Merchant Archive
Thread: Anti-Trust: Why in-game Monopolies are pure fiction.
that is so true! so simple, but they appear to be bent to do it anyway. i will hate to leave, but i play for fun. when it becomes work, it is dead for me.
Wire3k wrote:
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.
Actually stocking a vendor isn't that difficult. Making (or acquiring the right stock) and figuring out WHAT needs stocking takes awhile.
The biggest irritation is getting a tell in the middle of nowhere from a customer that wants you to drop what you are doing RIGHT NOW - and run back 3 planets to make them X. If X is on the vendor - problem solved. If X is not on the vendor you either have a major interruption in your schedule or an unhappy customer. By having sufficient and varied stock - I rarely ever had to drop what I was doing that second to try to make a customer happy. Of all the crafters I've met - that one aspect alone has driven more of them out of crafting than any other, this is not a good thing. No one wants to - or reasonably can be expected to be chained in their shops 24/7.
As dedicated a crafter and shopkeeper as I was, even I had other business to attend to in places other than my shop. I can only imagine folks that also like a little adventuring or hunting thrown into their schedules.
No, sorry - this is a killer. Kill the distribution methods - you kill craftsmen, kill craftsmen, you kill the game.
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.
I've thought about this, often. I would be against this because of exactly this reason. I want people to become architects on Tempest. The only way they get there is plopping down a vendor and having someone look at it instead of mine. Global searches would kill this exploration and happenstance finds.
Fivo Asia
Cafa wrote:
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.
I've thought about this, often. I would be against this because of exactly this reason. I want people to become architects on Tempest. The only way they get there is plopping down a vendor and having someone look at it instead of mine. Global searches would kill this exploration and happenstance finds.
Fivo Asia
Bermag wrote:
I like this quote from Holocrons friday feature about SWG economy:
"For example, it's easy to see that just like in the real world economy, the chacteristic "Pareto Law" distribution of cash holds true: most of the money is in the hands of a few. This is a graph of just the top 2000 or so folks on Bria, for example - the highest folks are billionaires.
This isn't necessarily something to be discouraged by - rather, we take it as a sign that the game economy is replicating characteristics of the real world economy. Since one of our goals was to have a game economy that can provide ongoing interesting strategy gameplay, seeing real world patterns manifest is something we were looking forward to. "
So follow Holos advice and let the game replicate real word economy.
yeah!
Sigrun wrote:
Yes, global searches would kill exploration for vendors and happenstance finds. It would also kill the frustration of running around to empty vendor after empty vendor and then maybe finding one that's charging twice what he should be, then more empty vendors until you give up and go to the forums.
I'm speaking from experience here. I just did it on multiple servers, including Tempest. It sucked, until I hit the forums and found what I was looking for.
What global searches enable is competition based upon the combination price and quality. No patience or excessive devotion is required on the part of the consumer. That is exactly how I want to compete against others who supply the goods I supply.
Going back to my forum experience, that was pretty much a global search of anyone who cared to visit that particular advertising opportunity. I wish I could have done it ingame. Would have saved me several hours of wandering and days of waiting for replies and I would have bought the same stuff from the same person anyway.
Cafa wrote:
Sigrun wrote:
Yes, global searches would kill exploration for vendors and happenstance finds. It would also kill the frustration of running around to empty vendor after empty vendor and then maybe finding one that's charging twice what he should be, then more empty vendors until you give up and go to the forums.
I'm speaking from experience here. I just did it on multiple servers, including Tempest. It sucked, until I hit the forums and found what I was looking for.
What global searches enable is competition based upon the combination price and quality. No patience or excessive devotion is required on the part of the consumer. That is exactly how I want to compete against others who supply the goods I supply.
Going back to my forum experience, that was pretty much a global search of anyone who cared to visit that particular advertising opportunity. I wish I could have done it ingame. Would have saved me several hours of wandering and days of waiting for replies and I would have bought the same stuff from the same person anyway.
Don't you think dropping them from the world map if the vendor empties would do this?
If not, what could possibly keep the lookers looking and satisfy you? I ask because I am sincerely interested in this concept.
Fivo Asia
- The vendor has stock, just nottheitemI want (i.e. no Fusion Gens). Wasted trip.
- The vendor has stock, but is insanely overpriced (i.e. FIG's cost 250k). Wasted trip.
- The vendor has the item I want andisn't overpriced, but the item is a piece of junk (i.e. FIG BER 8). Wasted trip.
I can save myself (and my customers) all these wasted trips ifwe can buy the stuff on vendors right from the bank in Coronet.
As to the argument that newbs won't be able to compete on qualtiy, well, that's right in some cases and wrong in others. In all cases, the competition is about PRICE + QUALITY, not necessarily just quality. It's also going to make the newbs think about what they can produce with reasonable quality for a reasonable price - be SMART about their business. They play smart, they'll grow.
Gavvot wrote:
The biggest irritation is getting a tell in the middle of nowhere from a customer that wants you to drop what you are doing RIGHT NOW - and run back 3 planets to make them X. If X is on the vendor - problem solved. If X is not on the vendor you either have a major interruption in your schedule or an unhappy customer. By having sufficient and varied stock - I rarely ever had to drop what I was doing that second to try to make a customer happy. Of all the crafters I've met - that one aspect alone has driven more of them out of crafting than any other, this is not a good thing. No one wants to - or reasonably can be expected to be chained in their shops 24/7.
My usual answer to people when what they want is not on my vendor and I'm busy : send me a mail with what you, I'll do it asap.
When I go back to my shop, I do the order and send them a tell.
The usual answer is : wow, you're fast. Even if the order is done a couple hours after they made it.
i don't have to do that, since my vendor is stocked. and it would be impossible for me, since i usually only get to play for a short period of time between other responsibilities.
Have you actually ever stocked a vendor? If so, what were you stocking.
Last night I stocked a full run of sliced comp armor (about 500 pieces). I have a pretty simple pricing scheme for sliced comp, but it still took me half an hour (and I'm a damn fast stocker). Before I really got stocking down, it would take me three times as long.
No one is argueing that crafting isn't fun, or that the dealmaking of a real merchant isn't fun. What they're saying is that with the horrid interface of the current vendors, restocking is not fun, and having to do it more often is essentially not having fun more often.
Yes, I do stock my vendor. Droid and accessories.
But I never stock 500 items at once, for alot of different reason.
I just make sure that I have about 10 medical droid, 2 or 3 of each crafting droid, enough battery crates, enough BH droids, enough custom kit.
not a vary big selection. sorry, but this would not cut it as an architect or a dedicated artisan.
But my vendor almost never have more than 100 items on it, mainly because I don't like the next button.
i personally don't like to shop where there is not a good selection. fewer than 100 items = not much of a selection to me, and to a lot of other people.
Some days I have to do a big restock, and it take a little more time because I have alot of different items to restock.
But most of the time, it take me a couple minutes max.
one item every 5 seconds = 24 items in 2 minutes. unless i am stocking a lot of the same thing, five seconds is not enough time. for me.
Going to the factory behind the shop, pick up items, go back in shop, put item for sale, end of story.
I have to agree that the current vendor interface is bad, not only for stocking.
it is bad if you need to know when your stock will go out, and if you have multiple dissimmilar items. not 20 or 30 items, as you seem to stock, but a couple hundred of different types. it is clunky and slow. and if server traffic is high, it can be pretty laggy, although that seems much better latey.
I know they already did some modificatons to it on TC, and I hope they'll do more.
For the specialization comment from Jef, I think it was directed to me.
And I don't take offense from it.
I can deal with bugs and that devs are not able to finish making stuff like combat revamp. But I can't stand stupid ideas like they want to "limit monopolies" by having limits on stacks, storage and vendors. I can (almost) even accept that they must have limits because of technical issues. But not becuase they want to control how we gamers want to play and instead play they way THEY thinjk is the correct way.
Control how players play the game is their job.
that is simply not correct. if controling me is their job, they are illsuited for it. their job is to make the game entertaining and fun so that people will pay to play it long term. this change will not affect small volume vendorswho list a limited array of items (such as you discribed for your character), but will have an adverse effect on those of us who count on variety to attract our customers.
The problems that we face now are more along the lines of general oversupply and market saturationthan anything else, and prices are about as cutthroat as they're going to get unless and until something changes. There is a glut of crafters in SWG, when compared to their consumer base.
Iagree with your diagnosis, based on the mostly ancedotal evidence I have seen so far. This would appear to confirm speaks to the low barrier of entry into the market. (Anybody can get in and start a business). The concequences for a 'failed' business are pretty low (Oh well back to missions) and many people just try if for fun. (Which one reason RL resturants are so unprofitable and fail so often. How many people think I would be 'fun' to run one).
What worries me is the cure the designer's are planning to put in to 'fix' this. They aren't removing the ability to produce massive quanitities of goods (assuming storage isn't a limitation), i.e. the BER 13 harvester and factories, just the ability to easily retail the finished goods.Successful crafters have figured out how to efficiently harvest, produce and sell their goods to get where they are.
Unless they just get disgusted by the additional interface yoke that developersare saddling them with and quit, they will find ways to get work around it. Hiring merchant employees to exclusively sell their goods comes to mind as an option, or pick up additional merchant accounts. Some people might quit, some people who are gluttons for punishment will stick it out. Prices will go up as artificial scarity is created for goods. Crafters who could keep a vendor stocked before (the primary measure of success for businesses so far) aren't going to magically gain the skill, time or inclination to do it now. Customers will have to devote more play time to running around looking for a well stocked vendor.
If SWG is hoping to level the playing field between the 'little guy' and the 'big guy', I think don't think it will have the effect they want. All it will do is increase the net pain the successful crafter have to bear in order to run their business. Shopping will become an inconsisant unrealiable experience.Before you would have99 empty vendors and 1 full one. At least you knew when you found that full one, you had a dedicated crafter you could rely on and return to. Now you will have10 sorta filled vendors, and the you will have to enter into backdeal negiotations with that crafter to get him to tell you when its going to be stocked, otherwise somebody else will beat you there and clean it out. Crafter reputation will be impossible to build and maintain, unless you want to play 24/7.
So SWG, congrats, the distopian vision of a niceegalitarian collectivistsociety, complete with artificial shortages, long waiting lines for goods and special privledges for the friends of the few remaining crafters will to put up with it is almost at hand. And its only one vendor limit nerf away.
May the force be with you, comrade.
Avair wrote:
May the force be with you, comrade.
Maybe you should consider an education in economics before tangling with the likes of Avair....
joined42904 wrote:
Avair,
Thank you for your eloquent post.
And for your punch line.
I still think that the effect of the changes will be exactly what the devs intend. Many of the present successful crafters have enough credits that they may not choose to go through the hassle factor of dealing with lots of different merchants to maintain their present volume.
Sounds like you think the devs are doing this to get the established crafters to quit crafting (which would probably equate to quitting the game). What? You ARE stoned!
And I am far from certain that master merchants would want to be employees of crafters. The crafters would have it that way. But why would a merchant want an exclusive dealing employee relationship? Maybe if you are in the same PA you would want that. Otherwise why not just buy goods from whomever you choose and stock them. It may be that you would choose to buy weapons from only one excellent source if they were always available in sufficient bulk from that source. But it wouldn't make you that person's "employee." Because if another crafter built a better mousetrap and were reliable and more cost-effective, you might shift to that crafter. Heck I would.
HalasterTheBlack wrote:
Maybe you should consider an education in economics before tangling with the likes of Avair....
joined42904 wrote:
Avair,
Thank you for your eloquent post.
And for your punch line.
I still think that the effect of the changes will be exactly what the devs intend. Many of the present successful crafters have enough credits that they may not choose to go through the hassle factor of dealing with lots of different merchants to maintain their present volume.
Sounds like you think the devs are doing this to get the established crafters to quit crafting (which would probably equate to quitting the game). What? You ARE stoned!
And I am far from certain that master merchants would want to be employees of crafters. The crafters would have it that way. But why would a merchant want an exclusive dealing employee relationship? Maybe if you are in the same PA you would want that. Otherwise why not just buy goods from whomever you choose and stock them. It may be that you would choose to buy weapons from only one excellent source if they were always available in sufficient bulk from that source. But it wouldn't make you that person's "employee." Because if another crafter built a better mousetrap and were reliable and more cost-effective, you might shift to that crafter. Heck I would.
I am hosting one of those "annoying" poll posts and Joined42904 who we all know by now is a staunch support of lthe proposed limits. He used other toon's to try and sway the vote in his direction as well as make comments aimed at undermining my ethics and reputation.(undeniable supporting evidence he and Telumt are the same toon, and I suspect now "calmdown" is as well is in my thread.)
Becuse he is so petty and childish I suggest we all just ignore him from this point on.