Merchant Archive

Here's what me and a group of crafters are doing - they give me their1k - 3kstuff to sell and me and an assistant are now listing them on multiple planet bazaars. Lots of ppl don't use their bazaar slots and as long as item price is below 3k this works well. Will be recruiting some more assistants who are already gallactic travellers. In return the non-travellers list my local stuff for me so that I have more slots to use on other planets. You do have to keep an eye on profit margin as travel costs can bite.

Of course there is a huge huge caveat - you have to completely trust your listers - and they have the pain of keeping track of their own income separate from bazaar income.

We also use vendors(foritems selling < 1k)and for anything over a certain amount we use secure trades.

I think targetted sale are a great idea, but I'd use it to deliver items to specific buyers.

I don't want to do business with a merchant, I am a merchant. That's why I became a tailor in the first place.

I guess my point was missed. I am looking at how to consolidate the 100 random shops in the world, 50%+ have nothing in them. All and all ticking off the end user who has to visit 5-7 shops to find something they are looking for.

Wal-mart does not make anything, they buy from "crafters" and sell it to "players". I was trying to help buildan ecomony.

Sorry if this sounds a bit rude, but your the merchant corrospondant? It seems to me that what you are suggesting is the very core concept of the merchant profession. I have already been working out deals with other crafters I know, combining their products all into my shop. I have three vendors now, one selling my own droid related products, one selling powerups, and one selling bio engineered critters. I have already worked out a deal with yet another person, and in the next few days I will have a fourth vendor setup selling medical supplies.

Basically, whenever they get around to crafting, they make a bunch of products, and offer them to the vendor. As the vendor needs restocking, I buy the products from the offer window and post them for sale with a little markup. The money I gain goes to my daily maintainance fees, and the more money I have, the more I can invest in their products. They make money without the hassle of running a vendor or advertizing much. For me, my shop improves, I gain merchant experiance, and my harvesters get paid for another day.

To me, this is what a merchant is all about.

I understand that, and I do the same. I am looking at the issues that I see on this board. Things that I can not change, like all the empty vendors all over the place, and trying to come up with ways to midigate the issue. There is a group out there that are ticked because they run to a shop to find it is empty. If a mercahnt has wholesellers, this would decrease I think, because there would be a "pipeline" of supply.

You are right, it is the very core of a merchant, but given that anyone who crafts for 2 days can have a vendor, the concept is not seen by all, and the issue I state above become a fact. I have gone into every "shop" around me, and only 3 of the 8 always have stock, the other 5 are always empty, and 2 have a entry fee on the house.

I personaly see my vendor as an promise to my users that what I sell will be there, I guess I take pride in being a merchant. My users come back, over and over, and they have said to me in game "I went to so and so, but the vendor was empty, do you know another armorsmith around here", I have half my datapad full of other stocked shops I send them to.

As a matter of fact, I think that many High crafter / low merchants, would benifit from a wholesale deal, because they would not be ticking countless people off by having an empty vendor, and if I did my job as a mercahnt, I will have more than one supplier to the things I sell, if one does not have it, one will, and theend user gets what they come for.

This is just my take on things, I have been very up-front with what I put on "the list", I am just tossing my ideas out as a player of this game, and the messed up economy I have seen. This or any other think I post as an idea makes the list, I am just tring to get people to think of ways to make this class better.

This is just my take on things, I have been very up-front with what I put on "the list", I am just tossing my ideas out as a player of this game, and the messed up economy I have seen. This or any other think I post as an idea makes the list, I am just tring to get people to think of ways to make this class better.

ment to say:

This is just my take on things, I have been very up-front with what I put on "the list", I am just tossing my ideas out as a player of this game, and the messed up economy I have seen. This or any other think I post as an idea and never makes the list, I am just tring to get people to think of ways to make this class better.

Okay, here is an Idea I have. I want to preface this with 2 points.

1. I know some Merchants (Including me) have an issue with Buss III Vendors, I had an Idea that I want to pass by CRAFTERS that are not really merchants.


2. Buyers do not like having to run allover the planet to find stuff.

Idea...

Elite Crafters (Armorsmiths, etc.) setup a vendor in there home. They do not open there house to the public, butmake deals with merchant merchants to sell there items wholesale. Give them access to your house, and they can go in and buy, than take it to there shop for sale to the public.

This gives buyers a quality one stop shop, and the crafters get there stuff out to the public. I would even be willing te sell my resources at a deep discount to my wholesaler.

A good armor smith could make deals with 5 or 6 vendors (I have 2 shops) and would have no issue selling there stuff, no ads needed, no nothing. Wal-mart makes nothing it sells, there is not crafter in the back building roller skates, and NASCAR hats, Just a thought, tossing it out there.

This works for me as well.

I run a shop where I sell two categories of items - food products and field gear. Food products I make myself, as I'm a Chef. Field gear is a combo of things that I make and things that are worth the time which people sell to me. My basic method of acquisition from suppliers is to just have them offer their item to me via my own vendors. I add a margin of profit onto the top of it, then sell it to the consumer.

Some crafters prefer to work this way just to keep from having to worry about stocking their vendors. More just hate dealing with the vendor system and advertising. Some do it because they have some reasonable assurance of making some sales in a timely manner. And I think it's a growing segment of the crafting population - most crafter simply don't want to have to babysit their vendors or worry about covering the various transaction bugs related to vendors. If they lose 5% per sale to a middleman, that's reasonable for most crafters to pay to avoid the hassle and retain their skill points to use elsewhere.

The basic idea is perfectly feasible with the code currently implemented - it doesn't really need anything more. Merchant is a network thing - who you can get to supply you, who you sell to.

I'm with you Marqie. I'm against business 3 vendors and I'm a *hardcore* crafter merchant. I sell tons of weapons per day that I make, market, and sell. This whole crafter merchant / pure merchant stuff is total bs. Let's call a spade a spade. This is nothing more then personal feelings and had zip to do with crafting or not crafting for this issue. Fact is artisan's don't *need* a vendor. 110% of what they do can be sold for 3k in one manner or another reguardless of what they say about needing them. They can sell all items under 3k as we all know nothing in artisan sells over 3k and all resources in 3k blocks. This in addition to the fact vendors are a crippling part of merchant class like pets to creature handlers. Add those 2 issues together and you can only come up with remove vendors from artisan line. Throw in the fact that bazaar fees in merchant line are worthless and you have something toreplace artisan vendor line with. Also we got the bug that vendors don't poof when you unlearn the skill to place them. So you can have a vendor down and not even have artisan skills at all! Terrible terrible terrible. Needs to be changed ASAP.

I disagree with any notion that crafter/merchants are somehow lesser merchants than a pure merchant.

I took merchant to represent my guildmates who are also crafters but don't have any interest in managing the sale of their items.

Not everyone wants to invest the time to set up shops for their wares and is satisfied with the limited ability of the Bus III vendor (which I also support). I provide a beneficial service by handling that for everyone in my guild. And that's a valid implementation of the profession.

Just because I still Tailor doesn't mean I am not serious about Merchanting. Last I heard, Sony gave us enough skillpoints to take at least two elite professions. Are you suggesting that anyone who takes Merchant should be only a merchant?

I guess my point was missed. I am looking at how to consolidate the 100 random shops in the world, 50%+ have nothing in them. All and all ticking off the end user who has to visit 5-7 shops to find something they are looking for.

LOL Anyone who's played UO is quite familiar with that. That's the core of the merchant profession--it's found in your abilities as a player not what boxes you have filled in as a character. Yes, all sorts of people have empty shops. That's not going to change. These are mostly kids who are playing. They want to have a vendor and sell stuff, but they're no good at it. They get bored and try something else. Eventually the vendor and probably their house will poof.

You make your living as a merchant by making sure shoppers remember that yours aren't empty. In the future you'll be able to solve this not only by reselling but by running and managing multi-player vendor malls. Which merchants will then have to manage by making sure they choose players to place in their shops that are reliable and dedicated and by monitoring their vendors to make sure they stay stocked.

I haven't really done much in UO for about six months. I guarantee you that if I log in now, I will be able to go to my runebook and click on five shops and they will be well stocked. I guarantee it. And I also guarantee I'm not the only one with those same five shops bookmarked. That kind of long term reliability brings customers. It's also why the people who run those "vendor malls" are charging people huge amounts to place vendors there.

This kind of thinking is ever so common amongst those who've never lived anywhere but First-World nations. Go someplace outside of those regions and exactly the kind of mercantile scenario exists as we have ingame at present. Sometimes the shop keeper will have lots of goods. Sometimes he'll have almost nothing. It all depends on supply and demand, and the fact that things are this way are a perfect illustration of a non-prosperous economy operating outside of the strictures of corporate dominance.

The economy does work, just not in the way you're accustomed to from your everyday life.

SWG is not a 3rd world contry, It does have a lot of similarities, I will holf my thought on that