Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendors and private houses
) uses a couple guild only vendors. They serve two main purposes:1) Our guild vendors put items up for sale (1 credit), either that they know someone needs, or are just commonly needed items (current best weapons / armor, crates of batteries / repair tools / slicing equipment, cook created items, stim packs, etc...).
2) We have one that's a generic "junk" vendor that people put anything they have that they don't want and think someone else would want on, or that they know someone else would want. For this folks offer to the vendor stacks of resources, their previous weapons, skill enhancement attachments (that don't work, but we've got a ton of them anyway
), etc.. . The owner of the vendor then buys these and puts them on the vendor for whoever might want them (again, all transactions at 1 credit).As kind of a 2A), the items offered to the vendor are sometimes things that people know someone wants, but even though it can take a day or more for the transaction to complete, they still find it more convenient to offer it to the vendor in our guild almost-city and then have it put up for sale for whoever needs it to pick up.
Opinion: This game is nowhere near a casual gamer friendly game. How can a casual crafterexist? You are catering to the Hunters and killing the crafters and business people. What pure hunter type needs house space ?
A couple ideas:
Guild vault like a bank:
1) you have access and are able to drop a limited number of items under your name. Like an extra backpack. (thus keeping inventory limits down in other areas and making visits to PA a social and viable)
2) you have a limited number of "vendor" spaces (5? 10?)in which you can sell to other PA members, charge whatever you wish and get email response.Each vendor space would have an access setting so you can make it for one or all PA people (admin list style)
3)A general vault space for community with a max amount of space. Has vendor style list for type of item and who deposited. All members in PA can search by item type to find what they may need. This is a no money exchanged space! All items are free to anyone in PA.
4) Make the "vault" a huge safe lookingitem that is craftable!
Special Orders : Please don't kill the artisans and merchant classes!
1) You can tip from bank. So why not be able to tip Items from bank ?
2)Or better yet Have a postal drop box. This could be in a house, PA hal lor next to bazaar terminals in the citys.Drop item in, pay a small mailing fee (percentage based on whether it stays in same location and much more if you send it somwhere..like a reduced shuttle ticket fee ?), add name of who its for, and set the COD price, press send (just like mail). The person it's for gets mailed the waypoint, who it's from, maybe a short message/description and the cost of pickup.When he picks item up he has to pay the COD. Then the dropper recieves money in his bank along with an email.
2a) Allow a PA hall to have this (Galactic Express) type of box or make it an item that can be crafted and placed like a vendor in a persons house. It is not a vendor but takes one of the vendor place spots. Thus crafters who do special orders don't have to waste time on a vendor. Any person who accesses it who dosent have an item in it for them simply gets the no retrievable items window!
2b) Reflect usage/senderfees based on level of business or merchant skills!
2c) Allow this drop box to be in private houses. Why because if a person cannot get in the house he will not be able to pay the COD - therefore no scam or retrieve issues!
2d) Allow a limited number of items to be sent out in drop box (5? 10 ?)! And add an error box if a person try to send himself an item (thus making it a non issue as a storage get around)
btw i had 105 items in my small house and i planned to use them all! what do i do with the stuff now? Destroy it ? I surely cannot transport it back to a half filled bank!
And why can you not have a furniture vs item destinction when it comes to amount of items in house/building? You have killed the furniture crafter definately! Why can you not make X items of furniture and x amounts of all else be the value of what is a per lot amount?????
Bye all furniture crafters..was nice knowing you!
I have a second house with vendors - purely for the pa members to donate cheap stuff to and to buy cheap stuff from. I made that house private and added pa members as admins.
You are now saying this wont work this update? How will it not work. Will my house be made public? or will my vendor cease to sell? will i lose all the stuff in the vendors already?
Holocron wrote:
In the merchant skill tree at one point we had "custom order" and "one person pickup" and "PA only" as sales flags you could set on items. I think they all went away because we didn't think there was much demand for them. Clearly, we were wrong.
Yep
Holocron if you did that again all would be well in the world How you do that i have no idea but i'm sure your team is smart enough to figure that out. In the mean time can i have my private vendor back? your crippling PA leaders/crafters to be on 24/7
I have been using my home as a store front .. but that means i dont really have a private structure..
I think the best solution would be -
1. Private vendors in private structure - Simplified and not connected to the market. There is a lot of custom ordering going on in SWG and there needs to be a better way for a customer who has ordered a custom item to pick it up and transfer funds when the crafter is off-line ( especially on items that may take a while to build ). Make the vendor look more like your pack with the twirling icons than the Bazzar. Limit items a bit to limit use for storage . no price cap.
2. PA hall vendors that can be private if needed ( for guild member private transfer ) or Public if the PA hall has been established as a public structure. What better way to advertise your PA than to undercut the market with high quality items.
3. Public vendors - would beOK to even limit these to the merchant class. Different price caps to make them valuable for selling the higer priced items to the general public.
Holocron wrote:
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.
That's all fine and good, but not warning us about this means that I have 2 full vendors full of guild stuff that cannot even be retrieved. It's locked out!
The other issue is, our guild has not quite planted our guild hall yet -- still getting the final resources together after waiting for our architect to become a master. What about the guilds that don't yet have a hall?
And lastly, last I heard, NO ONE but a building owner can drop anything, regarless of permissions, and no one can pick anything up, so your suggestion doesn't work anyway.
-Mohenjo
Now,I can see that you want to have more granular permissions on the hall, which is fine, I think we can manage that.
-Raph Koster, Creative Director
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Holo,
The other problem with this "solution" is that, with a limit of ONLY 250 items, a PA Hall will quickly fill up. I know this persoanlly from play today trying to recover form the current house limits and my PAhas only 4 members right now. I'd hate to be in oneof thePA's with 100+ members.
You've also said that only Mercahnts were supposed to be able to store mass quantities of stuff. Have you given any thought that gives Merchants a Special Ability to have an increased item count per lot? Like a multiplier (Lots x 75 x Mercahnt bonus = building limit) or straight higher number per lot (Lots x 200 = building limit).
HoloCron:
I am NOT using my vendor for "just" PA use and storage. I never had and never will.
1. I use it for PA swapping of items - 1 credit in, 1 credit out
2. I use it for sales to friends - 1 credit or cost
3. I use if for sales to PA allies - 1 credit, cost or reduced costs
4. I use it for sales to PA "Full" members - 1 credit in - 1 credit out, reduced cost or cost
5. I use it for sales to PA "non-full" members - 1 credit in - 1 credit out, reduced cost or cost
6. I had a public vendor registered on the map for any public sales. Heck, why even have that tree, if anyone could have just used the Galaxy search option? Sounds like you are covering up more than an ooops!
Reduced costs vary by who it would be for. People who abused the private vendor got "Banned" from the house!
Having a guild Vault is, ok. But then tell me, what are the plans for the Merchant proffesion if not to be a True merchant? I bet Han Solo gave Luke a discount on his spices! Oh and umm...that flying dude on Tat in Episode 1? Didn't he make a bet for an item? Hmmm...Guess we are not as close to the real thing, time to nerf another proffesion and not put it in the notes! Oh and quit giving excuses for your companies lack of planning and execution! It is getting very tiring to listen to
But I still love the game...except for that account which will be canceled as my merchant has no use for my needs anymore.
i dont really understand any of this...where were this goods showing up for people to buy them...on the bazaar? how where they seeing the listings if they couldnt get to the vendor,,,
regardless, it sounds like another non-issue that really didnt need to be fixed...
it seems his real concern is the database and how many items there are...
storage is a problem for all crafters...changing the volume of factory crates will help but there is still a stoarage problem...
many of us dont bother with factories since Raph made them worthless, so we have tons of single items now.....
also the recipes call for so may different things that you could easily have 3-4 diferent kinds of steel you have to store...
i personally think the equipment factory makes a nifty little storage shed....it will hold 100 items and only takes 1 lot...
Holo you said that the problem was mainly people using a vendor as private storage whenit wasnt designed to be used asan extra private storage feature. In Ultima Online they would have the vendors set up to where you couldnt have one placed in your house if the house wasnt declared public. If you made the house private after vendors were already placed, then the next time you accessed the vendor it would redeed. So it was impossible to use them as private storage.
SWG has taken buying from vendors one step further by adding a feature of letting people buy from a vendor that they may not be anywhere near yet. In turn this has created a new problem, because people can now make a place private, still have a vendor inside, and people cant get to the items that they have purchased eles where.
My suggestions would be to make items purchased transfer directly to where the item was actualy purchased from so they can get thier items, or to actualy have the vendors on the outside of the houses and not inside of them. Maybe some type of vendor canopy connected directly to the outside of the structure. If the player wants to move the house, he would have to remove all the items that have not been sold out of his vendor, and then deactivate it. Then a buffer timer would start, to give any purchasers 48 hours to grab the items that they have purchased off the vendor that has been deactivated.
I know its not perfect by any means, but at least it would give people time to get thier items that they have purchased.
The only other solution that I can think of right now would be to not let items that are for sale on the bazaar be purchased, but rather put on hold for a period of time till the person could get there and buy the item. Probly around 6 hours or so. Only maybe a couple of items per person could be put on hold at one time. This would insure that they didnt lock up all the items on someones vendor, and then not come and purchase them.
I read through page 3 and let me just add my displeasure at this change. It was irresponsible, poorly thought out and down right rude. It changed a dynamic that no one had a problem with and only causes trouble for merchants and crafters.
Restore this to its original functionality please, and stop screwing with things that aren't broken.
I wanted to add the the below list:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Allowing inter PA transfer of goods either for free or at a reduced cost.
- Coordinating the efforts of PA crafters in a manner that allows for a single shop where the public can access the wares of all the PAs crafters.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- To set up even offworld PA access to supplies. A remote supply center for just PA use.
I understand you did not intend for vendors to be used this way however there is a simple solution.
Set the vendor so it cant be screened by the general public. Let me take my wares out of the loop per se for the general public. The easiest way is to set it up so the only way your wares are screened is if the house is set to Public. Then if anyone buys an item...refuse to let that house go Private until the item is picked up.
However if a house is Private then none of the items should be screenable from any bazaar terminal. The only way to see the items are to be in the house and USE the terminal itself.
VERY SIMPLE FIX.
Holo:
Maybe people want private vendors so that they aren't abused by the Vendor Offer scam/exploit?
If I were buying large amounts of resources, I could setup a list (via the entry list) of approved miners who I will buy from and that way I feel better about not getting scammed by some passer by. Now every vendor who accepts offers is vulnerable to this. Thanks for helping the exploiters with this one.