Improved trading system

[Labtop 215]

So, while part of that criticism was directed at you, it was more of a general statement which I see now could have been misunderstood. I still wasn't attacking you personally but if this offended you somehow then I apologize.

I didn't ask you to apologize, nor am I offended.  I want to see you succeed, for I too want to see a better system in place for trading.  I will give you however, that you are being a bit disagreeable right now.

Sure, but does every single modification to the list have to be interpreted as an offer? If you want to buy something expensive for several less expensive items that doesn't make any sense, your intention is to build up a list of items you are offering and then ask them if they agree not in between every single squirrel skin or whatever that you add. The fact that UrW forces you to make an offer after every modification is rooted in one of the big problems with its trading system - the UI simply doesn't have the capability to do it otherwise.

Like I said, also with the other suggestions I have already posted and re-quoted above, when the UI is done properly this isn't even necessary any more because then you can adjust your "items on trade" list at will before making an actual offer so if you overshoot the target you can simply remove an item from the list again. The fact that now, if you overshoot, you have to start over and re-create that last list (except for one or two items...) you used previously is one of the biggest flaws of the current system. It's incredibly tedious and annoying.

You can already select multiple items at once to offer before presenting it.  You don't get to see the reaction until after you present that offer, however.  Give a good reason why any user interface should allow you to see the reaction before you make your actual offer.  Is it time travel?  Mind reading powers?

Sure, but does every single modification to the list have to be interpreted as an offer?

Yes, every time you add more items to the trade you are of course making a counter offer which deserves a reaction.  If you decide you've offered too much and you want to start over again, that too deserves a reaction.  I remember at one point these reactions would progressively get harsher and harsher as well as the villagers are supposed to have patience that would wear thin, but currently this only happens if you accidentally (or deliberately) attempt to leave with an unpaid for item in your inventory and the villagers demand payment.

Really? I mean.... really?! Even considering a potential misunderstanding between us, "moodiness" effects have nothing to do with a supply and demand system...

I'll put it this way.  If I have the supply, but I don't particularly like you, I don't have to supply you.  Even if I do supply you, I may do so more begrudgingly increasing the price.  This could happen due to circumstances entirely outside of your control.  For instance, maybe the village elder has interpreted signs of a bad omen and decides that trading is not a good idea right now, or perhaps a child has gone missing and the villagers would rather not trade with you until that child is found.  Or perhaps, maybe there was a raid (failed or otherwise) upon the village you are currently visiting, and the raiders happen to belong to your chosen culture.  While they may recognize that your not there to raid, they may still hold a grudge or resentment that just isn't fair.  I don't see why get woke go broke couldn't be a thing during the iron age of Finland.

These villages would either be temporarily or permanently worse for trade than other villages.

Furthermore, the random prices from village to village would simulate the demand portion of the supply and demand. Sometimes people just want certain items more than other, even of the same variety.  For example, the villagers in that area might want elk meat more than stag meat, or vice versa.  I don't see how this is contradictory.

Supply and demand is the fundamental law of economics, there is nothing random about it. Why would you try to remove one of the factors and randomize it? In this particular example, if a village is short on food but has a lot of mouths to feed, prices for food go up.

Wrong.  I made no such stipulation that the villagers where starving.  That is what you inserted into the scenario.  Food is a common item to get a hold of and I was laying out how it could be possible that some types of meat may be more desirable than others based on the tastes of the people in the village.  Of course, starving people will pay more for food than non starving people however.  But you missed the point.  Also...

At what point does it make sense to randomize anything? Imagine you are playing in such a game, where the prices of items are governed by dice rolls... you are then of course just completely at the mercy of the dice when it comes to trading, if one price in a village is particularly bad, do you move on to the next and reroll? How often do you do this? Is the price fixed for one village forever or does it eventually reroll, if so with what interval?

When you are simulating demands that could exist within the game but don't track the metrics due to the extra resources it would take to do so.  While items that exist may have an objective value, peoples interpretation of that value is still subjective to some degree.  More importantly, however is that while these people are NPC, they aren't supposed to act like NPC's.  They should be suffering from the same problem that you have at the very least.  They shouldn't act like they know perfectly what something is worth regardless of how good or bad of a trader they really are.  Sometimes they just get it wrong.  Sometimes they think they can get more from you than they really can or should.  Greed can play into this too you know.

Obviously they wont "re-roll" the prices every single time you talk to them again, that would be too easy to exploit.  I would assume instead that the prices would change when the village restocks it's goods for sale as this simulates the hunting of animals, the collection of harvests, other trades happening outside of your view, and the like.

You seem to think too that this randomization would be overly dramatic and would cause you to be able to trade knives for swords or something ridiculous.  That isn't the intent behind fluctuating and random pricing.

Furthermore, the reason you would add a modest random element (something you seem to have missed btw)

(very small variation, not enough on it's own to potentially generate lots of wealth).

would be to add an element of uncertainty and challenge.  These changes would also pave the way to playing as a merchant if you wanted to do so.

Lastly...

Let us consider a young man living in Finland in the early middle ages, some time between 800 and 1000 A.D. - let's call him Timo...
-snip-
He pulls out another item: an arrow, very standard make, a straight, thin piece of wood carved from a branch with some feathers at the back to stabilize flight and a head made of a sharp piece of rock, skillfully tied to the shaft with a cord. Another very common item among the Finnish tribes. He knows that an arrow and a squirrel fur are of the same value, as he has seen them exchanged 1:1 in trades many times when he was young.
-snip-
The next item he examines is his hunting knife...  he knows that a price of about 20 squirrel furs would be fair for such an item. Of course, a particularly high quality version of a knife would command a higher price, 25 or even 30 skins would be fair for those.
-snip-
Another very important tool in his pack was his woodsman's axe, and it was also so popular among his people that he knew its value to be the same as that of a hunting knife, meaning 20 squirrel skins for a decent quality version.
-snip-
A fishing rod is so easy to make that its value is not high at all, in fact one squirrel skin would most likely even get you two fishing rods. This doesn't mean it is useless however, it's just that getting one of these is much easier than even hunting a simple, harmless animal like the squirrel and Timo has often witnessed the people of his village making these without much effort.
-snip-
He remembers, that a single pelt of an Elk, if it wasn't too beat up, was mentioned to be even a little more valuable than a decent hunting knife, or of about equal value than a high quality one - that is to say, around 25 squirrel pelts
-snip-
The foreign traders would be more than willing to give you a high quality piece of jewelry made of a precious metal like silver for it - or perhaps two or three made of bronze. Returning with a lynx kill was always special cause for celebration in his village.

In practice, you got most of these values from playing characters and doing these trades in the game, probably across multiple characters.  Which is a consequence of items having fixed values that are never deviated from.  Essentially this is knowledge that you aren't supposed to have, but due to game mechanics you eventually learn.  This is why items need to have some randomization in what they are valued at.  Because a squirrel hide isn't always worth an arrow, even in iron age Finland.  Might I remind you that Timo's source of the information on squirrel hides being traded for arrows is from Foreigners whom particularly want those hides.  But again however, all prices are static right now.  Timo should not have been able to consistently trade squirrel hides for arrows with potentially everybody he meets.

Furthermore, no source is given for how he came to "know" what the value of a hunting knife or woodsman's axe would be worth other than he "heard" it.

Timo's also wrong about the fishing rod.  You can't make it vanilla.  You have to mod in the recipe into the game to do this.  Furthermore, no reason beyond the supposed ease of it's creation is actually given for why the fishing rod is so "inexpensive" that I'm wondering if you actually dumped the games raws to get this information.  While it is true that the fishing rod is half the price of a squirrel hide, they can be used to pull in lots of fish (like pike, perch, and roach at all once) by even inexperienced fishermen suggesting that more goes into the fishing rods construction than is known here.  Fishing rods probably take more time, skill, and materials to create than it's current price should even suggest.

Even as presented, this would be a backstory that would tie into a potential bartering skill, and possible game start as a wandering merchant.  You have to give that story a second pass though at least.

Now it's your turn:
-snip-
Please tell me how someone without the internet, without precision scales or even crude scales for that matter, without any kind of measurement instruments at all would have access to this kind of information?

They wouldn't.  That would only be an argument however for that information being obfuscated.  I take it that you wouldn't find it very fun however for every item to have it's weight listed in comparison to rocks and stones instead though.  Skills having listed percentages isn't necessary either, the bar is sufficient to demonstrate how much confidence your character has in his or her skills.  I wouldn't mind either change personally.

[flibbo]

I will give you however, that you are being a bit disagreeable right now.

And I'm not the only one here, certain parts of your comment I referred to there were very condescending.

You can already select multiple items at once to offer before presenting it.  You don't get to see the reaction until after you present that offer, however.  Give a good reason why any user interface should allow you to see the reaction before you make your actual offer.  Is it time travel?  Mind reading powers?

I wasn't talking about the reaction, I was talking about modifications to the list you want to offer before you actually make that offer.

Yes, every time you add more items to the trade you are of course making a counter offer which deserves a reaction.  If you decide you've offered too much and you want to start over again, that too deserves a reaction.  I remember at one point these reactions would progressively get harsher and harsher as well as the villagers are supposed to have patience that would wear thin, but currently this only happens if you accidentally (or deliberately) attempt to leave with an unpaid for item in your inventory and the villagers demand payment.

Look, you are playing a computer game here where you are building and modifying lists of items and not every damn keystroke should or even could be interpreted as an actual action of your character in that game's setting, in this particular example certainly not every keystroke should mean you are actually making an offer - adding items to the trade doesn't necessarily mean actually making another offer. You need to be able to make a list, evaluate (yes, that means getting the items value or at least an estimate!) and then make the offer.

I'll put it this way.  If I have the supply, but I don't particularly like you, I don't have to supply you.  Even if I do supply you, I may do so more begrudgingly increasing the price.  This could happen due to circumstances entirely outside of your control.  For instance, maybe the village elder has interpreted signs of a bad omen and decides that trading is not a good idea right now, or perhaps a child has gone missing and the villagers would rather not trade with you until that child is found.  Or perhaps, maybe there was a raid (failed or otherwise) upon the village you are currently visiting, and the raiders happen to belong to your chosen culture.  While they may recognize that your not there to raid, they may still hold a grudge or resentment that just isn't fair.  I don't see why get woke go broke couldn't be a thing during the iron age of Finland.

These villages would either be temporarily or permanently worse for trade than other villages.

And yet again, you are talking about mood effects, you are making up all sorts of things like "child goes missing", "bad omen", "cultural effects"... Nothing of this has anything to do with supply and demand. Those are just yet more factors that are different you can stack on top of it. I'm sorry but no matter how much you would like to shoehorn "mood effects" into being part of the law of supply and demand, it will never make sense. Your understanding of what "supply and demand" actually means is way too broad.

When you are simulating demands that could exist within the game but don't track the metrics due to the extra resources it would take to do so.

In other words, if you want to introduce a fun new mechanic but you don't actually want to do it properly. Yeah, not a fan thank you. This game is actually not that complex, less so than many other games and certainly much less than the real world, so if you wanted to you could actually put a proper supply and demand system in place that tracks all necessary variables. It's mostly a matter of effort but it's not a priority right now...

More importantly, however is that while these people are NPC, they aren't supposed to act like NPC's.

That's completely subjective, the specifics of what it even means "to act like NPCs" varies from person to person but the discussion is moot because at the end of the day, no game can ever hope to accomplish this until we have much more advanced AI.

While items that exist may have an objective value, peoples interpretation of that value is still subjective to some degree.  (...)  They should be suffering from the same problem that you have at the very least.  They shouldn't act like they know perfectly what something is worth regardless of how good or bad of a trader they really are.  Sometimes they just get it wrong.  Sometimes they think they can get more from you than they really can or should.  Greed can play into this too you know.

This is what a haggling system would tackle... Supply and demand gives you the basis, then haggling for the individual skill...

Furthermore, the reason you would add a modest random element (something you seem to have missed btw)
(...)
(very small variation, not enough on it's own to potentially generate lots of wealth).
(...)
would be to add an element of uncertainty and challenge.  These changes would also pave the way to playing as a merchant if you wanted to do so.

Uncertainty sure, but there is nothing challenging about dice rolls. You're just at the mercy of random chance. Exactly how is this better than the ability to analyze the current market situation, as much as that is possible in this game, and make a well-founded decision based on that?

In practice, you got most of these values from playing characters and doing these trades in the game, probably across multiple characters.

Dear Lord, the whole reason I have written this little story is to illustrate that your character would get information like this from his tribe, his parents and teachers, the environment he grew up in because you don't play a wild child or a newborn baby. You are playing someone who is 16 years old, was raised in a Finnish tribe, starts with bonuses to certain skill that he was obviously taught so the idea that he would get information about at least the basics of what certain items are valued is really not too far-fetched.

Furthermore, no source is given for how he came to "know" what the value of a hunting knife or woodsman's axe would be worth other than he "heard" it.

He "heard" it. Sure. As in, the woodsmen and hunters of his tribe regularly traded for it, which on several occasions Timo must have witnessed. You know, because Timo was part of the tribe, he was taught things and generally paid attention to things.
Yes, obviously I as the player DO have the information about item values available (because I painstakingly compiled a list of them, since the game just gave me the finger) but that doesn't mean the character couldn't possibly know anything about it. It doesn't matter what the values as they are coded in the game are and why, not for the question of could my character tell or not - MY CHARACTER is not someone who grew up in the late 20th century civilization with computers, the internet, currency etc., HE is a 16 year old Finnish tribesman and contrary to what you believe

without real world experience

he DOES have real world experience, 16 years of it! 16 years he was raised in the tribe and back in those days you couldn't spend those 16 years sitting at home on your asses like we can today. You had to pitch in at a very early age and this guy, he probably learned how to track and hunt at an age where we wouldn't even have started school yet today. This is the kind of person you roll up every single time you start a new game. To think he has at least basic level information about values of items common in his culture is not far-fetched at all and no he doesn't need to be a merchant character for it. There is no way in hell an UrW character would have no clue about these things.

Even as presented, this would be a backstory that would tie into a potential bartering skill, and possible game start as a wandering merchant.  You have to give that story a second pass though at least.

No I don't. It's a game start for any possible character you could play in UrW and I explained my point of view as thoroughly as I could - if you still don't see my point even after I wrote up walls of text just for your benefit then we'll just have to agree to disagree.

They wouldn't.  That would only be an argument however for that information being obfuscated.  I take it that you wouldn't find it very fun however for every item to have it's weight listed in comparison to rocks and stones instead though.  Skills having listed percentages isn't necessary either, the bar is sufficient to demonstrate how much confidence your character has in his or her skills.  I wouldn't mind either change personally.

So wait, you want to overhaul the whole game now and change the way information is given to us? What about the whole skill penalty thing which you conveniently ignored? Do you actually have a problem with how it this is right now? You wan't to remove information about how our skills are affected by the various penalties? You don't want to give us information about our skill levels any more? Why the hell are you even playing the damn game? What do any of the other players have to say about this?
What if item value displays were already part of the game right now...? Somehow I don't think you would be someone doing any complaining.

edit: please also answer this part of my question:

Now, you tell me which one of those two scenarios (Timo or Floki) makes more sense and why.

thanks.

[Labtop 215]

You can already select multiple items at once to offer before presenting it.  You don't get to see the reaction until after you present that offer, however.  Give a good reason why any user interface should allow you to see the reaction before you make your actual offer.  Is it time travel?  Mind reading powers?

I wasn't talking about the reaction, I was talking about modifications to the list you want to offer before you actually make that offer.

You can already select multiple items before presenting your offer.  At least I can.  Is it really that hard?

Look, you are playing a computer game here where you are building and modifying lists of items and not every damn keystroke should or even could be interpreted as an actual action of your character in that game's setting, in this particular example certainly not every keystroke should mean you are actually making an offer - adding items to the trade doesn't necessarily mean actually making another offer. You need to be able to make a list, evaluate (yes, that means getting the items value or at least an estimate!) and then make the offer.

*sigh*
Adding more items to the trade window is changing your offer.  Change my mind.

I'll put it this way.  If I have the supply, but I don't particularly like you, I don't have to supply you.  Even if I do supply you, I may do so more begrudgingly increasing the price.  This could happen due to circumstances entirely outside of your control.  For instance, maybe the village elder has interpreted signs of a bad omen and decides that trading is not a good idea right now, or perhaps a child has gone missing and the villagers would rather not trade with you until that child is found.  Or perhaps, maybe there was a raid (failed or otherwise) upon the village you are currently visiting, and the raiders happen to belong to your chosen culture.  While they may recognize that your not there to raid, they may still hold a grudge or resentment that just isn't fair.  I don't see why get woke go broke couldn't be a thing during the iron age of Finland.

These villages would either be temporarily or permanently worse for trade than other villages.

And yet again, you are talking about mood effects, you are making up all sorts of things like "child goes missing", "bad omen", "cultural effects"... Nothing of this has anything to do with supply and demand. Those are just yet more factors that are different you can stack on top of it. I'm sorry but no matter how much you would like to shoehorn "mood effects" into being part of the law of supply and demand, it will never make sense. Your understanding of what "supply and demand" actually means is way too broad.

Your view of what goes into a trade or a transaction is rather myopic.  Supply and demand are important, but are not the end all and be all.  It's like you don't understand the effects of bad timing, poor tact, or grudges and grievances. 

When you are simulating demands that could exist within the game but don't track the metrics due to the extra resources it would take to do so.

In other words, if you want to introduce a fun new mechanic but you don't actually want to do it properly. Yeah, not a fan thank you. This game is actually not that complex, less so than many other games and certainly much less than the real world, so if you wanted to you could actually put a proper supply and demand system in place that tracks all necessary variables. It's mostly a matter of effort but it's not a priority right now...

It's like you think I want to make the entire process determined by a random number, despite my many posts to the contrary.  However, and again, I'm suggesting that some villages may have a want for a certain type of item when possible, a preference if you will.  Maybe they would really like some river trout instead of salmon.  However, if these preferences where put in, they would have to be determined at some point.  Furthermore, it's not like that preference would be permanent.  When this preference is determined (presumably when this villages inventory would be restocked), it would be determined by?

More importantly, however is that while these people are NPC, they aren't supposed to act like NPC's.

That's completely subjective, the specifics of what it even means "to act like NPCs" varies from person to person but the discussion is moot because at the end of the day, no game can ever hope to accomplish this until we have much more advanced AI.

Doesn't mean you make 0 effort to try.  What I have proposed here is something small, called preferences.

Furthermore, the reason you would add a modest random element (something you seem to have missed btw)
(...)
(very small variation, not enough on it's own to potentially generate lots of wealth).
(...)
would be to add an element of uncertainty and challenge.  These changes would also pave the way to playing as a merchant if you wanted to do so.

Uncertainty sure, but there is nothing challenging about dice rolls. You're just at the mercy of random chance. Exactly how is this better than the ability to analyze the current market situation, as much as that is possible in this game, and make a well-founded decision based on that?

Nothing is challenging about dice rolls themselves, it's what they make you do.  If prices are not set in stone and fluctuate, they make those market calculations and decisions harder.  They also force you to shop around if you really want to get the best deals instead of just good enough.  Combined with villages having limited inventory overall, this still makes it easy to get common and decent quality items for less potentially, but for rarer masterwork items, may cause you to consider weather it's worth it to get the masterwork now, or continue shopping around and possibly no longer have access to the masterwork.  This would also apply to any highly sought after item.  Such as say, buying tons of a single item like nets or arrows.

In practice, you got most of these values from playing characters and doing these trades in the game, probably across multiple characters.

Dear Lord, the whole reason I have written this little story is to illustrate that your character would get information like this from his tribe, his parents and teachers, the environment he grew up in because you don't play a wild child or a newborn baby. You are playing someone who is 16 years old, was raised in a Finnish tribe, starts with bonuses to certain skill that he was obviously taught so the idea that he would get information about at least the basics of what certain items are valued is really not too far-fetched.

And that mean's I can't disagree with your presentation of that story, or point out the contrivances of that story.  You put in all that effort after all, how dare I point out what I think is wrong here.

Furthermore, no source is given for how he came to "know" what the value of a hunting knife or woodsman's axe would be worth other than he "heard" it.

He "heard" it. Sure. As in, the woodsmen and hunters of his tribe regularly traded for it, which on several occasions Timo must have witnessed. You know, because Timo was part of the tribe, he was taught things and generally paid attention to things.
Yes, obviously I as the player DO have the information about item values available (because I painstakingly compiled a list of them, since the game just gave me the finger) but that doesn't mean the character couldn't possibly know anything about it. It doesn't matter what the values as they are coded in the game are and why, not for the question of could my character tell or not - MY CHARACTER is not someone who grew up in the late 20th century civilization with computers, the internet, currency etc., HE is a 16 year old Finnish tribesman and contrary to what you believe

Again, merely hearing about the value of something without direct experience is not good enough to know something.  Maybe axes and knives in his tribe are just in short supply?  Moreso, your story is based on the contrivance of a world where the values of items never change.  Your story about Timo misses the fundamental point that I've been trying to make this entire time.  It should not be that to know the value of any item in the game, let along every item.  This is a barter system after all, there really isn't supposed to be a defacto currency that everybody values and trades in.  Also...

Yes, obviously I as the player DO have the information about item values available (because I painstakingly compiled a list of them, since the game just gave me the finger)

Unfortunately, sometimes we make bad decisions due to limited knowledge.  This is a common feature of rouge likes and is a part of the challenge.  Accidentally trading away too much value for something vital is a legitimate part of the challenge, and that's assuming a near perfect trade could have been made in the first place.  Sometimes losing an unfair chunk of value to get something you require is just a part of life in iron age Finland.  I'm assuming in this context that this is what happened, and I could be wrong.  If it is something that has happened that is bothering you, it may be worth making a thread on the subject.

They wouldn't.  That would only be an argument however for that information being obfuscated.  I take it that you wouldn't find it very fun however for every item to have it's weight listed in comparison to rocks and stones instead though.  Skills having listed percentages isn't necessary either, the bar is sufficient to demonstrate how much confidence your character has in his or her skills.  I wouldn't mind either change personally.

So wait, you want to overhaul the whole game now and change the way information is given to us? What about the whole skill penalty thing which you conveniently ignored? Do you actually have a problem with how it this is right now? You wan't to remove information about how our skills are affected by the various penalties? You don't want to give us information about our skill levels any more? Why the hell are you even playing the damn game? What do any of the other players have to say about this?
What if item value displays were already part of the game right now...? Somehow I don't think you would be someone doing any complaining.

That is the least charitable interpretation that I have seen of my words in a very long time.  Here is what you asked:

Now, you tell me which one of those two scenarios (Timo or Floki) makes more sense and why. Please tell me how someone without the internet, without precision scales or even crude scales for that matter, without any kind of measurement instruments at all would have access to this kind of information? And of course in particular, how in light of this and Timo's story earlier the idea of a simple display of trading values is so outrageous? And, seeing as how this seems to fall into your original question, "how would the character know item values", how do you suggest to remedy this obviously absurd flood of information we get? Are you going to uninstall the game because of this, I mean, this is obviously completely ridiculous...
Sorry for the sarcasm, I just can't resist here.

If you think being able to see the percentage points of your skills or the weight of your items to 1 decimal place is too much information than the answer to that question is simple.  You obfuscate that information.  You asked, I answered.

From there, you specifically decided to interpret that as "omg he want's to ruin the game!1!".

And I'm not the only one here, certain parts of your comment I referred to there were very condescending.

I usually respond in kind.

[Night]

Just skimmed this over real quick, looked to be a hot topic. I'll read the thread more later as it looked interesting, but just shooting from the hip on what it was all about, an overlay mod could be created to display the value of items you are attempting to buy/trade, as the trade value resides in memory for the items... I have also fiddled with the idea of making some sort of multiplayer trading system in my head, but I have not concretely worked through all the details to know if it would be at all feasible in any way. If I did happen to figure it out, it would be a fundamentally game changing mod, so implementation would be very important to make it enjoyable, otherwise the benefit of trading other people will over-saturate and essentially make the mod dull. And by feasibility I'm talking about sustainability in an economic sense and security sense (don't want people printing their own squirrel furs LOL), as the mod is 100% possible to create.

[Sami]

1. At no point anywhere does the game ever actually inform you about the trading values of items. The only way you can know is indirectly by "faking" a trade, i.e. offering or taking the item in question and ...
...
It doesn't matter that there's no currency, just use squirrel furs as basis, which I believe was commonplace back then, or some other item, I don't care. And those values HAVE to exist at least somewhere on code level otherwise the system wouldn't work at all

I'm very aware trying to figure out exact prices or numerical values of items while bartering in the game is tedious, but having a barter system like this is deliberate choice. If it's felt as the worst choice ever then it is, but I'm quite sure we won't be seeing precise numerical value based trading to be added. (If that was a suggestion here?) We've had our go with it back in the day. You can always ask your trading partner what they would like, and get some idea  of the trade balance.

2. Closely tied to nr.1 like I mentioned, you always need to slowly add (or remove) items step by step in a transaction until it is accepted, ideally in as small steps as possible if you don't want to just give loads of your stuff away for free (keep in mind any "gifts" like this if trades aren't balanced add up, your character is going to trade many times). Unless of course, you have the values noted down and can do the math ahead of time... and that's a prime example of something the game should take care of for you.

If you always try to have absolutely equal trade values then it's surely tedious, but that's players choice. You can also be broad-minded, and everything in between. Trading is also prone to reputation sytem so giving some extra for a "free" may very well be beneficial.

I can't get what the actual suggestion here is.

3. There is no way to just remove one or a few items from an offer you have made, you always have to start over from scratch! This is outrageous, especially when combined with the previous points. How can you even design such a thing in your mind let alone have it be like this or something similar since the early 90s (I assume)? I just don't get it.

Monetary system was ruled out from the game in 2001. Before that there was coins and numbers and seemingly perfect trading system.

But sarcasm aside, inventory handling in trading is very clumsy, yes. And it's that because they didn't evolve hand in hand. It surely would be all far more convenient if you could easily compile a list of items to trade, and then propose it, and change if needed, and propose again. And so on.

Do I see a suggestion here to allow removing items from the offer you have made? That's something we can start to consider.

4. If you want to know (and of course you will want to know) what items a village has available for trade, you need to go through every single house ...
Why not just be able to talk to a villager and say "I'd like to trade" at which point you get a list of all the items that village (and any villagers in it) has available?

For me it's all too gamey to speak to one person and have him list everything in the village. When looking for a specific item we'd want to feature a way to ask if there's a pot, or arrows, or bows in the village. Or have them give a general overview of village goods when asked, and say where you can find what. Then going to actually pick up the goods will still remain.
Also, we long to add a way to ask villagers to produce something you need.

What I would like to see is a trading system similar like the ones in Gothic or Morrowind for example, they did both a very good job with that.
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We need something like a screen with three lists: your inventory, the village's (or other person's) inventory and the list of items that should change owners. At the bottom, show the current value balance - how many more items need to be offered by either side to make it fair, and an indication whether the trade will be accepted as is or not. Of course you need to be able to add or remove items at any time *without* being forced to start over from scratch and the values of items have to be listed somewhere.

Well, I'm afraid this isn't going to happen. Feelings about trading often reflects the playstyle. It's not tedious for everybody, but if every village is approached as middle-age marketplace you can end up in habit of visiting each house and trying to get as even as possible. On the long run the idea is to bring trading more into direction where villagers sell far less than currently but you can order specific goods to be produced.