The Buyout Button (tm)

[Donald Jonker]

Would you like Eddie's bodacious buyout button in Vanilla?

Discussion of the buyout button has been popping up hither and thither on the forums lately, so perhaps it's time to engage it directly. For those who don't know:

The buyout button is a special key in the shop interface devoted to the function of buying and discarding the entire stock of a given store. This has the useful function of forcing the shop to completely restock with new items. It's chiefly used to acquire certain items either necessary for the current trip to the dungeon, or that are rare enough that it's faster to seek them in town with excess funds (of which there are many in the late game) than to find them in the dungeon. These can include anything from !rStat, !CCW to stat potions and endgame consumables. Consumables being so much rarer in recent versions of the game, it has seemed incumbent to bring the issue up now rather than later.

Under the current state of things, you have to manually buy out every item, transfer them to your inventory, and then destroy them. This takes longer in real time than townscumming. The chief reason to buy out stores instead of townscumming is to avoid insane turncounts. The buyout button would skip that step, and destroy all items in the store without transferring them to your inventory.

A few brief recent opinions:

As for the buyout button, it's heading on the opposite direction of what Takkaria wants which is, if I understood correctly: "don't ask for items to be easier to find in shops, suggest how to make items in the dungeon to be more useful".

I see that argument being analogous to the arguments that kept squelch out of V for so long. Once you think the game is ready to remove store restocking, then do so. Until then, I want the button.

This even interferes with squelch. I used to set it up so that when you bought a squelched object, the game would automatically unsquelch it assuming you now want the thing. But I've removed that because it is more important to ease the process of buying out a store, where you want bought squelched objects to disappear without any further keypresses.

In fact, I find that I squelch multiple objects I might otherwise use if I bumped into them in the dungeon [e.g. detect invisible] just so that the buyout process is faster. Having no buyout button leads directly to using *fewer* dungeon objects when I play.

[Zikke]

I personally believe buying out a vendor to get them to restock is somewhat of an exploit (even though it's programmed to cause a restock). I voted Nay.

[will_asher]

If I was a better player who often got far enough to have tons of money, and if I cared one diddlywop about turncount, I'd definetly vote yes. As it is I'm apathetic.

[PowerDiver]

One other advantage of the button is to present the information that it is possible to restock to players who otherwise would not know that restocking is part of the game.

[buzzkill]

I cast my vote for apathy. I have a general, presently unfounded, dislike of the mechanic itself. But, as long as it is possible, you might as well make it easy.

[Marble Dice]

I'm voting yes because I don't believe in rewarding tedium.

Currently you can force a re-stock with lots of gold or lots of turns. One is easy to do, the other takes a lot of key-jockeying. I don't really think either should be necessary or possible, but they are, so I don't think either should be annoying and time-consuming.

If other development is in the works that might address the root of the problem, then by all means go with that.

[Rizwan]

I voted no because I want to propose another alternative ala force the shopkeepers to change after a certain fixed number of turns. This will also get rid of the shopkeeper payout problem.

[Atarlost]

That wouldn't take care of the problem of inadequate stock, which is the primary reason for buying out stores.

[Rizwan]

That wouldn't take care of the problem of inadequate stock, which is the primary reason for buying out stores.

Doesn't a change in shopkeeper trigger a change in stock?

[Atarlost]

It doesn't matter unless shopkeepers are going to change more frequently than stores currently restock.

[Magnate]

I believe that Angband should not be "the game of shopping", and that the whole stores concept is broken. Stores should have totally invariant stock, so scumming/restocking should never be an issue. Or, we should get rid of gp completely, and the town, and have only barter with merchants wandering around the vast underground world.

[Rizwan]

It doesn't matter unless shopkeepers are going to change more frequently than stores currently restock.

Thats what I meant when I said force storekeeper change after a fixed number of turns. Right now the number of turns is not fixed there is a very small chance of change, but if the turns are fixed then we can wait it out

[Donald Jonker]

I believe that Angband should not be "the game of shopping", and that the whole stores concept is broken. Stores should have totally invariant stock, so scumming/restocking should never be an issue. Or, we should get rid of gp completely, and the town, and have only barter with merchants wandering around the vast underground world.

I'll agree that while the town lends Angband a great deal of its unique flavor, it's probably also its greatest liability. But both of these are giant, long ranging reforms requiring massive rethinking, negotiation and/or recoding. The button is a short term measure that works with the game mechanics as is. Can't we have both?

[konijn_]

I'll agree that while the town lends Angband a great deal of its unique flavor, it's probably also its greatest liability. But both of these are giant, long ranging reforms requiring massive rethinking, negotiation and/or recoding. The button is a short term measure that works with the game mechanics as is. Can't we have both?

What he says.

A bad analogy would be 'There should be no poor people', so there should be no option to feed them ( resulting in dead people ).

There is a real problem right now, a UI fix will fix at least the time consuming aspect of it and exarcerabate(sp?) the shopping problem so that people will be more motivated to rethink and fix the game mechanic.

What I would like to say about this is that in TinyAngband :

* There is no TMJ in my mind, almost perfect balance
* Because there is no TMJ, it might happen you do not find the 4 basic resists before level 15 ( trust me you need them after lvl 15 ), I find awesome other stuff but nothing to cover 4 resists

So here , as a designer you have 3 options :
* Allow shops to balance out the RNG with enough effort=cash (ok)
* Drop way more items (yuck)
* Cheat the RNG and purposefully drop armors of the elves or amulets of resistance (rly bad)

Think about it, what other options are there ?

If you dont add shops with random content, I think you will force players to scum even more or force them to dive without protection which limits game styles drastically or have fixed content with everything you need ( yawn ).

T.

[Atarlost]

We're not talking about waiting out shopkeepers. Shopkeeper processing is done at restock intervals anyways IIRC. You can already wair out shop restocks. It's called townscumming. You go to DL1 and rest for several thousand turns. That's what a buyout button is supposed to replace once you have the cash to use it.