Automatic pricing quirks

[Pete Mack]

Starting a list of questional estimates in autopricing. (I've forgotten a couple.)

- Sold a Lance of *Slay Dragon* (+10,+14) for 25K. (Selling price is 44K)
- Bought a Crown of Lordliness {ESP} from Black Market for 36K. (resale is 11K).
ADDED:
- Amulet of Charisma (+6) (116 GP)
- Ring of Flames [+13] (800 GP) -- Brand is not used in computing price. (5-10K is reasonable estimate.)

[Magnate]

Starting a list of questional estimates in autopricing. (I've forgotten a couple.)

- Sold a Lance of *Slay Dragon* (+10,+14) for 25K. (Selling price is 44K)

This is a bug. Assuming it had +2 pval it should have been worth about 15k (86 power). Please post the relevant stanza from your pricing.log file.

- Bought a Crown of Lordliness {ESP} from Black Market for 36K. (resale is 11K).

This is WAD. Without the ESP it's not worth much (depending on its pval) - +WIS, +CHR, susWIS, susCHR and rFear. The ESP is responsible for about 2/3 of its power rating (again, depending on its pval), and about 80% of its monetary value.

Your point is perhaps simply that ESP is still undervalued (it's currently worth as much as fire immunity). Or maybe (given your other post about +CHR items) that +CHR is undervalued. At the moment +CHR and susCHR are ignored when adding power for multiple abilities, and they are only worth +1 power each. So the item's cost would be very similar if it was just +WIS, susWIS, ESP and rFear. This is to avoid over-rating CHR on randarts (by which time it's irrelevant). I guess it depends on how important people think the limited-money part of the game is. What is that - the first two or three dives?

[Magnate]

- Amulet of Charisma (+6) (116 GP)

Ok, this is perhaps a bit cheap. So it raises a couple of options:

1. Just increase CHR _POWER from 1 (power per plus) to 2 or 3. (cf 8 for CON, 6 for STR/DEX, 4 for INT/WIS).

2. Make pval power non-linear. At the moment a +6 pval is worth 6x a +1 pval of the same stat. Perhaps it should be something like 1x, 2x, 4x, 6x, 8x, 10x ... we did toy with this early on in the randart development, and ended up abandoning it because it doesn't map well onto equivalent damage (items with big pvals turn into sick weapons) - but I'm happy to have another go.

Keep up the good work Pete.

[PaulBlay]

What is that - the first two or three dives?

That depends very much on how you play the game and how experienced you are. Angband appears to be very much balanced around the experienced and power divers, which is fair enough but I personally prefer a more casual and less competitive approach to gaming.

[Magnate]

(thinks more)

I think part of the problem here is the CHR is totally unlike all other stats, in that its only use is in town. If you found a +6 CHR amulet on the dungeon floor you'd leave it there, unless you were still in the really-strapped-for-cash portion of the game (first 10-20%) in which case you might make space for it in order to save money on consumables. Otherwise the only reason to bring it back is to sell it, and I have no problem with the new algorithm making that less desirable. In fact for 116gp you might actually buy such an amulet, whereas you would almost never buy it at its old price (of what, several thousand?) - by the time you could afford it, you'd probably have enough money not to need its benefits.

That doesn't mean CHR isn't underrated. It's just that we're looking to fix the evaluation of something which is only relevant for a small portion of the game.

[Magnate]

That depends very much on how you play the game and how experienced you are. Angband appears to be very much balanced around the experienced and power divers, which is fair enough but I personally prefer a more casual and less competitive approach to gaming.

Surely the opposite is true - the slower you dive, the more stuff you sell and the quicker you make money??

[PaulBlay]

Surely the opposite is true - the slower you dive, the more stuff you sell and the quicker you make money??

The slower you dive the less the stuff you sell is worth.

[Daniel Fishman]

Slower diving means you have more money at a given dungeon level.
Faster diving means you have more money after a given number of dives.

[Magnate]

Slower diving means you have more money at a given dungeon level.
Faster diving means you have more money after a given number of dives.

Correct. When I said above that money is only scarce for a small part of the game, I was referring to a small proportion of the dungeon. If you dive slowly, this proportion is smaller than if you dive fast.

[Magnate]

Ok, this is perhaps a bit cheap. So it raises a couple of options:

1. Just increase CHR _POWER from 1 (power per plus) to 2 or 3. (cf 8 for CON, 6 for STR/DEX, 4 for INT/WIS).

Raising this to 2 makes a +6 CHR amulet cost about 500gp. IMO this is sufficient - yes it will still pay for itself, but if you're prepared to use a slot in your home for that, that's fair enough. (For those who think it's still not enough - is CHR really worth more than half as much as INT or WIS??)

So that just leaves the crown of lordliness. The CHR is irrelevant there, it's really all about the value of ESP. Currently it's valued at 20 damage per blow (40 power). Would you give up more than 100 dmg/round for ESP?

A plain iron crown of ESP [0, +0] is worth about ~3.5k (x3 in the BM) - exactly the same as a weapon of 20dmg/blow. Again, I reckon that's about right.

Please bear in mind that anomalies in the new prices need to be considered relative to each other, rather than to previous prices. ESP was dramatically overpriced previously (in terms of its value as dmg/blow). So don't think "well if I can get 3k gp for a weapon of slay orc then this is too cheap" - because you can't anymore. Weapons of slay orc (and in particular slay troll) are much cheaper.

[Pete Mack]

[Overpriced Lance of *Slay Dragon*] is a bug. Assuming it had +2 pval it should have been worth about 15k (86 power). Please post the relevant stanza from your pricing.log file.

It was +1. Here's the log.

[SIZE="2"]object is & Lance~Adding power for dam dice, total is 18
Adjusted for slay power, total is 90
Adding power for to_dam, total is 118
After multiplying ammo and rescaling, power is 118
Adding power for to hit, total is 128
Adding power for to_ac of 0, total is 128
Adding power for CON bonus 1, total is 136
Adding power for combination of 0, total is 136
Adding power for resist fear, total is 142
FINAL POWER IS 142
a is 2 and b is 1
value is 40470[/SIZE]

[11K Gold for Lordliness (+3) {ESP}] is WAD. Without the ESP it's not worth much (depending on its pval) - +WIS, +CHR, susWIS, susCHR and rFear. The ESP is responsible for about 2/3 of its power rating (again, depending on its pval), and about 80% of its monetary value.

Your point is perhaps simply that ESP is still undervalued (it's currently worth as much as fire immunity).

Yes. I value ESP at least 2x fire immunity. I can live without any immunities for the entire game if I have to. I'm not likely to do so without ESP.

Here's the log:

[SIZE="2"]object is & Golden Crown~Adding power for base AC value, total is 0
Adding power for to_hit, total is 0
Adding power for to_dam, total is 0
Adding power for to_ac of 7, total is 7
Adding power for WIS bonus 3, total is 19
Adding power for combination of 0, total is 19
Adding power for CHR bonus/penalty 3, total is 22
Adding power for sustain WIS, total is 27
Adding power for sustain CHR, total is 28
Adding power for telepathy, total is 68
Adding power for resist fear, total is 74
FINAL POWER IS 74
a is 2 and b is 1
value is 11026[/SIZE]

Also note:Rings of Flames, etc do not take into account branding, which is a significant mistake, nor the temporary resistance activation, which is also potentially valuable in the midgame. (I don't know about artifact bows, either--Bard is just insane against Dragons.)

[SIZE="2"]object is FlamesJewellery - adding 0 as base
Adding power for to_hit, total is 0
Adding power for to_dam, total is 0
Adding power for to_ac of 13, total is 13
Adding power for resist fire, total is 19
FINAL POWER IS 19
a is 2 and b is 1
value is 741[/SIZE]

I guess it depends on how important people think the limited-money part of the game is. What is that - the first two or three dives?

In principle, it's for the whole game. It depends on what you are buying--basically you should be able to afford an object if it's reasonable to expect you to have found it in-game. If you are short of that, it should be unaffordable, or at least require emptying part of your home to afford it.

If it's stat potions in the BM, it should longer than for basic supplies. If it's for ESP, it should take a bit longer than the average time to find Thranduil. !Augmentation and !Experience, about twice that. Speed Rings, boots--until very late in the game.

Suggestion: cache the most recently emitted value in the log, and remove sequential duplications. Many records are repeated at least two times.

[buzzkill]

That depends very much on how you play the game and how experienced you are. Angband appears to be very much balanced around the experienced and power divers, which is fair enough but I personally prefer a more casual and less competitive approach to gaming.

Surely the opposite is true - the slower you dive, the more stuff you sell and the quicker you make money??

I think you're both right. The game is about as balanced as a wheel of cheese with a wedge missing.

I dive (to a certain extent, I certainly wouldn't call myself a power diver) not to earn a low turn count, but simply because if I don't, I find the game rather easy, and boring. This is coming from a guy who has never even come close to winning. I don't dive to amass gold or find items to sell. My gold supply is usually of concern to me until around CL 25-30, where all my characters stall. At this point the game become monotonous. It turns into, recall to dungeon, fail to amass experience or find better items (despite detection), get chased off by powerful uniques or undead, recall to town, sell junk, buy consumables, repeat. It's at this point that I start missing the early game. Shorty there after, disinterest in my character leads to his untimely demise. If I do manage to make it past this point, then the uber-items come at such a fast and furious pace that I have difficulty constantly reviewing my kit, trying to come up with useful combinations. Furthermore, this requires constant recalls to town to store the multitude of artifacts that are not currently useful. I don't have any useful suggestions except maybe this. Possibly consider basing the items available in town on the amount of gold the character has. I don't think it's a particularly good idea for two reasons. First, the dungeon should be the dungeon, and the town should be the town, regardless of the status of the player. Second, I believe that gear should, for the most part, be found, not purchased. I don't think that fixing the pricing to going to make a hill of beans of difference. Probably the wrong thread for this, but I think that the multitude of perceived problems with the game in general arise from the fact that we are trying to turn a ancient game into a modern marvel. Angband appears to have it's limitations, which won't be overcome by fiddling with numbers and adding new parts. For real progress to be made it needs to be recreated from the ground up, and that just wouldn't be Angband.

[PaulBlay]

For real progress to be made it needs to be recreated from the ground up, and that just wouldn't be Angband.

Not being Angband isn't necessarily a bad thing.

There are a lot of variants that are a long way away from Angband, and some of them are great fun. I personally would like to see more old variants considered for bringing up to date with Angband 3.1.0+ style user interface and usability. (However I think I picked a heck of a tricky one to start with )

[Magnate]

It was +1. Here's the log.

[SIZE="2"]object is & Lance~Adding power for dam dice, total is 18
Adjusted for slay power, total is 90[/SIZE]

Ok, this bug was fixed in r1325.

Yes. I value ESP at least 2x fire immunity. I can live without any immunities for the entire game if I have to. I'm not likely to do so without ESP.

Ok, thanks for the opinion. Can I just confirm that you value ESP at 40 damage per blow, 200 damage per round? You're prepared to give up that much damage to have ESP? That's what "2x fire immunity" means at the moment.

Also note:Rings of Flames, etc do not take into account branding, which is a significant mistake, nor the temporary resistance activation, which is also potentially valuable in the midgame. (I don't know about artifact bows, either--Bard is just insane against Dragons.)

Ring brands were properly included in power as of r1335. Activations were included as of r1330. Slays on launchers were sorted in r1326.

In principle, it's for the whole game. It depends on what you are buying--basically you should be able to afford an object if it's reasonable to expect you to have found it in-game. If you are short of that, it should be unaffordable, or at least require emptying part of your home to afford it.

Hmmmkay. That's an interesting principle. But ...

If it's stat potions in the BM, it should longer than for basic supplies. If it's for ESP, it should take a bit longer than the average time to find Thranduil. !Augmentation and !Experience, about twice that. Speed Rings, boots--until very late in the game.

...this takes us back to the other thread about desirability vs. rarity. You're talking about having prices affected by rarity - which is fine, but is not currently part of the algorithm. Perhaps it should be an additional component of price.

Suggestion: cache the most recently emitted value in the log, and remove sequential duplications. Many records are repeated at least two times.

Yes, I'll look into this. Sorry, I implemented the pricing log in a hurry, and it needs refining to avoid it growing huge.

[Magnate]

P.S. Please don't add more items to the first post, as that was done using an out-of-date version. Please update to the latest trunk and add any new anomalies below this post.