Merchants and trash

[oerin trubble]

Wouldn't it be nice if non usable "vendor fodder" items poofed as soon as the merchant bought them?
Imagine looking thru a merchant's inventory and not having to weed thru useless garbage that nobody would ever buy.

So much is mob drops that are great for storyline content but have no actual use other than selling to merchants for PP.

If these items didn't take up merchant slots, then tradeskill items sold by the non-tradeskill crowd would be easier to find.
When the merchant slots are full and someone sells an item not shown in one of those slots it's gone forever.

Second to this idea would be to bring back the "under the counter" merchant slots. I don't mind fishing for the tradeskill items i need.

I intend to post this for the developers. But i learned in the process of getting the hate drop for the pally epic fixed, they respond better to a suggestion coming from many directions.

So if you like the idea or have a better one, let the developers know.

[Naeadiene Needsamap]

Broddybeard (I hope I spelled it right) posted an idea about this in primal scream.

Vendors could have a move to the bottom rotation, so that the first thing sold to them would disappear when their inventory became full. As each new item is sold to a vendor it would bump the previous stuff down.

I don't think they would go for eliminate stuff that's "useless". But some change might happen.

[Sanna]

It would be nice to have a modified version of the HQ Ore Restocking quest, for vendors. Use, say.... 10 players. And isn't a period of 24 RL hours about equal to 5 ingame days? You would have to buy an item, I'll call it a Voting Ticket, that costs, I dunno, what's a fair yet significant price to a high end player? 20p per Voting Ticket? It would stack, of course.

When you wanted a given Vendor to reset his entire stock, you would hand him a Voting Ticket, and he would give you some text back like, "Thanks for your opinion, Tinkbang... 4 other people in the last five days have told me I should clean out my stock..." or something like that.

The trick would be: All 10 people must hand him tickets within a 24 RL hour period, and then he will reset his stock. (This 'quest' would not apply to the HQ Ore vendors.) Or, hm... should he even say how many people have handed him tickets? Just to keep people from saying, "hey, i need 6 more people to hand Caden Zharik tickets!!" (Then again, people would learn where vendors are in pok a little better, heh.)


But anyway, specifics aside, that make sense? A way to reset common vendors that isn't dependant upon the sole vote of a single person. Maybe, have the vendor say how many tickets he's gotten in the last day, but when he's full of tickets, you still have to wait another RL day, just to give people a chance to mine him and see what he's got.


anywho, i need to shoo to class. ^_^

-- Sanna

[oerin trubble]

I'm hoping to keep this constructive to share ideas to help us all that we can in turn pass on to the developers.
Would be sad to relate it to primal scream. Hope it's perceived as constructive and positive so it's not moved or locked.

As far as "voting" for a merchant reset, it would be too easy for a destructive soul to manipulate.

Keep the ideas coming and pass them on thru the channels to the developers.

[Froni Thunderpaws]

I like Brodybeard's idea of first in first out, and it seems like it would be reasonable to implement because the vendors seems to be a stack list since they don't rearrange on repeated opens.

A bit harder to implement would at least take care of some of the junk - if an item didn't have a tradeskill tag, wasn't equippable, or have charges (like scrolls) that they would be first to go when a new item exceeding the slots is sold. It would preserve a few of the items we are looking for on vendors and would only lose a few things that are useful (like quest pieces without flags.)

[Silound]

Vendos do indeed appear to be a stack, which could cause som trouble programming since a few other interfaces work teh same way, most likely off the same code structutre. A stack is a First In-Last Out structire. Doing what Brody suggested would mean a total rewrite of vendor code to implement a queue, which is a First In-First Out structure.

[Sanna]

i don't think this is a PS ^_^. The person just mentioned that Brody had brought up a similar type idea in the PS forum.


Specifics aside for the initial stage, the point of my idea is that there has to be some way to impress upon a vendor that he should clean house, /without/ a way for 'destructive souls' (i like that term, hehe) to viciously manipulate it to the detriment of everyone else. I just tried to clothe the skeleton ^_^.


as far as the programming goes... the devs have already shown that they're not as adverse to rewriting EQ code as I think some of us initially thought. I mean, they are remaking the graphics engine (/happy /cheer /dance). So maybe they're finally beginning to go through and say, 'here are old flaws, here are more recent flaws, if we have time to reprogram the skills window, then we have time to fix all these little things laying about', and then, well, who knows. Er, I think i started with one thought there and segued to another... At any rate, the 'heavy statement' of "the code just can't work like that and never will" might be fading back a bit in the future.

who knows, you know? ^_^ When you have people who like what they do, and do what they do well, the sky's the limit.

-- Sanna

[eniamn]

i imagine a simple
if vendor inventory slot 80 id value > 0
then set slot (whatever isn't normal stock) id value = 0 or whatever empty is
else
rest of the normal code

that way it only triggers when the last inventoy space has an item id in it. could also set it to quantity. not sure how its coded. only problem would be different vendors have different numbers of stock items that you wouldn't want kicked.

[Balkin]

That would work, but the person who sells an ornate pattern and fills that last slot, thus causing the merchant to reset would make me cry...

First in, First out gets my vote hands down. All new items sold to the merchant should go to the top of the list, and push older stuff off the bottom.

/vote!

[oerin trubble]

Nice to be able to shop

Natimbi seems to have been reset today. I logged in at lunchtime and the new boat dock had magically appeared.

Nedaria magus was empty except for his base goods.
Natimbi magus had no more than a dozen items beyond her base goods including 3 blue diamonds and 2 raw pale nihilite.

Within a day her inventory will be full and i can just imagine what goodies will poof as they are sold to her.

Besides zone resets and patches I don't know what can cause a merchant to reset.
But I have seen in EC tunnel (where there are several merchants) sometimes one or more are back to base goods and other merchants stock is unchanged.

I can't imagine anyone buying full inventory.
And the only other thing that comes to mind is the merchant getting killed.

[Vaard]

i agree that there should be a away for items not marked as tradeskill or quest realated to poof from a vendors wares once sold to a vendor.... i mean there is absolutely no reason for a person to buy it then

i mean why would anyone buy a pearl necklace or a mob looted emerald ring from a vendor?

[Alkure]

Originally posted by Silound
Vendos do indeed appear to be a stack, which could cause som trouble programming since a few other interfaces work teh same way, most likely off the same code structutre. A stack is a First In-Last Out structire. Doing what Brody suggested would mean a total rewrite of vendor code to implement a queue, which is a First In-First Out structure.

I would guess a linked list of some sort. We are able to buy items from the middle of the stack and if we sell an item before we close the merchant window, the item will go back into that spot...

[Rewde]

Re: Merchants and trash

Originally posted by oerin trubble
Wouldn't it be nice if non usable "vendor fodder" items poofed as soon as the merchant bought them?
Imagine looking thru a merchant's inventory and not having to weed thru useless garbage that nobody would ever buy.

Please do not take this the wrong way, but this is down right idiocy. Think about it. If they, the NPC merchants, only displayed "useable" items, you would never find anything on any vendor, as everything would be gone from that vendor in 1 of 3 ways:
1) non-useable items poof
2) "normal" people would be in pharm mode and everything would wind up in the bazaar at jacked up prices
3) "plat pharmers" would be perma camped by every vendor buying up all the "useable" items, and, everything would wind up in the bazaar at jacked up prices.

I have to say that the old "under the counter" method refered to, would be a nice option to re-introduce, but, they have stated that the way it is now, is the way it was intended to be. So, unfortunately, everything is "working as intended".

[Footsore]

Re: Nice to be able to shop

Originally posted by oerin trubble
And the only other thing that comes to mind is the merchant getting killed.

Bored level 65s kill them. I'm sure it harks back to the old days of EC tunnel when the favorite distraction was killing Shady.

I understand he can't be killed now, so Bubar and the rest are the favorite targets. I've been there a few times when folks are killing them.

[keribubba]

Here's an idea...

Once the merchant's inventory becomes full they'll store the sellback value of the cheapest item they have for sale. Then if a new item is sold, and not in its invenotry, it will see if it sells for more than the cheapest item it has. If it does then it will replace that item with the more valuable one. Why exactly are merchants keeping stuff that sells for 1 silver and destroying blue diamonds that sell for 262pp, pretty stupid merchants if you ask me. I'm thinking adding a check for every item sold could be too impractical though. Maybe vendors could have certain items always show up in their inventory, but greyed out when they're out of stock or something. This would be very nice for blue diamonds, that are bought up less than a day after a patch. A day or so after a patch there's no blue diamonds, anywhere on my server Stinnk having to pay 400pp+ per blue diamond.