dead horse rant:

WAAHHHHH!!!!! Trading is tough and inefficieant to train, especially for casual players. I love my baby trader, but it's because of his backstory and character and where he fits in the world of Elanthia. I DO NOT love training trading. At all. Maybe once my character is higher and can collect and sell more bundles and pouches for better prices and get better contracts it will be easier, but early on it's disheartening knowing I can lock 4 or 5 skills on any other character in a fraction of the time that it takes to get trading alone to 20/34, and when focusing on trading there's only a couple of other skills that can be feasibly learned (and appraisal, apart from circle reqs and tdps, is pretty useless after a certain point).

Okay. End of dead horse rant.

I know 3.0 and everything is taking a huge amount of time, but I really hope that a GM or two will step up when the dust clears and really focus on quality of life for us. I'm not just talking about trader magic (which I hope is a relatively high priority after 3.0), but also actual training and use of the trading skill. I know that experience tweaks can only go so far, so I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out more ways to get any amount of bits into the trading skill, and I've come up with one idea that I figured I'd post:

I like that under the old shop mechanics we got experience in trading for haggling with merchants. I've heard (but am not sure) that some of the new shops offer traders lower prices, but I think we'd all rather get a few extra bits in trading than simply a few extra kronars. My suggestion is to wipe discounts based on the simple fact that we are traders and institute a trader-only HAGGLE verb to be used in new shops.

Essentially, after SHOPping for an item on a surface, instead of BUY <item>, we would have the option to HAGGLE <item>. This would open up a system similar to the shopping mechanics of old shops to allow us to haggle for lower prices based on skill and stat checks, and would actually teach us trading. Difficulties could be based on price of item in standard shops, and the system could possibly be applied to trader-owned shops where the owner is on the floor, making it a skill/stat contest resulting in more trading experience for both the buyer and the seller. HAGGLE could also be used in pawnshops to try and get a better deal on sold items.

Maybe the system would be able to work player-to-player as well, so that there can be some give and take when a trader is out buying bundles and pouches off of adventurers to resell (maybe charisma/intel + trading vs. wisdom/disc + appraisal, starting at the base APP value of the bundle/pouch?). I understand that the EXP for bundles and pouches happens at the end when you turn them in, but it would be nice to see some EXP happening both at the buying AND the selling, since making a purchase (even from a PC) is theoretically indicative of us practicing our skill.

I'm not sure if this HAGGLE idea is feasible, but I thought I would post it anyway as an idea for giving us another avenue to put bits into our guild-only skill and help us casual players advance in the guild. Thanks for listening!

I'd like to expand on this.

As our 3.0 circle requirements require a heck of a lot more combat than 2.0, i'd like to see haggling with critters - sell to critters, and if you or the critter doesn't like the deal presented, then you go to war... <combat>. "Okay mister goblin, you don't like my price for these shiney swords, Let me show you how Pointy they are!"

An arisen dummy zombie bellows, "You will all be ssslaughtered!"
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