Merchant Archive

I say we get rid of all those non-interactive npc's. The npc's that just stand there looking pretty that dont talk to you. I went to Mos Eisley for the first time in a while yesterday and was shocked to see 3 or 4 giant clusters of npc's. Dont get me wrong, i am all about immersion but if I had to pick I would much rather have stocked vendors than a bunch of npc's standing around taking up space.

Plopt's EvilHam Weapons
-5495 3415 Naboo (Just south of Theed)
EH Resource Dump
5860 -1200 Corellia (ouside of Dark City)
I hate base spammers. Click here if you do too

no one else feels this way?

Plopt's EvilHam Weapons
-5495 3415 Naboo (Just south of Theed)
EH Resource Dump
5860 -1200 Corellia (ouside of Dark City)
I hate base spammers. Click here if you do too

-Vicrock Tame-

As a person who has coded Diku-derived MUDs before, I can assure you that any mobile object (mob) has an impact on a database, somewhere. I will gurantee you that SWG is no different as it is simply a MUD with a pretty UI instead of a telnet client. It does not matter if the mobsare interactive or not, as each is treated as an object with properties andhas a unique identifier as well, known as a vnum (virtual number).

The impact on the database from non-interactive mobs could be minimized by dropping unique names and recycling from a set pool of vnums. Since these mobs change names and appearances with each initial area load after reset, I can see that they probably aren't being recycled, but instanced with unique vnums. Add that to the fact that you can go some places and sometimes two dozen of these mobs walking aimlessly in formation between two points, and you can have a problem. Nobody cares that they have unique names, or even the fact that they have names. Nobody cares that they serve no 'real' purpose. I do like to see thesemobs in the game, though, as it does add to the immersion but can't we just call them A Noble instead of Hookajajwa Binjut (a Noble)?

I remember in beta (back when Han and Chewy were in there) when the devs added the mobs to the Mos Eisley cantina. I went there to get a couple of screenies of me hanging with those guys and as soon as I walked into the place, my computer bogged down to a modest crawl with lag that made prime-time Coronet look snappy. Why? Because of having to load the vnums and graphic models for the mobs in that 'room'. They put way, waytoo many in there and then later trimmed down the numbers before launch to minimize lag in the cantina.

I do agree that the character purge and the deletion of former players' objects will be a good thing to trim the database down significantly. Personally, I would try to downsize the database by purging long before I would impose insane restrictions to merchants such as those that are proposed, particularly when you examine the impact it will have on the in-game economy. There are so many abandoned objects in the game left by people who no longer play that it's not even funny. Remove this stuff, recycle vnums, and then determine what needs to be done with the merchant database(s), such as preventing unlimited storage and placing more realistic limits on them.

-----
Numa
Former maker of magic clothing and damage-free weapons.

Hey, since I made a Star Wars Quake III mod 5 years ago, does that make me an SOE dev??

I think they are more like characters then like items.

They may even take up less space then a normal character since they don't have to track as much stuff ... such as, for example, inventory ... or languages spoken ... migrated stats ... or faction points ... or badges ... or bios ... or etc, etc, etc.

More space then a cdef? don't know ... you might be surprised at how many stats are in a cdef :-) (any weapon for that fact).

'=-*-='=-*-='=-*-='=-*-='=-*-='=-*-='=-*-='=-*-='=-*-='=-*-='=-*-='=-*-='=-*-='=-*-='=-*-='=-*-='
Hero--[Hero Built]Weapons
~ ~M a s t e rW e a p o n S m i t hS i n c e8 / 1 8 / 0 3~ ~
[Coronet Mall, Corellia: 910, -4690]-[EPOC Mall, Naboo: -3950, 3885]
[Freedom City, Dantooine: -6040, 6160]-[Sandy Hills, Tatooine: 363, 3218]
Resource and Loot Drop Off: [Hero's Workshop, South Coronet, Corellia: 400, -6050]

The number of NPC's in the game remains fairly static, whereas the number of items on vendors has been steadily increasing, as more and more items are "kept for possible use later", or in the hope that some fool might buy it at some point.

I have seen plenty of crafted items with severely reduced durabilityon sale on vendors. When someone's expensiveT21 gets to 346/600, for example, it get's slapped on their vendor, because they paid a lot for it, and they might be able to recover a few credits if someone buys it.

What ? Destroy it ? No way !

Rankh Xholo (Master Chef)

**If I can have more than one account for SWG, can I also get a second account for LIFE ?

----------------------------------
Chataka Windae
Rifleman/Combat Medic
CEO, Windae Enterprises
Mesric Sanctuary Founder