Merchant Archive
Thread: Customized Vendor barking
Wire3k wrote:
Well, unlike the canned messages - I don't think the tags for addressing by name or race work in the customized messages - pity that.
yankee486 wrote:
Wire3k wrote:
Well, unlike the canned messages - I don't think the tags for addressing by name or race work in the customized messages - pity that.
Well, those tags wouldn't be too useful since there'd be about 50 different people walking around
Different from the canned message? Don't think so. It's a nice touch but not sure why customized tags don't work. Vendors don't address a crowd - they speak to one player at a time. That's just one of those little intangibles that make NPC speech a bit more real if personalized and a little less like a canned recording.
my personal feeling is that i hate this feature!
the vendors keep repeating if you move around and if there are serveal its laggy....of its a BUSY shop you get nothing but vendor spam
i would much rather see this feature turned into a vendor welcome screen the player gets if he clicks on the vendor....instead of the NO ITEMS FOUND screen you get now you would get a short message... Hello Player X, wleocme to XXXXXX...all armor is sliced..any item can be purchused crated....special orders on request...etc
Naufragus wrote:my personal feeling is that i hate this feature!
the vendors keep repeating if you move around and if there are serveal its laggy....of its a BUSY shop you get nothing but vendor spam
i would much rather see this feature turned into a vendor welcome screen the player gets if he clicks on the vendor....instead of the NO ITEMS FOUND screen you get now you would get a short message... Hello Player X, wleocme to XXXXXX...all armor is sliced..any item can be purchused crated....special orders on request...etc
Ok I don't get the chance to say this too often, but I agree with you.. I love that idea..
MasterJian wrote:
Naufragus wrote:
i would much rather see this feature turned into a vendor welcome screen the player gets if he clicks on the vendor....instead of the NO ITEMS FOUND screen you get now you would get a short message... Hello Player X, wleocme to XXXXXX...all armor is sliced..any item can be purchused crated....special orders on request...etc
Ok I don't get the chance to say this too often, but I agree with you.. I love that idea..
The feature as described isn't bad, but it isn't a substitute for the bark. When you walk ito a mall, the bark is the only way (beyond mouseover to display the name) to tell which vendor might have what you want. Since changing the name requires replacing the vendor, the names are even less likely to be accurate.
I would like to see a "sign board" feature, that let you hang a sign on the wall that was legible without a mouseover, like a structure name with a frame. That would be usefull, and appropriate,for a lot of things people use barks for now.
I like having one vendor barking when I am crafting to act as a doorbell if someone comes in. Mostly though, I dislike the way the vendors face the wall so often when it is left on, and leave it off.
But it is the only way to give the visitor information that he does not have to look for. I find that most of them don't mouseover the packs prominantly displayed on the walls (or else ignore the information in their "name"). My vendor bark mostly says "read the @#%! packs", though more politely.
I suspect, Nauf, that you object to being involuntarily subjected to the advertising more than any real problem caused by the spam. But it is exactly the involuntary nature of a bark that makes it valuable.
Until recently, I had two vendors for my goods, and a third as the "greeter." The vendors with actual goods were named according to what they carried (in this case, BE-enhanced and unenhanced food). The "greeter" had the name of the shop as her name, was the only one advertised on the map (avoiding the illegible overlay problem), and was set to bark a message. I hid her in a back room and had nothing for sale on her. So visitors to the shop would hear a disembodied voice give a greeting, but my two functional vendors stayed quiet and orderly and facing the customers instead of the wall. It worked out great.
Unfortunately, I had to take the greeter down because the vendor slot was urgently needed elsewhere. For anyone with extra vendors, though, I highly recommend doing the barking this way.
And what message was important enough to devote a vendor slot to barking it? "Welcome! If you don't see what you need on page one, be sure to hit the "Next Items" button to view pages two and three." Ugh. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten complaints that I was out of such and such popular food when I had 20 crates up for sale. 