when stores restock, remove items the player sold to them

[Silvermoon]

My thoughts:

The current system is flawed in that it forces players to "game" the system based around when they enter the shops. That's its biggest flaw. This can also result in players making the shops useless, especially if they've played the game before but don't know how shops work, and visit every city right at the beginning to start alchemist quests etc.

Also, metagame knowledge that the shops restock after certain key events plays too big of a role. It's not good to force the player to rely on metagame knowledge (and makes the game less fun for people who haven't read spoilers.) The player has no way of knowing to check the shops after clearing Dreadfall. Worse, seeing the stocks change then may make players constantly revisit shops from then on (believing they'll restock at random) when there's actually no chance of them finding anything new.

Another consideration: Should shops lose their old inventory when getting new stuff? This is logical and prevents huge lists of stuff, but at the same time, it's potentially a bad thing, since it forces the player to constantly revisit shops if restocks are too frequent. One way to avoid this might be to have shops 'retain' their X most expensive items (which they can't sell so easily). As a practical matter, this would require repeatedly regenerating the stock if the player has missed more than one restock period while they were out, to avoid forcing them to constantly revisit shops or risk missing good purchases.

You could pretty much address all those issues in a single go with a relatively simple method.

-> Shops restock every 5 player-levels. Generate the new stock as the player enters the shop if performance is an issue.

-> Give the player an immediate notice upon levelup that shops have restocked. This gives players a mental association between leveling and shops restocking. This is necessary to eliminate player confusion about the restocking mechanic. For lore reasons, perhaps have Elisa contact the player to pass the information along when the level up occurs.

-> Upon restocking, remove any items more than 5 levels below the shop's level.