One thing I noticed about this game is the lack of trading. I’m not sure if this is planned, or if the devs don’t want any form of trading (since it could encourage botting and RMT)… so why not a birthday/holiday gift giving feature?
For birthdays, players have to submit their birthday under their character profile. It doesn’t have to be your real birthday, for identity reasons. However, players can only set their birthday ONCE, and after that, it’s locked-in. Setting your birthday is also optional.
Once you set your birthday, you have 48 hours to change/modify it, and after that it’s locked in for good.
Additionally, during this 48 hr wait period, you won’t be eligible for receiving birthday gifts. This is to prevent abuse of the system.
Anyways, within 14 days of your birthday, everyone on your friends list and in your Steam community (or whatever other community/friend features this game will have) is notified of your upcoming birthday.
You are able to, at any time, visit any shop and place items on your wishlist.
Then, players who know about your upcoming birthday can visit shops, and view your wishlist.
They aren’t just limited to buying items on your wishlist, though. They can buy any item.
When they buy the item, on the checkout page, there is an additional option called “Gift”. The player chooses this option, then chooses a name from a list of eligible birthday people (so, anyone on their friend list with birthdays in the next 2 weeks), then confirms the purchase.
The items are then placed in a ‘birthday escrow’
On your birthday, the items are placed in your inventory.
You open these like you would catsacks - you place them down, and open them. Except, they are gift wrapped boxes.
There are two places you can celebrate your birthday. One is your condo, just as you might imagine. You invite your friends over, you can decorate your condo with birthday decorations, cake etc, and just have a good time and open your gifts.
The second place is an instanced area that can be accessed from the plaza. This instanced area is basically a party condo, but no one ‘owns’ it (the birthday person would be set as admin though). It’s already decorated, and you can choose from various setups, such as an arcade theme, a pizza parlor theme, bowling alley theme, beach side theme, etc etc.
You can modify the decorations to your liking, but you can’t take any of the party condo decorations out.
Additionally, the birthday person can pass admin to a trusted friend, if they want to designate that friend as the party host (because sometimes your friends want to decorate for you, as a surprise)
This party ‘condo’ will also have an NPC that rents out party decorations. Again, they can’t be removed from this ‘condo’, but anyone with perms can place, move or remove decorations. And when you leave, the decorations are removed from your inventory/the party condo, and the person who purchased them is refunded the units at full price. (There doesn’t have to be a cost for decorations, tbh. But maybe there is a rent cost for the party condo)
This special party condo can also be used for other celebratory occasions - it’s open all year to anyone.
Birthdays aren’t the only times of the year you can buy gifts for people, either. Throughout the year, there are certain holidays where the gifting option becomes available for everyone, such as during the winter season.
Also, during certain holidays, special holiday themed party condo themes become available.
All in all, I think a gifting option would be fun, and can be implemented in a way to prevent abuse (if the devs are concerned about that), and having non-player owned, ‘party condos’ is a good way for players to quickly grab a themed instanced area for them and their friends, saving them time (and units) from having to completely redo their own personal condo for themed events and special occasions that may only last an hour or so.