Merchant Archive
Thread: The Balanced Merchant profession
Does SOE expect to be able to balance Merchant with other professions? They talked about crafter vs combat balance in rejecting the DE's combat droid proposal, so supposedly they want to balance the Artisan based professions as well.
If we look at the improvement in effectiveness between Artisan Bus 3 and Master merchant, they are now discouragingly similar. Yes, there are a few features, but nothing compared to other professions. The character with Bus-3 (or even less) can compete quite effectivly if he plays well.
This is the same difference in skillpoints as between Marksman Rifle-3 and Master Rifleman. But competition between those characters is laughable. The MR wins every time in seconds.
Similarly compare Eng-3 and Master Architect/DE/WS/AS? The Eng-3 made installations, weapons and armour are largely worthless and almost impossible to sell. Again, those skillpoints are enough for total domination.
What would the merchant profession look like if it were balanced, and what would the economy look like then?
I could set some goals by analogy to the other professions relative skills:
- Anything sold by a player would be sold to a Merchant unless none were interested in it.
- Anything a player buys he would buy from a Merchant unless none were interested in selling it.
- Bazaar transactions would be dominated by Merchants, the above would be as true on the bazaar as anyplace else.
- Lower skilled merchants might, if skillfully played, compete sucessfully at times with ones who had a few more boxes, but would be at a clear disadvantage in most situations.
This is the appropriate balance. After all, nobody would buy an Artisan's armour unless no armoursmith armour were available to them, and a Master can always make a better product for the same or lower cost than lower levels. The same is true for any crafting profession.
1) Fix the bug that allows people to skill up for tents and vendors then drop merchant and keep the perk
2) Cap the number of items on each vendor
Merchant would become a very sought after skillset
Haruspex77 wrote:What would the merchant profession look like if it were balanced, and what would the economy look like then?
I could set some goals by analogy to the other professions relative skills:
- Anything sold by a player would be sold to a Merchant unless none were interested in it.
- Anything a player buys he would buy from a Merchant unless none were interested in selling it.
- Bazaar transactions would be dominated by Merchants, the above would be as true on the bazaar as anyplace else.
- Lower skilled merchants might, if skillfully played, compete sucessfully at times with ones who had a few more boxes, but would be at a clear disadvantage in most situations.
This is the appropriate balance. After all, nobody would buy an Artisan's armour unless no armoursmith armour were available to them, and a Master can always make a better product for the same or lower cost than lower levels. The same is true for any crafting profession.
I'm a little bit confused as how you compare competition between merchants and competition between combat classes. It seems that is like comparing apples and oranges. Missing in your comparison are some rather important externalities that would more determine competition between vendors. First would be price, assuming both merchants are selling the same item with identical qualities, simply being a higher level merchant is a lot less relevant than the price each merchant decides to charge for the item. Really, who cares if you're buying from a master merchant if he's selling item a for 10000 credits, when novice merchant is selling the same item for 100? Second is location, if business III has his vendor south of coronet in the first row of buildings, and is selling item b at 100 credits, and master merchant has his vendor on rori in a house in the upper NW corner of the map and is also selling item b for 100 credits, who is more likely to sell more of the item? Location of your store or vendor location is much more likely to have an influence on your sales than any level of merchant you may or may not have. These factors will determine competition, not skill point usage.
I also find your idea of having all commercial transactions to merchants rather limiting. There is also the problem of the merchant profession becoming a defacto cartel and controlling the entire economy of the game. Perhaps you are familiar with OPEC or DeBeers Diamonds, well if you were to have only merchants control all trade in the game, imagine the harm that would cause to the game economy.
I still think a way of opening the flood gates to the merchant profession would be removing the 6 vendor limit. Let merchants create unlimited numbers of vendors and sell them to non-merchants. Put some decay on the sellable merchants to prevent a one buy and out scenario. Also have merchants to alter a vendors ad bark or even advertise the vendors on the world map for the person buying the vendor from the merchant or change their clothing, all depending on the skill of the merchant, lower level merchants can do less, higher merchants can do more. This way, non-merchant crafters can still exert complete control over their wares, vendor decay would thin out the empty vendors on the world map, merchants would become sought after for being able to provide not only a service but actual goods, anyone could open up their own little business with a merchants help, fostering tolerable interdependancy, and most of all with all the new businesses and thus transactions, the economy of the game would actually grow even greater, all thanks to the new indispensable services and wares of the humble merchant, facilitator of commerce.
relaxin wrote:
I'm a little bit confused as how you compare competition between merchants and competition between combat classes. It seems that is like comparing apples and oranges.
Don't worry Haruspex. Relaxin loves the word Cartel. He figures that once merchants actually take control of the tools they should have had control of from the beginning, that the world is going to end in the doom's-day of a world filled with merchants.
My thought is to not have the merchant dominate the economy of the game. Play a hugely more significant role that what it has now, yes, but not dominate it. People need to trust that merchants will not monoplize the economy as it stands. They need to see us as the hugely efficient portal by which goods can be distributed.
I think that the Vendor revamp will help take care of many of those issues, but everyone needs to be aresponsible salesperson.
Haruspex77 wrote:I don't really think they are comparable either, but the Devs do as they said in rejecting the DE proposal. I think there are two different games, and characters should have separate skillpoints for each.But even if you stay within the "economy game" Merchants come off verybadly in value for skillpoints. An artisan with Bus-3 can easily do as well as a Master Merchant if he works those other factors to his advantage. Compare Eng-3 and Master Weaponsmith or Armoursmith. TheArtisan made weapons and armour are largely worthless and almost impossible to sell. Those skillpointsgiveenough powerfor total domination.To have the professions balanced, a Master Merchant should have a comparable advantage over the Artisan, and I stated my standards for that. Yes, it will take a lot to give a Master Merchantthat much advantage, especially if it is done without nerfing the Artisan's vendor. But it may be possible and I started this thread to attract speculations on what it would take.For example, if Merchants got a delivery capability for premium bazaar items, and those premium sales always went on the first page(s) of every listing at every location, a Merchant would have first chance at every sale. Add to that a Merchant-only ability to put up 100k or resources a price/unit letting the buyer choose the quantity, and a Master Merchant would have a comparable advantage in Bazaar sales to a Master Weaponsmith in weapon making.I don't think we should settle for less.But we also need comparable advantages in buying things, perhaps the ability to auto-accept offers to our vendors (for specific resources or items at set prices) so someone wanting to sell would come to us first knowing they could be paid immediately even if we were not on.To boost the power of our vendors, we at least need powerfull advertising like signboards in the wilderness and NPC cities. And perhaps a way for a player to know exactly what we have for sale without traveling to our shop, order it, and get delivery service.If they really are thinking balance at SOE, we have a very long way to go. We can ask for a lot!
Thank you for the lucidity in your reply. I think some of your ideas are interesting and merit consideration from the developers. The only one I find to disagree with is the one of signboards/ads in the wilderness, but only because of an aesthetic reason. I really enjoy how beautiful the game is and take screenshots liberally whenever I get that "wow" feeling. To litter the landscape with ad boards in my opinion would detract from the great work the developers and artists put into the game. But for the rest of the suggestions on increasing the skill-set of developing merchants, thumbs up, great ideas!