1. Remove Barter.
2. Make it so that the Face, the person who talks to the merchant, controls the prices, and let everyone sell their items in one interaction at that price.
Clean, and simple.
So, basically the same stuff that was already suggested, except you had to be the one stomping your feet and making a scene before conceding that it would be an improvement.
And for the record if anyone thinks that "party-based reputation" is too much work to implement, I have even the simpler variant:
- let the prices be decided by the companion that starts the trading, regardless of which companion's inventory we switch to, during the process".
There, done.
Just to be clear, as far as I'm concerned if they removed the current system entirely and replaced it with nothing more than just FIXED PRICES for everyone, it would still be an improvement and something preferable to what we have currently.
The system I suggested above (in both variants) is simply meant to be something that would maintain the same design goals of the current system (having reputation and likability affecting prices) but...
- with less room for blatant exploitation
- less incentives to spend even more time juggling items from one bag to the other
Not to mention that "removing the barter system" doesn't really address the core of the issue in itself and it's a textbook case of "throwing the baby with the bathwater", because the undesirable part isn't the bartering in itself, but how easy it makes to to manipulate prices with the "gifting exploit" it comes attached to.
