Tailor Archive
Thread: Higher Vendor Fees Coming
Said with a great deal more eloquence and restraint than I could muster. I withdraw my outburst.
donnah42 wrote:
And I still say calling people with a different playstyle from you a "dabbler" is condescending. Some of us are choosing to go after a smaller percent of the market. I'd rather have a small group of loyal customerscome shop my vendor instead of trying to go high volume. And I do need a vendor, so those customers can get some clothes when I'm not there. See, I love tailoring. But I also like going out hunting with my friends and travelling. Keeping a well-stocked vendor keeps my regulars happy when I just run off for a couple of days to Yavin IV or Endor.
But apparently that makes me not a serious tailor and undeserving of having a shop.
YukonSam wrote:
Said with a great deal more eloquence and restraint than I could muster. I withdraw my outburst.
donnah42 wrote:
And I still say calling people with a different playstyle from you a "dabbler" is condescending. Some of us are choosing to go after a smaller percent of the market. I'd rather have a small group of loyal customerscome shop my vendor instead of trying to go high volume. And I do need a vendor, so those customers can get some clothes when I'm not there. See, I love tailoring. But I also like going out hunting with my friends and travelling. Keeping a well-stocked vendor keeps my regulars happy when I just run off for a couple of days to Yavin IV or Endor.
But apparently that makes me not a serious tailor and undeserving of having a shop.
And how would using the bazaar not serve the exact same purpose?!?
"Hey guys ... just finished making some items for you ... I plopped them on the local bazaar so you can pick them up at your leasure"
Now if you are selling below market price just to friends ... then I stand my assertion that you are dabbling .. and be alturistic.
Allright, how about this Ghartan. **edit** YOU!
So, if you're not willing to devote ALL your time to being a tailor, you don't get to be one? Is that how it works?
Oh, you're right man. This is entirely justified and a great **edit**ing idea. Let's make anyone who wants to play a tailor play it hardcore, so only the people with a high tolerance for crap get to support themselves making clothes. Nevermind that it's a **edit**ing game, and every **edit**ing profession is supposed to be **edit**ing fun, not to mention accessable to the casual player.
I really have no idea how the casual player is supposed to be a crafter at all, unless they hand sample all their resources and spend all their time yelling in cities trying to sell their vastly inferior products when it would hardly be easier to give them away.
Ghartan is a troll, nothing more. There are some in every game. 3k limits on the bazaar prevent many sales from occuring there. And there is no reason why someone should not be able to setup a vendor in a less populated city and still make a small living off of it. It's all about play style, and this change would drastically prevent many of the current styles of running a shop. And I would highly argue that it would shutdown even the most high volume of sales shops and limit variety.
Here's one example, my sales of revealing fleshwraps have dropped significantly over the last couple weeks. On our server, the majority of people wanting these are dancers, and they have purchased them by this point. I end up selling 1 or 2 a week, while my sales in some other areas has stayed high (so far, like dusters). Without clothing decay, I expect this to drop even further over time. But I still want the option of offering different colored fleshwraps on my vendor, giving the few still looking a good choice. I might be paying 5k a day to listten wraps, and selling 1-2 a week. That's 35k a week maintenance, and 20-30k income. I lose each week. So I pull my fleshwraps off the vendor. And people have less choice now, and aren't as happy with my shop...spiral starts and continues with every item such as this, and I lose customers. I close shop. Done. End. Sucks.
This is a bad idea, period.
My biggest fear is that the devs will look at only the "combat service" classes - the Weaponsmiths and Armorsmiths - and as long as it doesn't hurt them too much, everything will be deemed acceptable. And, in truth, Master Weaponsmiths *don't* look like they'll be much harmed. It seems like most (or at least a lot) of them are *already* paying the high fees (on machine merchants), but it's no big deal to them, because their vendors only carry a couple dozen items at a time, the items are priced at a huge markup, and they sell really fast. For their business model, this is just a relatively minor cost of an extremely lucrative business.
The problem is that not every crafting profession is the same as a Master Weaponsmith....
This isn't the right avenue for what they want to accomplish. They are trying to get into the pockets of crafters who are making a killing.
I have 2 problems with this fundemental idea.
1 people choose to be crafters because they like running a bussiness or providing a service, that is why they are playing, this is attacking them at thevery fabric ofwhat they like to do.
2 it opens up a can of worms where people have to find other ways to avoid getten bit by these changes, which can include higher prices, limited stock, spam in towns and various other un-attractive tactics.
The idea is poor, and shouldn't have ever been posted on the boards.
Raptorfish wrote:
The idea is poor, and shouldn't have ever been posted on the boards.
It's the poor ideas that they DON'T post on the boards but implement anyway that get them into the most hot water. I'm glad Q took the time to solicit input on this bug fix, because the sole reason people are exploiting the low charge on the NPC vendor is that none of the other vendor types is viable except for a very small percentage of high-volume, high-margin retailers..... who, by the way, have a vested interest in driving out as many competitors as they can and thus argue in favor of the system.
In a player-driven economy, it is essential to have efficient channels of distribution from producer to consumer. If the barriersto those channels are too burdensome, the market loses much of its dynamic quality and degenerates into a de-facto monopoly of those few able to effectively deal with the barriers. This gives you an enormous concentration of wealth in a few hands, a bad sign in any persistant state world (or society, for that matter).
Oh, and for chrissakes, not this debate about "pure merchants". There are no pure merchants, like there are no pure tailors, pure pistoleers, or pure scouts. Last time I checked, any player character on SG has 250 skill credits available, not 158. Any combination of skills, whether specialisation or "dabbling" is valid. There is no reason to invalidate the point of view of artisans who also are merchants, or merchants who are artisans too. Like I don't feel I should shut my mouth and be considered a second class pistoleer because I have crafter skill, and am not a "pure fighter".
I know and understant the merchant profession need help, and there should definitely be more ways for merchants NOT to rely on an artisan skill, by giving distinct advantages to the master merchant skillbox, probably as part of theplayer cities expansion changes imho, like beeing able to set up a shop in one of those "closed" buildings inside of the main cities (or maybe the ability to build in the no build zone), more way to advertise, and an easirer supplier/crafter to merchant UI, so that setting up effectively a business relationship between a non crafter merchant and a non merchant crafter is not as much a pain in the ... But punishing *merchant*characters who take part, or totality of the merchant tree, just because they arecrafters too .... please.
The irony is that the so called "pure merchant" will be hurt more than the crafter-merchant with this patch. Let's say the item "kazoo of death" cost 2000c to craft, the artisan sell it to the merchant at 4000c and the merchant resell it at 5000c.
If the artisan uses a personal vendor, he'll pay the upkeep of a 4000c item, and will earn 2000c when reselling the item. The merchant will pay the full maintenance of a 5000c item, and can only hope to earn 1000c.
Agreed, what I meant by the statement was it should have never goten to the point where it was even considerable thus never making it to the boards, orout further then the original person who said it. Now if they are actually considering something that stupid I am glad they put it on the boards so we could tell them it was stupid. 
This just one of the stupidest ideas yet that has been actually discussed with the players, making me feel it shouldn't have gotten past the intial, dev 1 says hey, "I have an idea" phaze.
>There is a whole elite profession based on merchants. By making it hard for the semi-serious merchant, >they are protecting the merchant profession. It's actually a boon for tailors... it means instead of competing >with 100 other tailors with their own shops, you'll hook up with a merchant, who generates more traffic, and >be able to sell in bulk... without having to own a shop or find your own customers. Serious merchants can >afford the fees, because they're pretty much guaranteed to generate traffic, based on their advertising, the >death of non-merchant shops (no competition) and their high volume of items/stock.
What are you talking about? How are these merchants supposed to guarantee traffic? I am a near-master tailor with ALL of the useful merchant skills (maxed out advertising and hiring and some management) and the merchant tree provides absolutely NO good methods for advertising or driving traffic.
Unless you're saying that this class of merchants (all but non-existant, I'm sure) is supposed to be a full-time advertising drone (fun!) going around to cantinas and banks and advertising your stuff by word of mouth. I'm sure there's HUNDREDS of players wililng to do that all day that a tailor can hook up with...
Totally silly idea.
On the other hand, this might provide for more interesting and involved selling methods, such as hooking up with other artisans and creating a "Mall" in a PA hall or such. A place with centralized shopping might certainly do better.
Still. The fees are ridiculous. Yet another example of SOE's ignorance of how their game systems work...
-ave
I'm talking about all of the tailors, weaponsmiths, armorers, etc. closing down their shop, so that only a few show up on the planetary map (those serious about being a merchant). If you're suddenly one of 3 people who have vendors showing up on the planetary map, you're going to get much more traffic... see?
you may not like it, but this does i fact validate the merchant profession.