Merchant Archive

I have a large Naboo house and I have Vendor Management IV. When I use any sign other than address sign (sign #1-#4), it does not display outside where anyone can see it. Is this due to my house size? I see new signs on other smaller (medium Naboo) houses all the time! Is this a known bug? Is there some trick in placing your sign after you switch types on the structure management tool?

Thanks in advance for any help

Sign positions are bugged for several house designs, Jerek. On my shop (small generic style 2)my nifty new merchantsign is 10 meters in front of the house, floating in midair!

All you can do is /bug it.

Suze

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Jerek...check BEHIND your house, up in the air a bit. Congratulations ! You have a high tech antigrav shield !

Man, this is depressing

Any clue on when they will fix this?

Depends. Did you enter a /bug report, or perhaps a customer service ticket? No ticket, no fix!

Suze

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Need armor or PSG's? Visit Armor by Suze on Radiant, near Theed at -3747 5111

Very true, Suze I actually work in the software test industry, so I agree about "no bug - no fix". I guess what I was asking for is this: Does anyone know if this has already been bugged and slated for a fix. I will file a bug just to be safe, I hope I am not the first person to report this though

If I'm not mistaken, there was actually a post in General from Holocron asking for bugged sign information. I don't know if that was related specifically to this or not, though.

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Does anyone know if this has already been bugged and slated for a fix. I will file a bug just to be safe, I hope I am not the first person to report this though

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Bug early, bug often. The devs have said that their priority list is based partly off of the number of CS tickets created on that issue. So make sure you send bug reports, even if it is a known issue. The squeaky wheel and all that...

That's cool. Its hard not to be a little cynical about this. I feel like we are testing their software for them for free (we actually pay them) and then we must yell loudly and beg for a fix. It should not have shipped bugged. I know software bugs are a way of life, but this is a little frustrating. Seems like basic functionality. Part of the joy of raising Vendor Management is you get more signs. Hard to feel inspired when none of the new signs work.

Umm.... but, in this case, this was something we didn't have *at all* before, not something advertised with the game that now doesn't work. Slightly different situation. Before the patch that introduced signs, you couldn't have shop signs on any house. Now, you can't have shop signs on a Large Naboo House. Annoying, yeah. Kinda funny, though, the first time my friend and I figured out why the sign didn't work for him even though it worked for me. And not something that will take them a long time to fix.

I haven't tried playing on Test Center with this game, but after two years on EQ's test server, and a month in beta III, I can entirely believe that there was no one on Test Center who (a) has a Naboo large house and (b) has the Merchant Management skill and (c) tried the shop sign. I can also believe that there were several who did, and dutifully bugged it, but since it's not a showstopper they went ahead and patched it for all the people who would be able to use it anyway.

So a feature has to be *advertised* to work? So are you suggesting that SOE advertise on the box that you can have signs if you're a merchant? Obviously not... I work as a softaretest lead for a large software company. Adding new functionality that clearly does not work in a prime user scenario (large house is the most popular I would assume) is an example of bad software dev. Plain and simple. You seem very comfortable with bugs. I say expect more, raise the bar, we are paying good money for this. SOE had a press release stating there were 275,000 registered users. At $15/month, that is over $4,000,000 a month that they pull in from this game in subscription fees. That is after the initial $13,750,000 they made on game sales (not including the increased price for Collector's Edition). Now given an income such as that, I think making sure that signs work in all houses is not too much to ask

"So a feature has to be *advertised* to work? So are you suggesting that SOE advertise on the box that you can have signs if you're a merchant? Obviously not..."

No, but I'm suggesting that when you bought the game and signed up for your subscription, you weren't expecting this feature, and now that it's been added and you can't use it in a particular situation when the feature is brand-new, it's not quite the same as the game not working as expected when you bought it.

"is an example of bad software dev. Plain and simple."

Could be, but it's an example of MMOG software dev.

"You seem very comfortable with bugs."

Been using Windows since 1994, so yeah. ;-) But mostly, been playing MMOGs for four years.

"I say expect more, raise the bar, we are paying good money for this."

No, we're paying crap money for this. How much do you pay per hour to see a movie? Think about it. Your $15/month doesn't pay for an hour of a programmer's time. It takes 12.8 subscriptions to pay for one *day* of a programmer's salary (if they make a piddling $50k/year, which is about what my husband makes writing games).

"I work as a softare test lead for a large software company."

I'm a Transportation Planner. I specialize in urban mass transit. Shall I tell the devs how they should run the shuttles?

The MMOG development cycle doesn't resemble anything you've worked on before, unless you've worked on an MMOG. Your professional knowledge may not necessarily give you a whole lot of insight about how this works. Maybe it doesn't work the way it should. But it's not possible to run it like conventional software, where you develop, test, release, get feedback, maybe make a service pack, and then go into the next version. This *is* a lot more like a beta product, because it's constantly changing. We want it to constantly change. Either deal with the consequences of new code every few days, or come up with a better solution. (Currently, you'd rather no one have a sign until it works for everyone. For me, that's not a good solution... because my sign works and I love it.)

"(large house is the most popular I would assume)"

First off, I think that's an erroneous assumption... there appear to be mostly small houses, then mediums, then larges on my server. I live on Naboo so this is particularly relevant. Most people don't want to give up either the cash or the lots for a large house.

Furthermore, since there are five other house styles, and it seems that this bug only affects one, only 1/5th of the already small population of large houses owned by merchants are affected by it.

"SOE had a press release stating there were 275,000 registered users. At $15/month, that is over $4,000,000 a month that they pull in from this game in subscription fees. That is after the initial $13,750,000 they made on game sales (not including the increased price for Collector's Edition). Now given an income such as that, I think making sure that signs work in all houses is not too much to ask."

Do you know how much they spend on bandwidth every month? With EQ it was about $1 million when they had 300,000 users... and this game uses more data. Hardware? Every new "server" consists of several server-class machines working together... maybe 10, maybe 20, but each of those costs probably at least $15k. Round-the-clock staff, plus keep in mind that they didn't stop paying the programmers when the game shipped. Rent, utilities (I'd hate to see the electric bill!) and you're left with probably barely enough to keep the Sony shareholders happy. These games are far from a honeypot.

Wow, that answer must've taken you quite a while to construct

Here's an easierresponse: You seem to be defending bugs. I don't get this, but it's your opinion and I respect that. I personally hate bugs, I wish people worked harder to avoid or fix them. Introducing new bugs with added functionality is generally frowned upon in the industry. We seem to have some differences of opinions, perhaps we can leave it at that.