Merchant Archive

another thing that might really make the Merchant profession more useful would be if say, master merchants, could declare housing type structures as a store. The developers could then also add a new terminal type that shows all of the stores in a given region. I'd say this should be entirely separate from the Bazaar (commodities market) and that people should still have to travel to the actual vendor to pick up their merchandise. But the new terminal, lets call it a Classifieds Terminal, would show the location of the shop. I'd say this should be regional only. They could even simplify it all by just making one of the Advertising levels allow for posting say a waypoint to your "store" with a small description of what you sell....forget about listing each item and even letting people buy your items from afar. Just have a terminal that provides waypoints to shops and a small description of each shop. Ideally, it would be something like:

Advertising I.....Barkers (but attached to the building not the vendor)
Advertising II....Listing on the planetary map (again, the building not each vendor)
Advertising III...Local listing in the "Classifieds" (again with the building...and a waypoint)
Advertising IV....Planetary Listing on the Classifieds (like Advertising III but Planetary)
Master Merchant...Universe wide listing on the Classifieds (ditto but universe wide)

Just an amendment to the idea about tying the advertising to a specific housing type structure instead of tying it to each individual vendor...and then having a "classifieds" terminal...

They could make us pay a listing fee to stay listed on the classifieds terminal. That would keep the terminal less cluttered with run-down shops that don't have any inventory.

Come on folks, hammer this idea at them. It would make the Advertising path very useful in the game universe and make Merchant truely a viable profession. And it would make the non-Bazaar economy worth paying attention to, plus it would give us a reason to have NPC vendors in our homes. Right now, unless you happen to be right on the edge of a town, there isn't even any reason to have a vendor. And even if you ARE on the edge of a town, you still have to spend half your time standing around the Bazaar terminals and the shuttle ports hawking your wares. This idea would fix the economy period. Right now, the economy is seriously broken because customers have no good way of trying to locate needed goods that cost over 3k. Folks would still use the Bazaar for trading low end items and as a spot market for resources, but there would actually be a MARKET for all the nice high end craftables that right now, one has to search half a planet to find half the time and thus simply decide they are just as well off without most of the time. But it would do it in a way that keeps some balance because not just anyone would be able to post waypoints on the "classifieds" terminal...just folks who wanted to devote the skill points to the merchant class. My guess is most any Artisan type would push up in to Advertising at least far enough to get a regional listing on the classifieds terminals, which would make them decide between being a shopkeep and being a warior-artisan a bit more...which is sort of what the devs were after anyway with the merchant profession.

TENTS!! LOL someone on the team has been playing Ultimate Online too long....Yeah, 1 tent 1 chest in UO and now its 1 tent 1 vendour in SWG....btw, anyone who likes this idea has not yet played much UO before...but hey, once the exploits happen, you will wish you had just SAID NO TO TENTS hehe...just wait.

Hey its such a great feature, can you include some dried Bantha crap as well?

1) Fix current problems for merchant class

2) Get rid of the stupid time limit on vendours for carrying stock

3) Give the merchants a better way to get their vendours/shops advertised across the planet/galaxy

4)If you proceed to gimp us on fees, fix 1-3 FIRST!

5) Stop trying to sugar eyecandy the Merchants with stupid crap that will only add 1) Lag or 2) Bugs...once you get your collective butts together to formulate some plans on fixing the tons of problems, then you can move forward and add some new stuff. Merchants who have no ability to sit and wait for new stuff, shouldnt be in the profession. Quality, Durability, Timeliness, Stability ---these are the Merchant's Creed and SOE needs to work these to fix them and make them work.

Dyderich

SOE Paying Beta Slave