Just like the title says, the way i see it, the trading just aint working right. Im talking about player to player trade. Everyday more and more topics and situations in-game make me think abit about this, and slowly i've gotten to this conclusion: it isnt reliable to trade, its more reliable to make crafting alt; it takes too much time to trade, instead seeking someone who has the 10 gecko pelts, il simply go kill geckos myself and mostly, it isnt safe to trade: your trade partners sidekick can steal off your items/caps while trading, someone might kill you while trading, someone might scam you with items, lure you into a trap and so on and so on...
Now, this definately isnt a main priority suggestion, but this, i guess, is what the suggestion subforum is for.
So that was the introduction, the problem.
Fix im offering:
call it as you want, but for now i'l call it just mail. Yes, people, mail. I've tought this plenty times: what the heck, it aint realistic, mail in wasteland? But then again, its gameplaywise, and in my eyes, gameplay>realism. The idea is pretty much snitched off other MMO's; you send item to reciever and if the reciever wishes to get it, he has to buy the caps. Bit more in-depth, an example more like:
Player A wishes to send 5 plasma rifles to player B.
Problem No. 1: Player B doesnt trust player A, he think it might be a trap, besides, loosing X caps wouldnt be good.
Problem No. 2: Player B has 20% outdoorsman. He is at Hub, player A is at Klamath. Hell yeah.
Problem No. 3: Player B wishes to buy all the rifles, but he is offline right now. Meanwhile, player A is worried - he is going sleeping in few minutes, he very likely wont be online tomorrow and he needs the caps.
Fix for all of the problems: unlogical, unrealistic, unexplainable mail system.
Each city and larger areas (Gordons Gas, for example) could contain one mailbox wich would work like a faction terminal. You can use this terminal to give items to other players, simply trough some kind of dialog the mailbox takes away your item and 'sends' it to the reciever. When the recieving person uses any mailbox, he can withdraw the item. Similiar when its about trading. Seller sends a laser rifle to buyer and determines the price, 3000 caps lets say. The buyer recieves the item and to withdraw it from the mailbox he must have atleast 3000 caps in inventory, wich get 'eaten' by the terminal upon laser rifle withdrawal. Later the sender can use any mailbox/terminal to get his 3000 caps. Also, during the dialog, seller could determine how long does the item is available to buy for the buyer. This means that if buyer decides to actually not buy the item, seller gets it back in, let it be 1 hour, 2 days or a week.
I hope i runned down the basics clear and understandable.
The mechanics might be kind of hard to implement, but dialog shouldnt.
Seller's dialog with terminal could be something like:
1. Select item you wish to sell.
*Items you got in your inventory listed down, OR type the item name trough ''Say''*
2. Select the reciever/target
*Enter persons name trough ''Say''*
3. What would be the price of item?
*Enter price trough ''Say''
4. How long you wish to sell?
*Choose amount of time from a list*
And reciever's would look like this:
1. You got no new items/You got new item/items!
2. Its a light support weapon loaded 30/30 .223 FMJ and 78% deteroriaton./... looks like it has been repaired already.
3. Do you wish to withdraw this item?/... it needs X caps to withdraw it.
This would definately, ihmo, improve player-to-player trade. Only cons i see for it is the dumbness and unrealism of it.
I guess thats it, i hope i didnt miss anything out and you'l get it.
My own vote goes to 5th option.
Poll
