Merchant Archive
Thread: Extracting from the Long Thread: Exponential Limits
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Khaldun
Sun Aug 08, 2004 3:13 pm
#1
I see a few other people have suggested this: I want to be sure it doesn't get buried.
Keep the tight limits at the lower end of the vendor-skills, but don't increase in a linear fashion, increase in an exponential one, so that Master Merchant ends up with very large limits. That gives Merchant (esp. Master) some real utility, and it also provides players who want to focus elsewhere some real reason to contract with Merchants at "wholesale" prices to move goods.
Most of the people who are calling for higher limits are just calling for them across the board, which defeats the point of this change. Yes, let's have vastly higher limits, but let's stagger them much more programmatically across the Merchant skill trees. You know, rather like other professions. And let's drop the big benefit onto Master Merchants--you know, like other professions.
Solitiri
Sun Aug 08, 2004 3:20 pm
#2
Unless I have complete control over the items I put on the vendor and the vendor itself, I will not ever again trust another merchant with my sales.
Brilyn
Sun Aug 08, 2004 3:20 pm
#3
< Yes, let's have vastly higher limits, but let's stagger them much more programmatically across the Merchant skill trees. >
Why?
How does this *help* anything?
Your idea *still* means that I need to be a Master Merchant in order to keep a moderately well stocked vendor.
Unacceptable.
Khaldun
Sun Aug 08, 2004 5:41 pm
#4
Solitri, that's frankly just bizarre.
I'm not talking about *trusting* a merchant to run a vendor for you where you have complete control.
I'm talking about *selling* your stuff to a merchant at a wholesale price, and then letting the merchant take a retail markup profit.
That's the way real-world stores work.
If this about the idea that every crafter should get their own stores, on their own terms, then really, SOE *should* eliminate the merchant profession. Plus they should make it so crafters can manufacture much less quickly than they can now. Because very generous vendor terms to people with almost no merchant experience not only makes merchant irrelevant, it effectively leads to a massive glut of the marketplace. Right now, on every server, there is simply way too much of everything in way too many vendors. A concentration of goods on a smaller number of vendors would be a good thing.
It's true that the limits as proposed are an enormous hassle--but if high-level merchants were the only ones capable of having uber-vendors stocked with stuff, many crafters would find that it was worth their while to make good profits by being reliable suppliers to merchants.
Khaldun
Sun Aug 08, 2004 5:47 pm
#5
So tell me whata Merchant is for. Or what a Master Merchant should get.
If everyone can have a well-stocked vendor on favorable terms, then let's get rid of the merchant profession.
And is that good for the game as a whole? Not just for you, for the game as a whole? I just tried "shopping" south of Coronet. The map is so choked with people who have vendors that they've gotten through gaining Merchant experience and dropping it that you can't use the map to find anything. There's no way to tell which of 100 stores might have stocked vendors save experience. There's no way to tell which of 100 stocked stores might have good stock save experience. Merchants who are serious about their stores have to spend time stalking the streets in major cities with spam macros telling people what they've got because planetary advertising is now almost useless.
So this isn't just about Merchants. It's about making the game's economic systems function.
Now I grant you that this has been sprung in SOE's usual clueless manner, with unclear design objectives, and with little thought for the consequences. But if you're protesting that you want to be a mastercrafter AND be a combat profession and yet also have lots of vendors with advertising, well...
suck it up. Because merchants can't be all those things and yet be merchants, just like bounty hunters can't also be master weaponsmiths and master creature handlers all at once.
If you want to eliminate merchants, then call for that. Don't pussyfoot around.
If you want to see limits increased on vendors so that it's reasonable to run a large store, then adopt an exponential increase vision--and become a merchant. That's what you should have to be to run a large store.
Solitiri
Sun Aug 08, 2004 5:49 pm
#6
That is correct however that was not the intent of merchant. The intent of merchant was for a merchant to put down a tent and a vendor and rent them out. The renter had complete control of the vendor. That got abused somehow though I cannot remember how. Someone else here will have to fill us in on that. That *feature* got removed early in the life of the game. We were left with a broken profession for all this time. This led to those who needed a merchant to do the exploit which is not really an exploit but a bug the developers did not squash.
Before a merchant and buy inventory to stock their merchant they need to have capital. They need to have a LOT of capital to do as you are suggesting. How is a merchant to do that? It is the same in the real business world as you pointed out. If I want to play real life I don't need to pay $15 a month to do it.
Now we have this broken profession that is going to be fixed by breaking it more.
VarnaxDespin
Sun Aug 08, 2004 5:50 pm
#7
Khaldun wrote:
Solitri, that's frankly just bizarre.
I'm not talking about *trusting* a merchant to run a vendor for you where you have complete control.
I'm talking about *selling* your stuff to a merchant at a wholesale price, and then letting the merchant take a retail markup profit.
That's the way real-world stores work.
If this about the idea that every crafter should get their own stores, on their own terms, then really, SOE *should* eliminate the merchant profession. Plus they should make it so crafters can manufacture much less quickly than they can now. Because very generous vendor terms to people with almost no merchant experience not only makes merchant irrelevant, it effectively leads to a massive glut of the marketplace. Right now, on every server, there is simply way too much of everything in way too many vendors. A concentration of goods on a smaller number of vendors would be a good thing.
It's true that the limits as proposed are an enormous hassle--but if high-level merchants were the only ones capable of having uber-vendors stocked with stuff, many crafters would find that it was worth their while to make good profits by being reliable suppliers to merchants.
So lets say I am an Armorsmith, which I was for 6 months...I had enough problems keeping myself stocked with master merchant and master AS, let alone trying to supply a middleman...
But lets say we have to go that route... how many "only merchant" classes are going to be able to pay for a stock of 600pieces of armor or suits of armor for that matter from an AS....were talking 50+mil cr in merchandise....surely not consignment..... I would not just hand over 60 suits or a hundred suits that took me alot of time/effort and money to make to joe blow... to sell and hope he repays me.... I also will have to wait upon the merchants delivery of money to me so I can re-invest in new resources etc...
This applies to all crafting proffesions.
Khaldun
Sun Aug 08, 2004 5:53 pm
#8
"the intent of merchant was to put down a tent". Considering when tents came into the live game, that seems a rather backdated concept of the "intent of merchant". Frankly, the intent of merchant from the developer standpoint has never been anything--they've never had the faintest idea of what they thought merchants should be.
But a reasonable *game* interpretation of what a merchant would be is that merchants are the retailers, crafters are the wholesalers. If you want crafters to do both things, you don't want merchants. Simple.
Khaldun
Sun Aug 08, 2004 5:55 pm
#9
Varnax's problem is a more serious one, and it goes to the heart of one of the several major problems in the SWG economy, Where's a pure merchant going to get his capital, basically, without any source of funds short of a) being a combatant or b) being a crafter? But that's more of a concern for the early game economy. Now we're in a situation where I can well see that some current active mastercrafters might well *want* to 'graduate' to being retailers and let another class of mastercrafters come up behind them as suppliers.
Solitiri
Sun Aug 08, 2004 5:59 pm
#10
Spoken by Khaldun:
suck it up. Because merchants can't be all those things and yet be merchants, just like bounty hunters can't also be master weaponsmiths and master creature handlers all at once.
If you want to eliminate merchants, then call for that. Don't pussyfoot around."
I am done dealing with you. This is not a constructive way to discuss this issue nor is it productive. You are just looking for someone to argue with.
I have 2 accounts play 2 servers. I have a master tailor and master merchant, I have stores on 3 there planets on each account. I do run a big business.
I will not speak on this thread any further.
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