Misused (Alt names crowner 25 September 2021): Vendor Trash

I'm not sure that "A YMMV reaction for items with some other nominal purpose but is normally sold by players due to being useless or better worth sold" is a viable trope. For a sufficiently high level player, any equipment that has lower stat than their current gear would be useless for anything except for selling, making this chairs.

"A YMMV reaction for items with some other nominal purpose but is normally sold by players due to being useless or better worth sold" I agree with others that don't see why this needs to be YMMV. If acquiring the Infinity +1 Sword is part of the game's plot, or the Beef Gate or other bosses cannot be defeated with low level weapons, and the weapons have objective stats, the uselessness of a low-level weapon is an objective fact about the work.

And as I've said previously, YMMV aside I find this concept too similar to Vendor Trash as strictly defined to be worth a split.

I'm opposed to a split, too. It should either be fully YMMV or fully Objective.

Although regarding the scope of the trope, I suppose we can include items that can ostensibly be used for something other than selling, but only if the price of the items is disproportionately higher than it's supposed "function". For example, if a Gold Weapon has an ATK of 10 but somehow is more expensive than a Titanium Weapon that has a 100 ATK point, then it can count.

But this won't be YMMV because it's clear that the Gold Weapon is primarily meant to be used as a money maker even if you can use it for attacking as well.

This shouldn't be used to cover any instances where players sell their equipment en masse simply because they already have better gear equipped.

Edited by Adept on Jul 11th 2021 at 10:47:36 PM

Though a trope about getting less useful gear after you already have better gear could be useful. It might catch some of the misuse.

I'm inclined to disagree:

For one, this is a state that a given item may or may not have (depending on the stats), and that may change over the course of the game. Further, different players may respond differently: some might simply discard certain items (perhaps those that, for that player, fetch too low a price to be worth the inventory management). And finally, this isn't something that happens in all games, or even necessarily all games that drop loot.

Thus it's not something meaningless and ubiquitous; it's something that occurs under specific conditions, and that impacts the play of a given game. Hence I would say that this is not "chairs".

The relative utility of the weapon is objective, indeed—but it's status as "vendor trash" might not be.

I know that when playing such games, for me there's a line beyond which it's no longer worth the bother of collecting an item for sale; beyond which it's no longer "vendor trash" but "just trash".

The placement of that line may vary from game to game, and can very much vary across the course of a single game, I believe: changes in item prices and in my own store of money can affect what selling-values are worth picking up.

I wouldn't be opposed to including the "loot treadmill" definition under the main trope—but that does then mean broadening it beyond "things whose only purpose is sale".

I am opposed to just dropping the "loot treadmill" definition entirely; I think that it's a valid reaction to the treadmill, and something that does, I believe, happen.

I would be opposed to such a restriction, myself. Selling off a stack of a hundred "basic iron swords", each costing a few coins, seems to me to fit the trope.

True, but it would seem to not catch the gameplay loop of selling that gear off in order to fund continued adventuring; i.e. the treating of such gear as "vendor trash".

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Jul 12th 2021 at 10:17:07 AM

Don't forget that some basic equipment could be upgraded to a certain extent from having minor stat boosts to becoming completely different equipment.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Jul 12th 2021 at 9:39:44 AM

True; it might be more of a sister trope than anything. Still might be worth it though just to catch misuse.

I neglected to mention this earlier, but I checked the work page for Final Fantasy III after I brought up that game and the Gold Sword is listed under Joke Item (since it's the weakest sword in the game with an attack stat of just 1), if that matters.

Joke Item wouldn't apply to all pieces of equipment that are outclassed by ones from earlier in the game and thus are better off sold, but Final Fantasy III's Gold Swords might not be a unique case.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 12th 2021 at 10:51:24 AM

Admittedly I don't play that much RPGs any more, but in my experience with them, the only way to "discard" useless items is to sell them. So by default the only way to remove obsolete equipment equipment in the inventory is to sell it to the nearest merchant.

Again, this seems like something that is directly dependent on the characters' levels and what stage of the game. If you are a level 100 trying to raise gold to buy suitable equipments for fighting level 100 monsters, trying to grind in level 20-39 areas will obviously be a waste of time, since you'll just end up with mountains of stuffs that sells for much less than what you need, but doing so in a level 95 area might still be worthwhile.

I suppose we can add another criteria of items "can be obtained at a much higher rate than the player would reasonably need".

Edited by Adept on Jul 13th 2021 at 12:46:19 AM

I'm for a split, as there are

1. A lot of examples for items that literally have no in-game function besides being exchangable for cash.

2. A lot of examples that sound like a sister to Scrappy Weapon or the inversion of Complacent Gaming Syndrome, items that have a use but you'd never use them (with or without farming potential), which is part YMMV and part bad game design.

3. Items that are only good in early game or low-tier crafting should just be moved to Item Farming and Money Grinding, since, you know, they are "good in early game".

I'd think Joke Item is when a unique equipment is designed to not be taken seriously and works like a collectable. It can be worth a separate misused thread if there's are problems there.

I agree with all three of your numbered points. As for whether Joke Item is being misused, I don't know if it is, but I agree that that's outside this thread's scope.

As for my own $0.02, I think what separates point 2 from Scrappy Weapon is that that equipment in question would have been useful if it had been obtainable earlier in the game instead of later, while a Scrappy Weapon just plain isn't worth using.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 13th 2021 at 2:48:55 PM

Personally "would be good if" and "not good" sound the same to me, but it can be some sort of idea to make a list of equipment that are just too weak for an area you get them from. May fall into Bragging Rights Reward and Power Up Letdown in specific cases.

Indeed—a matter that makes the question of whether or not an item is "vendor trash" even more complicated in some cases.

That is a good point. And looking back at the proposal, it does look like a solid trope to have.

I've very much seen RP Gs with this feature, as I recall. It might be a "rubbish bin" icon, or it might be simply dropping the item on the ground, but there are definitely games in which one can discard items, I do believe.

(See for example the little trash-pile that I made at a certain location in Divinity: Original Sin 2 when I realised that much of the crafting junk that I was carrying around wasn't worth the weight incurred.)

Thinking of Divinity: Original Sin 2, that game even has the option to explicitly designate any (I presume non-quest) item as "wares", which allows for one-click offering of all such items in trade.

Further, there may well simply be the option to simply not pick up certain items.

What's worthwhile to one may not be to another. One player might prefer the safety of a longer grind in a lower-level area, while another might not have the patience for it and prefer the risk of a higher-level area. (To the former, some people actually like grinding, I gather!), One might be willing to scavenge and sell every item down to the cheapest, another might not bother for anything worth below some given value. And so on and so forth.

I'm not sure that it's necessarily bad game design. Some players might like the verisimilitude that one can, theoretically, still wield those basic iron swords, and that it is such perhaps-plausible equipment being dropped—even if those items only end up being sold on.

Well, Useless Item is sorta unintentional trash...

...

Could maybe split this trope into items that directly say for you to sell them.

Weird and Unfortunate Things Are Happening, for instance, has "Sell to a collector".

...

Edited by Malady on Jul 26th 2021 at 3:53:22 AM

This one sort of got pushed to the bottom.

So do we need to crowner this? I'm not sure what the options would be...

Ah, I'd forgotten about this one!

I may well be missing some options, but I think that some of the suggestions thus far have been these:

• Allow the inclusion of items that have potential purposes other than sale, but that the player deems worthy only of selling
  • Likely making the trope YMMV, I think
• Disallow items that have potential purposes other than sale, and clean up the examples
• Split, creating a separate YMMV trope for selling items that have potential purposes other than sale, but that the player deems worthy only of selling
• Create a trope "about getting less useful gear after you already have better gear could be useful"
• Make "Vendor Trash" a disambiguation between some of the above new tropes, if any are made
• Rename

I'd personally prefer to Split, this keep as-is (or rename it to Shop Fodder, but I don't see it making a difference) and make a new YMMV trope for "underused items" alike inverted Complacent Gaming Syndrome. Even if there are a lot of misues, the page's description is clear enough and it's a common concept.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 8th 2021 at 11:35:31 AM

If there's misuse, then that would seem to indicate a problem of some sort. Hence I'm against leaving it as-is.

Personally, I'm in favour of broadening the trope to include the "misuse" of "items that technically have a use outside of sale, but that the player considers only worthy of sale".

In part this is because it's my impression—which may of course be mistaken—that this matches the general, non-TV-Tropes usage of the term "vendor trash".

See for example this article on GiantBomb, which explicitly includes "extremely poor quality equipment". (And indeed, mentions it as "the most well-known type".)

Another such example is this article in "Almar's Guides". It describes "vendor trash" as "a universal term used in MMORP Gs to describe an item that has no use other than selling it to a vendor", and then goes on to say the following: "Some items are made specifically to be vendored for money but other items at one point in time were useful but have since become out dated with time and are not used for anything useful anymore." (Emphasis mine.)

That said, I'm also in favour of additionally creating a new trope to cover the experience of gear dropping that may once have been useful, but that has since been outclassed.

While this overlaps with the above definition of "vendor trash", I'm inclined to argue that it's not identical: such a thing could happen in a game that lacks resale of gear, it seems to me.

That is, examples of this new trope would produce vendor trash in some cases, but not all.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Aug 8th 2021 at 10:21:59 AM

If there are many articles that use such term but don't quite fit how Tvtropes is using it, I guess Vendor Trash would be YMMV and what is there currently (cash compressed into items) moved to Shop Fodder.

I'm suggesting that, since this is a pre-existing term external to TV Tropes, that the trope be redefined, expanded to fit with both current usage (if I'm not much mistaken) and that external definition.

For myself, I don't see sufficient cause for a separate "Shop Fodder" trope: such things can simply fit under Vendor Trash, as I gather is common usage.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Aug 8th 2021 at 12:37:14 PM

"extremely poor quality equipment". (And indeed, mentions it as "the most well-known type".)

As in Broken / Junk / Grey tier items like in Titan Quest.

Splintered staves, rusty swords, that sort of thing.

Edited by Malady on Aug 8th 2021 at 5:02:41 AM

I'm not sufficiently familiar with Titan Quest to be confident of what sort of items those are that you're describing, I'm afraid. :/

My reading of that line is that it refers to any item that's all-but-useless to the player. For example, a simple iron sword that, while okay at the start of the game, does scratch-damage when dropped near the end of the game.

In any case, the reference is to "equipment", and between that and the fact that said equipment has quality at all, it seems to me fair to conclude that the items in question have (theoretical) use besides sale.

Although looking again, the Giant Bomb article does seem to restrict "vendor trash" to only the least-useful of items. The other article doesn't seem to do so, however, and I'm inclined to the more-inclusive definition, myself.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Aug 8th 2021 at 2:51:44 PM

- Oh, I was hoping my examples would help.

As in Splintered Staves still work as Magic Staves, just not as well, like how rusty or dull swords still work as swords, but... Not as well.

Frayed robes, dented / rusted armor, etc.

I think that's the kind of "extremely poor quality equipment" that Giant Bomb was talking about. Stuff that can be equipped, but only would if you were upgrading from Starter Equipment, and possibly not even then.

...

Yes, you said it.

Yep! Very Theoretical. Such that if they were only collectable, but not equippable, nothing would change about the game, for basically anyone not doing a Challenge Run.

Edited by Malady on Aug 8th 2021 at 6:08:15 AM

Aaah, fair enough! My apologies for misreading, then! ^^;