Merchant Archive

...completly overhauling the merchant profession, and having them craft and sell vendors to crafters of other professions?

Not that I'm overly confident that sony could make a system where a vendor is placed, someone else was given control of it, and there wouldn't be major issues with items poofing and what not.

I don't know, merchant could be so much more than it is...

Skill tree possibilities:

Efficiency: leave it as is, personally, i love the 20% reduction. Although I'd like to see 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% going up the tree, and 25% at master.

-Additional Vendors: Get rid of it. Having artisan skills would be enough to own a vendor. Replace it with:

+Vendor crafting: Whereas the merchant would be able to craft more efficient (cr/hour cost up/down by 1-2 for instance), more models and fashionable vendors, longer lifespan, ability to hold x items (depending on success roll) ability to bark (and also the ability to make a vendor bark only ONE time at a player as they come in the store), etc. What a dream to have a loot drop (along the lines of janta blood, hide, schematics, etc) that would allow a master merchant to create a fairly uniqe vendor.

-Advertising: get rid of it. Make the ability to advertise on the world map be an optional feature (much like a droid personality chip) that is built into the vendor the merchant creates. Keep the much-needed idea of removing empty vendors from the world map. Replace it with:

+Shop design skills: Create a set of schematics that merchants can use to create various items to make shops more "shoplike" - datapads are now creativly used to make "checkout registers", brainstorm and come up with 40 more items that appear in shops. Only merchants could place them (for a fee, of course!). Could even team up with architects somehow to make intercrafting class dependancy in placing and designing shops. Let merchants designate buildings (and I mean especially those owned by others) as "shops" in which certain items with a "decoration" label could be placed and not count towards the item limit for the building (no weapons, armor, or anything else that has a secondary function, but rather, just display items. This would not be imbalancing, imo).

-Hiring: get rid of it. Link the types of vendors that a merchant can create linked directly towards their crafting skill (with some reserved exclusivly for masters). Replace it with:

+(few ideas here)

+Consignment ability. Allow only merchants with this tree to place vendors and sell them for others (of course, people can do this now, but to make it practical, have it set up so that the merchant recieves a set % if the item sells, and the owner of the item recieves the other %)

+GCW: enable a merchant to create vendors that "cater" to factions, if they are alligned themselves. When an imp sees the price on that crate of Stim Bs, it's 20000 for 10, when a rebel boots up a vendor, they see the same item, listed at 30000. (yes I know, huge headache but trying to somehow instill gcw to our profession)

+Meaningful signs (GRR I want this) - how annoying is it to want a customer to know something about the product they are buying? How many times have you had to say "Did you look on the "next page" of items? Did you look at the "seller information" before you bought it? /scream! Allow merchants to make signs that can be placed in shops (similar to a painting) that give information to a buyer. I'm so sick of trying to cram a bunch of information on to the name portion of an armorweave segment and selling it for 999999999 only to have it go to page 5 anyway.

I don't know. Maybe I'm way off base. I just think merchant could be so much more than this add on skill. Yes it would require massive revamping, but hey, it's possible

-Snift

Essentially you would replace Merchant with "Merchant Tools Crafting Profession"

Its just not what the merchant profession is all about. We are essentially a service profession. Our service is the ability to advertise, to hire unique vendor types and to sell 24 hours a day with multiple vendors for less money than it costs other players.

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Chataka Windae
Rifleman/Combat Medic
CEO, Windae Enterprises
Mesric Sanctuary Founder

And you would be against that? Sure, I'm biased because some of the ideas posted are my own, but I think it would add soooo much depth to Merchant.

It doesn't add anything to merchant. It makes everyone a merchant and makes us just another crafting profession.

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Chataka Windae
Rifleman/Combat Medic
CEO, Windae Enterprises
Mesric Sanctuary Founder

It doesnt add anythign to "Merchant", it removes them from the game. You can bet SOE isn't gonna do that. You might as well make the Business tree in Artisan the Vendor crafting/Vendor renting tree. They wont do this. What we are left with is trying to find ways to make the existing profession viable. The upcoming fixes go a long way toward that. Its obvious youreally dont want to have to distribute your goods to anyone else for retail sale. And of course you have options, but I really, earnestly think that if the people who so much hate the thought of distributing their products would just take a step back, and look at the big picture, they would see the net result as a good one.

This time and the next 4 or so months represent a huge, earthshaking change to the game. Nearly every single profession will be profoundly affected by whats coming in that time. I hope people will give it a chance. For us specifically, we will hopefully be able to fill the role intended, and if that is the case, then you might actually find yourself happier with the new system.