3.3.0 Hobbit Rogue / Death

[emulord]

Heres an idea to prevent townscumming for final stats being terrible.

Stuff you sell decreases in price, and the town has a VERY SLIGHTLY lower chance of stocking it, because they know the player wouldn't want to buy it as much. Things will never get cheaper than the original price.

The reverse is true when you buy things. So if EVERY TIME you buy a Healing potion in the black market, it starts appearing more frequently and more expensive. The BM owner knows that you want it and will work harder to make sure its in stock, and also wants more profit for doing so.

So Stat potion's price may go up in the middle game, then down after you max your stats for example.
All your "unlimited consumables" will gradually increase in price, forcing you to conserve / not whore at one depth indefinitely.

[fizzix]

Heres an idea to prevent townscumming for final stats being terrible.

Stuff you sell decreases in price, and the town has a VERY SLIGHTLY lower chance of stocking it, because they know the player wouldn't want to buy it as much. Things will never get cheaper than the original price.

The reverse is true when you buy things. So if EVERY TIME you buy a Healing potion in the black market, it starts appearing more frequently and more expensive. The BM owner knows that you want it and will work harder to make sure its in stock, and also wants more profit for doing so.

So Stat potion's price may go up in the middle game, then down after you max your stats for example.
All your "unlimited consumables" will gradually increase in price, forcing you to conserve / not whore at one depth indefinitely.

There have been suggestions to implement some sort of market economics to prices, including possibly aggregating data over many different players to set initial prices. I think if someone were to code up the framework for this it could probably fairly easily get in the game. But it's a lot of work to get it right, and it's hard to ask anyone that doesn't really feel strongly about it, to go ahead and do it.

[Magnate]

There have been suggestions to implement some sort of market economics to prices, including possibly aggregating data over many different players to set initial prices. I think if someone were to code up the framework for this it could probably fairly easily get in the game. But it's a lot of work to get it right, and it's hard to ask anyone that doesn't really feel strongly about it, to go ahead and do it.

This is a brilliant encapsulation of the game of shopping problem. There are dozens of threads with detailed proposals for different, better store stocking mechanics - but it's not been a labour of love that anyone wanted to code up and show the world.

But now we have v4, and maybe somebody will. With a bit more sophistication in stores.txt (min/max clevs and dlevs for items to show up, numbers of affixes they might have, some sort of weighting by class or whatever) and some generation code in store.c, plus the investment code which can be borrowed straight from Sang - someone could quite easily offer a fairly radical new stores model for testing.

[relic]

There have been suggestions to implement some sort of market economics to prices, including possibly aggregating data over many different players to set initial prices. I think if someone were to code up the framework for this it could probably fairly easily get in the game. But it's a lot of work to get it right, and it's hard to ask anyone that doesn't really feel strongly about it, to go ahead and do it.

It has already been done. Chocolate Angband has a "free market system" where things you buy often, will become more expensive, and things you sell will drop in price.

You can find the source here: http://angband.oook.cz/nt/chang.html

[Magnate]

It has already been done. Chocolate Angband has a "free market system" where things you buy often, will become more expensive, and things you sell will drop in price.

You can find the source here: http://angband.oook.cz/nt/chang.html

That's excellent - it's been around for eight years! All those debates and nobody knew about it. So has anybody played it?

When I get a chance I'll have a look and see how portable the pricing code is - it might be quite easy to re-use.

[wuphonsreach]

-there is a massive quiver which expands the inventory

I rather like the new quiver system (as a mage) over the old 3.0.9 system. Weight is the major restriction on whether I carry the full set of 99 arrows or a half set of 50 arrows. But being able to carry around 3-4 different types of ammo with random enchantment levels on them in a single slot is a big help.

Now, if I only had a similar system for my spell books or scrolls...

-stat drains seem to go away automatically (no restore potions ever seen)

I'm mostly happy with the idea that stats can go back up automatically, but maybe it should not be a guaranteed thing at level up. Maybe you only get back one of your stats at level-up.

- there do not seem to be things to breath confusion

I lost a mage last night to a confusion-like breathing critter, a chaos vortex at around 1100'. (In vanilla 3.3.2.) Granted, it was a big old vault and the critters were probably at least a few levels out of depth. It was huffing and puffing at me on almost every round.

[Derakon]

I rather like the new quiver system (as a mage) over the old 3.0.9 system. Weight is the major restriction on whether I carry the full set of 99 arrows or a half set of 50 arrows. But being able to carry around 3-4 different types of ammo with random enchantment levels on them in a single slot is a big help.

Now, if I only had a similar system for my spell books or scrolls...

In 3.4 the maximum stack size will be 40 instead of 99, so 99 arrows would take up 3 inventory slots.

If we were going to add similar "slot compaction" for other item types, we'd probably just move all the way to an inventory-by-bulk system instead of an inventory-by-slots system.

I'm mostly happy with the idea that stats can go back up automatically, but maybe it should not be a guaranteed thing at level up. Maybe you only get back one of your stats at level-up.

Hm, that could work. Every time you level up, your most-drained stat is restored. That means that stat drain is still unlikely to be a major penalty in the early game, but it gets a lot nastier later on and items that restore stats become much more valuable. Time breath gets really nasty, too.

I lost a mage last night to a confusion-like breathing critter, a chaos vortex at around 1100'. (In vanilla 3.3.2.) Granted, it was a big old vault and the critters were probably at least a few levels out of depth. It was huffing and puffing at me on almost every round.

That was chaos breath, not confusion breath. Confusion used to be an attack element like shards and sound; there were bronze dragons and dragon flies that breathed it, etc. That went away awhile back because people thought that breathing a status ailment was silly. I believe 3.4 will have baby chaos drakes, though, which should accomplish a similar purpose. Though we should also add a chaos dragon fly (chaos butterfly?).

[Magnate]

When I get a chance I'll have a look and see how portable the pricing code is - it might be quite easy to re-use.

Hmmm. It's pretty simple - the price is raised by 5% each time you buy one, and falls by 5% each time you sell one. It uses a completely separate price_type struct to track the prices and numbers bought and sold - personally I'd just add bought and sold fields to the kind struct.

The clever bit is the function that weights the selection of items offered for sale by how much the price has risen - so stores are more likely to stock items that you've bought lots of before, and are less likely to stock stuff you've sold to them.

Doesn't look like it would be too hard to try out in v4. After so much debate, it would be good to have an alternative system in v4 to enable comparisons of how it plays.

[Malak Darkhunter]

I kind of feel like things are moving more in the direction of variant talk, for one i find stat drain annoying- taking out restore stat potions was one thing i didnt like but found it an acceptable change since your stats are restored at level up. To make it more annoying by punishing the player the more by only allowing one stat to restore at level up is aggravating, and i for one won't play it. Reading this thread i will put my 2 cents worth in-

1. I have always considered angband/moria a type of rpg game and i like to roll play the character, its my story.

2. I like options and i miss seeing ego weapons and armours in the stores.

3. I think things have moved more towards ironman gameplay, i do like the birth- no selling option however.

4. I prefer the old shop ui

5. Im okay with id by use and artifacts automaticaly ided

6. Like the newer font-windows interface and big screen support

7. I like 3.0.6 gameplay though feels more like the original game, think the game is changing to be not like angband anymore.

[CliffStamp]

But it's a lot of work to get it right, and it's hard to ask anyone that doesn't really feel strongly about it, to go ahead and do it.

That is the purpose of a maintainer/developer. If you are going to ignore the requests from the user base then you should be on a variant not on Angband proper by definition.

[Magnate]

That is the purpose of a maintainer/developer. If you are going to ignore the requests from the user base then you should be on a variant not on Angband proper by definition.

But the consensus of the user base is a tricky thing to ping down, and we can only do what we think is best after listening to all the views expressed.

And even when we know what we'd like to do, that's still different from someone finding the time to code it up.

[fizzix]

That is the purpose of a maintainer/developer. If you are going to ignore the requests from the user base then you should be on a variant not on Angband proper by definition.

I don't think that's a fair statement. Everyone who's on the devteam is a volunteer. We have lives and the time we can spend working on Angband is a limited commodity. You can't tell someone, "Hey, do this!" regardless of whether you yourself are on the devteam or not. The best you can do is say, "I think this is a priority and I can't do this myself, can someone pick it up or help me?" It's amazing how much actually gets done with this structure.

To say that we don't consider user input is also not fair. Every gameplay change I've made has either been something that someone else has suggested and that received good support here (~80%) or something that I've come up with that I talked about here and other people have supported. All major changes get ample discussion on the forums, and I've abandoned ideas that were disliked or only received tepid approval.

The other point is everything I've implemented is something that I've felt strongly about, or something that I felt was a requirement, i.e. bugfixes. (Actually bugfixes really are the major bulk of my commits, and most other devs as well.) The whole point being, if I don't feel it's necessary I have no incentive to work on it, especially when there are so many other higher priority tasks that need attention. There is no shortage of open tickets for Angband, but there is limited devtime.

So my statement is essentially, I don't think adaptive shop prices is a priority. While I understand that you feel strongly about it, it's way down on the list of things that bug me. So I'm not going to spend my Angband-coding time implementing it. If someone else wants to work on it, that's great! I'm not going to stop them. I'm not even going to say, "Hey, you should work on this other project instead." If you want to pick it up yourself and work on it, awesome!

[fizzix]

I kind of feel like things are moving more in the direction of variant talk, for one i find stat drain annoying- taking out restore stat potions was one thing i didnt like but found it an acceptable change since your stats are restored at level up. To make it more annoying by punishing the player the more by only allowing one stat to restore at level up is aggravating, and i for one won't play it. Reading this thread i will put my 2 cents worth in-

I agree that stat-draining/restore is not perfect now and could stand some significant improvement. I have not yet seen the "yes, this is the way to go!" suggestion yet. I don't like time drain-all attacks or nexus stat swap at all. I would rather both of those be removed, but that hits a lot of resistance, so it's never been implemented except in personal versions.

1. I have always considered angband/moria a type of rpg game and i like to roll play the character, its my story.

Honestly, I do this too.

2. I like options and i miss seeing ego weapons and armours in the stores.

I agree with Derakon that it's more fun finding things in the dungeon than finding things in the stores. I also still wind up buying a non-trivial amount of weapons/armor/jewelery from the stores. I'd be ok with ego items showing up in armory and weaponsmith more often but at prices closer to BM value (large discrepancy between selling price and asking price is needed).

3. I think things have moved more towards ironman gameplay, i do like the birth- no selling option however.

Angband will never go full ironman. One of the appeals for me playing Angband instead of, say, Nethack is how "nice" it was to allow you to replay early levels to try things out and learn the game. That's why I got hooked on Angband and never really progressed in Nethack.

4. I prefer the old shop ui

old shop ui works in 3.4

5. Im okay with id by use and artifacts automaticaly ided

6. Like the newer font-windows interface and big screen support

Yay. ID by use has turned out to be pretty popular.

7. I like 3.0.6 gameplay though feels more like the original game, think the game is changing to be not like angband anymore.

How much of this is nostalgia for a non-existent past? 3.0.6 had some features which annoyed the hell out of me. Overabundance of hounds, way too much time spent hockey-pucking hounds around a corridor bend. Way too many junk items and no squelch, especially when you started hitting Wyrms that dropped 12 items that were all weapons and armor that needed to be ID'd. Amnesia that caused you to forget all your items and require you to either take notes on everything or re-ID everything. Neither of which is "fun". Useless mage attacking spells except for MM. Destruction abuse to loot vaults.

Specifically, what did you like about 3.0.6 that is missing now?

I'm hoping you like 3.4, I think we've fixed a good chunk of the problems in 3.3, at least with item generation.

[Nick]

That is the purpose of a maintainer/developer. If you are going to ignore the requests from the user base then you should be on a variant not on Angband proper by definition.

Spoken like a job applicant

[CliffStamp]

You can't tell someone, "Hey, do this!" regardless of whether you yourself are on the devteam or not.

As I have stated this fairly frankly that is obvious, but the point remains if you are coding for what you want to be done you are not a maintaining Angband proper, you are making a variant by definition.

There is nothing wrong with that, some of the greatest roguelikes are variants. Zang for the most obvious is still played, it inspired Heng which is still played, and that inspired Entroband then Chengband etc. . These are all great, but you can clearly see how they are "this is what I want" coding.

Again, nothing wrong with that, the entire thing started off as "this is what I want" to get Moria from Rogue. But again if this is what you are doing then don't claim to be maintaining Angband proper.

While I understand that you feel strongly about it, it's way down on the list of things that bug me.

It isn't a large thing to me, it just stands out as an obvious weak point in both game mechanics, gameplay and just consistent behaviour. It is in other variants in various forums and it adds meaning to both item gaining and general rp atmosphere. There are other things you could do, for example donate vs sell. It is just another way to make use of ood items which you can not use directly and gain more use from the stores which at this point are almost useless as a game mechanic (weapons/armor).

The largest thing to me which stands out is gaining replayability through randomization. Think back to when you first started playing Angband, provided there was no spoiler searching, the main thing that made it a challenge was not knowing. If there was a random element to monsters this would add challenge for experienced players (especially if it was monster level based) but be almost transparent to new players.

The only thing you could do when you see a monster that you had not saw before is :

-try to judge from its description, level/vault placements
-hit it with your best distance attack
-get fully buffed and try a round of melee etc. .

This would make probing much more powerful as well. However it could be argued this is such a major change from gameplay and it would not be Angband proper any more.