Merchant Archive
Thread: They make us pay skill points for this?
Hiya. I should say I'm pretty new, but in my online life I've always gravitated towards the merchantile life. Normally though, that doesn't prevent me from being able to do other things when I'm not fiddling about with vendors. I love being a merchant. I also want to participate in the GCW as something more than cannonfodder.
The business and merchant paths have some extraordinary things that we are expected to pay skill points for. I don't need Master Merchant. What I want is a shop that shows up on the map. So lets go through the costs for that and the wonders I receive in return.
Business I, 2 skill points, total cost 2.
Access Fees. Might be great for some purposes, but I don't want to do anything to discourage anyone from entering my shop so I won't use it. Admittedly I'll miss out on the business xp from that.
Business II, 3 skill points, total cost 5.
I gain the ability to spend 100 credits to get a little star next to my sale on the bazaar. The shape of things to come. Does the star actually do much? For3 skill points we shouldn't have to pay for it. It should just be there for all our sales. And even then it'd be feeble.
Business III, 4 skill points, total cost 9
Yay, a vendor! I'm not going to complain about this one. If I didn't want to be advertised on the map, I'd stop right here. The vendor machine we get is chunky, but suits me just fine.
Business IV, 5 skill points, total cost 14
Hiring +10. And here we get to the problem. We have to spend skillpoints to change the outward cosmetic appearance of vendors. Why? Will my customers walk in and say "Nay! I shall not buy from thine chunky vendor! I only buy from Twi'Lek females in purple dresses!". 5 points.
Onwards and upwards to:
Novice Merchant, 6 skill points, total cost 20
A second vendor, and more cosmetic options. I can see a second vendor being handy, but given they can hold as much as you like, I'll just be using the one. Well, I'll stick the second in my other room for the xp, but only one'll actually have anything on it.
Advertising I, 5 points, total cost 25
Now, I should admit I haven't quite got this one yet. 5 points for a vendor to recite some canned speech though. Hummm.
Advertising II, 4 points, total cost 29
Now we get to set the speech of our vendors. Somewhat useful I suppose.
Advertising III, 3 points, total cost 32
Finally. Advertisment on the map is ours. 32 points though. You can do a lot with 32 points. Hang about though. We don't actually get map advertisment for 32 points. We get the right to buy it. I don't know the costs involved.
While we're here, lets look at the other Merchant skills.
Advertisment IV, 2 points.
Half price advertisment. Harrumph.
The Hiring Path - Completley worthless for reasons given above.
Efficiency I, 5 points
We get 20 percent off bazaar costs. Thats a whole 4 credits off a regular sale, and presumable a mighty 20 credits off a premium one. And just 5 skill points!
Efficiency II, 4 points
20% off vendor costs. They're pretty cheap to run anyway. I suppose if you had 6 of them it might save you a bit of money.
Efficiency III, 3 points
Another 20% off bazaar fees!
Efficiency IV, 2 points
20% off all structure fees. Actually I quite respect that one, with the number of harvesters I have. And the right to place a merchant tent, whatever one of them is. I'll bet architects don't sell a lot of them. Not sure I've ever seen one.
The Management Path
Additional vendors. Great for those who want them. And the ability to change our shop sign. Changing the sign on your door ought not to be a question of skill points! Neither should adverting for that matter. Variety in house signs would be a good thing. Everyone should be able choose from a variety of signs, with additional ones if theres a vendor in the house.
Master Merchant - Those of you who have this, I have utter respect for your dedication. But unless the holocron was especially cruel to you, why?
Frankly, I think the biggest problem with Merchant is the insistance on having 4 paths to a profession. You could merge all four paths into two paths or even one without anyone calling for a nerf. Some things we're asked to pay points for should just be available to anyone who wants it, for the price. Premium auctions. Ebay doesn't require you to have a special skill to pay them extra cash to mark your auction premium. Neither does the yellow pages inisist you give up being a commando to advertise with them.
I want to be a merchant, I really do. But I also want to be able to makes things, and maybe still be able to shoot a gun. The skill point to benefit ratio for the merchant and businessman is feeble, and needs to be seriously looked at by the Devs.
Alrevolis Vosteo
Arkenor wrote:
I don't need Master Merchant. What I want is a shop that shows up on the map.
Have a friend who is a merchant with a spare vendor place it somewhere in your house not seen by the public, name it and register it on the map. I do it with our City's Master Tailor and her business has increased. I even run vendors for people without any merchant skills. And run a few "public" vendors in my city that act as bazaars.
I agree that the merchant tree has very little in it, but it is all that Merchant's have right now.The Merchant Correspondentis working on compiling lists of what people would want in another thread here.
Just because you don't value something doesn't mean it has no value.
You could go through most of the elite skill trees in this game and come up with the same analysis. One could just as easily argue that Surveying has no bearing on your ability to craft things so why do you have to take it to get all of the experimentation points in Master Artisan. You could also argue that if you are a weaponsmith who only wants to make Rifles why do you have to use skill points on melee weaponscrafting when you won't me making them? The answer to all of those questions is: Part of the challenge to to the game is to make choices about your professional skill points. You have to decide how badly you want to advertise your shop. Giving it to you at no cost isn't much of a challenge.
There are some issues with the merchant skill tree..mainly the efficency line is outdated becasue the costs they are discouting are lower than they were when they first designed the profession so the savings is now negligible
The Master skill box should be more powerful. We need to identify workable suggestions that will make it so. It does have another reduction of vendor costs however which is now considerable since they are hourly charges .. those feeds build up over time.
Overall though I just disagree that everything that is fun about the merchant profession should be given to anyone with novice merchant.
Well, you're the correspondent guv, and you'vebeen at this SWG merchanting lark a lot longer than I have.If you think you're getting value for your skill points then maybe you are. Frankly, to my untrained eye you're gettingembarrasingly short-changed. The problem with most of the abilitiesa master merchant has is that you really could give them to novice merchants without anyone batting an eyelid.
Ta for the suggestion, Okie. I might try that. One chunky old Business III vendor will do me just fine in that case.Still, just means some poor soul has to spend skill points for me.
The Master skill box should be more powerful. We need to identify workable suggestions that will make it so. It does have another reduction of vendor costs however which is now considerable since they are hourly charges .. those feeds build up over time.
Really? It is actually cheaper for me since I wasn't exploiting the NPC bug where they only charged you 1cr or less. Were you using NPC vendors when they were bugged Mr. Correspondent?
Jebwa wrote:
The Master skill box should be more powerful. We need to identify workable suggestions that will make it so. It does have another reduction of vendor costs however which is now considerable since they are hourly charges .. those feeds build up over time.
Really? It is actually cheaper for me since I wasn't exploiting the NPC bug where they only charged you 1cr or less. Were you using NPC vendors when they were bugged Mr. Correspondent?
1/3 of my skill tree is tied up in NPC vendors so of course I used them. I always kept them full of credits though just in case the maintenance rates changed. I also ran some terminals and droids from time to time as well.
Heh heh heh. I enjoyed this write-up. I have to agree with much of what Arkenor says. I'm currently a3/4/0/0 Merchant sitting on maxed-out Merchant xp. The only important thing Merchant gives me is Planetary Advertising. The reduced maintenance feesare nice, saving me about 4000 credits a day, but considering how much money I make as a merchant, I really hardly notice it.Compared to the reduced maintenance fees, thereduced vendor/bazaar fees are a sad joke. The stuff from trees that I'm not climbing is cute, but not worth skill points. Money, yes, but skill points, no. Now that I'm almost out of skill points, I'll probably surrender to a 3/0/0/0 Merchant to make way for TKA skills.
Isscossk Osli, owner
Isscossk Resources of Thorn, Naboo (Naritus)
Frankly after playing a merchant in this game since day one, well you know what I mean, I am ready to see the Merchant tree disappear. It is nothing but a skill point sink that does more harm than good. I think they should take all the Merchant skills and place them in the Elite Crafting tree that also gives you your Experiment points.
They will never do anything with the merchant tree because it is there just to keep players from mastering more than 2 other elite crafting skills.
I play a merchant, I enjoy being a merchant, but really, the skills you gain as a merchant should be gained just by being a crafter. Drop the profession from the game. Give the skills to the elite trees.
Many of the skills are just neat stuff. Like talking vendors. I think that's just super cool. Also with NPC instead of coke machine vendors. However, there is a correlation between appearance and sales. Hence the entire Advertising profession in RL. Things that look better and do neat things will sell more than, say a coke machine. Otherwise, why haven't gas station attendants been replaced? They could be. I've done the job, it's entirely a monkey job. We could be replaced by friggin' U-Scan lanes like they have at supermarkets. But people like interacting with people. They like a personal touch. NPC's are more attractive than a clunky vendor. Will it make or break a customer descion? Maybe not. But now with vehicles, and travel time being less of a problem, maybe so.
I do aggree that most of the hiring line is kinda fluffy, though many people like uniforming their employees. Personally I think it's a waste of skill points, and I think we DO deserve better in that line (I mean honestly, the sum of that discipline, of that subject of learning and skill is putting UNIFORMS on NPC's?), but that doesn't make it entirely worthless.
Skedoozy wrote:
I play a merchant, I enjoy being a merchant, but really, the skills you gain as a merchant should be gained just by being a crafter. Drop the profession from the game. Give the skills to the elite trees.
I completely and utterly disagree with that entire paragraph. "should?" based on what? Nothing about crafting an item makes you good at running a large scale merchant shop. That is what the merchant skill trees are for. Basically you would destroy the merchants of the game who don't craft in the name of freeing up skill points.
I took full advantage of the NPC bug when I was able to with no regrets. I exploited and did so proudly. Of course that was only after spending 5k/day on terminal vendors since NPC then couldn't count and sold all my resources to the first person buying.. and then served up empty containers to everybody else. **edit** for tat.
DocSavag wrote:
I completely and utterly disagree with that entire paragraph. "should?" based on what? Nothing about crafting an item makes you good at running a large scale merchant shop. That is what the merchant skill trees are for. Basically you would destroy the merchants of the game who don't craft in the name of freeing up skill points.
What gives you these "skills"? Placing a vendor and waiting? How is this gaining a skill? It's not.
Merchants who don't craft? You HAVE to be joking!! Talk about something rare. I would bet both of my accounts that the number of people who are PURE MERCHANTS WHO DO NOT CRAFT is the LOWEST NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN THE GAME. Do you seriously believe there are enough pure merchants to support it's on profession anymore? The percentage of Merchants who do not craft has to be WAY below 1%. So we keep a huge skill point sink for less than 1%. Great.
Merchants who do not craft. Hahaha I don't know if there is anything more absurd. It's fine in theory, but it aint true.
The question is, do you think we're getting value for skillpoints? Are there really merchants out there who would rather being a merchant was costly on SP simply to keep the class exclusive? You really wouldn't rather do something else with them?
So what if it meant other people can merchant? Being good attrading isn't about buying skills. You can't buy a skill in being able to deal with people. Forging a relationship with a customer is worth 20 singing dancing twi'lek vendors in matching hats.
If enough was added to the class paths, then of course I'd change my tune. But as it stands, I think you're being cheated. And a merchant ought not to be happy with that. I shall be happy with my single vendor, find a merchant willing to let me hire an advertising vendor, and spend my points on being able to make things and survive the journey to my harvesters. This may not make me a true merchant in the eyes of some, but the only opinion that matters to me in that regard is that of my customers and suppliers. And my bank manager.
Anyhows, I've said my piece. I came into this forum room to see if there was any goodness coming the way of the class. It didn't appear so, so I vented my distaste regarding the status quo. If, as at first sight it appears,some folk would rather the classcompare disfavourablyso as to discourage folks from becoming merchants, in order to maintain exclusivity, then I don't think theres much I can add to the conversation.
Alrevolis Vosteo