Merchant Archive

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MightyDeuce wrote:

I just don't understand all the negativity towards merchant in general. I am a master merchant and a master crafter, but I focus more on the selling of items than the crafting. I enjoy merchant. I like being able to offer what people are looking for. I like merchant being a seperate prof because crafting and selling are different activities and not necessarily mutually exclusive/inclusive or whatever the term is. My biggest sales come from a butcher vendor I operate, which I buy stacks at 2 cpu and resell for other prices. Requires no crafting skills at all. So why should I then have to be a crafter to be what I consider successful at sales? I guess that's my biggest argument against making merchant skills dependant on crafting like so many continue to argue for. If we go that route, then let's also make all scout skills an overlay for combat skills, maybe medic too.

I can't honestly say that I am seeing an increase of sales due to fewer poached vendors or because I've been moving around a bit to a loc with more traffic. I will say this, however. I've seen tons fewer vendors all over the place, and those I still see around tend to have what they advertise on more of a regular basis. I am very happy with the merchant fix, and I'm looking forward to a few other changes I hope get implemented, like vendor id and consignment interfaces and such.

And let's hope they never limit lots per account. My husband and I share accounts, just play on different servers. That would just be awful for our play.

-Belili Selene-Scylla-Master Merchant/Master Artisan/Master Chef

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Realisticly....a Consignment systemis never going to happen.

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ofim wrote:

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MightyDeuce wrote:

I just don't understand all the negativity towards merchant in general. I am a master merchant and a master crafter, but I focus more on the selling of items than the crafting. I enjoy merchant. I like being able to offer what people are looking for. I like merchant being a seperate prof because crafting and selling are different activities and not necessarily mutually exclusive/inclusive or whatever the term is. My biggest sales come from a butcher vendor I operate, which I buy stacks at 2 cpu and resell for other prices. Requires no crafting skills at all. So why should I then have to be a crafter to be what I consider successful at sales? I guess that's my biggest argument against making merchant skills dependant on crafting like so many continue to argue for. If we go that route, then let's also make all scout skills an overlay for combat skills, maybe medic too.

I can't honestly say that I am seeing an increase of sales due to fewer poached vendors or because I've been moving around a bit to a loc with more traffic. I will say this, however. I've seen tons fewer vendors all over the place, and those I still see around tend to have what they advertise on more of a regular basis. I am very happy with the merchant fix, and I'm looking forward to a few other changes I hope get implemented, like vendor id and consignment interfaces and such.

And let's hope they never limit lots per account. My husband and I share accounts, just play on different servers. That would just be awful for our play.

-Belili Selene-Scylla-Master Merchant/Master Artisan/Master Chef

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Realisticly....a Consignment systemis never going to happen.

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I don't know about that. We'll see.

>> Realisticly....a Consignment system is never going to happen.
>I don't know about that. We'll see.

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What makes you so sure?

Several professions have gone without a revamp since game release; the Merchant profession got what its most vocal and strident form presence wanted. (The continual use of the perjoratives "exploited" and "poached" were great tactics; while I disagree with your goal, I have to salute you for being effective: by framing the debate in these terms, you got what you wanted: a greater share of the market -- but it's now a much less liquid market.)

But I digress.

Now that you've gotten what you wanted, what makes you believe a consignment system will be implemented? You and I both want a more liquid market. (I'd have supported the vendor nerf if it had come with such a system).

Problem is, SOE doesn't care either way, and can now throw up its hands and say "Merchant's been revamped once already. All our resources are on JTL, then the Combat Revamp. Smuggler and Carbineer and Pistoleer after that. There's no development time to even think about merchant until 2006."

Message Edited by AngryHoopJumper on 09-28-2004 04:36 PM

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AngryHoopJumper wrote:
>> Realisticly....a Consignment system is never going to happen.
>I don't know about that. We'll see.

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What makes you so sure?

Several professions have gone without a revamp since game release; the Merchant profession got what its most vocal and strident form presence wanted. (The continual use of the perjoratives "exploited" and "poached" were great tactics; while I disagree with your goal, I have to salute you for being effective: by framing the debate in these terms, you got what you wanted: a greater share of the market -- but it's now a much less liquid market.)

But I digress.

Now that you've gotten what you wanted, what makes you believe a consignment system will be implemented? You and I both want a more liquid market. (I'd have supported the vendor nerf if it had come with such a system).

Problem is, SOE doesn't care either way, and can now throw up its hands and say "Merchant's been revamped once already. All our resources are on JTL, then the Combat Revamp. Smuggler and Carbineer and Pistoleer after that. There's no development time to even think about merchant until 2006."

Message Edited by AngryHoopJumper on 09-28-2004 04:36 PM

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I disagree with your version of why that change was made and you never saw me use the word poached in any context and my use of the word exploit was always carefully phrased. The devs have never responded well to theatrics anyways they respond more to reasoned arguments. But beyond that point the focus of the live team after JTL and combat balance will be professional revamps. We aren't at the top of that list but we are still on it. The devs were very clear to me that the changes we just saw were NOT a revamp for our profession. They were changes to complete a back end re-write of the vendor system. Our professional revamp is in line with all the others that will need to happen. When will that be? I don't know, but I do know that there isn't any "you've had yours" mentality coming from the devs.

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LadyGrey wrote:

I've always figured that it didn't really matter what I said on the forums, because the devs don't seem to read the forums, or listento the players. If that is the case, then it does not matter if we threaten, bluster, or make ultimatums.

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That isn't true either though. They do read them. Alot. I know becuae I've gotten posts quoted at me before both in email and in person a couple of times. They do know what is going on on the forums a lot of the time. They don't know everything but they know the highlights and my job is to make sure they don't miss anything really subtle

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DocSavag wrote:

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I disagree with your version of why that change was made and you never saw me use the word poached in any context and my use of the word exploit was always carefully phrased. The devs have never responded well to theatrics anyways they respond more to reasoned arguments. But beyond that point the focus of the live team after JTL and combat balance will be professional revamps. We aren't at the top of that list but we are still on it. The devs were very clear to me that the changes we just saw were NOT a revamp for our profession. They were changes to complete a back end re-write of the vendor system.

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Consider my comment retracted, then, on the language comments: (please re-interpret "you" as plural, and directed towards those who did use the language in question.)

Your comments on the back-end rewrite are intriguing. Are you at liberty to discuss what you know about happened, when this was done, and any evidence that you have that further changes are coming?

My observations are consistent with either a rewrite or significant architectural change, but my data is incomplete: I left the game in March, during which time the Bazaar on my server was taking minutes to initialize. I came back only last month, and was (very pleasantly) surprised to see that it loads nearly instantly, even at peak times. Vendors appear to function pretty well, too, though I've noticed neither an improvement nor a delay in house/item spawn times over the past few weeks as unused vendors vanish.

The removal of unused vendors and implementation of item storage limits made sense if the tables were growing past the size at which their keys could be cached. (Probably what had happened to the bazaar, with the caveat that without access to the source, we can't know the precise relationship between the bazaar system and the player vendor system.) The purge of players and structures from inactive accounts will also help. We'll see if they implement anything further, but I can't see how implementing consignment sales can help the database to scale.

(As an aside, the player purge will certainly do interesting things to the economy. The guild with the largest harvester fleet pre-deletion wins. Problem is, there's not much to spend it on other than loot... the shift from a resource-basedeconomy in March to a loot-gathering economy today must have been interesting to watch. The next month is going to be even more interesting, methinks.)

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Breigh wrote:

Can someone please explain what a poaching vendor is? I've been gone for a long time and don't understand what you are all talking about.

Thanks

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Before publish 10 you could put down your vendors then drop all your merchant skills and continue to use the vendors just as if you were still a merchant. This was not intended by the devs (The designer of the system admitted to me in front of a room full of witnesses that he just missed it) and they agreed some time ago to make changes to prevent it from happening. The term "poached" in this instance refers to a vendor that was being operated without the merchant skills required to operate it. I don't use the term and the practice doesn't work the same way any more becuase of the code written to stop it.

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AngryHoopJumper wrote:

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DocSavag wrote:

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I disagree with your version of why that change was made and you never saw me use the word poached in any context and my use of the word exploit was always carefully phrased. The devs have never responded well to theatrics anyways they respond more to reasoned arguments. But beyond that point the focus of the live team after JTL and combat balance will be professional revamps. We aren't at the top of that list but we are still on it. The devs were very clear to me that the changes we just saw were NOT a revamp for our profession. They were changes to complete a back end re-write of the vendor system.

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Consider my comment retracted, then, on the language comments: (please re-interpret "you" as plural, and directed towards those who did use the language in question.)

Your comments on the back-end rewrite are intriguing. Are you at liberty to discuss what you know about happened, when this was done, and any evidence that you have that further changes are coming?

My observations are consistent with either a rewrite or significant architectural change, but my data is incomplete: I left the game in March, during which time the Bazaar on my server was taking minutes to initialize. I came back only last month, and was (very pleasantly) surprised to see that it loads nearly instantly, even at peak times. Vendors appear to function pretty well, too, though I've noticed neither an improvement nor a delay in house/item spawn times over the past few weeks as unused vendors vanish.

The removal of unused vendors and implementation of item storage limits made sense if the tables were growing past the size at which their keys could be cached. (Probably what had happened to the bazaar, with the caveat that without access to the source, we can't know the precise relationship between the bazaar system and the player vendor system.) The purge of players and structures from inactive accounts will also help. We'll see if they implement anything further, but I can't see how implementing consignment sales can help the database to scale.

(As an aside, the player purge will certainly do interesting things to the economy. The guild with the largest harvester fleet pre-deletion wins. Problem is, there's not much to spend it on other than loot... the shift from a resource-basedeconomy in March to a loot-gathering economy today must have been interesting to watch. The next month is going to be even more interesting, methinks.)

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I don't have any inside information about exactly what they did. My assumption (based on comments and observation) is that they re-wrote the code that handles the interaction between the vendor/bazaar interfaces and the database. I don't know if that included a reorganization to the database itself but it might have. My impression is that they were rewriting it both to solve current speed issues but also to make sure it could scale into the future.

Consignment sales don't have anything to do with helping the database that is a "tool" enhancement for merchants and part of a package of things we have asked for to make doing what we do easier and less of a job.

Message Edited by DocSavag on 09-29-2004 08:07 AM

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Chataka Windae
Rifleman/Combat Medic
CEO, Windae Enterprises
Mesric Sanctuary Founder

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DocSavag wrote:

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LadyGrey wrote:

I've always figured that it didn't really matter what I said on the forums, because the devs don't seem to read the forums, or listento the players. If that is the case, then it does not matter if we threaten, bluster, or make ultimatums.

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That isn't true either though. They do read them. Alot. I know becuae I've gotten posts quoted at me before both in email and in person a couple of times. They do know what is going on on the forums a lot of the time. They don't know everything but they know the highlights and my job is to make sure they don't miss anything really subtle

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