Merchant Archive
Thread: Reseller ability is available RIGHT NOW. Thanks SOE!
All you have to do is buy EVERYTHING off of all the "non-Merchant" vendors and sell them on your own vendors.
Since there is no vendor item limit yet, you should be able to buy everything in your area and sell it all on your own 6 vendors! In a very short time, you should have enough money to afford every item in your city, then your planet. All that should limit you is how fast other true merchants get to these goodies before you.
You don't need to wait for a code change. You just need to get out and be a merchant!!!
No?
If you WANT to be a Merchant and you don't do this work already, then why do you think other people will come flocking to your vendors to do this job for you? If they wanted to play with someone else's vendor, they would be a Merchant and do this too.
While limiting non-Merchant vending ability is a good way to giveMerchants like myself an edge, prohibiting vendors for non-Merchants will only demolish the player economy. The sheer volume of goods being produced and sold right now would overwhelm the small % of people with the Merchant profession.
According to Astromech Stats, only 2% of the game have Novice Merchant. Let's assume that all of these people WANT to be resellers, and WANT non-merchants come through them. Let's also assume (falsely)that NO Artisans (35%) have Business III to sell their own goods, unless they are also Merchants. Now add in Doctors (2%), Smugglers (2%), and Bio-Engineers (1%) as people who sell things, all of whom are dirty exploiters using illegal vendors right now. That works out to roughly 40% of the server population who might have expensive goods to sell, while only 2% *should* have vendors? That means that every merchant will need to handle about 20 suppliers to keep the economy going.
(Yes, not everyone in the professions mentioned sell their wares, but then again not every merchant wants to be a reseller for other people. In fact, I suspect that most Merchants are selling only their own products.)
How many of us are dealing with 20 suppliers now? Or even 5 suppliers? Juggling 20 suppliers would be HARD! If you play every day of the week, that means you have to handle 3 suppliers every day. That means you have to put goods from 3-4 suppliers on each of your 6 vendors. You may as well just buy everything on every vendor in your neighborhood and sell it on your own vendors!
Nerfing the number of vendors in the world means that you all will have to work 20 times as hard as you are working right now.
Reducing the number of vendors in the world would also ruin the economy in other ways. Since the merchant now becomes the universal middle-man, suppliers will be forced to compete for his attention. Their prices will be forced to some uniform amount (after all, why would he buy expensive goods from YOU when he is already buying identical products from your neighbor for less. Customers do it because your shop is well-placed, well-decorated, or you have a good personal rep. A merchant filters all of this out.)
Yes, Merchant skills should have good rewards and advantages, but having vendors or not having them is a dangerous difference to wish for. Let's quit nerfing "other people" and focus on positive improvements to our profession. Here are a few suggestions...
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=merchant&message.id=18251
Taking vendors away from other people will not help us.
ideas wrote:All you have to do is buy EVERYTHING off of all the "non-Merchant" vendors and sell them on your own vendors.
Since there is no vendor item limit yet, you should be able to buy everything in your area and sell it all on your own 6 vendors! In a very short time, you should have enough money to afford every item in your city, then your planet. All that should limit you is how fast other true merchants get to these goodies before you.
You don't need to wait for a code change. You just need to get out and be a merchant!!!
It's pretty obvious you don't have a sense for real business, sarcasm aside. You don't see WalMart going out and buying up everything from KMart's shelves for resale. Mainly because why should they pay retail when they can buy directly from the manufacturer for much less. The manufacturer is happy because they get VOLUME, and usually guaranteed sales if their product is a strong seller. Of course, there's no reason why a manufacturer doesn't make their own storefront and sell direct to the customer. There's many advantages to that too. The point is that in SWG, if you want the best of both worlds, then you pay for it in skill points. Think of it as trading your skill points for more profit. What, you want those skill points to go do non-crafting or merchant things? Awww... cry me a river.
All these posts that say "you're killing the non-merchant classes!" are all crying wolf. Frankly, if you can't adapt to change, you shouldn't be in business in the first place. Sure, it's a game, but to some of us, the challenge of the game comes from running something akin to a real business. You want to play with the real merchants? Step up and do real business then. It's no difference than the hardcore PVPers killing me in 10 seconds flat in combat, than me running bad businessmen out of business because they can't handle competition. This isn't a single player game.
ideas wrote:
All you have to do is buy EVERYTHING off of all the "non-Merchant" vendors and sell them on your own vendors.
Since there is no vendor item limit yet, you should be able to buy everything in your area and sell it all on your own 6 vendors! In a very short time, you should have enough money to afford every item in your city, then your planet. All that should limit you is how fast other true merchants get to these goodies before you.
You don't need to wait for a code change. You just need to get out and be a merchant!!!
No?
If you WANT to be a Merchant and you don't do this work already, then why do you think other people will come flocking to your vendors to do this job for you? If they wanted to play with someone else's vendor, they would be a Merchant and do this too.
Then they should pick up the skills to provide themselves with a vendor.
While limiting non-Merchant vending ability is a good way to giveMerchants like myself an edge, prohibiting vendors for non-Merchants will only demolish the player economy. The sheer volume of goods being produced and sold right now would overwhelm the small % of people with the Merchant profession.
The economy will adapt, it will weed out the inefficient operations and provide a stronger more sustainable marketplace for everyone.
According to Astromech Stats, only 2% of the game have Novice Merchant. Let's assume that all of these people WANT to be resellers, and WANT non-merchants come through them. Let's also assume (falsely)that NO Artisans (35%) have Business III to sell their own goods, unless they are also Merchants. Now add in Doctors (2%), Smugglers (2%), and Bio-Engineers (1%) as people who sell things, all of whom are dirty exploiters using illegal vendors right now. That works out to roughly 40% of the server population who might have expensive goods to sell, while only 2% *should* have vendors? That means that every merchant will need to handle about 20 suppliers to keep the economy going.
(Yes, not everyone in the professions mentioned sell their wares, but then again not every merchant wants to be a reseller for other people. In fact, I suspect that most Merchants are selling only their own products.)
The economy will adapt, I would imagine you'd see more merchants popping up as a result of actually having to have the skills to utilize the vendors.
How many of us are dealing with 20 suppliers now? Or even 5 suppliers? Juggling 20 suppliers would be HARD! If you play every day of the week, that means you have to handle 3 suppliers every day. That means you have to put goods from 3-4 suppliers on each of your 6 vendors. You may as well just buy everything on every vendor in your neighborhood and sell it on your own vendors!
What's so hard about it? You log in, pick the stuff off your vendor and repost it? I've got 4 vendors right now, two re-selling materials from others, two selling my own material, I can't see another two somehow ruining the game for me time wise.
Nerfing the number of vendors in the world means that you all will have to work 20 times as hard as you are working right now.
No, it means a good portion of the people who have been using vendors without the appropriate skills will either re-train in those skills, or find a vendor to sell their wares. It doesn't mean I'm going to be forced to take on more business if I don't want to.
Reducing the number of vendors in the world would also ruin the economy in other ways. Since the merchant now becomes the universal middle-man, suppliers will be forced to compete for his attention. Their prices will be forced to some uniform amount (after all, why would he buy expensive goods from YOU when he is already buying identical products from your neighbor for less. Customers do it because your shop is well-placed, well-decorated, or you have a good personal rep. A merchant filters all of this out.)
Suppliers without merchant skills should be competing for merchant's attention, that's what being a merchant is all about.
Your uniform pricing argument is great, if you find a vendor who doesn't want to pay you what you want, go find another or GET THE SKILLS YOURSELF. As much as I hate to do it, there is a great RL analogy to this. Just go to your local upscale department store, and then wander down to a Wal Mart or some other discounter. Are the prices there the same? No? Gee, they're both selling the same kind of goods...why aren't they priced the same? Don't try to tell me quality either, half the time the products come from the same factories, just with different tags thrown on for the particular seller.
Yourlast sentance really made me laugh, I've seen plenty of merchant shops that put straight crafter shops to shame. this particular portion of your argument is specious.
Yes, Merchant skills should have good rewards and advantages, but having vendors or not having them is a dangerous difference to wish for. Let's quit nerfing "other people" and focus on positive improvements to our profession. Here are a few suggestions...
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=merchant&message.id=18251
Taking vendors away from other people will not help us.
Having vendors is the main focus of the entire class! How can people using vendors without keeping the required skills help us in any way?Are they helping me by basically getting all those extra skill points at no cost?Those who are using vendors without the skills are going to need to adapt, either by former partnerships or getting the skills back themselves.
No amount of arguing semantics (ie the use/place argument) or opining about how this is somehow going to wreck the economy is going to change this. Adapt to it, or make room for those who will...
People without the vendor skills can always sell on the bazaar you know.........
Whats that? the stuffs worth more then 3k? well then hawk it on the street corner of go find yourself a merchant......
Unless you as a Merchant are willing to take up to 1500 items a day off of my hands yourself, don't expect me to feel much sympathy for you. Putting that production up on a vendor is the only way I have to effectively distribute AND be guaranteed payment upon delivery.
I've heard suggestions about the merchant using houses as a warehouse - I drop off and they pay me later. As a crafter, f--- that! It'd only take one merchant ripping me off for me to lose potentially a million credits or more, and I'd have no means of forcing compensation. Payment on delivery is the only way that the system can work.
Really, I feel sympathy that Merchant vendors aren't going away when the class is dropped - it surprises me that they don't. But screwing over the producers in the system is just going to hurt everyone for the benefit of a single class.
The day SOE takes away my big box vendor to give some imagined advantage to merchants is the day I quit crafting - and I'll tell all of my former customers exactly who to hate for it. Seeing as how I produce for dozens of Bounty Hunters, hundreds of vehicle customers, and pretty much anyone who wants to buy food on my server, that's a lot of people who'll cheerfully dish up an anti-Merchant storm.
I've tried to play it square with the Merchants on my server, giving them chances are reselling, and none of them yet have taken more than a little advantage of the services I provide. No way I'm going to let the morons who couldn't save themselves create a monopoly on my products simply because they're too stupid to function without developer intervention, even with the tools they've already got.
Better that there be no Merchant class at all than that there be such a narrow chokepoint on commerce in an already screwed up system...
See my previous post
If those are the conditions you want to set then that up to you (but bear in mind if the 150 item cap comes in you wont even be able to do that kind of volume yourself)
Otherwise suck up the skill cost for the vendors