Merchant Archive
Thread: Fix for the Non-Merchant vendor issue Proposal
LonelyGhost wrote:
I've always hoped that the lag issue and the spam stuff in Coronet would be fixed in a seperate event. A little more computing power for the Dev cities, and please...oh PLEASE add client-side code that will catch afk spamming. I dont mind too much if someone sits there and shouts out every 2 minutes, but its really annoying when every 30 secs a HUGE block of text appears. For one, they could reduce spam by giving Docs a bonus to buffing if they are INSIDE a medical cneter.....oops, a little off-topic, hehehe
I actually mentioned this last night in another post.. but what amazes me are the few things that were REALLY cool about EverQuest they left out of SWG. Like the /ooc command. That enabled you to type /ooc and it listed your chat text in an "ooc channel" and everyone had the option of turning their ooc channel off and on. See, people would turn it on when they were shopping and off when they were not. And since that option was there, anytime someone /shout'ed or /yell'ed their item for sale, they would be bombarded with /tells to stop and so they had to. If not, they were /ignored. This was perfect, because we didn't have to /ignore EVERYONE like we do now and then selectively unignore everone when we want to shop. I honestly do not know how the EQ chat servers are set up in comparison to SWG, but I am certain this feature would be a simple add.. except now people are so used to dealing with the spam, it will take some time for it to finally catch on. The only lag caused by all of this on EQ was the fact that everyone was standing around in one spot (usually a cave being the only landmark). In SWG, however, they could be anywhere in the city and have landmarks everywhere so I would wager this would also cut down on the lag.
I know the AFK spamming is not necessarily on topic, except that it is for me since my arguement is based on an increase of AFK Spamand lag based on "fixing" the merchant skills.
Balkstar wrote:
RumblingSky wrote:
Balkstar wrote:
2: Sell it in a community location that is well known but again with meager means, say a Farmer's Market. The community spreads the cost of the market between them. (i.e. one buisness tree vendor in a well known mall, with only word of mouth for advertisement)
Funny.. this is exactly what I do in game, except I use the management tree in merchant in order display my wares for sale in a manner which is more convenient to the customer.
So what do we have to argue about on this point. It sounds as if you are legitimately putting points into the the merchant to be a legitimate distributor by making seperate vending booths to help segregate your wares to the customers. What I am referring to is those crafters that do not want to put points into being merchants, where they can only put down one vendor to sell from in a "Farmer's Market."
I agree and that is why I feel I have a right to speak up. As opposed to those who are "exploiting a bug," I do have management 3 and I plan to keep it unless SOE states that it is okay to drop it and keep your vendors or offers to allow us to pay more or something. Since my last response to you, I have admitted that my opinion has started to sway slightly. Now, however, the original reason why I responded to this thread is still a problem. While I understand that it hurts you guys and clogs up the Planetary Map, we still have the problem of AFK spam (my last two responses have dealt specificly with this issue). A fix as most of you have explained it in this thread will dramatically increase AFK spam and thus, the lag. That is where my chief complaint lies now.
3: Sell your wares wholesale to a distriutor that has the means to advertise and distribute your wares worldwide with the most attention to your product availible. (I think you know what this is) Yes, crafters have the right to sell your products, but the way that you sell your products is what is in dispute. What most crafters have been doing is taking the advantages of the distributor and calling it your god given right, when you did not legitimately spend the capital to make the distributorship or storefronts. In the real world, it amounts to robbery.
Yes, well you know what else amounts to robbery in the real world? Forcing someone to pay you money in order to do business. What would we have to do if things worked the way you want? Pay you money so we can do business. Err.. umm.. sorry.. that's racketeering.. not robbery.. MY bad.
Now I'm really confused by your arguments. Being a distributor of goods by having to PAY wholesale for products created by crafters amounts to racketeering? Do you even understand the free market economy? I guess the US government better startarrestingWalMart and Costco execs for selling products that they "forced" the manufactures to buy products from. Let's go back to the Stone Ages, shall we?
My guess is that the manufactures are happy that they have a distributorship that frees them from having to use capital to sell thier own products. And it saves a lot of capital. An example of this would be the Wizards of the Coast stores. WotC decided that having stores to distribute their own products could help eliminate the "evil" middle-man distributors, as you would call it. Guess what happened to the stores? The WotC execs realized how much of a burden it was to actually run the stores. Too much capital investments for not enough returns. They then closed down the stores and instead focused on the most efficient way of doing buisness that they knew: using distibutors to do buisness.
Now, I do actually have an issue with this as you describe it in the real world. The corporations of our country are generally the ones responsible for destroying small businesses. They have a tremendous amount of capital with which they can buy absurd amounts of overstock for extremely cheap prices and in doing so can afford to offer their wares for far less than any other types of business. Free Enterprise is not exactly free. America was built on the "propaganda" of opportunity, yet these large corporations have been allowed to grow so large that it can be next to impossible to start and run your own business and compete fairly with them. The only thing a small business has over a large corporation is customer service, but eventhat will only get you so far when you're talking about middle class consumers and where the difference between $5 and $10 is a loaf of bread and some sandwich meat. While this may not be the text book example of Racketeering, it would be a monopoly, except the corporation executives are smart enough (rather, their lawyers are) to make enough of a difference (store front, CEO's etc) so that by the business standard they aren't breaking any anti-trust laws. However, if you cut away the red tape and look at the simple facts, they are. WOtC doesn't quite count either as they are a corporation themselves and, by nature, corporations feed and work off of one another. However, it does prove my point that even a smaller corporation does not stand a chance against a large corproation. What does this have to do with SWG? Nothing.. it's just a direct response to what you said regarding the Wal-Mart's of the world.
As for the racketeering.. even in the real world, I might make my own goods. There is no limit what-so-ever to how many shops or employees I can have save the capital to fund them and the goods to stock them. That is it. With a Merchant profession not being a supplimental profession, what it seems to me is being said is, "Here, regardless of your funding you only get one vendor and it has to look like this. However, if you pay ME, you can have several vendors and they can look however you want them to." I fail to see a difference between that and sending in a bunch of thugs to tear up the place unless we pay YOU protection. That is the classic example of Racketeering. However, in SWG, you simply cut out the middle-man (the thugs) and simply make it impossible for someone to grow or expand their business using the only things that SHOULD matter in the ability to expand one's business.. capital and goods.
The reason that SOE is not banning people, is that by the time they realized what they did, it was too pervasive, thus they didn't want to piss off the 25% of the people that do it. Instead, they told the 1% of the players that are merchants to kiss off. It was easy. It was a buisness decision for them. All we Merchantsgot was " yes its a a bug, but you will have to live with it for the time being, wheile we decide how to fix our screwup diplimatically."
Oh.. I see. So if there was a credit dupe and 60% of the people playing were exploiting it, they wouldn't ban anyone or take the dupe away? Yeah, that makes sense.
If it was me, I'd be banning them left and right too. But guess what, I don't work for SOE. I instead have to bare the brunt of their "We appologize" speeches. There was just too much of the economy of the game tied up in these illegal vendors in the game by the time SOE admitted it was a bug that was exploited unfairly. In order to prevent alienating a significant portion of their player base, they screwed an insignificant portion of the players base. Is it wrong? Yes. Is it about money? Yes.
If it's a bug, it's a gamebreaking bug that they should've fixed as soon as they found it. Hell, Wookies with Lekku implants were such a gamebreaking bug they fixed that.. what.. a month after it became rampant? Please link me to the post where SOE admits that this is a bug that is being exploited, because I have never seen it.
Doc is also an advicate for Merchants as well as he can speak with members of SOE directly. He definetly is speaking for me. This is a large issue that the majority of us feel it is of top concern. And as for this "totallyscrewed" feeling, wasn't there an inner voice in any of the a-holes that stole our vendors that said, " you know, am I screwing over Merchants by doing this?" I have no sympathy for them.
How would I be screwing over people who make a supplimental profession their main profession? Understand the profession and you wont feel screwed over.
This is where you are totallly off base. Most people believe it is exclusively a seconday profession, but it really shouldn't be. It is my secondary profession, but not for the reasons you think.
I am a Master Smuggler by profession. I became a Merchant for the money savings that you got for structures. My vending stinks. It is by far not my bread-and-butter. I get more money doing missions and slicing; two things that cannot be affected by the Merchant profession. I became a Master Merchant to help my guild. There are a few carfters in my guild that do not want to take the time to sell products on the market. It's a total waste of time for them. Instead they look to me to sell thier products. All they have to do is move it to my vendors, and I do all the rest. Its that simple for them. They get money up front; I get stock to sell for the good of the guild which gets our guild noticed.
Then I honestly don't see where your problem is either. This is such a gamebreaking bug, yet you are able to perform the function on a merchant as you see fit. If that is how you see your role, then that's awesome! You're able to do it, even with the way things are now! You only get.. what.. 6.. 8 vendors max as a master merchant anyway. I don't see much more room for you to expand as it is.
All I hear from the other side is justification for screwing over a "secondary profession".
I'm not exactly sure how I'm screwing over a secondary profession by treating it as a secondary profession.. but ookay
The reason I put it into parenthesis is to show that most people in the game think this profession is. They really should stop thinking that. It can easily be a primary profession once the bugs have been fixed, and a person can have enough capital to create a market. That is the major work for the profession: creating a market. It is a lot more work then what most people are willing to give credit for in the game.
Again, I'm just taking it at face value as is most of the other people, I would imagine (I haven't spoken to them so I don't know for sure.. or even if they'd be honest if I did). I highly encourage SOE to step up clear up the issue regarding the purpose of the Merchant profession and how it was meant to relate to all of the other crafting professions. I honestly do. It's true, I do enjoy debate but I for one would like a clear cut answer to what should be a very simple problem.
Hey, have ALL the opinion you want...just so you know that it's wrong 
Look. You don't want spammers? Great. Goody for you. I want my profession back. I want it to mean something. I don't want every ass clown with a product taking it and dropping it because they won't need me.
Spamming aside, why is it perfectly ok to make this profession USELESS on it's own? Because that's what you're talking about. You're talking about invalidating being a merchant. So people will stop advertising and start spamming? Big deal. Screw'em. They don't have the skills they don't get the benefits. that's just the way it goes. I don't want more spam I want my profession back. You're dislike of spam doesn't overstep me getting to play the game I pay 12 a month for. And if you let people keep the profession I'm taking up skill points for, you're stepping on MY game, and EVERY person's game who wants to be a merchant, not to compliment their weaponsmithing, but because they want to be a financial bigshot and wheel and deal. Some of us DO want to actually PLAY this game instead of beat it, you know.
I'm going to say this again. If people can just drop the skills and keep the benefits then you might as well scrap the profession because no one will ever go, "Hey, I need a merchant." And yes, THEY SHOULD be saying that. That's the point of having it as a player profession. Not so you can solo the crafting game. Interdependency is a part of this game. Some crafters are just going to have to need us.
RumblingSky wrote:
Balkstar wrote:
2: Sell it in a community location that is well known but again with meager means, say a Farmer's Market. The community spreads the cost of the market between them. (i.e. one buisness tree vendor in a well known mall, with only word of mouth for advertisement)
Funny.. this is exactly what I do in game, except I use the management tree in merchant in order display my wares for sale in a manner which is more convenient to the customer.
So what do we have to argue about on this point. It sounds as if you are legitimately putting points into the the merchant to be a legitimate distributor by making seperate vending booths to help segregate your wares to the customers. What I am referring to is those crafters that do not want to put points into being merchants, where they can only put down one vendor to sell from in a "Farmer's Market."
I agree and that is why I feel I have a right to speak up. As opposed to those who are "exploiting a bug," I do have management 3 and I plan to keep it unless SOE states that it is okay to drop it and keep your vendors or offers to allow us to pay more or something. Since my last response to you, I have admitted that my opinion has started to sway slightly. Now, however, the original reason why I responded to this thread is still a problem. While I understand that it hurts you guys and clogs up the Planetary Map, we still have the problem of AFK spam (my last two responses have dealt specificly with this issue). A fix as most of you have explained it in this thread will dramatically increase AFK spam and thus, the lag. That is where my chief complaint lies now.
And I would agree with that, but there isnt any easy answers to fix that, as most of these morons will call on the freedom to speak. Thing is that once people realize that their spams are falling on deaf ears, then they may move on, butI doubt it. It becomes other players responsibilility to call out these morons and tell them that their antics are not wanted.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3: Sell your wares wholesale to a distriutor that has the means to advertise and distribute your wares worldwide with the most attention to your product availible. (I think you know what this is) Yes, crafters have the right to sell your products, but the way that you sell your products is what is in dispute. What most crafters have been doing is taking the advantages of the distributor and calling it your god given right, when you did not legitimately spend the capital to make the distributorship or storefronts. In the real world, it amounts to robbery.
Yes, well you know what else amounts to robbery in the real world? Forcing someone to pay you money in order to do business. What would we have to do if things worked the way you want? Pay you money so we can do business. Err.. umm.. sorry.. that's racketeering.. not robbery.. MY bad.
Now I'm really confused by your arguments. Being a distributor of goods by having to PAY wholesale for products created by crafters amounts to racketeering? Do you even understand the free market economy? I guess the US government better startarrestingWalMart and Costco execs for selling products that they "forced" the manufactures to buy products from. Let's go back to the Stone Ages, shall we?
My guess is that the manufactures are happy that they have a distributorship that frees them from having to use capital to sell thier own products. And it saves a lot of capital. An example of this would be the Wizards of the Coast stores. WotC decided that having stores to distribute their own products could help eliminate the "evil" middle-man distributors, as you would call it. Guess what happened to the stores? The WotC execs realized how much of a burden it was to actually run the stores. Too much capital investments for not enough returns. They then closed down the stores and instead focused on the most efficient way of doing buisness that they knew: using distibutors to do buisness.
Now, I do actually have an issue with this as you describe it in the real world. The corporations of our country are generally the ones responsible for destroying small businesses. They have a tremendous amount of capital with which they can buy absurd amounts of overstock for extremely cheap prices and in doing so can afford to offer their wares for far less than any other types of business. Free Enterprise is not exactly free. America was built on the "propaganda" of opportunity, yet these large corporations have been allowed to grow so large that it can be next to impossible to start and run your own business and compete fairly with them. The only thing a small business has over a large corporation is customer service, but eventhat will only get you so far when you're talking about middle class consumers and where the difference between $5 and $10 is a loaf of bread and some sandwich meat. While this may not be the text book example of Racketeering, it would be a monopoly, except the corporation executives are smart enough (rather, their lawyers are) to make enough of a difference (store front, CEO's etc) so that by the business standard they aren't breaking any anti-trust laws. However, if you cut away the red tape and look at the simple facts, they are. WOtC doesn't quite count either as they are a corporation themselves and, by nature, corporations feed and work off of one another. However, it does prove my point that even a smaller corporation does not stand a chance against a large corproation. What does this have to do with SWG? Nothing.. it's just a direct response to what you said regarding the Wal-Mart's of the world.
As for the racketeering.. even in the real world, I might make my own goods. There is no limit what-so-ever to how many shops or employees I can have save the capital to fund them and the goods to stock them. That is it. With a Merchant profession not being a supplimental profession, what it seems to me is being said is, "Here, regardless of your funding you only get one vendor and it has to look like this. However, if you pay ME, you can have several vendors and they can look however you want them to." I fail to see a difference between that and sending in a bunch of thugs to tear up the place unless we pay YOU protection. That is the classic example of Racketeering. However, in SWG, you simply cut out the middle-man (the thugs) and simply make it impossible for someone to grow or expand their business using the only things that SHOULD matter in the ability to expand one's business.. capital and goods.
Wow, man, you have been listening Ralph Nader a little too much.
If I had put a small buisness next to a mall that sold exactly the same items that I sold, I don't think my business would get off the ground. In an example like that, I would believe that it was my lack of distributive and sales power that prevented me from succeeding compared to the mall. It's all a part of the Laws of Supply and Demand. Large Corporations can afford to sell at cheaper prices because they usually sell in bulk. Supply go up, price goes down.As long as people buy, they will continue to sell at that price. But this is beside the point.
Who's forcing you to sell to these thugs? Why not open up a mom and pop store? If the 900 pound gorillas are giving you trouble telling you you must sell your goods to them, I'd sick the CSR's on them. I'm sure that there antics you state are against the aggreement you agre to every time you play the game. So far, as far as I know, I have not seen the gorillas you spout on about. The only preditory people that I've seen so far have been dealt with (i.e. Double-Slice Smugglers. Let them burn in hell!!) And before you go on stating you were speaking metiphorically, know that in previous posts, I gave 3 ways that non merchants can sell their wares. You tell me what is most effective. Odds are it will be a tie between 2 and 3.
What we have now is all the suppliers becoming big corporations themsleves without risking capital. That is robbery. They steal capital away from other players and the environmentfor financial gain. That sure as hell isnt the communistic ideal that you are supporting. What would be ideal for you, from what I'm hearing, is if everyone had a coke machine vendor, no planetary map, and no spamming. Guess what? AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN. There should be a profession that, with hard work, can benifit from selling goods that others make in which both will benefit. As a benifit to society, these players can provide convinient locations for goods at a fair price.
This game is all about social interaction anyways. Why not go out and find a merchant and see what they may do for you to help sell your hard-earned wares
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The reason that SOE is not banning people, is that by the time they realized what they did, it was too pervasive, thus they didn't want to piss off the 25% of the people that do it. Instead, they told the 1% of the players that are merchants to kiss off. It was easy. It was a buisness decision for them. All we Merchantsgot was " yes its a a bug, but you will have to live with it for the time being, wheile we decide how to fix our screwup diplimatically."
Oh.. I see. So if there was a credit dupe and 60% of the people playing were exploiting it, they wouldn't ban anyone or take the dupe away? Yeah, that makes sense.
If it was me, I'd be banning them left and right too. But guess what, I don't work for SOE. I instead have to bare the brunt of their "We appologize" speeches. There was just too much of the economy of the game tied up in these illegal vendors in the game by the time SOE admitted it was a bug that was exploited unfairly. In order to prevent alienating a significant portion of their player base, they screwed an insignificant portion of the players base. Is it wrong? Yes. Is it about money? Yes.
If it's a bug, it's a gamebreaking bug that they should've fixed as soon as they found it. Hell, Wookies with Lekku implants were such a gamebreaking bug they fixed that.. what.. a month after it became rampant? Please link me to the post where SOE admits that this is a bug that is being exploited, because I have never seen it.
Were Lekkus really tied so intricately to the economy of the game? I doubt it seriously.
What SOE has to do is really nasty from a technical stand point, in that it will involve wholesale changes to their databases. Not an easy feat.
Oh, your wish has been granted: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=game_guides&message.id=130200
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Doc is also an advicate for Merchants as well as he can speak with members of SOE directly. He definetly is speaking for me. This is a large issue that the majority of us feel it is of top concern. And as for this "totallyscrewed" feeling, wasn't there an inner voice in any of the a-holes that stole our vendors that said, " you know, am I screwing over Merchants by doing this?" I have no sympathy for them.
How would I be screwing over people who make a supplimental profession their main profession? Understand the profession and you wont feel screwed over.
This is where you are totallly off base. Most people believe it is exclusively a seconday profession, but it really shouldn't be. It is my secondary profession, but not for the reasons you think.
I am a Master Smuggler by profession. I became a Merchant for the money savings that you got for structures. My vending stinks. It is by far not my bread-and-butter. I get more money doing missions and slicing; two things that cannot be affected by the Merchant profession. I became a Master Merchant to help my guild. There are a few carfters in my guild that do not want to take the time to sell products on the market. It's a total waste of time for them. Instead they look to me to sell thier products. All they have to do is move it to my vendors, and I do all the rest. Its that simple for them. They get money up front; I get stock to sell for the good of the guild which gets our guild noticed.
Then I honestly don't see where your problem is either. This is such a gamebreaking bug, yet you are able to perform the function on a merchant as you see fit. If that is how you see your role, then that's awesome! You're able to do it, even with the way things are now! You only get.. what.. 6.. 8 vendors max as a master merchant anyway. I don't see much more room for you to expand as it is.
Then I guess I will never be the evil mega-corporations you keep talking about. What I do hope is that I can carve a small niche in the economy enough to make a good living. And I would hope that all players would have that same goal too.
From what I'm seeing other players are getting my benifits as merchant, but are also able to branch out yet again to to other professions without penalty. There is no grey here. It's all black and white. They are in the wrong. They should be penalized for it.
Remember, I payed 60+ skill points to get Master Merchant. Shouldn't I have some sort of benefit that far exceeds the vast majority's skills in that profession?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All I hear from the other side is justification for screwing over a "secondary profession".
I'm not exactly sure how I'm screwing over a secondary profession by treating it as a secondary profession.. but ookay
The reason I put it into parenthesis is to show that most people in the game think this profession is. They really should stop thinking that. It can easily be a primary profession once the bugs have been fixed, and a person can have enough capital to create a market. That is the major work for the profession: creating a market. It is a lot more work then what most people are willing to give credit for in the game.
Again, I'm just taking it at face value as is most of the other people, I would imagine (I haven't spoken to them so I don't know for sure.. or even if they'd be honest if I did). I highly encourage SOE to step up clear up the issue regarding the purpose of the Merchant profession and how it was meant to relate to all of the other crafting professions. I honestly do. It's true, I do enjoy debate but I for one would like a clear cut answer to what should be a very simple problem.
Agreed. Your debates are very stimulating.
Well I would say it is getting more confusing then helpful.