Merchant Archive

Give Master Merchants the ability to have their goods displayed on public bazaar terminals.

That means, when you put a rifle up for sale on your vendor, I browse the generic bazaar terminal on Dantooine, and I see your rifle for sale! When I buy it, I get a WP to your house in the email, just like the current bazaar works for purchases. I run to your house and pick up the item.

Alternatively, make this a function of a player city bazaar terminal. Let master merchants sell stuff for more than 3k on these.

The reason I say this is from a non-Merchant point of view.

Unless it's for clothing or maybe furniture, most people don't browse-shop. When I want to shop, it's because I need a new set of VibroKnucklers, or a new FWG5 gun.

There is NO in game way to get a good one as it is. I can hit the vendors who advertise, on the planetary map, but that takes HOURS. I really, really don't enjoy spending hours running from shuttleports out to merchants to find empty shops. Running back, repeating, finding the next shop filled with CDEF pistols, etc, etc.

Sure, I can post on my servers board... but I argue this should be in game... and master merchant is the place for it, imho.

The only problem I see with having the public bazaars display all vendor sales is the volume of data that would need to be sorted through. Take Naboo for instance, there could be 40+ weaponsmith vendors up at any time. Each vendor has 50+ items and that is just one planet. I think my sample numbers are at the low end, but the point is the same.

But in the same instance it would be nice to see what is for sale before running 4km to a vendor to find it empty. Maybe with player city shuttleports and vehicles, this will not be an issue.

Otiamo

No, it's still an issue. Most vendors are 1km away from the city. You can wait on a shuttle for 5 minutes or you can run there for 5 minutes. Either way, each vendor is 10 minutes (5 there, 5 back) of your life you never get back.

In this last patch, they added the ability to sort by "Pistol", etc. Long overdue imho. I can't see it taking too much more work to be able to add more detail to the this... break resources up into Aluminum, Copper, Steel, etc.

Oh yeah, don't forget that this is only a Master Merchant skill, not every vendor... not many at all I believe will have this ability.

I'd have to oppose that, because we as merchants want people to come into our place of business not just to pick something up but also to browse. I get a lot of business from people who come in looking for x and then buy y and z as well and then tell their friends who need y and z as well that I have good ys and zs.

Wow, I can't believe it, vendors oppose being able to advertise their goods.

The simple fact is, unless i bought from you in the past, or hear about you, I'll likey never visit your shop. It's too far away, too long of a trip (shuttles and all), too filled with the same stuff or near the same stuff everyone else has, and too rfisky that you'll be out of stock anyway.

Instead the stuff I resort to is buying 5 of a weapon when I go to upgrade, and just use those until they all fall to pieces.

I buy from the first vendor I find with "decent" stuff. I never go shopping just to shop. It's too tedious, too time consuming, etc.

Maybe I'm the oddball, but to me, vendor shopping in SWG ranks right up there with visiting the dentist, and being beaten up by the school bully.

Vid (VFN)

Now that I'm trying to promote a city as well as my own goods, I'm rather at odds about that kind of suggestion. I want people to come, shop and spend some time in the city, not just drop by to pick something up they found in the bazaar.

I player city bazaar placeable only by a master merchant might work, but since shops and tents can be placed with the player city it's not much of a burden for players to see what is available if the shops are kept in a commercial area.

Yajedi;

Is it so hard to send an email with an order to a dealer that you have bought from before? I see a ton of people saying I don't want to run around looking at empty vendors, well that is YOUR choice, you obviously have bought items before from someone, and more often than not you and every other person visit the same dealer for that items that you/they need to resupply. Send them an order a day or two before you need it and more than likely they will get back to you, and instead of running around looking for items, email 3 or 4 dealers that you know carry the quality that you want, so you get the option of a few people that tell there prices/stats so you can decide who you want to buy from.

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Yajedi wrote:

Wow, I can't believe it, vendors oppose being able to advertise their goods.

The simple fact is, unless i bought from you in the past, or hear about you, I'll likey never visit your shop. It's too far away, too long of a trip (shuttles and all), too filled with the same stuff or near the same stuff everyone else has, and too rfisky that you'll be out of stock anyway.

Instead the stuff I resort to is buying 5 of a weapon when I go to upgrade, and just use those until they all fall to pieces.

I buy from the first vendor I find with "decent" stuff. I never go shopping just to shop. It's too tedious, too time consuming, etc.

Maybe I'm the oddball, but to me, vendor shopping in SWG ranks right up there with visiting the dentist, and being beaten up by the school bully.

Vid (VFN)

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It is human nature to oppose someone else's good idea

As far as your idea goes, i think there is benefit in being able to advertise your actual products on the vendor, in another category (Making "Local, Planet, Galaxy, Vendors"), but this should only be a master merchant perk.

This was removed from the game in Beta for many reasons. For something like this to be brought into the game there would have to be major batabase changes. Vendors used to be tied closely to the bazaar, but that has changed. I think player cities will change this dinamic greatly.

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Draznar wrote:
This was removed from the game in Beta for many reasons. For something like this to be brought into the game there would have to be major batabase changes. Vendors used to be tied closely to the bazaar, but that has changed. I think player cities will change this dinamic greatly.

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I agree. I missed the vendor link to the bazaar for a while after beta myself but I've become accustomed to it and understand why it is not a good idea. The poster above that pointed out the massive amount of data to handle is correct. Go to any bazaar and turn the filter to Galaxy and them multiply the list by 50 or 100 times and you have the amount of data you would see if you tried to browse every vendor at once. First the system just wouldn't support that much data all at one time in the first place and second you can't find anything in that mess. Pages and pages of items in various places.

Player cities are the key I think..If they are done correctly you should soon be able to look at the map and see a huge collecction of vendors in "Mos Pacalis" and shuttle over there. Jumping off the shuttle you will notice 4-5 tents of various colors in the town square. People are wandering in and out of them, small time salesmen are barking their wares and making deals (careful walking with all the Dewbacks and Kaadus wandering about) . Going into and out of the shops and viewing the various vendors there will be very quick and you will be able to find that gun you wanted, the armor you have been looking forever for, and wow! Who knew they would have that encoded Imperial disk part 5 that I need to complete your quest.

This, in my opinion, is a much better goal than putting a lot of data on the bazaar that you can't sort though effectively. If player cities work to their full potential you won't be spending a lot of time in the static cites and looking at their bazaars anyways. That will be mostly newer players who haven't yet joined a city or who are sticking close to their roots before they have experience to go out into the universe. This works perfectly with the price caps on the bazaars.

Ahh......ok..so it is a little utopian but that would be something to see.

Nonsense. Yes the database can handle it. Of course it can. What kind of argument do you have behind the "It can't handle it"?

Second, remember: Master Merchant only. Just how many of those do you think we have on our server?

Third Add more sub menus to the bazaar. Yes, obviously it'll take coding work, but eventually it could look like:

Resource Components
Inorganic
Metal
Iron
Plumbum
Dolovite
Copper

Weapons
Pistols
DL44
FWG5
etc.

Well, this last thing is needed anyway. But to ANYONE that claims running for hours and hours looking at vendors is easier than browsing through 20 pages in a bazaar listing, you are crazy. 20 pages = half hour, at most.

To the other suggestions... yeah, that'd be great, email 3-4 people days before I need something... keep track of these people I shop from... assume they won't be put off because they take the time to respond to me and the chance I buy from them is very low...etc.

*sighs*

Vid (VFN)

Ha! What do you think you are soem kind of database software engineer! I bet you code an access database and think that everything is as easy as that.