Merchant Archive
Thread: Database/Money Sink options.
Ok so it would seem SoE dropped a Clanger and vastly underestimated the load that they envisaged for their database. They also need to create Money Sinks into the game, as they have messed up the balance of money in to money out from the start.
So if we accept the fact that the overall number of items in game needs to be reduced, and extra money sinks are needed in game, how do we go about this without placing restrictions or nerfing anything at all? – and if were clever increasing the worth of merchants at the same time.
Lets do the designers job for them here before we get pounded out of all existence by the nerf bat.
Idea’s I have had / heard / blatantly robbed from other that will help the situation. - Feel free to add your own, or improve on these.
1. (Items) Make resources sellable on a sliding scale – i.e. you post up 100,000 units of power as a single stack, and customers can use a sliding bar to buy as much as they want – Saves many items as we currently split those resources up into sellable lots of 500-5,000 units. – As an example my resource vendor had 120 items last night – but that was only 6 different resources – so this idea would have saved 114 items…
2. (Items) Drop the item limit on the bazaar to 10 items – The bazaar should not be used as a main selling tool – merely as a way for low-level artisans and crafters to get a few items out there for some initial income until they either sell through a merchant or become one themselves. Also for combat people selling the odd bit of loot, 10 slots should be sufficient. (Also makes selling through a merchant more attractive).
3. (Items) impose an item limit on each vendor. 25 for Business Skills, 50 at Novice Merchant with +10 per efficiency line to get 100 at Master Merchant sounds about right – this would hurt the very few who want 1 vendor to sell 400 items of clothing/food, but in general we could all live with this, and would give an individual Master Merchant a possible 600 item capacity. (This would also generate more interest in training the management line of skills, and Master Merchant as a whole). Business 3 = 25 items total Bus 4 = 25 NM = 100 total MM = 600!
4. (Items) reduce the item limits on houses (50 per lot sounds fine to me (currently 75???) – I have a fully decked out shop (Medium Naboo) with 10 vendors and many pieces of furniture and I’m only using 50 items – having another 50 for storing stuff sounds like more than enough for me – if you want more storage, buy another house.)
5. (Items & Money) Increase or implement the decay of items / weapons /structures as intended. – Items decay faster generates a better turnover in items for the economy, takes more money out of the game, reduces the number of items..
6. (Money) Activate Insurance as intended – Vast Money sink there – I generally die every few days.
7. (Money & Items) Increase Maintenance on General Houses (not shops) – Makes using a house as a storage depot more expensive, so people will be inclined to store less.
8. (Items) Make organic resources (Hide, Meat etc) decay over time as if they were rotting – many items I see “dumped” in houses are creature harvested resources from combat people – give them a week/two week limit before they rot to nothing…
9. (Items) Make the stockroom work better, i.e. if I have a factory crate of 20 identical Laser rifles, don’t make me put up 20 individual sales, let me put 1 up for sale and put the factory crate in the stockroom. When the items is sold, instead of removing the item listing, it just pulls one from the stockroom crate instead – Bingo 20 items reduced to 2. (This would also be of great benefit to vendor maintenance if they insist on following their insane policy of basing it on total items for sale costs.)
10. (Items) generally make merchants more useful to crafters. I’m sure if all crafters sold through Merchants then there would be a lot less items for sale generally. As every wepaonsmith wouldn’t have 20 laser rifles on a vendor somewhere.
Now only a few of these are what I would call a Nerf, and to be honest they’re not even that bad of a nerf – there is far more good things added in here than bad, and I’m confident the vast majority of the player base would agree to this in an effort to miss the nerf bat that is so quickly wielded these days.
I dont know what type of shop your run where you only use 50 storage in your house.
But I am an armorsmith and i need TONS of different resources/hides/bone along with any armor displays.
75 per lot is barely enough so dont reduce it to 50.
If they are really concerned about the database size then reduce the amount of differetn resources and hides from the game. Sure it screws the depth and fun of crafting but do you really need 6 stacks of differetn hides? That would be the easiest way to nerf the database.
I have to agree - I'm a tailor and 75 per lot is pushing it as is. Tailors live and die by their displays.
That having been said, there are several ideas here that I agree with. First and foremost is fix item decay, *especially* for clothing (which currently does not decay at all). Tying the max items per vendor the the management makes alot of sense.
I think 10 items on the bazaar may be a bit too limiting, unless they also put in that sliding scale for resources. Fifteen might be better. I would also impose a miminum price for items on the bazaar (say.. 150cr), just to keep people from dumping 1 or 2 unit lots of resources for 10 to 20 credits. (It's a stupid thing to do, but I've seen it...)
kasierpalo wrote:
I dont know what type of shop your run where you only use 50 storage in your house.
But I am an armorsmith and i need TONS of different resources/hides/bone along with any armor displays.
75 per lot is barely enough so dont reduce it to 50.
If they are really concerned about the database size then reduce the amount of differetn resources and hides from the game. Sure it screws the depth and fun of crafting but do you really need 6 stacks of differetn hides? That would be the easiest way to nerf the database.
I am just amazed that they'd take draconian measures to deal with database size when the vendor/inventory system isn't working as intended. Over the last couple weeks, I've had 16 stacks sitting in an unretrievable state either on bazaar or NPC vendors... until they decayed.
Fix that issue and see what it does to the database problem.
If that's not enough, trash the one-week time limit on player-owned merchant sales. It's such a PITA to get stuff out of the stockroom that I'll just let things sit there and rot as opposed to pulling it out or putting it back up... particularly if it's an obsolete item due to skill increases. And allow Merchants to destroy unwanted goods directly off the merchant.
Do this and see what it does to the database problem.
If that's not enough, then raise the minimum quantity of resources needed in a stack to be sold on the bazaar. There are so many wheat 1 for 30 credits on the global bazaar that will never be bought because it's an unusable quantity. You raise this to 50 minimum per stack and at least 25% (if not up to 40%) of the resources stacks on the global bazaar go away.
Do this and see what it does to the database problem.
If that's not enough, lengthen the time between resource shifts by a couple days. Each resource shift is going to introduce more stacks of items into the world. Instead of shifting every 5 to 8 days, change it to every 10 to 12. This will allow people more time to burn off last shift's resources before getting into the current shift's resources and acquiring next shift's resources.
Do this and see what it does to the database problem.
There are so many things that can and should be done to optimize the database issue before getting into anything that severely impacts gameplay like reducing house storage.