Merchant Archive
Thread: Proposed Vendor Exploit Fix
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Aethrin
Fri Apr 16, 2004 4:19 pm
#1
This has probably been done to death - I apologise if this has been suggested before.
Intro:
A quick read through some of the post here and I get the feeling Merchant despise anyone who keeps a vendor around without having the skills. Perhaps rightly so, but there are a number of reasons people do this. The pitiful lack of storage in the game. The ability to only sell items for 6000 credits on the bazaar (3000 was even worse). No trade channel in game. The fact that a lot of people only dabble in buying/selling - this is a combat oriented game after all. But, to be able to keep the best part of a skill tree without maintaining the skills necessary to achieve this in the first place makes the profession useless. So, here goes my proposal - what I think is fair to both Merchants and the general community.
Part I: Hit them where it hurts
I've seen calls to destroy all vendors people don't have the skills for. This is bad for many people who didn't know it was a bug. Not everyone reads the forums. I can only imagine the number of CSR tickets raised if this were to be implemented. Lots of angry people.
So, part I of this proposal is to increase maintenance fees for vendors which people can't support. I'll start with a kill_off_the_vendor_factor of 2, but if this is not discouraging enough then a factor of 3,4,5,etc could be used.
- If a player loses the skills to maintain a vendor, a vendor may be chosen a) at random or b) based on number of items on the vendor (we want to get rid of the vendor so choosing the one with fewest items makes this easier for the player to do) and an email sent to the player saying "Vendor [name] is no longer covered by your employment agreement. Maintenance rates have been raised to [base_maintenance x kill_off_the_vendor_factor] for this vendor".
- Factor of 2 you say? Not very much I hear? No it isn't. Please keep reading, it'll be addressed.
- For each vendor out of maintenance, the cost of that vendor increases by the kill_off_the_vendor_factor. So if 1 is out of maintenance, it costs [base_maintenance x kill_off_the_vendor_factor]. If 2 are out of maintenance, it costs [base_maintenance x kill_off_the_vendor_factor ^ 2] per vendor.
This boils down to the equation:
Total vendor cost = number_of_vendors * [base_maintenance x kill_off_the_vendor_factor ^ number_of_vendors]
- Becoming costly to maintain all those vendors yet? But! I hear you say, what's to stop someone putting all there items on a single vendor? And so comes part II.
Part II: No room at the vendor
- Any vendor which is no longer maintained also suffers a distinct problem holding items. Max item limit is 100-200. This would have to be implemented not to destroy items though (angry people) and so would only prevent restocking items until under the limit. This would force people to either a) re-take the skills or b) live close by and restock the vendor constantly. The max item limit could of course be altered if too large.
I hope the changes outlined would make the Merchant profession useful again without making large sections of the community angry - any comments are welcomed.
Intro:
A quick read through some of the post here and I get the feeling Merchant despise anyone who keeps a vendor around without having the skills. Perhaps rightly so, but there are a number of reasons people do this. The pitiful lack of storage in the game. The ability to only sell items for 6000 credits on the bazaar (3000 was even worse). No trade channel in game. The fact that a lot of people only dabble in buying/selling - this is a combat oriented game after all. But, to be able to keep the best part of a skill tree without maintaining the skills necessary to achieve this in the first place makes the profession useless. So, here goes my proposal - what I think is fair to both Merchants and the general community.
Part I: Hit them where it hurts
I've seen calls to destroy all vendors people don't have the skills for. This is bad for many people who didn't know it was a bug. Not everyone reads the forums. I can only imagine the number of CSR tickets raised if this were to be implemented. Lots of angry people.
So, part I of this proposal is to increase maintenance fees for vendors which people can't support. I'll start with a kill_off_the_vendor_factor of 2, but if this is not discouraging enough then a factor of 3,4,5,etc could be used.
- If a player loses the skills to maintain a vendor, a vendor may be chosen a) at random or b) based on number of items on the vendor (we want to get rid of the vendor so choosing the one with fewest items makes this easier for the player to do) and an email sent to the player saying "Vendor [name] is no longer covered by your employment agreement. Maintenance rates have been raised to [base_maintenance x kill_off_the_vendor_factor] for this vendor".
- Factor of 2 you say? Not very much I hear? No it isn't. Please keep reading, it'll be addressed.
- For each vendor out of maintenance, the cost of that vendor increases by the kill_off_the_vendor_factor. So if 1 is out of maintenance, it costs [base_maintenance x kill_off_the_vendor_factor]. If 2 are out of maintenance, it costs [base_maintenance x kill_off_the_vendor_factor ^ 2] per vendor.
This boils down to the equation:
Total vendor cost = number_of_vendors * [base_maintenance x kill_off_the_vendor_factor ^ number_of_vendors]
- Becoming costly to maintain all those vendors yet? But! I hear you say, what's to stop someone putting all there items on a single vendor? And so comes part II.
Part II: No room at the vendor
- Any vendor which is no longer maintained also suffers a distinct problem holding items. Max item limit is 100-200. This would have to be implemented not to destroy items though (angry people) and so would only prevent restocking items until under the limit. This would force people to either a) re-take the skills or b) live close by and restock the vendor constantly. The max item limit could of course be altered if too large.
I hope the changes outlined would make the Merchant profession useful again without making large sections of the community angry - any comments are welcomed.
warrenowen
Sat Apr 17, 2004 7:42 am
#2
Whilst this is a nice solution, I think it overcomplicates the issue. The issue is more simply solved by the following
When you try to place an item for sale on a vendor :-
If Num_of_my_vendors > Num_allowed_with_MerchSkills then
MESSAGE BOX "SORRY- YOU CURRENTLY ARE RUNNING MORE VENDORS THAN YOUR SKILLS ALLOW, YOU MAY ONLY RUN X VENDORS, YOU WILL NEED TO REDUCE THE NUMBER OF VENDORS BEFORE YOU CAN ADD ANY MORE ITEMS. ITEMS WILL WILL CONTINUE TO BE SOLD ON YOUR CURRENT VENDORS, HOWEVER AFTER 28 DAYS THESE AUTOMATICALLY COME OFF SALE..... SO YOU'D BETTER SORT IT OUT QUICK... OH AND WHEN YOUR VENDORS REACH 0 MAINTENANCE THEY WILL DISAPPEAR - HONEST!!!! - NO SLOW DEGREDATION FOR YOU AS YOU DITCHED YOUR MERCHANT SKILLS SO YOU COULD GO AND CAMP OUT IN SOME CAVE FOR HIGH LEVEL LOOT"
Problem solved, nothing disappears, you get fair warning.
Tarnak_Archvold
Sat Apr 17, 2004 3:16 pm
#3
Other simpler solutions have been put forward. The one I like the most is simply preventing any more items from being put up for sale until the place vendor skill mod and the number of vendors correspond again. After 30 days any unsupported vendor would be empty and unable to be restocked.
Aethrin
Sun Apr 18, 2004 5:04 pm
#4
The problem with those solutions is that you can just get merchant again (It takes what, 1 hour or less to go from nothing to the ability to get 2 vendors if you have a little merchant xp lying around?), restock your vendors, drop the skills againand be happy for another 30 days. Sure it's more work than the current situation but is it a real disincentive?
warrenowen
Mon Apr 19, 2004 2:18 am
#5
You make an interesting point, but most people have their skill points tied up somewhere, they aren't going to want to levelmerchant every month, because they will have to drop master fencer or whatever, and then they need to build that up again. Obviously some people in some scenarios can do as you say, but most will not, and frankly if somebody goes to the trouble of putting theSkill Pointsinto merchant then I think they deserve the month, rather like the crafterwho masters and builds up a few schematics for after he retires.
Even if they do as you say they will only be able to stock the vendor for one time during the month when they have the skills, a huge disadvantage.
This issue could be mitigated if merchant XP was only gained if you have merchant skills for your vendors, again a simple condition added to the code.
The other issue is that we need a solution that the devs aren't going to have to invest too much time in developing, because a complicated solution is difficult to explain to the users and difficult to implement. If we offer a nice simple solution then it is more likely to be adopted (possibly).
_KernMist
Mon Apr 19, 2004 4:02 am
#6
Another solution would be to allow players to drop skills, but not pick them back up until a certain amount of time has elapsed.
For example I drop MasterRifleman to get some Merchant skills. I get my Merchant skills and set up my vendors but cannot pick up Master Rifleman for (for example) another 30 days, even if I have already dropped the merchant skills again.
This will seriously make people reconsider whether they *really* need to sell things themselves or whether they should employ the services of their local Master Merchant in order to sell things (which in my opinion is how it should be...) Can you live without your lifeblood skills in order to gain the benefits of Merchant? Those of you that say "No" should consider taking Merchant the permanent way...
WhiteRose555
Mon Apr 19, 2004 4:09 am
#7
Well I am in favor of a more agressive solution.
1) Remove all non legal vendors. SWG can post on that nice log in screen a warning that they are going to do it.
But if the refuse to fix thsi exploit then atleast prevent it from happening in the future.
2) Do not allow any skill drops from the merchant line or bussiness line if you have an active vendor. They do a pretty good job of knowing that I have all my vendors dropped, so in the drop skill code it should not be hard ot add a line of code that says
if VendorCount > 0 then DropSkill=False
Vendor Tent Checks would only work if SWG stores what you have dropped in your 10 lots. We may have to just suck this one up.
The problem with having merchants deployed and trying to drop skills is that when you do a merchant maybe illegal. It could be advertising, barking, a certain race or type that you no longer are eligible for. Realistically I think we would have a much better chance of getting SWG to implement this low effort fix that a complicated check system to cover all trhe possible solutions for making a vendor that is deployed illegal. It would make dropping merchant skills a pain, but how often do you do that anyways unless you are giving up the profession completely or plaining on exploiting it?
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