Merchant Archive

Looks like TH likes my idea of making quantity allowed on a vendor to be tied to merchant skill.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Developers&message.id=19383#M19383

He is also working on the keeping vendor issue. (Includes another mention of tying item limit to merchant skill)

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Developers&message.id=19390#M19390

PS: It is nice to see a Dev quote me. Especally on an issue I feel strongly about. I am feeling a little better about this.

Honestly,

I don't see that TH is actually listening to our overall comments orpointed analysis. He grabbed onto ONE ideaposted and decided to run with it. And now he's talking about removing thevendor skills for Business?!?!

I just don't understand why they don't just fess up and say the following:

"Folks, we have a crappy database that cannot be upgraded (no capital for it), so we need to do something to reduce the number of items in the galaxies or the crashing as seen in Bria will continue. Please help SOE come up with solutions that do not adversely affect classes if at all possible. We will run this thread for three days, run a poll for one on the login page, and then attempt a few fixes to the database"

Essentially they're talking about gutting merchant. We're only supposed to have one shop now? Instead of several across the galaxy? So people have to spend a minimum of 2500 credits to get to a shop of a vendor they like and trust for something that might only cost a 1000 credits itself?

They still have never corrected the 75/lot 250/max issue for houses, so we see people using vendors for storage.

Let's break down the issues as posted:

Database difficulties: Performance and query-based issues. Nothing we can do there. SOE need to get some hardcore Oracle properllerheads to come in and optimize.

People storing items in vendors for non sales: Usually because there is such a low limit on housing lots that people can't even decently decorate their own homes!
Fix: Have a max sales value for items in the vendors. Say, 1 million credits, anything else would have to be bartered for directly. Return housing limited to the promised values.

People cannot find items: Again a SOE issue, since the queries do not reach across all results in the query, just the first 100 returned results. Also, the next page does not work properly since the queries manage the results in such a way that if you hit next after C for copper, you may end back up with A for aluminum.
Fix: Correct the queryies in the DB, and test in TC keyword searching, additional categorization, and proper categorization fixes for all items (you know so crates go in the categories they are from, etc)

People are creating monopolies: I cry "Dewback Cookies" on this one. There is NO WAY this is accomplished anywhere in the various galaxies. There is no way to monopolize resources of an entire galaxy, let alone monopolize crafting sales or other people's merchants.
Fix: None, a perception rather than a fact.

There are too many items for the DB to handle: This is related to the database, but perhaps reducing the number of live items will help.
Proposed fixes:
- Allow stacking of like items in vendors and the bazaar with a set price per item, with selection for minimum order #.
- Remove vendor interaction and then eventually vendor storage for people who do not have the proper skills for the number of vendors present. This forces the items to be sold or deleted fairly quickly.
- Allow PC stacking of non crated items, but still have the stacks take up inventory space. Reduces item "count" while keeping inventory space"
- Allow junk dealers to buy all types of items, not just ones labelled 'junk' for a small but non-useless amount of credits. perhaps .5-1 cr/crafted resource used. newbies would be able to make some cash, and extra items would be deleted.
- Reduce the amount of garbage 'drops'. This is a hard habit to break for all the EQ playertypes who want the 'phat lewt' but it might reduce the amount of cruft in the DB.
- Allow items with color palletes to have one time choice configuration options, so that tailors, ws, DEs, etc do not have to stock 100's of items just to have a decent color representation. You're doing this with composite armor atm, so it can obviously be done. (tailors and such still have 100's of possible items though)
- Ask players to delete items in their houses and inventories as a part of the "good deed basis"
- Give more of a reward for practice mode crafting so less people grind and produce 100's of junk items which the get dumped on the economy.

Proposed Merchant changes to help with the issue while not gutting the profession and other crafting/non-combat classes: (ideas only, not saying they all have to fly)

- Allow consignment sales, ala Offer at set price, with Merchant configurable comission percentage
- Allow Draznar's "business/merchant skill based item amount per vendor", though I prefer it spread across the business/merchant trees instead of just up one branch. (perhaps 100 to start in Biz 3 and +25 per vendor for each tree in merchant
- Allow transshipment of goods to any bazaar terminal in the galaxy, based off a percentage of sale price. That 500 credit item is cheap (say 525 credits total), the 200k one might be better to pick up yourself.
- Allow vendors with planetary listings show up in the bazaar terminals.
- Show number of items in vendors in paraenthesis. Vendor A (2) Vendor b (2000)
- Remove items that win auctions from bazaar display.
- Have a "stockroom" building for merchants where they can store and stock to vendors on same or other planets. If they reach capacity, they risk losing expired sales after 2-3 days.
- Delete items that are not picked up from the bazaar after 3 days.
- Improve database sorting and querying so that people can find what they want easily.

Honestly, I'm expecting that this will go through in such a way that Merchant and noncombat classes are hideously nerfed, essentially for no good reason other than SOE cannot deal with tehcnical issues before they become crises. We've been telling them for ages that allowing stackable like items would reduce count, but they didn't want to listen.

Hopefully I'm wrong and they listen to many of the brilliant ideas other people have posted and try those solutions first... but TH and the rest of SOE forums crew do not inspire confidence in me. They too often have ignored well thought out solutions for what is convenient and easy for them, while penalizing and limiting play in this game.

--D'Ruk of iD Co., Corbantis

I'll also note that TH specifically pointed out earlier in the thread that it would take MONTHS to implement the expanded # of items per merchant level.

Which would mean nerfing us now, and promising a fix later.

Isn't that how the house storage issue was addressed? What was the final fix for that again? Oh... right.

I think he was mentioning that it would take months to have the vendors automagically update to the correct number of items possible for storage in those vendors. Personally I'm curious how they're going to implement the change on the vendors that have already been placed.

I'm forwarding my last few posts to someone in SOE who I know. Actually one of my better customers.

I'm not going to be producing or buying any new items from crafters in the meantime. I'm going to probably have to drastically cull my inventories as is. So much for player-run economy.

Wish I could have that lunchtime beer

--D'Ruk

It's sad when you play a profession that was beaten with a stick before it even got out of the gate, just to have it diseased/poinsoned then flame dot'ed....

This must be a new precedent in mmporg gaming history I think.... Take a profession that was almost utterly useless and gimped from the get goand lets nerf them a few times just to unsure they are nothing more than a title..

bah...

Yeah but is he hearing us?

I havent' heard ANYTHING about the price cap desicion either. I'm WAY more worried about 6k being the artificial cap for a lot of goods that go for anywhere up to 15k right now. I'm worried about it screwing the casual crafter (because the only way to make a profit on some of these goods when you're selling at 6k is to mine your own resources). It's gonna hurt ALL of us, and bad.