Tailor Archive
Thread: It spreads like a disease..
I haven't used the bazaar to move product in one or two months, so not familiar with who's doing what on it. But then, it has not affected me so I am really not concerned at all. As in RL, there are those that will sell low, those that sell high and those in between. Each has it's own market. I have seen no evidence yetthat shows everyone flocking to the lowest seller.
Those that come to my vendors are not ones that buy off bazaars. They can't readily get full outfits from the bazaars. They can't get personal attention. They have plenty of credits from hours of missions on Dantoo or wherever else, and notrouble getting more after they spend it all. It is very rare that someone complains about pricing (and then it is normally froma rival guild member or someone with less than 5k in the bank).
I find myself raising my prices almostevery week in attempt to curb increasing demand. I find no lack of demand whatsoever despite all of the issues out there. I even am not at all convinced of the arguments that tailoring will become useless without decay. Last thing I want now is more demand to deal with. People will still want to change outfits often, show off to their ingame significant others, put them on display, etc. And most will not spend the time to search for matching second hand clothes in the style they are looking for. They have millions to burn and that's what they will use. Why spendtime to find something when there's that tailorshop just over there? That is where tailors come in. Normally, if someone walks into a shop and sees something they like, they buy it.
Anyway, point is I just accept the MTs that dump on bazaar, etc. etc.because it will never stop. I don't see the pointof spending energy toworry about it. People are very aware of grinders, as they exist inevery crafting profession. If customers don't want to bother with the "cheap" side of tailoring, they simply go to the not-so-cheap tailors. Problem solved. This is how I have seen things go at least...
Sam,
You are right. For those that don't want to "waste" the skill points on merchant their options are 1) hire a merchant (very hard to find, and very difficult to manage such a relationship) 2) sell only face-to-face (spamming at starports) 3) use the bazar. So if (1) or (2) are not attractive (and they're not), they are forced to do their selling through the bazar.
BUT, even given your increased sales tax (which would make no difference at all imho) this would *completely* invalidate the merchant profession which is already extremely weak. I think we can all agree as tailors, that our customers value convenience far far far above price, so adding 50%, 100%, hell 200% sales tax to the bazar would not dissuade people from shopping the bazar at all. Basically you've just destroyed all player run stores if you were to remove the 3k cap.
To solve this problem I think I would go the opposite direction and make the merchant profession far more attractive to people in hopes of greatly increasing the number of "true" merchants. Give em extra lots, give em 0 maintenence costs, give em vendors that they can give others "full administrative rights" to, give em lots more perks, and keep piling on more perks until you start seeing more "real" merchants. At this point it would be far easier for those not wanting to "waste" skill points on merchant to still run a shop, and I think you'd see them doing this rather than dumping all their high end goods on the bazar.
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
Sam,
You are right. For those that don't want to "waste" the skill points on merchant their options are 1) hire a merchant (very hard to find, and very difficult to manage such a relationship) 2) sell only face-to-face (spamming at starports) 3) use the bazar. So if (1) or (2) are not attractive (and they're not), they are forced to do their selling through the bazar.
BUT, even given your increased sales tax (which would make no difference at all imho) this would *completely* invalidate the merchant profession which is already extremely weak. I think we can all agree as tailors, that our customers value convenience far far far above price, so adding 50%, 100%, hell 200% sales tax to the bazar would not dissuade people from shopping the bazar at all. Basically you've just destroyed all player run stores if you were to remove the 3k cap.
To solve this problem I think I would go the opposite direction and make the merchant profession far more attractive to people in hopes of greatly increasing the number of "true" merchants. Give em extra lots, give em 0 maintenence costs, give em vendors that they can give others "full administrative rights" to, give em lots more perks, and keep piling on more perks until you start seeing more "real" merchants. At this point it would be far easier for those not wanting to "waste" skill points on merchant to still run a shop, and I think you'd see them doing this rather than dumping all their high end goods on the bazar.
I wholeheartedly agree with this assessment. The Merchant Class is not being used as intended or designed, for the most part I think. How many crafters who do not want to run their own shop and vendor actually do sell their goods to a merchant to resell? How many Merchants are pure merchants and only resell others crafted goods? Isn't that what the original idea for Merchant was? Mostly resellers, with some people being Merchant/Crafters. Such as Tailors, because our profession demands a lot of personal service.
Even though, we could quite feasibly own just shop, with clothing on display, and have no vendor. Just face-to-face custom orders -or- direct them to the Merchant's shop(s) where our standard items are available. But how many people operate thier business like that? Not many. Rather negates the Merchant profession in a huge way. The merchant class just does not have enough perks, unique to them skills, etc., to make it attractive enough to other crafters to use the Merchant to sell their goods for them.
A lot of us disdain to contract bulk sales to a Merchant reseller. Some of us frown on others buying our products to resell, branded or not. Frankly, if I knew I could spread my name and product out across several planets and not have to manage all those vendors... I'd go for it in a heartbeat.
As a consumer, I'd like knowing I could go to AnyName Mall - a franchise store - on every planet, and know I can buy Tailor goods by XXX and OOO there, or guns by XXX and OOO, etc. As you can at any department store; you know what labels and brand names they carry.
As a crafter, *I* would like to see the Merchant profession be made more attractive as a reseller profession, not just a sidebar profession so I can sell my product without being reduced to using just the bazaar or shouts. As a Merchant, I would enjoy the onus of being a reseller removed. I would love to be able to sell varied products from a cross-section of crafters, all in one location. It sounds like fun and profit to me.
One of the funny things is, and this has been discussed here before, once you become tailor and move up pretty high, you realize that there are a number of items in the domestic arts tree that sell well, even relative to similar items in the tailoring tree, and you wish you had known how well while you were there. Stuff like: hide boots (which my customers consistently choose over high level tailor footwear), leather gloves, wookiee arm wraps (again, wookiees often choose these over the high level tailor ones), and of course everyone's favorite the travel pack. These items can consistently fetch 1k or so, provided the baazar isn't flooded with them. You might want to check these out.
Another anomoly is teltier noodles which are as powerful, or more powerful than many pretty high level chef foods (provided you have the engineering skill to "experiment these up"). Another potential money maker for novice artisans.
Svanja wrote:
This is one of the very few times I post.
I am a starting Tailor (currently Domestic 3) and the only way I can make a profit is to selll on the bazaar. Or do missions and that money goes towards resources. Yay for for my Novice pistoleer, my 900cred missions always go towards my grinding, and I HATE making things and not selling. Though I do rarely sell on the Bazaar, its always low grade grade stuff for cheapo stuff.
As in RL, there are those that will sell low, those that sell high and those in between. Each has it's own market. I have seen no evidence yetthat shows everyone flocking to the lowest seller.
This is not a valid argument, in RL the difference of price often takes into account a difference of quality. In SWG the quality is the same for clothing.
There's a bit more than just raw item quality involved in the equation:location accessibility, lvl of customer service, breadth of selection, customer base, customer purchasing and traffichabits, advertising/brand, customer's view of self (how much do they care about how they look, sense of style),seller'singamegoals/views (i.e. in it for money or not, value attached totime, etc.),the variousinterface/mechanics problems and bugs...All or some of these may come into play when a customer decides where to shop. I find that some customers tend torate "quality" of a product based onmany of these things combined.
The game just can't support a stratified mercantile class, any more than it could handle a seperate resource extraction or manufacturing class. They should have finished what they started and dismantled the Merchant along with the rest of it. Since they didn't, it behooves them to move as far as possible away from giving Merchants a monopoly, relying on incentives instead of restrictions to build up the class.
The degree of protectionism afforded Merchants by the bazaar cap just hampers the free flow of goods and distorts the dynamics of the free market to an incalculable extent. It's bad for producers, it's bad for consumers, and the only ones it's good for is a small number of middlemen who produce nothing themselves.