Merchant Archive
Thread: Merchant Experience! Wonder why it's slow?
Since I couldn't seem to find out from anyone how merchant experience worked I decided do some checking myself.
To start I have two computers (side by side), two accounts and two characters. One of my guys is a merchant and the other a fighter. I used the fighter to access vendors while I watched experience on my merchant. I spent many, many hours the last 3 days checking and this is what I've found.
If you place an entrance fee on your place you get 50 experience points. I didn't spend a lot of time on this because I didn't want my customers to have to pay to get in. It's set on a timer so the same person entering can't give you more experience for at least 15 minutes. It seemed to work ok from what I could tell.
When someone accesses your vendors you get 50 experience points.... Oops! That's not quite right. What happens is, when someone accesses your first vendor they start another timer. From what I could tell this timer is set for about six minutes. You don't get experience when they first open vendor to the blank screen, you get it when they select a category. As long as that timer is active that person can't give you more experience. Each time the person moves to another vendor the timer is reset to six minutes. I think that answers the question about if you get experience for each vendor accessed. But wait here's the clincher, you don't get 50 points each time a person opens a vendor, you get 50 points every other person. I spent many hours testing this, making sure my fighter didn't access the vendor for at least seven minutes. He would open a vendor and I'd get 50 points, next time nothing.
By the way, there is no hourly experience gain for having vendors.
What does all this mean to a Novice merchant? Well let's see. At Novice you need 400,000 merchant experience points to become a Master merchant. If you don't want to charge an entrance fee you'll need 8,000 customers if you collected 50 points from each. But since you don't get points from each customer you'll need 16,000 to reach Master. I guess I'm one of the lucky one's since I only need 32,000 more points to become Master; I only need 1,280 more customers (lol).
One time while I was testing a customer came in and made a purchase. She bought 16 items for a total of 18,045 credits. I received not one experience point for that sale but yet someone can charge 1 credit to enter their door and collect 50 points. To me there is something very wrong here.
I can understand putting an entrance charge on a business such as a Cantina but what stores do you know of charge a customer to view their goods? This to me is very unfair to a Novice merchant. The Novice merchant won't stand a chance against a Master merchant. The Master merchant will no longer need merchant experience so he won't charge an access fee. The Novice wanting to get ahead will feel he needs to so chances are he will charge. Now the Novice is not only loosing to the Master because of the level and quality of his goods but also because of availability to them.
If you're going to dish out experience this way at least make it an option. Have an option on the house control panel where as you can get 100 points per entrance and no vendor experience or 100 points from vendors. This I think would cover all businesses.
Delfre Freman
Bestine Emporium
Eclipse Server
The hourly thing is a recent change I think, as I certainly used to get a steady amount coming in on a vendor I didn't advertise, and people didn't really access. Since about the big update time, this has stopped.
Right now, I only have Business 3 and am working on 4.
Last night I had 350 Merchant XP. I sold two items, and had about 3 people enter my store. I did not check my Merchant XP since last night. I have spent the entire day except for maybe one hour in my store grinding Droid XP.
I just checked my Merchant XP, and I suddenly have 1850.
How did this happen? No one access my vendor, I did not sell anything, and I have no access fee on my house...?
Z
I have been getting hourly exp. There were a few days I didn't get any, so I chalked that up to patch bugs. Now I get it again, but the rate seems slower, so I chalk that up to patch changes.
I sat in my shop again all day today, not touching my vendor, with only two people entering and paying the access fee, and not buying anything, and I gained over 1,000 xp.
I say just be glad you're getting any experience at all. I decided long ago to be a resource merchant. My vendor worked fine the first day I placed it, but after that, no one, not even me can retrieve anything from the vendor. Since at the end of day 1, when everything seemed to be going well, I dumped everything I wanted to sell in there. So I'm sitting here with a vendor holding everything hostage, 3 weeks work collecting and buying and all may be gone.
Guess how many XP I've gotten? Zero Zip Nada none.
So just be happy your vendor is working at all.
Jaye
One small thing that is important for this is that your vendor must have items in it and they must be for sale. If it has items but they are all in the stockrooms, you get no XP at all for it. If it has no items, you get none.
But it is evident from this thread that this is not true for everyone. One more thing that needs fixing with Merchants.