Hey community, if I missed an older/existing thread targeting this issue, then please point me there, I haven't found one. I guess everyone playing for at least a month knows the situation that you get an item for the thousandth time but miss an other item completely. Of course CH is in a way a CCG and getting every item for free is definitely not the way I want this game to be. But if I may sketch you the situation I got with LF being at Highway Robbery this time: I got my fifth Unholy Nimbus (Level 3 Legendary) but I only have one Staff of the Inferno (Level 3 Epic) and all of the mentioned items are chest drops. Yes, getting some gold is great, but I can't effort to buy everything from shops that I want and in case of rarer items it takes some time for an item to be listed in one of the rare shops. I've done some research in the forums regarding trading systems and found many suggested approaches and even more arguments against direct trading and I would agree to all of the arguments. Hence, I tried to come up with some system that isn't trading in a classical way but lets me get items without the need of selling 2500 common items to get one legendary. That is the point where Skarl's comes into play. At the moment Skarl's is more a pawnshop than a second-hand shop. I admit, I was clad that Skarl's collect's all items I sell from chests because I used to sell one item by accident and this probably won't be the last time. But second-hand in a classical way means second owner and the system is no serious owner imho. Therefore, my suggestion is some sort of lottery or anonymous second-hand bazaar or "Secret Santa". Everyone willing to participate invests one item and after item-redistribution you get one item back. There are some features this system should/could have (not only to be thematically closer to the original Secret Santa): The system could make sure that no-one gets his/her item back (if possible). [You probably won't get the same Secret Santa gift than the one you're giving away.] If this isn't possible perhaps consider to let the system replace some items by similar ones (see later for a definition of similarity) before redistribution. You have to sell five common items to buy an other common item (and even worse for rarer items). Therefore "trading" one item for one (random) item may be problematic for the devs. What if you have to pay some commission? [You have to pay the Secret Santa gift you're giving away.] To limit (or perhaps practically prevent) abuse - meaning heavy participating until you converted all unused items into useful ones within e.g. hours - there should be a limit of how many items you can invest within some time period. It should be something you do to have fun and no source of (great or financial) profit. [You buy ONE Secret Santa present for ONE other person.] Getting a level 21 Legendary for a level 1 common won't be appropriate and the opposite way neither. Hence, there should be some item classification and only items belonging to the same class will be put in the same pod and redistributed among each other [Every Secret Santa group sets some price limit that all gifts should match.] This is the rough idea of the system. For those needing more details to judge I will present further ideas of how to implement this. But everything coming next is definitely my personal opinion. So feel free to comment and suggest other ways (and of course feel free to comment the idea itself). I would suggest to do the redistribution every hour. Every item that is invested within the last 60 minutes is collected until the next clock hour. Afterwards you can pick up your present. You can only invest one item each hour. There are plenty of classification criteria possible. There is the rarity, the level, the slot, the set (Base, AotA, CM, ...), the power token requirement (but having level AND power token at the same time won't be that brilliant) and many more. But I wouldn't suggest to always either apply all criteria or none. I would suggest a more dynamic system. Assume there would be 5 criteria, each redistribution could use for example 3 of them. A subset of the available criteria may be applied always (although I don't like this strategy). A subset of the criteria may be chosen (randomly) in some predefined interval (for example every day or parallel to LF movement, every week similar to Randimar, every month or every time the LF moves at 0 o'clock UTC). Using the stated numbers this could mean today the slot-rule is applied, this week the rarity-rule is applied and this month the power-token-rule is applied but both the set-rule and the level-rule isn't applied. Tomorrow the slot-rule may be replaced by either the set-rule or the level-rule (or any other rule if there would be more than the five I mentioned). The more criteria are available the more different combinations are possible and the more fun this will be. The advantages of such a system would be that you can get items not based on classical drop-rates but based on other player's collection, you will know some thinks about the item you get in contrast to classical chest buying, there will be some (quite a bit degenerated) trading system, there would be more (in-game) user-interaction and in case the applied criteria aren't publicly available there would be more cooperative work to do for the community the determine the active rules. And every player who comes into world chat and tells all players to keep one specific pod empty such that he can trade one specific item with someone else will accomplish the exact opposite as everyone in world chat will try their chance in getting a particularly worthy item. Greetings, Phoenix
