Merchant Archive
Thread: Remove Empty/Dead Vendors from the Global Map
yes - i am fed-up of empty vendors!
also, mall owners should be able to remove empty vendors if they need to - it is very annoying!
Naufragus wrote:
1) map listings are a SKILL
2) you PAY to be on the map
so you want to deny people a skill they have worked for and paid for?
Yes. Because leaving them there makes the listing worthless because everyong is tired of running to advertised shops that are empty.
WhiteRose555 wrote:
2) If you do not sell anything on a vendor for 7 days it is removed from the global advertising and must be reregistered.
Olanthe wrote:
WhiteRose555 wrote:
2) If you do not sell anything on a vendor for 7 days it is removed from the global advertising and must be reregistered.
I wouldchange this to: If the vendor's owner has not accessed the vendor for (7? 14?) days, it is removed from the global map and must be re-registered. Most empty vendors are from people who either quit the game or just lost interest in merchanting, and abandoned their shop without bothering to unregister.
The reason I don't like the not selling anything option is because it is conceivable that a seller of high ticket items (city structures, top rate harvesters, quest rewards, rare weapons, extinct resources, etc) may go that long without a sale. However, if the merchant is still active, and they got a mail about their listing being expired, they could certainly go out and re-register. So it's not a big deal in any case.
My dream is to have some sort of eBay-style rating system for vendors, so the shoppers themselves could provide info on whether a shop is worth a visit or not. Probably not going to happen though.
Message Edited by DocSavag on 04-19-2004 12:01 PM
Naufragus wrote:
1) map listings are a SKILL
2) you PAY to be on the map
so you want to deny people a skill they have worked for and paid for?
1) Yup it is.. and guess what you can register in a heart beat.
2) Yup you do.. and if you're forced off the map, your maintenance goes back to as if you weren't registered.. so this really isn't a point.
The only people I see afraid of #1 are the people who dropped Adv3 and won't be able to re-register.. Which I have no sympathy for. So I'm sorry to say you're points while "valid" are pretty moot.
And to respond to other issues.. I think the first thing that needs to go is the browsing XP. This is the main reason empty vendors are there now. After this is gone I think you'll get rid of 20-30% of the empty vendors from this change alone. As a balance bump up the XP per hour. 250ish an hour would be good.
After that 0 item vendors are removed, then I personally like the 7 days of no browsing or something like that to be removed.
I've had two merchant experiences that I detested.. First was when I was looking for armor.. pull up the map, head to vendor marked "Composite Armor".. walk on in.. guess what access fee.. fine I pay it.. then I hit the vendor,, empty.. 6 other vendors ALL empty.. there wasn't even a piece of furniture in the house. What a waste of time.
Second was when I was looking for food.. Went to the vendor on the map.. 2k from Theed.. Walk in.. "Hey my vendor's moved...(waypoint)" and it's another 2k away.. Nothing on either vendor.
This is a very worthile idea:
1. Once the vendor is empty, the merchant should receive an email from the vendor, telling him about it. The vendor should be delisted from the planetary map if it is there.
2. An empty vendor should poof when it is out of maintenance money, and condition reaches zero, alternatively, after a certain number of days without stock in it.
3. Mall/structure owners should have an option to lay off vendors that are placed in their structures by other people. It should be implemented in a way that does not make people loose items, or loose their number of available vendors (which is the case as it stands now, if the structure owner decides to delete all items in a structure to get rid of empty vendors)
It would be nice if instead of converting all these houses to malls or stores, which is fine, if Master Merchants could place a store structure and manage all vendors placed within. It would be like a Merchant tent and not lot expensive, but something like an upgrade from the merchant tent for when you hit master. Would be a definite indication of an active merchant, beacause most master merchants, unless they have quit have invested skill points in selling things.
Also I was wondering, if you take someone off of admin on a house will their vendor remain in place?
/sign
Empty vendor after empty vendor after empty vendor after empty vendor is a part of the frustration that made me drop CH.
If you're a good merchant, you won't run out of stock.
If you're a GREAT merchant and your stock is selling out that fast, a) your customers would appreciate it b) they'll know where you are anyway, and c) you'll be restocked quickly.
I don't see any reason why this would be a problem for anyone but people trying to keep "ghost" vendors alive.
Veterans need some perks, hehe!I agree with you completely WhiteRose, both as a chef with a shop, and as a customer of all the other goodies our artisan neighbors make. In a game where travel is so obnoxious and slow (unlike, for example, in UO, where you could be at any vendor in the world in seconds) - there's a serious need for empty vendors to be purged from the map. And the solution you outlined would work perfectly.