Merchant Archive

Name me a successful crafter who doesn't have a vendor. I know there are some people who do ok with just custom orders. But really, most crafters have vendors at some point, and it is very hard to have a successful crafting business without them. But, there are no pure merchants, because merchant without a crafting profession is useless. In fact, I was just reading a post on the tailor forum about how people who buy clothing from a tailor and resell it at a higher price suck, and that's pretty much what a merchant does.

Allright, this is what I should have said. Merchant is a retarded profession and should be done away with. And here's why...

The practice of merchantery has much more to do with the the person's skills than the character's skills. The person has to decide the optimal pricing scheme, the best location for a shop, how to advertise (using the bazaar, the forums, harvesters, etc.), how to aquire resources or components... The merchant skill only allows someone to sell things when he or she is not online.

And, I don't understand why you would want to have to waste skill points on merchant anyway. I mean, I can see that you have, but wouldn't you rather spend them on something else?

Really the game is not set up for merchants to exist. Let's look at the example of a hardware store in reality. That works as a concept because there are many different types of tools in a hardware store made by many different companies, and it is more convenient to go to a local hardware store than to go to whereeach ofthe tools are manufactured to get them. However, in Galaxies, one person can make all of any time of item, and no one is so far away that it's not worth a trip. Plus you can generally find someone who manufactures anything in or around any major city.

And as a practical matter, if you made master merchant required to be effective as a merchant, it would not promote pure merchants. It might promote some crafters to master merchant as well, but mostly it would make people stop crafting, or just hang out in cities spamming sales pitches.

Additionally, even if pure merchants became prevalent, the general population would get pissed off because everything would cost more, since not only would the crafter be trying to make a profit, but there would be a middleman added to the mix trying to make a profit as well.

To me, anyone who makes a statment like "Merchant is a retarded profession" and then attempts to back it up with dribble like this, clearly was eaten alive by the merchant class, and/or lacks the social graces a player of this class needs.

And, I don't understand why you would want to have to waste skill points on merchant anyway. I mean, I can see that you have, but wouldn't you rather spend them on something else?

I will in fact awns your question, Because it is my character, and I will stick the points anywhere I want.If I want to stick them in merchant, I will. If Iwant to cram them in my ear, I will (the command is /craminear).Now if you do not like that, please send me info so that I can change over my billing info so that you are paying for it, and I will take your advice for how to play my character.

I am sorry you made a bad merchant, I am sorry that you did not know how to overcome the obsticals of this class to win. Many of us have, and are very good at it. As a matter af fact, I do well over 60% of my sales while I am online, and I am only online 2 hours a day. Why, because I sell, I chat, I explain, and help. If you have not been a merchant (as I suspect) then this post isjust you talking out of your rear.

As for the rest of your comments, I will sum them up my responce for you, You think that we care, rest assured, we don't. You think that your opinion MUST be the opinion of ALL people, when in fact it is not.

So I will bid you good day little one, and ask that you please take your missguided waste of 1's and 0's somewhere else.

So I will now take my ONE copy of STAR wars and put it to good use.

just one? gah!

i had some one today tell me she bought another copy of SWG because she wanted another house and didnt want to upset her neighbors. i was like huh?? no really, i was liek huh???

but just one? i thought i read somewhere you had 5? oooh come on... just one? huh?

lol man i need sleep, but i was posting on this thread to ask my brother and sister why even respond to this guy? 1-star him and move on

*signed*

a very successful non-crafter merchant with prices to beat most crafters

Merchant is a profession that does require the human behind the char have a little knowledge of business. It is not a simple profession, it is intensely PvP (we do compete with each other, just no one dies :smileyhappy and it requires a different way of approaching a game. This was a great profession to introduce to the gaming community. There is so much potential for these types of characters.

The one beauty of this game is you can surrender your skill, if you don't like merchant, drop it. And crafters could easily sell their goods to merchants. Merchants would take care of the inventory, advertising and daily shop requirements while the pure crafter could just make things. I am willing to work with any crafters in this type of business relationship. I don't look to get rich, my markup would probably not exceed 10% depending on the item. It would not kill any crafting business to sell their goods to a merchant for a 10% discount. Once you sell to the merchant, it is instant money. The merchant then eats the cost if items to not sell in a timely manner.

Otiamo

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marqie wrote:

So I will bid you good day little one, and ask that you please take your missguided waste of 1's and 0's somewhere else.

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OMG I love that! Can I borrow this and take it to the smuggler forum. Pretty please!

Getting a good abdominal workout today. You GO girl!

"If Iwant to cram them in my ear, I will (the command is /craminear)" - Marqie

Laughin' my butt off! (Everyone in the office is giving me wierd looks and slowly figuring out that I'm probably not compiling insurance claim files like the rest of them are... although some of the insurance claims are pretty funny too...

Mahu

I used to think Merchant was a bored. I use to sell resources and just did merchant for vendors and the 20% discount on structure maint. But I learned how to be a REAL merchant. Talk to people that make food, powerups, tailors and you shall be suprise how glad they are to have you resell stuff.

Now I have 4 vendors selling things. 1 is my resource that I harvest, everything else is something I get from an artisan,....

I posted a rather cool solution to this problem:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=merchant&message.id=10011

This would basically either force artisans to become master merchants or resell to one, no more of this artisan with enough merchant skills to sell their own wares stuff.

I'm not even a merchant yet, and I'll be happy to answer his question.

1) There are no useless professions. Professions exist for fun, not for utility. If the devs wanted they wouldn't even have crafters in this game. Merchants are a profession because people wanted them to be, and so they are. They are an added layer to the crafting game. Right now, they aren't as useful as they could be because they cannot set up shop where there are people. With the coming of player cities and merchant tents merchants will be infinitely more playable and profitable, and, if history teaches us anything, a powerful influence on the player politicians (never alienate business, old political rule).

2) The biggest boon to the game merchants provide, the one many people overlook, is that merchants are middlemen. Middlemen exist for a reason. They sell things for people. Pure crafters who have no interest in running a shop, and vendors (or time) simply sell their wares to merchants for wholesale prices. Merchants add a sales charge and sell the goods because they have time, energy, and SKILLS to run a successful shop, complete with advertising, and all the other goodies.

And what do you mean pure merchant? Of course a merchant is a crafter! They get their pre-reqs from the Artisan tree! And there's only a one discipline pre-req! So one discipline + one whole profession= a buttload of skill points left over. Why wouldn't you spend them? Is anyone here a pure ANYTHING? If they are is that because they don't want skills from other professions or because they haven't gotten around to spending their skill points?

Look at it this way. Bounty Hunters don't add anything to the game for other PC's. They are good at combat, but so are all the other combat classes. They're investigative skills only work on NPC's that no one else can attack. They are, really, a useless profession. But they're in the game because people want to play them. THey're one of the most popular professions for a reason, and it's not utility. I'm sorry. You're point doesn't hold water.