Especially since the idea of being able to trade anything with anyone goes a little beyond equipping companions, and can be a giant project on it's own.
I'm pretty sure that trading with everyone was the easiest way of implementing companion equipment - the trade dialog option and the interface was already in place, Toady probably just removed the store requirement and he was good to go. It's a long requested feature and it makes sense to introduce it now that Toady has reworked groups and entity interaction.
Oh, that would make sense how that would work.
Still think that the equipping companions and free trading should probably not be on the same line.
2: I never said to buy all the weapons from everyone. I'm saying if you need to kill some Urist McVampire or McGangLeader, you can get his weapons, and then attack him freely.
Is this a bad thing? I'm reminded of some old trickster folk tales. Trading for a weapon before attacking sounds like something Odysseus could have done. I don't think it's out of place.
It kind of requires awareness of the trickery. Some restrictions as not everyone might want to trade, some psychology, such as a recognition that you are a stranger who's trying to get your weapon, and so on. With that, it could be really cool. As it is now, it just makes the game even easier for dealing with initially non-hostile creatures.
People want to be able to equip their companions. The possibility that some players might not be able to keep themselves from (potentially) exploiting the feature isn't a good reason to leave it out.
Well, okay. I'll shut up on this, but it's not as much about exploits. It's just a really bad placeholder that removes some of the systems from the game, (need for stores,) and adds placeholder feature that will have a lot of time sunk into it when the "temporary situation" is resolved..