Merchant Archive

Ok, I've done the merchant thing, I ran three vendors before I took a short break and now coming back into the game. A close knit group of my friends play with me and we play to have fun. These new vendor limit would not only limit what we could sell, how much of it, but also greatly increase time amount of time it will take to run the vendors. We had planned for our weaponsmith to keep a fair amount of merchant so he could run the 2-3 vendors we had planned to keep us in a fairly steady stream of income from resources and crafted goods.

Instead of going on a rant about the limits, how stuidly low they are, and how it'll destory so many buisnesses out there that we all rely on for goods, lets try to come up with a better solution.

Problem 1: Lots and lots of empty vendors that are still on the world map. Well that's an easy thing to fix. If a vendor stays empty for 3 days it's automatically removed from the world map. 3 days not enough, make it 5. I know people log into empty vendors that have been away for a few days and such, but we've got to do something about all the people who have left the game for good (because of stupid SOE decisions and such) and they have vendors on the map for months afterwards.

Problem 2: People using vendors to store things. This is a effect from the fact houses, the bank don't store enough items. Increase the storage on structures and they'll have far less of a need to use vendors as a storage point. I'm sure it takes less database room to store an item in the bank than on a vendor with all attached price, age on vendor, etc. Not to mention the actual vendor.

Problem 3: Non Merchants, and even non Artisans keeping vendors long after they have dropped the skills. Honestly, I'm guilty of this one in the past. However these limits are NOT the solution to the problem. You limit how non-merchants can operate the vendors, not the number of items on them. Example: player gets the skills to place 3 vendors and then drops the boxes needed to keep them. If they still have the novice merchant skill then the maintance on the vendors above his "limit" goes up by say 50%. If he drops merchant completely then he looses the ability to add maintance to any vendor that's not the buisness 3/4 style vendor. If the player drops Artisan all togther then they loose ability to add maintance to any of their vendors. Oh, and limit the amount of maintance to 60 days. Sure they could pick up kills once very 2 months, but that's easier said than done when it requires dropping high level skills to do that.

It's not a perfect fix, but think it's a huge step in the right direction instead of pissing off the only group SOE hasn't lately - the crafters.

Oh, wait, we already are by simply "testing" this without getting any input from the community

Solutions you say? Try these...

1. We all move to Test Center server so we can have 4 characters on one account. Then you will have your lots and vendors and anything else you need without much hassle. The item limits however are still too low.

2. LucasArts (sorry everyone is bashing SOE and I feel the main problem is George Lucas, not SOE), allows all servers to have at least 4 characters per account. Due to the lot issue on each planet they can limit the amount of players per server and lock the server when it is full, allowing every 4 character account to have all 40 lots, guaranteed. Or they can add memory space and whatever else is needed to support this move. Again, the item limits are still too low.

3. Shut down the entire game and start from scratch. PVP is broken, Jedi is broken, Merchant is broken, Professions have been nerf until they are no longer fun to play, cities are broken... you name it, it has issues in one form or another. This merchant issue is indeed the final straw for a good many of us.

The pvpers were lost a while back with the system being broken and nothing but promises for a fix. The fix will probably follow suit as the other fixes that are nothing more than nerfs. Smuggler profession just had its' 1 year anniversary for the promise to fix it that was never utilized. However, seeing the fix to Merchant I can only imagine the fix to Smuggler will be similar in nature. Master Creature Handler has been "fixed" three times until it is a useless profession.

GCW fixes will follow suit most likely, the fun will be removed.. actually, the fun was never there.

With the pvpers gone on the most part that leaves a pve crowd. The content is not there. Why pay for this game when EQ1 is still there and had 5 years worth of content? And that game actually works.

What is left? Merchants and crafters. This will put an end to those professions as well.

What does that leave us with?

Well, we have JTL coming out. Why would I want to buy the xpac for a game I can't play because it has been nerfed to the point that it is no longer fun?

Sorry, I do not see much of a solution to fixing the whole problem. Like most the posts I've read, my two accounts will likely be canceled and I will go back to EQ1 until EQ2 comes out. And that is where I will stay. George Lucas can play by himself.

"When Sony and Lucas set out, we said, 'How can we do this and not make another EQ?' We didn't want it to be all about Luke, or combat, or lock our players into a class. So we created a system that would allow players to switch professions during the game, and there would be a lot of gameplay around making that change. If you want to go from architect to scout we've created a system to make that happen." - Julio Torres

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George Lucas can play by himself.

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had to laugh, most the people involved in these stupid decisions probably play WITH themselves, which would make them a bunch of ******* which is proved by the ideas they keep proposing

                             .--.           
Leader of GDC      ::\`--._,'.::.`._.--'/:: Found Spiderwell you have
Vendors & MedShop  ::::.  ` __::__ '  .:::: Master Doctor I am
Pickup/Dropoff     ::::::-:.`'..`'.:-:::::: 12 Points I have
HQ Dant 3348 5515  ::::::::\ `--' /:::::::: Signature sucks it does
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This would be my solution to this fix:

1a) master merchant - unlimited. merchant 4 - 400, merchant 3 - 200, merchant 2 - 100, merchant 50, business 4 - 25

1b) master merchant - unlimited. merchant 4 +50, merchant 3 +50, merchant 2 +50, merchant +50, business 4 +25, all other merchant skill boxes +25.

2) Bazaar would be limited to 10 items.

3) Bazaar would be unlimited in price for the auction and the sales.

4) All factory crates will now hold up to the 1000 items crafted.

Zuker - Jedi
Zuke - Commando
Bastia - Structures Trader
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