Tue Mar 15, 2005 5:06 pm
#65
riotcontrol wrote:
Wouldn't pretty much all possible 'griefing' issues be resolved simply by removing the 'Purchase' option and just leaving "Get Waypoint' so you have to use the actual vendor to purchase the item, not just go there and pick it up?
Exactly whatI thought and think as well.
I had mentioned this first time round and hols to it being a great idea now.
Since people will basically be there for purchase, they will also pickup {so the deleted vendor before retreiving item would be rare}
Since people will basically be there for purchase, they will also pickup {so the deleted vendor before retreiving item would be rare}
and above allthe folks who are banned stay banned.