Merchant Archive
Thread: Pleading on behalf non-Merchants
Make those endorsements part and parcel of your request to the devs to fix "poaching", and I will be your loyal servant.
DocSavag wrote:
I agree with just about all of that until your solution is allowing people to keep using our tools without being a merchant. I'll post in support of any thread you point me to for Tailor Mannequins. Send me a link and I"ll agree with you on that.
I'll even post my agreement on your proposal for "mailboxes" provided they can be implemented without griefing and without giving people another source of unlimited item storage.
Calfek wrote:
Im personally very interested in what merchants think the effects will be if after a period of grace all of these vendors are removed. Id like to do a pro con analysis, not only regarding the merchant proffession but also likley effects on the economy.
And I'd like to comment on the list.
Pro
Certainly there will be less people who keep empty vendors, except most of the empty vendors on the map are from people who have left the game for a long period of time, and who quite possibly have cancelled accounts. However it would stop people using merchant for storage.
Although not paramount to the fix, it is a very nice side effect.
The equality argument, that people will have to get skill points that people who arnt using the exploit have. I can see this, Soe can see this too and are likley to be very happy with the idea as it seriously encourages people to go and get a second account. Just as a view here as soon as publish 10 hits and people go mad getting jedi, the secondary slots opened are likley to be full of merchant/doctor characters.
Thismay make merchant a viable proffession in its own right, i dont know what the stats are but i think its likley that 70% of people currently use the exploit.
Equal skills-for-skill point usage for everyone in the game is a pillar for the fix.
This would encourage co-operation, this change will only benifit independent merchants who are allready cornering certain markets, over peoples dead bodies are they about to give merchants 10% of their profits when selling there T21's etc. PA's Player cities etc will simply make a merchant for them, i still feel this is not going to make merchant particually viable.
Unfortunatley giving extra skill points to exclusive Weaponsmiths, Armorsmiths, and Architects is not making things any better in the monopoly market. The big crafter players will continue to get richer and richer, due primarily to theoverallotment of skills to their characters.With a much more restrictive system put in place for the vendor system, many more people will be added to the ranks of merchants. More Merchants mean a increased playerbase to constructively criticize the profession instead of the now continuous posting on how to cheat the profession. More players that are interested in the well-being of the profession mean better viability.
A well thought out merchant character can be a very viable template. It's a lot of work to tend to multiple vendors, conversing with suppliers, and advertising your wares, but in the end there can be a great feeling of acclomplishment.
The fact is that the current system has stiffled that type of template due to the fact that the market is saturated with players that like to hoard skills they have not right to keep. This has virtually quashed any attempts ofplayers from entering into the Merchant profession, as most players that exploit the merchant profession steal the same skills to get back at SOE for not providing an engine internal to their profession to sell their products. What they fail to realize is that SOE is trying to make an economic model for the game that really focuses on interdependency between players. These expoiters, though, are mired in the old-school methods of MMORPG economies of past.
They should grow up and face the real world. Merchants are not trying to stick it to them. All we merchants want to do is play the game to be successful at what we do, not get spat upon,which gets old really quick.
It may make items easier to find due to reducing the number of vendors on the planetary map.
OK, though I doubt it, with more people turning to merchant to sell goods once vendors are restricted to merchants, or if vendor leasing becomes reality, which many merchants here are hoping for.
Cons
A massive increase in bazaar sales, this will not help a already lagging database, it could in fact make the bazzar unworkable.
If you heard, most people won't sell products like T21's and Composite armor pieces for 6k each. I doubt the bazaar's database will grow that tremendously. Besides I've noticed that the bazaar sytem lags more at the location that I am in or if its after a new patch or release, then how many itemsare for sale.For instance, the lag at the Coronet bank is atrocious, but if you just head west to the terminals next to the shuttleport, you will probably notice an extreme difference in the speed of database access.
Huge increase in spam around coronet as people will hawk their wares in spacial, a probable large rise in spam e-mails too.
There has been a popluar request to limit shouts of similar text to 3 or 4 minutes in cities. If implimented, this should radically change the shape of the spam farms at the Coronet Starport, which we all hope comes to pass.
This is another fix that benifits the established and will make it increasingly hard for newer crafters,
K, you are going to have to expound on this. As a HELPER, I would be more then happy to help distribute any starting crafter inselling his wares to actually GIVE him a jumpstart into the economic system. Remember, there is no bad publicity.
That this is seen as money for nothing by people and will cause a lot of resentment towards the merchant class, people who craft items are unlikley to give them to anyone they dont know.
Hmm...concidering that we started with no respectibility in the first place, I don't see how we could lose any more.
I dont feel that this change will make any difference at all in any way to current merchants because of the following principle, there is not going to be less items produced. Theres may be a change from smaller houses to larger malls, but no one will be able to say 'I want to make money I know ill become a merchant.' Merchant will only ever be a support career to those who are producing, reading through the boards there seems to be the idea that there will be reselling involved, again I say people will not produce something to be sold at a mark up. Indeed consumers are far more likley to go direct to crafters as they know there is no mark up. Merchants will still be the providence of people who either craft, or produce resources on mass.
Concidering the incredible mark ups that crafters now have on many goods, I believe a little competition will actually improve the price structure. Inventive Merchants that have foresight can really take advantages at the outragoeous price structures that are already in place. People will come to Merchants for convieince, knowing that all they have to do is look on the global map for a convienent site next to them, not try to hunt down and pray that a specific crafter happens to be on at the same time that you are playing.
If I was a crafter, and I was inundated with so many of these special orders that will be flooding in after my vendorsbecome absent, I'd really start wondering if selling direct is really worth the time and agony. To tell you the truth, if I had a way to get money on the spot quickly and efficiently by droping items on somone's merchant vendor without hassle, I would really concider it. Facefacts. Trading betweenplayers in bulkis a pain in the ass.
This will hurt player cities, any decrease in goods sold from vendors (which is likley as there will be less) avoids sales tax which cities need to survive.
I dont know about you, but 2 Master Merchants in a large city will give that city 14 vendors. That would pretty much cover the majority of a tax base in place. And that is not even including certain crafters that will also put down their own Coke machines in the center of commerce to help in the economy. All it takes is 9 skill points for most of them.
In summary I am concerned by this change as i am not sure....and am interested in peoples views, what merchants really want out of this other than people to have to use skill points up. There dosent seem to be any real benifit to the profession, there are very very few real merchants and obviously they have the loudest voices on these boards, but do recall the outrage over the proposed crafting changes where the majority carried it.
Well when the primary tool of a profession becomes free to use by anyone without cost from the release of the game, that profession would look pretty pathetic too. Concider if any one could use crafting schematics of a Architect, Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, or any other crafting profession. How long do you think those professions would have lasted in the game?
It's too bad you are stuck in that trap of the old economies all other MMORPG. SOE is trying to make a more real-world system. Instead of being a neigh sayer, you should really concider the posibilities that the new system has to bring to the table.
The only viable alternatives Ive heard are to allow merchants to craft vendors for sale, this makes sence but views that then these merchants should funnel back funds are just ridiculous. If you get this however welcome back to square 1, you will still have the same issues, everyone getting the benifits without the skill points.
The best arguement for this is at least the tool now is back into the control of the profession that it was intended. To me, vendor leasing is the happy medium between the crafters innate phobia of merchants, and merchants cry to be a viable class. As long as merchants have vendor revocation power, we'll be just fine.
As of now true merchants have no influence in the economy at all, which to me means that there is a fatal flaw in the system that needs to be fixed.
p4Samwise wrote:
Make those endorsements part and parcel of your request to the devs to fix "poaching", and I will be your loyal servant.
DocSavag wrote:
I agree with just about all of that until your solution is allowing people to keep using our tools without being a merchant. I'll post in support of any thread you point me to for Tailor Mannequins. Send me a link and I"ll agree with you on that.
I'll even post my agreement on your proposal for "mailboxes" provided they can be implemented without griefing and without giving people another source of unlimited item storage.
DocSavag wrote:
"We disagree tailors are too powerful to add mannequins"
Their refusal to put additional functionality in would have nothing to do with game balance. There's only so much time and energy they're willing to put into improving the lot of the crafting/mercantile classes, and if they can with one fell swoop address your top issue (and maybe incidentallyget a bunch of people to start paying for dual accounts), they will. To hell with anyone who might be adversely affected.
I'd feel much better about the whole thing if your top issue was to enhance the merchant profession to make merchants attractive as resellers. As it is, you've chosen to focus your energies on making sure other players dabble in merchant to continue playing the way they've been playing, rather than having the system fixed so that the old playstyle becomes obsolete.
Balkstar was railing earlier against being"stuck in that trap of the old economies all other MMORPG." Simply stopping the "poaching" won't get people out of the trap. It won't increase respect for Merchant as a profession. It'll just give crafters a skill point sink.
It'll become an accepted fact of life that if you want to survive as a seller of goods, you need Business III. If you're the artistic/roleplaying type and you want a shop or house that looks nice, it'll become an accepted fact of life that you need at least Novice Merchant. If you're a tailor, you'll need at least Hiring IV (and probably some Management if you want to model more than two outfits). If you're a DE and want the roleplaying aspect of a protocol droid selling your wares, you'll need Master Merchant, even if you have no interest whatsoever in selling anything but a few custom droid orders.
But I guess as long as we can **edit** the powergamers, it's okay to **edit** a few roleplayers in the process.
Message Edited by p4Samwise on 05-18-2004 02:11 PM
Balkstar wrote:
Samwise: Whatever happened to being content with Merchants helping youto push the ideas of mannequins? Now you are back to the old rant of giving everyone a reason to steal our tools? You are losing us as an audience again.
I'm sure the rest of the merchant community appreciates your speaking for them. 
The point I'm trying to get across is that it's a complex issue. Removing "poaching" will fix one problem (powergamers using poached vendors toact as high-poweredmerchants without investing skill points), but it will also severelyaggravate a couple of others (roleplayers, content providers, and humble craftersusing poached vendors for non-merchant purposes).
You've chosen to focus all your efforts solelyon punishing acertain subset ofother players (probably without even improving yours or any other merchant'sgame experience in the process), rather than making the game more pleasant for everyone involved (by giving merchants a better-supported role and giving other crafters the basic non-merchant-relatednecessities like mannequins and mailboxesthat they currently "poach" simply because nobody's bothered to implement them properly yet due to the availability of a workaround).
Frankly, I find that disturbing.
Balkstar wrote:
Vendorsare not ...decorations. They are an important tool that requires skills to be utilized.
Message Edited by p4Samwise on 05-18-2004 03:29 PM
For toughs who wand a link to where is says it is an exploit to keep a vendor after dropping the skill.
Complaining vendors to production schematics:
A master weaponsmith can give a schematic to someone who have never been a weaponsmith, and that person can make the weapon if he or she have the resources.
Conclusion: It was not mend for players to be weaponsmiths to use weaponsmith schematics in factories.
A marching cannot give a vendor to anybody else, not even to another merchant.
Conclusion: It was not meant for players to have vendors unless they have the necessary skill to create them.
Complaining vendors to weapons/pets:
All players can use CDEF guns and CL 10 pets. But they are not as efficient or powerful as toughs that come with a master profession.
All players can use the bazaar and secure trade. But it and not as efficient as vendors. In essence the bazaar is the CDEF vendor or and CL10 vendor.
It will be a major task, where you'll have to try to synchronize the output of your contracted crafters with the stuff people buy and a major logistical task to move literally 100s of items from crafter to vendor with the crappy inventory space we have. I plainly don't think that there will be many people who do that.
Either the crafters will get back biz 3 mostly or, if the abilities of this vendor are too limited (like only a few items on it), it will lead to major disruptions in the supply of crafted items.
DocSavag wrote:No. That implies that Tailors or ANY other profession has the right to hold our skills hostage until they get what they want. I am all for the idea of dress up mannequins but it shouldn't be a pre-requisite for our skill points being protected.
Tailors have a correspondant..a very able one in NJ62 who will be very vocal about getting their wishes heard and I'll speak up for those ideas myself, but she doesn't need or want our skills to be ours only if it is convienient for someone else.
Well said as usual Doc..
p4Samwise wrote:
.
You hit the nail on the head - they are vending machines just like the Coke Machine.
Aside from planetary advertising (which I will completely agree should not be available to non-active Merchants), they have no powers above the coke machines (other than looking pretty).
Therefore, what unfair advantage is someone getting by keeping a nicely-decorated vendor (or even several all in the same location)and then dropping everything down to Business 3 (which they have to keep anyway if they're a Master Artisan), assuming they don't use advertising? ZERO benefit other than decoration. That's right. The sole benefit they're getting is increased home decor abilities. And that's all I, for one,want or need.
Because those types of vendors have value to you which you would pay more for then just dropping a Coke Machine.You don't want a Coke machine showing off your nice clothes, so in some way an NPC has more intrinsic value to you. The value you may say is no more then looking good, but you deem it a higher quality item, so you should have to pay more for it.
That is why NPC vendors need to have a greater cost in skill points.
DocSavag wrote:
p4Samwise wrote:
Make those endorsements part and parcel of your request to the devs to fix "poaching", and I will be your loyal servant.
DocSavag wrote:
I agree with just about all of that until your solution is allowing people to keep using our tools without being a merchant. I'll post in support of any thread you point me to for Tailor Mannequins. Send me a link and I"ll agree with you on that.
I'll even post my agreement on your proposal for "mailboxes" provided they can be implemented without griefing and without giving people another source of unlimited item storage.
No. Here we have a disconnect. My request for them to fix my skills in no way obligates me to wait for them to add skills you wish you had. I support you wholeheartedly but if they answer "We disagree tailors are too powerful to add mannequins" then I'm not going to support you continuing to use vendors without skill points as a compensation.
No. That implies that Tailors or ANY other profession has the right to hold our skills hostage until they get what they want. I am all for the idea of dress up mannequins but it shouldn't be a pre-requisite for our skill points being protected.
Tailors have a correspondant..a very able one in NJ62 who will be very vocal about getting their wishes heard and I'll speak up for those ideas myself, but she doesn't need or want our skills to be ours only if it is convienient for someone else.