Originally Posted by
CheddarLimbo
Maybe use something like Google Docs, and keep track of the totals everyone has with a shared spreadsheet. Maybe have the participants try to update their total EM for each type on a daily basis to the spreadsheet so everyone knows what the total amount for everything is.
You'd need one member of the co-op to act as a sort of administrator/manager. That player would coordinate between the various other members and issue instructions to the other participants. For example "Player A, go gift X tapes to player Y". Or if there are time zone issues, then the administrator can act as a go-between until they can pass the right equipment on to the right person.
It would mean a LOT of book-keeping for the administrator, and it would require total compliance from the members.
There are lots of questions to answer: Do you always go to the next person on the list, and upgrade the thing they want? Or do you focus on the lowest level first player first? What happens when someone new joins the group? Or when someone leaves after they get their upgrade? By joining, are all of your materials "spoken for", or can you choose to sell some if you need the cash? What if I'm not playing very much, and someone else is playing a LOT? Do you prorate my share? Do you have to have a certain amount to contribute before you can receive, etc, etc, etc.
The BIG pitfall I see is coming up with the rules to determine who gets to upgrade next. You want everyone to feel like they are getting rewarded fairly or nobody will want to contribute. Nobody wants to just hand over their EM's to some random other player if they aren't sure they will get a return themselves. And lower level players are going to resent having to wait 2 weeks to get another upgrade because another player need 45 of each item to advance again.
It's the kind of thing that could work fantastically in theory, but would be quite tricky to execute. I think this level of organisation is probably how the farms that contribute 10,000 pies to the Global Events get it done. Except, in those case there is only one farm receiving the benefits, and many other farms feeding into it.
If I were doing this, I would start with a group of maybe 5 people in roughly the same time-zone and test it out. Elect one person the admin, get a shared document going, KIK or some other communication protocol in place, and just try it for a few weeks to see if it ends up being a better experience for everyone.
EDIT You could also just have participants flag themselves as needing one item or the other. And when one player has a surplus, you communicate to the one needing it. If you were doing that, you'd want to try to identify what items each participant gets lots of, so you don't have a co-op full of 6 people who ALL need tape and ALL have tons of Mallets.
