Merchant Archive
Thread: Anti-Trust: Why in-game Monopolies are pure fiction.
Artiman wrote:
What you need to do is worry about improving and establsihing your own product and reputation, and stop worrying about conspiracy theories. Customers will invest a huge amount of extra time if they feel they're getting their money's worth. Unfortuneately, the attitude I'm reading here is that you'd rather compel customers to accept your product as the best that they can get at that moment because the people with a better product and/or price are sold out due to artificial vendor limits.
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Uhm.. hello? What I want is an open market. I don't want to force anything on anyone. I don't want vendor caps. I want a place that people can easily compare my product to other products and choose.
ok, i will buy that. of course, then everyone shops at the swg equivalent of wal-mart, which then actually does become an effective market force and drives prices down, effectively eliminating the little guy's chance to make a living. our advertising opitons are very poor, but if you establish a clientele, you have a better chance of keeping them as it stands.
but vendor capacity limits will be a bad thing for most of us at some point.
Artiman wrote:
What you need to do is worry about improving and establsihing your own product and reputation, and stop worrying about conspiracy theories. Customers will invest a huge amount of extra time if they feel they're getting their money's worth. Unfortuneately, the attitude I'm reading here is that you'd rather compel customers to accept your product as the best that they can get at that moment because the people with a better product and/or price are sold out due to artificial vendor limits.
__________
Uhm.. hello? What I want is an open market. I don't want to force anything on anyone. I don't want vendor caps. I want a place that people can easily compare my product to other products and choose.
ok, i will buy that. of course, then everyone shops at the swg equivalent of wal-mart, which then actually does become an effective market force and drives prices down, effectively eliminating the little guy's chance to make a living. our advertising opitons are very poor, but if you establish a clientele, you have a better chance of keeping them as it stands.
but vendor capacity limits will be a bad thing for most of us at some point.
Sigrun wrote:
Artiman wrote:
Artificial production caps (vendor limits) isn't going to help you break into the market, but it will limit what you can eventually achieve.
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Which is one of the reasons why I specifically stated that I am not in favor of vendor caps. The problem that newer players face is ONLY that it takes MUCH more time to buy from a scattered array of new players with high quality goods than from a long-term player with a large stock of high quality goods. The solution is NOT caps.
/lick
The solution is a Bazaar system that lets you search and buy from (but not necessarily take delivery from) PC vendors, from any Bazaar terminal on the planet or (preferably) in the galaxy.
i think i love you, too
Avair wrote:
I suspect this would actually make it worse for new crafters, asit creates a perfect market where it would be extremely easy to find the absolute best goods, which new crafters won't be able to create for a while. It would make entry into the marketharder rather than easier. Perfect markets don't exist in real life, I'd be really leery of creating one in the game.
The solution is a Bazaar system that lets you search and buy from (but not necessarily take delivery from) PC vendors, from any Bazaar terminal on the planet or (preferably) in the galaxy.
sadly, this is a valid concern. in a system where there is a lot of money, the quality of goods will be the deciding factor for most purchase decisions. there would be a small secondary market for "value" items where a lesser quality is compensated by a reduced price. still, as a shopper, it is very attractive. perhaps if it were limited to regional searches or had other constraints. but we have constraints at present, and appear to be about to get more...
Gavvot wrote:
I didn't read the whole thread, but I just wanted to point out 1 thing :
It's about 5 days now that we hear again and again and again that master merchant with 660 items for sale will have to restock at least twice a day.
I have some doubt this is the majority of Merchant.
However, this isn't about pure monopolies but about the fact that some Merchant hold a very big part of the market.
Concidering some sell 660 items, including crates of 25 items, twice a day, according to what they say,
I have some difficulties concidering it's pure fiction.
People weren't whinning that much if it was pure fiction.
monopolies are my least ocncern. i don't want to have to restock frequently. i make a factory run, put it on my vendor, and i restock my vendors every other week, since i have adequate supply now. one day, every other week is all the stocking i WANT to do. i hate it! it is mind numbingly boring and tedious.
this will only add to the tedium of having a (by choice) small business. some people, maybe me, will quit their profession, and prehaps the game, as a result. and that is a bad thing.
you said it! bummer is, i sell mostly the powerups and "silly low volume items," lol. businesses like mine will be ruined.
DarthLueder wrote:
First - those 660 items are spread out into 6 vendors. Often these vendors will have certain categories (ranged, melee, heavy, powerups, etc.)
Second - These vendors are often on 2 or more planets. So if I carry 12 each of the 9 different basice rifles (never mind stocked/scoped variations) and my lasers sell out in Coronet (I live on Dantooine) I have to run out and restock that item or the combat type looking for lasers will be looking somewhere else.
Third - People don't come to my vendors because I'm a Master Merchant. They come because I'm a Master Weaponsmith and make damn fine weapons for very reasonable prices. I'm small fry compared to the huge volume weaponsmiths on my server. People know me and I have my regular customers. I pride myself in stocking virtually everything I make so you never find my vendor without the weapon you need. Typically this means 300+ items on each vendor.
This limit will force me to drastically reduce the variety of what I stock and if I want to make decent credits limit those items to the most profitable and big sellers. No more powerups, no more silly low volume items like fishing poles or vehicle customizing kits. Too low a volume and not enough profit. Who suffers here? Me? Nah, I can make stuff for my guildies and I and go do other things. If keeping my vendors gets to be too much of a pain I'll just drop it and do something else. Again, who suffers? Not me. The customers are the true losers in this nerf.
Oh, and for the egalitarian proponant.
/RantOn
Why not just remove all crafting from the game. SOE can supply NPC vendors that all sell the same quality product at a set price. Everyone is equal. No advantages, no disadvantages. Docs buff packs are all the same quality. Clothing can all be the same color (perhaps a nice Mao shade of brown). It would certainly solve the spam problem at the Coronet starport. You could stand in the square and listen to the wind whistle through the buildings. BECAUSE NO ONE WOULD BE PLAYING THE FREAKING GAME!
/RantOff
Peace
great sig! lol
Breatai wrote:
jefdenbeffer wrote:
I foresee...
This thread deleted...
Coz u outsmarted devs...
/agree's
"You nerf much more of this game and you might as well call it Pong..." quote Antihero-"
and those of us who don't want the group marketing hassel, those of us who are left behind, become those of us who simply left.
Kershakk wrote:
Hero_DarkJedi wrote:
Monopolies are not limited to a single company ... a group of companies that control 60% or more of an industry are considered to have a "collective" monopoly.
What do you think would happen with these caps? You call a group of people maintaining 60% 'dominance' of the market as a 'collective' monopoly. What do you think will happen if such low vendor caps will be instigated?
Encouragement of collective monopolies.
It will be tough to run independent operations - those people who act as a 'collective' and set up gigantic malls will, in effect, be your 'collective monopolisers'. The drive is to have an establishment that people enjoy shopping at. It's clear what annoys people most about shopping is having to go from place to place. Clearly, a mall that provides everything will be the desired service.
Those people who cannot afford to play dedicatedly, who aren't part of a huge mercantile group, or who do not have multiple accounts with which to set up more vendors will be shut out. That's your monopoly set up right there. Do you think people will just suck it up that they can't hardly stock anything worth a darn? They'll group, consolidate, form super malls, got more accounts for more vendors, while those who can't are left behind.
I agree in principle that unlimited storage is wrong, especially combined with the fact vendors can be kept after skill revocation, and I believe that is the key problem more than anything else - but the caps as they are, while attempting to stop unlimited storage, is hurting everyone else.
Gavvot wrote:
Bermag wrote:
It is not about selling 660 items in one day, very few do that. But me as a ws I haveat least60 different models. Then I also sell powerups and resources. A limit of 660 items does not give me much room to have enough of each item (I usually stock at least 25 item of each weapon). What you want to do is to stock a reasonable amount of each item so they don't get sold out to quick anddon't need to check your inventory every day. One weapon can stay on vendors for a long time withou any sales and then in a day or two all are gone. It is not possible to predict demand so you need to have a sufficientquantatity of each model. Many people buy 5 or more of each model so they can get a good slice.
Well, you just have to stock more of the items that sell often and less of the items that don't.
And keep a small stock of the low sellers somewhere like for exemple in crates in your factory.
As ou pointed out, lots of people buy several identical weapons to have them sliced.
why not sell them pre-sliced? Speed sliced doesn't sux as much as people say, overall in the game there are more people leveling than people being master in a combat profession, and when leveling, speed is always better than damage.
If you don't want to sell pre-sliced, and the majority of your customer buy items per 5, why not make your product available per crate of 5?
i don't think you have a basic grasp of this. there are potentially hundreds of individual items that i would like to have available to my customers. even if i just have a few of each, these caps will be a problem. andif i don't have it, or enough of it for sale, they buy it elsewhere, and then they get used to shopping elsewhere, and then they don't come back to see me. and if you start selling presliced (as an example) then you have to have a bunch of items on hand to restock with, and inventory becomes a problem again. or you can go smuggler yourself. but then you won't have enough skill points to have vendors.
so basically, you need to be come a master artisan/master merchant for six months, and then tell me if you think 660 items total is enough. i think you will say "NO WAY!"
Gavvot wrote:
I know Jef.
LK-tech is probably the most successfull shop on farstar, and maybe on several server at once.
The question is, how many merchant sell as much as you?
1% to 2% big max. Overall, I would say 1 to 2 shop per server, not much more.
You'll be hurt badly by this change, but you know that the easiest way for you to deal with it is to add a couple master merchant in your team, and maybe a couple WS too.
Having such a big business is great, but is it normal that you can have that much business with a so small team in a so big server?
EDIT : If I don't sell much, it's mainly because I don't want to.
This is a game, and I'm here to have fun, being rich and having the biggest sale numbers of the server isn't part of my fun.
And feeling like my profession is work isn't part of my fun either.
I still make millions you know, even if I don't sell much.
Oh, and being specialized on all the possible weapons isn't what I call being specialized.
Message Edited by Gavvot on 08-11-2004 12:41 PM
Artiman wrote:
Yay!!! Yeah screw the newbs. Then one year from now you'll wonder why the hell they canceled the game.
Ask yourself this. When you started, were there HUGE operations that had fully stocked vendors out there that you had to compete with? Were people rich to the point that they didn't comparison shop on the basis of price, or even quality?
Us "newbs" don't need a vendor item cap. All we need is a place to sell our wares, where a customer doesn't have to invest a huge amount of extra time to buy from us rather than you.
Amen.
I was the NOOB is November 2003. There were seriously large architectural operations yet I made my stuff and always had the best I could make in stock. I have ONE vendor location on Dantooine.
I have no doubt I sell more than all the rest because I MAKE MORE. I spent 7 months and over 53 million credits collecting the tapes to get my 12 points in structure experimentation, structure assembly, artisan experimentation and artisan assembly.
I never asked for anything but a place to sell my wares. Refreshing to see someone else of similar mind.
Fivo Asia
Gavvot wrote:
Bah, it's the law of evolution : adapt or die. works in MMORPG quite well too.
I still don't get why it's that hard to restock a vendor more often.
It's just puting item for sale and setting a number once per item, it doesn't take hours.