Criticism and 5 Suggestions on the Economy/Vendor system post 0.9.5 playtesting

Inventory Slot and Carry Weight has always been a problem in Hack and Slash Games.

There is too much loot on the floor. We get conflicted between taking them or leaving them behind. We dont want to let them behind and at the same time we dont want to waste time dealing with them (vendoring, stashing, muling).

We dont want to let items on the floor because they are the representation of our achievements, the spoils of war, we want them to mean something.

Since we have finite inventory slots, finite stash space (we are bound by space) and we are also constricted by the time it takes to gather them and sell or stash them, it creates the following problem:

"What should I pick and what should I left behind?" because it becomes obvious after 10 minutes of taking every item on the floor and bringing to the vendor or stashing, that the player will run out of space and will quickly realize that its not "worth it".

Because the design made it so not all items are worth their time. The more you kill, the more items drop.

The 2 minutes it takes to run to the waypoint or entrance, or open a portal and sell the items to the vendor, will likely wield a half a dozen to a dozen wisdom fragments.

If players pick white armors with quality % only, they will eventually need to use the stash, so they can effectivelly match sets of 40-80-120-etc % quality in armors. So that they can exchange for an armorer's stone.

The same for weapons with quality, and for flasks or gems.

Gems with quality are rare and waste little inventory space. Flasks are uncommon, and waste very little inventory space as well. So their value per time/space is superior than the value per time/space of hauling armors and weapons with % quality.

This leads to decisions such as not ignoring weapons with 6 to 8 slots, or armors with 6 slots. Only picking 3-4 slots armors and weapons.

This are just the white items.

Some items like the three colored linked items are worth one chromatic orb, and they can be exchanged instantly, without any hauling, or loss of efficiency.

Blue items drop always unidentified, their value per time/space is dependent on their type and size. Rings, Amulets, Belts and Flasks occupy little inventory space and when identified they often provide interesting bonuses/value. They cant have slots, so we dont need to judge them based on their slots colors, links presence, like we do with weapons and armors.

Blue armor and weapons are mostly placeholders in the first few hours, and only if they have one or two particularly rare affixes, and that, combined with a certain amount of sockets of specific color with certain links. Boots with movement speed, or gloves with increased attack speed come to mind.

With that said, if they are not getting picked because of their type (amulets, rings, belts, flasks), or their quality % (20% for instantaneous stone currency, or over a certain % per slot size, if space is a constrain, wich usually is) and size, or amount of sockets (rainbow linked sockets, or 6 sockets for the jewelry's recipe), they are mostly not picked at all.

The majority of items remain on the ground, because they are objectively evaluated as not being "worth the time".

The design is not so people are not forced to pick everything, but the design is so that people are punished for doing so. Because the rate of reward/value per time/size of each item is different.

Blue items if not identified can be used to get transmutation orbs at the rate of 1 for every 20 blue items. To minimize the constraint of stashing 20 blue items or the inability to exchange them all at once due to the vendor window size, we have the convenience of transmutation shards.

These shards are worth 1 wisdom fragment each, if tediously exchanged one by one, after splitting a stack, wich would wield 4 wisdom scrolls for 20 transmutation shards. 20 transmutation shards also turn automatically into a transmutation orb, wich can be exchanged for 2 wisdom scrolls. So, if one exchanges the shards, gets twice the wield of wisdom scrolls than if they exchanged the transmutation orbs. It doesnt make sense. The only sense it makes is that its afterthought, something the developers dont care about.
It exposes the philosophy behind the system. We are not supposed to even consider dealing with transmutation shards, selling unidentified items or getting wisdom scrolls. Its there as a placeholder, an hypocrite way of saying "you do get some shit in return, but its so worthless we didnt even bothered to properly balance the ratios, because its so shitty we are doing this so nobody realistically goes for it".

Once identified, blue items give alteration shards, some affixes are worth nothing, some are worth 1 alteration shards, some are worth 2 alteration shards and some, are worth alchemy shards.

So far, it seems that rarity/quantity of items find affixes are worth 1 to 2 alchemy shards each, depending on the % of the value exchanged. Surgeon prefix on blue identified flasks also give an alchemy shard in return.

The possibility of finding surgeon prefix on a flask is 1 every 12 prefix rolled, but not all identified flasks even receive a prefix. Assuming each prefix has an identical chance of appearing and assuming the chance to get a prefix is 50% of the items identified, then the best possible scenario is 1 identify scroll wielding 1/24 = 4~% chance of getting an alchemy shard in return.

The chances for finding rarity/quantity of items find in other type of items is EVER SLIMMER. Ultimately, the identify scroll finitude works as a deterrent to the acquisition of alchemy shards. Many wisdom scrolls wasted does not guarantee value back.

Thats why making a level 1 character every 4 minutes and checking the already identified vendor items for magic items with rarity/quantity affixes and even quality % is a nice way to shop. Chris even stated it was intentional, well, without the making a new character thing over and over I guess. But thats why Im here.

So by now, we have set the landscape of drops "pickiness". What drops are worth picking, what to do with them, and why should I care?

See, only few specific item types, rarity, quality, socket disposition were given value by the developers.
Some recipes are still unknown and it limits other sources of evaluation.

What we currently have is whites
with quality %, rainbow linked sockets, or at end game 4 linked sockets if boots/gloves/helms, 3 linked sockets if 1 handed weapon/shields, 6 sockets for armors and 2 handed weapons, rings/amulets/belts with perfect intrinsic rolls for people who want to gamble orbs of chance, alchemy orbs, transmutation, augmentation, alteration orbs and flasks when they people first find a higher tier type, but mainly white vials for crafting.
Everything below that, has only value as a placeholder for the specific player who finds it and even then, only for a few hours, nobody else care about these.

Blue items could be identified 100% of the time in a tedious search for the valuable alchemy shards, or even to stockpile alteration shards, if not for the fact that wisdom scrolls value wield is too low. One cant make a profit by identifying, selling and using that currency to buy more identify scrolls.

Currently one can exchange armorer stones, blacksmith stones, transmutation orbs, and alteration orbs for wisdom scrolls at the rate of 2 to 1. Wich is a vendor scam (and it offends us), a last resort for the foolish who wasted their last identify scrolls identifying blues only to run low. The design decision here is clear: "you are not supposed to identify everything on demand".

Identifying items would allow players to generate more value, more alteration shards, more alteration orbs, more purchase power on vendors at higher levels, but more importantly, the ability to identify items would allow for acquisition of alchemy shards and alchemy orbs. A powerfull orb that allows a normal item at the player choice to become a rare. The Alchemy orb itself is somewhat rare, but with the availability of alchemy shards from identified blues would increase the overall acquisition of alchemy orbs per time.

Thats why the recipe awarding an alchemy orb from a rare+magic+white of the same type got quickly patched and nerfed back to augmentation orb.

The augmentation orb itself is worth just 1/4 of an alteration orb, wich itself is just worth 1/2 to 1/4 of an alchemy orb, or 1/20, if players use the alteration orbs to purchase rarity/quantity from vendors at high levels.

The ability to get alchemy shards from previously identified items from the vendor, for the low cost of 1 armorer or 1 blacksmith stone or 1 transmutation orb or 1-3 wisdom scrolls using new characters to infinitelly refresh the vendor allows us to equate all these currencies values to the alchemy orb itself. 20 to 1.

The alchemy orb recipe, wich requires 2 yellow items with the same name, prefix and sufix on paper is an excelent way to create a strong interplayer trade. Making it so players try to mix and match the rares they have collected with the rares of their friends.

It is hard enough so it doesnt get out of control, the variation on prefixes and sufixes per type of item seems reasonable enough so its not out of the realm of possibility to find two items with the same name on the same character incarnation. But with trading, it light speeds it.

Two interesting situations:
Ultimatelly if a single player has one of each possible rare combination of prefix and sufix stashed. He does that by having multiple accounts, for the infinite space required for such a feat. He also tightly organizes what rares he has and where they are stored. Whenever he gets a rare he knows where to put it and he knows how many versions of that rare he already has. If the developers check my account they will see what Ive been doing with my testing time.

At some point, every new rare the player drops will equate to an alchemy orb. Because he already has another one of that rares and that was only possible because he took his time and effort to industrialize the proccess. To make it so an accounting man does, or a library archivist. I made a templar named Archivist just for that.

This would ruin the system. Why? Because it makes so every rare is an alchemy orb. Rares drop like there is no tomorrow, 4-5 rares per run with a magic find set. Do I think its worth my time? Hell yeah, I alone would break the economy. The fact I already have an optimization system to industrialize the whole process of generating value out of my time exposes the blatant flaws of design.

What about the people who dont get assed to create a "Rares S/A"? They will get left behind, owned and wont see what hit them. Its like monopoly of the means of production and how it affects people in real life "I can make every rare dropped become one alchemy orb. You dont. You want it? You work for me now. How do you like your Paths of Exile now bitch?" This I believe is far from what the developers intended.

That some people will mass stash items is a given, specially as F2P. Multi accounts, sandboxing, virtualboxers, other computers, multiple ips, etc. You cant prevent people stashing shit, keeping useless things around is human nature.

But you can DESIGN around it. You can remove the hassle. You can make it so people still TRADE. Still find joy in finding items. Without the hassle of going out of their way to do so, when the majority will not, thus imbalancing/breaking it.

So I was thinking of a few original systems around the problem. I didnt prepared a powerpoint presentation or anything, so bear with me and try to invision it.

1. Orb of Holding.
Drop is rare. What it does? Right click to add 1 inventory space. 1 slot = 1x1.

The current inventory has 5x12 = 60

As the player finds and uses these orbs, their inventory space expands by 1 slot. Up to 240.

How are we going to do it with the UI? Create a clickable tab on top of the inventory "Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5". JUST LIKE THE STASH.

Players start with 5x12, and slowly upgrade their inventory space. Per character.

It gets integrated with cash shop later so people can skip the orb of holding gathering and get an item that unlocks their inventory for 30 days or forever, for a price.

Whats the point? Inventory is an issue. It has to be eliminated from the equation of value per time/space.

We have dozens of magic items that do all kinds of shit. A bag of holding does not disrupt anything in the context.

Inspiration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bag_of_holding

Alternativelly,
2. Create a bag system, just like the inovative Flask system we have. Like Depths of Peril/Dins Curse (another Hack and Slash) did. You play and find a bag, equip it, it increases your inventory space by X slots. Bags could be crafted integrated with the system, giving bonuses to things like movement speed, elemental resistances, chill/frozen/burn/shock reduction, bonuses to stats and so on, adding them to loot tabbles, level requirement, etc. Besides their main functionality of giving more space.

3. Transmutation Spell. A rare white gem.
Casts an area of effect spell that transmutes all items on the ground to shards of wisdom, transmutation, alteration or alchemy, depending on the items on the ground. Either identified or not. The wield could be either the shards, or another currency that also fits the theme and the idea. Or make it so it only gives transmutation shards. Or only destroys whites and blues unidentified on the ground. There are lots of possibilities here.

The idea is that players CLEAN THE FUCKING FLOOR. I killed 20 enemies, 20 whites/blue items dropped and I cant click anywhere to move without picking some item. I dont want to do 10 runs to the vendor. I dont want to check every single item. I dont want to identify them all. I dont want to leave them on the ground either. I dont have space or time for the job. I just want to use it and get done with the process. But hey, I have this nice spell. I use it and there is a nice sound and nice effects and every item turns into a bunch of shards in my inventory that I can later do something with. (with more recipes that will be created to give whatever we get from the transmuted items on the ground a value, exchange rate)

Its an absolute solution that circunvents the problem, just like dismantling was originally designed for Diablo 3, then implemented on Hellgate and back again into Diablo 3, but without copying them. Dismantling every single item lacked foresight as well.

Not like the Transmute in Dungeon Siege 3 where their value in gold is given, that was a bizarre execution of an old idea. The idea here is to make the need of practicality fit the setting and improve on the currency system we have. We are just making it more practical by eliminating the vendor chores and elimination the "all items on the ground in this game make me feel like swimming in manure such is the feeling of not being rewarded that I get reminded of every time shit drops".

With suggestion 1 and 2, we alleviate the space issue, with suggestion 3, we move 10 years into the future of design.

4. A solution to fix the mass hoarding of items. The solution is not "if you dont like it, then dont do it, nobody is forcing you to do it". Ignoring the problem does not make it go away. That is ridiculous bad design.

What is my idea? Allow player turn their rares into "collectible cards" or "scrolls". Instead of hundreds of thousands of slots for each rare. Just a single deck of cards, each card representing one rare.
Verifiable, tradeable, exchangeable and fully functional with the recipe system.

By the power of magic, one item's essence gets infused in a scroll, and from the scroll back into its former glory. Except it doesnt wastes inventory space. We dont need to play tetris on our inventories anymore.

Maybe create an item just like wisdom scroll, that does that. For the purpose of the idea, lets call it "Scroll of Magic", they drop just like portal scrolls, they stack, they are bought from vendors. Player right click on the "Scroll of Magic" and click on the item, item becomes a card and goes to the "Grimoire", or if you dont like the idea of "cards", just turn it into something different, like "Magic Book".

Players then right click their "Magic book", opening a bulky UI screen showing all the scrolls that it contains. A player could then add and remove these inscriptions, as "scrolls" representing the item whose "essence" they contain. Each scroll would be named after the rare unique, such as "Scroll of Chaos Shroud", and mousing over the scroll would show the item and its stats surrounded by some glowy magic fog or something. Those could then be right clicked to turn it back into the item they originally hold its "essence".

The idea is to make turn players inventory management, stashing, hauling, into ABSTRACTIONS tooled by the system, IN A WAY THAT IT FITS THE SETTING/THEME.

A nice original idea, like you guys had with the Flasks.

Its clear that so far Paths of Exile does not have its original solution to the old problems of TETRIS MANAGEMENT, SPACE CONSTRAINTS, EXCESSIVE STASHING/HAULING. Every little physical step of getting an item, opening a portal, going to vendor, selling to get shit is not worth it. Gathering items and putting them on the stash, storing things every 5 minutes over and over on the stash, is not worth our time. EVEN THE VALUE GENERATED BY THE MAJORITY OF THE RECIPES IS NOT WORTH THE TROUBLE OF EXCESSIVE TIME AWAY FROM THE ACTION FOR THE SAKE OF MANAGEMENT JUST SO WE CAN GET A MODICUM OF REWARD FOR OUR EFFORTS.

The way I experienced the game so far on Hardcore is that the only thing really worth the trouble of inventory management are the rares and that only for the long run. Its much easier just ignore everything on the ground and keep killing, because THE TIME SPENT KILLING AND GENERATING MORE RANDOM LOOT IS WORTH MORE THAN MANAGING SHIT THAT DROPPED TO ACTUALLY GET SOME VALUE FROM IT. When players conclude that "its not worth the hassle" you failed.

Noone wants to go do multiple runs to the vendor to sell shit, because they have no space, because they get no value in return, because it takes them away from the action. Thats the drawbacks of the current implementation. You need to REMOVE THESE DRAWBACKS.

Want people to stay longer on towns to socialize? THE WAY TO DO IT IS NOT BENEFITING FROM AN ISSUE. Make it so people get a Xp/drop bonus if they spend a few minutes in the lobby "tavern" area or something.

The argument that "we dont want to force people to go to town" YEAH, BUT YOU ACHIEVE THAT BY MAKING ALMOST EVERYTHING WORTHLESS to pick. Good job!
The current system PUNISHES PEOPLE. PUNISHES PEOPLE FOR PICKING THINGS UP. How? BY MAKING THEM WASTE TIME WITH MENIAL BORING TASKS THAT SHOULD TAKE NO PART ON GAMES LIKE THIS.

It is a stupid design when I stop to think and realize that Im calculating individual %s of quality to match 40% or else I dont get rewarded. How much time have I wasted in these 3 days just calculating %s of quality of armor, weapons and flasks. Playing the math game, really?

You know how it should work? Shift the weight from the PLAYERS SHOULDERS to the system.

How?

5. Makes it so the vendor doesnt reward the player PER WINDOW OF TRADE, but make it so the VENDOR ACCOUNTS FOR EVERYTHING THE PLAYER HAS SOLD IN TOTAL SINCE THE BEGGINING AND KEEPS TRACK OF IT AND SHOWS THE PLAYER ITS CURRENT PROGRESSION TOWARDS THE NEXT REWARDS ELIGIBLE.

This does not need to affect all recipes.

But things like % quality of items sold? I DONT WANT TO CALCULATE ANYMORE! I DONT WANT TO STASH THINGS SO I CAN REACH 40% or 80% threshold so I can get 1 or 2 items!!! Think of all the time I wasted to do that, looking on the items on the ground, picking them, bringing to stash, then accumulating more, then calculating, then trading. All the time I WISH I WAS KILLING THINGS!

Same way for magic, whites, sockets amounts, colors, links, etc. EVERYTHING I BRING TO THE VENDOR. Make it so the vendor accounts what I bring to him and keeps track of all the status of valuables I gave him.

That creates a "credit" from the vendors to the character. That character will then be able to use "credit" in valuables sold to get the armorer stones, blacksmith stones, glassblower bubbles, wisdom scrolls, transmutation shards/orbs, augmentation orbs, alteration shards/orb, and so on.

Make it so all the effort the player has to do is BRING SHIT TO THE VENDOR. Then player checks on the UI his current "selling credit" for all kinds of items and what he is eligible to get in return.

Secret, complex recipes could remain as they are, being a "PER TRADE WINDOW" basis, or they could be a global value. The more items player bring, closer they get to something they want.

Once the players "redeem" their currency/orbs from the vendor, there will still be some "credit" left, and as they bring more shit, more "credit" would start accumulating. The orbs acquired would still be able to be traded between players normally.

It would also be built in a way that the developers could keep track of everything sold, and bought, the best feedback on the demand/offer and get statistics on the economy and FIX THINGS ACCORDINGLY. So they would know what people find more valuable to bring to the vendor, what they find more valuable to buy from the vendor and so on.

But more importantly, it works "under the hood". It doesnt penalize people for not stashing, for not wasting time calculating, for not matching sets. This is all a pain and only detracts from the experience. Do you think I like to make multiple characters and stash every single rare, just so I can get value out of the time I play? Of course not. I hate it. I do it only for the money. What I like to do is PLAY the game. THE ACTUAL GAME, the killing of multiple defenseless little things and see shiny things drop and compare them to the ones Im wearing to see if I can improve my killing powah. And that is all there is to it. After all is said and done this game is an instanced based game, it cannot aspire to have any design that usurps its intrinsic limitations. For a brief moment I had a glimpse that the design intended is to have people running around on town like it was a full fledged MMORPG. If thats the case, then I dont even know where to start, I would just go away. Creating artificial hassles for people is not how you inspire socialization. I refuse to play a game designed to frustrate me. Its like the ulterior motives of all this hauling,stashing,set matching, tetrising is that so people socialize more... This is... seriously... not the way to do it... will only detract from the experience, the main reason people came in the first place. You are still forcing people to do shit they dont want, but it doesnt matter because people just ignore the system altogether, will not achieve one, neither hinder another, and frustrate both.

This testing served to show that you dont actually have a functional system yet.

Sorry it felt too harsh. I didnt meant to offend. Its just how strongly I feel about it.

+1

+1
love the idea for the Bag-Orb!

+1

I approve this completely. Current system is super tedios and not fun at all.

+1.

Why are we back to ID scrolls and TP scrolls with a whole lot of extra currency junk to go with it? Why do we have to keep a huge stash of items to get the most out of the vendors? What is wrong with representing both as numbers on a stats screen?


Chromatic orbs: 2
[drag item here to apply orb]

Transmutation orbs: 6
[drag item here to apply orb]


There. Done. It is also user-friendly and would cut out a lot of lugging items around and stashing them.

But don't forget like every F2P game this one is designed to enhance revenue. If you end up cramming your stash full of trade gear, this directly benefits the developers because you are going to purchase additional stash space (whether they intended this to happen or not is irrelevant, if people feel they cannot play to win without purchasing something they will hate the game for it).



Also, thanks for bringing up the tetris inventory. Traditionally ARPGS have been a contest to see how much tedium you can put up with. Whether it be repetitive farming, hauling junk to town, filling your inventory to the brim with charms so you can't pick up items, endlessly resetting vendors, ...

There is no reason why the inventory can't just be a list, like in Skyrim. Hell, add a weight rating so you can't stock up so many items you don't want to go through them and sell them all.

And for the love of god, add a way to sell or break down items on the field. Carting every single white to town like a hobo collecting bottles may be the optimal way to play, but it is extremely annoying.



First person shooters have come a long way since Hexen. The endless key hunts and mazes are gone and the focus is now on actually fighting and defeating enemies. It is time for the ARPG genre to abandon its endless inventory management/scrap collecting and move on to fighting and defeating enemies, too.

"

Interesting wrote:

The possibility of finding surgeon prefix on a flask is 1 every 12 prefix rolled, but not all identified flasks even receive a prefix. Assuming each prefix has an identical chance of appearing and assuming the chance to get a prefix is 50% of the items identified, then the best possible scenario is 1 identify scroll wielding 1/24 = 4~% chance of getting an alchemy shard in return.

To put that into perspective, that's 1 Orb of Alchemy for every 500 Scroll of Wisdom used!


I liked your analysis of how every rare eventually becomes an Orb of Alchemy (well almost - when you turn a pair into one, you are now down to 0, so the next of that name is not an OOA). By extension, every rare is also worth a Regal Orb (recipe 3 rares with the same name).

"

Interesting wrote:

The idea is that players CLEAN THE FUCKING FLOOR. I killed 20 enemies, 20 whites/blue items dropped and I cant click anywhere to move without picking some item. I dont want to do 10 runs to the vendor. I dont want to check every single item. I dont want to identify them all. I dont want to leave them on the ground either. I dont have space or time for the job. I just want to use it and get done with the process. But hey, I have this nice spell. I use it and there is a nice sound and nice effects and every item turns into a bunch of shards in my inventory that I can later do something with. (with more recipes that will be created to give whatever we get from the transmuted items on the ground a value, exchange rate)

Haha, they could call the spell Hoover.


I like the Scroll of Magic/Grimoire idea. Removing the tedium of stash/inventory management would be huge.

"

Interesting wrote:

It is a stupid design when I stop to think and realize that Im calculating individual %s of quality to match 40% or else I dont get rewarded. How much time have I wasted in these 3 days just calculating %s of quality of armor, weapons and flasks. Playing the math game, really?

Amen to that!


I like the idea of just dumping everything at the vendor and getting credit, but i think it's basically gold and wouldn't see the light of day in PoE. Then again the credit could be in orb values, if there was a fixed rate of exchange between every single orb.

This entire vendor issue could be solved by giving us the reward based on a SINGLE item, not recipe sets. If a three-part set gives an Alchemy orb reward, give 1/3 shard per item instead of forcing us to hoard crap all over the place.

Get rid of this tedious nonsense, it's not fun and it's not what I expect out of a game like this. I want fast action, not vendor-item hoarding for a vendor mini-game.

Git R Dun!

Just to make it clear, when I say "credit", I dont mean gold, or anything like gold. I mean our current currency in the game. The vendor UI would inform us our credit in all possible currencies we have "credit" on. The way the vendor evaluates and pay us back can remain exactly the same, what changes is that we dont have to haul/stash/analyze/calculate anything, we just hand them over and then it says "Alteration Shards: 7 Armorer Stones: 2, Glassblower Bubbles: 1". Thats what I meant. It is still a "no gold system". The player could then withdraw these currencies or keep them on the vendor pilling up, and the game would automatically verify what kinds of items players could exchange their current currency credits for.

If the devs verify people have too much of one type or another credit, then they can tweak the drop rates of the items that are "valuable to the vendors" to better fit their vision, or just increase the threshold required for a specific currency. So they can still keep things under control to make it so a currency that is intended to be rare, still remains rare/valuable.

Kind of like how I have 4 stacks of 20 Chromatic orbs due to the rainbow linked items. With the changes to vendor, players would just need to hand the vendor 5 or so these and the vendor would automatically update the players' "chromatic credits" without the players having to keep stacks of 5 rainbow linked items for that one exchange.

This would also allow the rewards to be balanced. By increasing the % of quality required for items, now that the trade window and stash space is not an issue. So we could actually have glassblower bubble require over 40%, wich feels too little, making everyone walking around with +20% flasks/vial in their 2nd/3rd day on the game. Or make things like requiring more rainbow linked items for each chromatic. This would also allow for the system to aknowledge number of sockets and links on items, to possibly award rarer orbs, after a certain amount of "high socket/links" items has been exchanged.

It would be easy to balance the frequency of each reward, by increasing or reducing the requisites on the vendor on demand. Players wouldnt even need to know how much % or how many units of "this or that" they need to bring, or it could even have a bar, like the xp bar, but say something like "Orb of Fusing: 54%" when people hover with the mouse over the icon for that currency. Each currency would have its own icon and a number next to it. Like how games inform about "gold", except here it would be for all currencies. Thats the only way to make this insanity make sense. Whenever people drop items on the vendor, they would be able to see the "currency bars" filling, depending on what they brought and when that fills up, the number increases, informing they now have the right to withdraw X of that currency.

Man, your wall of text gem sure is powerful.

I would like to answer properly but I fear that would take too much time. And I don't feel like doing it now ;)
Anyway, you have some interesting ideas :)