Merchant Archive
Thread: Three months to make master merchant and I get... bent over?
I am going to try and keep this as un-ranty as I can, but to be quite frank.. I am more than a bit miffed atm. I finally just made master merchant, it took since release for me to obtain because I am pretty sure my vendors were not giving close to the xp I was supposed to be getting. It took 3 weeks justto fill the last box with 6 vendors up full time and a reasonably active shop, but that is besides the point.
Here is what I got for making master merchant..
- A Pink Protocol Droid who can not talk
- A supposed discount on my vendor fee's.
On ad barking:
Imade a protocol droid vendor, which I was planning on putting in my entryway to greet customers.. except unlike every single other protocol droid in the game.. mine can not talk! The option to bark ads does not exist on his menu! Guys... this is silly... I can build a device out of spare parts in my garage right now that can detect a person and play a recorded message to them. Considering that droids can in fact talk and even terminal vendors could contain such a simple device, why is ad barking not an option on anything but NPC vendors?
On the cost of maintaining vendors:
Well supposedly I got a 40% discount off the regular maint rate by making master merchant. Unfortunately this means that instead of going in the hole 100k a month, I will only be in the hole 60k a month. Realistically, I didn't notice one bit of difference in the maint cost.. it was still WAY to high for me to use without my business losing serious money. This needs to be fixed. I realize that NPC vendors are bugged and the future adjusted maint structure is under debate.. BUT I WANT TO USE MY TERMINAL VENDORS NOW. I hate the NPC vendors, they do not fit how I want my shop to be at all and I am rather ticked at them being my only option. With that in mind, I would like to see the maint rates on ALL vendors dropped to match those of the NPC vendors until such a time as SOE gets around to fixing them. I spent months getting my skills, but as it stands, 2/3 of the vendors are unavailable to me because if I used them they would put me out of business!
Naming my vendors:
Pretty much any possible thing you could name your vendor that might actually elicite business from someone looking at the world map listing.. is considered obsene, for reasons beyond my comprehension. The skill I earned way back when is called planetary advertising.. so how about I get to use it for that. I want to list a "50% OffSale - Weapons!" vendor.. but every one of those words except weapons is "obsene".
Actually advertising:
This doesn't exist in any form. There is no place that anyone can look and see that my powerup vendor carries around 200 crates in stock at all times and has a wide selection. The only adverytising I get I mentioned above and it in no way differentiates me from the guy with 6 single powerups on his vendor. At the very least I should be able to attach a comment to my world map that allows me to say what I sell. My weapons vendors has great deals and selection on very highqualityon low-mid end weapons. I do not want to waste anyones time that is looking for high end stufff, nor do I feel that travelling to 15 different architect vendors only to find that NONE of them had what I needed was a good or fun use of my time. Let there be advertising I say!
Wrap up:
There are a million things that could be done to fix merchants, but for right now I would settle for being able to actually use the few things that I earned.. ie: my different vendor types. So drop the fee until you fix all vendors and let me at least enjoy that much of the class that took melonger to master than the other 4 classes I mastered combined.
PS:
Whatever the final solution for vendor maint turns out to be.. it better be WAY cheaper than it is now. Charging me 32,000 a day at master merchant on a vendor that does maybe 10-20k in business is ridiculous and ludicrist. For the amount of business I do, I would be expecting to MAYBE pay 1-2k a day.. MAYBE. Anything over that and it is no longer worth my time to be a artisan or merchant. I have enough other money sinks up front that a end use money sink isn't even necessary in my opinion. I have to buy resources, many of which get wasted in failures or by becoming outdated.. I lose hundreds of thousands of creditsthis way already, and there are bugs out the wazzu that have cost me millions in lost products, materials, houses, etc.
Anyhow, clue in to how it is for the average artisan/merchant instead of looking at the couple percent that are making a killing because they got here first, have better materials, a guild backing them, a great location, etc... a good many of us run decent little shops in the not so heavily travelled towns and we would like to be able to ekk out a living. As it is now, a combat character can make in an afternoon what takes me a week to make... and you want to give me more money sinks? Bah
very nicely said! i couldnt agree more! luckily for me my maintenace is bugged and stuck at 0 except for my one bartender droid i plopped down to keep my xp rolling it. new maintenace on vendors is outrageous. totally unacceptable.
devs want a money sink? offer less money for missions. that is where the money enters the ecomomy at, controling the payout of missions will control the economy. all factors of the economy and not just strugglign merchants.
until next time friends. farewell
Welcome to the "I Made Master Merchant and All I Got Was This Stupid T-Shirt" club. Here's your t-shirt 
Seriously, if there were any less point to making Master Merchant, you wouldn't even notice the difference. Oh, wait...
Oohh can I have a T-shirt?
I'll sell it on this pink protocol that cannot talk and costs a fortune to maintain. 
Seriously though, 3 months?
You must've trained the Efficiency line first then, lol.
DorkVador wrote:
Oohh can I have a T-shirt?
I'll sell it on this pink protocol that cannot talk and costs a fortune to maintain.
Seriously though, 3 months?
You must've trained the Efficiency line first then, lol.
No I didn't, I trained the vendor line first and have had 6 vendors up forever! Thats why I figure my XP was broken... I would go entire days at a stretchwithout getting ANY xp, then some small amount would trickle in. I even recreated the vendors on numerous occassions because I figured there was no way this was normal... but alas... it never changed. I was under the impression for the longest timethat all those folks that made master merchant so long ago, must have found a loophole or something.
enoughBUGSalready wrote:
devs want a money sink? offer less money for missions. that is where the money enters the ecomomy at, controling the payout of missions will control the economy. all factors of the economy and not just strugglign merchants.
Actually, if they want a money sink that will not kill off all but the select few "top"merchants and artisans, they need to implement a system that spreads the love around. I have heard numerous maint fee structures talked about and IMHO they all stink, as every one of them drops the money sink directly in the merchants lap... and the merchants are not the people with all the money.. the people who are buying their wares are.
The least painful system I have heard about would be taxing each sale, which makes sense. However,. why should it be the merchant who has to spend the time computing the new costs of every item because he is going to be charged extra for selling it? Let the buyers pay the tax, that makes it fair for everyone! When you buy an item, the system should automatically add on whatever the desired tax is and charge it, if the person wishes to complete the purchase... this should also go for the bazaar, so it can not be used as a way to undercut real merchant vendors prices due to them having to add in a tax charge themselves in their pricing.
*sigh* i hate when my post gets lost in the shuffle....well anyway, all i wanted to say was good post, thanks for making it very clear that when you really look at it, we have no advantages to being a master merchant
And can i put my order in for a tee shirt too? heh looks like the best part of making master! oh well, at least i can come here to the forums for support!