Merchant Archive

Marqie, as merchant correspondant, how do you feel about the recent patch?

How do you feel that we still cannot use even 1 of our skills except hiring?

Do the merchants in this game realize advertising, ad barking, and vendor maintainence are ALL totally broken? And that no efforts are apparently being made except by marqie to fix them?

The recent patch had 0 merchant changes. That's zero. For merchants. Who are totally broken.

Kana

I have in fact, expressed concerns, and I am working to make sure some love is there.

Marqie one day I'm making a character on Kauri and showing up to buy you a Jawa Beer. You never know when it might be either.

Have you (or anybody else, for that matter) gone on Test Center after the patch? There are apparently a whole bunch of (fairly significant) unnanounced "stealth" improvements to Tailor stuff, and I was wondering if maybe there might be one or two for Merchants. A fix for the seven-day expiration is probably way too much to hope for, but I can dream....

On the super secret correspondants board, I am pushing for the 7 day fix, not as a thought, but as an action. I am making a char on TC now, but it is down everytime I try. I suspect is a plot aginst merchants

Its up now

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tzakiel wrote:

How do you feel that we still cannot use even 1 of our skills except hiring?

Do the merchants in this game realize advertising, ad barking, and vendor maintainence are ALL totally broken? And that no efforts are apparently being made except by marqie to fix them?

The recent patch had 0 merchant changes. That's zero. For merchants. Who are totally broken.

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We cannot use 1 of our skills?

1. I have several vendors. More so than my non merchant buds.


2. My structures cost less than everyone elses.


3. I don't pay squat for my NPC vendors (bonus).


4. I get XP when I'm not on. (Better than AFK entertainer).

Advertising, barking and vendor maintenance are totally broken?

1. I can advertise albiet I have to reset every day which is not totally broken.


2. My vendor barks abiet I have to reset it every day which is not totally broken.


3. I can pay vendor maintenance which is not totally broken.

No changes for merchants in patch?

Merchant - adding merchant ability to update player shop signs

Merchant - Fixed bug where vendors sucked up too much space in your inventory

I think your hysterics are not realistic. There isn't anything about being a merchant that makes the profession unplayable. Flame away!

Good analogy, Harin! I agree also with you that merchant is playable, but it is frustrating to play, not only because of bugs with the skills we have, but also because there is so much potential to improve the class, and I think it would have a pretty dramatic effect on the game as a whole if the merchant class can be improved in the right ways.

While I wouldn't go so far as to say the profession is unplayable (since I play it every day) I would say that it is severely crippled in its ability to take perform a substantial role in the player economy which makes playing a merchant very frustrating.

The Advertising does work unless you have a job in which case it stops working around the time (on the east coast) that you go to work and you get a chance to start it up about the time you get home. Giving a lot of players less than 16 hours a day of map coverage most of that in non prime time hours for the East Coast.

The entire efficiency line is just not worth the skill points because the amounts of money you are saving are too small with the current economy. They meant more before the bazaar costs and harvester costs were adjusted late in beta.

The Hiring Line is mostly fluff. I mean having multiple types of vendors is a cool feature but it isn't really an advantage for the Merchant over anyone with a bulky vendor (when they fix the maintenance that is).

Management is obviously worth it if you want to have a big store or multiple locations.

Master Merchant is a huge let down you get a Protocol Droid that can't adbark (as I've said before in the movies you can't shut those things up) and again with the maintenance fee reduction.

I love being a merchant. I love the feeling when I'm sitting in my store and someone comes in with their buddy, shows him something on the vendor and says to him (without even realizing I'm there) See I knew he would have it here, he has everything! I don't love spending 4 hours an nightstocking merchandise, repricing, calculating payments to suppliers, and handling the email spam I have to deal with in order to play this profession.

To extend the pistol analogy if pistoleers got an email everytime they stopped firing their pistol they would be getting it fixed pretty **edit** quick.

The signs added in the last patch are fine, but they don't really address the real concerns of this profession which are all centered around one theme:

How are we expected to compete for our spot in the player economy, and enjoy this game, with the lack of tools and the amount of tedious tasks we have to perform in order to play our characters?

For the record: I still play as a merchant

I never said the class was "unplayable"

I'm just annoyed at these very very serious bugs that never seem to get looked at.

Kana

WaerbGloofin by the way.... getting merchant XP while you are on is not a skill. It simply lets you purchase skills you cannot use correctly. And vendor maintainence being 0 is not a plus. It's a bug and a problem. It may help you personally, but I'm concerned about the game, not your wealth.

And I never said the game was unplayable.

Kana

It's 0 but you still pay

I'm mostly curious of when they are going to fix vendors as they had promised... I hope they will at least warn us beforehand...

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WaerbGloofin wrote:

We cannot use 1 of our skills?

1. I have several vendors. More so than my non merchant buds.


2. My structures cost less than everyone elses.


3. I don't pay squat for my NPC vendors (bonus).


4. I get XP when I'm not on. (Better than AFK entertainer).

Advertising, barking and vendor maintenance are totally broken?

1. I can advertise albiet I have to reset every day which is not totally broken.


2. My vendor barks abiet I have to reset it every day which is not totally broken.


3. I can pay vendor maintenance which is not totally broken.

No changes for merchants in patch?

Merchant - adding merchant ability to update player shop signs

Merchant - Fixed bug where vendors sucked up too much space in your inventory

I think your hysterics are not realistic. There isn't anything about being a merchant that makes the profession unplayable. Flame away!

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Both of those fixes have already gone in through hot fixes. Hopefully you already know this. If not, you need to pay more attention to reading the forums before you post. And while our profession is playable, and we can use more than 1 skill, there are several bugs that seriously detract from the Merchant experience. Chief among these are the resetting of the advertising skills (All of them), 7 day expiration on vendors, the fact that recently bought items are STILL disappearing, even though this was supposedly fixed, premium auctions don't work, and the discrepancy between vendor maintenance on different types of vendors. Some of these bugs are annoying, some infuriating.

So honestly, you and the original poster are both right, and both wrong. It's not in the unplayable state that he claims, but I certainly don't think it's in as good a shape as you seem to believe. Perhaps you are just being optimistic, but if pistoleer were as broken as merchant (ie your gun would stop firing every hour until you had it repaired, you had a buy a new one every week, and disappeared for 24 hours whenever you used a shuttle), it wouldn't take nearly as long to get fixed as our bugs have taken.