Smuggler Archive

• They should not be allowed to be sold on the public bazzarr


• If Merchant vendors can eventually have their items searchable on the bazzarr, then any sliced items and spices listed on that vendor will be seized.

IRL, Nothing actually prevents a person from trying to blantly sell illegal items on eBay... except common sense. Should hold true for SWG as well and rather than a hammer handed rule, I want to see a game that plays smarter.

Message Edited by Crillan on 02-21-2005 11:11 AM

***Message Edited: Forgot to vote for B!***

Great post below! Iam a Master Merchant / Master Smuggler that slices on average a month, 900 pieces of armor that I craft. I think that it's just plain goofy that I couldn't place those pieces of armor on a vendor. The funny part is that I get tells all the time with Smugglers offering me a deal on slicing armor - only 5k a piece! I'll tell you what, slicing is a boring task, especially when you do 200 pieces at one sitting. It's time consuming, boring, a real pain with that stupid color window popping up with every slice, boring, and sucks even more since smugglers can't keep slicing tools crated and have to fill up inventory with individual items instead of items to slice. Did I mention it's boring?

But anyways I digress. I also have 13% stun / 80% electricty / 71% base comp armor that is reasonably priced and slices the same way as the armor on my vendor does. Smugglers, as well as the average player,can buy whatever they want to of it, slice it themselves or find a smuggler to slice it. I have well over 75 suits of this stocked over 4 planets on Ecilpse. I also sell crated armor to smugglers that resell. If people want to pay more for the time that it takes me to slice this armor then try to get that slice themselves, so be it. I don't see why everyone should cry because there's a few business minded people out there.

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Hurlobacca wrote:

I'm not here to vote, this poll is meaningless, it's the equivalent of going to the Doc forum andasking if doctors shouldbe able to buff. I'm hear to bust some myths.

1. Smugglers need a ban on vendors selling contraband in order to indulge their RP fantasies - There will always be some players who want to roleplay, and some who just want to play the game. If you want to sit in the cantina and do shady smuggling deals that's great but there's no need to cram it down everyone else's throat. Find like-minded players and play out your fantasies but leave the rest of us out of it. As for the lack of realism of contraband being sold openly, look at med/mind/food buffs, players soloing krayts, snipers firing once per second, shuttles appearing every sixty seconds and a hundred other ways in which the game doesn't follow the script.

2. Weaponsmiths/Armorsmiths are hurting our business - All weapons/armor are sliced by smugglers already, so it's impossible to increase your 100% market share of this business. Like it or not, we have a free-market economy in this game (well, sorta) and such markets gravitate towards efficiency. It's simply more efficient for me to pay a slicer to slice several hundred weapons at a time and offer them for sale so players can pick the slice they want rather than having to force the players to buy multiple weapons hoping to get a decent slice. It's also far more efficient for the slicers I hire to slice for me rather than standing outside the starport in cnet having to trade and collect payment from every player wanting a slice. If a smuggler's idea of immersion is having the equivalent of a buff line that's what you're gonna get.

3. Contraband shouldn't be sold openly on vendors- I can see the argument for sliced weapons not being available on the bazaar since it's a public forum, but I wouldn't support that as it would mainly hurt the noobs who are the main buyers of weapons off the bazaar. As for vendors in player-owned houses, that's private property. I can restrict access to my property and vendorsand only allow players I know are ok with the fact that illegal good are being sold there. Also, I don't have vending machines sell my sliced weapons, I have NPC vendors that sell my banned goods. That's my contribution to immersion. I'm not Wal-mart or 7-11, I'm an idependent businessman who seeks business opportunity, legal or illegal. I don't really care if I'm breaking the law as long as there's a buck to be made. I'm a merchant and I value commerce before the law, something I have in common with many of my RL counterparts. This is how I roleplay and it's every bit as valid as how you chose to roleplay. The only difference is I'm not the one trying to tell you how to play the game.

4. A ban on vendor items will work/solve all smugglers problems - I rely on selling sliced weapons for my swg living. No change in vendor operations is going tostop that. I know from personal experience that players will pay for the convenience of being able to purchase the type of slice they want and that's not going to change either so stop kidding yourselves. There are several ways I can work around a ban on selling sliced weapons from vendors and it would be a major hassle that would wind up increasing the cost to the players but as long as the market demands sliced weapons I will be there to meet that demand. I hear smugglers complain about wanting more smuggling content, but it sounds like what you want is to be transformed into a profession of slice-monkeys.

5. Smugglers should get vendors to sell sliced weapons/spice/slicing tools - This is the argument I love the most. Those who hold this view want to take a skill away from a class that has already invested their skill points on those abilities (Artisan/Merchant) and be given the ability to place vendors without investing any skill points. Yeah right. Keep dreaming.

Here's what I'm in favor of:

1. Smugglers are member of the underworld and should be capable of extorting protection money from merchants who sell illegal goods. Once a merchant has paid off a smuggler, the smuggler then bribes Imperial officials to overlook the contraband on that merchant's vendors, thereby saving the merchant the risk of a hefty fine proportionate to the number of contraband items listed.

2. Just yesterday I was transporting over 100 sliced weapons to my vendors from my workshop as they are in different cities. I was stopped by a probot, who curiously found nothing. If I could hire a smuggler to escort me so he could talk his way out of my being scanned, that's something I would consider doing, especially if being probed meant being caught and db'd by the probot, which it probably should, at least some of the time.

I'm sure there are lots of other ways to incorparate a richer gameplay experience for Smugglers, but these are just a couple that would be alternatives to the lame idea of ending contraband vendor sales. There's got to be more brainpower on this forum than this poll would indicate so prove my assumption wrong and come up with some ways to improve your game experience without taking away from somebody else's because next time it might be some other profession crying that Smugglers shouldn't be able to do ___________ and if they get their way I'd say that's karma for you.

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Message Edited by HunterCotC on 02-21-2005 03:02 PM

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HunterCotC wrote:

***Message Edited: Forgot to vote for B!***

Great post below! Iam a Master Merchant / Master Smuggler that slices on average a month, 900 pieces of armor that I craft. I think that it's just plain goofy that I couldn't place those pieces of armor on a vendor.

Message Edited by HunterCotC on 02-21-2005 03:02 PM

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Message Edited by jbezorg on 02-21-2005 01:28 PM

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jbezorg wrote:

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HunterCotC wrote:

***Message Edited: Forgot to vote for B!***

Great post below! Iam a Master Merchant / Master Smuggler that slices on average a month, 900 pieces of armor that I craft. I think that it's just plain goofy that I couldn't place those pieces of armor on a vendor.

Message Edited by HunterCotC on 02-21-2005 03:02 PM

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I don't know... maybe something about being illegal or something.... I find it just plain goofy that a player would get fined for having a small amount of contraband on them but vendors stocking 100's of contraband items...crates of the stuff even... are immune.

Hurlobacca is right. We should not invade on the Merchants turf by getting vendors. In his own words;

"Those who hold this view want to take a skill away from a class that has already invested their skill points on those abilities (Artisan/Merchant) and be given the ability to place vendors without investing any skill points. Yeah right. Keep dreaming."

Likewise, shouldn't it be smugglers who wheel and deal in illegal goods? Isn't that why smugglers have the underground tree? Should not his own justification on why we should not have vendors apply to the sale of illegal goods by Merchants?

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AngusMacGregor wrote:

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jbezorg wrote:

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HunterCotC wrote:

***Message Edited: Forgot to vote for B!***

Great post below! Iam a Master Merchant / Master Smuggler that slices on average a month, 900 pieces of armor that I craft. I think that it's just plain goofy that I couldn't place those pieces of armor on a vendor.

Message Edited by HunterCotC on 02-21-2005 03:02 PM

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I don't know... maybe something about being illegal or something.... I find it just plain goofy that a player would get fined for having a small amount of contraband on them but vendors stocking 100's of contraband items...crates of the stuff even... are immune.

Hurlobacca is right. We should not invade on the Merchants turf by getting vendors. In his own words;

"Those who hold this view want to take a skill away from a class that has already invested their skill points on those abilities (Artisan/Merchant) and be given the ability to place vendors without investing any skill points. Yeah right. Keep dreaming."

Likewise, shouldn't it be smugglers who wheel and deal in illegal goods? Isn't that why smugglers have the underground tree? Should not his own justification on why we should not have vendors apply to the sale of illegal goods by Merchants?

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Bingo. Talk about hitting the nail on the head.

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I edited my post to spell it out and to retract my vote for B in a previous post...

I vote A now.

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jbezorg wrote:

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HunterCotC wrote:

***Message Edited: Forgot to vote for B!***

Great post below! Iam a Master Merchant / Master Smuggler that slices on average a month, 900 pieces of armor that I craft. I think that it's just plain goofy that I couldn't place those pieces of armor on a vendor.

Message Edited by HunterCotC on 02-21-2005 03:02 PM

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I don't know... maybe something about being illegal or something.... I find it just plain goofy that a player would get fined for having a small amount of contraband on them but vendors stocking 100's of contraband items...crates of the stuff even... are immune.

Hurlobacca is right. We should not invade on the Merchants turf by getting vendors. In his own words;

"Those who hold this view want to take a skill away from a class that has already invested their skill points on those abilities (Artisan/Merchant) and be given the ability to place vendors without investing any skill points. Yeah right. Keep dreaming."

Likewise, shouldn't it be smugglers who wheel and deal in illegal goods? Isn't that why smugglers have the underground tree? Should not his own justification on why we should not have vendors apply to the sale of illegal goods by Merchants? It's very much like taking Artisan and Merchant to get a vendor and then dumping it and keeping it before that was fixed. I retract my vote for B and vote for A. It looks like a heavy handed rule is needed. Paraphrasing Hurlobacca;

Vendors should not be able to sell illegal goods. Those who hold this view want to take a skill away from a profession (smuggler) that has already invested their skill points on those abilities (Underground) and be given the ability tosell contrabandwithout investing any skill points.

Merchants have not spent the points to deal in illegal goods.

Message Edited by jbezorg on 02-21-2005 01:28 PM

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jbezorg wrote:

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HunterCotC wrote:

***Message Edited: Forgot to vote for B!***

Great post below! Iam a Master Merchant / Master Smuggler that slices on average a month, 900 pieces of armor that I craft. I think that it's just plain goofy that I couldn't place those pieces of armor on a vendor.

Message Edited by HunterCotC on 02-21-2005 03:02 PM

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I don't know... maybe something about being illegal or something.... I find it just plain goofy that a player would get fined for having a small amount of contraband on them but vendors stocking 100's of contraband items...crates of the stuff even... are immune.

Hurlobacca is right. We should not invade on the Merchants turf by getting vendors. In his own words;

"Those who hold this view want to take a skill away from a class that has already invested their skill points on those abilities (Artisan/Merchant) and be given the ability to place vendors without investing any skill points. Yeah right. Keep dreaming."

Likewise, shouldn't it be smugglers who wheel and deal in illegal goods? Isn't that why smugglers have the underground tree? Should not his own justification on why we should not have vendors apply to the sale of illegal goods by Merchants? It's very much like taking Artisan and Merchant to get a vendor and then dumping it and keeping it before that was fixed. I retract my vote for B and vote for A. It looks like a heavy handed rule is needed. Paraphrasing Hurlobacca;

Vendors should not be able to sell illegal goods. Those who hold this view want to take a skill away from a profession (smuggler) that has already invested their skill points on those abilities (Underground) and be given the ability tosell contrabandwithout investing any skill points.

Merchants have not spent the points to deal in illegal goods.

Message Edited by jbezorg on 02-21-2005 01:28 PM

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Hurlobacca wrote:

Well here's a news flash for ya; smugglers are criminals who flout the laws in pursuit of the almighty credit, so it's absolutely hilarious to hear supposedly dedicated smugglers citing illegality as justification for removing sliced items from vendors. If you wanna sell sliced weapons from vendors like I do then just pick up the skills to place a vendor and you're in business.

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AngusMacGregor wrote:

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Hurlobacca wrote:

Well here's a news flash for ya; smugglers are criminals who flout the laws in pursuit of the almighty credit, so it's absolutely hilarious to hear supposedly dedicated smugglers citing illegality as justification for removing sliced items from vendors. If you wanna sell sliced weapons from vendors like I do then just pick up the skills to place a vendor and you're in business.

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It's perfectly logical for us to cite illegality as a reason. We "flout the laws in pursuit of the almighty credit", not Merchants. There is no real justification you can give that would allow Merchants to make millions selling illegal sliced items when real Smugglers don't even get asked for slicing anymore because of it.

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