I assume the ID is required for a good reason that we both ignore, so I'm potentially -1; however, in case such a reason fails to come to surface, maybe my assumption was wrong, and therefore I'd be +1.

 

iirc it's more or less so it's harder to do it accidentally/on the wrong tool/etc

 

Yeah, iirc that was the case. It makes sense.

 

I have many tools and I /own'd them almost at the same time, as soon as /own was released: therefore their IDs are pretty similar, so it's actually easier to do it accidentally on the wrong tool. If I'm un-owning a tool, it's much easier to double-check which tool I'm holding in my hand than to double-check the ID I noted on paper/notepad (first passage) and then typed in the command (second passage)

 

With what's suggested you wouldn't have to check anything to unown a tool, so I don't see how your system makes it easier to do the wrong tool. Sure, at best you can write stuff down wrong and cancel it out, but that's about it.

Plus not everyone is you, and I'd hazard a wild guess that most players haven't done that.

 

Ok, I'll elaborate better. If I type /own remove hand or something like that, I'm obviously removing ownership on the tool I'm holding, so I will double-check what I hold in my hand. It's not like you can accidentally type such a command.
On the other hand, if I want to unown my tool #12345678, it's very easy to type /own remove #12345679 without ever realizing that I'm unowning the wrong tool.
About not everyone being me, I don't see how that would be relevant: not everyone is me, but we all need fresh air to breathe.
We all play on the same server and there were already many "old" players, much older than me, when /own was released, so I'd bet that a decent fraction of them already had many tools and did exactly the same as I did.

If this is the sole reason, it's not worth the trouble, and here's the proof: ownership transfer. You don't need to type the ID when you transfer an owned item to someone: you just hold the tool you already own and type /own <username>. Why would the ID be needed in one case, but not in the other? For what matters to the old owner, it's basically the same: at the end of the process, you will not own the tool anymore.

Plus, something of it is pretty bugged: I had to unown a full armor set a while ago (4 pieces in total) and it took me ages to do it. I double and triple-checked, I was typing everything correctly, but the command was just not accepted, unless I moved the item around chests and inventories a sizable number of times. Ask @Canadian_Apple who was present (in retrospect, it would have been faster to just transfer, but neither of us realized at the time lol)

 

Isn't it impossible to un-own a tool you're not holding in your hand to begin with? So if you typed the wrong id in, then it wouldn't unown the wrong tool. It would just unown no tool.

 

-1 Removing the ID could cause some problems, considering you don't have to be holding the tool to unown it. Doing /unown could risk unowning all the tools in your inventory. If the ID could possibly be removed, Andrew would have done it a long time ago.

 

Yeah exactly.

 

Lol, then I was resoundingly wrong, I thought we were in a "either this or that" situation. Obviously two requirements at the same time are better than either one or the other (but then, why is the ID not required when adding someone?).
Therefore I'm against the original suggestion, sorry.
But a step in that direction (with no harm to safety, though) could be to add a command "/own what" that just shows in your chat the ID of the tool in your hand: this way you don't have to write it on paper or somewhere else, you just need to type what you have before your eyes. I guess it would take no more than 5 minutes to implement, what do you think about?

 

+1

 

Correct, and it won't be leaving.