Talk:Courier/@comment-24557935-20140308235257/@comment-24658963-20140309080116

"Having the option to receive a Receipt allows the buyer to have someone who is not a Courier retrieve the item for them for no fee or a directly negotiated fee, or perhaps they have developed a unique quest that requires a participating player to use the Receipt - who knows what players will come up with- we want to encourage emergent gameplay. This also gives the buyer the option of picking up the item for themself."

Couldn't the Courier Contract do the same without requiring another arbitrary item? It seems that the Receipt is only used as a way to get from transaction to Contract when that's something that could just be done automatically. The Courier Contract and Receipt can have their functionality combined with little to no overlap. What's stopping someone from just giving their Courier Contract to someone so that they can retrieve the item for no fee or a directly negotiated fee? It would essentially just be a way to avoid needing the Courier Board and allow players to give someone a Courier Contract directly. The Receipt just doesn't seem to hold a function that isn't easily fulfilled by the Courier Contract.

This is another important concept; what defines a Courier? Is it a system that anyone can access occasionally on their own or  do you need to specifically 'spec into' it so to speak? Your wording of 'someone who is not a Courier' makes me feel as though the goal here is to make the system require a form of...I guess 'membership' to be a part of it rather than it just being available. Take a market system for example; the Market is available to all players at any given time and is a core part of the game. You wouldn't necessarily have some people being 'Merchants' or something that are able to use the system, you would just have it be a tool in the players' arsenal like a crafting UI.