Proposal
Lending feature: you can lend an item to someone for a given time or at given rate or both, or you can lend an item to someone with or without a given rate, with the condition that both parties will be able to cancel the loan at any time, which will return all items involved back to the original lender. You can also lend an item to a clan and a clan can lend an item to you, but the rules for that would be slightly different
- the lending is done from the trading screen. Items or galleons can be permanently exchanged in the same deal as the loan. e.g. I offer to lend a full agility set for a week, in exchange for 5000 galleons (not per day, just 5000 galleons up front)
- Only items that can’t be used up can be lent e.g. enchantment scrolls can’t be lent. Galleons also can’t be lent
- The renter can’t make any modifications to the item, such as enchantments or upgrades
- The lender is notified asap when an item has been returned to them
- Items that are lent have a special outline. Items that are being offered for renting appear in the trading sceen with a different special outline, and show the terms offered when hovered over
- Items that are owned by a person but have been lent out for a specified period of time will appear at the bottom of their inventory but greyed out, and when you hover over them, it will say when the owner gets them back
For lending for a given time:
- the item is automatically returned to the original owner at the specified date, unless it’s returned before then
- the item can be lent out by the renter to another person, as long as the offered lease ends at least 1 day before the date that lender has to give it back to the original lender
- If the renter is lending the item back to the person who lent it to them, it doesn’t have to be 1 day before the date they have to give it back on
For lending at a given rate
- the rate can only be in galleons
- they can pay the rate in advance e.g. if the rate is 5000 per day, then they can pay 25000 on one day to get the next 5 days. There would be some way of seeing how many days they have left
- If they haven’t paid the rate in advance, then when a day comes that they haven’t paid for, the item is returned to the lender
- If the item was only lent to them for a specified time, then they can’t pay in advance for more than the maximum days they’re allowed
- The renter can lend the item out to someone else, but they will still have to pay the rate
- If a person who accepted a loan under a given rate lends the item out to someone and then fails to pay the rate, the loan and its terms are taken over by the person they loaned the item to
- If a renter got the item from someone who also rented the item, they can see the rates that person is required to pay, and if someone loaned it to to the person who loaned it to them, then they can see that person’s rates too
For lending with the condition of being able to cancel the loan
- Both parties can cancel the loan at any time
- Up-front galleons and expendable items can’t be invovled in this loan. For example, a person can’t offer 5000 galleons up front in exchange for an item to be loaned to them under this type of loan, but they can offer a rate of 5000 galleons per day that the loan hasn’t been canceled
- If there is a certain rate of galleons that needs to be paid per day that the item is held, the rate will only be paid at the end of the first 24 hours after the loan is agreed to, and every following 24 hours
- The items obtained in a single loan of this type can only be traded together (e.g. if I rented a sunken helmet, a sunken chestpiece, and a pair of sunken boots all in one of these loans, then I can’t trade only the sunken helmet to someone, I have to trade the whole set or not trade it at all). When these items appear in the trading screen, they’ll have a special colored outline, and when hovered over, they’ll show the original lender of the items and the deal that was made in exchange for them. If the trade is completed, the ability to cancel the loan is transferred to the new holder of the items, and if the loan is canceled, those items will be returned to the original lender, while the items that were originally loaned out in exchange for those items will be given to the person who last held those items (e.g. if I set up a cancelable loan with somebody where I give them a power amulet, and they give me an attack speed amulet, then if I trade the attack speed amulet to somebody else, then if the loan gets canceled, that person will get my power amulet)
- If an account is banned, then any cancelable loans they made are canceled
For Clans
- The clan would have an item storage in addition to the clan bank. The leader of the clan would be able to give all members or certain ranks of members the ability to freely donate to the item storage, which would have unlimited capacity
- The clan owner can give all members or members with a certain rank permission to borrow items from the item storage. Here, I’ll refer to that as free-borrowing. Members would also be able to borrow items from the clan the normal way (sending a trade/renting offer. See the last bullet point for more elaboration on that), and that would be treated differently. If a member leaves the clan or is kicked from the clan, any items they free-borrowed would be returned to the item storage. A list that’s public to all members of the clan will also display all the items belonging to the clan, whether they’ve been temporarily lent out or not. Multiple items of the same type that have either all been lent out, or are all available will just be represented by a number next to the item e.g. Old Sword (2), but if some items of that type have been lent out, and some have been retained, then they will be displayed separately. The item name would be displayed twice in the list, with the letters of the name representing the lent out group being grey. When the name of an item in the list that was borrowed is hovered over, it will display the name of the person who borrowed it, and if they didn’t free-borrow it, then the terms of the loan will also be displayed. If the clan leader hovers over an item that’s been free-borrowed, then when the free-borrower’s name displays, the leader can click on that name to take away the item from that person. That person will be notified. In order to free-borrow an item, a member with permission clicks on any item in the list that hasn’t been lent out. The item will then display at the bottom of their inventory in a different color from regular items. When they hover over the item, a textbox will appear next to the item with a “return item” button, which, when pressed, will give the item back to the clan
- Free-borrowed items can’t be lent out or sold by the free-borrower. They also can’t modify the item in any way
- Permission to be able to withdraw expendable items (such as food and potions) from the item storage comes separately from permission to free-borrow non-expendable items. All clan members will have access to a record of items donated to the clan storage, expendable items taken out of it, trades completed by the clan, cancelable loans that the clan was involved in being canceled, and galleons being paid for a borrowed item. An entry into this record might say “lookingforabargain donated 1 heavy cannonball” in green, because it’s a donation, while entries for expendable items taken out would be red. Entries for trades will include who approved the trade, what individual or clan the trade was made with, what was given, and what was received. The given items will be red, the received ones will be green, and the rest of the entry will be white. Those colors will also be used to report a cancelable loan involving the clan being canceled
- The clan can also trade with individuals, whether they’re in the clan or not, and other clans, as well as lend and rent items the same way an individual would. Items bought or rented will go into the clan storage, and galleons obtained will go into the clan bank. If the clan bank would be overfilled by a trade, the game will send an error message and not do the trade. The clan leader can give permission to certain members of the clan to be able to accept/deny trades on behalf of the clan, as well as initiate trades. They would be able to trade using all items that the clan has on hand or that members have free-borrowed, and would also be able to directly take items that members have free-borrowed away from them the same way the leader would. They would also be able to free-borrow items and then modify them (e.g. with enchantments), since a trade might require an item with a certain enchantment
Pros:
- Being able to try out items before buying them, particularly with the mutually cancelable loan
- Probably would increase marketplace activity. For example, rn headlesses almost never get traded because nobody can afford them, but headlesses could still be loaned out for however much buyers are willing and able to pay. Rn owners of big shops tend to have a lot of items that just sit on the shelves for a long time, but adding this system would incentivize them to have less on hand, and to lend out items, thereby putting them into the hands of people who might use them, and also allowing them to circulate in the market. This system would allow players who finished grinding for everything they wanted to still interact with the game & community in some manner, and to be rewarded for it
- More incentives to be in clans. A player who’s skilled but doesn’t have good equipment could utilize free-borrowing to get the equipment they need to be effective
- Could be a way to involve decision-making into clans. For example, a clan leader would have to decide what kind of items to get for the clan storage, which would influence what some of the members would equip. They could decide to trade items in the clan storage for other items that give different stats. They could decide to sell off more expensive items and get a larger quantity of cheaper ones or they could do the opposite. They could decide to spend less on personal equipment, and more on ship equipment, or they could even just decide not to give any member permission to free-borrow, and just lend out items in the item storage for a fee, in order to grow the clan’s funds. Rn members pretty much get their own equipment, so the clan leader doesn’t have to do anything to enable them to be effective, but with a clan item storage that members can borrow from, the clan almost becomes like a customizable army
- Grinding incentive. I’m not a huge fan of grinding, but the game runs on it, and it’s better that this be a grinding incentive than that something else be one. This would incentivize grinding because owners of more equipment than they could ever realistically need or use would have something to do with it. What if equipment loaned out by them for free in a cancelable loan made up more than half of a clan’s item storage? Imagine the leverage
- Some traders in The Galleon predict that the value of headlesses relative to other seasonals will increase because the fact that headlesses almost never get traded makes them more susceptible to being locked in accounts that don’t play the game anymore. That’s the main reason why I came up with the cancelable loan. You could choose someone to inherit your inventory if you never come back to play the game again, but if you do come back, you can cancel the loan and get it all back so you won’t have lost anything
- May increase direct interaction between clans if clans themselves can trade, like a person
Cons
- Might be a little complicated
