Merchant Archive
Thread: VENDOR CAP GOOD FOR MERCHANTS
My table was cut
100- Novice merchant and Business3
150- Manage1
200- Manage2
250- Manage3
300- Manage4
350- Master Merchant
Also, vendor sales for merchants who do not have the management skills to support them should be disables. Allow the player to remove items from the vendor only. This will put a stop the the business3 or novice merchants who place vendors, then sell back the skills, while still keeping the vendor.
I'm not opposed to using several vendors for my tailor shop, but tailors should not be forced to use our entire allowance of merchant vendors in order to run one decently stocked store.
If this goes through, maybe it the devs will finally listen when the combat classes start complaining about only being able to find a tiny selelction of clothes in 3 or 4 different colors.
SueDenim wrote:
Well, on the bright side, armorsmiths and weaponsmiths (two classes that get what they want) are mildly irked, so we'll probably get thrown a bone like raising the limit from 150 to 200.
Whee.
Excuse me?
The biggest issue (PSG and Tantel armor stat shifts) that Armorsmiths have had to deal with since... well, forever- hasn't even, as far as I know, ever been acknowledged as a bug by the dev team, so I don't see how we're getting what we want.
I don't see what purpose it serves to snipe at someone else's profession, but unless you've actually *been* an armorsmith, statements like this can't really be taken seriously.
Oh, and I have more than 150 items on my *custom* vendor. My other vendors have at least a thousand items on them combined, maybe more. So this would affect me as badly as you, and I don't know a single other armorsmith that isn't totally hacked off about this. I don't think any of them would be blaming tailors for their problems, though.
The basic scenario that's worrying and depressing me is that issues which *uniquely* affect tailors do not get dev attention. And, as far as I can tell, it would be at least *possible* for most professions to sort of get by with lower vendor limits, while for tailor vendors, it's a simple impossibility. A 150 or 200 item vendor limit for a tailor is so low for our peculiar needs that there's no point in even *having* a vendor if that's all you can get.
Unlimited storage space on vendors is bad for the database. Everyone should be able to se that, so the only question will be: What is the best limit?
We have to remember that I have to be low enough to be efficient, and that will mean it will hit thoughts with most items up for sale the most. This is unfortunate, but unavoidable if the vendor database has to be decreased in size, by limiting the number of sales on vendors.
It will give a benefit to merchants by making more vendors more useful, a simple buis3 vendor can no longer sell "unlimited items" at an "unlimited price" while the owner is not there.
On the other hand, it will make the "train management 4, place vendors, and drop skill" even more useful then is now.
What I think that will really hurt vendor owners is the increase in bazaar prices. It is directly undermining one of our primary advantages, the maximum price of the items we sell.
eznihm wrote:
That's right folks, the cap is good for merchants. It gives meaning to the Management line and Master Merchant box.
The only people who would suffer are those mega-merchants who have vendors in like four different locations - and you know what, that's fine with me. A ltitle competition never hurt anything. And yes, you will have to log on every day or two to move your items from a backpack to the vendor. Talk about the inability to overstock is so played already.
/cheer
I've said this elsewhere, but it's worth repeating - my problem is that it affects different professions unequally. A tailor will need to maintain management 4, while a smuggler could simply maintain business 3. Additionally, it encourages merchant behavior that shouldn't necessarily be encouraged, namely the practice of selling the best-sellers and nothing else. With the limit, I am much more likely to run a medical best sellers shop instead of a comprehensive medical shop.
I am ok with the change if they tie vendor capacity to merchant skills as well (particularly if it's an under-utilized line like efficiency). By tying capacity to skill, you could also potentially fix the issue of people dropping their skills and keeping their vendors - if they drop the skill, the vendor capacity would drop next time they try to add an item.
Posted this on the In Development Thread. Just an idea that might help the number of uniques items.
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Sorry if this has been said before but wouldn't a better way to fix the sheer number ofentries on vendor listsbe to modify vendors themselves.
1) Have any identical items placed on the vendor auto stack in the vendor.
For instance let's say I make a factory run of identical guns and throw them up on the vendor. Instead of them each being listed why can't it just list one and then a quantity number to represent how many of that type are available for sale. The customer could then, with a slightly modified buying process, purchase any number of them they wished similar to how power is transferred manually to harvesters...or how the bank slider bar works. Another example would be with resources. Instead of a vendor full of descrete packets of resources why not have identical resources stack on the vendor and let the customer decide exactly how much they want down to the single unit.
This would allow those running vendors to set unit prices for all their items instead of having to price every single item that goes onto the vendor. Would also simplify the restock process.
2) Limit number of "unique" items sold
Now that similar items stack, throwing a "unique itemlimit" on pc vendors would hurt less and at the same time keep the number of unique items sold from becoming too extreme.
One of the biggest benefits of the quantity system would be that vendor lists would no longer be large catalogues ofmostly repeated items. Shops could focus more on what selection of goods they want to display without having to worry about their quantitiesgoing over pages and pages.
Perhaps even throw some kind of unique item count increase to Merchants as a bone to that skill tree.
This cap it totally stupid, it will cause more merchant to quit and even worse vendor service.
To have less items per vendor the solution is more vendor, give us twice the amount of vendors we have now.
We need also more vendor flexibility : admin right, change vendor name, move stocked vendor, customize vendor appearance like image designer etc... remove empty vendor from map register... Theses are the real solutions for better shops
Magusarcanum wrote:
2) Limit number of "unique" items sold
Now that similar items stack, throwing a "unique itemlimit" on pc vendors would hurt less and at the same time keep the number of unique items sold from becoming too extreme.
The problem with this is that all types of products aren't the same. This unique limit would onlyhelp every profession that mass produces in factories.
But it would still screw the tailors. Go to any decent tailor shop and you will see hundreds and hundreds of items, but instead of having 10 identical harvesters, we have 10 of the same type of shirt, but in different colors.Tailors mostly use their factories for making components. Almost all of what you see onour vendors is crafted by handbecause we need to stock items in a wide variety of colors.
One-size solutions do not fit all, which is why I'm against this change in its entirety. Even some of the suggested "raise vendor limits with merchant skill" ideas would still hurt my profession. It would force every tailor to also become a master merchant, and even thendepending on the max cap, they'd still have to use most of their vendors stocking one decent shop. I'm a master merchant, but I don't want to be forced to use my entire vendor allotment just on my tailoring business! Irun several other shops that this limit would force me to close down...
No type of merchant should be forced to use all of their vendors to support one shop. These changes will hurt everyone. But while they will be a huge inconvienience for many, they can be potentially game-breaking for my main profession.
If this goes through, apologize in advance on behalf of all us tailors. Because now you will all have to custom-order and wait on your tailor to have time to help you, just in order to get a simple coordinated outfit (the kind that you can just pick out for yourself at any good tailor shop right now).