Merchant Archive
Thread: Merchant Issues Designer responses
Pladias wrote:
Master Merchants, or Masters in an Expert Crafting tree should get more lots, even as little as 2 more lots when reaching Master (merchant, weaponsmith, armorsmith, chef, tailor, DE, etc)
I like the idea of sales tracking aside from E-mail. Bar charts and such.
Houses with Vendors need to be able to set to private. My friends and I used this to swap items effectively and safely until this patch.
I agree we need more lots. Mega gay because I need to have lots for my shop(s), harvesters, and factories.
As for sales tracking in-game, I say no way! I can easily take notes of who buys what from my store, and do that work myself. I don't want to face a potentially laggy and system-intensive function just so some of that junk can be automated.
What they should add is a notice whenever someone looks at your vendor. That is some information that would be great to track.
Ebbatuu on Corbantis
Q-3PO wrote:
We’re going to add vendor tents that will help distinguish shops from housing. How does this work for you?
I'd rather keep my vendors inside the shop/house and just have a "storefront", like a false front on the building to designate it as a shop - a large, over the door sign, or an awning over the porch or something to that effect.
Having vendors in a tent outside my house might be ok if I were selling homemade crafty trinkets or vegetables or something, but I'd rather run a store.
ZnickZ wrote:
On the contrary... its not the e-mails that cause lag, it's all of the items on the vendors. By making us replace them, they feel we will remove from circulation those that don't sell, and that will reduce the amount of items offered... and the lag as well.
Z
Acutually it can be a bit of both. The emails would probably cause processing lag and could account for a large bandwidth hit.Removingthe notifications for failed sales and allowing sales to go more then 7 days on personal vendors I would think would be very practical, possibly 30 day sales or somethingat a longer time frame. I imagine the point of 7 days sales for everything is to prevent items on sale byinactive charactersfrom sitting around too long.
Items in the bazzar shouldn't cause a hit on power unless the tables they reside in are indexed poorly or the queries to the database they are in are written poorly. There is always the case that the hardware the bazzar database is on isn't performing well but I would assumethey would have a fairly beefy system to handle that, a lack of resources allocated there would definately slow it down, as well as many other things I imagine.
Ad barking hasn't worked since before the patch, and certainly wasn't fixed after it. The only thing that did change was Customization worked with ads...but that's almost useless as I have to reset my ad several timesa day.
Advertising III is still broken...I have to re-register my vendor. Advertising IV is useless because, no matter what, my vendor maintenance is only 1. (Not that I'm complaining 
) But the point is...there is no reason for anyone to become Master Merchant. Hiring III is pointless I'm told, Hiring IV doesn't work, the Efficiency tree is pointless because vendor costs can't be adjusted anyway (not sure about bazaar fees but I never put stuff up on the bazaar anyway now that I have a vendor). Advertising is bugged to all heck, and what's the point of getting all these additional vendorsif everything else is so bugged?
Merchant is probably the worst profession available right now..and the most useless. No one is 100% sure how merchant xp works. Sure there's the 50 you get from vendor viewing, and the 50 you get from entrance fee...but what about bazaar stuff? Why do I come on from being offline for a few hours to discover I got about 4k xp? Where does it all come from?
It is much appreciated that these issues are being addressed now, and I sincerely hope that something will happen very soon, because this is really quite frustrating.
I have a really big problem with requiring houses for vendors. I also have a problem with the lot sizes for houses.
My justification is simple. As a successful merchant, I will want to live in opulent splendor. Unfortunately, I have to use my lots for small houses to put my vendors in. A large house takes up 6 lots. That would mean a max of 3 vendors IF I wanted one in my home.
Tents are great, but only if it was all I needed. I should not have to beg other PC's to use their homes for my vendors. Interdependancy is one thing, but I should be able to have all of my vendors without needing other peoples homes.
That is not even considering that every Merchant that I know is also another profession, one requiring factories and resources. Relying on others for some or most of those resources is one thing, but many times I can not find the needed resources on the bazaar and must instead mine them myself. This further reduces the lots available for vendor placement.
Also, as a Merchant, I find myself selling many different types of items and yet I can only pick one type of item for my planetary advertisement per vendor, thus requiring me to have multiple vendors in one location IF I want that location advertising all of its wares.
Oh one more thing, not sure if it was brought up yet.
When my customers purchase clothing off my vendor it usually disappears for a period of time, then reappears later. What's worse is, if they had the newly purchased item equipped at the time it disappears, and then equip something else after that, when the item reappears it erases whatever they were wearing at the time of the reappearance.
No reason for this at all.
My main problem is that as a Master Merchant, i am not given the means to compete with crafters, as i have very low cost advantages (20%). I do take the risk not to sell merchandise, and have to discount it...taking a huge loss, while crafters can discount and still make 500% margin. I get no reward for the time i spend travelling the whole galaxy to find the best products while a crafter get xp and easy margins for his time crafting.
Please rethink the skill tree and give master merchants REAL cost advantages (80% off vendors and structures maintainance, reduced traveling costs, free bank tipping).
I agree, for those of you non-crafting merchants. Frustrating. 
The unfortunate fact is, at this point in the game, there's no profit in being JUST merchant. You hafta be an armor/weaponsmith, a tailor, a chef, an bio-engineer...one class shouldn'tbe so dependant on another. It should be separate. Just like you don't HAVE to be a Weaponsmith to be a Pistoleer. Just like you shouldn't HAVE to be a crafter to be a successful (even in the smallest amount) Merchant.
Actually SWG was designed so players would be dependent on other players. Original design was that crafters would be dependent on other crafters to make any of the elite items. As it is the Pistoleer is dependent on the WeaponSmith. Crafters should be dependent on others. You have a mixed argument.
UGoBananas wrote:
...one class shouldn'tbe so dependant on another. It should be separate. Just like you don't HAVE to be a Weaponsmith to be a Pistoleer. Just like you shouldn't HAVE to be a crafter to be a successful (even in the smallest amount) Merchant.
Draznar wrote:
Actually SWG was designed so players would be dependent on other players. Original design was that crafters would be dependent on other crafters to make any of the elite items. As it is the Pistoleer is dependent on the WeaponSmith. Crafters should be dependent on others. You have a mixed argument.
UGoBananas wrote:
...one class shouldn'tbe so dependant on another. It should be separate. Just like you don't HAVE to be a Weaponsmith to be a Pistoleer. Just like you shouldn't HAVE to be a crafter to be a successful (even in the smallest amount) Merchant.
?? I think the point being made is that a pistoleer can have a nice profitable life without actually MAKING any pistols. Yes the pistoleer is dependant on a weapon crafter to get a pistol, but he/she does not have to be a weaponcrafter to be a successful pistoleer. The argument is not that a merchant should not have to depend on others. I mean duh in order to sell a gun someone had to have made the gun. I think his point is HE should not need to MAKE the products he sells to be a successful merchant if a marksman does not need to MAKE his guns to be successful.
Q-3PO wrote:
3) Vendor List – An explanation of how this works is needed. Is it currently bugged?
You should see some major fixes to the Vendor List as of the last update. Once again, let us know what you think about them.
Is it just me or does this not actualy address the statment above: How does Some major fixes to the vendor list as of the last patch go to explain how the list works?
I relooked at all the update for august this is what i found
Merchent
- Fixed and exploit where you could steal things from vendors
- Fixed the max sale price on bendors being the same as the bazaar
- You now have to select "init vendor" from the cendor options after you place you vendor to activate it
What are these MAJOR FIXES to the vendor list other then stome stuff I noticed with clothing being seperated into different styles when you go to buy an item?
So this above mention item I dont like - why cause I have not notice any changes or recieved an exlpination on how it works. As for the Ad Barking works for a while the stops.
just my realy late 2 cents worth or is that 5K and hours worth