Merchant Archive
Thread: To The Devs: The Merchant Revamp: Core Changes That Will Help The Profession
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Create more custimization options after race selection. New optionscouldbe: -
Body Type: Allows us to select the kind of body type we want for the vendor (height, torso build, weight, etc...) -
Face: Allows us to customize facial features of our vendor (skin color, tatooes, lekku types, fur color, and age) -
Createa Customize Clothing tab on thevendor menu options -
What this will do is allow us to not get jacked by our vendors for clothing we place on them. When we select this menu an inventory box pops up. When the box first pops up we see the clothing the vendor currently has on. We can drag these clothings out of the box and place new clothing in (allowing us to get our clothing back instead of it being a one way process). For instance if we want to change a vendor's shirt, we open the Customize Clothing tab, inventory box shows up, we double click the currently worn shirt and drag in a new shirt we want it to wear into the box taken form our inventory. When this Customize Clothing box is closed, that is when we see the new changes. If a merchant simply takes out the shirt but doesnt place a new replacement shirt in, the changes do not take effect (eliminating the possibilty of having a naked vendor). The inventory box that holds clothings and other items we want vendors to wear has a max volume of 10 and anything dragged into this box is auto-equiped by the vendor.
Creation of a Grouping Command:
One of the most dreaded things we merchants face is the restock. Instead of going through a long winded explanation i will go with a scenerio we all face. After doing a massive inventory run of (insert product here) we have over 100 items to place for sale. We organize what we're going to put up for sale in our inventory and begin going through the process of placing it for sale. Then we see all 100 items up for sale we realize we priced it wrong by so so credits. Here is where our headache comes in. We have to withdraw the sale of all 100 items and then get it all kicked to the stockroom. From the stock room we have to go through each and every item and price them. Current sytsem in placed has us to select each item individually, select Sell Item, new pop up box comes up and and re-adjust the price and select Sell item again. To our GREATEST annoyance this pop up box does not close, instead it stays open and doesn't go away when we re-price and select Sell Item. Instead we need to hit esc to close it and go through this winded annoying process for the next 99 items. This has got to stop. One clear solution to this restocking hell is the creation of a grouping command.
Proposed Fix:
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Grouping command: When we are faced with a massive restock Merchants should be given the ability to group items into clusters. A walkthrough of this process will explain it more clearly that a brief description. Before the merchant selects the item from the stockroom he/she first selects the Group command from the tabs below. With Group highlighted the merchant then selects all the items they want to place for sell. In our scenerio the merchant selects all 100 items (each time a merchant selects an item it is highlighted. If they select a item by mistake they can simply select it again and it gets unhighlighted). With all items selected and highlighted they choose "Sell Item" from the bottom tab and we are met with "Sell item" pop up box. We enter in the new corrected price and hit "Sell Item". When we do this all 100 itemsare placed up for sale at once with their corrected prices. The Group command basically allows a merchant to select numerous items they know will be sold for the sale price,allows them to go throughthe "sell item" pop up window interface once and all highlighted will be placed for sale at once at that price. This shaves a good 17 minutes from a 20 minute job it takes the average merchant to reprice and resell items in stock room. This Group item can also work in the reverse way when want to take items from sale and get them kicked back into the stock room. Merchant selects the "group" option from the bottom tabs, selects all items they want to be taken off of sale then select "withdraw" sale and all selected items will be kicked back into the stockroom. And also this works further when we want to totaly remove items from the vendor, in the stockroom window we select "Group" again, select (highlight) each item we want to removed and select "retrieve item" and all items are retrieved at once and placed in our inventory instead of manually retrieving each and every item at once. If no other suggestions of mine are taken seriously, please do consider this one the most important.
Private Sales Option:
One of the absent things we merchants lack is the inability to place items for sale for specific customers. Another scenerio. A armorsmith gets an order in from a customer asking for a suit made with specific attributes. Be it a suit of armor that's all effecieny sliced or a suit of armor all encumbrance sliced, or a suit made with special protection in a specific area, or whatever the case may be. The armosmith spends his time getting this suit just right, spending days creating the layers needed, securing a master smuggler to slice the armor and now has a full suit of armor that the customer asked for. But wait, this suit can't be placed this up on a public vendor for sale in fear of it being purchased by someone else besides the customer. What can they do? Our current options are to waste a vendor and allocate it just for custom orders. You all seen the many Special Order vendors out there in many shops. Why is it that these vendors exist? Cause crafters can't place custom orders on their regular vendors in fear of that item made for someone else being purchased by someone it isn't for. So we have to waste a vendor, a vendor that could be used for other uses like selling other types of items besides armor, maybe weapons or AUK hits, or whatever. The armorsmith then needs to place this armor in a bag, obviously to further sheild it from customers so they cant see what's inside, and name it "Droayus's Order" or something like that. Now we're only taking the case of one special orders. How about if that armorsmiths has about5 or 10 orders out. A solution to this waste of a vendor is this.
Prosed Fix:
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Creation of a "Make Private" option: This option can be placed both in the For Sale window and the Stockroom window. A merchant can basically select an item for sale and enter in the price of that item, since this item is a custom order instead of selecting "sell item" they select "make private". A pop up box comes up with a field where the merchant types in a player's name and selects "sell item" on this pop up box. What this basically does is by entering the players name, that item can only be viewed on the vendor by that player who's name is entered inthe field. Basically when a walk in customer views the merchant's vendor they only see what is up for sale to the public, but when a person who has a custom order placed in with the merchant/armorsmith, when they view the vendor they see both public sale items and their order on the vendor. To eveyone else besides this customer his/hercustomer order is invisible, but to them, they see it and can purchase it securley with no hassle. Also, all private sales should be anchored at the top of the page and highlighted yellow (or any stand color that stands out). When the person who's coming to pick up their order views the items on the vendor,they see their customer order highlighted in yellow and listed at the very top of the page above all items on the vendor. And even if they hit the "next item" buttons, these items stay anchored at he top. This elminates the process of that person weeding through the vendor pages to find their order. Their custom order is displayed in bright text color at the very top of the page for easy visiblity and access.This new option can also be combined with my "group" command idea, merchant selects "group" then selects all items for sale (in this case all pieces of the armor for the custom order ) then selects "make private" and goes through the steps above. This fix will basically have us merchants do away with the need to waste a vendor from our 6 we're given and use it for other purposes besides allocating it for private sales. It's just a waste since we are limited to 6 at master.
These are my three core changes i'd like applied to merchant. Though i have many more, these three are the core issues we face as merchants. Some of may read this and realize that the processes we go through now can easly be fixed with such inclusions as i've listed above. If this Merchant Revamp is truely being done for the sole purpose of changing the way we sell, manage and view productsI feel that these changes will help tremendiously. It would be good to get some feed back on these proposes and also maybe if a dev selects Merchant by mistake and comes into this thread can view this and grace it with a responce (i say that cause i haven't see a dev post in here in ages).I know our coorespondant keeps an eye out on threads as well. Hopefully they'llread this and putin some of their feed back as well asbring this to the devs attentionwith fixes to our bug issues. But most imporantly i'd like some feed back, maybe if given enough some of these things will see the light of day
All I know is that stocking 3600 buff packs takes me 3-5 hours depending on lag in the shop.
I really do hate having to individualy list items. A grouping command would make my life that much easier.
On the vendor customization, I would also support simply giving image designers the ability to image design a vendor. This doesn't make any skills within merchant more useful, but it does get us our perfect vendor, plus it throws another useful ability to image designers.
Either way (we select at hiring or IDs do it after the fact), we need a way to customize vendors (at least those races that are customizable - I don't expect to customize my Ithorian...).
I would also like the idea to add players to admin on a vendor. Let peopel stock and sale of that vendor, and to give the merchant a certain % of the sales that take place. (make the % adjustable)
IMO makes Merchant more business like profession.
I don't want to steal anyones thunder here but aren't just about all of those things already on our list of Top Issues?
Balkstar wrote:
You would know Doc, since you submitted that list.
This presentation does go into exquisite detail, though.
It is very good presentation. I"m just making sure that I"m not missing out on anything. I think we have those covered. 
DocSavag wrote:
Balkstar wrote:
You would know Doc, since you submitted that list.
This presentation does go into exquisite detail, though.
It is very good presentation. I"m just making sure that I"m not missing out on anything. I think we have those covered.
My main point of posting this was to show how tedious much of what we do in this profession is, which is why i chose to give scenerios of what we merchants go through with each proposal instead of just explaining my ideas. I tried to go into much detail as possible and keep it clear to a point. Though my first proposal was on the Merchant Top Issues list, my idea for the private salesoption and the group command feature was something i wanted to put out there for the community to read and realize that these two features are things we need despretly, especially the group command. I was just doing a restock on my vendors just now and i so wish we had such a command, it is absolutely imperitive that the Merchant Revamp either has this feature or something that does the same function and more. We've been the same profession since day 1, only advances given to merchants since launch (besides bug fixes, but a bugfix should be an advancement should it)were first vendortents and now barking advertisement droids, but these two extravigencies do nothing to aid the profession at all. They do nothing to limit the pain of dealing with vendors and the total lack of room we have to make selling items more pleasing and better. We need more ways to make this profession as efficient as possible. This is what the merchant revamp should be, creating options for us to group items into clusters, more customization features (i like the whole ID designer idea), and more ways to cater to individual customers instead of everyone as a whole (private sales/auctions). Also one thing i'd like changed is the ridiculous restrictions we have when naming our vendor. I found that we can't use many simple words in our vendor names like for instance "medical". What needs to be posted are words that cannot be used for vendors, maybe this is something DocSavag can look into because it gets really annoying to be hitting road blocks when trying to name our vendors because the filter is blocking out certain words. There are many other simple everyday words we cannot use unrelated to Star Wars. I thought only trademark words were restricted from being used in vendor names, like they are with player character names and pets.But last i remember, the word "medical" wasn't coined by George Lucas
Real simple. Batch uploading all items of the same value.
This concept keeps either being ignored by or beyond our merchant devs DBAs.
Since we can already take things off of sale and retrieve items in groups, it shouldn't be too hard to put them on sale in groups (as long as they are the same price). That may not work so well for people with highly customized pricing, but for someone who sells a lot of same or similar product at the same price, it would help tremendously.
Cafa wrote:
Real simple. Batch uploading all items of the same value.