Merchant Archive
Thread: Your view on the planetary map and one other question
In the meantime, my question is this to business owners. Do you find it more successful to just register one vendor on the planetary map with a name encompassing your shoppe or all your vendors and enjoy the "ungarbled" view on the overhead map? Or do you register all of them and figure customers will use the planetary map to find what they want and won't mind that all those vendor names are crammed together. When I'm trotting along on my adventures and see a bunch of names running over each other I usually go check it out figuring there's variety to be had, but I also know why it looks like that, being a merchant myself. I'm curious what others have found to be the best way to use the map, I personally have just labelled one vendor as the name of my store and put him on the plantery map -- bringing up a second part of the question of which category under the P-map do you think gets the most looks? I would guess weapons but have no real idea.
My second question deals with NPC vendors, specifically the protocol droid you can get as a master merchant. I've never been given the option to enable ad barking on him, it seems kind of pointless to have one otherwise. THanks for any insight you can provide, and keep making credits!
Nick,
May I ask why you have multiple vendors in the same location, since one vendor can list it all? Shouldn't multiple vendors be used for multiple locations?
Faellyn wrote:
Nick,
May I ask why you have multiple vendors in the same location, since one vendor can list it all? Shouldn't multiple vendors be used for multiple locations?
No. And I'll give you two reasons.
1. The Overhead map only allows you ONE category. To let people know you have Weapons AND Clothing you need two vendors.
2. If you have exclusive arrangements with suppliers it is MUCH easier to keep up with sales from their vendor vs try to pull out the sales from one vendor and separate them by the item names or something.
I personally don't worry about map clutter. I don't use the map that way to look for vendors. When I want to find something I click on the vendor category I am looking for and locate the vendors by clicking on them and making their individual icons come on. (I Turn OF show all waypoints etc to get a clear map to work with)
At one time I was dealing with several million credits of merchandise at a time from a Master Weaponsmith. I wasn't willing to tie up all of my liquid assets into her inventory and she didn't want to give up control of the pricing and the left over inventory stock to me. Keeping the vendors separate was a good way to manage the costs. For the sake of ease of use she separated her wares into three vendors. I don't know that I would do that again but it worked for her and I at the time. Consignment sales I think are a legitimate relationship and I hope we can get more support for them in the game.
I don't think this so much a disagreement as a difference in how we play the class which is fine. We should be able to play differently and still accomplish what we need to do to be successful. There is no one way to do it.
I suspect the vendor categories on the global map is more a prodcut of limited time and resources to get it done rather than any serious study of how it would be used. I wish their was a General Category.
So don't think of it as us disagreeing or not seeing eye to eye. See it as a primary reason we have to have different features to facilitate differing play styles.
That's really all I meant, sugar. I was being tongue-in-cheek. This is just the sort of differences in viewpoint that make for lively discussion and generate new ideas that benefit everyone - in other words, the forum elegantly performing it's supreme function.
It's just that in this case, I happen to be right
Neener-neener!
Faellyn wrote:
That's really all I meant, sugar. I was being tongue-in-cheek. This is just the sort of differences in viewpoint that make for lively discussion and generate new ideas that benefit everyone - in other words, the forum elegantly performing it's supreme function.
It's just that in this case, I happen to be right
See we are back to agreeing again.. was that so hard? Now if you will just accept that I"m right about all this stuff....
Faellyn wrote:
Truthfully, I'm aware that I'm WAY in the minority on this issue already. I seem to be the only merchant I know of - on my server or any other - that's taking the approach to the merchant profession quite the way I am. I'm going for the maximum location approach (see my sig) rather that the niche vendors in the same location approach that everyone else seems to be doing. But, even if I'm all be myself on this side of the fence, I still think it's a more efficient use of the vendor slots.
The whole 'You must use six vendors to seperate things!' and 'You must use one vendor in six places!' debate is pretty silly if you ask me. It really depends what sort of business people have. I tried selling clothing on a single vendor once, but I sell a lot more with several vendors in one location. The problem with some items, like clothes, is you stock a wide range that all appears in the same catergory. If people can't find what they want in a reasonable time, they stop looking. BE clothing especially, I didn't sell any when it was on my normal clothing vendors. On it's own vendor it sells well. People just couldn't find it, even with the names making it stand out in the list.
That said, someone that only stocks maybe a selection of 200 popular items per vendor could have six clothing vendors in different places. And I have seen this. But those sorts of vendors get a different customer base to the all-in-one clothing shops that stock everything. Though one in particular that springs to mind recently changed from a single vendor in one location, to having a seperate BE vendor there too. So it seems the problem of customers not being able to find the BE clothing affects those with multiple sites, as much as those with single shops.
The essence of this is it isn't the same for every merchant, and every type of merchandise. If I specilised in pet stims and medical supplies, I'd have six sites. But for what I do, the one site is much more sense. It's always best to be flexible about it, rather than being determined that one method is the best for everything.
Prior to the big patch I separated my vendors by catagory, but now that they cost a significant amount I'm trying the consolidation strategy and I'm not seeing much difference in sales. The main thing is to get customers to your shops, once there it doesn't seem to matter much if you use multiple vendors, ad barking or dress them up, at least not in my experience.
As for the protocal droid, you're right. It doesn't talk. I think it's classified as a droid vendor and droid vendors do not talk. Hopefully they'll fix that and give it some other bonus.
ROFL!! How cow, Doc! You and I agreeon most issues, luv...but we're not stumbling upon any of them today, are we?
Truthfully, I'm aware that I'm WAY in the minority on this issue already. I seem to be the only merchant I know of - on my server or any other - that's taking the approach to the merchant profession quite the way I am. I'm going for the maximum location approach (see my sig) rather that the niche vendors in the same location approach that everyone else seems to be doing. But, even if I'm all be myself on this side of the fence, I still think it's a more efficient use of the vendor slots.
Your observation regarding merchant catagories on the planetary map (and ad-barking too, btw) are well taken, however, and seem, to me, to exibit a preconception on the part of the devs regarding how vendors would be used. I think the root of this problem is the same as the original poster's observation that multiple vendors in the same loc make the waypoints an unreadable mess. It really should be the building that's registered on the planetary map and not the vendor - and multiple catacogies should be allowed.
As for your second point, Doc, you must be referring to some sort of a consignment arrangment, which is WAY too much drama for me. I buy from my suppliers outright and sell at a markup - and it all goes on the same vendor, both in single and crate form:
Camp Kits
Seeker Droids
Food & drink buffs
Radioactive Power
MKIII shield gens
power-ups
stims, woundpacks, and rez kits
Eshren_Jandl wrote:
but now that they cost a significant amount
Just curious, what are you selling? I "move" around 800K to 900K a day, with 2 vendors and amarkup of around 20% = margin of 16,66%. So of that 800-900K, 133-150K is profit. Now... with that in mind, how's less then 1K upkeep per day a "significant ammount"?
Kindest regards,
Goff McMerrii
Miner
I think he's referring to NPCs costing 360 credits/day now instead of 24. It's surprising to me how many merchants forgot that the artificial 1 c/hour NPC vendor maintenance was really just a placeholder while NPC maintenance was bugged - and that it was always intended to be much, much more expensive.
Those of us that sell resources were forced for a long time to use machine vendors to avoid the 'NPC resource sales' bug, so we were stuck paying the 10000 - 20000 creditsper day maintenance while merchants with NPC vendors were charged 24. So I can't help but politely chuckle a little bit when those merchants were surprised by the "price jump" in vendor maintenance from 24 credits all the way upto a stratosphereic 360 credits.