Merchant Archive

Hello,

I posted this rather lengthy comment on the thread going on in the In Development forum thread. I am posting it here in order to get people's feedback and to increase visiblity. I hope many of you agree with what I have written, but if you do not I'd love constructive criticism. Thanks!

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It seems to me that your two suggestions are interlinked as an excuse to make the bazaar more useful while hurting the merchant profession.

If you raise the bazaar cap to 6000 credits, which, actually is a *GOOD* thing, you will of course find more people selling items on the bazaar. Therefore, your database size for the bazaar doubles, triples, or quadruples, and you have to devote more machine-power to that.

So, you now cut down on the amount of items on a vendor, from unlimited (since LAUNCH, I might add) to 150. It seems, probably to more than just me, that this is a potential fix for your forthcoming bazaar database problem, you now free up the space so that you can devote vendor DB storage to bazaar DB storage.

First off, the limit of 150 items is TOO LOW. Make it 500. Then you won't see the deluge of complaints from certain people that you will otherwise. Quite frankly, a weaponsmith, bio-engineer, or even an chef or architect might not care all that much about a 150 item limit. 150 different weapons or pet deeds or food items or harvesters is a good variety, and if someone has a fair amount of merchant skills, they can definitely keep in stock with this system.

But what happens with a tailor? If a tailor wants to stock 25 different colors of each item, that automatically makes it so they can only stock 6 different items at any given time. That's ridiculous. Let's say they have master merchant (6 vendors). So, that means that a fully-stocked master tailor/master merchant with 25 of each color of an item can have, at most, 36 DIFFERENT item types for sale, in several colors. That's not even half the available clothing types, in fact I think it's less than 1/8 of all craftable tailor items. What you are asking them to do, in effect, is become custom-order only for most things, stocking everything in one or two colors that sell well and devoting much of their game time to filling custom orders, which conversely cuts down the rest of their gameplay. Last I checked, tailoring didn't take 250 skill points, so I'm sure most tailors have other things to do in the course of a gaming day than stocking vendors and sitting in their shop custom-crafting 24/7.

My guild's tailor currently stocks 800+ items on her vendor. She is not a "monopoly." There are many other tailors within 4000m of her shop and they all seem to do fine. She has made a million credits, sure, but has never cracked two million, even though she has been a tailor since July. And many, many, many other merchants of all types have. Tailoring is simply not profitable like weaponsmithing can be for example, and so forcing them to limit their selection will kill their business. A blue shirt is a blue shirt, but there is a great variety in gun or armor quality, so people go to the best. With tailors, they go to whoever is IN STOCK and has the right color. Low vendor item limits = out of business tailors.

Or an armorsmith? Their armor takes what, two bracers, two biceps, a helmet, boots, leggings, chest and gloves per set. 9 items for one complete set. So tops, they can have 15 suits or so of armor for sale at any given time per vendor, again having to devote several vendors to different armor types if they want variety. And of course they have different colors too. So if someone wants green composite, custom order. Yellow ubese, custom order. Please see the above tailor argument for what this could do to an armorsmith's business. At least armorsmiths have the benefit of quality differences, so the people who make 80% resist composite will still be in demand over the 40%.

And what does this do to the merchant profession? Isn't the point of being a merchant supposed to be selling lots of things? The best merchants are SUPPOSED to have a "monopoly" of sorts, selling things across the galaxy like a brand name. So if a merchant has 6 vendors, at the moment they can service 6 different artisans selling their goods, and profit simply from being a salesman. With the proposed change, a master merchant will be lucky to service 2 artisans, because a successful artisan will likely need more than 150 items for sale at a given time in most cases. You know this is the case, or you wouldn't be proposing this cap; obviously, many vendors are highly stocked. You will be hurting a LOT of people. So this limit would also spell doom for the merchant class as anything other than a support class, there is NO hope for a merchant to just be a salesman if they can't have multiple artisans giving them wares to sell.

This kills the mall idea, because many vendors in mall environments also have their main shop vendor, now they will have to pull the vendor from the mall so their shop can have more in-stock.

So to summarize, the change to the 6000 credit limit on the bazaar is a GOOD thing, but not at the expense of the vendors being capped at 150 items. If the changes go in as planned, you will be forcing any artisan who wishes to be successful at all to become a merchant in order to have vendor storage, and the merchant class as a stand-alone profession will die. You will force variety of clothing out of the game, as every tailor will stock only what generally sells quickly (black). You will force serious artisans to give up trying to adventure, as they will have to continually make custom orders to stay in business to make up for what isn't in stock, and therefore won't be able to devote any time to other pursuits such as hunting, exploring, etc.

The only way I see this situation being avoided is to cap the items at 500 instead of 150. That might solve almost every issue, because most people could deal with 500 items per vendor, even if it is less than what they are used to. But asking people to go from 800+ to 150 isn't even funny. It's just sad. And I'm trying hard to convince my tailor not to quit playing if this goes in to effect.

I agree its too low 150 per vendor i keep over 500 per vendor im the merchant formy guild and have issues with the number as i see it we also need more vendors then i am forced to place more than one perfession's items on a vendor tailor and armor ect. due to the fact there are not enough vendors as the guild merchant that cap will kill us. our guild decided this is the last nerf we are leaving if this goes through. ..... so get ready for a loss of income SOE

Guessit's time to quit this game. I just recenty became a merchant and already I am being penialized becuase people find it hard to go to shops or sell their stuff.I thought thatwhat the merchants were for. Bad enough people can get a vendor drop the skill and get to keep the vendor. There is no reason to up limit cost on Bazaar. All it will do is increase prices of things and bog it down. So merchantsget alimit of items on their vendors, for me it does not pose a problem yet. I am sure it will in the future. Why not let everyone have a vendor and just kill the merchant character all together. Hey why not give everyone an additonal 200 skill points then everyone can be self sufficent. Wait then SOE would be out of business because there would be no interaction between people. Can happen!

As a tailor and merchant I am NOT happy with the bazaar increase to 6000 credits. The cities and banks around the big towns are already causing so much lag that I don't go near the bazaar. Since my vendors sell all my clothing, I would be forced to put items on the bazaar to sell even though I would rather use my own vendors. At this point, I cannot list any items on the bazaar because I have too many for sale on my vendors, so they don't separate out private vendors and bazaar items. If you ask me its going to cause alot more problems than it solves to increase the bazaar limit. It may put alot of small tailors out of buisness completely because most of our items sell for less than 6000 credits, and also I bet you'll tailors starting to undercut other tailors on the bazaar selling BE clothing for a mere 6000 credits.

I don't like the bazaar cost increase one bit.

I agree with Chiana. For tailors, even the bazaar increase is a Bad Thing. We sell a large amount of mid-priced items in the 3,000-6,000 range. If the bazaar cap is raised you will start to see a lot more high level tailored goods on the bazaar, even our Master items. This will lead to a reduction of our vendor profits and a decrease in the percieved value of tailored goods. Tailor is already the crafting profession with the largest amount of low-priced durable goods, we certainly don't want the average sale prices of clothing to fall!

I appreciate your concern for us on the item limits, but many of us tailors think the bazaar change is almost as bad.

I am Architect/Artisian/Merchant. And I feel that my vendors are poorly stocked at around 200 items! 150 items per vendor creates a lack of variety on the vendor! Whats the point of having a shop if I can't sell my goods. Not to mention my resources vendor!!!

150 is Just disgusting

500 is better but still way to low

1000 if ya gotta have any at all.

unlimited... Perfect.

The increase to the Bazaar is the most asinine thing I've heard of in an already ass backwardsgame.

How long down the road until they raise it again, just because cretins (excuse me, customers) want to destroy the merchant profession (excuse me, convenient bazaar)?

But, no one cares about the merchants because they don't have any "ub3rl33t d0dg3 modz!1"

While I appreciate the severity of this nerf on the tailor profession, you are by far not the only profession to be seriously crippled by such a terrible vendor cap.

I am an architect.

I keep about 2,000 items of furniture on two of my five vendors. That doesn't include any other item. People want harvesters...not just one or two, but 10 or 12...and they want all different kinds of harvesters. People also want houses. Some people buy 10 or 15 houses from me at a shot. With a 500 limit cap, where am I going to store all these items? If I can't keep them on my vendor, then the wait times for these orders goes up by DAYS. And where then am I expected to keep the resources for these unmade items? Nobody wants to wait three weeks for their structure or furniture order. My only choice is to change professions, and this I am utterly uninterested...and unwilling...to do.

I am also a master artisan. I keep all kinds of components, both artisan and architectural, on vendors. These items number around 1000 or 1200 at any given time. Even a cap of 1,000 items per vendor will kill my business, because I already spend hours a day in game just trying to keep up with my orders. This is the punishment I get for playing my character successfully: a whack from the dev nerf bat that is so hard it will knock me completely out of the game itself, for good.

This is why I am urging all merchants, even those who never keep more than 100 items on their vendors, to oppose this vendor cap. It is not for one or two people, but for the entire crafting community as a whole. A vendor cap will be devastating, and will completely break the game for many people, such as myself and my roommate, who is a master tailor.

As if the game hasn't been disappointing enough due to this announcement, tonight I lost three items in rapid succession because they poofed out of my house less than five minutes after I set them down. One of these items was a vendor! Another was a rare blue crystal, something I've wanted for months and never been able to procure, and given to me by a very close friend.

I am so disgusted and sickened by this game over the past two days that if I didnt have people I promised to fill orders for, I woudln't even log in at all this weekend. All I can think of when I log in is what I'm expected to do with the thousands of items I have for sale when the vendor axe falls.

This is repugnant and it is absolutely astonishing to me that any business could be run this way. It was exactly what I feared when several years ago I found out that SOE was going to be developing this game for Lucas. And my worst fears have, indeed, come true.

Everyone who works at SOE, from the receptionist to the CEO, should be ashamed of themselves for this crap. Everyone. If I had a job there, I'd quit rather than be associated with this kind of rubbish. I have had a terrible day today. Terrible.