No. You can still protect yourself with independent weapons like molotovs, grenades, and LAWs. However, the system is now very random - gaming it is more a matter of luck than anything else, so the mechanic is increasingly pointless because the player has fewer means to manipulate it.[/quote]
“Gaming” something with “luck” is an absurdity. Gaming something means that you can consistently influence the outcome in your favor, with an implication that it’s to a degree that allows you to extract arbitrary value from the system.
As you point out, you can interact with the system, but not freely manipulate it, which is the whole point. When approaching a potential trading partner, you can either keep your best gun at the ready for better protection, or conceal the fact that you need it. If you have access to many alternates such that you can conceal any and all items that this would be pertinent for and simultaneously protect yourself, congratulations, trading from strength has its advantages.
Also how do you get “random” out of a purely deterministic system? Just because you don’t have all the information doesn’t make it random.
Not all trade is directed by the player, why would it be? The NPC naturally won’t offer all their possessions for trade, that would be absurd. So it’s a decision on the NPCs part to offer things for consideration for trade, the player does the same. You can certainly bias the interface to be player-centric, letting them propose a deal and let the NPC have the accept/reject decision, computationally this is much easier, but there’s no reason the NPC can’t propose offers as well. You can have the NPC either propose entire deals, or propose adjustments to the deal offered by the player.
Or the player is trading something of high value to the NPC and low value to the player for something with a low value to the NPC and a high value to the player, perhaps even something of equal worth, but more portable. Regardless of whether there’s an actual currency, there’s value in possessing valuable items for future trade. Also with bartering it’s quite common to trade items both parties are somewhat indifferent about in order to balance the transaction. Also the question isn’t whether the player wants it, it’s a question of how much the player wants it, misc barter items or lifesaving self-defense equipment, it makes a difference.
Superficial indicators, like “I use this equipment to defend myself”. Why the hell would you be carrying around a gun you don’t intend to use? Certainly you could factor in things like “player didn’t buy this before” over time, but that’s a false dilemma, you can factor in both indicators.
That doesn’t make any sense, to evaluate a trade, you need to determine what an item you offer is worth to your trading partner, and what an item they are offering is worth to you, these values need to balance. If you lock down either side of the equation, you aren’t acting on all available information. Of course you also need to evaluate what an item you offer is worth to you, if its worth more than what’s offered in exchange, obviously the correct choice is to not make the deal. Similarly evaluating the value of an item offered by your partner to them can be an indicator of how much you can push the deal.
So you really need to evaluate the value of every involved item to every participant, removing this complexity is one of the major benefits of currency, allowing much easier evaluation of the worth of deals as well as enabling trades between entities who otherwise may have nothing of value to offer each other. Perversely, adding this complexity back is precisely the reason to have bartering in the game, as an additional mental challenge for the player to interact with.
It’s very bizarre that you expect NPCs to sell ammo they can’t use, and players to buy ammo they can’t use.[/quote]
Ammunition is highly portable, extremely valuable to the right person and can be finely divided, it’s very likely to be a dominant form of “small change” in a barter system. However, Its value as a currency will generally be overshadowed by its value as a weapon if you happen to have and be proficient with that weapon, especially if it’s your primary weapon.
