Merchant Archive
Thread: Why every Merchant poacher cry baby should be quiet....
Paxlar wrote:
And to the poster who says they see empty vendors all the time. Yes I do see them too, but since they are emtpy where is the harm in that person having that vendor up and not having the skill points required to run it? How does that effect the merchants? How does that man's empty vendor hurt you? He is NOT a merchant. He has a vendor but is by no means a merchant.
Empty venders are bad for the merchants and i've run through a couple of scenariosto demonstrate why.
Scenario 1 - As things stand anyone can keep a vender registered on the planetary map with no skills.
Many people have no incentive to stock their vendors or carry a good range of stock, they are from when they used to be a crafter, used as stores for getting rid of random loot etc.
I want to buy a new jacket, so i bring up the planetary map and select tailer, over a dozen possibilties spread across the planet.
- I drive to the first one, no jackets just half a dozen random items of clothing.
- Head to the second, empty.
- The third one, well stocked but not what i want.
- The forth next to no stock again. etc.
I'm now fed up and frustrated, cursing the useless people who don't bother to stock their venders well or at all. The two merchants who do have a huge range of stock happened to be 8th and 12th on the list, but I was fed up after number 7 and gave up. One of those merchants missed a sale.
Scenario 2 - Only people with merchant skills can have a vender on the map
These players have invested precious SP in the merchant profession, they want to be merchants and spend their time sourcing goods to sell, stocking their venders etc.
Iwant to buy a new jacket, so i bring up the planetary map and select tailer,only fivepossibilties all near to shuttle or starports.
- I head to the nearest, its well stocked but doesn't have the colour i want
- Off to the second and it does have the jacket i want, but its a bit expensive for my tastes
- On to the third, again good stock but not the style i want
- At the forth, this time the jacket is available and the price is somewhat lower than before so i buy the jacket.
I'm happy, I got the jacket i wanted at the price i wanted to pay. The merchant i got it from is happy as he got a sale and the tailor who made it is happy as they will get a repeat order from the merchant.
So which is better for merchants? Which is better for the general player base? If you don't want to dedicate the time and SP to being a successful merchant then don't, sell your goods / loot wholesale to your local merchant instead. Make the system work as it should.
Paxlar wrote:
Now, while I did enjoy reading your answer it didn't answer my question. I want you to explain how SWG needs the merchant profession to drive the economy in a way that other MMORPGs withOUT a merchant profession drive their economy.
You may want to ask the owners of any retail store why they decided to exclusively resell products and see what their reasons are. SOE decided that like-minded people that wanted to merchandise should have a solid base of tools to use.
Let me explain to you what it is I do. In SWG I am a master smugglar. What I do is scour my galaxy for the best price/stats on armor and weapons. I then slice them and tax on a small mark up and sell them on a vendor. And yes I do not have merchant skills. I spend alot of time looking for deals, I also advertise by sending an email with a WP to every person who I slice for on the streets. I have a network of harvesters that I use to pull any hot minerals that I can and sell them as well. I look for interesting items cheap and bring them back and mark them up a bit for profit. Basically while most people do missions for cash, I hustle a buck. I am pretty well known on my galaxy and my vendor does really good business.
It sounds as if you are running a successful buisness without requiring the tools of the merchant trade. My congratulations to you. If you have every seen any of my previous posts, I have never condemned trade by folks of the non-merchant profession so long as they never have poached skills from said profession. (Which includes vendors, of which I'm sure you have Buisness III to keep the Coke Machine vendor you have)In fact I have left many ideas on how to be a successful buisnessman without the aid ofAdvertiseing III or the use of mutiple vendors. Not being a member of the merchant proffesiondoesnotmean that you are precluded frombeing a successful businessman.
Now back in my days of playing Ultima Online I had a character that had a few crafting skills. I had set up about 6 vendors in a buddies house which I stocked all the time. Doing that ate up alot of my play time, so I was dedicated to it. I advertised and searched for the raw materials at the best prices. In Ultima you can buy a vendor contract deed and set up a vendor in any house you own or are on the friends list for. While I didn't have a set of skills that said I was a merchant I considered that character to be.
Lets assume for a moment that the skills that SOE gave the merchant profession are no longer broken and can be used only to those who are currently in that profession. Did Ultima give anyone the level of intricacy in setting up vendors or advertising, or even the use of specialized buildings for the sales of goods owned by individuals as compared to what Galaxies has on the table? These are specialized tools that can tremendously help anyone who truely wants to specialize as a Merchant.
In both cases I consider myself to be a merchant, just by the very nature on how I played these characters. Why is it in SWG it must take 16 skill boxes to classify you as a merchant? Would you not honestly like to have vendors and yet use the skill points into somthing more useful? More aritisan? More scout? More combat? More medic?
If that were the case, then why are vendors so valuable to them? I value the use, modifying, and advertisingof my vendors as much and in fact more so as my ability to slice weapons, my certificate to use a DX2, and my ability to craft spices. I truely believe that the skills on the profession are things worth investign in, with the exception of the Master Merchant skills. I know others do to, judging by the vast amount of players out there, exploiters or not, that drop custom clothing on their vendors, use new types of NPC vendors,and advertise their vendors by virtue of the advertising spam on the planetary maps.
Not everyone who has a vendor truely runs a business. Some people just get one and from time to time toss crap on it they want to unload. However more often than not people who stop at a vendor only to find it empty will not return. If there is 500 vendors on my server, I can bet only about 200 of them are visited on a regular basis by people because they are ran by people who are dedicated to stocking them. They are merchants. They may not have skill boxes that say "Your a merchant" but by god they are. They run those vendors, stock those vendors, and take orders to place on those vendors.
The empty vendor issue has been addressed ad nauseum on the boards here. It is a definite problem that we hope the devs will focus much of their work on. But you are making a false assumption that those empty vendors are run by current members of the Merchant profession. This is usually far from the case. More often than not, they are holohunters that are lad to keep little keepsakes from their temprorary jaunts up the merchant tree. All of us that post on this board feel the need to have our vendors well stacked as utmost of importance.
As for those that use vendors while not having skill points invested in at least Buisness III, how does it feel for them to cheat their fellow players out of extra skills? They may think they are merchants, but all they are are exploiters, stealing extra skills from the game. For those that use Coke Machines while having Buissness III and still running a successful business I have nothing for respect for. It is that type of small buisness mentatlity that keep this economy vibrant.
Why does SWG NEED an entire class to define someone as being a merchant? What harm would come from allowing people to get a vendor and run a business out of it IF they wanted to dedicate the time to make a succssfull one?
Perhaps because the tools that SOE provides the profession make it extremely easy to get started as a successful merchant player. You are currently seeing the profession in its broken state, where the tools are extremely easy to get for ANYONE that is not in the merchant profession to exploit those tools. It makes the Merchant profession not all that appealing since there is no exclusive benifit for the tools usage. You will need to wait until the vendor bugs are fixed and the tools get back under the merchant umbrella to really see this profession shine.
Paxlar wrote:
Balkstar wrote:
Paxlar wrote:
<snip>
Well, if you wanna go with the old style of economy like every other OLD game, sure, by all means.
Fact is that SOE wanted to try out a new game mechanic. Aseperated Supply-Distribution model that more closly relates to a real-life economic system. If you wanna go back to the old systems, fine. Just go back to playing the old MMORPG's. Personally I wanna try out SOE's system to see how it works. Once the bug fixes are in place, you will see how the economy was intended to work.
Please enlighten me as to how you think the economy should work in SWG? Also releate your response to other MMORPG's economy. I don't get your point. I really don't see any "new game mechanic" here, other than an entire set of skill trees which are really pointless. All of them could have been rolled into the artisan profession or just not included. I really don't think it would impact this game at all.
I'll take a crack as this
SWG = Merchants (including business3) sell stuff through Vendors
Other MMORPG's = everyone and his cat sells stuff through Vendors
I guess by your argument SOE should just throw out Battle Fatague as well. And while at it, sack all the entertainer professions?
Merchants are limited to warehouse stockers in this game. If they wanted to make a profession out of it, they should/need to add a lot more to it to make it a viable profession. As it is now, even if they changed it tomorrow, at the most people would just get a secondary account and set up a merchant there, and to me, that is worse than vendor poaching because that person with his secondary account is no more a 'true' merchant than a poacher, and it is just SOE's intention to make more money off the player base. The alt account could care less about the profession except for the utility of the vendors. And that is all merchants have in this game. The domination of a utility tool. specccial.
I'll take a crack as this
SWG = Merchants (including business3) sell stuff through Vendors
Other MMORPG's = everyone and his cat sells stuff through Vendors
I guess by your argument SOE should just throw out Battle Fatague as well. And while at it, sack all the entertainer professions?
The only reason why you feel the merchant profession is pointless is because people can retain 95% of the tools of the trade with a 0 skill point investment.
You are wrong on this assumtion. Just because people CAN place vendors they don't always find it is easy to keep them up without alot of time put into them.
rexan wrote:
I'll take a crack as this
SWG = Merchants (including business3) sell stuff through Vendors
Other MMORPG's = everyone and his cat sells stuff through Vendors
I guess by your argument SOE should just throw out Battle Fatague as well. And while at it, sack all the entertainer professions?
The only reason why you feel the merchant profession is pointless is because people can retain 95% of the tools of the trade with a 0 skill point investment.
lisasdarren wrote:
Paxlar wrote:
And to the poster who says they see empty vendors all the time. Yes I do see them too, but since they are emtpy where is the harm in that person having that vendor up and not having the skill points required to run it? How does that effect the merchants? How does that man's empty vendor hurt you? He is NOT a merchant. He has a vendor but is by no means a merchant.
Empty venders are bad for the merchants and i've run through a couple of scenariosto demonstrate why.
Scenario 1 - As things stand anyone can keep a vender registered on the planetary map with no skills.
Many people have no incentive to stock their vendors or carry a good range of stock, they are from when they used to be a crafter, used as stores for getting rid of random loot etc.
I want to buy a new jacket, so i bring up the planetary map and select tailer, over a dozen possibilties spread across the planet.
- I drive to the first one, no jackets just half a dozen random items of clothing.
- Head to the second, empty.
- The third one, well stocked but not what i want.
- The forth next to no stock again. etc.
I'm now fed up and frustrated, cursing the useless people who don't bother to stock their venders well or at all. The two merchants who do have a huge range of stock happened to be 8th and 12th on the list, but I was fed up after number 7 and gave up. One of those merchants missed a sale.
Scenario 2 - Only people with merchant skills can have a vender on the map
These players have invested precious SP in the merchant profession, they want to be merchants and spend their time sourcing goods to sell, stocking their venders etc.
Iwant to buy a new jacket, so i bring up the planetary map and select tailer,only fivepossibilties all near to shuttle or starports.
- I head to the nearest, its well stocked but doesn't have the colour i want
- Off to the second and it does have the jacket i want, but its a bit expensive for my tastes
- On to the third, again good stock but not the style i want
- At the forth, this time the jacket is available and the price is somewhat lower than before so i buy the jacket.
I'm happy, I got the jacket i wanted at the price i wanted to pay. The merchant i got it from is happy as he got a sale and the tailor who made it is happy as they will get a repeat order from the merchant.
So which is better for merchants? Which is better for the general player base? If you don't want to dedicate the time and SP to being a successful merchant then don't, sell your goods / loot wholesale to your local merchant instead. Make the system work as it should.
While I do like your scenarios I feel your mearly pushing small truths out to make your point.
Lets look what most likely is a REALISTIC approach to your jacket search. You decide you want a jacket, you open your friends list, find your tailors that you have. See who is online and place an order. I really don't see any realistic person just flying to random vendors they spot on the planet map, when just about everyone after a month will have a friend or 2 on their list for just about every profession. So when I need a buff, I open friends list see who is on and ask, rather than flying to diffearant space ports or hospitals in search of one. If I need some weapons then I goto one or 2 differant smiths who I know are the best on my server. Same for armor. No seaching involved, no looking at the planet map, no flying to 4 differant vendors looking for what I want. Email, place order, pick up order. What a novel and REAL thing!
I think I am beginning to see what you guys think your role should be. You want any and all crafters or sellers to have to come to you guys who run vendors just to sell stuff. The bazaar is NOT an option for selling with the 6k cap. And you can only sell on the fourms so much. But you need to wake up to reality. This may be a MMORPG, but for the most part people just want to do small stuff like that themselves.Nobody wants to have to go out of their way and track down someone for something small. Just like people were complaining about having to group with smugglars at spaceports to get by the scans. People didn't want to be inconivenced.
Paxlar wrote:
That statment I don't agree with at all. Most people that need something will usually ask around for who to goto. Someone will tell them, email them a WP and off they go. After even playing only a month most new people will have people on their friends list whom they buy what ever goods they need from. That planetary map seems trival to me. As I stated, I advertise my vendor in my sig, email it to people whom I slice for on the streets, and I get alot of business through word of mouth. I have never spammed at the SP, or worried about adding my vendor to the map and I do just fine. That vendor is almost my sole source of income, as I feel taking missions to kill animals is not Star Wars to me.
Some will, some won't. A new players will not necessarily ask everywhere but will use the tools he has at his disposals, same for me if I need a particular item and my usual shop doesn't have. I use the map pretty regularly,.
Still if this whole profession was never included but the options of buying vendors were, how would your play style be any differant? Would you not stock that vendor? Would you not advertise that vendor by mailing people, or telling some friends and let word of mouth spread? Would you not use that droid that allows you advertise while your away? (used in the artisan line somewhere), Would you not come to your galaxy's message board and advertise?
What is it you guys are looking for in a "skill box set" that would be so dramatic to require a profession title of a "Merchant" to BE a merchant?
We want a profession that gives us better tools to do it, and we don't want everyone and their dog to have a vendor. Take it the other way around, when everyone has to decide what they want to do in the game, why shouldn't be a merchant one of the possibilities? Why shouldn't someone who wants to sell things better be able to get the merchant profession, when someone who loves healing people can be a doctor? If we followed your point of view, why shouldn't everyone be able to heal then, if they are true healers in mind?
As a customer I'd much rather deal with people who are doing their job than dabblers who never restock their vendors - because no matter how much you insist on the difference between people who play like a merchant or not, what you don't see is thatcustomers have no other way of telling the difference than a stockedor an empty vendor. The tools of the merchant profession will let them see the difference right away.
Paxlar wrote:
While I do like your scenarios I feel your mearly pushing small truths out to make your point.
Lets look what most likely is a REALISTIC approach to your jacket search. You decide you want a jacket, you open your friends list, find your tailors that you have. See who is online and place an order. I really don't see any realistic person just flying to random vendors they spot on the planet map, when just about everyone after a month will have a friend or 2 on their list for just about every profession. So when I need a buff, I open friends list see who is on and ask, rather than flying to diffearant space ports or hospitals in search of one. If I need some weapons then I goto one or 2 differant smiths who I know are the best on my server. Same for armor. No seaching involved, no looking at the planet map, no flying to 4 differant vendors looking for what I want. Email, place order, pick up order. What a novel and REAL thing!
I think I am beginning to see what you guys think your role should be. You want any and all crafters or sellers to have to come to you guys who run vendors just to sell stuff. The bazaar is NOT an option for selling with the 6k cap. And you can only sell on the fourms so much. But you need to wake up to reality. This may be a MMORPG, but for the most part people just want to do small stuff like that themselves.Nobody wants to have to go out of their way and track down someone for something small. Just like people were complaining about having to group with smugglars at spaceports to get by the scans. People didn't want to be inconivenced.
First - You don't always have time to wait for people to log on/be available to make what you want. The example was a jacket, but you've tried asking an architect to make you 3 heavies that you need in 10 minutes? It doesn't work so well.
Second - some people actually enjoy shopping.
Third - yes people always want to be able to do everything for free, but the game doesn't work that way. They have to make choices. If they want to sell their wares they can either find someone to do it for them or spend 24 points to get a vendor. Same reason why they need to spend 15 points if they want to be able to heal themselves.
Songe wrote:
Paxlar wrote:
That statment I don't agree with at all. Most people that need something will usually ask around for who to goto. Someone will tell them, email them a WP and off they go. After even playing only a month most new people will have people on their friends list whom they buy what ever goods they need from. That planetary map seems trival to me. As I stated, I advertise my vendor in my sig, email it to people whom I slice for on the streets, and I get alot of business through word of mouth. I have never spammed at the SP, or worried about adding my vendor to the map and I do just fine. That vendor is almost my sole source of income, as I feel taking missions to kill animals is not Star Wars to me.
Some will, some won't. A new players will not necessarily ask everywhere but will use the tools he has at his disposals, same for me if I need a particular item and my usual shop doesn't have. I use the map pretty regularly,.
Still if this whole profession was never included but the options of buying vendors were, how would your play style be any differant? Would you not stock that vendor? Would you not advertise that vendor by mailing people, or telling some friends and let word of mouth spread? Would you not use that droid that allows you advertise while your away? (used in the artisan line somewhere), Would you not come to your galaxy's message board and advertise?
What is it you guys are looking for in a "skill box set" that would be so dramatic to require a profession title of a "Merchant" to BE a merchant?
We want a profession that gives us better tools to do it, and we don't want everyone and their dog to have a vendor. Take it the other way around, when everyone has to decide what they want to do in the game, why shouldn't be a merchant one of the possibilities? Why shouldn't someone who wants to sell things better be able to get the merchant profession, when someone who loves healing people can be a doctor? If we followed your point of view, why shouldn't everyone be able to heal then, if they are true healers in mind?
As a customer I'd much rather deal with people who are doing their job than dabblers who never restock their vendors - because no matter how much you insist on the difference between people who play like a merchant or not, what you don't see is thatcustomers have no other way of telling the difference than a stockedor an empty vendor. The tools of the merchant profession will let them see the difference right away.
What tools do you need to be a better seller? Isn't it just about what you do as a player/person at the keyboard that makes or breaks your business? I mean if you send out an email advertising your shop do you just have something like : Hey check out this great store we got xxx, xxx, xxx, xxx, xxx, xxx. Or do you put something in there to spice it up? Like a commerial or something. Your ideas. Seems to me there are several tools already here that people can use to portray merchants without having to have a merchant skill box. And it seems that merchants WITH the skill boxes do the exact same things.
Your comparsion with someone who wants to sell stuff picking a merchant boxes with someone who wants to be a doctor picking medical boxes is not valid. As all it takes to sell something in this game is to just yell it out somewhere, ask people directly if they want to buy, or post messages about it. You can't reach into the screen and heal someone directly. All the other skills in the game are things that you CAN'T do without picking that skill box. However selling stuff ANYONE can do. So why can't everyone just be allowed to get a vendor if they want?
Try to look at the game had the merchant skill set never been included. Would it be at some crippling halt? Would people not just sell stuff anyways? What if vendors would just buyable at some NPC? Would things be so bad for you? Would your game play somehow be changed? What if the medical profession wasn't included? Now THAT would be a game crippling change wouldn't it?
The big point is for alot of people is most other MMORPGS that are thriving don't have some class and skill set just devoted to sell stuff though vendors. Yes, people may put down vendors that they don't stock, but they are not making money nor are they taking money from you. If YOU are advertising your shop creatively and your well known, fair priced, you will be successful. Why do you need skill trees to do these things?
Look how much advertisement I'm getting just by making these posts? =) Granted nobody knows what server but still you get the idea
Songe wrote:
Paxlar wrote:
While I do like your scenarios I feel your mearly pushing small truths out to make your point.
Lets look what most likely is a REALISTIC approach to your jacket search. You decide you want a jacket, you open your friends list, find your tailors that you have. See who is online and place an order. I really don't see any realistic person just flying to random vendors they spot on the planet map, when just about everyone after a month will have a friend or 2 on their list for just about every profession. So when I need a buff, I open friends list see who is on and ask, rather than flying to diffearant space ports or hospitals in search of one. If I need some weapons then I goto one or 2 differant smiths who I know are the best on my server. Same for armor. No seaching involved, no looking at the planet map, no flying to 4 differant vendors looking for what I want. Email, place order, pick up order. What a novel and REAL thing!
I think I am beginning to see what you guys think your role should be. You want any and all crafters or sellers to have to come to you guys who run vendors just to sell stuff. The bazaar is NOT an option for selling with the 6k cap. And you can only sell on the fourms so much. But you need to wake up to reality. This may be a MMORPG, but for the most part people just want to do small stuff like that themselves.Nobody wants to have to go out of their way and track down someone for something small. Just like people were complaining about having to group with smugglars at spaceports to get by the scans. People didn't want to be inconivenced.
First - You don't always have time to wait for people to log on/be available to make what you want. The example was a jacket, but you've tried asking an architect to make you 3 heavies that you need in 10 minutes? It doesn't work so well.
Second - some people actually enjoy shopping.
Third - yes people always want to be able to do everything for free, but the game doesn't work that way. They have to make choices. If they want to sell their wares they can either find someone to do it for them or spend 24 points to get a vendor. Same reason why they need to spend 15 points if they want to be able to heal themselves.
Well if your a mineral harvester person your gonna have stuff on hand. That isn't valid. And having to wait on a jacket isn't what I would call a real game breaking crisis. Email tailor, request jacket and color and pick it up when its ready. Wear another jacket in the mean time.
People enjoy shopping and just like when you shop for real you don't always find stuff on the first try. How ever you can always CALL stores (ie: email your people for products) ahead of time and see what is available before you waste your time driving around.
Like I'm trying to say, this game would not suffer in anyway if people didn't have to spend 24 points to run a vendor. Even just a basic crap one. I think that is just about all people want. Just to not have to waste skill points on something that in other games was easy to set up yet hard to make work.
If you could get all your vendor stuff up without having to spend points on it because the merchant class didn't exist would you feel upset? Would you feel that your getting something for nothing? Wouldn't you be happy that you could use them 24 points on something else that is more intersting than + vendor, ++ vendor?
Paxlar wrote:
What tools do you need to be a better seller? Isn't it just about what you do as a player/person at the keyboard that makes or breaks your business? I mean if you send out an email advertising your shop do you just have something like : Hey check out this great store we got xxx, xxx, xxx, xxx, xxx, xxx. Or do you put something in there to spice it up? Like a commerial or something. Your ideas. Seems to me there are several tools already here that people can use to portray merchants without having to have a merchant skill box. And it seems that merchants WITH the skill boxes do the exact same things.
Your comparsion with someone who wants to sell stuff picking a merchant boxes with someone who wants to be a doctor picking medical boxes is not valid. As all it takes to sell something in this game is to just yell it out somewhere, ask people directly if they want to buy, or post messages about it. You can't reach into the screen and heal someone directly. All the other skills in the game are things that you CAN'T do without picking that skill box. However selling stuff ANYONE can do. So why can't everyone just be allowed to get a vendor if they want?
Try to look at the game had the merchant skill set never been included. Would it be at some crippling halt? Would people not just sell stuff anyways? What if vendors would just buyable at some NPC? Would things be so bad for you? Would your game play somehow be changed? What if the medical profession wasn't included? Now THAT would be a game crippling change wouldn't it?
The big point is for alot of people is most other MMORPGS that are thriving don't have some class and skill set just devoted to sell stuff though vendors. Yes, people may put down vendors that they don't stock, but they are not making money nor are they taking money from you. If YOU are advertising your shop creatively and your well known, fair priced, you will be successful. Why do you need skill trees to do these things?
Look how much advertisement I'm getting just by making these posts? =) Granted nobody knows what server but still you get the idea
Well yes you can still do that without having the merchant profession, it's called business 3. Personally I love having 6 vendors on the map and they are the main reason why I have and will keep merchant.
Without merchant skill it would just be a chaos of useless and empty vendors as it is now, without any advantage for people who take the time to stock their vendor to get known other than by shouting in the streets. No thanks.
Paxlar wrote:
The big point is for alot of people is most other MMORPGS that are thriving don't have some class and skill set just devoted to sell stuff though vendors. Yes, people may put down vendors that they don't stock, but they are not making money nor are they taking money from you. If YOU are advertising your shop creatively and your well known, fair priced, you will be successful. Why do you need skill trees to do these things?