Merchant Archive
Thread: Have we heard any update on vendor item limits?
I would assume that since the devs haven't said anything since they announced they were rethinking their original, nightmarish proposal for the 150 item cap, that this cap will *not* be going in with publish 7.
If anyone has any news on what's been happening with the caps and when it might be going live, I'd love to hear it. I'm anxious as all Hades to find out what the deal is going to be.
Doc, have you heard anything about this?
Thanks!
Or to use an example, say a particular level of Merchant skill entitles you to 3 vendors and 600 items, I'd rather see them handle this as:
1. You can have 3 vendors maximum, and a maximum of 600 items on your vendors
rather than
2. You can have 3 vendors, and each vendor may have a maximum of 200 items.
I.e., the upshot would be that you could put everything on one vendor if you wanted to, or have one vendor with 590 and one with only 10, etc.
I have a hunch (based on wild-ass reverse engineering guesses about the database structure, so take with a huge grain of salt) that option 1 *might* be the most easily implemented solution anyhow. It seems like it might be easier to limit items based on an item-person relationship as opposed to an item-vendor relationship.
Regardless, I *hope* they do something like #1 if it has to be done. For me, the potential requirement to scatter my goods across multiple vendors for no good reason is nearly as bad as the draconian number limits in the first place.
SueDenim wrote:
For me, the potential requirement to scatter my goods across multiple vendors for no good reason is nearly as bad as the draconian number limits in the first place.
Message Edited by DocSavag on 03-10-2004 01:51 PM
doc i really cant believe you nor the devs have this figured out.....
- ok you take your lot mule or do a vendor trade witha new person....give him supplies to craft until he gets biz three...
- give him admin rights to your shop or house
- he drops bulky vendor
- you offer the items you want to sell on his vendor.
- he takes the items, buys them with money you supply (hello 1 credit a piece) and lists them
- at first you can just offer anything as you will just be buying it back..you look at the vendor every 1/2 hour and buy something giving him merchant XP
- after you have done this enough to get him to novice, you place more vendors and rinse and repeat until you have as many as you need
- then you simply offer the items to the vendor, he logs in once a week to list the items and tip you what ever money the vendors have made
I've agreed in the past, and continue to agree, that vendors shouldn't remain uncapped. Even if this particuliar database is pathetic, there is *no* database that is unendingly unlimited in size. I'm just really opposed to having a very low cap set. I'd like to see master level merchants get a minimum of 1,000 items per vendor, adn to have that amount scaled down as you reach business 3 in the artisan tree. And I feel it would be a very helpful thing if the devs stopped nerfing left and right and did things the other way around: by researching how to do things like making all the thousands of unstackable items stackable, making factories produce crates of at least 100, reducing the incredible number of different variations of the same resources, etc., etc.
I've seen TH post on this, and he mentioned that it was harder than it seemed to do these things. That may well be, but brutally penalizing your already wounded and less than cheery player base for the shortcomings of the system is no way to go about fixing it, whether it's a short term solution to a larger problem or not. If they've got to cap the vendors, that's fine. But claiming that their game is an entirely crafter-driven, player based economy and then removing the ability of crafters to sell their items is simply incredibly misleading and bad form.
Cap away, but cap at a *decent* level. One thousand items on a master merchant's vendors is still going to give the database a huge amount of relief, and then to take up the slack they can finally remove the utterly ridiculous, useless, and annoying "auction" option on the bazaar and remove the contentious exploit...yes, I firmly believe it's an exploit...where people who drop merchant and business skills can still retain their vendors. I am willing to bet that the vast majority of merchants wouldn't utter so much as a peep (and be justified) if the vendor cap was set at 1,000 for the master of the profession. Even tailors and armoursmiths I've spoken to feel that 1,000 is totally adequate for their high-volume businesses. It's those professions that will be hit the hardest...but as an architect who moves a vast amount of furniture and harvesters, I can tell you it's going to hurt me, too, and I resent it because there are much better ways to do this.
The dev team is really trying to sort stuff out as well as they can, but the decisions they sometimes make astound me. For instance, take the recently rethought decision to remove the ability to sell or trade bags that are not empty. This is an incredibly thoughtless, hostile act against not only crafters but all players. Why in the name of the gods was this even considered to be a good idea? It should have never left the room where those absurd words were spoken in the first place. How can anyone think this is a good solution to any problem? Even if it does take longer to make bags viewable, this other option should never have been considered acceptable in the first place. Only after they make their decision public and face an overwhelming amount of player outcry do they realize what an asinine maneuver this would be? Come on now. Who's doing the approvals on this stuff?
Sure, they've thought better of it, and they make it sound like it's them listening to the player base. In reality, they not only dropped the ball but threw it over a cliff, and they're scrambling madly to make it sound like they're doing their best to "work with" the player base. Unfortunately, that holds no water, because this decision was as stupid as the decision to implement vendor caps of 150 before the screaming outrage of the players made them realize that it might be a tad draconian to run a crafter-based, player-economy game with no way to actually sell anything that players make. You can only use this kind of tactic so long before people begin to become unable to believe a word you say.
I try my best to give all the support I can to the dev team and the players that help them iron out the issues in the game. I fully understand and expect that mistakes...major ones and minor ones...are destined to be made. Out of mistakes, in fact, have come some of humanity's greatest successes. I know about the appalling amount of work that the devs face in not only building but launching and then debugging a project of this magnitude. I try to do my part to help when I can. However, I can't help but grow suspicious and disgruntled when the level of comprehension doesn't go up, and nobody learns a dang thing even though the same mistakes...and bad mistakes, hostile mistakes, really unprofessional, unthinking, inconsiderate mistakes...are made time and time and time again, and then we get lectured on how to be positive and told by the devs that they will only look at threads that are upbeat. How's that for putting the final insult on the glaring injuries done to the intelligence and dedication of the players who have been there from beta and who have no wish more heartfelt than to see SWG actually realize the incredible potential slumbering within?
I'm hoping that this vendor cap issue, as well as the other myriad and nearly countless nerf and other poor decision-based issues that are currently plaguing the game are able to be resolved in a manner that, if it *must* discomfort the players, discomforts them as little as possible. At the same time, I think that the devs must expect some discomfort, as well...drive away your players, and your database problems might be solved, but I'm thinking it'd be cheaper in the long run to simply improve, or replace, the database. If you wouldn't keep a car with a crap engine, no matter how nice the car is, why would you not apply the same theory to anything that was badly broken, such as the database for this game? It doesn't make sense to me, and all it does is really cripple the devs from being able to implement things I KNOW they would love to implement, as well as piss off the players.
Maybe in the future this database can be improved or replaced. In the meantime, it's ours to work with. I'm willing to do that becuase I have no choice other than to quit the game, which I'm not *quite* yet willing to do. I think a lot of what the dev team has done is simply stunning, and incredible, and I want to continue playing and watching the game grow. There have been a lot of cool things done lately, and it is without a doubt that the dev team *does* hear the players at times, and TH *does* do his best much of the time to represent the players, and none of these guys tends too act too much like a suit.
However, the "suit" mentality is sometimes also really glaringly obvious...especially when the players are lied to and misled...and I think that as the engineers of the game, the devs should share some of the player discomfort for the faulty decisions, shortsightedness, and bugged, flawed implementations on the part of the dev team.
Thanks again for all your hard work, Doc. I hope this vendor issue turns out okay.
May the Force be with you!
Naufragus wrote:
DocSavag wrote:
And btw if you are going to use this method to get around the item limits you need to be with us on the changes we are asking for in area of making consignment sales easier to do.
i dont care about consignment sales...like 99% of everyone else with a vedor i sell my own goods...i dont really care aboyt selling other poeples goods
i dont want people offering things on the vendor...i dont want to have to deal with the vendors any more than a couple of times a month...i load them then go other things.
Could you point me to the evidence to support the fact that 99% of all people with a vendor don't sell any thing but their own merchandise?
DocSavag wrote:
Naufragus wrote:
[description of how mule is used]
That is funny....there is nothing to "figure out" You are describing a consignment system using another merchant. I made millions doing that for a weaponsmith taking 10% of the sale. Merchants are using this method all day on every server. What is different about yours? You are talking about swapping merchant accounts across server? That is a total waste of time since you can get someone on your own server to do it for a small fee per transaction and be sure they will be online handling business a lot more often than 1 time a week.
And btw if you are going to use this method to get around the item limits you need to be with us on the changes we are asking for in area of making consignment sales easier to do.
It isn't funny at all Doc, the nature of a mule is that it looks just like a character and does the same things, but has "neither pride of parentage or hope of progeny". The character hardly ever has a player operating it, just a few minutes at a time. In Everquest, bazaar mules had to be logged in, but people would start them up and go to work or to sleep -- nobody there, character never actually played. SWG mules will havelogged out next to their vendors and be active only long enough to complete the transactions their owners need. No real character there.
The mechanics for consignment etc. are only needed for transactions between real players. You don't need them to operate a mule who has no motivation ofhis own or desire for profit. So long as you can trust the people who can access the mule account not to rob it (perhaps due to offline relationships or guild links), the owner will just operate it for the few minutes a week needed. Each account can provide a mule on 10 servers or so.
Do you want to be regarded as a mule because you are a merchant?Often EQ bazaar mules were seen traveling around fetching things for sale or delivering purchases to their owner. Originally, I thought they were newbies like meand wasted buffs and time on them. Eventually you learn the signs, since some would respond "just a mule", or you would see them in the bazaar, and learned to ignore them.
Actually, without the droid command capabilites, I see most crafter characters becomming mules in the long run. Master whatevers, logged on only long enough to make what was needed at the time, but otherwise not played. The crafting character becomes just a mule owned by the player whose main is able to participate in the high-end content (GCW, PvP, dungeons etc.) which all requires seriouscombat ability.
DocSavag wrote:
It is funny because the "method" that the devs and I can't figure out is something I (and many others) have been doing for crafters for months in a much more productive manner than is being described. It is nothing more than a consignment system. It won't even work like it is described since the time it takes to operate a vendor is a lot more than a few minutes a week especially if the items on the vendor are limited.
It is all so unecessary. It can be done much more efficiently with real players rather than just mule accounts. Players who have a vested interest (profit) in performing this service.
Oh, sorry Doc, I didn't realize Chataka was justa mule. Who is your main?
: apologizes for sarcasm
All the merchant mule is doing is mindlessly accepting offers and placing or renewing sales for a bunch of vendors in one house. The player logs him in just after making the offer, so that will take how long? There is no email to go through, unless you also use him as a mail drop. You might have him hold the cash, and log him in to bank-tip it to you, or you pull it out using your offer price.
A merchant player has to invest a lot of time in building trust andmanaging relationships with customers and suppliers, investigating competition and going price levels, examining offers, etc. that doesn't apply to the mule. Sure, thereal work of amerchant adds value, but those are all things that are best done on your main and not while logged onto the mule.
Many crafter players will find it easier to have a mule than to deal with a live Merchant. Real players want some of the available profit, and the relationship needs to be maintained. The real Merchantwill have their own opinions about whatis best to selland prices, and all the complexities of an actual living person. Those crafters will probably never even realize that they could be doing better with some division of labor.
I had hoped that the design of SWG was going tolimit the creation of mules. Mules are a rather disgusting class of character, since they are really NPCs, but have the appearance of players. Storage or Lot mules were discouraged by the one-account-per-server rule, and were not really neccessary anyway.
But between the vendor limits and the weak value for Merchant skillpoints, I am really worried about Merchant mules becomming the most common kind of merchant. Even real merchants will have them.