Merchant Archive
Thread: State of the Merchant: A Review of bugs and Deficiencies
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Plinka
Sun Jul 13, 2003 9:34 am
#1
The merchant is an interesting profession for the SWG player who likes retailing to other players and operating stores. Shopping, bargining, and knowledge of markets are all key skills in the success of a merchant that the player must bring to the table. There are, however, several deficiencies that the profession suffers from as well.
I. Current known bugs:
A. Ad Barking, learned at Advertising I, works sporadically. After being turned on, the vendor will bark for a while, then cease all barking until the merchant turns off ad barking, then restarts it. This does not appear to be related to any other event.
B. Custom Ad Barking, learned at Advertising II, doesn't work. No dialog box appears with which a merchant can compose a custom advertisement for their vendor.
C. NPC Vendors, gained at Novice Merchant, appear to have bugged maintenence costs. Upkeep is 1, always. This makes the best vendor in the game, also the cheapest. Using any other vendor is a waste of cash. I am guessing that this is unintentional.
D. It is not possible to place a vendor in anyone elses home, even when you have vendor privledges granted.
E. There is no way to retrieve merchandise from a vendor that has been deleted, although the merchandise lists for the region and you can manipulate it from another of your vendors. Many merchants have unretrievable merchandise floating in the ether.
E. Some merchandise, for reasons unknown, becomes unretrievable from a vendor. Neither the merchant trying to retrieve from the stock room, nor a player purchasing the item, can retrieve it.
G. If you give a vendor to another player to be set in their house (See item D.) that vendor will sometimes become undroppable and undestroyable in the other player's inventory. The only way then for the player to rid himself of the vendor is to offer the vendor to a vendor and sell it back to the merchant who created it. This will allow the merchant to retrieve the bugged vendor and destroy it. (I would suggest that vendors not be tradeable, simply fix permissions so merchants can place vendors in permitted homes.)
I. Deficiencies and suggested ways to fill those.
A. Advertising is the largest single task that a merchant must tackle, with very little help from game mechanics. While it is true that some skills are granted, many of them are not used by merchants.
1. Other than the Advertising III skill that let's you place your shops on the player map, there is no other in-game method of advertising as part of the merchant profession. This is leading to some creative work arounds. For example, naming a droid "ForShopsEmailNnelg" and having it follow the merchant around. You, oddly, can't name droids using numbers (no R4's named, well, R4) so players can't give a location in an droid name.
Another player created advertisement is to make an item with the name "Advertisement, please read" then using the item description when placing this on the bazaar to advertise store locations. I'm sure we'll see more and more variations on this until the bazaar is filled with advertisements.
2. Other ways of advertising need to be introduced for Merchants to be effective. Here are some suggestions.
a. At Advertising II, list the merchant's goods on the regional bazaar system. At Advertising III, list them on the planetary system, and at Master Merchant, list those goods on the Galactic Bazaar.
b. Provide a merchant usable Barking Droid that will follow the merchant, barking an advertisement at 5 or 10 minute intervals. Grant this at an appropriate level of advertising, or at Master Merchant level.
c. Provide a building design that only merchants can use, the shop. Make it visibly different from player housing. At present the only way to tell a shop from a house is to either read the sign (a tedious task) or go inside and look for a vendor (a more tedious task). But if only merchants had shops, then these would be easily recognizable from the outside.
d. Provide merchants with the ability to place a custom sign on their house. Something that differintiates their house from the masses. Perhaps a lit sign. It wouldnt' need customizable text other than what is currently available for house signs, but be something that clearly marks a shop. If this were to be done then there would be no need for item c.
e. Add display text under a merchant's player name above the avatar that displays the location of the single store of their choice, set on the Character menu.
B. Ways to better allow presentation to customers are very desirable and currently lacking.
1. There is no way to set the default item list on your vendor when a player accesses it. Allowing the merchant to set the defualt item list on a vendor is highly desirable for specialized vendors, such as bartenders or weapons merchants. Since in most cases we're selling more than one category of merchandise, it would be good to be able to select the default list. For example, if I had a waitress in a cafe, I would want her to default to listing food when a player accessed her initially.
2. There is no way to set for faction allowances. Suppose I'm a rebel and I'd like to offer special goods to rebels, that imperials or neutrals cannot see. A checkbox on the "Sell" window to allow this would be ideal.
3. Control over the sound and lighting environment of a store would be ideal. Grant this as a set of merchant skill boxes.
a. Lighting inside the house adjustable by tint and intensity.
b. A custom sound system that would allow for:
b1. Ambient background sound selection from a menu
b2. Simple selection of music to play, perhaps the musician tree selections played at very low volume. This could come as part of an object that would be merchant only craftable.
c. A smoke switch that would allow that Smokey Cantina look in your shop if you so desired.
d. The ability to place objects like food, on tables.
C. Better Tools - Because keeping track almost requires external software.
1. A special folder in your email that all transaction email goes to. Merchants need to see the transactions, but they also need their regular email.
2. Cargo Shipment skill. A skill that allows the merchant to ship merchandise from one vendor to another without having to carry it on foot. Provide a time delay, say it takes one hour for the shipment to arrive. Limit the uses per day and grant more uses, more cargo space as skills advance.
3. A larger personal inventory/storage system. Backpacks don't cut it, yet we have to move far far more items around than the normal player. If you go to move a store, you better expect hours of work and major shuttle costs.
4. An in game calculator granted at Novice Merchant. Give it basic calcuation functions such as percentage, and one memory slot.
D. Other problems with the merchant profession in no particular category
1. Entertainers are a primary target market for clothing merchants. However, shops must be placed in the wild and where shops are placed, angry enemies gather. There is no easy way to market then, to entertainers as they cannot easily travel to our shops. Possible solution? A droid vendor that follows the merchant, only usable for a limited amount of time each day, and only in city areas. "Would you like to browse my selection? Take a look at these samples."
2. There is no compelling reason for a merchant to market on the bazaar, other than advertising. A merchant does not get any experience when selling things via the bazaar. The bazaar discount of 20% fee, while nice on paper, 4cr doesn't really matter in the game. Solution: Provide token experience rewards to merchants making successful bazaar sales.
I. Current known bugs:
A. Ad Barking, learned at Advertising I, works sporadically. After being turned on, the vendor will bark for a while, then cease all barking until the merchant turns off ad barking, then restarts it. This does not appear to be related to any other event.
B. Custom Ad Barking, learned at Advertising II, doesn't work. No dialog box appears with which a merchant can compose a custom advertisement for their vendor.
C. NPC Vendors, gained at Novice Merchant, appear to have bugged maintenence costs. Upkeep is 1, always. This makes the best vendor in the game, also the cheapest. Using any other vendor is a waste of cash. I am guessing that this is unintentional.
D. It is not possible to place a vendor in anyone elses home, even when you have vendor privledges granted.
E. There is no way to retrieve merchandise from a vendor that has been deleted, although the merchandise lists for the region and you can manipulate it from another of your vendors. Many merchants have unretrievable merchandise floating in the ether.
E. Some merchandise, for reasons unknown, becomes unretrievable from a vendor. Neither the merchant trying to retrieve from the stock room, nor a player purchasing the item, can retrieve it.
G. If you give a vendor to another player to be set in their house (See item D.) that vendor will sometimes become undroppable and undestroyable in the other player's inventory. The only way then for the player to rid himself of the vendor is to offer the vendor to a vendor and sell it back to the merchant who created it. This will allow the merchant to retrieve the bugged vendor and destroy it. (I would suggest that vendors not be tradeable, simply fix permissions so merchants can place vendors in permitted homes.)
I. Deficiencies and suggested ways to fill those.
A. Advertising is the largest single task that a merchant must tackle, with very little help from game mechanics. While it is true that some skills are granted, many of them are not used by merchants.
1. Other than the Advertising III skill that let's you place your shops on the player map, there is no other in-game method of advertising as part of the merchant profession. This is leading to some creative work arounds. For example, naming a droid "ForShopsEmailNnelg" and having it follow the merchant around. You, oddly, can't name droids using numbers (no R4's named, well, R4) so players can't give a location in an droid name.
Another player created advertisement is to make an item with the name "Advertisement, please read" then using the item description when placing this on the bazaar to advertise store locations. I'm sure we'll see more and more variations on this until the bazaar is filled with advertisements.
2. Other ways of advertising need to be introduced for Merchants to be effective. Here are some suggestions.
a. At Advertising II, list the merchant's goods on the regional bazaar system. At Advertising III, list them on the planetary system, and at Master Merchant, list those goods on the Galactic Bazaar.
b. Provide a merchant usable Barking Droid that will follow the merchant, barking an advertisement at 5 or 10 minute intervals. Grant this at an appropriate level of advertising, or at Master Merchant level.
c. Provide a building design that only merchants can use, the shop. Make it visibly different from player housing. At present the only way to tell a shop from a house is to either read the sign (a tedious task) or go inside and look for a vendor (a more tedious task). But if only merchants had shops, then these would be easily recognizable from the outside.
d. Provide merchants with the ability to place a custom sign on their house. Something that differintiates their house from the masses. Perhaps a lit sign. It wouldnt' need customizable text other than what is currently available for house signs, but be something that clearly marks a shop. If this were to be done then there would be no need for item c.
e. Add display text under a merchant's player name above the avatar that displays the location of the single store of their choice, set on the Character menu.
B. Ways to better allow presentation to customers are very desirable and currently lacking.
1. There is no way to set the default item list on your vendor when a player accesses it. Allowing the merchant to set the defualt item list on a vendor is highly desirable for specialized vendors, such as bartenders or weapons merchants. Since in most cases we're selling more than one category of merchandise, it would be good to be able to select the default list. For example, if I had a waitress in a cafe, I would want her to default to listing food when a player accessed her initially.
2. There is no way to set for faction allowances. Suppose I'm a rebel and I'd like to offer special goods to rebels, that imperials or neutrals cannot see. A checkbox on the "Sell" window to allow this would be ideal.
3. Control over the sound and lighting environment of a store would be ideal. Grant this as a set of merchant skill boxes.
a. Lighting inside the house adjustable by tint and intensity.
b. A custom sound system that would allow for:
b1. Ambient background sound selection from a menu
b2. Simple selection of music to play, perhaps the musician tree selections played at very low volume. This could come as part of an object that would be merchant only craftable.
c. A smoke switch that would allow that Smokey Cantina look in your shop if you so desired.
d. The ability to place objects like food, on tables.
C. Better Tools - Because keeping track almost requires external software.
1. A special folder in your email that all transaction email goes to. Merchants need to see the transactions, but they also need their regular email.
2. Cargo Shipment skill. A skill that allows the merchant to ship merchandise from one vendor to another without having to carry it on foot. Provide a time delay, say it takes one hour for the shipment to arrive. Limit the uses per day and grant more uses, more cargo space as skills advance.
3. A larger personal inventory/storage system. Backpacks don't cut it, yet we have to move far far more items around than the normal player. If you go to move a store, you better expect hours of work and major shuttle costs.
4. An in game calculator granted at Novice Merchant. Give it basic calcuation functions such as percentage, and one memory slot.
D. Other problems with the merchant profession in no particular category
1. Entertainers are a primary target market for clothing merchants. However, shops must be placed in the wild and where shops are placed, angry enemies gather. There is no easy way to market then, to entertainers as they cannot easily travel to our shops. Possible solution? A droid vendor that follows the merchant, only usable for a limited amount of time each day, and only in city areas. "Would you like to browse my selection? Take a look at these samples."
2. There is no compelling reason for a merchant to market on the bazaar, other than advertising. A merchant does not get any experience when selling things via the bazaar. The bazaar discount of 20% fee, while nice on paper, 4cr doesn't really matter in the game. Solution: Provide token experience rewards to merchants making successful bazaar sales.
MerchantRogue
Sun Jul 13, 2003 9:51 am
#2
Very nicely done. There's nothing else at the moment that I can think of that needs a fix...
Mike
Grachus
Sun Jul 13, 2003 3:06 pm
#3
Excellent Summary of all the problems I'm having right now.
I currently have 2 vendors stuck in another player's pack and a third one that I just removed with over 300 items stuck in the storeroom. Now, my new Large House won't let me make a new one.
I submit one ticket a day for these issues. Everyday the same response - "We're working on the issue" Please work harder. These are ridiculous bugs to have with the core components of an entire elite profession. If these vendors don't work, we lose money and time and don't have the ability to play the game the way it should be played.
Klordy
Sun Jul 13, 2003 9:17 pm
#4
Very very wonderful post. Let's keep this one active until the devs do a swing around our forum.
VilePickle
Sun Jul 13, 2003 11:42 pm
#5
Totally oblivious of the deleting items with a vendor bug, I deleted the vendor with 100k worth of stuff in it. Jesus, I am steaming now... I can't retreive them at all, sigh sigh sigh.
hugefeet
Mon Jul 14, 2003 12:10 am
#6
i also believe that becoming a merchant should be a LOT harder to reduce the number of merchants. a merchant is someone who sells everything, not an architect/merchant, or a DE/merchant, but someone who buys from the producers, and sells to the public.
the way the economy is set up now, theres no possible way for a merchant like this to exist and thrive profitbly.
the way the economy is set up now, theres no possible way for a merchant like this to exist and thrive profitbly.
Plinka
Mon Jul 14, 2003 7:16 am
#7
Things I neglected to add in my original:
Bugs:
H. The planetary map advertising must be manually reset after each instance of server downtime. So if a merchant can't be on when her server comes back up, their listing won't appear. They have to be at the vendor to reinitialize the planetary map listing.
Deficiencies:
A mechanism to re-price merchandise is needed. Currently you must take the item off of sale, then go to the stockroom and sell the item again. Instead, what we need is a simple "Reprice" button from the sales screen.
Bugs:
H. The planetary map advertising must be manually reset after each instance of server downtime. So if a merchant can't be on when her server comes back up, their listing won't appear. They have to be at the vendor to reinitialize the planetary map listing.
Deficiencies:
A mechanism to re-price merchandise is needed. Currently you must take the item off of sale, then go to the stockroom and sell the item again. Instead, what we need is a simple "Reprice" button from the sales screen.
Blackmugen
Mon Jul 14, 2003 10:35 am
#8
I'm not really sure what to say about those who have deleted their vendors with items still in it. ... Why did you do that? When you place the vendor and initialize it, it specifically says that it will no longer be able to be moved. That means, in addition to not being able to moveit around your house, you will not be able to pick it up. That is also MOVING it.
The other bugs I agree with, but when they warn you about moving your vendor it's not a bug... it's your mistake.
Blackmugen
Mon Jul 14, 2003 10:37 am
#9
As far as I'm concerned if you can't move something, why would you be able to delete it and miraculously have your items appear in a new one? or in your inventory?
TackonBloodfin
Mon Jul 14, 2003 10:47 am
#10
They also need to make moving items from one vendor to another user friendly. I now have almost 200 items and i want to move locations but i cannot take all those items off and put them in my inventory then have to go through and reprice every single item.
Blackmugen
Mon Jul 14, 2003 10:53 am
#11
THAT I agree with. But it isn't set up that way, so if you do something expecting that it is (even though there is nothing indicating that it is) it'syour mistake not SOE's.
Peeved I would be at losing 100k in items, but it would be at myself, not the game developers.
Zarathustra
Mon Jul 14, 2003 11:11 am
#12
hugefeet wrote:
i also believe that becoming a merchant should be a LOT harder to reduce the number of merchants. a merchant is someone who sells everything, not an architect/merchant, or a DE/merchant, but someone who buys from the producers, and sells to the public.
the way the economy is set up now, theres no possible way for a merchant like this to exist and thrive profitbly.
I have to disagree 100%. I am working with a merchant now who has a very easy way to survive in the economy now. All it involves is having me make a schematic for them, I supply my own vendors and then I just make a schematic for him for say 1000 units of something, he keeps running as many through as he needs to, and he's ableto produce wares for his markets he is trying to get a foothold into. Is this the 100% intent of the merchant, probably not, but adaptation and using the tools available to be a smart business man is what being a merchant is all about.
SmugglerSnake
Mon Jul 14, 2003 2:50 pm
#13
Didn't read every reply, sorry if this is a repeat:
I. Premium Sales are no different from standard sales, aside from the fact that they correctly cost 100 credits.
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