Merchant Archive

I've been mulling over the Advertising skill tree, and come to the conclusion that it needs love. The point of "advertising", generally speaking,is to make people aware of your business, and get them to come to it so they can give you money. Right?

"Ad" is a very misleading term here - the "barking" occurs in spatial chat, so it only reaches people who are coming to your shop already. In a crowded mall, it makes a bit more sense, but in a setting like that the odds are good that EVERY vendor in the place is barking, and your chat buffer is just filling up with too much junk to read. What's more, the generic messages available at this level don't provide any information beyond what general type of goods you're selling.

This is a minor improvement in that you can continually customize the messages to alert customers to the day's specials, but it still suffers from the general problems associated with barking - namely, it doesn't reach anyone who isn't already in your shop, and it doesn't do anything but spam up spatial.

This is the reason that people get the Advertising tree. In one fell swoop, customers can search for you by category, they can get a waypoint to your shop, and they see your shop name on the overhead map. A WONDERFULLY useful skill.

Although I don't particularly like the spamdroids, they areeffective in that they can't be ignored, but they don't last that long. The lower advertising costs are pretty insignificant, since advertising is dirt cheap anyway, and reduced costs seem like they should go in the Efficiency tree anyway. All in all, the best reason to get this skill box is the cool Propagandist title.

I think we can do better. So here's an alternate list of skills I've come up with. Fling poo and eggs, offer suggestions, whatever you like - I'm curious to hear what everyone else thinks of this.

This low-level skill causes registered vendors to show up on the overhead map, but noton the planetary map. This allows people in the immediate area who are navigating with the overhead mapto see your shop at a glance and go check it out, but it doesn't help someone on the other side of the planet.

Ability to operate a spamdroid. 'Nuff said. Like I said, I don't like 'em much myself, but anything to give those poorDEs more business.

Functions exactly like the current Adv III skill.

An extension of the planetary advertising skill, this allows the merchant to give the vendor a blurb (like a Yellow Pages ad) that can be accessed from the planetary map (analogous to the "Details" option in the commerce UI), so that potential customers can get additional information about the vendor's stock if they so desire.

What about ad barking? I'd suggestmodifying it to be less spammy (have it fire at infrequent random intervals, rather than having every vendor in a building spam at once when a customer comes in rnage)making it always customizable,and putting it in Novice Merchant or thereabouts, since my view is that it doesn't have much to do with advertising specifically.

That leaves us with four skills for the four boxes. Any other suggestions?

"Prettiest shim on Bria!" - Sev
Certified "cool" by the Darth Vader of Bria
Blue glowie.

Darn, good post.Another idea, the possibility of making an ad on bazaar in a special section, or that would always appear at the top of the corresponding category in the bazaar listing. About as good as the planetary map except it can be accessed from any planet. And as the bazaar time limit is 7 days, it would make sure that those vendors are recently stocked.

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Novice Lekku Stomper

Oo, I like the idea of ad space in the bazaar. It'd be a great way to start pulling newbies into your shop, since most of them start out by shopping in the starting city bazaars.

"Prettiest shim on Bria!" - Sev
Certified "cool" by the Darth Vader of Bria
Blue glowie.