Mysterious Merchant Clarification

nitocris83 · June 2017

***UPDATE***
As of July 7, the Mysterious Merchant should not be giving the same inventory selection unless the following circumstance occurs:

Summoning a new Mysterious Merchant in the ~15 second interval it takes for the previous store to be destroyed will cause the same inventory to appear. In other words, clicking a signpost as the merchant blows up, keeping it open, and then building a new one will result in the same inventory

We hope to address this in the future but, in the meantime, we urge players to wait until the previous merchant store is completely gone before attempting to build a new one. We will also be reviewing any new player feedback to make sure there are no additional edge cases that could be impacting inventory selection.

******

Hail Adventurers,

We wanted to clarify any confusion that may exist regarding how the Mysterious Merchant functions in regards to individual guilds and alliances.

The Mysterious Merchant works independently of Alliances, meaning guilds within the same alliance may have the same inventory selection at the same time.

The Mysterious Merchant should not offer duplicate inventory selections twice in a row for the same guild.

The example below doesn't cover every single selection permutation but is meant to show how Alliance should not influence the inventory of an individual guild.

Alliance ExamplePants has guilds:
-FancyPants
-SmartyPants
-CutiePants

All the guilds in this Alliance summon the Merchant one week and get:

-Guild FancyPants: Inventory Selection X
-Guild SmartyPants: Inventory Selection X
-Guild CutiePants: Inventory Selection X

OR

-Guild FancyPants: Inventory Selection B
-Guild SmartyPants: Inventory Selection A
-Guild CutiePants: Inventory Selection B

The following week, these guilds summon the Merchant again and get:

-Guild FancyPants: Inventory Selection Y
-Guild SmartyPants: Inventory Selection Z
-Guild CutiePants: Inventory Selection W

OR

-Guild FancyPants: Inventory Selection A
-Guild SmartyPants: Inventory Selection B
-Guild CutiePants: Inventory Selection Y

On this second week, none of the guilds should get the inventory selection they got the week prior.

We hope this answers any questions or concerns with how the Mysterious Merchant works. We will continue to follow the community threads on this topic for any additional clarification needed!

This is a fictional example. Alliance and guild names are either the products of the Community Manager's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to Alliances or Guilds, active or dormant, is purely coincidental.

Unknown · June 2017

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Unknown · June 2017

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oldbaldyone · June 2017

I think Alliances should be taken into account for this, but at the very least, we really just need to know what actually went live.

For the record:

"Tuxedo TShirt Alliance" guild:

2 weeks in a row, and I think another alliance guild had this before that also:

Wisley's Dreaded Wristguards
Executioner's Black Attire
Protector's Standard
Scenes of the Sword Coast
Portrait of the Merchant

Not sure if our plan is to waste more resources spawning this thing just to test it on live. Seems to me a GM could just create a rank 20 SH guild, summon the vendor, see whats on it, destroy it, rinse and repeat. 30 mins work to clear up if the inventory changes without punishing players for testing.

beckylunatic · June 2017

oldbaldyone said:
2 weeks in a row, and I think another alliance guild had this before that also:

Wisley's Dreaded Wristguards
Executioner's Black Attire
Protector's Standard
Scenes of the Sword Coast
Portrait of the Merchant

Yes, Ember Legion did have the same inventory as well.

The thing is, it appears that nobody on PC or consoles can get a different MM inventory than that set right now. Absolutely no guild who's been building it has reported anything different since the fix went out, but even console guilds have had no variety since they've had access to it.

Like I said in the other thread, this goes far beyond probability or coincidence. Something else has broken. It's not about whether or not guilds in the same alliance are rolling the same items and find it disappointing. It's that every guild on every platform has an identical MM. The duplication on repeat summoning is now not just something unintended for that individual guild, but a byproduct of the MM literally not being able to produce anything else at the moment.

Unknown · June 2017

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Unknown · June 2017

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oldbaldyone · June 2017

@nitocris83 This vendor really needs a thorough review and a test run on live to see the results. Even with only a couple of the items making it to live, it seems unlikely the same items would pop up every time.

thefiresidecat · June 2017

nitocris all the guilds ALL of them, across all the platforms had the same selection last week. there was NO variance among them. I haven't heard of a single guild having a different selection last week than I mentioned in my post. SOMEONE should have had something different but NO One did. now they're saying the selection this week is the same as last week. (I haven't seen because no one will build it now)

edit one of our guilds did build it and they confirm what the other guilds we've talked to were saying. same as last week

Unknown · June 2017

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hirogarde · June 2017

Has any thought gone into a short term change in the duration (and cost) to say 8-12 hrs?

This would make it affordable enough for more guilds to build, giving more results to test the variance.

kooler · June 2017

We build him twice since he became available, on PS4, and he still has he same stuff. Everything is the same. Should it be that way?

thefiresidecat · June 2017

the consensus among players is that it is not wai. it's been the same for everyone and now the gear is repeated again the next week.

molchar · June 2017

Ok I think I understand - the mysterious vendor offers various types of pants. Got it!

beckylunatic · June 2017

molchar#7365 said:
Ok I think I understand - the mysterious vendor ~~offers various types of~~ is pants. Got it!

FTFY

xinexix · June 2017

I wonder if all the guilds wasting resources on this will be compensated for their testing efforts.

Unknown · June 2017

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kooler · June 2017

Same on PS4. Same stuff this week. Spent 80k of enchantments resources of the guild to waste! I demand feedback on when it'll be fixed and how dev's are gonna cover those waste expencies!

beckylunatic · June 2017

Word was a little too slow to get around and two more guilds in my alliance built the MM today. Same old, same old.

armadeonx · June 2017

5 guilds in our alliance built the MM and all 5 of us got the same stuff (I personally checked them all). two, maybe three is a coincidence - five is a problem that requires developer attention.

On the second week only one of our guilds built one - and yes, same stuff as the previous week.

Julia, there IS a problem and things are not working as they are supposed to. Do you have any evidence to the contrary? (other than assurances from the devs).

armadeonx · June 2017

@mimicking#6533 @terramak @rgutscheradev please look into this, there's feedback across the platforms that the MM is seriously bugged.

xinexix · June 2017

Yup tired of waiting to buy the guise of the wolf clan. Might as well spend these guild marks

putzboy78 · June 2017

Same thing in my alliance on PC, 5 Mystery Merchants with all the same offerings. This cannot be a coincidence. It needs attention ASAP

@nitocris83
@mimicking#6533
@terramak
@rgutscheradev

nitocris83 · June 2017

Hi everyone. Appreciate the feedback/constructive comments. The main purpose behind this post was to explain how the design is intended so that when we were getting reports, we could determine if there was an actual bug or if it was due to confusion with design. The inclusion of people discussing dupes across their alliance hindered us from investigating issues at the guild level, which is where we had to start. We are now looking at issues such as latency and systems order that impact the store selection every guild is getting.

I know there is feedback regarding the design, the cost, etc. and we are listening to that too but we need to be systemic about how we address things.

putzboy78 · June 2017

how would latency and system order impact store selection? Shouldn't the inventory be a server side calculation. i.e. remove last weeks offering, RNG the remainder. Calling this latency actually would point at a bigger issue with RNG and how it may be impacted by latency and system order. This isn't a small discussion, this sounds HUGE

xinexix · June 2017

@putzboy78 Latency makes sense when you think about the past few "unintentional advantages" some players have been using to break game rules.

dupeks · June 2017

putzboy78 said:
how would latency and system order impact store selection? Shouldn't the inventory be a server side calculation. i.e. remove last weeks offering, RNG the remainder. Calling this latency actually would point at a bigger issue with RNG and how it may be impacted by latency and system order. This isn't a small discussion, this sounds HUGE

Or she could be using imprecise language, probably relayed through what amounts to a corporate game of telephone.

Even if it's a server side calculation, it would be sensible for them to have separate systems for managing RNG rolls and loot lookups. Whether they duct taped the Mysterious Merchant inventory onto an existing loot roll system or built out a new system for managing it, it's still sensible to speculate that they would call some global RNG controller and lookup mechanism. And if the problem is with that call or the return, then some dev might have labeled it a "latency and system order issue" even though that might mean something very different from client side latency.

That said, I think that we probably become less helpful when we climb so far out on limbs speculating about the way the internal systems work. Admittedly it would be great if we were given more information so that we could more accurately use a common terminology, but I doubt that's in the cards for now.

So I would be hesitant to jump to too many conclusions based on a couple words out of context. I think it would be best to focus on clearly articulating the very real in-game effects that are plaguing the mysterious merchant.

Namely: Currently all Mysterious Merchants everywhere in the PC world are rolling the same inventory. This has been the case since the recent "fix" was deployed to prevent the earlier duplicate inventory complaints.

beckylunatic · June 2017

dupeks said:
Namely: Currently all Mysterious Merchants everywhere in the PC world are rolling the same inventory. This has been the case since the recent "fix" was deployed to prevent the earlier duplicate inventory complaints.

Both consoles have been experiencing the same issue since their Shroud of Souls release (ie. all MMs ever).

oldbaldyone · June 2017

Consider it a failed experiment, add all items to the vendor at all times....be done with it.

Randomize prices if you need some mystery.

putzboy78 · June 2017

dupeks said:
Or she could be using imprecise language, probably relayed through what amounts to a corporate game of telephone.

Hot Breath Telephone?

Regardless in your description it still boils down to transparency. Either Julia is not being transparent to us or the devs are not being transparent with her (making her a lame duck in the capacity of community manager). Either scenario hurts the community as a whole. Even a we are looking into it blanket response is better than a false response, especially one that the community already rages enough on (latency). At 200k AD+ gem value per MM, this is a very expensive mistake across the community, costing my alliance over 1M AD already

dupeks · June 2017

putzboy78 said:

dupeks said:
Or she could be using imprecise language, probably relayed through what amounts to a corporate game of telephone.
Hot Breath Telephone?

Regardless in your description it still boils down to transparency. Either Julia is not being transparent to us or the devs are not being transparent with her (making her a lame duck in the capacity of community manager). Either scenario hurts the community as a whole. Even a we are looking into it blanket response is better than a false response, especially one that the community already rages enough on (latency). At 200k AD+ gem value per MM, this is a very expensive mistake across the community, costing my alliance over 1M AD already

All valid points, I don't disagree with a single thing you said. I would bet my pickle that it's "devs not being transparent with her" or just "nobody involved is prioritizing transparency / updating the community with detailed information about this issue because they are busy and that's not their priority"

But if transparency is our aim, then I believe that a positive reinforcement model (appreciating successes more than criticizing failures) is more effective. In my opinion, seizing on a couple words in an update post as evidence of deception or incompetence is not helpful in advancing us towards our objective of increased transparency and community engagement.

In that spirit, thanks @nitocris83 for the update! It would be helpful if you could clarify what you mean by "latency and systems orders" in order to alleviate any concerns that this issue is related to what most folks here could consider latency (client-side latency).

It would also be awesome if you could maybe raise the topic of potential compensation (perhaps a reduced cost for MM for some time? or following oldbaldyone's suggestion and just throwing in the towel on the RNG part of things). It does feel like some guilds continued to build the MM structure at your and others' insistence that it was working correctly. Since it's pretty clear by now that it wasn't working right after all, some kind of gesture would be really appreciated.

Mysterious Merchant Clarification

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