Vendor and Merchant are not the same thing (vendor patterns) #TerminologyMatters

@Lexie

Would you be kind enough to check this one with @DarkStarr

The old naming convention used to be that

• Vendor = player vendor
• Merchant = NPC/Britannian merchant

Where the point was that they would be easier to separate if they had different terminology.

This is also so if one reads the Player Instructions where the headers imply this paradigm.

(Which has been eroded a couple of times since it seems not everyone on the dev team was on board for that info, for instance Public Vendors should really be named Public Merchants since they are NPC etc).

However with the new vendor patterns this seems to be broken even further.

Example:
One of the new crafting patterns are named
"Pattern: Blue Female Merchant"
and when we apply it the object goes from
"Commission-Free Vendor" (or the ordinary one)
to
"Blue Female Merchant"
which according to the old naming convention is simply wrong.

It is also extra super confusing for new players since there are a couple of dresses that are called things like
"Viking Merchant Outfit"
and
"Wealthy Merchant Outfit"

That is of course really really confusing that there are now two "merchant" patterns, one which is applied to clothing and the other on vendors.


Proposed fix:
Please, please, please consider removing all of this confusion and re-instate the old naming convention with this slight addition:

• Vendor = player vendor
• Merchant = NPC merchant
• Trader = generic when used for gear

This will make it much much easier in documentation and for clarity for which is refering to which.


Then the scenario above would be that the vendor patterns are like this:
"Pattern: Blue Female Vendor"
Which makes sense that we use a Vendor pattern on a vendor.

That the NPCs would all be "Merchant" including the
Public Merchant

That all the gear uses trader so they'd be renamed to
"Wealthy Trader Outfit"
"Viking Trader Outfit"
etc


Thank you

 

Bump
Bumpeli
Bumpeti
Bump

 

All merchants, eh forgive me... "traders" are npcs, the difference is static vs. dynamic/player controlled inventory. With stuff this important you can't make any mistakes!!

 

???
I don't think we are on the same wavelength here.

The pattern renames it from vendor to merchant. Regardless of dynamic or static inventory.

That is a bug.

Which also is apart from the design specification.