Merchant Archive
Thread: So before I look at the latest Friday push of ERRORS ....
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Wolfbane9999
Fri Oct 15, 2004 10:20 pm
#1
Does anyone have a clue what Stupid things will SOE customer service think they're fixing now??
DingoBoi
Sat Oct 16, 2004 6:53 am
#2
...posts like this?
Sorry, you/re a whiner! Please try again!
Thanks for playing!
Message Edited by DingoBoi on 10-16-2004 12:54 PM
DocSavag
Sat Oct 16, 2004 8:24 am
#3
I just don't get what this post is supposed to be. Are you asking us to inturpret the patch notes for you? Are you asking if we know of any stealth changes? Or is this just an excuse to troll about your issues with SOE Customer Service?
It would help if we knew what you were trying to accomplish.
It would help if we knew what you were trying to accomplish.
Wolfbane9999
Sat Oct 16, 2004 8:41 pm
#4
Just trolling. Actually, I was wondering about the history of SOE accomodations for the Merchant profession. It seems you've been working at this for a long time so could you brieflyrelate how oftenor how many changes orcorrections have been made in the last year at the request of the posters in this board? Also, I would like to know if there's a set procedure or schedule for any changes. In other words, what and when will the next improvement(s) be? All the stickies are about present problems and future wishes and I don't feelcapable of makingconstructivecomments without a bit of background.
DocSavag
Sat Oct 16, 2004 10:02 pm
#5
Hard to answer some of those questions. There have been a number of changes over time to the profession but most of them just fixes to various bugs , some of those fixes created issues of their own (not bugs just exposed some design issues). Recently they did manage to implement 3 of the top 5 issues from our list though they did so by giving us item limits.
There is no specific schedule for changes to the profession though we are due a revamp of the vendor interface that hasn't happened yet. Probably will happen with the various profession revamps that are expected to happen over the next few months after JTL ships and the Combat upgrade happens.
There is no specific schedule for changes to the profession though we are due a revamp of the vendor interface that hasn't happened yet. Probably will happen with the various profession revamps that are expected to happen over the next few months after JTL ships and the Combat upgrade happens.
Wolfbane9999
Mon Oct 18, 2004 12:46 am
#6
Thank you. The track record, as you describe it, does not exactly inspire enthusiasm in me. That doesn't seem like a week's work has been done in a year's time. So assuming the other 30 or so professions have been treated equally, it doesn't sound as if there's even one programmer dedicated to fixing bugs AND accomodating changes from a professions point of view. I have to expect the same or less in the next year. Less, since it seems maybe fewer people are playing nowadays.
It might be strategic to keep the list of top issues small and concentrate on the things that would improve our gameplay or that of our customers most. If I had to pick one of each it would be the improved vendor interface and Galactic or Global Item listing/searching of all vendors. Of course they must ask for a big list so they can pickif what's at the top seems difficult/expensive. Perhaps several issues can be integrated to single ones to make the choices fairer.
If JTL is a hit I suppose they'll do another expansion pack in six months or so, but if it flops it'll be Star Wars II in six months. I think SWG has been more successfull than any other MMORG in it's first year and it won't be abandoned too soon.
It might be strategic to keep the list of top issues small and concentrate on the things that would improve our gameplay or that of our customers most. If I had to pick one of each it would be the improved vendor interface and Galactic or Global Item listing/searching of all vendors. Of course they must ask for a big list so they can pickif what's at the top seems difficult/expensive. Perhaps several issues can be integrated to single ones to make the choices fairer.
If JTL is a hit I suppose they'll do another expansion pack in six months or so, but if it flops it'll be Star Wars II in six months. I think SWG has been more successfull than any other MMORG in it's first year and it won't be abandoned too soon.
Thanks for all the work you've done! When I started Merchant your posts were a great help!
Message Edited by Wolfbane9999 on 10-17-2004 12:48 PM
DocSavag
Mon Oct 18, 2004 5:49 am
#7
Less than a weeks work? I"m not sure where you get that. In the past year:
1. Fixed dozens of issues that caused items to vanish, vendors to disappear (we still have a few of those and the recent code changes have made it worse for a while)
2. re-wrote the entire back end of the vendor/bazaar system to make it more stable
3. Added a column for time left (that was just recently)
4. Fixed bugs that prevented us from doing custom adbarking
5 Fixed an issue with having to restart the global advertising every morning (still has an issue with someone having to be in the room with them every day for it to start)
6. Changed the way maintenance was collected on vendors from [Sale Price]/1000 per 45 min to 15 credits per hour ( NPC vendors were bugged for a long time and were only charging like 1 credit per hour or something)
And those are just the ones that come to mind. The re-write of the backend code took several weeks alone to write and debug. Programming these systems takes time. I'm not satisfied with the features they have added for us, but I'm not going to pretend they haven't worked on our issues at all.
1. Fixed dozens of issues that caused items to vanish, vendors to disappear (we still have a few of those and the recent code changes have made it worse for a while)
2. re-wrote the entire back end of the vendor/bazaar system to make it more stable
3. Added a column for time left (that was just recently)
4. Fixed bugs that prevented us from doing custom adbarking
5 Fixed an issue with having to restart the global advertising every morning (still has an issue with someone having to be in the room with them every day for it to start)
6. Changed the way maintenance was collected on vendors from [Sale Price]/1000 per 45 min to 15 credits per hour ( NPC vendors were bugged for a long time and were only charging like 1 credit per hour or something)
And those are just the ones that come to mind. The re-write of the backend code took several weeks alone to write and debug. Programming these systems takes time. I'm not satisfied with the features they have added for us, but I'm not going to pretend they haven't worked on our issues at all.
mhal9000
Mon Oct 18, 2004 11:08 am
#8
This is not a flame in the slightest, its just that everytime I hear someone bemoaning about the programmers not doing anything I always think of this link...
Warning, the link above could be considered NSFW due to "colorful" language.
Message Edited by mhal9000 on 10-18-2004 11:10 AM
LadyGrey
Mon Oct 18, 2004 11:37 am
#9
DocSavag wrote:
Less than a weeks work? I"m not sure where you get that. In the past year:
1. Fixed dozens of issues that caused items to vanish, vendors to disappear (we still have a few of those and the recent code changes have made it worse for a while)
2. re-wrote the entire back end of the vendor/bazaar system to make it more stable
3. Added a column for time left (that was just recently)
4. Fixed bugs that prevented us from doing custom adbarking
5 Fixed an issue with having to restart the global advertising every morning (still has an issue with someone having to be in the room with them every day for it to start)
6. Changed the way maintenance was collected on vendors from [Sale Price]/1000 per 45 min to 15 credits per hour ( NPC vendors were bugged for a long time and were only charging like 1 credit per hour or something)
1. I continue to have items vanish. Haven't had a vendor disappear in a few months, but they have malfunctioned very badly several times.
2. It depends on what your definition of "stable" is
3. This was good for listed items. Time left in storeroom fluctuates so wildly that I'm not sure whether to trust it or not (varies between 5 days and 60 days now).
4. I don't have vendors that can adbark, so don't have experience with this
5. Yes, we don't have to restart global advertising by using the radial menu on each vendor, but we do have to go to every house/merchant tent/mall that we have a vendor in to restart it every morning after the server reset. Takes about the same amount of time that the old system took. Basically, global advertising does not work if you are a casual player who, along with 99% of the merchants, doesn't get much traffic unless you are on global advertising.
6. All of my vendors seem to use a different algorithm for deciding how much maintenance they require. It is part of the immersion into StarWars, and is a large part of my game content.
My vendors are still randomly deciding that some items are not valid, and deleting them as they are purchased. CSR's seem to be unable to read the log files dealing with these transactions. Vendors must have an item purchased from them, or newly listed (from inventory, not from stockroom), in order to not be declared as abandoned (and then subject to being deleted), within some time frame which might be anything from one week to two months. A structure cannot be transferred with /transferstructure if it has vendors set up in it. Vendors set up to adbark, if set up near each other, will sometimes adbark at each other (some people have used this new feature in humorous ways).
The best part of being a merchant is having DocSavag here to keep us in somewhat good humor. Actually, sometimes posting on the forum is more fun than playing the game.
Srednii
Mon Oct 18, 2004 2:52 pm
#10
LadyGrey wrote:
My vendors are still randomly deciding that some items are not valid, and deleting them as they are purchased. CSR's seem to be unable to read the log files dealing with these transactions. Vendors must have an item purchased from them, or newly listed (from inventory, not from stockroom), in order to not be declared as abandoned (and then subject to being deleted), within some time frame which might be anything from one week to two months. A structure cannot be transferred with /transferstructure if it has vendors set up in it. Vendors set up to adbark, if set up near each other, will sometimes adbark at each other (some people have used this new feature in humorous ways).
Just a week or two ago I bought a big chunk of hide someone had offered to my vendor, was around a million credits worth, and the hide deleted itself as an invalid item or something. Sent a ticket in and the csr refunded me the money after checking the logs (his words, he checked the logs). I would have rather gotten the hide heh, but a refund is still more then I expected to get out of a csr.
That's one of the things that burns me about this game, how totally random csr service is. Sometimes you get helpfull csr's who actually do their job, but other times you get csr's who ignore and lie to you.
LadyGrey
Mon Oct 18, 2004 3:27 pm
#11
DocSavag wrote:
My post was pointing out the effort not the successes
Something I heard once, somewhere, about "There is no try. Do, or do not." 
Another saying comes to mind with this game. Something about "First, do no harm."
There is just something about four fusion reactors simply vanishing into outer darkness that makes me really negative and nasty for a few days. I'll get over it.
Wolfbane9999
Mon Oct 18, 2004 4:35 pm
#12
DocSavag wrote:
Less than a weeks work? I"m not sure where you get that. In the past year:
1. Fixed dozens of issues that caused items to vanish, vendors to disappear (we still have a few of those and the recent code changes have made it worse for a while)
2. re-wrote the entire back end of the vendor/bazaar system to make it more stable
3. Added a column for time left (that was just recently)
4. Fixed bugs that prevented us from doing custom adbarking
5 Fixed an issue with having to restart the global advertising every morning (still has an issue with someone having to be in the room with them every day for it to start)
6. Changed the way maintenance was collected on vendors from [Sale Price]/1000 per 45 min to 15 credits per hour ( NPC vendors were bugged for a long time and were only charging like 1 credit per hour or something)
And those are just the ones that come to mind. The re-write of the backend code took several weeks alone to write and debug. Programming these systems takes time. I'm not satisfied with the features they have added for us, but I'm not going to pretend they haven't worked on our issues at all.
"Less than a week's work" Where do I get that you ask? One, when I asked you how many things had been fixed in the past year you answered "a number of things" and I took that to mean ten to twenty items. Two, I worked for a couple years as a software engineer and am familiar,roughly, with how much time a repair or added feature should take. And three, I don't think it's fair to count repairs as accomplishments or work in the normal sense. After all it should have been done right in the first place. And so if I go down your new list above, there's only two accomodations or changes been done for Merchant #3 and #6. All the others are fixes to errors in programming.
And I'm not "pretending they haven't worked on our issues at all." I'm complaining about the low level of quality in the software. And I think it's because much too much of the programming effort goes into development and much too little into testing and debugging. Really, how many issues in your sticky list have been since day one, and one year later they're still there confirmed but unfixed. Yet the JTL expansion is now "ready" for purchase. What can we expect with that?
I would really like to know how many programmers are on the development team and their responsibilities? Is the development team the same team working on FTL? Are any of them solely dedicated to fixing problems from the Professions point of view? Why is there a 'development' team but notesting or requested features team? If any of our requested features are too extensive to do now why don't they add them to the expansion? Ask them as the Merchant Representative please!
In any case please know that I appreciate all the work you've done. It has helped me many times and saved me frustrations time and again.
Message Edited by Wolfbane9999 on 10-19-2004 11:22 AM
DingoBoi
Mon Oct 18, 2004 5:54 pm
#13
DocSavag wrote:
As for the costs..even the wacky variable costs we have today are better than the Sales Amount/1000 that we got with the non npc vendors before.
/cringe at the horrific penalty resource brokers paid since we could ONLY sell on terminal vendors.... otherwise when somebody would try to buy a 1k unit stack, they would get EVERYTHING of the same resource on your vendor.... yes, all 10million other units.
and that was they early days when paying 6-10k per day in vendor maint was a whole damn lot.
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