Merchant Archive

I'm highly confused about the reasonings behind the artisan and merchan class structures.

We know what the rules are and what is about to change. What we don't know is why the current rules exist nor why they are about to change the way we were told (other than "this is what it was supposed to be so we're changing it").

Again, why?

The artisan/merchant classes are apparently not intended for casual gamers by any means -- even though we were told this would not be the case with this game.

A maintenance fee (tax) on the prices of items in stock instead of on the prices of the items that sold...? (Heck. Even adding a flat rate for 'wages' on top of a sales tax makes more sense than a maintenance fee based on items in stock.) What was the logic behind this decision?

Thousands and thousands of resources can disappear in a blink upon a failure. With a game that has little in-game reward (and it does across the board... not just merchants), such a detriment seems extremely steep. Why is it like this?

If the devs wanted people to rely on their own vendors for high dollar items, why are items that take hours or days of collecting and making resources even allowed on the public bazaars (which has a limit of 3K)? With the above noted fee, it seems that someone wants to encourage people to stand at banks and shuttle ports spamming the spacial chat channel instead of using their own vendors.

As I said, we know what changes are being made, but I cannot find a post that says why these things are the way they are. If we knew this, perhaps we wouldn't be so frustrated or perhaps we could find more reasonable alternatives. Without this knowledge, all we can do is whine and complain.

Help us and yourselves out.... just explain some things. We're confused, and it's getting us annoyed being kept in the dark.