Merchants Inventory

[Bregga]

Can something be done about their inventory? It is pretty annoying having to scroll up to see everything they have.

[Arnof]

Do you mean for merchants like the wandering ones outside cities for example. The ones that after so long end up with 30+ items?

B

[Gwain]

Newer items tend to make it to the top of the list though.

[Bregga]

All the merchants are a little ridiculous.

[Lathlain]

Your point is entirely valid Bregga, and I'm sure a good deal of people will agree with you here. That said, the Games Suggestions forum is a place for productive suggestions and ideas rather simple than 'fix it' posts.

Can you, or anyone, suggest any alternatives to the current system whereby vendors retain their inventories through copyover? Should items below a certain value be gradually removed from a vendor over time, or should the merchant perhaps refuse to buy the items in the first place?

I think my personal preference would be to incorporate a check whereby 'rarer' items (the ones that don't appear frequently in the realms) are kept whereas the more common ones (such as the Waterdeep Sewers rings, which 'spawn' regularly) are removed.

[Gwain]

I can tell you that based on my experiences as a sort of binge buyer or consumer in regards to in game rubbish, that the system has improved incredibly well. Items are cheaper, worth less but easier to purchase. There is no haste to buy things as they are persistent. In some places, the sheer delight in goods one often used to miss because of resets is staggering. Not to mention that damaged goods and material types being priced appropriately means that a buyer is no longer fleeced.

Though there is often too much of a good thing.

The easiest way to fix this manually, is to flush out merchant inventories once a month, though we could created automated means.

Some ideas:

-Merchants could sell items in packages depending on the items for sale, meaning that if a merchant has fifteen sets of rusted armour, he could bundle them together to sell. No one will probably buy said armours but it keeps the inventory smaller.

-Merchants could stop accepting items that are badly damaged, made by trades and utter rubbish. Instead they could only managed items in very good condition.

-High traffic merchants could have their shop weight limit garnished, so that they can only carry a certain amount of goods.

-We could automate that once an rl month the merchants will dump their inventories.

[Peverell]

Dealing with merchants carrying 75+ items in their inventories is slightly annoying, to say the least. By the time you've got to the bottom of the list, you can't remember what was at the top...
The "sewer baubles" were placed in Waterdeep as a source of coin for new/low-level characters. Having every merchant in Waterdeep overstocked with these items sort of ruins that.
I do like seeing items for sale I would otherwise have missed, but I think some of the more common items should be "flushed out", if possible. I like Lath'lain's suggestions of removing cheaper items / more common items fairly frequently.

[Aveline]

I like Lathlain's idea about the more common items sort of being dumped over time. Now forgive my lack of coding knowledge because I don't know how hard or feasible this would be to do or if even possible. I don't know how we'd have merchants check for things that come up a lot.. You cannot do it by price, because there are a lot of interesting things with prices between the sewer rings and the rusted armour pieces. Is there any way to create a flag that we could add to items that we know merchants get mobbed with? So that merchants could be set to junk those items after a certain period of time? I think we could come up with a list of items that this could be added to pretty quickly. My fear with this is that unless we tag individual items in some way to be trashed, that items will be grouped together somehow and we'll lose some interesting items in the process. I've found some interesting items lately, that probably aren't all that valuable, but would have been sad to have missed them all the same.

[Solaghar]

It would probably require a hardcode change to the game to flush out every item below a certain price range that wouldn't take into account the actual items that the store sells. I happen to think that changing things so that items remain in the game for such a long time really hurts low-level characters who are the ones who actually sell a lot of stuff. As a high level character, I don't go around selling leather armor or wooden spears, it's for low level characters, yet they're the ones who are hurt the most by it. There really isn't THAT much armor/weaponry in the game that is worth selling in the shops to make a lot of money, and if I understand things correctly this was implemented to prevent people from crafting items like ebony bows and selling them for 10-15 platinum at every shop in the game. It's certainly solved the problem with people selling crafted items to all the stores (kind of anyway, people can just make bows out of any other wood and continue to sell them) but I don't think the repercussions for low level characters was realized.

My solution is that if an item is crafted, it has a flag on it, FLAG_CRAFTED. FLAG_CRAFTED items are not purchased by vendor mobs, or else they are purchased for a really low amount of money, or are simply stored as all items are now permanently, would be a good solution. Let FLAG_CRAFTED items be the ones to remain stocked, along with perhaps FLAG_MAGIC items to keep some of the new/interesting things people might sell. This will solve the problem with abuse, open up a wider range of goods (yet not an absurd number) and allows low-level characters who really need to sell cheap equipment to earn a little coin to do so as they used to.

[Nysan]

Oh, someone brought it up.

I agree, it is becoming excessive, rather glad I got a program I can scroll up with.
I definately agree with a regular dumping of some kind. Little need to have 10 wooden spears stick around for weeks on a vendor.

I am a bit leery of dropping vendor price of crafted goods though. Might seem a bit bias, but I would hate to see something like crafted mithril platemail come up the same vendor value as tattered leather armor looted from a kobold mob. Extreme example, I know but it works. Just my 2 cents there.

End of the day, I would like to see vendors dumping looted trash regularly, while at the same time, crafted and magical flagged items persist. Actually, I would like to see anything characters would use persist... but it might be hard to code a "player's choice" flag on certain loot items.

[Gwain]

Another thing to note, I think a lot of the merchant mobiles now with over 70 items are weighted down to the point of being stationary. It might do well to take carryweight into the ability to buy items from players. A merchant at its weight limit should refuse to carry more.

[Isolrem]

periodic inventory dumps seems the cleanest solution that also addresses every issue (Gwain's proposition would allow newbies to sell even less of their items, the opposite of what we are aiming for). Perhaps this could also be associated with the restocking of the items the mob sells by default (too many are out of stock these days). Basically these are the things we used to rely on copyovers for but now can manage on a more regular and predictable basis. Also the inventory resets wouldn't happen all at once anymore.

[Gwain]

(Gwain's proposition would allow newbies to sell even less of their items, the opposite of what we are aiming for)

Actually, my proposition would mean they would need to find other merchants to sell their items to and not the one or two that are apparently bearing the brunt of sales. There are more than three merchants in the game and for the most part a small minority of mobiles are the ones carrying in excess of seventy items. It was more an idea with a solution to a minor problem. Bearing in mind that stationary shop mobiles should have no problem carrying an excess of items since they don't move around, but the ones that do should be limited by weight so they can still move around with ease.

[Nysan]

Perhaps this could also be associated with the restocking of the items the mob sells by default (too many are out of stock these days). Basically these are the things we used to rely on copyovers for but now can manage on a more regular and predictable basis.

This completely slipped my mind til you brought it up. I had noticed a streak of "out of stock" moments lately. I chalked it up to bad timing on my part or someone packratting goods, never thought it might have something to do with the persisting merchant inventory change. If the two are related, definately would be nice to see merchants' default stock refreshed regularly. However, my paranoid side (it gets out alot) is concerned a few bad apples might stalk these restock moments and buyout the stores. Perhaps someone more creative than me has ideas around that.

I must agree with Gwain on his point about the 'heavy traffic' merchants. Anyone see a merchant with 70+ items in Westgate or even Berdusk? I don't. Nothing wrong with getting out and seeing the world, as you sell your loot.

[Isolrem]

I'm actually not sure who are the merchants with 70+ items (I thought this was being used as hyperbole), so I must have missed the gist of the discussion But all the merchant inventories are getting pretty cluttered in my eye.

[Jaenoic]

I think I'm missing the problem. Is the problem that people are having difficulty scrolling through long merchant lists because they do not have a program that allows them to scroll up? Or is it just an inconvenience to scroll up? Or is this issue more dealing with merchants being hard-pressed for cash(consequently making it impossible to sell to them) because they are full up on dumpy items?

And for the record the other day I saw a merchant with 100+ items. Didn't really bother me, I'm a frequent user of the page up key.

[Solaghar]

Jaenoic it's not that the merchants run out of money (they don't like they did in the old days, they slowly regenerate cash now even without a reboot) but rather the fact that there are only so many different objects characters have to sell, especially low level characters, and that a mob will only buy so many of an item at a diminishing price before they stop buying the item altogether and turn it away. Fast forward the game a few months and no shop will buy anything because they already have it.

[Jaenoic]

Ahhh, I see now, thanks Solaghar.

If that is the case would it be viable to remove the code that makes each consecutive item sell for less? I mean what's the difference between selling 10 crude spears to 10 merchants or selling 10 crude spears to 1 merchant? Or increase the number required for the sell price drop, say to 5 instead of 1.

[Isolrem]

My chars (or someone who gets there before me) would instantly be rich off of adamantine swords. I don't think that's the viable solution.

[Jaenoic]

As it stands, it's not difficult to sell your 10 adamantine swords to 10 different merchants. If a reboot allows for X crude spears what's the benefit of finding X merchants to sell them to, as opposed to being able to sell them all to just 1? Either way you're still making Y amount of coin. Just with one way you're walking all over the place.