The asked-for value is whatever a vendor says it is, it's up to the player and character to figure out if that is good or bad and where to proceed from there.
In this case the additional data point was communicating information but not necessarily the information that would be obvious from being given two differing numbers. There is really nothing now to stop this from happening now when someone inspects something themselves and tries to sell it, but packaging inspection values directly into the market functions strongly implies an immediate importance of that inspection value to the market system which isn't necessarily true.
If the data from inspect is at best misleading (not sure if that's the case?) then maybe they shouldn't be offered.
But whether it's misleading or not, I will see them at the moment I buy the item anyway. So, I don't get why my PC cannot do the same when looking at the item at the market in the first place. That's all this suggestion is, let me trade flavor flow, and let player learn how to use it correctly.
Artists need to be able to see it for artwork and there are maybe one or two other places I'm not thinking of that it's needed, but by and large it could be replaced with messages that say 'X doesn't seem to be worth much' and 'Y seems like it might be worth something to the right person' and it would be much more in line with the rest of the game's design.
That being said, I think that the using the phrase "You have no idea" to replace the numerical results of a complete skill botch would go a long way to helping the new player experience. They already have zero concept of Sindome's economy, we are confusing them even more by telling them wildly inaccurate numbers for prices because their stats at gate are absolute shit.
As for the 5,000 chy limit… there's more than meets the eye initially in that system. It's all in the haggling.
I don't think this is weird at all, inspect giving any specific valuation for an object is weird (even if it's fuzzed). Having psychic evaluation of worth is an RPG trope (getting a sword out of a chest in a dungeon and knowing it's worth 100g, somehow), but isn't really consistent with much of the game's design. Sure an object has a programmed number set as a valuation so it can be modified and fed into NPC sellers depending on location, and so it can be bought by NPCs for some consistent amount after gameplay, but why would a character know this?
I've constantly run into player commerce issues and misunderstandings from items having an exact valuation in inspect. Okay so a player sees an item is coded to be valued at 100,000c but the only place it's sold in the entire game prices it at 130,000c. Does this mean it's inherently overpriced? Or if a character is offered 2500c for an item at the market and then inspect tells them it's worth 10,000c, what is the system communicating through it's gameplay there? Because I could see a player understanding that as reading them doing something wrong or their character not having adequate ability for what they're trying to do, which I would say would both be incorrect take aways.
I don't think items should have inherent value at all except as a backend function and fuzzing that value and providing it to the player in some contexts but not others just muddies the game's scarcity and player-driven economy in my opinion towards seeming to be more determinate than it really is.
I very much agree with this. There is absolutely no reason at all for new players to understand that when they see an exact number provided to them, down to the single digit chyen, that that is both a fuzzed and cached value that may not be either correct nor consistent. Issues of realism of coming across an unknown widget in the desert and knowing it's value by universal intuition aside, simply providing such detailed information to a player leads to expect it is accurate or meaningful, when it might not be at all.
I have always take this to represent a character's in game knowldge. The value you get, to my knowledge is based on a specific roll using a specific skill and relevant stat(s). It's not a magic psychic thing. It's supposed to represent your character having enough experience in the field to make a good guess
This can very much help a fixer type who has tracked their valuations and market deals for specific items when it comes to predicting pricing. This has been, in my experience, very valuable for a fixer that utilizes the markets and I think all should to some extent.
I do agree that it's might be a bit awkward for the game to support and encourage the character and player to learn item pricing by shopping about AND by using a skill/stat based command. There have been times I have felt meta having a PC use store prices and the like to know all about item pricing when they have zero trade skill, though I am fine doing so within limits.
That being said, I think that the using the phrase "You have no idea" to replace the numerical results of a complete skill botch would go a long way to helping the new player experience.
I love this but I'd prefer a phrase that's a bit more revealing perhaps. It could be as specific as 'You don't think you're skilled enough at X to make a useful estimation' or more vague like, 'You lack the skill to make a useful estimation.' Adjust so to fit the game mechanics. Just my opinion and preference.
Inspect used to be more obviously a handwave-y maybe-value because it could change dramatically from second to second, but now that it caches whatever the last output was there is really nothing to communicate or even imply it's not accurate or even approximate, let alone that there can be weird maths sometimes that makes it a value massively divorced from reality (see: high-skill clothing).
It's a strange middle ground where we sort of implicitly acknowledge getting a perfectly accurate value appended on every object would be weird, but then the solution is just to make that number sometimes super unreliable which feels to me like the worst of all options for the new players' experience (or really the any player experience, assuming those players didn't have the benefit of playing through past updates to know what's going on behind the scenes).
