Merchant Archive
Thread: Merchant Top 5 Issues
Bounty Hunter Blues
4. The lack of tools to make good business arrangements with Artisans.
We would love to have more detailed ideas about tools to help with these
arrangements.
For starters I have two requests regarding vendors and shops:
Request:
Why can't we Artisans have permanent non-purchasable items on our Vendors? I'm talking about Price Lists, Welcome Notes etc. It's such a pain having to craft a bogus item to put on as a "Welcome to my store" note or Price List, only to watch it get kicked off with other items. All I want is a "Notepad" style item where all it is a comment from the author. It can't be bought and it doesn't get removed from the vendor with other items. One per vendor would be enough!
Also, why not have "Advertisements" as items to be placed on the Bazaar (only one per PC is allowed in each city) that allow people to download waypoints?
The current system is customer un-friendly and completely backwards
You have to rely on them typing in a waypoint, naming it and then remembering what the place was!
Throw us a bone here, devs! 
We need to be able to advertise and make our customers feel welcome!
Another Request:
Specially made items.People often request a specific items, why can't we place items on vendors that can only be bought by a person we specify? This way we can offer discounts to people and leave the items on the vendor for them for when is a convienient time for them to pick it up? (Instead of now where once the item is crafted you have to track down the person and meet up and /trade with them.)
This would be easier for the customer AND the crafter!
Vipossk wrote:
You know, i don't really understand why all of you get your knickers in a twist whenpeople want tokeep vendors after dropping the skills. I am a Master Merchant. Personally,I don't see why after scratching and clawing my way up the worthless branches of this skill tree I can't keep a few vendors around....After all, it has only taken me MONTHS to reach master, and i did it on my own accord and not by the order ofsomefriggin holocron. Cry me a river. Then I'll call my artisan buddy to build me a canoe so i can paddle myself all the way to creditsville.
Took me a long time to get a lot of the skills i once had and then dropped ... master medic, master scout. However, i dropped them, and now can no longer use those skills. By allowing merchants to keep vendors they no longer have the skill level for, you devalue the merchant class in comparison with other classes, and further imbalance the game. Tell you what ... if you get to keep some vendors, can i get warning shot back? I dropped range support 3, and now dont have the skill points ... but i would still love to have the skill!
Elvinworm wrote:
Am I missing something.....the skill you get for Eff 4 is PLACING a tent. Once placed if I drop the skill all I should loose is the ability to place one, not loose the tent. This is like saying if I am a master armoursmith, and make a good set of armour, but hen drop the skill, I loose my armour. Well i don't because the skill is not wearing the armour, its making it. And this skill is placing, not using or keeping. If SoE id to go back and change it to ready place/maintain tent, then thats diff, and theyt would have to grandfather all tents already down.
I really wish merchants would stop complaining. There are not enough of you out there, to maintain all the vendors in our world....and the prices would go up. Stop looking out for yorself and start thinking about the community. I was one of the first to agree an ATST needed looking at, and I had 3....but I don't see a problem with tents and vendors.
You might be taking the term 'placing' a bit too literally ... it is possible that the devs meant for this to be a skill of placing and maintaining.In terms of merchant tents, i'm sort of on the fence ... mostly because i would hate to see entertainers who had gotten the ability to place cantinas lose their buildings in player cities, and other things like that.
In terms of thinking about the community, i believe that i am. There are too many vendors out there already, with nothing in them. Some of them have been placed just to get xp ... no merchandise needed. I thinkTHAT is a real diservice to the community. Some people get the vendors, get master merchant, advertise them on the map, and then keep only a few stocked. This leaves a ton of advertised vendors with nothing in them.
To be honest with you, what makes me frustrated about that is not the merchant side of me, but the customer side of me. I've recently started a decorating business, and as i'm not an architect, i spend a lot of time going to different vendors looking for furniture. I try to use the planetary map to make it easier, waypointing those vendors that are advertised ... at least 50% of them have nothing, or just a couple of chairs and a lamp. A BIG waste of time for me. After several weeks of doing this, i've managed to come up with a couple of vendors that are routinely stocked ... now i only go to them. But that was a couple of wasted weeks. I'm sure other customers have the same frustrating experience, and i know for a fact that one store i visited was full of empty vendors cause the guy gave up merchant to fulfill some holocron profession. He no longer had time to craft or stock ... only hunt. If he had lost these vendors after giving up the skill points, both myself and countless others who visited his place could have saved ourselves the trip.
I just have a note on some of the ideas for #4, with the new colums and all those good ideas... I don't know if it has been mentioned, only read half of first page or something. But I think there is a problem with such an overhaul of the vendor... the database... Those changes will contain loads of new information that have to be stuck in the database as I see it. Let us say that on one cluster there is 1000 items for sale (not much) let us say that each of those should have a percentages discount for a special person, or a number of special persons... that would enhance the database workload witha lot. So if there is something like that, it should be suggested it was done on the whole vendor, which would apply for every item on the vendor... that would still increase the workload for the database, but much less...
(I know my example with 1000 items wouldn't do much, but think about it... in a city with loads of shops... how many items are for sale there? A lot... and that is one of the reason why I think it hasn't been implanted yet, we complain about the server lag, but still we want more implants that makes the server lag much more noticeable... just my penny )
TheSorceress wrote:
I amend the above statement: Scruftydog just pointed out to me (on a different thread) that i can get master armorsmith, make an armor schematic, drop the skill, then keep crafting the armor (at least until the scematic runs out) .. so excuse me, i have many artisan trees to master, and schematics to make. Keep all the vendors you like ... the skills are clearly not rules, just general guidelines.
I assume that is tongue in cheek..because it is, as always, a poor example. Limited Use Schematics can be used by anyone. The reason the armorsmith can continue to use they is because they don't take any skill to use..just to make. If vendors were the same way you could trade them to your friend the noob marksman to sell his looted cdefs and stone knives. You can't because you are supposed to be a merchant to use them.
For the "there won't be enough vendors" arguement. I just don't buy that. You can't hardly find a vendor that isn't "unitnitialzed" or empty these days anyway so removing a few won't hurt the economy that much. What will really happen is that people without merchant skills will either have to get the back and give up something else or they will have to work with an established merchant to drive their customers to that shop. Forming a business relationship instead of trying to do everything themselves.
"form a business relationship........"
This honestly can't occur until the merchant class is improved. I used to rent a vendor to a weaponsmith and it was probably the most painful thing to do in-game.
Also, I think master merchant should entail additional features that make being a merchant really spiffy to be. Not sure what that is but maybe something like giving vendors an administrative list, automated commision computing, maybe +5 vendors, blah blah.....
I think the focus of the issues with merchant class have shifted to the less meaningful. Fix the class then worry about cleaning up vendors that belong to people who have dropped the skill.
surrendered without the loss of the benefits of those skills."
It should read:
We do not understand how skills really work in this game, and as an example of this we offer this common sentiment from our community
"If I had mastered commando and could give up all of my skills and still get all the bonuses this would be a top priority to be fixed for SOE."
so annoying.......
Just like commando's who give up their skills, when we give up the Vendor skill we DO LOSE THE BONUSES OF THAT SKILL!!!!!!!!!!!! We can no longer place the god damned vendors. That is called losing the abilities granted by the skill. That is GIVING UP the skill.