Merchant Archive

Up front! I'm not a crafter or a merchant. My wife plays this game and she is both, but I am writing this as a buyer, not a seller.

From a buyer's perspective, PLEASE don't implement this restriction on vendors. Right off, a few points:

1a. There are "at least" 110 separate weapons in the game. Ifa weapon vendor is stocked with the intent of offering each weapon, then I will be limited to being able to buy one of each type, rather than several of the same type. If one person comes by 5 minutes before I do, then I'm out of luck until the merchant can restock. Even if the merchant restocks every half hour, I'm still waiting. What if the vendor logs off? They "can't" be on 24 hours a day. So.. ..either merchants will sell multiple common items (which negates variety) or sell a variety of items but fail to keep items on hand.

1b. Tailors sell "at least" 110 separate clothing items. Even if they were comfortable with only selling one of each item, the item would only be available in "one" color. Buyers wouldn't have the option of selecting from different color options.

1c.Armor is not a "one" item purchase. Buying armor involves up to 10 items purchased simultaneously. Even if the armorsmith is also a master merchant, there will only be 11 full suits available on a single vendor at any given time. I can't imagine an armorsmith being willing to go through the aggravation of producing armor "and" becoming a master merchant only to be crippled at the "point of sale".

2. This change "WILL" force many merchants and crafters to give up their professions. The ones willing to stick around may think this will mean "more" profits for them, but this is bad logic. Fewer merchants means increased sales, but with this restriction, these merchants will still only be able to offer limited supplies. The fact that all vendors will be limited in available items "and" the fact that there will be fewer vendors means that players will not be able to purchase items as readily as they do now. In short, we won't be able to get the items we need because they just won't be there. Period. The vendors aren't the only ones suffering in this. Everyone will suffer. How many players do you think are going to be happy going to greater distances to reach the few remaining vendorsonly to realize that the item they need is "out of stock"?

3. I can understand the desire to remove vendors from players that once "had" the ability to place 6 vendors, but then untrained those skills. There isn't any profession in the game that allows you to benefit from an untrained skill like this does. If I was a MCH and had a full datapad of high level pets, I don't expect to be able to call them out if I drop the whole profession. If you wanted to introduce a way to remove these vendors by placing a check against the owner to ensure that they still possess the requisite skills, then fine. This alone would probably result in a major reduction on the databases. However, this universal backhand to the entire merchant community is overkill and unfair to them.

4. Even "if" players were willing to kiss all the merchants goodbye, then where does that leave us? Loot? Loot weapons are at least 50% inferior to crafted counterparts. Are we suppose to loot full suits of composite armor? Full cases of Vasarian Brandy? SOE made this system to be extremely player run. This economy, unlike many other games, is totally dependant on the players. To then chop everyone off at the knees and not offer any other method to acquire our necessary tools, then where does that leave us? Want a vision of the future? Put this plan through as intended and everyone will be running around bare-arsed or in mismatched clothes looted from Ragtag Loons and wielding CDEF pistols looted from said same NPCs. Okay, not that drastic... ...but it will be bad.

5. If this game has roughly 300,000 players all paying $15 a month, then I would think that the $4,500,000a month that SOE is pulling in would afford exceptionally high database capacity. At least enough to support those players.

My point? This reduction may be an attempt to ease the databases, but it going to severely reduce the availability of choice and the choice of availability.