While talking about this game with a coworker a short while ago I mentioned how inconvenient shopping can be when you have to have this back and forth over who wants what items. This is compounded from the first game since now you can have three or four people all trying to buy things through one of them to make sure they get the best price.
In fact, during my last session I actually just bought things myself because the hassle of it didn't feel worth the money I'd save, while the player whose character would have saved money over me felt confused that I had not taken advantage of their investment into the barter skill.
Since then I've thought of three ways I'd consider trying to change the barter skill, or shopping in general:
1. All players get the lowest price available to the party
2. All players can look at an npc's store at the same time and maybe even tag items. Tagging an item could even send it directly to them if the item was bought.
3. All players get the lowest price of any party member in sight of them, basically working the same way as Leadership always has. In-world this makes sense by the other party member helping them haggle, instead of just standing around while they get a bad deal.
Regardless of whether one of those ideas is used or something entirely different, I certainly think multiplayer shopping could be made more convenient with less time for players to be just standing around doing nothing if they want to get the best prices..
