Squelching for gold

[PowerDiver]

Are you folks all taking this idea seriously???????????

It is downright crazy. It means that every time you change object generation, you have to rebalance gold to maintain game balance. Every time the power rankings for weapons and armor change, money generation would change. One of the advantages of "no selling" is that object generation is divorced from gold generation.

If you want to change the money available, change the money drops.


Also, I spent years telling the reactionaries that squelch is 100% UI only and does not affect game balance in any way. This change would throw that away.

[d_m]

It is downright crazy. It means that every time you change object generation, you have to rebalance gold to maintain game balance. Every time the power rankings for weapons and armor change, money generation would change. One of the advantages of "no selling" is that object generation is divorced from gold generation.

I think you're wrong--it might be crazy, but it might not. It's hard for me to imagine an exchange rate of 50% of the black market sell price (price the player gets selling to the black market) significantly unbalancing anything.

Also, you're kidding yourself if you think that "no selling" divorces item generation and gold generation, since the only thing you do with gold is buy items. If items are made much rarer but sell for the same amount in shops, that is a balance change.

That said, it's unclear if anyone wants to actually fight to get this implemented in Vanilla. But it seems like a reasonable idea to discuss.

Also, I spent years telling the reactionaries that squelch is 100% UI only and does not affect game balance in any way. This change would throw that away.

That was a promise you made to the reactionaries. I never signed a contract agreeing that squelch must be 100% UI.

[takkaria]

That was a promise you made to the reactionaries. I never signed a contract agreeing that squelch must be 100% UI.

Hey, I *am* one of the reactionaries, and I did.

[PowerDiver]

Also, you're kidding yourself if you think that "no selling" divorces item generation and gold generation, since the only thing you do with gold is buy items. If items are made much rarer but sell for the same amount in shops, that is a balance change.

Say you decide weapons are too cheap, available for half what they should cost. So you increase their prices by 100%. But then this change would increase the player's gold by some significant amount, and you didn't achieve what you wanted. You'd have to iterate. Why introduce these sorts of complications? If you want more gold, add more gold. I'll happily write Pete a mod that keeps the mean roughly the same and makes the variance unbounded, at least until overflow rears its head.

[Sergio]

I wonder, since I just arrived, how do you define what is "vanilla"? So far, squelch is something that is not part of the "game mechanics", so every variant can take it however they want, including magically creating gold from items. But how do you decide such thing is "vanilla" enough to make it into Angband?

I still don't see why having more gold is going to help after DL50, when the least you need is gold, but I guess that's a separate issue

[Rizwan]

If you want to change the money available, change the money drops.

I agree. More money/larger money drops earlier down to almost no money near the bottom.

[Marble Dice]

Also, you're kidding yourself if you think that "no selling" divorces item generation and gold generation, since the only thing you do with gold is buy items.

Obviously gold's only purpose is to "generate" items from the town shops, but with no selling it's easy to control the player's gold because the gold they have is the gold they find. If you can sell items then a player's gold is what they find but also what they earn by selling valuable items. Every item becomes both an item and possible gold, so any change in the frequency or distribution of items also affects a player's potential gold supply. You do not have this problem with no selling.

I wouldn't want squelch to become something more than UI, it would mean I have to think about annoying tasks like unsquelching certain items before I expect I might need and find them in the near future. That or I'd have to squelch fewer items and deal with leaving them all over in case I needed them.

Has Tak considered adding a birth_no_selling option? I think it's a really awesome gameplay mode that removes the tedium of hauling valuable, cumbersome, and/or heavy loot back to town just to get gold. We already have options for many similar gameplay decisions - you can play with disconnected stairs or restrict them completely (ironman), and you can even restrict shops completely, but there's no halfway point in that department (no selling). As Eddie implements no selling it's not a strict difficulty setting since it does increase gold drops, but I see the option for starting with no equipment but more gold in a similar light. If you have options at all stuff like this seems to beg for them.

[takkaria]

Has Tak considered adding a birth_no_selling option? I think it's a really awesome gameplay mode that removes the tedium of hauling valuable, cumbersome, and/or heavy loot back to town just to get gold. We already have options for many similar gameplay decisions - you can play with disconnected stairs or restrict them completely (ironman), and you can even restrict shops completely, but there's no halfway point in that department (no selling). As Eddie implements no selling it's not a strict difficulty setting since it does increase gold drops, but I see the option for starting with no equipment but more gold in a similar light. If you have options at all stuff like this seems to beg for them.

Tak has considered implementing it, and indeed, will implement it.

[nekrotyrael]

Has Tak considered adding a birth_no_selling option?

That would be great. I've been playing DaJAngbang with no_selling and I can't see why the Eddie's patch hasn't been included in Vanilla. It makes the game much more fun.

[Pete Mack]

Are you folks all taking this idea seriously???????????

It is downright crazy. It means that every time you change object generation, you have to rebalance gold to maintain game balance. Every time the power rankings for weapons and armor change, money generation would change. One of the advantages of "no selling" is that object generation is divorced from gold generation.

If you want to change the money available, change the money drops.


Also, I spent years telling the reactionaries that squelch is 100% UI only and does not affect game balance in any way. This change would throw that away.

Whoops! The thread was started by Nick, so I assumed it was for FAAangband, and I pointed out some potential problems he might run into. These changes definitely don't belong in V; A basic no_selling option probably does.

[Hariolor]

I am in general agreement that increasing the availability of gold is counterproductive. As CL increases, gold availability becomes moot. Clearing out one vault provides ample cash for anything one might need.

An issue I'd rather see addressed is the amount of time that has to be spent scumming for support items at higher CL. It seems a little silly to me that after hours of careful diving, leveling up, and acquiring excellent items, my character is limited by the fact that I often am short on relatively mundane crap like !*healing* and !Restore Mana...

Maybe this is a problem with my play style more than the mechanics of the game (I am not much of a coder). But if we're discussing tweaking stuff to reduce junk and make gold have a purpose at high CL; I'd rather see either drops of these items increase at low levels, or have the shops increase the 'potency' of the items they sell as CL increases. I wouldn't mind dropping a couple million gold to stock up on potions for the big battles at the end. It certainly seems preferable to scumming troll and dragon pits until enough useful items turn up.

[Nick]

Whoops! The thread was started by Nick, so I assumed it was for FAAangband, and I pointed out some potential problems he might run into. These changes definitely don't belong in V; A basic no_selling option probably does.

Yes, it may not have been such a good idea to start this in the Vanilla forum - it arose out of my thinking about how I would implement no selling in FA. I don't necessarily think this doesn't belong in V, but I do think it doesn't belong in V yet. And this forum seemed the most likely to generate lively discussion...

[Nick]

It is downright crazy. It means that every time you change object generation, you have to rebalance gold to maintain game balance. Every time the power rankings for weapons and armor change, money generation would change. One of the advantages of "no selling" is that object generation is divorced from gold generation.

If you want to change the money available, change the money drops.

I don't really get this argument. Object generation and money supply are intricately related, given that the only use for money is buying objects. So any change to object generation is going to have an effect on the gold - no selling just makes that effect less direct.

Also, I spent years telling the reactionaries that squelch is 100% UI only and does not affect game balance in any way. This change would throw that away.

I think the real problem here is that it's making you look like a reactionary

[Marble Dice]

I don't really get this argument. Object generation and money supply are intricately related, given that the only use for money is buying objects. So any change to object generation is going to have an effect on the gold - no selling just makes that effect less direct.

Dungeon items and shop items are two different things; shop items are carefully selected and (sometimes) available to the player, their acquirement is subject to the player's choice. With selling, both gold and dungeon items affect the players gold supply, and thus their ability to purchase shop items. It's a one-way street though.

[Marble Dice]

Double post, but back to the original topic (alternatives to Eddie's no selling option), Nick have you considered a "sacrifice" command, similar to those found in many MUDs, such as ROM, Smaug, etc? You could sacrifice items from the ground and receive gold for it. Just change the "kill" feature to award you gold for destroying items. That way you wouldn't have to make any changes to the squelch system, and you would avoid the problem of "pre-identifing" items. If you were concerned it would be too powerful, you could just adjust the gold awarded so sacrificing yielded less gold since you'd be able to sacrifice on demand.