What's with all the arguments about balancing? Seriously, I couldn't give two s***s less about what everyone thinks about balancing. Why are so many people obsessed with difficulty? You're repeating the same crap over and over needlessly when you die when in the same amount of time two or three playthroughs could be done. This is a perfect example of something that didn't need to be fixed. Don't like it? Then DON'T USE IT!! There's no what, if, ands or buts about it! If you lack self discipline and you can't play the way you want because your will is weaker than a wet paper towel then that's your personal problem that you need to deal with during your alone time. Some people have busy schedules and don't have time to bull**** repeating the same fights multiple times or waste time running around to figure out how to accommodate some missing bloody ability because there's that one point in the game were you can't do without.
Because balance is necessary if the developers hope to maintain their vision of how their ideas should be visited. Obviously they have an interest in doing that since the game is filled with rules that define each system.
They can't just "leave the Seller of Secrets alone" and leave it up to the player to choose whether to abuse it or not. The average player doesn't come to these forums or even know something is wrong with this NPC. All they see is the inventory restocking with books. At that point it's not a decision to abuse it or not - from the perspective of the unaware that's just how the vendor works, is obviously intended, so why wouldn't they make use of it? You might as well expect them not to "abuse" vendors by shopping with them.
If the developers intended for the Seller of Secrets not to restock those books in the inventory then they need to set things up that way - because that's the only surefire way to make their vision crystal clear to everyone, not just the ~2% of players who visit the forums.
