Tailor Archive

The biggest problem is that some of the "compromise" solutions would work kinda-sorta OK for most crafters, but still punish tailors severely. For example, many weaponsmiths would be hurt not a bit by a 150 item limit. Some would, but even there, you might have plausible (albeit painful) solutions. Specializing in a particular class of weapon, for example.

Arguably, this sort of specialization might even be a good thing. You'd know where to go to find a really, really good Vibroblade, for instance, instead of having to hunt around to find someone who even makes *any* Vibroblades. I'm not sure I'd actually *support* the argument that vendor policy should be used to promote/force specialization, but it's not indefensible for most professions.

It *is* indefensible for tailors, though. People generally want to buy whole outfits. "Just Gloves" or "Worldwide Pants" simply aren't viable tailor business models in SWG. (Any more than they are in real life, come to think of it. Most clothing stores are *very* general, and even the most specialized aren't as specialized as you might think. Victoria's Secret, say, is best known for lingerie, but actually sells a lot of practical "everyday" clothing too.)

It's the type of comments I see a lot of that worry me, along the lines of "150 is too low! Why, the level should be much higher, even as high as, dare I say it, doubling it to 300!" I'm afraid we'll wind up with something like that - adequate, perhaps even generous, for most crafters, but still woefully inadequate for tailors.

The really ironic thing is they most likelysaw a jump in vendor items is because they changed the sale time to 30 days from 7 days. I know I bumped up my stock when I saw that I wouldn't have to relist every 7 days. I'm sure a lot of other people did too.

I did a lot of travelling around this weekend and checking out vendors. Not so much clothes, but armor, resources, deeds, etc. I'd have to say most of the vendors I went to were nearly empty. They really should put a stock level on the world map. How many customers do we lose when folks just get tired of empty vendor after empty vendor? My clothes vendor shows up about 1/2 way down in Naboo's 30 or so vendors. How many people bother to visit any more after the first few are duds?

I think I found a solution for myself if the vendor caps do go in.. I'll stop selling regular clothes and just sell BE enhanced ones. I finally made some tissues with my BE this weekend, and stuff flew off the shelves. Put a BE clothes vendor on the map, and people actually go out of their way to come to your shop. I sold way more BE clothes this weekend than non-enhanced. So, maybe that's my niche.. especially since I can harvest my own meat, and most BE's seem to be concentrating on pets these days.

Oh, and you won't see many high quality BE items on the bazaar, even if they do raise the price cap. I'm charging 500cr per point of bonus, added to the cost of the clothes.. nothing comes out less than 7000 credits since I'm using only +14 and higher.

Ri'a

Wow, I'm impressed, but this certainly isn't the norm. When I think about all the vendors I've visited on my server, I can't think of a single one, other than mine and a couple other tailors, that had over 150 items. Much more typical is 25-50 or so. I think this is why many customers get so confused by the "page 2" concept, because hardly anyone stocks that many items. I've visited the two most famous weaponsmiths on Bria (Certes and Vigo, both retired now I believe)when they were in full production, and I never saw either of them have more than say 50-75 items on their vendors (although they did have 2-3 vendors).

So the more I think about it, the less the 150 item limit makes sense (since virtually nobody is at that limit now anyway), and the more this seems aimed at the "hard core" tailors exclusively, which again makes no sense and just seems vindictive.

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BradBradley wrote:

But don't assume that only tailors will get bit by this. I know a moderately famous weaponsmith who dropped ranged weapons off of his vendor altogether, he'll only make them for friends and guildmates. In melee weapons alone, he has to keep about 550 to 600 items on his vendor at any given time in order to ever have even a single day off from having to restock.

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Same here. There are obviously enough people in the other professions with very well-stocked vendors to show they exist, but they're a real rarity in my personal travels.

Personally I think they should eliminate all the empty vendors, then work on the vendors of people who dropped all their merchant skills but still keep vendors. Then maybe work on the vendors used for storage (I'm guilty of this, but I'm cleaning it out).

THEN and only THEN.. screw with the few of us who actually like to keepfully stocked vendors.

Ri'a

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Developers&message.id=20407#M20407

Looks like verification that tailors definitely won't be listened to.

Avaleena,

I was (still am)worried the same as you, but my guild mates assured me that no one buys clothing from the bazaar. Let's hope they are right. For one thing, who the heck wants to go into town where lag can be an issue for some, using the bazzar terminal which is sometimes very slow and sorting through a ton a badly made,stupidly namedclothes to find what they want.

I think established tailors like ourselves will continue to do okay, but it may hurt novice and newtailors trying to get a new buisness up and running. The customers we don't want todeal with anywayswill continue to buy from the bazaar or wear their undies...

Plus I find it more relaxing to go shopping out of the city, especially if TEF or a Jedi, or even another crafter not wanting to show up in a city because of tells.

So it may not be as bad as we think.. lets hope not anyways.

I think Chiana's right. I don't expect to *personally* be hurt much at all by the bazaar thing (assuming our profession can somehow survive the vendor nerf, that is!) Even if the odd lowball bazaar clothing gets bought, it seems unlikely to me that the bazaar will be able to serve *all* a player's needs. A couple thousand credits here and there don't make up for the absence of customer service.

I'm still against the change for a variety of reasons, but I don't think it'll be a disaster for most good tailors.

I posted to that thread:

I am completely opposed to both ideas. The combination of raising the bazaar cap to 6000 and limiting the number of items on vendors will severely hurt many player run businesses like mine. I am a Master Tailor that worked very hard to get there and establish a successful shop. I am not poor nor am I rolling in money, but I do a fairly steady business and 90 percent of my income comes from my vendors. I have two vendors currently and keep a good size stock on them at all times (around 400 items). I receive many words of praise from my customers about this. This is a fast-food society, RL and in-game. The majority of people do not want to have to email and custom order clothing, they want to be able to run to a vendor, finding exactly what they are looking for in the colors they desire, and buy it right then and there. With the number of items available to a Master Tailor along with the countless color combinations, maintaining any sort of a decent stock of in-demand items in the most popular colors would be impossible. Not only that, but with the bazaar cap doubled to 6000, there will be an influx of higher end items on the bazaar that people used to have to go to vendors for, and with the limit of only 25 items on the bazaar there is no way people can have any kind of healthy competition. Those that are online all the time and can constantly restock maybe will do ok, but the rest of us will in no way be able to keep up. Vendor sales will drop drastically, and prices are sure to follow as the competition becomes tougher and tougher. As for the monopoly issue that was raised as the reason for adding a vendor cap, with all due respect that's the biggest crock of you-know-what I've ever heard. Anyone can carve a nitch for themselves by making a good reputation, having fair but profitable prices, and having well stocked vendors. (ask any customer how much they HATE running all the way to shop only to find the vendors empty). I did not start playing in beta, I came into the game later and had to compete against all the other already established Masters, and I did just fine by employing good business strategy, now I am told that doing so is some sort of monopoly?

This is a huge mistake in a game where there are already numerous problems that are not attended to and ignored. Doing this will completely unbalance the game economy, which is one of the few things that is working just fine....like a capitalistic society's economy should.

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SueDenim wrote:
A couple thousand credits here and there don't make up for the absence of customer service.

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Hmm, well, if you're talking about the "random" walk-in customers using tailor shop vendors, there is no customer service there. It's simply an alternate form of the bazar, and a less convenient one since it can't be located in the heart of the big cities. So it's difficult for me to imagine a scenario where the bazar limit changes don't hurt player run shops a lot.

I'm not so sure about that. You're assuming that the number of items put into the bazar increases greatly thus causing lag? I'm not sure it will work that way. For clothing items, yes, but for resources, it should actually decrease the number of resource auctions. This is just because people can use fewer auctions to sell the same amount of resource.

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Akaara wrote:

With the proposed bazaar changes.... I see LAG

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Actually, the reason why nobody buys clothes from the bazaar is that there isn't so much choice there. I know that when I put clothes on sale they get sold pretty fast.

For me, the bazaar and the "random walk-in" are really a form of advertising first and foremost. Bazaar sales give me a chance to follow up with an e-mail and get people to check out my vendor. And "walk-in" people checking out my vendor - yeah, they might not get "customer service" there (though they often will - I hang out at my shop a good bit), but they see what I can do from a vendor that's much better stocked than the bazaar will be (and more coherent, organized, consistent.)

To put it slightly differently, I can't envision many of my currrent customers abandoning me in favor of bazaar shopping, or word of mouth from them decreasing.

Now, for a *new* tailor, I think it's a bigger problem potentially, but I imagine they have it tough already for a variety of reasons.