Merchant Archive
Thread: can this be addressed w/o being flamed
How is this hurting Merchants?
Okay, I'll TELL you how....
Because you guys are using vendors for storage, they decided months ago, that they wanted to LIMIT the storage capacity of a Vendor to...are you ready for this? 150 items.
Yeah. 150 items PER VENDOR. Thanks. Good job.
Did we talk them out of it? Yeah. To a degree. But they're GOING to make some changes to vendors and LIMITING SPACE on them is probably going to be one of them. SO, yes, you not only USING the vendor for storage, BUT STEALING the skill to do so, DOES hurt merchants.
In fact, THANK YOU! Thank you for providing me with a text book case of WHY you guys suck 
Okay, the suck part was a joke, but the rest is serious. Thanks.
Why this is a database/server problem:
Okay, so let's take food. There are lots of people who have lots of food on their person. By the crate load, and it's high turnover. There are what? 30-something types of food? Okay, now multiply that by ALL of the different possible combinations of resources. Now multiply THAT by ALL the different combinations of skill and experimentation effect points. That's how many different schematics for FOOD exisist on the server. How many different food items there are. And that's not even taking into account BE'ed ingredients and all of the factors that go into that, OR skill enhanced clothing and all the ingredients that go into THAT.
Now, that's a LOT of schematics that exist on one server.
OTHER games don't have a crafting system of this complexity. Usually, there are X amount of items to make, but everyone MAKES THE SAME ONE. SO there are only as many schematics are there are different items. There's only ONE instance of a Vorpal sword, because everyone MAKES the SAME vorpal sword. So there's REALLY only ONE but it's in LOTS of places.
Where as on Galaxies there are literall MILLIONS of versions of food being made and consumed every day.
See the difference? That's BILLIONS of schematics game wide easily. The devs want that stuff to get consumed, cycled out, and make room for new stuff. But if you're hoarding stuff on your vendor by the thousands than you're cluttering up the system. And if there are 1000 people game wide doing it....you starting to get the picture? This is ADDED to all of the database and server stress of all the little details of character creation, NPC and critter load, and all the hundreds of other things I can't think of.
Are there mathematical short cuts I'm not aware of? Probably. But even then, I'm over stating my case, by, at most a couple of factors of ten, which isn't all that much when you're talking about THIS MUCH data.
lisasdarren wrote:
theonebountyhunter wrote:
all i wanted to know was how the dev's plan on handling the problem, and if they had any intentions on addressing a growing storage issue.
You want to know how to fix your storage problem?
Throw some stuff away, if you're not using now and are not going to use it in the next few weeks then you either don't need it or just have too much of it.
And don't give me all that junk about needing the stuff, scale down your business if necessary and get it into your head that the problem isn't the lack of storage the problem is that you have too much stuff and you, or others like you with too much stuff, have found one loophole after another to exploit in order to store more than the developers ever wanted you to be able to store.
Yea I like this coming from a master smuggler/pistoleer. You haveno clue and should keep your comments to yourself. If you have read the resource stack increase thread that was posted and is still going strong you would see more comments than you want to read about why stacks need to be increased. Storage is an issue--period.
I use my vendor for storing items as well. But what I do is offer the items for a price slightly higher than I paid. These are legitimate sales. These are items I would normally use like tailor leather portions. But storing them is a nightmare. It is easier on the vendor. I buy these for the most part for my needs. I just put them on my vendor for a higher price so that if I do sell them I make a decent profit. However, if people do exploit as it is called then so be it. SOE knows there is a problem and if they will not alleviate it legitimately then they will have to deal with people who exploit. It is the responsibility of the DEVs to fix exploits when they ar revealed. It is human nature to take advantage of situations. All those bleeding hearts that will come here and post they can not believe this is happening, I bet have at one time or another, used an exploit themselves. I doubt there was a player in the game that did not use the vehicle repair bug. There may be that one or two players that just will not use an exploit but even those have used some unknowingly.
The only answer to this problem is to have the resource/parts stacks increase. I suggest we as customers to SOE continue to push this issue. A no has been issued by the DEVs but we are their customers and if we do not accept a no then it is in the power of the masses to sway the decision in the future if people are persistant.
Wow.....three pages of goodness. Pretty good read might I add although very time consuming. Anyways, I just wanted to add this.
Now I'm a pretty logical person, and I can't for the life of me understand how having the points in merchant, and using the vendor as "storage" is a crime. So before you flame me, let me explain.
Pretty much everything has a limit of storage in this game...granted Vendors don't, HOWEVER think about this. People have said use small houses, use factories, use vendors (if you have the points). I'm sorry to say, but no matter how much we merchants (and yes I'm a master). Whine, cry, **edit**, moan, and complain things will NEVER CHANGE. Its the nature of the beast. It doesn't matter if SOE limits vendors...frankly it doesn't really matter if they take the "illegal" vendors away (which I think needs to be done) Items on vendors are being stored REGARDLESS if they are ment to be sold of not...Items will sit on the "shelves" and be STORED until someone buys it....in which case it will again be STORED somewhere else. It doesn't matter the intent or price of the item on the vendor.
It really does not matter how many fingers we point and scream NERF!! I bought a second account so that I could use her lots as storage for my main toons medical crap. does that make me an exploter??? I'm paying 15 extra bucks a month because I want more storage, not to play my toon, so does that mean I'm cheating the system? Every single profession is screaming nerf in this game, and then people are like "W.T.F why did we get nerfed".
Like I said it doesn't matter how many times SOE fixes problems, people BY NATURE will always ALWAYS find ways to adapt to the changes via work-around (exploit) or just by figuring something else out. Human beings adapt, its the nature of the beast. So frankly calling people a cheater and an exploter is just pointless with this game or any other game. Storage is a huge problem in this game and its not going to change anytime soon. And even if it does people are still gonne find work-arounds.
DragonScout wrote:
lol. I guess you didn't read all the posts in this topic. Unfortunate for you. Because if you had, you would have seen that no, it wasn't because of vendor storage that they decided to put an item limit on vendors. Here, I will post it again:
"The second item has to do with Vendors. Currently, there is no limit to how many items can be placed on a vendor. This causes technical issues, encourages monopolies and actually hurts sales in many instances because most players don't "drill down" through all of the vendor pages to find items. We want to solve the technical issues, discourage monopolies and make vendors easier to use. An item limit is going to be placed on vendors and that limit is intended to be placed on 150."
See anything in there that mentions vendors as storage? no? interesting, huh? oh, and surprisingly enough, there isn't even anything in that reason about vendor poaching either. Kinda nifty huh?
And the only problem with the idea of 1000's of people storing 1000's of items on vendors, is that it is completely absurd. lol. I don't know about your server, but on Shadowfire, I know far more 'true' merchants with skill points invested who have thousands of items for sale, than I know individuals -- skill points invested or not -- who have more than a couple hundred items max on vendors as storage. I don't even know that many that use it for storage period beyond crafters. Soooo. Try again
lol i guess you didn't read my response to this the first time you posted it. Unfortunate for you, because if you had, you would have seen I already explained this in simple terms. Here, let me post it for you again:
Currently, there is no limit to how many items can be placed on a vendor. This causes technical issues, encourages monopolies ...
Well Songe is so correct in many ways.
Lets all be honest.
It is clear common sense that vendors and factories were never intended to be storage.
I fightstorage problems all the time but I have never used a vendor or factory to solve them. Anyone who does that knows darn well it is not an intended use of vendors or factories, just admit it.
Armor smiths do in fact need hige amounts of space. Maybe you need to bring that up to the AS correstpondant, sounds like it could be a schematic requirement issue and the way an armorsmith crafts neesds to be looked at. Maybe too many component requirements or suits need to contain less items.
"The second item has to do with Vendors. Currently, there is no limit to how many items can be placed on a vendor. This causes technical issues, encourages monopolies and actually hurts sales in many instances because most players don't "drill down" through all of the vendor pages to find items. We want to solve the technical issues, discourage monopolies and make vendors easier to use. An item limit is going to be placed on vendors and that limit is intended to be placed on 150."
See anything in there that mentions vendors as storage? no? interesting, huh? oh, and surprisingly enough, there isn't even anything in that reason about vendor poaching either. Kinda nifty huh?
And the only problem with the idea of 1000's of people storing 1000's of items on vendors, is that it is completely absurd. lol. I don't know about your server, but on Shadowfire, I know far more 'true' merchants with skill points invested who have thousands of items for sale, than I know individuals -- skill points invested or not -- who have more than a couple hundred items max on vendors as storage. I don't even know that many that use it for storage period beyond crafters. Soooo. Try again
Thank you Dingo...I was about to post the exact same thing...
No...I didn't read all the posts? Know why? Heard it ALLL before, thanks. Been in this fight for a while now. I was EXPLAINING the technical issues. Hugs and kisses!
Your database/technical issues don't apply. Because the problem isn't the few who use vendors for storage or the few that vendor poach. It is the 'true' merchants with 6 vendors and 500+ items on each one that is causing technical issues. How many storage vendors have you ever seen one person have? and how many of them have you seen 500+ items on each one all as storage? I have never seen anything even close. I can't honestly say I have seen vendors specifically and only used as storage. Usually I see one or two items out of a couple hundred that are clearly overpriced -- and can be assumed they are there for storage (though some people are just clueless to the market value, so you can't even be sure of that.)
Sooooo. yes, a few items.. hell, let us even estimate... 5000 items in a server are on vendors as storage... yet, maybe 500,000,000 items are on vendors for sale. Which do you think is causing the technical issues? Maybe.. just maybe the items for sale?
And while I am sure those storage items disappearing would completely fix the technical issues, the DEVs can't prevent it without finding a computer that can read peoples minds and figure out their intentions. So it is a pointless battle.
It's not what he meant. He meant that they are part of the problem, and you can't really deny it.
That being said, you are pretty subjective when you say 'the few that vendor poach'. Get your facts right, from all the people I know who have a vendor less than half of them have merchant skills.
ISo what do you do? Penalize the merchants who are USING the vendors correctly (even if they are 75% of your load)? OR penalize the guys who AREN'T using the system as intended by CORRECTING the system so that it can only BE used as intended?
And songe, you know this statistically? You are looking at the code and are able to pull up data on all the people that have enough skillpoints invested to keep x amount of vendors. Because unless you do, saying that less than half are 'true' merchants seems a bit high. Most of the people I know have at least some 'right' to vendors, if only through business 3. So, we could both be wrong, or not. either way, you keep saying that vendor poachers always have empty vendors, so how are they adding to the database problem?
And the developers cannot 'do' anything about vendors being used as storage unless they completely remove them from the game, or nerf them to pointlessness. A computer cannot understand the difference between you placing one item for one price, and another of the same type item for a different higher price. Vendors are working correctly, because no matter what price you put it at, it is still going to sell that item if someone wants to buy it. It just isn't possible to code a workable fix to vendors, so as long as there are going to be vendors, there will be vendors as storage.
And in my example, 5 thousand vs 500 million does not equal 25%. lol. try... .00001 or something %. And I bet that is far more accurate than 25%. People just don't use vendors as storage anywhere near as much as vendors are used to just sell things.