Honestly I think it time to move beyond the whole trash items / vendor system and come up with something fresh and interesting. Gold only has value in our pen and paper games because we use various down time activity and no idea how those could be added to a CRPG. That all our DM adjudicating that, would be a nightmare to code.
I would be happy to all the busywork parts of CRPG was just removed and the Developers would focus on more fun stuff. All most people want is meaningful loot so maybe after each quest have a list of rewards and we get to pick an item we want. Toss in some scroll and potions and I would be happy.
