Merchant Archive

"I've owned a modem since 1987, I'm a cyberpunk to the core. I'm never wrong on such things."

Ya know ya had me right up until this part. I mean in the beginning of the post you were nearly breaking your arm to pat yourself on the back, but I looked past that. This line here tho is the bit that puts the 00b3r 133tness back into the whole thing, which is just a personal annoyance. The never being wrong and the earlier comments really just make you sound arrogant. No one cares really how long you've had your modem.

"Factory Crates: Should stack to 1000 no matter the schematic that produced them. Most crates stack to 25 units per crate, raising this to 1000 would reduce the # of factory crates on all database servers by FOURTY times. I'm sure most smart crafters know this, the BEST storage devices in gameare NOT vendors, but factories. You can store 100 items in the output hopper of a factory and 100 items of ANYTHING in the input hopper. Only the truly stupid store stuff on vendors and price the stuff out to 9999999 or whatever."

The problem with trying to stack multiple crates like that is that the serial numbers are different if they are from different runs. If you would be given the option to create crates of any given size up to 1000 when you start the factory, that would solve the issue as everything in that huge crate would be the same serial number and then it could be split down if the crafter so desired. Crates of 1000 synth cloth or reinforced panels would make armorsmiths and tailors quite happy I'm sure. Otherwise it won't happen as the different serial numbers wouldn't be able to stack. Also, right now you cannot recombine crates you have already split apart.

Resources:I would definitely have no problem with stacking to a million, especially considering some folks having several characters worth of mining happening. Back before they fixed experimentation with architects I had several fusion reactors...they were BER 13 and 14 with one that was a 21. You want to talk ridiculous numbers of power, I had plenty coming in to keep me wealthy just from those 4. Course, my videocard died and I wasn't in game for a month so I lost them all. BER8 and 10may well be just a bit on the ridiculous side for a medium, but right now you can experiment smalls up to BER 4 so it would seem to make sense in that respect.

Bazaar:In the same breath you say get rid of all auctions and then you say to increase auction limits to 10k. Did you mean instant sales should be increased to 10k instead? Also, you will never be able to regulate the cpu cost of resources on the bazar. the Devs have shown that while they will take some steps to provide more money sinks to get rid of excess capital in the system, that they have no intrest in auctual limitations on the player economy ie setting artificial ceilings for resource prices. If you're going to raise a cap for anything raise it for everything. I've been a Merchant and a crafter in the past (and on Valcyn i'm working on BE now so I'm a crafter yet again) so I understand how vendors work, but I honestly believe that increasing the bazaar limit beyond 6k won't prove detrimental to the economy. Some of the people who would waste their skill points in Merchant when they have no desire to do so would just do all of their sales on the bazaar and maybe the basic vendors allowed by the artisan tree if they wanted Master Artisan. The crafters who deal with extreme volume like armorsmiths, weaponsmiths, tailors etc would continue to use their vendors and while, like now, you can occasionally find good deals on these items on the bazaar, most folks would still go look on the vendors for their goods.

Until we start seeing real QUALITY items on the bazaar on a regular basis, we will continue to have vendors be heavily utilized. Most of the armor and weapons you find on the bazaar are low level crap versions with the occasional nice piece which is obviously someone having recently upgraded and deciding to just take the quick 3k. I know I've found an entire suit of armor over time on the bazaar that was actually pretty reasonable. I generally consider it a fluke.

More Vendors:The Devs need to add a check upon login for levels in Merchant. Any items on the vendors of people who don't have the skills needed to run them will appear in their inventory with any spill over showing in their bank account and any beyond that in their house. More than that is them being SOL. I know they don't want to just delete stuff from people because of the hue and cry it would instigate, but people are exploiting the current system by training Merchant or Business skills and surrendering them and maintaining the ability to use all of the vendors they once had. With a check on login for the skills needed you would solve this problem geting rid of a lot of database bother. Give an announcement on the play screen overtop of all of the usual patch notes and give say a 2 week grace period. Anything beyond that and they're responsible for losing whatever gets lost.

Fiado (Scylla)

Astu (Valcyn)

I've posted this basic idea in a number of threads but I feel its' simplistic wisdom demands a thread of its' own. Hopefully it will reach the eyes of the devs too.

I am not anangry, fearful player, just a humble crafter who enjoys crafting and understands a thing or three about MMORPG's. Iseem to have a knack for figuring out and mastering in-game economonies and am very successful when it comes to analyzing them.

My motive for making this thread, obviously, reguards the suggest cap of 150 items per vendor. SOE says they are having database problems from all of the items on vendors. Well, honestly, the data problems on their servers does not come from items on vendors, it has to do with their overall crafting profession coding.

In simple terms, SWG creates too much data the way all crafting professions are laid out. The main cause of this is three things, all of which can be fixed with 3 simple changes.

Factory Crates: Should stack to 1000 no matter the schematic that produced them. Most crates stack to 25 units per crate, raising this to 1000 would reduce the # of factory crates on all database servers by FOURTY times. I'm sure most smart crafters know this, the BEST storage devices in gameare NOT vendors, but factories. You can store 100 items in the output hopper of a factory and 100 items of ANYTHING in the input hopper. Only the truly stupid store stuff on vendors and price the stuff out to 9999999 or whatever.

Resources: Make any resource stack to a million units. Along with this we also need resources to be identified by their resource NAME, not Steel, Iron etc. because you can tell that from the color of the Icon. Obviosulyall organics are inneed of an expanded icon identification change as well.

SOE are the ones who gave us 10 BER medium harvestors and 12/13/14 BERHeavies. These now generate IMMENSE number of resources. I'd wager the average account uses 8 lots for mining. Some players buyextra accounts or use cross server friends to obtain even more lots. 8lots is a fair average guess. Even using (8) 10 BER Harvestors on 75% spots, each account per serveris generating 86,400 units of resource A DAY and just over 600,000 units a week. Making resources stack to a million would reduce server database storage by atleastTEN times and make the hardcore miner VERY happy.

Well, with just two simple fixes, we're at at a total of a 5000% percent reduction in the number of bytes on SOE's database servers.

Bazaar/Vendor: Get rid of the potential for idiots to load up the bazaar with single credit sales and get rid of all auctions. Cap the limit forbazaar resource auctions at 30c per unit with a 100 unit limit. Any amount of resource under 100 units, with the exception of egg or milk, isn't necessary. These little noob sales which never sell and only create more pages to scroll through would be a minor, but much needed fix.

The bazaar sale cap should be 10,000c and I've lobbied for this since launch. Increasing the Instant Auction price cap to 10K does a number of things, it reduces the # of auctions on the bazaar because there won't be the foolios who put up some rare out of shift resource @ 30c per unit. I don't think many use Auctions anymore because they're broken and you can't bid past 3k currently anyway.

On vendors, my god, look at this from a rational standpoint. Weaponsmiths, Armorsmith, Architects, Tailors etc. HAVE to stock hundreds of items because honestly, restocking a vendor is the biggest PITA as a crafter, next maybe having to grind repetitively to get to Master. Tailors have tons of different pieces of clothing, Armorsmiths have 9 piece suits and Weaponsmiths sell anywhere from 40 to 50 DIFFERENT weapons!

If players are abusing the vendor system, you FIX this by addressing the cause, not the effect. Limiting the # of items on a vendor is an EFFECT fix. The CAUSE is what raising factory crates and resources can stack to would eliminate.

Fix the cause, not the effect. This kind of logic needs to be applied to every area of the game, from broken professions to exploits. Nerfs are never the answer. All nerfs do is drive customers away... Why? Because the players are smarter than the devs. We also pay your salaries and know a lot more about gaming than you do.

The devs need to start thinking and coding like players and hackers, not devs. The hacker mindset will always figure out a way around any change or nerf, that is, unless they quit, which is exactly what will happen to nearly every tailor, weaponsmith or armorsmith etc. if vendors are capped to 150 items per vendor. I've owned a modem since 1987, I'm a cyberpunk to the core. I'm never wrong on such things.

OH AND HOW ABOUT FIXING MODERATE EXPERIMENTATION SUCCESSES?

"I've owned a modem since 1987, I'm a cyberpunk to the core. I'm never wrong on such things."

Ya know ya had me right up until this part. I mean in the beginning of the post you were nearly breaking your arm to pat yourself on the back, but I looked past that. This line here tho is the bit that puts the 00b3r 133tness back into the whole thing, which is just a personal annoyance. The never being wrong and the earlier comments really just make you sound arrogant. No one cares really how long you've had your modem.

"Factory Crates: Should stack to 1000 no matter the schematic that produced them. Most crates stack to 25 units per crate, raising this to 1000 would reduce the # of factory crates on all database servers by FOURTY times. I'm sure most smart crafters know this, the BEST storage devices in gameare NOT vendors, but factories. You can store 100 items in the output hopper of a factory and 100 items of ANYTHING in the input hopper. Only the truly stupid store stuff on vendors and price the stuff out to 9999999 or whatever."

The problem with trying to stack multiple crates like that is that the serial numbers are different if they are from different runs. If you would be given the option to create crates of any given size up to 1000 when you start the factory, that would solve the issue as everything in that huge crate would be the same serial number and then it could be split down if the crafter so desired. Crates of 1000 synth cloth or reinforced panels would make armorsmiths and tailors quite happy I'm sure. Otherwise it won't happen as the different serial numbers wouldn't be able to stack. Also, right now you cannot recombine crates you have already split apart.

Resources:I would definitely have no problem with stacking to a million, especially considering some folks having several characters worth of mining happening. Back before they fixed experimentation with architects I had several fusion reactors...they were BER 13 and 14 with one that was a 21. You want to talk ridiculous numbers of power, I had plenty coming in to keep me wealthy just from those 4. Course, my videocard died and I wasn't in game for a month so I lost them all. BER8 and 10may well be just a bit on the ridiculous side for a medium, but right now you can experiment smalls up to BER 4 so it would seem to make sense in that respect.

Bazaar:In the same breath you say get rid of all auctions and then you say to increase auction limits to 10k. Did you mean instant sales should be increased to 10k instead? Also, you will never be able to regulate the cpu cost of resources on the bazar. the Devs have shown that while they will take some steps to provide more money sinks to get rid of excess capital in the system, that they have no intrest in auctual limitations on the player economy ie setting artificial ceilings for resource prices. If you're going to raise a cap for anything raise it for everything. I've been a Merchant and a crafter in the past (and on Valcyn i'm working on BE now so I'm a crafter yet again) so I understand how vendors work, but I honestly believe that increasing the bazaar limit beyond 6k won't prove detrimental to the economy. Some of the people who would waste their skill points in Merchant when they have no desire to do so would just do all of their sales on the bazaar and maybe the basic vendors allowed by the artisan tree if they wanted Master Artisan. The crafters who deal with extreme volume like armorsmiths, weaponsmiths, tailors etc would continue to use their vendors and while, like now, you can occasionally find good deals on these items on the bazaar, most folks would still go look on the vendors for their goods.

Until we start seeing real QUALITY items on the bazaar on a regular basis, we will continue to have vendors be heavily utilized. Most of the armor and weapons you find on the bazaar are low level crap versions with the occasional nice piece which is obviously someone having recently upgraded and deciding to just take the quick 3k. I know I've found an entire suit of armor over time on the bazaar that was actually pretty reasonable. I generally consider it a fluke.

More Vendors:The Devs need to add a check upon login for levels in Merchant. Any items on the vendors of people who don't have the skills needed to run them will appear in their inventory with any spill over showing in their bank account and any beyond that in their house. More than that is them being SOL. I know they don't want to just delete stuff from people because of the hue and cry it would instigate, but people are exploiting the current system by training Merchant or Business skills and surrendering them and maintaining the ability to use all of the vendors they once had. With a check on login for the skills needed you would solve this problem geting rid of a lot of database bother. Give an announcement on the play screen overtop of all of the usual patch notes and give say a 2 week grace period. Anything beyond that and they're responsible for losing whatever gets lost.

Fiado (Scylla)

Astu (Valcyn)

Factory Crates: Well stacks of 1000 sound great the problem is that each item crafted has it's own serial number. Which means stacks of 1000 new items on the DB, something that SOE is really not wanting to do given thier current problems. Of course a clever programmer could just have that serial number refer to the first item crafted in the manufactured series.

Bazaar: The 20cr fee allready limits the amount of junk on the bazaar. A cap on price and total goods stocked is necessary but could use some adjustment. Generally I believe that the 3000 cr cap is sufficient for the people that do not have skill points invested into business. Presently the business tree in artisan allows for "premium sales" and a vendor. This tree could use some adjustment to allow additional slots on the bazaar and sales at a higher cost than the maximum.

Auctions: Do people even use these any more? Perhaps eliminating the pricecap on auctions and alow it to becomea commodities market would be an interesting improvement in the game. Competeitive pricing would definately be a boon to the economy. Just a thought.

Merchant Vendors: The proposed cap is way too low. I could see a 300 item cap per merchant vendoras somewhat reasonable as long as the number of items increased proportionately with increases in management.

Artisan vendors: Limit these to the proposed 150 items but do not remove them from the game.

Storage: Increase housing storage capacity. This has to be better than having players set up additional houses with additional items in them. What would be less of a drain on the SOE reasources additional houses or 100 more items stored.

Something to think about. As they propose limiting vendor capacity they're actually increading the amount of craftable weapons. Adding a merchandise multiplier into the current system reall makes little sense.

I like the idea of letting resources stack up to 1million, this would definately help the DB issue. Stopping or increasing the rarity of junk loot drops would help too, I can't count the broken vid screens, power couplingsand worthless cdef pistols I've sent to the digital graveyard. For everyone I trash, I know there are 10 more though, sitting on some holo-grinders vendor, or just cluttering up a house.

Limit stuff like that, if need be just make npc's loot credits, with the higher end mobs only dropping credits or an occasional uber-item, such as a factory schematic or the like.

Three things to help solve the storage issue besides limiting vendors:

1) Eliminate all vendors who have dropped the necessary skills needed to place them

2) Allow crate sizes up to 1000

3) More bazaar restrictions - do not allow the posting of anything broken, do not allow hides/bones/meat to be posted in a quantity less than 100, raise the price to use the bazaar to 500 credits

Very often I make runs of 1000 synth cloth panels. All the same serial number, and *gulp* crates of 25. I think that if the crates held more panels, storage issues would be easier for crafters, and there would be incentive to make large runs of cloths rather than craft "as needed" small runs that have new serial numbers (which presumably puts more stress on the database than identical cloths).It would, however, be impossible to combine crates of the same item because theyhavedifferent stats, different materials that go into them, etc.

I suggested the ability to combine identical factory crates up to at least 100 a while back, but I can see a possible problem with this, particularly when combined with higher resource stacks. Someone giving up a profession could store millions of units of materials and create the schematics to continue manufacturing their goods and storing them in stacks of factory crates; effectively allowing them to stay in business long after they have dropped their profession. Newcomers to the profession would then be competing with everyone who had ever mastered it before them and had the foresight to stock up.

I still think 50 or 100 unit factory crates are a good idea, but then schematics should be made to only be usable by a current practicioner of the profession they produce goods for.

I like the idea of moving the resources into larger stacks (100k is too small).

What about the Safety Deposit box though? Maybe lower that to 50 items?

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Ryche_Mykola wrote:

I like the idea of moving the resources into larger stacks (100k is too small).

What about the Safety Deposit box though? Maybe lower that to 50 items?

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