The entire major fiasco which everyone knows about came about because bonus chests, which look and act exactly identical to one another, actually are a wide range of very distinct items. This resulted in a very large amount of confusion, and in fact most players still don't know how it works. My suggestion is simple. Change bonus chests so, upon using them, they open a chest GUI with the actual item displayed, similar to the GUI for /promo, instead of the standard confirmation screen you see now. The GUI would work exactly the same way as /promo, allowing players to preview the item and grab it if they so chose. I feel this solves every present issue. Bonus chests are no longer hidden. Nobody can be scammed because everyone knows what they are getting. As a result, trading bonus chests would no longer violating rule 4, and could be allowed. Bonus chests could freely be used for future events, without having to worry about new players not knowing the rules, with the contents changed to still allow for some bonus chests that are unique collectors items from the 300k event. The only potential downside I can see is that this takes the fun out of not knowing, however I would argue that if not knowing is desired for a future event, you use an item which is random at the point of being opened. (Something like what NetherSpecter suggested below.) Relying on having the two items simply look similar is not a good way to accomplish this.
Or the chests could be specially coded to when right click spawn a random item into your inv from a list with percentages IE. 15% 32 Diamonds 1% Diamond Voucher 20% Diamond Horse Armor 30% Obsidian 15% Random Level 30 Enchantment book 9% 64 Enchant Bottles 10% 128 Emeralds Just an idea.
This is a great idea for future events. If existing bonus chests could be changed, which may be difficult, it still wouldn't be fair to players who held them presently. (For example, they might have a Marlix Leggings bonus chest.)
Yes perhaps Aikar could recode new chests to be like this, I dunno. I don't want to suggest too much work for him.
I don't think it's possible or easy to go into player inventories and change any of the items stored there. On the other hand, changing what happens when you use an item could be feasible and he's already got code from /promo which could be copied over or potentially even used directly. I would envision replacing the standard confirmation dialogue with a simple call to the code that displays a /promo chest for the item involved. To accomplish your suggestion for future events, I think the easiest solution would be to simply code a different item (perhaps named something different like Random Chest #). It's a great idea I agree with, for future events.
