Merchant Archive

OK, I'd like to run through a good-news-bad-news list for this latest modification to the vendor limit changes (as I see it). I'm interested in getting feedback from other merchants on these ideas.

Quick summary of new limits (summary based on Thunderhearts description in the "In Testing" forum):

A. One vendor each for the following boxes (Business 3-4, Novice Merchant, Efficiency 1-4, Management 1-4, Master Merchant)(12 vendors total at Master)

B. 100 items/vendor at Business 3, 250 items/vendor at Novice Merchant, 300 items/vendor at Master Merchant.

Good news:

1. These limits are (in total) just barely large enough to allow my business to survive... you've managed to keep about 7 or 8 accounts from cancelling because of that fact.

2. Allowing additional vendors will allow people to diversify to other planets if they so choose. Players are likely to see at least some convenience factor from this as some merchants take advantage of the capability.

3. The limits make division of inventory into more narrow categories almost inevitable... if merchants name their vendors appropriately, it's going to be easier to find a map-listed vendor whose name tells you that it likely carries what you're looking for (instead of "stuff for sale"). This is especially true since we should be seeing vastly fewer empty vendors showing on the map.

That's about all I can think of as positives. I'm trying, but I can't think of any others at the moment.

Bad news:

1. These limits are (in total) just barely large enough to allow my business to survive. Not thrive, not expand, not offer good service... just survive. That's it. That's assuming I have Master Merchant on all of my selling characters.

2. Vendors are going to become even more of a time sink than they were before. It's going to mean more time running around from place to place if you want to diversify locations. Shuffling inventory from vendor to vendor is going to be a royal pain. Changing vendors means tearing everything down and replacing the vendor just to rename it. Hello carpal tunnel syndrome. =(

3. Large swaths of the map are going to be obscured by massive piles of vendor names, as people who were able to run their business on a few vendors will now be maxing out. This is especially true for those who run narrow lines (hundreds or thousands of the same item). We'll be seeing 10-12 vendors in the space that used to be served by one...

4. We will still likely be seeing a big economic disruption to the market due to product flooding from those with large inventories and templates that don't give them room for major point investments up the merchant line.

5. Vendor tents are going to become nightmarish if people try to fit in a dozen vendors.


Possible easy ideas to help make this change more palatable (i.e. not many months down the road... changes to go in at the same time as this vendor limit):

1. At a bare minimum, can we get the stockroom time increased to 14 days? Ideally, I would want it to be much longer, but this timeframe is in line with the empty vendor expiration, so no vendor sticks around longer than necessary and no one loses items due to vendor poofing time. It's going to be harder to ensure that every vendor gets visited in a timely fashion if we are on many planets and still fighting a 7 day window. Please, at least throw us a bone on this one...

2. We really, really, REALLY need a mass relisting feature, ASAP! If we have a stack of stuff in the stockroom, we should be able to highlight any number of items, and relist them all in their original locations at the prices that they were listed at. The information is already there, just get someone to write the loop to process it. This would gain back a chunk of goodwill that has been lost on this change, and save a lot of repetitive stress injuries. Better yet, allow us to highlight multiple items in our inventory and list them all for sale at the same price... kill two birds with one stone.

3. If you want vendor names to be more meaningful, please, PLEASE let us rename them! Many people invested a LOT of time, effort and expense to get pleasant nice-looking vendors with good equipment... a rename feature would help customers without hurting the merchants. Even better if possible: allow vendors to be moved around similar to furniture as well.

4. I know that I would be willing to pay a LOT more maintenance on a given vendor if I could get extended listing times or auto relisting... a LOT more. Make it a per-item charge if you like. I'd gladly pay at least 100 credits per item, and would consider as much as 400-500 credits per item in maintenance if the vendor would automatically relist my items on expiration. Want to make Master Merchant meaningful? Implement this and give Master Merchants a huge discount on it.

5. Vendor name flooding on the overhead map can be a serious pain, and may be even worse after this change... can we get a checkbox/toggle to turn vendor names off while leaving the rest of the map intact and functional?

6. It would be super-cool if the vendor names would show the number of items currently listed in parentheses after the name. Ideal if this shows up on the overhead map and registered name list (Ctrl-V), but still quite useful even if it only shows when looking at it locally. We may have a LOT more vendors to look through, please help us make the process faster and easier.

7. Help us save a lot of time when shopping by letting us auto-suppress any empty categories on a vendor when we view it... this would make life so much easier for the shopper.


If you can push to get some of these changes put in alongside the vendor limit changes, it would help ease the pain a lot. Months down the road would probably be too late, the harm will have been done and the account losses from excessive frustration will be huge. At least some of these should be fast and easy changes to make. Please help us, Thunderheart.

• Show identical items on a single line, with a count of remaining items in stock, rather than one item per line.

This would like remove the need to EVER have a next button. The current design is extremely inefficient.Multiple identical items show up each on their own line. At its silliest, 102 identical items will cause a next button to be shown, requiring buyers to next between pages.

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joined42904 wrote:

I like most of your ideas including a mass relist by the player at once of large numbers of stock items or even a relist button for the player to press to relist everything at its prior stock price.

Surely this wouldn't take up too much of your time and would be something that you could live with.

Please though no auto relist. I don't want that otherwise empty vendor to get its single item relisted for 90M credits that no one is ever going to buy so that the vendor doesn't poof. I want the player to have to go relist that stupid item of his. And if he's on vacation..."Poof" goes the vendor and the overpriced hunk of garbage.

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I was torn about listing that one because of that possibility... but it seems like a good natural extension to our capabilities. If they price it right, it won't make much sense for people to be keeping vendors around that they don't need.

If taken in conjunction with the number of listed items in parentheses, would it be more palatable? If you could see before making the trip that there was only one item listed, would it make a difference to you if someone was doing this?

Nothing programmatic can stop people from being jerks about this.. if someone wants a perpetual useless vendor, then they will have one.

Why make the life of legitimate merchants that more painful by eating up their time in ugly relisting tasks just to spite a few people who aren't getting with the program?

With this suggestion, we at least provide a direct disincentive for people to do this casually, via the heavily increased maintenance.

I'd rather have five people wasting money on a useless vendor with one item than have one legitimate merchant lose a bunch of valuable inventory because they were out of vacation when the timers expired.