>3) Should know the general layout and have memorized/be able
>to look up the shopping lists of all the protected cities and
>the 3 largest non-protected cities but not necessarily all the
>shortcuts in and out of them.

I can't think of any other RPG game offhand where you have to buy stuff first, before you can get a good idea of what it does. Can you imagine playing Diablo/WoW/GW/BG/etc and having to purchase each of the items for sale before you can see what it does?

Find something in a dungeon? Okay, maybe you have to identify it somehow. Buying from a store? Share that info.

The browse command is a great idea that Valguarnera had, but wish he had carried it a lot further. As is, it isn't useful in a lot of situations.

Can someone make the game design case for why this info should remain hidden?

I like the guy in the Inn that ids stuff, but it is prohibitively expensive. CF just has way, way, way too much stuff to make regular use of him. It's more of a one item here and there kind of identification. Not any way to really learn what stuff does.

For a lot of games, once you know what an item does, that information is permanently connected to the item for that character. So when shopping at a store, it is easy to compare what you have to what's for sale. In CF, unless you have a great memory and know what to look for (for a long time I went purely off AC values and tried to get "divinely armored" on every character thinking that was best), it's all a mystery.