Merchant Archive
Thread: Craftable vendors: a new idea on how to improve merchants at all levels
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JMnITup
Fri Jul 25, 2003 10:19 am
#1
Ok... here is a post from a thread on ideas for changes to the merchant profession located here:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=merchant&message.id=1817
"
Other comments... similiar to what Anabelle said, I think abilities of your vendors should be based on your skills, NOT the type of vendor. Sure, it makes sense to have a bulky terminal have higher upkeep cost than higher end terminals, giving a reason to upgrade (though the means of upgrading right now is so painful that the selective hiring line is nearly useless unless you at the same time go up in the management/# of vendor line).
However, I don't think a Master Merchant should be penalized for having an affinity to a bulky vendor.
Ideally, a mix of the 2 ideas would be perfect. Have each model have its own base stats, while (as mentioned in my earlier post) having the efficiency line lower the relative cost of all vendors... so that as a merchant gets higher, he can still go with a lesser vendor, but still be better off than a low end merchant who is FORCED to use the lesser vendor. At the same time, this would still make a master merchant who chooses to use a bulky terminal have higher costs than one who min-maxes and doesn't care about how his place looks and just goes for the best price (which, really, is what makes a great merchant a great merchant... )... with that argument, I'd say eliminate the differences in models all together.
New idea, best one yet, but probably most difficult to implement... make vendors craftable... this is going to take a little explaining... first, keep things as they are, allow create vendors from structure to work as it does, have each model have base stats so that the later grants are more efficient, and have the merchant skills themselves lower costs across the board in a relative way (a master merchant using a bulky vendor still has the worst vendor he can have, but it costs him less than a novice merchant using the same vendor).
Now the crafting part.. allow players to use crafted merchants instead of generic created ones. Have Droid Engineers able to craft droid vendors, have bio-engineers able to craft NPC vendors, and have architects able to craft terminal vendors. Have these vendors have qualities, so a droid vendor made by a master droid engineer with high quality materials would have the base cost of that vendor type modified until they reached some maximum efficiency (either a global max, a max based on the merchants skill, or a max based on that vendor model, I'm not sure which would be best)... thinking about this, I REALLY like the idea... and it might be REALLY hard to implement, depending on how vendor objects are written.. it might also be really easy... it would bring non-forced interdependance between merchants and these 3 classes, it would give early merchants a reason to use higher end merchants, while at the same time, allow higher-end or well-to-do merchants free selection of what type of merchant to use without having to sacrifice for it!
Huh... wow, I suppose that was an epiphony.
"
I thought this was an idea interesting enough to not be buried within another thread, even if that thread IS interesting in itself (I recommend reading it as well)
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=merchant&message.id=1817
"
Other comments... similiar to what Anabelle said, I think abilities of your vendors should be based on your skills, NOT the type of vendor. Sure, it makes sense to have a bulky terminal have higher upkeep cost than higher end terminals, giving a reason to upgrade (though the means of upgrading right now is so painful that the selective hiring line is nearly useless unless you at the same time go up in the management/# of vendor line).
However, I don't think a Master Merchant should be penalized for having an affinity to a bulky vendor.
Ideally, a mix of the 2 ideas would be perfect. Have each model have its own base stats, while (as mentioned in my earlier post) having the efficiency line lower the relative cost of all vendors... so that as a merchant gets higher, he can still go with a lesser vendor, but still be better off than a low end merchant who is FORCED to use the lesser vendor. At the same time, this would still make a master merchant who chooses to use a bulky terminal have higher costs than one who min-maxes and doesn't care about how his place looks and just goes for the best price (which, really, is what makes a great merchant a great merchant... )... with that argument, I'd say eliminate the differences in models all together.
New idea, best one yet, but probably most difficult to implement... make vendors craftable... this is going to take a little explaining... first, keep things as they are, allow create vendors from structure to work as it does, have each model have base stats so that the later grants are more efficient, and have the merchant skills themselves lower costs across the board in a relative way (a master merchant using a bulky vendor still has the worst vendor he can have, but it costs him less than a novice merchant using the same vendor).
Now the crafting part.. allow players to use crafted merchants instead of generic created ones. Have Droid Engineers able to craft droid vendors, have bio-engineers able to craft NPC vendors, and have architects able to craft terminal vendors. Have these vendors have qualities, so a droid vendor made by a master droid engineer with high quality materials would have the base cost of that vendor type modified until they reached some maximum efficiency (either a global max, a max based on the merchants skill, or a max based on that vendor model, I'm not sure which would be best)... thinking about this, I REALLY like the idea... and it might be REALLY hard to implement, depending on how vendor objects are written.. it might also be really easy... it would bring non-forced interdependance between merchants and these 3 classes, it would give early merchants a reason to use higher end merchants, while at the same time, allow higher-end or well-to-do merchants free selection of what type of merchant to use without having to sacrifice for it!
Huh... wow, I suppose that was an epiphony.
"
I thought this was an idea interesting enough to not be buried within another thread, even if that thread IS interesting in itself (I recommend reading it as well)
KruppeRift
Fri Jul 25, 2003 10:23 am
#2
Good Idea ...
Great Idea the more I think about it, but I imagine it will be a very hard thing to code ??? - Depends what crafting actually influences with the vendor.... I suppose things that would be easy to grant as modifyable options are :-
Maintenance Rate - Simple modifier
Item Capacity - Simple Modifier
Number of customiseable Ad options - Droid/Terminal vendors could developed with voice units to enable ad barking ?? for example...
Can't really think of anything else of hand, but I'm sure the excellent Merchant community can expand on this....
JMnITup
Fri Jul 25, 2003 11:35 am
#3
Yeah, that would give Droid engineers a little more use for their essentially useless personality chips... 
Different chips either give different options, or different default barking sentences/options or whatever.
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