Merchant Archive
Thread: Fixing the Artisan vs Merchant Issue (Longish)
Fixing the Artisan/Merchant Issue.
A lot of people have views on whether artisans ARE merchants, and whether they should have vendors, and that they are giving us pure merchants a bad name…I class Pure Merchants are those who pick the Merchant profession as their FIRST profession, and don’t craft their own wares (such as me). I would call crafters who pick up a few merchant abilities as Artisan Merchants, who are just as valid as pure merchants, but the two should be distinguished differently as both groups NEED different things from the class. Personally I fell the class changes must be driven by the PURE merchants, not the artisan merchants. – I can shoot a pistol well, but I’m not concerned (or fully understand) the inner workings of the pistoleer profession… likewise, the artisan merchants have specific needs from the merchant profession, but generally do not understand or even care about the pure merchant abilities, or what makes a pure merchant.
I used to be in favour of scrapping the vendor from Business 3 all together, however I HAVE CHANGED MY MIND.
I shall try to explain to you why….
IF things were working as intended, then the pure merchants among us could set up multi-vendor malls. These malls would be great, and well visited. Artisans would be begging us to let them place their vendor there, purely because we would be generating so much traffic for them. – A lone crafter with 1 vendor wouldn’t really get a look in, as why would someone go there, especially as there is no guarantee that that vendor will have anything in it – a common complaint! – A purpose built vendor mall, is much more likely to be re-stocked regularly than a single vendor, and saves huge amounts of time running around 4-5 different shops to find what you need.
I think you’ll find when the fixes are made to all of the current bugs (admin/vendor rights, and house item limits being the current killer of multi vendor malls), the merchant profession will really pick up. What we need to be doing NOW is to promote and train the general playing populace to use the tools we DO have that an Artisan Merchant does not. By this I am specifically referring to the Planetary Map vendor listings. How powerful would these be if everyone actually used them to find vendors?? – Artisan merchants wouldn’t be listed (unless they trained up that far – in which case they’re half a pure merchant anyway.).
The only remaining issue with the merchant (assuming all fixes are made) is that there are few things of worth to the merchant over and above what you can train for with 150,000 MXP or so. The rewards for tier 4 skills and master status should be a lot better, and by this I mean tools to make our trade easier (and define the pure merchant more from an artisan merchant), not vendor clothing, put that in as a tier 1-2 item.
I would love to see a sliding scale of vendor maintenance fees – as you progress up the efficiency tree, you get a reduction in fees at each level (say 10% Bus 4, 20% Novice Merchant, 30% Eff1, 40% Eff2, 50% Eff3 60% Eff 4, and 90% at Master Merchant). This would make being an artisan merchant possible, but would also make pure merchants a lot more desirable to artisans.
Another Item of note, is that the servers are no-where near full yet. When more players are online, crafters will have to dedicate more time to crafting, to meet the demand (should they wish to be successful), they will then be more willing to sell 50 blaster X’s to a merchant, so they can get on with crafting again, than spend the time promoting their own shop to get the required sales, which will be getting harder and harder as pure merchant multi vendor malls spring up all over the place, driving the “corner-shop” out of business.
This game also needs to settle down… It’s still in it’s infancy, both economy and player progression wise. Give it a few more months, and many crafters will be master status. They will then wish to persue other avenues of interest – travel, combat, scouting, etc. When the skill points start to run out, what will they drop? Certainly not their primary crafting profession, which they worked so hard to master. They’ll start to drop their merchant abilities – why? Because the Pure Master Merchants will be so efficient at selling their wares (in multi vendor malls), that they just plain don’t need them any more. A lot of artisan merchants are picking up merchant abilities purely because they have spare skill points, and the merchant XP comes without any input or effort whatsoever. I guarantee it will be the first skills to be surrendered.
Lets all calm down for a bit, concentrate on getting the BUGS in the game fixed, so the professions are all working as intended, and THEN AND ONLY THEN start concentrating on improvements and modifications to professions if required.
lemme say this... in the long run I don't think it's a bad idea for artisans to have vendor access as they currently do (ok maybe move it up to bus4 at the very least). HOWEVER, in the immediate time, since it will take the dev team quite a bit of time to get the merchant up to snuff, I think the best idea would be to kill the biz 3 vendor and replace biz3 and 4 with something else. The reason is, is because at this moment we really do have nothing but the vendor and they are our pets as stated above. On top of this, taking it out of biz won't hurt the artisan merchants because a good number of them at least train novice merchant for the broken NPC vendors, and many train up to adv3 for the global advertising. I just think that until the dev team fixes the merchant class (which will likely take at least 6 months given how long it's taking them just to fix the bugs let alone the inherent problems with the class), it would benefit us pure merchants for non-merchants to not have access to the vendors.
That being said I said long ago that they should have a slowly reducable vendor cost as you go up some line. I said originally that the cost of the vendor should depend on the hiring stat, which btw would also bring a need for skill-enhancing items for the merchant profession which would also be cool. However, I have since decided it be a far better idea to move the vendor +1 line from management to the hiring line and create a totally new management line. It's still possible that vendor cost could be associated with hiring, but I think hiring would be fine if it were combined with management. Maybe like you said we could have a new vendor cost stat that you gain in as you progress efficiency that would go from novice to master merchatn +10, +15, +15, +25, +10, +25 (I put only 10 for eff4 only because I think the structure cost reducution is a worthy skill on it's own and doesn't need as much) This would create a +100 skill, though that wouldn't be free vendors, it would certainly need to be tweaked, I'd say somewhere around 75% discount, maybe 80% if you could find the right skill-enhancers.
My point is that IF the merchant class was working as intended, there would be no need to NERF artisan's, as we would be able to far outperform them on sales anyway.
I don't see the point in nerfing a class on a temporary basis until bugs are fixed with another class. We shouldnt be trying to balance a bugged merchant class this early in the game's life - wait and see how the bug fixes affect those merchants who know how to be merchants..
Xcal78
I wholeheartedly agree It should have all been fixed in Beta, but that's life, and if they had tried, we would not be playing this game for another year.
Are vendors realy the defining feature of our class ?? - I suppose yes they are, but should that negate an artisan from having one, no.. Artisan is the route to becoming a merchant. By your same argumentthere should not be a bazaar, merchants should hold the sole monopoly of selling everything in game. - I'm all for making vendors less efficient and more time consuming to manage at artisan / low merchant skills, but taking them away from artisans all together is not the right decision in the long run.
I am a pure merchant, and I used to hold with the idea of taking away vendors from the artisan. Yes it would help to make merchants more worthwhile in their broken state, but thats not what fixing / balancing etc is about. It would be better *in the long run* to see how things pan out, so any fixes / balancing that is done is constructive to both pure merchants and artisan merchants.
I mean if artisans having vendors is so much of a problem to Merchants, how come you appear to be a Master Merchant already, judging by your signature.
BTW? what is the title for maxing the efficiency & hiring trees, I know Advertising is "propagandist" (sp?) and I presume management is "Manager", but what are the other two ??
Why issue is why do people see reduced vendor fees as the main point to merchant???? Vendors are the main stay of a merchant. Can't have the tree before the seed. We can't even get to reduced vendor fees till we resolve the artisan vendor issue. I'd say give me a pet in the scout treeon the 3rd box and then leave vendor on business 3. That's fair right?!?!?
Cherry picking our examples a bit aren't we?
I'm a tailor and I still sell tons of travel backpacks -- that's an artisan item. This is probably a perfect example because the only difference between this pack and a "high level" pack is appearance. They are functionally identical.
Hide boots and leather gloves are still my best selling shoe and glove. Artisan level item. Tree dwellers hoods continue to sell out in mere hours. Again, artisan level.
6 of my 8 harvestors are personal sized -- that's an artisan item.
Artisan is meant to bea an entry level to the craft professions. Why should merchant be exempt from that? And how does this help me. That's what I really can't understand. Nobody's going to ask me to sell their stuff. They want to sell their own things or they'd already be finding someone.
Numtini
If a pure merchant came up to you and said I have a mall on Tatooine which gets 500 visitors shopping there per day. I wish to stock your travel packs, boots and gloves. I will buy 100 of each at 80% of the cost that you sell them for from your own vendor. I expect them to sell out in 1 week, after which I will buy another 100 of each item every week, until the demand drops and they no longer sell.
What would you say ? - I bet you'd have a struggle to find reasons why not - Think of the UXP from all the extra people wearing your stuff. Think of the guaranteed income on a regular basis. Think of the time saved not having to restock and manage your own vendor. Think of the money saved in vendor maintenance fees.
The defining feature of the "pure" merchant is not necessarily to "have" a vendor or six. It is just being a merchant!, to offer a way for artisans goods to reach (and sell to) a wider audience. There is no in-game feature which defines the merchant (as most other professions have), its the way the particular player goes about being a merchant that defines who/what he is. there is no right or wrong way to play a merchant, which in my opinion is fantastic, and a big factor in why I chose the merchant in the first place.
A fully working merchant can offer a vast amount of benefits to an artisan/merchant - so much so I believe (if you play the merchant to its fullest abilities) that the vast majority of artisan / merchants will give up any merchant abilities they have when the team up with a "pure" merchant as in the example above.
As a merchant who does the above I would love artisans to retain their vendor. If you set up a contract to sell wares from an artisan, they can set up a vendor in a private house, to which you have access. They can then list all the items you wish to distribute for them on that vendor for the price you have agreed. At any point you can return there to get more stock - enabling you to re-stock the shopping mall you have set up. THIS is the real advantage of artisans having a vendor. I believe this is how the majority will opperate in the future.. (this is how it will be operating when vendors etc get fixed in my PA !) - and I think we've got it arranged pretty sweet!!
What would you say ?
Think of the time saved not having to restock and manage your own vendor. Think of the money saved in vendor maintenance fees.
I'd say no.
This is the fun of the game. Clicking on the tool is dull. It's stocking what i know looks good and helping my customers to find what looks good on them that's the enjoyable part of being a tailor.
The money is just not an issue.The vendor fees are a tiny amount.
Also I'm opening a second branch probably on Tatooine. I would prefer to do that by placing a vendor at someone elses shop so they could refer people to me for special orders and tell me if she needs refilling and I haven't gotten there and either way I'll probably set hours that I'll be available for special orders at each shop, but I wouldn't deal with a reseller. Selling is the interesting part of being a crafter. Without it, it's just clicking. And merchant is what allows me options like opening a second shop.
To be honest, to me the pure merchant concept strikes me as wanting to have the fun part of crafting without all the clicking. Until I started to read this board I understood the merchant class as a way to enhance crafting, not a profession in and of itself. To me being a merchant without being a crafter is like being a scout without a combat skill.
Numtini wrote:
The money is just not an issue.The vendor fees are a tiny amount.
Wait till they fix them.. Vendor maintenance is all screwed up right now
