I know you talked about trade in the FF and people have talked about trade a little but no one has given a reasonable way to fix this. The trade chat idea only moves to problem, it doesn't fix it.
My idea was to add some kind of bulletin board be it a physical place in the town or something accessable from the trade window. The board would be city specific but not distric specific (e.g. someone in yack's bend doesn't see someone in Old Ascalon). I have often cursed my trading ways when I go to another district to find that something I just sold is going for a much higher price. This would allow for a more even economy between districts.
The board would have a drag mechanism for a seller to drag an item to the board, so others could see exactly what it was that was being sold (this would just put the item info on the board, the item should still be useable and always remain in the user inventory). You could see the item, what district the person is in (or are they adventuring) and the conditions to buy (specific price, Best Offer, Trade, Etc..)
By clicking on the person's name, it would open a pm. Buys could be done in a similar way. Insted of showing the actual item desired, a person could write a description of what they want, where they are and again buying conditions. This board should also update when 2 people come to an agreement. Either through checking if somethng gone from a user inventory or allowing the user to cancel.
I think this is a viable option that allows tradeing to go on unhindered, in a more discreet way. I hope this helps. Gaile I would find your feedback on this idea particularly interesting.
Lectalist Firehands
Viable Trade System
Ossus
efiloN
Here's my vision.
You just tag items in your stash as buyable, put in a price, and that's it. You don't need to be online or anything.
Then the buyer goes to an NPC named broker or trader. There they have a serach engine. They can write the name of the item in a field and put price, min and max damage, bonuses and all of that.
Say you want to buy a monk weapon with at least 15 damage and it shouldn't cost more than 30 gold. You may get 30 hits and then you can choose what monk weapon you want from those.
Then the seller gets the money in his stash, character or whatever.
You just tag items in your stash as buyable, put in a price, and that's it. You don't need to be online or anything.
Then the buyer goes to an NPC named broker or trader. There they have a serach engine. They can write the name of the item in a field and put price, min and max damage, bonuses and all of that.
Say you want to buy a monk weapon with at least 15 damage and it shouldn't cost more than 30 gold. You may get 30 hits and then you can choose what monk weapon you want from those.
Then the seller gets the money in his stash, character or whatever.
RitchDavis
I'm thinking each Guild should have it's own Shop so it can sell the items it finds on missions and make a profit for the guild itself.