I'll cut to the chase. The system of player to NPC selling when it comes to everyday items that you want to get rid of could use a lot of improvement. I won't deny that it works, but I believe it could work better.
The main purpose I bring this up is for Guild Wars 2. I would like to see a better system implemented for the sake of testing its effectiveness in Guild Wars One. Guild Wars 2 is supposed to have improvements on all aspects of the game, and I feel that this is one aspect that requires some attention.
As it stands now, the merchant is very much comparable to a black hole. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, a black hole is a gap in the spacial plane that occurs in places with high gravitational pull that amounts to the point where the plane ruptures, and creates extreme gravity, pulling everything around it into the hole. What does all this have to do with the merchant? Simple. Things sucked into a black hole are broken down into oblivion and never seen again. The same happens to any item that you sell to the merchant. That item is totally wiped from the game never to be seen again. I don't feel that this is an effective system.
In other games, the merchant, trader, or what have you will retain items sold to them by players, even if only for a few minutes or hours. I feel a system like this would be a great alternative for the system now. I know that there are players that would be grateful to have a spot in town where they could simply purchase weapons or weapon mods, or even materials, collector items, or what have you that we sell to the merchant every time we come in. Instead of having to track them down and sell it, we sell it to the merchant.
I don't see any possible harm of putting in a similar retention system so that all items are retained for a certain amount of time when sold to the merchant. Yes, there are a lot of items in the game, and maybe the list would get long, but there are only so many items that drop in a given area where a merchant is close. People normally sell things to that merchant as soon as they are done with that area, so we would see quantity of the same items and not quantity of different items to a point where it would cause a real problem in the long run.
Another Pro-Improvement idea is that it will significantly reduce spam. People so often spam to buy things that we know we just sold to the merchant, or items that we know other people sell. If ther merchants had a retention setting, those people would have a faster, quieter way to obtain the items they need.
Lastly, it creates a much needed gold sink. People who buy things from the merchant naturally pay higher than whatever players are selling for. What's more, this gold is not transferred, but deleted, much like the black hole function of our current merchant. A gold sink like this, while not harming anyone, would greatly relieve a few pressures on our economy.
My stand is, implement this in Guild Wars one to test a similar system in Guild Wars 2. There are already things being "beta'd" for Guild Wars 2 now in the game. This one, while improving the game, would give Arenanet valuable input on how to handle the new system.
I /Sign this idea. How about you? Why? Why not? Tell all.
Until then, Thank you for reading.
