I think mistakes are a very relevant consideration. It's in Rich's
best interest to make the interface to the game as user-friendly as
possible. If a particular feature generates a significant number of
mistakes, and is irrelevant to game-play, then it should be changed to
a form which generates fewer mistakes.
In this case, the feature isn't totally irrelevant to game-play,
however. Since Oleg isn't into stealing boats while their owners are
at the market, he thinks it ought to change. Actually, I can't think
of a single other game which makes it so difficult to interact. And I
must admit that I've made this mistake already this game.
> I'm trying to visualize a city so organized
> that it has fraud-proof markets
Not hard. I was just at Pennsic, and I found that shopping around
would quickly show that most fungible items had the same price at
most booths. A few would have a higher price, hoping that some
customers would be stupid, but if you confronted the vendor about it,
you'd get the same price as everywhere else. The key is having a
central market where you can check all the booths in a short time.
-- g