Hi all! Thank you to everyone working on the game and for asking for input!
After reading through
every response, here are my two cents about a good starting point. (tl;dr:
read this stuff)
Yes: Items that are not required and do not heavily influence game progress. Warnings, exceptions, and daily caps applied as needed.
- Garb, all materials, ammo, jewelry, tattoos, potions, cheat cards, charms, cannon rams
- Crude, common, rare items
- Restrict first few trades to “item(s) for item(s) of equivalent value” to prevent accidental big losses. After that you should have the hang of it and can willingly sell a valuable item for next to nothing if you so choose, or maybe even gift items.
- Gold… though I guess then it'd be a sale, not trade at that point. Great for when you’re maxed out.
- Ships. But… prices may be insanely high due to various upgrades, so the “sellers” may always get the short end of the stick.
- Trading between pirates of our own account- the items are still ours, we worked for them
- Items you cannot even use yet. Existing built-in skill and level caps already limit their use, so there would not really be an unfair gameplay advantage just by having it sit idly in one’s inventory. I can foresee many players running out of inventory space. *hint hint*
- Multi-step process for trading… Make it EXPLICITLY CLEAR which items are in the trade slots (maybe show the entire item description card), and lock them in to prevent last-second swapping.
No: Rewards/incentives that keep alive the goal of progressing
through the entire game and encouraging the completion of the trinket collections. Nothing to do with items' sentimental values, only game participation. If the rewards lose importance, so may everything else.
- Treasures (My personal favorite to collect, would love to see more!)
- Famed, Legendary items of any kind.
- Any items needed for quests
- Quest rewards
- Special event items
- Items redeemed only via codes
Eye for an eye trading is fairest… Crude sword for crude sword, common boots for common boots, etc… but could be circumvented if both parties agree to an inequal trade. It’d be easiest to ignore any skill boosts and existing item value amount, but if they were part of the whole equation, perhaps a couple coins could be included to make up the difference in item value. That may be overcomplicating things though. (But if Runescape can maintain a massive Grand Exchange, and other online games can handle trading, then surely WE can do this successfully as well!)
Having traded within other free online games, I do realize there are many pros and cons. There will always be someone looking for an opportunity to exploit others. There will always be someone who gets more emotionally attached to their pirate and puts way more sentimental value into their achievements and weapons. Everyone is different, and that’s okay. Is it worth quitting the game over? Not for me, no. No matter how much I love it, it’s still just a game.
Just because this aspect will eventually be implemented in the game, doesn’t mean that everyone has to or will participate… much less will immediately go and trade all of their best weapons. Even if they do, then so what? Their items, their choice. As long as the trading process is fair and secure, few will receive something for nothing and no one should naturally attain an unfair advantage over others.
Remember, this game, this community… is made of people coming together and having a good time, no matter how many hours we spend playing, which activities we partake in, which guild we join, which weapons we use, how many legendaries we score... or don’t, or how much sentimental value we do or don’t put into the game and in-game items. Other player’s trading, bragging, or gameplay styles won’t inherently take that experience and enjoyment away from us unless we allow it.
Slight tangent: As others have mentioned, I’ve always liked the idea of having leaderboards to reflect various achievements. Since naturally looting high-level weapons seems to be a hot topic… perhaps that can now be something to be acknowledged/rewarded for. Personally, I think a fun way to display such achievements would be unique “infamy” badges to wear either on our nametag or pirate profile card.