Appraising and comparing items for sale

[Raona]

An ASK inquiry prompts me to suggest that it would be great if PC's could not just examine, but also appraise and compare items for sale by a storekeeper. (Appraise assuming they have the requisite appraise skill.) It would make sense for them to be able to do so before purchasing something, and my hope is that this wouldn't be overly hard to code, though compare might need a sub-command, like
Syntax: compareon <object> <merchant>
Syntax: compareon <object> <PC/NPC>
or something like that, the latter incarnation requiring the PEEK skill.

[Selveem]

That'd be really cool.

I'm not sure how that could be structured in code without having some sort of temporary file created or utilizing the pfile, but if you made it something like:

Compareon "<Person1>" "<Object>" "<Person2>" "<Object>" it should work?

It'd be pretty cool, but from what I have seen the slight differences in objects does next to nothing anymore. At least, not an obvious difference.

[Peverell]

This would be really useful and I'd like to see this implemented. I have problems buying armour because I can't work out which piece is better quality from name alone, and when you're shelling out dozens of platinum coins for a piece it's a bit of a bummer to compare it to your current equipment to something you've just bought only to find it "looks about the same."

[Arnof]

I'm all for this. I think I mentioned it a looooong time ago, years and years at least. It seems reasonable, doesn't it? You walk into any sort of retail location and you can ask a salesperson for some details on whatever it is you're about to buy. I think this is most excellent when looking to purchase a weapon, but also applies to armor and any other EQ as well. Hopefully we can see this get added to the todo list.