Merchant Archive
Thread: Work Allergic Merchants Who Want Every Idea To Be Merchant Only!
There has to be a few merchants here that actually are willing to get ahead in this game under their own steam. To those I can only say,
/salute
As for the rest of you, the following copied from my thread:
Think you know what you and the rest of the merchants that want to sit on their butts and have the game system force everyone to buy and sell through you can do so you can have a free ride to a master title and easy credits that you don't have to do any work to get. So far, I havent seen a so called pure merchant yet that actually wants to work to make it as a success. They want the game to hand them the success for free. All the success I've ever seen have been artisans first and merchants second. And they actually worked their butts off to be a success. All I see here is a bunch of whining by a crowd want to get ahead on the efforts of others. Have any of you bought 2 or 3 houses, bought product in bulk from crafters, partnered with others to do the same, and set up malls were people can buy just about everything under one roof? Ummm... No, you havent. You hang out here and whine for features so you don't have to do any work. One word for you guys. LAZY...
Merchant is the easiest profession to master in this game. Just need a house, get novice merchant, put two vendors up, and sit and do nothing while the exps build up. Train additional merchants and add more vendors to make it even faster. Sorry, but it takes more work for a Novice Droid Engineer to get Blueprints 1 then it takes for a Novice Merchant to go all the way to Master Merchant. Sadly, because of that, its the profession for those who don't want to work. Most so called, "Pure Merchants", not all, but most.
Adios! Don't worry, I wont let the door hit me on the way out. I'd rather hang out with those who actually have to work their arse off to get ahead. Like the Droid Engineers....
I agree.
As I said in another thread, it's about player skill vs character skill. Merchanting is a skill that is 90% in the players hands. You can't just work yoru way to "master" and be guaranteed success. You, the player, the person at the keyboard behind the character; you're the one who will decide your fate. Skill boxes are simply not going to do it.
The nasty pure merchant elitists can get upset about this, but those of us who were successful as merchants got there by our human player behind the character work, not our character skills. Maybe this is a failure. Maybe they should just not have "player skill" professions involve "character skills." I was successful as a gardener in UO as well, even though UO has no "gardener" skills or "merchant" skills. I just did the research on plants. I put in the time to get my different hybrids going. I kept my vendors stocked. I made deals with vendor malls. And I got some damned good locations for my shops which required taming and selling a few squillion giant beetles and ostards. And I did really well. Zero "skill points" but IMHO a lot of skill on my behalf.
I'm playing AO now and I'm buying up Omni med suits and bringing them to clan territory and reselling them for a big profit. Again there's no merchant skill there. Just the ability to see an opportunity and take business advantage of it. That's what gets you ahead in this profession, not filling in boxes. And God help us, I hope one of the very very few skills in MMPORPGs that is really player skill based doesn't get nerfed into another catassathon, where only the 24/7 no-life players can win at it. I had plenty of that in EQ.
What I see on behalf of the pure merchant mafia is a desire to have success handed to them on a platter. They want some skill box to guarantee success despite their lack of ability rather than rewarding good skills. I hope that never happens. Merchant should allow a good player to increase their business, scale it up from a succesfull shop into a multi planet galactic business empire. It should allow you to let the entire galaxy to know that you're there and what you have for sale. It should give you tools to deal with your suppliers and you customers.
But it should never guarantee success just because you've XP'd your way into a few boxes.
That's the treasure of the merchant profession. It's one of the few things in a MMPORPG that is truly based on your skill as a player, not just on how many hours you can sit and press buttons.
I completly agree with you Numtini. Being a successfull businessman is not about having the best character skills, it´s about the player. Youdon´t need the merchant skills to be successfull, but they can surely help you.The life as abusinessman involves alot of interaction with other people and the last time I checked, no skill can interact with another player.
None of which is to say that this profession doesn't need fixing in some major ways. It's a desperately broken profession that offers very very little for your points. There's so many great ideas on this board that it's not funny. Even a handful of them would be a major boost to everyone's business.
But it should fix a toolset, not substitute game skill boxes for player skills by locking out the competition.
I am not sure what you are talking about, You are making some very wild generalizations. Have you started a char on every server, and looked at the merchants?
I belive you are right, merchant is easy to get, don't blame the merchants, blame the devs, they are the one that has tied merchant exps to time, not actions.
So to you I say good sir, good day.
I can see how easy it would be to become a Master Merchant, that's why if I see the title I don't really think much of it except for a possible person to train me. Personally I seem to work harder to try and be a success at this job than I do in RL. I had 4 shops on my server, one on Tatoonie, Naboo, Corellia, and one on Rori at my PA's city. I was constantly running to put more and better stock on them and pay maintenance fees. When I wasn't running between my shops I was out doing reconaissance, stopping in at others shops and marking down their prices for things in a spreadsheet so I'd know about where to price my own wares. I only went up the business branch in Artisan to get to merchant and so have no crafting ablities what so ever. I buy from my PA crafters and sell on my, now 2, shops (wasn't having any fun in the game because it was all work). Lazy merchants just annoy the heck out of me because here I am constantly running my arse off 3-4 hours a day so everything will be fine when I'm not online and I'm still doing poorly success-wise. If you want to be successful, go out and work for it.
Dur'Faroth (Scarlet Horizon Merchant)
Scarlet Horizon Adventuring Supplies
Shops on Rori and Naboo, Corbantis
I havent even visited them in 3 days.
How in the world do you survive in the business world?
I started out to be an Armorsmith and after working at that for 2 weeks and only getting 2 boxes in the skill, I saw someone selling the Chitin that I was so psyched to be able to finally make for 12k... My heart broke. I asked the guy how he can afford to do that when I barely would turn a profit selling at 15k (and much rather would get some decent profit trying at 22k) and he said he was just a merchant for his guild and that the armorsmith guy had like 3 paid accounts and was able to mass mine resources and was just selling the sets that cheap for the UXP.
At that point, I shifted gears and started down the tailor road. Surrendered my Armorsmithing skills and am now (in just 2 weeks) one box away from Master Tailor. In all this time, I used vendors and built up my Merchant XP & skills and am 2 boxes away from Master Merchant as well. I will be usding it to sell my own personal wears and drop a Vendor in my PA for sales there as well.
As an artisan, I'm able to make plenty of money to mass grind & purchase my own skills, so you "Pure Merchants" who are so stingy that you won't even buy a skill, maybe it's because you're trying too hard to undercut the entire economic system and if you charged the proper prices that match other players maybe you could easily afford the training... Then again, maybe you can easily afford the training and you're just falling into the typical Money-Hungry Merchant mindset and not wanting to pay a meager 9k for a skill. You can't be earning points that fast. I know mine takes a couple days in between being able to earn a skill box and I can easily make 5x that in a day.
But there I go wanting to work for what I'm getting. Silly me. Maybe I should give up my Merchant skills since I'm willing to work for my money. 
Darchon SkyCrosser
Eclipse/Master Artisan/(Soon to be Master Tailor & Master Merchant)
Wow.. a lot of bitter people in here willing to group a whole class of people based on your server, or idiots you may know.
You wanna know why merchants want things for their class? BECAUSE EVERYONE DOES!
Okay, other than that there is the fact that as a merchant and a artisan, lets face it you gotta be both. pure merchants have no choice of surviving, it takes up so many skill points that being a merchant is all we have. We like to sell things. We like to build things, we like to interact with people. How can you fault a class for wanting more for their pretty deserted class?
Wouldnt you like the class you like the most to have more things? To make the game more interesting for yourself? I really don't get why people need to put down a whole class of people, it makes me think you have other issues, or personal problems with someone whoi is a merchant.
These posts do not offer constructive criticism nor do they promote healthy conversation. If any CSR or Dev actually visited this forum this thread would be locked already.
Well, my problem is this:
Yes, it takes players skills to be a merchant.
BUT
You need no merchant skills. So the tree is useless.
I started beeing a merchant because i was overflowed with merchant exp. But i don't use the skills.
I do what merchant do. Check market, sell, buy, advertise. MYSELF.
I study the bazaar and harvest ressources that are rare. I harvest on a planet and sell on another. I purchase in sales and resell myself. I undercut just enuff to get noticed (like, sell 2950 when everyone sells 3000).
I advertise myself with crafted chance cube. Exemple: i wanna sell weapons? Craft a chance cube, call it GOOD WEAPONS! then sell it on bazaar for 3k, and in the description, i advertise my shop and coordinates.
My shop is a small house with 1 vendor.
I do not need more advertising, speciallyadds that do not even work and need daily re-boot.
I do not need reduced bazaar fee, lol, 20 creds is low enuff.
I do not need cooler looking vendors to stay in business.
I do not need multiple vendors if i'm the only one that can manage them.
So, i am a merchant from what i do. But i t think the skills will be worth when they allow you to:
Advertise on a special Billboard in town.
***** Give administrator rights to our vendors to business associates *****
Augment Bazaar cap for $$ and quantity.
Augment lot capacity. Having a shop just cuts on harvesters right now.
Venar