Merchant Archive

Hello fellow salespeople. I have ad barking2 now. Does ad barking even work? I can input a custom message and it seems either of my vendors randomly speaks or does not. Most times it doesn't speak at all when I enter or exit a building. A friend suggested that it might not be coded to welcome the owner. So tell me folks is this just another bug in the game or does the vendor actually work and greet everyone except the owner? I am new to this and would appreciate your help. Good luck to you all.

Ad barking usually works for almost 24 hours at a time, way to go devs! It stops working when they re-set the servers each morning. Sometimes, like you, my vendors won't bark right away, but usually if I go out and in of my shoppes, or to another room for a moment and then back, they'll spout out the phrases. I must say though, it's a real pleasure to have to take a shuttle from Kor Vella to Bestine each and every day to turn the ad barkers and the planetary ad back on so people might see my warez. Fortunately, the last update included the ability to skip through the first few screens of the game, giving me an additional 2.8 seconds online, which really allows me time to make back the extra 800 credits I blow a day on shuttle fees.

The servers are rebooted every morning at about 4:00 a.m. Pacific Time. Ad Barking and Planetary Map Registration have to be re-initiated every time this happens. If you are in a non-US time zone, this may be right after you start playing.

No, I mean, I will be in the game, logged in the whole time, and my vendors go silent after an hour or two.

Exactly that's what I seem to notice as well.

24 hours? I wish.

In my experience, ad barking works for an hour, maybe two tops, before it stops.

I don't even bother with this feature anymore it is so borked. It works for 15 min - 21 hours depending on your luck, but will always die at server reboot(just like the planetary listing). Sometimes it will bark at the odd customer, but ignore the next 20 and it will definately spin your vendor to face the wall 99% of the time when someone runs past outside or if the vendor detects the person walking in your building behind him instead of waiting until the customer is in front of him.

All in all, it is a feature that works about 10% of the time total and inevitably leaves your shop looking unprofessional(and stupid)with all your vendors turning their backs on your customers.

I can understand why they would make you reregister your vendor on the map periodically ( it should last for more than 24 hours though) BUT wonder why it doesnt stop charging you the higher rate for that service? ie - you have to unregistar it ( and the charge goes down) and re-register it daily.

So although its not displayed after the re-boot you appear to be paying the elevated cost as if it were - for as many days as it takes you to unregister it. ( unregister if you go away for a few days!).

Ad barking always breaks within an hour- or the vendor turns and faces a wall, or shouts to random people passing outside my house - and who are not within the building. I have not had it turned on since about 5 days after i first got it.

It is a bug that it is reset, the devs are looking into a way to fix it.

As for the ad barking, it to is a known bug, that is stops working after a reboot. That should be fixed as the one stated above is fixed. If it stops before that, /bug it with details like 20 Mins after I turned it on.

Also, it is my understanding here is how ad bark works.

The vendor is not going to bark at every person. There is a timer on the vendor, so if it sees a NEW player, and it has not barked in a set period of time, it will bark, but if I walk into my shop, and right after me, another player, it will not bark. If that player waits the time setting, it will bark with me standing there. In short, the vendors do there best no to spam. Keep that in mind.

Mine do not stop after I turn them on.

To be real honest, I'm glad this doesn't work. I recently had someone move a vendor into my shop with ad-barking turned on, and while it was "working" (I say that loosely because the vendor would always turn his back on the customer) I found it annoying as heck. It would spout out those ads every minute or so it seemed and after a very short amout of time I wanted to strangle the vendor.

Personally I wish there was some way to tie this ad barking to say the door of the place instead of the vendor. That way when someone enters they get the ad, but then they don't get it again as they move about the store.