Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: Possible Merchant NERF that greatly affects us . . .
LLJK_Griz wrote:
What about people who want to take classes that involve more than sitting around crafting all day? Armorsmiths and tailors in particular would be forced to take up merchant just to be able to put a reasonable selection of items on their vendors and thus are denied the ability to be worth a **edit** in combat because they don't have enough skillpoints to get useful skills.
Isn't that how the game is supposed to work? You want to have a profitable business that provides goods, you must be a Merchant.
How many combatants do you see complaining that it's not fair for them to have to give up skillpoints to use a weapon effectively? You cannot use weapons without the proper skills and certifications. (Saving the currently broken Republic Blaster cert.) Why should you be able to have a fully-fledged business without the skills to back it up?
You want to be a PvP god in your spare time, then you will have to rely on someone else to provide vendors for you. You can't have the best of both worlds, it's an essential part of game balance.
As it currently stands, you can take artisan business 3, put all your junk into the huge ugly vendor, and that's that. If they limit it, then you can't have any reasonable number of items up and you're forced to either waste skillpoints on a class that grants only one ability of any value at all, or sit around and babysit vendor all day (in which case you might as well drop it entirely and sell crap at the starports), or fill it up to the item limit and have customers bitch all day about not having some item on it because you weren't able to fit it on.
There are several ways they could go about fixing merchant; forcing people to take it while keeping it useless is not one of them. This will just piss people off unless they fix merchant to NOT SUCK.
There is massive opposition to vendor limits being set that low, and the only reason a few people support it is because of the ability to use vendors to store unlimited numbers of items. This could be fixed some other way, and if this is because of database problems they could fix that by reducing the enormous number ofcompletely worthless loot dropsthat end up sitting on the bazaar and being relisted for weeks until some newbie accidentally buys them.
Judging by the thread in the In Development forum, if they ignore feedback and implement it as-is, like they did with the T21 changes, everyone will complain until they adjust the changes to a reasonable level like they did with the T21.
revisoHT wrote:
I'd call it more than a bug, i'd call it an exploit. What's the difference between dropping vendors you don't have the skills to manage and duping resources you never really mined?
One grants a minor convenience to the player by freeing up a few skillpoints, the other destroys the economy.
LLJK_Grizwrote:
As it currently stands, you can take artisan business 3, put all your junk into the huge ugly vendor, and that's that. If they limit it, then you can't have any reasonable number of items up and you're forced to either waste skillpoints on a class that grants only one ability of any value at all, or sit around and babysit vendor all day (in which case you might as well drop it entirely and sell crap at the starports), or fill it up to the item limit and have customers bitch all day about not having some item on it because you weren't able to fit it on.
As it currently stands, you can get Business III and trivialize an entire profession (ignoring the Management bug). Granted, the vendor is ugly and you can only place one, but for all intents and purposes, that is all you need for your business, you have no other limitations or restrictions. If they change it, it willplacemore value intothe Merchant trees and actually make it a profession. A Master Merchant should be able to say that he has the largest business, with vendors that can carry the widest selection of goods for sale. He shouldn't be able to say, "Well, the only thing I can do better than anyone else is play dress-up."
Unfortunately, it comes with the disadvantage of hurting players who have grown accustomed to not wasting skillpoints on Merchant. But frankly, no one could have thought it was going to last forever. Those who put forth the most effort and sacrifice towards their crafting should be awarded with larger, more efficient businesses. Those who do notand would rather Master Commando instead should not receive the same rewards.
Marlan_Intrepid wrote:
Doesn't mean much. I put down 5 weapon vendors when i had the merchant skill to do it, then I dropped that line and put them in planetary advertising.
With all due respect it is this exact behaviour that probably lead to this impasse. Too many vendors out there and no skill points behind them makes for over population of the vendors, not to mention so many people using them as packhorses and then going back to commando.
This is obviously a bug so relying on this to 'get around' this is just not on. If people had to keep the skills to keep all the vendors they operate I daresay it'd go a long way in solving this, as suddenly a lot of vendors will disappear because those people haven't and won't keep the right number of skillpoints.
Besides, what if you wanted to run a couple of stores?
Itchybacca wrote:
I hope they Fix that (putting down vendors than dropping skill that allowed them to be placed)
The skill allows you to PLACE a vendor, and that's what people are doing. If they remove that and put in a vendor item limit they might as well tell crafters that there's no point in trying to multiclass because they'll either be chained to their vendors all day because of the limits, or they won't have any skillpoints for anything else because they have to spend them all on merchant.
Tailors, armorsmiths, general junk merchants, artisan component vendors, and a lot of other classes would get shafted a lot worse than weaponsmith if this goes through.
I can agree with the changes but I think the bazaar caps are fine where they are. Bazaar caps at their current limit gives newbies without a lot of cash a nice option for getting a decent newbie weapon.
150 Limit on the personal venders is a good Idea and gives a reason for mutiple venders. Stocking a vender isn't much of a problem if you make back stock..it is not too much of an effort to restock off world venders..(I have 4 venders spread out between 2 planets).
Not everything is a technicle issue just because you don't like the change. Just because you might have a limit on our vender doesent mean you won't have a sufficent stock pile of merchandise to resupply venders so this argument is crap in my opinion. The data base will be full of backstock so if there was a problem with the datat base and venders there will be a problem with the backstock as well.
boceifus2000 wrote:
Not everything is a technicle issue just because you don't like the change. Just because you might have a limit on our vender doesent mean you won't have a sufficent stock pile of merchandise to resupply venders so this argument is crap in my opinion. The data base will be full of backstock so if there was a problem with the datat base and venders there will be a problem with the backstock as well.
The merchant correspondent says this is a vendor/bazaar database reduction "fix". Instead of actually FIXING it by optimizing the database, changing loot tables so there aren't thousands of useless crap items dropping every day, or other nondestructive means, they take the easy way out and screw over vendors without considering any of the effects it'll have.
Even the merchants and their correspondent think this change as proposed is a terrible idea.
Forcing crafters to get master merchant and drop all combat skill is going to cause 1 of 2 things to happen
Many crafters will drop the crafting side of their character all together which will make the monopolies they intend to limit worse.
or
Many crafters will start a second account for combat. (if they haven't already; which is probably SOE real intention in this whole matter anyway)
One change I would like to see in the merchant vendors is to give them the functionality of the public bazaar without any price limit; imagine being able to go to a private vendor and offer your stuff for sale for what you feel it is actually worth. Merchants would make their money by charging a sales tax; controls would be in place so a merchant could limit what type of items are listed on there vendor (only meds, or only swords orwhatnot) and the merchant would be able to police the listing of crap! No more 3k auctions for View screens 
I think if this was done there would be less vendors out there, all of which would be better stocked
LLJK_Griz wrote:
boceifus2000 wrote:
Not everything is a technicle issue just because you don't like the change. Just because you might have a limit on our vender doesent mean you won't have a sufficent stock pile of merchandise to resupply venders so this argument is crap in my opinion. The data base will be full of backstock so if there was a problem with the datat base and venders there will be a problem with the backstock as well.
The merchant correspondent says this is a vendor/bazaar database reduction "fix". Instead of actually FIXING it by optimizing the database, changing loot tables so there aren't thousands of useless crap items dropping every day, or other nondestructive means, they take the easy way out and screw over vendors without considering any of the effects it'll have.
Even the merchants and their correspondent think this change as proposed is a terrible idea.
What databse issue will this fix if crafters have to keep backstock to keep their venders filled? NONE. There will still be databse problems with the limit of 150 items because of the backstock. SOE is wrong in assuming it will fix database problems, I think we can agree on that. I do disagree that it is entirely a databse issue.
It will give value to the merchant skill tree and a reason to have multiple venders to sell their wares. Right now the only reasons to have multiple venders is to spread them on different planets or to seperate and catogorize items by type.
Changeing the loot tables won't change anything because most people destroy these wothless items anyway.
All i can say simply is STUPID
For crying out loud havent they done enough to the ws' to make it a huge time sink...energy sink...harv sink...repair sink...craft sink...that we now have to waste what precious moments we have left with our families on a merchant sink...this is by far the EASIEST way to make sure there are only 10 crafted weapons in the game...I hear rumours of new weapons coming....WHY???? 150 itmes per vendor! So if you spend the months and months and months harving like hell building up resources and diligently spending and crafting and spending and advertising to build up a successful biz...I now have to either log in every 60minutes to restock or I have to be a high level merchant and run 6 vendors....I already run 6 vendors and all of them except 1 is over 150 items.......I do so to supply stock of every crafted weapon in the game...so that people have a choice instead of every single player running around with a laser rifle....why do these people always hammer the hell out of their core players who have built this game up from inception to make it what it is today...an award winner....to allow for the fact that they have no real solutions on how to get people to buy weapons from a novice ws....FYI NO ONE wants weaps from a novice...didnt when i was a novice 5 months ago.....plain and simple....this is across the board....novice smiths can be creative sell other items and hone their craft...I have heard the complaints about the grind and the lack of sales takes incentive away...anyone grinding up the tree without looking at the playing field and carefully planning out resources wont get much business anyway...it takes an insane amount of resources to do this job right...stop listening to complaints from those who have spent a week to master a profession!
They do this 150 item limit and i might join the list of the retired smiths and the Devs can start listening to the complaint threads about why no on can get a decent Laser carb anywhere!
Weaponsmiths are one of the few professions they did right and its still bugged up...would it be possible to consider that a ws might want to go out and kill something from time to time? Guess not all my skill points will be tied up on merchant and ws....lol!
If you have read this far I have a suggestion....IF you want to prevent MONOPOLIES do something about real estate....instead of having people run all over ....create a Market square adjacent to some major cities....have Merchant tents there where online players can log on and set up shop and link it to their Home vendors....or at least try and think of a creative solution to the every growing issue of house placement around cities and player cities aka ghost towns!
The reason monopolies exist is that there is a ridiculous merchant system where the reward for being a new merchant is being able to drop a tent 10miles back behind a couple hundred houses because people managed to drop a home in week 2....P.S. there is a ton of absentee landlords around believe me...
And while I'm on a rant....might as well go full bore and say...I'm sick and tired of seeing high level pets spams inside of airports...so If i go ch I can advertise better than any master merchant?? Or if i can convince some fool to be online for 20 hours a day to have a pet out!
I consider pets inside the starports as an exploit that needs to be fixed....fine if its outside the starport...that only adds server lag and stability issues ....but...inside is an unfair advantage and serves no purpose to the game whatso ever...the pet stores automatically when u fly out of a starport...like bikes u shouldnt be allowed to have any pets out inside the doors of a starport....! Droids sure...there's a whole mini economy while waiting for the bus....but if you allow this why not start allowing merchants to put up in starport billboards....! J/K
boceifus2000 wrote:
It will give value to the merchant skill tree and a reason to have multiple venders to sell their wares. Right now the only reasons to have multiple venders is to spread them on different planets or to seperate and catogorize items by type.
Changeing the loot tables won't change anything because most people destroy these wothless items anyway.
I'm sorry, you seem to think that having multiple vendors to run shops on more planets or categorise items is a useless thing? What? That is the core of having muliple vendors. That is the benefit. This proposed change will only make it possible to run ONE well stocked store. What kind of merchant is that?
Merchant is less and less a class with it's own identity and now is just one of those 'side effects'. Crafters already need merchant to really make use out of their profession - crafting things on it's own is not useful if you have no medium to sell them at. I wonder if we introduced a new class called "Combat Tactics" and moved half the combat bonuses from all combat trees into this class forcing the combat folks to have to spend dozens of skill points into this new class to get ANY value from their main class.
And changing the loot tables would help considerably. It doesn't matter it most people destroy these worthless items ... a fair few hold onto them (look how many posts we see a day from people asking about this or that loot on weaponsmith forums alone) and they take up space just be being possible to be generated as loot, hrm?
If they did a purge of vendors that are invalid - that is put up by people who dropped the skills after placing them, yet retaining the vendors, that would very likely solve the issue. Purge them using LIFO rule, and I personally don't care if a warning is given on that one. These people knew it was dodgy and is a bug, they deserve to get burned all the way on this one. There is no way anyone can tell me they thought it was a legitimate thing that you could keep the perks of a skill tree after dropping it. They fixed it how an artisan with survey 4 could set the max range on a survey tool and drop the survey skills and keep the range and yet they let THIS slide for so long which is by FAR more damaging than a stupid survey tool resolution.
Bah!