Merchant Archive

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DocSavag wrote:

What if there were wholesale terminals in static cities that anyone could make sales TO but only Merchants could buy from. (Effiency IIish I think) The offers on this terminal would be unlimited but the general public wouldn't be allowed to buy there. This would give crafters the ability to sell in bulk to merchants who would then sell the merchandise locally on their vendors.

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That would just limit who could buy their goods, which I think would make most people avoid selling to it.

If you want to make it easier for us to gain needed resources, it would be better to extend the bazaar like this :

Add a merchant ability to place "want to buy xxx at yyy per unit" on a new tab in the bazaar. No price limit. Max number of "needs" listed to be discussed.

That way, hunters, miners and manufacturers can compete to fill "orders" for goods. This would add new things to do for these people who now either need to have a close and personal agreement with people who want their goods, or stand around spamming in cities with "WTB" or "WTS", noise that I am sure many would want to see less of.

For resources, specific named resources. For crates, either just the type ( for cloth etc where stats are irrelevant ), or within special parameters for stats.

So, I want agiven amountof a specific, named type of wooly hide. I enter my need into the bazaar.

Bingo, I have now created a "mission" for those players who can get this for me. And since the first to fill the order gets the deal, it is also an incentive to fill it quickly, which is good for me, and creates competition among the sellers, which is healthy for the economy.

I think this would stimulate the economy, reducing the damage the holocrons did ( I used to be able to buy crates of cloth on the bazaar, that stopped almost immediately after the holo craze begun ), stimulate hunting again ( hide also just about vanished from the bazaar post-holo ) and help casual players, solo players, and new players getting an income from hunting or manufacturing what they do not need themselves.

Also it would reduce the current tendency to be as self sufficient as possible ( since the bazaar stopped being a reliable source of certain components made by other professions ), once more stimulating trade among professions, allowing some to drop professions they did not really want, but had to get to be able to produce their goods ( as in armorsmiths being tailor to make cloth, plus master artisan to make shield components ).

Finally, it take a lot of guesswork out of what to mine or harvest for sale...the bazaar is often clogged with material that is plentiful, but of no use to anyone except for grinding

The whole point of it is limiting who can buy their goods but it also gives them a market of large buyers from all over the galaxy. The benefit to them is that they don't have to try to makret their wares to individuals. They come on put up a crate of weapons for x amount (with no cap because the general public can't buy it) and merchants from all over the galaxy can buy it. I think it has potential to allow crafters to sell to larger buyers if they want to do wholesale which is an almost completely untapped market.

I actually like the purchase order idea as well because that is in fact one of the missing components of our economy. I have no way to really find people wanting volume purchases.

I would have used that technique myself recentlyl since I was looking for large volumes of meat for grinding and finding it the traditional way is very very difficult.

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DocSavag wrote:

Ok.. so let me see if I have this:

This skillwould give Merchants the ability to have auctions on the bazaar that are not capped at 6k. Are you asking for their instant sale auctions to not be capped as well? What about regular users? Do they still have auctions that are capped at 6k?

I was just thinking about auctions but removing the cap on insta-sale would be good too!!!!!!!

Where is the proper place for this skill? It can't be tied to Premium Auctions where it is currently because that is a Business II skill. Effiency III is the Reduced Bazaar Fees this might be a good place for it.

Sorry, i didnt realise it was that low...i thought it was up in effiency...Effiency 3 sounds really good!

Are you still limited to 25 auctions? Should you get 25 at Eff III and more at Master?

I think that that sould also be an effiency bonus....25 until say Effiency 4 then you get +10 and another +15 at Master

There are some considerations that should be made about this. While it sounds like there is no down side there usually is. For one thing this has the potential for moving all of the high priced items out of the vendors and into the bazaar. That seems good but it derails the player city economy which relies in part on sales taxes to make their money. It moves people back to static cities for purchasing instead of pushing that activity out to cities and unincorporated communities. The lag will get worse at popular city bazaars. Hopefully one day they will fix the technical issues with the bazaar terminals being put in player cities.

Well...PCs are basically a failure but thats another topic. Most merchants are not concerned with it. On my server most good shops are outside of the static cities anyway.

But PCs should have a BAZAAR as well. It could be a structure buildable by architects but only placable by MMs like hospitals and bars can only be placed by Masters.

(Do you really believe there is a "technical" issue or just laziness?)

As far as moving goods from vendors to the Bazaar.. What is wrong with that. Why is so all fired great about selling from vending machines. As a merchant, i just want to sell goods...i dont care about the how and the where. Lets stop worshiping the vending machines.

Wouldnt that also help the Vendor item limit issue?

Let me pitch a slightly different idea (and not a competitor to this idea but an extension of it)

What if there were wholesale terminals in static cities that anyone could make sales TO but only Merchants could buy from. (Effiency IIish I think) The offers on this terminal would be unlimited but the general public wouldn't be allowed to buy there. This would give crafters the ability to sell in bulk to merchants who would then sell the merchandise locally on their vendors.

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Naufragus wrote:

Well...PCs are basically a failure but thats another topic. Most merchants are not concerned with it. On my server most good shops are outside of the static cities anyway.

Really..on my server almost all of the good shops are in a few Player Cities. And you go there because you find a lot of them in a concentrated area and they have a reputation of having vendors that have a good variety of merchandise.

But PCs should have a BAZAAR as well. It could be a structure buildable by architects but only placable by MMs like hospitals and bars can only be placed by Masters.

(Do you really believe there is a "technical" issue or just laziness?)

There is a technical issue or was that prevented them from putting the bazaars in player cities. The bazaar placement has been an issue since beta. The whole vendor system is apparently a lot more complicated than it seems.

As far as moving goods from vendors to the Bazaar.. What is wrong with that. Why is so all fired great about selling from vending machines. As a merchant, i just want to sell goods...i dont care about the how and the where. Lets stop worshiping the vending machines.

Wouldnt that also help the Vendor item limit issue?

It would just move the problem to the bazaar.The bazaar it is just another vendor database with some slightly different functionality. Putting the major workload on it would cause issues and lag it down. Not to mention that you can't find anything on it as it is without adding 1000's 1000's of additionalitems to it. One of the benefits of the vendor system is distributed processing for all those items.

Before you get so excited about selling everything through the bazaar I hope you really think it through.If every merchant is selling through the bazaar you will be competing with EVERYONE at the same time for attention. Your items will just bea few more in a sea of 100's of the same item. A 2credit difference in your price will now result in youlosing the sale rather than someone buying it becausethey are already there and theshop is convienient to them. Impulse buying is easier to facilitate in a shop with multiple vendors all inviting thecustomer to look atwhat is available. The bazaar is not magical. It isa good place to move items quicklyespecially now since not that may types of items are actually available on it. If you push everything to the bazaarthat will all chagne. I doubt it will end up what most merchants want. It certainly doesn't give youANY role playing satisfaction whatsoever which is important to some of us and it is an RPG after all even if some of you don't appreciate that. In the process you render 3/4ths of the Merchant skill tree useless. (And no they aren't already even if you don't use them many people do).

Ultimately, moving everything to the bazaar is not a good move for merchants in my opinion.

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DocSavag wrote:

The whole point of it is limiting who can buy their goods but it also gives them a market of large buyers from all over the galaxy. The benefit to them is that they don't have to try to makret their wares to individuals. They come on put up a crate of weapons for x amount (with no cap because the general public can't buy it) and merchants from all over the galaxy can buy it. I think it has potential to allow crafters to sell to larger buyers if they want to do wholesale which is an almost completely untapped market.

I actually like the purchase order idea as well because that is in fact one of the missing components of our economy. I have no way to really find people wanting volume purchases.

I would have used that technique myself recentlyl since I was looking for large volumes of meat for grinding and finding it the traditional way is very very difficult.

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you guys are thinking like me NOW!!!!!

the bazaar need to fundementally change.

There should not be single listings for 1000 steel, 500 steel etc...the resources shouldnt be 19 pages long...all resources should be lumped together...

You should pull up the Bazaar and it should look like this

RESOURCES

Copper

Iron

Steel

Click steel

Lycos Duralloy 500,000

Altavista Duralloy 175,000

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Naufragus wrote:

lol omg you mean that didnt get 1 starred!!!!!

it only makes sense.

Thats what a Premium Bazaar skill should be. not some silly asterick no one pays any attention to.

There should be no Galaxy Trade forums....that is what is bad for merchants...not the so called "illegal" vendors

Vendors are fine...but really are only limited

The bazaar is where it is at... It allows you to reach a galaxywide audience.

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DocSavag wrote:

This skillwould give Merchants the ability to have auctions on the bazaar that are not capped at 6k. Are you asking for their instant sale auctions to not be capped as well? What about regular users? Do they still have auctions that are capped at 6k?

Where is the proper place for this skill? It can't be tied to Premium Auctions where it is currently because that is a Business II skill. Effiency III is the Reduced Bazaar Fees this might be a good place for it.

Are you still limited to 25 auctions? Should you get 25 at Eff III and more at Master?

There are some considerations that should be made about this. While it sounds like there is no down side there usually is. For one thing this has the potential for moving all of the high priced items out of the vendors and into the bazaar. That seems good but it derails the player city economy which relies in part on sales taxes to make their money. It moves people back to static cities for purchasing instead of pushing that activity out to cities and unincorporated communities. The lag will get worse at popular city bazaars. Hopefully one day they will fix the technical issues with the bazaar terminals being put in player cities.

Let me pitch a slightly different idea (and not a competitor to this idea but an extension of it)

What if there were wholesale terminals in static cities that anyone could make sales TO but only Merchants could buy from. (Effiency IIish I think) The offers on this terminal would be unlimited but the general public wouldn't be allowed to buy there. This would give crafters the ability to sell in bulk to merchants who would then sell the merchandise locally on their vendors.

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Ilikeyour idea of makingauctions a merchantonly skill. The insta-sell cap should certainly be left at 6k for most characters, though I wouldn't object to a Merchant skill raising that or increasing the number of auctions. I recall that being suggested before, but don't recall the discussion.

Most of the auctions I see on the trade forums are for really high priced items like 100k of good resource or rare drops. Typical pricing is millions. That generates enough interest among the participants that the effort of an offline venue, then having to locate the other person online, doesnot seem to bea problem. I am not sure how well it works there, I haven't participated myself. An unlimited bazaar auction should take over that market, though the item holderwould have to be, orfind, a merchant to handle it. The trade forum can be used to advertise the existance of the bazaar auction.

Making all auctioning a merchant privledge would only help non-merchants, because the auctions work so badly now. With a 6k limit on prices, a bazaar auction isn't worth looking at more than once (unless, I suppose, you have a mule parked next to a terminal just to do price checks). Most items are ignored, or get exactly one bid, either at the minimum or at 6k. I am fairly familiar with that, as I have made good money buying bazaar auction items, often for 2cr bids. Kind of a distastefull activity though that feels like griefing.

I like Eff 3 as the box for this, and the title for IV could be upgraded to Auctioneer! Another minor point is that the current bid might show the name of the bidder. I think many on the trade forums bid partly for the benefit of being seen as rich, and it would help discourage using shills.

A viable wholesale market would be great, but to really work, non-merchant crafters would have to have confidence that well made and priced product would actually sell most of the time. Howwould you achieve that?

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DocSavag wrote:

Ok.. so let me see if I have this:

Where is the proper place for this skill? It can't be tied to Premium Auctions where it is currently because that is a Business II skill. Effiency III is the Reduced Bazaar Fees this might be a good place for it.

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My thinking is that it would allow you to place in instant sale for any amount on the bazaar. And allow you to create a 7 dayauction as well with no cap on how high the auction can go. You still have the same 25 item cap. Here is the rub. The fee for these unlimited cap sales and auctions on the bazaar would be a % of the final price.

Since this skill would in effect invalidate the use of vendors, I feel that this skill should be reserved for master merchants only.

After all, this would be the "crown jewel" skill of the profession.

the Trade Forums INVALIDATE vendors

let go of your vendor love....

dont you guys see that by making vendors a pain and requiring many skill points and adding limits you are just driving people to the Trade Forum..

A good portion of the posts are ads for shops...making the map skill worthless

As i said earlier...the real threat to Merchants is the trade forum..

It makes merchant skills completly unneeded.