Merchant Archive

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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.

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Well, if you have a request for specific types of clothing, say a leather jacket, your point about bypassing a merchant and going straight for the source carries weight. However, you would hope that the Tailors in the area that you /tell out to won't be too busy going out on missions, grinding out other special orders, or whatever tailors will do in their free time when in OR out of the game. Usually it will be a, "Can't talk right now. Leave an email and I'll get back to you on prices. Expect the item to be ready for you in 2-3 days."

A lot of consumers still fall in the "I don't know whats out there to buy, Where can I go to see a good selection?" or " I need the item NOW NOW NOW!! I'll pay any price, just as long as I have it in my hot little hand." Merchants cater to these types of consumers, simply because with thebazaar's smalllimit at 25 items, there is little likelyhood that anyone will find the items that will fit their appetites. With the ability to mechandise a large number of a variety of items, we can provide everything that boththe non-descriminating, and heavily-decriminating consumers can look for 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

As for your percieved role as to what we want the profession to be, you are partially right. We do want to be the easiest route of goods to the consumers, but we are not blind. Buisness outside of our profession will still happen. It is unavoidable and actually should be encouraged, but with the tools that are provided in the profession, we will be a much easier storefront to find when compared to having to search far and wide for the crafterthat isnt to busy to help fulfill a special order. The tools that the Merchants have (i.e. global map advertising, barking droids providing WP to shops)were made to provide nothing but convinience to the consumers of the game, not inconvenience them.

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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.

As it is, there are still players, both merchant and non merchant that place a higher value in the look of the vessel that they sell from. Call it human psycology. Call it whatever you want. When trying to theme up a shop, sellers will always try touse items that will follow the theme of the environment they are selling from. Coke machines arn't really that great in a stylized storefront.

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?

Well first of all. I'm sure you are privy to the backlash of the players that cannot stand the spam wars of Coronet. Once someoneis put on the ignore list, they have a hard time coming off. How do you intend on selling to players if you are on mute?

You need to concider vendors as tools of the trade, just asbuff schematicsare to docs and weapon certifications are to PvP professions. Not everyone has a need to use them, and frankly I can see why SOE decided to put limits to their distribution in the game. As it is right now, their databases are taxed to the limit. Think about if everyone had a vendor out just for the hell of it. Not really selling anything, just spicing up their abodes. And people complained about how crappy all the empty vendors in the game are right now!

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?

As for Doctors truly being necessary, are they actually? If I spend enough time in an empty hospital I will be healed of all disease, wounds, and poisons. It will be very tedious, I know, to spend hours there if I am exceptionaly wounded, but its still the same healing powers. And you don't need to be buffed in order to be successful. I can count the number of times I've been buffed on one hand, and I have been playing since 2 weeks after launch.

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?

You forget that most of those games had well known environments that were dedicated to the merchandising of items, usually near a permenent town or such. With the limited exception of the bazaar, there is no such area in SWG. It is all distributed throughout the entirety of the different worlds. With the exception of Spamming (of which I've shown that such advertisements are not very effective to an uncaptivated audience), how would you like to advertise such places of commerce?

Empty vendors are not helping the merchant profession to be sure, but look what you just said above? "So why can't everyone just be allowed to get a vendor if they want?" Because of that exact reason. Not everyone will stock the vendors if that is not their overriding goal in the game. Consumers will be too frustrated to plow through empty vendor after empty vendor, and the economy will slow to a grinding halt, due to the fact that now everything will become special order to the crafters directly. Hope you are ready to hang out in the game 24/7. And you thought that storage space nowis a problem for crafters when you concider that crafters will have to wait to directly trade the goods with his or her customer.

Look how much advertisement I'm getting just by making these posts? =) Granted nobody knows what server but still you get the idea

OK, you've advertised to 10% of us, how many of us do you think will show up to buy goods based solely on your tagline?

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DirthNader wrote:

I keep seeing this brought up, but I'm curious to hear why having a dedicated merchant manage my storefront will suddenly free up enough of my time that I'm able to fulfill every custom order that comes my way almost instantly.

After I ran about 600 pieces of armor a couple of days ago and had my slicer run through them (God bless him), it took me a while to stock my vendor. Not nearly as much time as it did to get the armor to the point where it was ready to go on a vendor. Even if the merchant stepped in a bought the armor pre-sliced in bulk crates, he's really only saving me about two hours of work. Now, the problem with custom orders is that most require factory run components, and those by nature are very time consuming. Am I really to believe that by freeing up 2 hours of my time I'm suddenly going to be able to craft every random piece of armor someone requests?

I think not. In fact, related to custom orders the only benefit to the customer that I can see is having a master merchant as a single point contact to multiple crafters (which isn't anything in the merchant skill tree). But the rub of it is that once that customer puts their custom order in, they're likely going to have to wait the same amount of time as if they had contacted the crafter directly, because the merchant isn't really saving much of the crafter's time in the grand scheme of things.

Middlemen / distributors work well in industries where there are a basic items with little variety. Once someone wants something outside of that basic selection their value crumbles. Think if purcahsing a car - if you can't find what you want on any lot and need a special order, you end up waiting on the factory, not the dealer. I really fail to see how merchants are going to bring the custom order back to crafting.

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Balkstar wrote:

You misinterpereted me. I never said that special order items need to go through any merchant. I believe that items like that are more efficiently done through direct sales in using profession searches.

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Balkstar wrote:

To tell you the truth, wouldnt you rather spend those 2 hours doing anything else then stocking a vendor? I'm willing to, because I'm in the profession nearly full time, but you as a crafter have so many other things to deal with when crafting. How much is your time worth to you when you do something that is not your primary focal occupation in the game?

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The artist formerly known as Ittov

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DirthNader wrote:

Yeah, but I'm not much of a trusting person when it comes to money. Consignment sales? Sure.

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Balkstar wrote:

Look how much advertisement I'm getting just by making these posts? =) Granted nobody knows what server but still you get the idea

OK, you've advertised to 10% of us, how many of us do you think will show up to buy goods based solely on your tagline?

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4. Last and totally off topic, I think this game is seriously lacking in any fun or balance and I hope that the Jump to Lightspeed really adds some fun.

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Balkstar wrote:

...having to search far and wide for the crafterthat isnt to busy to help fulfill a special order...

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I keep seeing this brought up, but I'm curious to hear why having a dedicated merchant manage my storefront will suddenly free up enough of my time that I'm able to fulfill every custom order that comes my way almost instantly.

After I ran about 600 pieces of armor a couple of days ago and had my slicer run through them (God bless him), it took me a while to stock my vendor. Not nearly as much time as it did to get the armor to the point where it was ready to go on a vendor. Even if the merchant stepped in a bought the armor pre-sliced in bulk crates, he's really only saving me about two hours of work. Now, the problem with custom orders is that most require factory run components, and those by nature are very time consuming. Am I really to believe that by freeing up 2 hours of my time I'm suddenly going to be able to craft every random piece of armor someone requests?

I think not. In fact, related to custom orders the only benefit to the customer that I can see is having a master merchant as a single point contact to multiple crafters (which isn't anything in the merchant skill tree). But the rub of it is that once that customer puts their custom order in, they're likely going to have to wait the same amount of time as if they had contacted the crafter directly, because the merchant isn't really saving much of the crafter's time in the grand scheme of things.

Middlemen / distributors work well in industries where there are a basic items with little variety. Once someone wants something outside of that basic selection their value crumbles. Think if purcahsing a car - if you can't find what you want on any lot and need a special order, you end up waiting on the factory, not the dealer. I really fail to see how merchants are going to bring the custom order back to crafting.

The artist formerly known as Ittov

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Paxlar wrote:

Ok to sum up:

1. I think this game wouldhave been just fine if no merchant class was added.

I think this game wouldhave been just fine if no<insert Paxlar's profession>class was added.

2. I think that anyone who wants to run a vendor should be allowed to.

I do too. Business 3 in the Artisan profession allows this.

3. Vendor costs need to be a % of the total amount of the goods listed. No goods on the vendor for say 3 days or something, then the vendor quits for lack of payment since he isn't selling anything to make money. Would you work for free?

Bad idea. Well-stocked vendors will bea thing of the past.

4. Last and totally off topic, I think this game is seriously lacking in any fun or balance and I hope that the Jump to Lightspeed really adds some fun.

Quit then.

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Hi guys I just wanted to throw another point of view out there... I only have the big box vendor for my own goods in my little shop, but i work my butt off to stock it as high as i can, having over 1200 items on it... There's simply NO way I could afford to pay a merchant to keep all the stock listed for me as I don't sell a HUGE volume, just enough to get by (I just wanted to insure that people would have a HUGE selection when they come to my humble little shop) If this one clunky vendor is stripped from me (and I only have one as in my opinnion it was more fair to merchants for me to only have ONE, as apposed to people who climb the merch tree and then drop it after getting several vendors and tents), I will basically HAVE to drop tailor... Not all of us are in this to be insanely wealthy, like i said, i make enought to get by, but pride myself on having a huge selection... Perhaps if we could limit the venor retention to just ONE that could be a way to solve the brunt of this dilemma? Obviously I have a LOT at stake here so i'm clearly biased, but think of it this way... if someone insists on having access to tents or specialized snazzy vendors than they SHOULD have to go through an active merchant, but if they will accept the bare minimum, no frills, than they should only have to pay maintenance fees to that vendor (which in mho should be disbursed to the merchants on THAT server anyway, not the game itself) Hope that make sense, as I know quite a few crafters who are doing the same thing, and they too would be devistated if their single solitary vendor and all their stock was stripped from them.. We small time businessmen and women can't afford to go through merchants with the proposed plans I have seen thusfar.... Just my take on this, thanks for listening-

Chloe of Sunrunner

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vanora wrote:

Hi guys I just wanted to throw another point of view out there... I only have the big box vendor for my own goods in my little shop, but i work my butt off to stock it as high as i can, having over 1200 items on it... There's simply NO way I could afford to pay a merchant to keep all the stock listed for me as I don't sell a HUGE volume, just enough to get by (I just wanted to insure that people would have a HUGE selection when they come to my humble little shop) If this one clunky vendor is stripped from me (and I only have one as in my opinnion it was more fair to merchants for me to only have ONE, as apposed to people who climb the merch tree and then drop it after getting several vendors and tents), I will basically HAVE to drop tailor... Not all of us are in this to be insanely wealthy, like i said, i make enought to get by, but pride myself on having a huge selection... Perhaps if we could limit the venor retention to just ONE that could be a way to solve the brunt of this dilemma? Obviously I have a LOT at stake here so i'm clearly biased, but think of it this way... if someone insists on having access to tents or specialized snazzy vendors than they SHOULD have to go through an active merchant, but if they will accept the bare minimum, no frills, than they should only have to pay maintenance fees to that vendor (which in mho should be disbursed to the merchants on THAT server anyway, not the game itself) Hope that make sense, as I know quite a few crafters who are doing the same thing, and they too would be devistated if their single solitary vendor and all their stock was stripped from them.. We small time businessmen and women can't afford to go through merchants with the proposed plans I have seen thusfar.... Just my take on this, thanks for listening-

Chloe of Sunrunner

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