Guild Vendors - Improvements and why

[knightgf]

Introduction

Recently, our small guild has achieved level 22. After taking a look at the very last unlockable vendor in House K, I can definitely conclude that the vendors need a HUGE, HUGE improvement. But before I list the improvements that need to be made, let's look at the positive things that were done well by Turbine.

Vendor Strengths

There were 3 good things that Turbine did well with guild vendors. First off, Turbine USED to make the guild general vendor buy all your stuff for greater than the pawn brokers! While it buys less than the pawn brokers now, it used to be pretty convenient in that when you had to sell all your vendor trash, you could just go to one vendor and sell all your items to that vendor, which made things really convenient. The second thing that was done well was the HP and SP gems that were sold by the vendors. If you had room on your build for a guild augment slot, and had the proper guild level, you could gain from 5-20 HP and 20-80 SP depending on the slot you use and your class. It was a nice boost to most builds.

And last, the wand vendor sells wands of cure critical wounds, which is real nice for builds that can use them since they are not only easier to obtain, but also they are fully charged. I might also add in a side comment that potions of remove curse from the guild potion vendor work while in a barbaric rage, which can be useful to those who have barbarian levels. At least Turbine got a few things right, so the guild vendors are not a epic failure to the game.

Vendor complaints

And now, to the complaints. Before I even talk about each individual vendor, I can honestly address all the vendors as a whole with issues. First off, the vendors don't even look like they belong there. For those of you who were playing back when the marketplace invasion took place, remember when the marketplace vendors moved to the Rusty Nail Inn after the tent was destroyed? Well that's exactly what it looks like with the guild vendors. I wouldn't mind this so much if the guild vendors underwent a similar situation of what the marketplace vendors went through, but since there's no explanation of why the guild vendors seem out of place, its not ok. If you were to put the vendors in their own building, say maybe a entrance to them in the harbor or even a new building in House K with the guild vendors residing in them, you could clear up more than the problem of placement.

After viewing all the guild vendors, I can list 3 issues that are common but not constant throughout the guild vendors:

1. The vendors have a rather odd inventory of items, and are usually understocked.
2. The items are bound to character, which can cause several types of inconveniences
3. The quality of the items are poor and have potential for more improvement since they are guild items.

As I go into detail with each vendor, you will notice that those same 3 problems can pop up most of the time when it comes to these vendors.

Guild General Vendor

The guild general vendor wasn't bad at first in that he could buy your items more than the pawn brokers, but after that, he got stealth-nerfed to buy for less than them! Really now? Why wasn't this in the release notes for update 5 patch 1? Granted, his stock is horrible for most players, but its understandable given that the guild general vendor usually sells common, everyday adventuring items. Why take away the guild general vendor's most talented trait by reducing his purchasing cost? The pawn brokers around stormreach are not even that good anyways, only 5% of the time will you find a 'good' item, and its usually a sub-par item when compared to similar level items sold in the auction house. I can understand if you decide to lower his purchasing cost so its just as equal with the pawn brokers around stormreach, but setting it lower than the pawn brokers makes it near-pointless to have a guild general vendor when you can buy the equipment with very little price difference at the harbor. Bottom line: Either give the vendor purchasing power equal to the pawn brokers, or don't have it at all.

Guild arcane and divine spell component vendors

Most of us know that the guild arcane and divine vendors suffer from the problem of non-working spell components, we all know that, and its more of a bug than a bad design feature, but one actual complaint I can list is the fact that bard, ranger and paladin spell components are NOT sold at these vendors! How did they mess these vendors up so bad that only wizard and sorcerer components are sold here? It's another disappointment, even the House Jorasco vendor managed to sell all the divine components for all divine casters, including the holy sword components. I can only guess that either they didn't have enough room in the vendor stores to add these items, or they didn't have enough time to code them in. Either way, there's no excuse not to include these items in the guild component vendors. Show some respect for the missing classes by adding their spell components in the store!

Guild Hireling Vendors

The hireling vendor is probably the worst. Oh god, it's horrible. Let's look at this in the first place before I talk about the vendor itself. Hirelings and guilds. It's such a slap in the face, especially to large guilds. Don't get me wrong, maybe the small guilds will have their own uses for hirelings, and sometimes, players like to experiment with hirelings, regardless of guild. But is it really worth going through all the trouble to waste time by coding in guild hirelings? What's wrong with the hireling vendors in the marketplace? I don't know, I thought they were ok, just to go there, pick up 1 hireling and use it for whatever. Hirelings are NO substitute for players. If you wanna do a group activity with others, hirelings are your last bet. Do a guild run, solo, or heck, even pug if you want to risk it. But hirelings should not be on your mind for grouping, especially at high levels.

Now, about the vendor itself, my god is it busted. The melee vendor only goes up to level 16, and I KNOW you can get higher level vendors than that, so why they left out 4 hireling levels beats me. The arcane vendors lack the bard hirelings, and the divine vendors are a total waste because its just one class: Clerics. Why? I don't know, and I have no idea, but if your going to slap guilds in the face with hireling vendors, at least add some consistency and a tiny bit of value to them. For starters, add the missing levels of melee hirelings to the list(17-20), maybe move paladins to the divine vendors, add the missing bard hirelings to the arcane vendor and maybe introduce other hirelings to the guild vendors, like favored soul or ranger, for example. Or better yet, just get rid of the hirelings vendors and substitute it with something better, such as guild pawn brokers, to make up for the loss of the guild general vendor's buying value. At least you can allow all guilds on the server to sell their vendor junk to them and hope that another guilded player will buy it.

Guild Gem Vendors

The gem vendors had their perks, but unfortunately, its mostly worthless. The main issue that bugs me so much are the dang specific slots that you have to put most gems in. I wouldn't mind this problem at all if diplomacy enchantment bonuses appeared only on cloaks, intimidate enchantment bonuses appears only on shields, and so on, like the gems fallow, but it doesn't. Why does it have to be so specific? If you look at the health and power gems, they can be attached to any item with the appropriate guild slot, so why do most of them(Except the weapon gems, that's fine for technical reasons) have to be in a specific slot? On top of that, it seems only low and mid-level players primarily benefit from these, because most, but not all high leveled players are usually loaded with named gear, such as greensteel, tower of despair rings, dragonhide, epic items, and so on. There's no room to attach guild augment slots. Overall, the guild gems need to be fixed so that its WAY more flexible with items and other equipment, and maybe try looking to add 'adjustable' guild augment slots to some named and raid items, so that both small and large guilds can have some flexibility to adding guild bonuses on raid gear.

Guild Scroll Vendor

The scroll vendor is where the items begin to get rough. While it technically started with the component vendors, the bound to character items really get to be a pain at this point. Not only does it force you to get rid of the original item you bought at another store, you can't trade it to anyone, period. Would it really be that much trouble to the economy to not have these items bound? If you really wanted to restrict the guild items from falling into non-guild hands, why not make the items bound to guild then? At least you can trade it with guildmates, and allow you to store the items in the guild chest as well.

As for the scroll vendor itself, well, first off, they're both poor in several ways. Because of the fact that there is only 1 vendor per spell class(1 for arcane, 1 for divine) the stock is severely limited. And you know, this whole 'understocked' vendors probably wouldn't be such a problem if the vendors had their own store, because there could be more people selling specific goods! But what really ticks me off is that it seems that the divine scroll vendor was treated a lot better than the arcane scroll vendor. Really now?

Because of the whole 'bound on purchase' thing going on with the guild vendors, you would expect to find scrolls that the other vendors in stormreach wouldn't sell(I.E.: Power Word: Stun scrolls, scrolls of meteor swarm, scrolls of true resurrection, scrolls of mass repair x damage, stuff you would normally only find in dungeons), but is that the case here? No. Of course not. All we get is a arcane scroll shop that goes up to only level 5 spells, and a divine shop that goes up to level 6. Either way, with the way guild shops are now, you better start adding a LOT more scrolls to both spell categories. And whats this, don't have enough room to sell them? Like I said several times before, add a exclusive shop for guild NPC's, you'll have more room to sell more things!

Guild Potion Vendor

The potion vendor wasn't anything special, I guess. It's just like your typical potion vendor, except that some of the potions in the store can be used while raged. There's really not much bad or good to say about it, other than the annoying bound to character items. Wouldn't it be nice if they sold some good potions, like say potions of Cure Critical Wounds? Yeah, I know, if they put them in, some players would be outraged, but if you think about it, they sell enhanced cure critical wounds potions in the DDO store, so what's the point? Overall, not much to say really, other than add some better potions because of the whole 'bound to character' thing. But don't add silver flame pots, those should be favor-only rewards.

Guild Wand Vendor

The wand vendor is the last one unlockable, and its still disappointing in a way. The lack of consistancy is definately present, I mean if you have a guild wand vendor who sells wands of cure critical wounds, why not sell wands of repair critical damage? The lack of consistency is astounding. Also, why not add better caster levels to the wands, since they're from the guild vendor? Couldn't there be a wand of fireball(10) or a wand of shield(10) or any other higher level wand that you can find in a quest or raid? Instead, we're stuck with the regular vendor-level wands that are practically useless in a way. Either way, having some higher level wands that dungeons can drop would be nice to have in stock at this vendor.

Conclusion

Overall, the guild vendors still have a lot of potential, and are not necessarily ruined. If Turbine were to analyze them and find improvements, guilds would benefit greatly from the vendors like they were supposed to. I can only venture to guess that update 5 was rushed, and they had to add these vendors in quickly, so at least I know why the vendors were made so horribly. But bottom line, the vendors cannot stay like this for long. Guilds should be able to benefit greatly from these vendors, and at the moment, they're lucky to receive slight benefits. The vendors should not be overpowered, but it should not be inferior compared to the other vendors around stormreach.

End of suggestion. Discuss? Comments? Questions? Rants? Post away!

[ghettoGenius]

I totally agree with all your points.

+1 sir.