Merchant Archive

Besides the various bugs that seem to have made my business un-runnable(see my other post) I have noted a few things about this class that I think could be improved. I will give reasons for each improvement as well.

Make having a vendor in your house non-trivial.
Since pretty much any artisan that skills up to become a master at something will generate enough gcxp to place a merchant in their house, this makes being an actual merchant rather hard, why should I have to compete with my suppliers? Since just by placing the vendor and having folks use it, artisans will continue to generate merchant xp and be in direct cometition with those that choose to become merchants.

Being a merchant should be like every other class, you should have to focus and work at it to obtain it... it should not be a side bonus you get for free. I mean I don't become a master marksman, architect, clothing maker or whatever just because I have those items for sale in my store now do I? Maybe make an option when creating a vendor, to have items sold through it either generate the regular item uxp or optionally generate merchant XP, not both. Make artisans have a hard choice, if they want to be merchants also they will need to focus on it and will cost them xp in their primary artisan skill.

Merchants should be able to replace the "Crafted By" tag on items with their business name and location.
How many small businesses will actually tell you their suppliers, especially if said supplier is willing to sell to anyone at or below the same price and most likely has his own shop 10 minuts travel away at most? (the answer is none btw). This would give merchants what they need to bring customers back and stop the artisans that are not looking to be public merchants from inadvertantly competing. Heck, even if they are looking to compete it will make them focus on their merchant skills and have to work at it... not get free advertising from every retailer their work with. Heck, as it stands now, the artisans(not the merchants) have The Best advertising option in the game and they didn't even have to get to Advertising III to use it.

There should be NPC's or "yellow pages" that advertise your business city wide in every city and give players waypoint links to it.
And I do not mean just in the city near my shop. I should be able to pay and use the advertiser NPC on other planets to advertise my offworld business. The skill to use these NPC's should also not be trivial and usable only by serious merchants.

Anyways, those were just a few things I have noted that I feel would improve the game/class.

I like the idea of being able to create our own label. If Walmart and others can relabel things, then it sounds like a great idea for us merchants.