Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendors and private houses
One thing I hope you really, really keep in mind when thinking about the NPC Vendor fees are the specific needs of Tailors. I think we're alone among the professions in really *needing* to put a very large number of items on our vendors for them to have much sales value for us. We have a lot of items that we can make, in a huge variety of colors. Simply *having* that variety is what makes our vendors worthwhile, even though the entire stock doesn't turn over every couple of days. If you limit us to the same standards as weaponsmiths and armorsmiths, tailor shops will just become "one of every item that l33t dudes like, in any color, so long as it's black."
My huge worry is that you're going to change NPC vendors to be just like the mechanical sort, thus effectively eliminating all vendor-based tailor shops from the game.
Holo, I understand the exploits that were involved with the vendors in private structure issue, but personally I take this as kind of a slap in the face to those of us that use vendors for legitimate reasons...here are some of the reason why vendors should be private, most of them follow the original intent of merchant, and are completely reasonable within a role-playing perspective:
- I WANT my privacy from time to time. Under the old system, I could establish shop hours. Merchant is not an exclusive profession, you can be a merchant/pistoleer/rifleman, you have enough skill points to do so. There are certain nights my shop is open, certain nights it is closed, however without the privacy feature people are wandering into my house all of the time to find empty vendors, this leads to a non-stop session of me getting /tell's and not being able to keep up any other kind of conversation in spatial chat. Personally I am a master weaponsmith/master merchant. I want to take nights off of crafting to explore worlds, not sitting inside a house non-stop.
Along the same lines, we have NO other structures to place merchants in, this is MY house, I want to be able to control it. If I choose to take a day off and relax and meet a few friends in my house when I am not crafting and stocking my vendors, then it's still a 24/7 flow of people coming in to interrupt us like it's a fast food chain or something along those lines.
- I need time to stock my vendors, especially say if I'm going to have a "sale". There's no way for me to close my shop, advertise and create a demand, and have a mad rush sale like the day after Thanksgiving. It has been done before already with hundreds and hundreds of items being sold in less than a half hour...it's a blast and it makes for a lot of fun in the merchant tree (which is a profession that is mostly stress and lacks a lot of fun as it is).
- From a completely role-playing perspective...it's completely inhumane to have your NPC's working 24/7, the Twi'lek Labor Regulation Committee is going to come after me if I keep pushing my vendors like this...c'mon, don't they need sleep?
- NPC vendor's should have the capacity for "specialized" orders and discounts to certain people, this should be a skill in the merchant tree, but since it's not, private vendors are needed for this. A "this is coming" statement doesn't help us solve the problem of it existing now from this.
I'm EXTREMELY upset that this came with zero warning at all as well, there were private vendors created by me for special orders that could have easily been wiped and set my crafting behind a ton because this was failed to be mentioned. This was something MAJOR that could (and probably did) screw a lot of people over. Things meant for my PA only could have been swiped by any Joe Shmoe.
The most important of these is the privacy issue, I don't want people coming through my house 24/7, stores should have the capacity to have hours, you do need to stock, these are all things that are needed in this game to make the Merchant Profession fun, right now I feel like "well, you're a merchant, you're not allowed to have any kind of privacy from this point forward". None of these things listed above are exploits nor are they unreasonable to have inside of the merchant tree....and should be what the profession's intent was (and I seriously doubt the intent of merchant was to have their house as a 24/7 shopping center). Please make structures able to be private again until there is some other way to work around the exploits...all it does right now is make things unbearable in this profession for most of us.
Holocron wrote:
Yeah, that's exactly what they are NOT supposed to be for.
Don't get me wrong, I understand that you want and needa PA vault and storage space. But that's not what vendors are intended to be, hence this change. We need to find an alternate solution to PA storage and distribution.
[sarcasm]
Yes, and heaven forbid we get an alternate solution before the "problem" is "fixed", thereby removing the workaround we've had to rely on without providing for an alternative.
[/sarcasm]
However, I'd think they can still be used in this capacity, if they have (or will) fix the vendor admin bug.
If I make everyone in my guild a vendor admin of my house, then they can all offer stuff for sale to the vendor, and anyone on the vendor list can accept those sales while non-members can't. It's just the same thing in reverse, and you can do it in a public structure.
So... If I am reading this right...
PA Hall takes 9 Lots for the Leader. If the hall is private, then no vendor for the PA Leader? They do get admin access to someone else's house to place a vendor? 250 items for 10s or 100s of members ... including the PA Leader's personal space?
And so... basically, the PA Leader could never really be a crafter type ..no Lots for harvesters... no vendor and no personal space. Incredible...
What is the difference in server load if there are 4 houses with 250 items (1000 total) in the same spot as 1 PA Hall with 450 total items? This doesn't make sense to me...
I still haven't heard WHY, from dev, a PA hall take up so many lots? 7 to 9 lots? why..why... these are public structures. Yes.. public because now the are SUPPOSE to be used by members to distribute items, not vendors. So it they are supposed to be shared, then reduce the Lot to 6 with 450 items.
Yes... this is relevant because the discussion is about not using vendor for storage. The Hall is now supposed to be used. So, how to balance this for the PA Hall owners? The PA building is treated like houses.. but they do not have the same function.
Ardn Lorilles
Holocron wrote:
shadok wrote:
My house was built next to our PA hall and set to private, with all PA members on the list. We used my vendor as a share and distribution point for resources and pharmaceuticals, all set at 1cr.
Yeah, that's exactly what they are NOT supposed to be for.
Don't get me wrong, I understand that you want and needa PA vault and storage space. But that's not what vendors are intended to be, hence this change. We need to find an alternate solution to PA storage and distribution.
Well Bingo then, how about making a PA vault and storage Vendor? It sounds simple enough.
Instead of coming here and telling us why our ideas are bad and your PA vault is good, why don't you actually add it instead? Wouldn't that stop all our bad ideas from coming in completely, as well as solve the problem?
Holocron wrote:Can you explain what you were using the vendors for? Was it storage, sales to PA members only, or something else?
For me, sales to PA members. We work as a team for resource collection, and share what we have for little more than production costs. Considering that this an order of magnitude below what the profiteers charge on the public bazaars for the resources, we certainly don't want our vendors open to the public.
Pre-patch, having vendors in private houses (with everyone in the guild manually invited... very clunky, by the way) worked fine. Except for that nasty "split resources containers can't be retrieved" problem. Which I was hoping would have been fixed with the update. Which wasn't. Which is making me a very unhappy architect lemur who cannot get the metals he needs.
There are several ways I can think of fixing things so that this intra-guild trade mechanic worked again:
- Be able to set houses "PA Only", so only people of the same guild as the house owner can access it. Having public vendors in a "PA Only" house would effectively make them accessible only to the PA.
- Be able to set vendors themselves "PA Only", and let only people in the same guild as the vendor manager able to access it. Houses could be left public then (although the above point would still be very handy).
- "PA Only" vendors, but limit them to placement inside the PA Hall. In this instance, I don't think the owner of the PA Hall should need the artisan Business skill to place one (but it would be limited to only one, and only one style.)
Just some thoughts that shouldn't be too difficult to implement.
Holocron wrote:
Have you looked at NPC vendors lately? Regardless of how much you dump on them, they charge 1 maintainance (0 if you have Efficiency III). People use NPC vendors to avoid maintenance charges.
Yeah, expect that to be fixed.
Please, if you're going to change this then at least make the maintenance rate less obscene or you're going to have another fiasco on your hands when you put up this "fix". I shouldn't have to pay 5000 a day in maintenance for my vendor that's selling a 50k house (I'm not exagerating, this is what you get when you put a 50k house up on the bulky terminal you get at business 3).
I used my vendor for my job as supply officer in my PA.
I accept all PA members resources at a sale of 1c. I put up for sale at my vendor supplies for the PA at 1c.
I *could* use administrator permissions as a workaround, but then there's no tracking.
I never used the vendor as storage, really, as I get multiple donations that need consolidation by type for easy dispersal to the right crafter.
Hi Holo,
While admin rights are one way to do it, that provides no notice of what is being picked up, and gives no mechanism for PA members to make things available at cost, but not quite free. That's why our PA liked to use private vendors. Besides the accountability, it was an easy way to tell PA members how much a stimpack, armor piece, or food item was worth in terms of cost.
If you could see your way clear to allowing private vendors (which don't list on the bazaar, or on the planetary map, what-have-you, we never wanted that either) it would be a boon to PA's large and small. It would be ironic to be able to sell to strangers while offline but not friends.
Thanks,
Tennyson