Making the game harder, take two

[EpicMan]

That's a brilliant idea - it makes d_m's approach viable at a stroke. I'm thinking about half a million gp, which you reach somewhere in the third quarter of the game.

I was thinking something much smaller, that the character could unlock around a quarter into the game, maybe a couple of thousand. That way more of what the Black Market offers could be potentially useful to characters.

[Timo Pietilä]

That's a brilliant idea - it makes d_m's approach viable at a stroke. I'm thinking about half a million gp, which you reach somewhere in the third quarter of the game.

Or not. I don't now remember what I saw in BM but I "town scummed" by killing enough townspeople to buy something that cost me somewhere over 50000gp. It didn't really take all that long, it just required a lot of resting to get town respawned full, casting satisfy hunger and fighting only daytime.

The amount of terror high-level char can cause in town is enormous, and IIRC I wasn't that high in level, I actually needed to avoid fighting battle-scarred vets and stuff (IIRC mage with regen + mm does the trick in very low level).

Doing that same in dungeon is more lucrative and much faster, you might create mini-quest with that (collect enough money to open BM).

[Nomad]

How about switching all the standard shops to non-restocking, but keeping the black market as-is with the random turnover of items? It's not as vulnerable to scumming as the other shops anyway, since it doesn't have a fixed item set that you know it's going to get back in.

Or, another thought: eliminate scumming by linking restock to dungeon progress rather than elapsed time. The shops get new inventory in every time you make it to another ten-level milestone. Need more of that stat restore potion they've sold of? Don't scum for it, get back in the dungeon and work your way down to dlevel 10/20/30/40 to trigger a restock.

You could even use that system to steadily 'level up' the kind of stock available: say, past a certain dlevel the armoury stops trying to sell you leather sandals and starts getting ethereal slippers and mithril shod boots in.

[Dean Anderson]

With all this talk of removing shop restocking to prevent town-scumming, it's worth remembering that - especially for new players - going into the shops to see what new things there are to buy with your freshly gained treasure is fun.

If the shops don't restock, that fun element is removed from the game.

Personally, if non-restocking shops were implemented I'd want to see it as either a variant or - if it's going in V - as an "ironman" option. So people who want the game harder can switch it on, but new players (who don't need the game made harder) will have it left off by default.

[fizzix]

If we go to fully fixed amounts, I'd imagine playing many games where I am forced to scum dlevel1 for ?phase. Something to be wary about. Really ?phase !CCW and ammo are the only items that I wind up buying more than 99 of. I wouldn't mind ammo being set at 99 and !CCW being removed altogether, but having a fixed stock of ?phase would be annoying.

[RogerN]

With all this talk of removing shop restocking to prevent town-scumming, it's worth remembering that - especially for new players - going into the shops to see what new things there are to buy with your freshly gained treasure is fun.

I think this is an extremely important point. When you've got money to burn then shopping is fun and checking the stores is exciting. Nomad's suggestion (restocking at 10-level milestones) is an excellent way to maintain some shopping excitement, while also tempting players to take bigger risks if store inventories are running dry.

[Dean Anderson]

You know, looking at the source code, disabling shop restocks and giving the owners a fixed purse looks like it will only take half an hour at the most.

I'm going to throw together a quick variant of 3.1.2v2 with that in, so that people can get a feel for what it's like.

Ecoband ("Economics Band") here we come...

[Derakon]

How hard would it be to tweak dungeon generation to always generate exactly one small "vault" that contains a portal back to town? Obviously you'd need the new portal dungeon feature (which should probably be immune to various terrain alterations), and the vault itself should be trivial to make by mimicking the moated-room generator on a smaller scale. The main difficulty, I'd guess, would be in forcing its generation.

Regarding store restocking, there is some question as to whether we want ?Phase, !C*W, or ammo to be infinitely available. Ammo at least should be a moot point, since there's plenty in the dungeon. Are we justified in assuming that we should always be able to carry around a bunch of scrolls and potions? Certainly they get used often in current gameplay, but that doesn't mean they're required.

I like the "only black market restocks" idea. It preserves some of the fun of shopping for newcomers (and honestly, newcomers would very quickly figure out that the other stores never carry anything interesting anyway) without overly promoting the shopping game.

[Dean Anderson]

In a similar vein to the Black Market only allowing rich people in (something that I seem to remember was in an early version - or possibly Moria), another thing that could be done to make the game more difficult is to start the player not owning the house. The house begins locked.

Instead, they have to buy the house (for a large amount of cash) before they can start using it as a back-up inventory space.

[camlost]

Ecoband ("Economics Band") here we come...

Reduce, reuse, restock^W

[Dean Anderson]

How hard would it be to tweak dungeon generation to always generate exactly one small "vault" that contains a portal back to town? Obviously you'd need the new portal dungeon feature (which should probably be immune to various terrain alterations), and the vault itself should be trivial to make by mimicking the moated-room generator on a smaller scale. The main difficulty, I'd guess, would be in forcing its generation.

Why make it immune to terrain alterations? If the player is stupid (or desperate) enough to trash the portal with an Earthquake or whatever, tough. They can go up or down a level to the next one.

Actually, I'm not sure I'd want one per level. That seems to be too many. Maybe a 50% chance of each level having one would be better. The uncertainty makes it more interesting too.

Regarding store restocking, there is some question as to whether we want ?Phase, !C*W, or ammo to be infinitely available. Ammo at least should be a moot point, since there's plenty in the dungeon. Are we justified in assuming that we should always be able to carry around a bunch of scrolls and potions? Certainly they get used often in current gameplay, but that doesn't mean they're required.

We'd have to be careful that a lack of scrolls and potions doesn't overly penalise non-spellcasters too much.

[bio_hazard]

Personally I'd want to see ammo in the stores. I think I understand the general desire here to force more tactical decisions by players, but having to sweat out every time I hit 'f' whether I should have run away or attacked in melee because I may not see another stack of ammo for who knows how long seems like taking it to too much of an extreme. This really seems like it is approaching ironman, which is already an option.

At least reduce the chance of ammo breakage. Or up ammo drops.

[Nick]

IMHO no restocking is birth option territory.

And while we're at it, how about a birth option that reverts to the old only-one-item-dropped-per-grid behaviour? That would sort out any junk problem.

[Timo Pietilä]

IMHO no restocking is birth option territory.

And while we're at it, how about a birth option that reverts to the old only-one-item-dropped-per-grid behaviour? That would sort out any junk problem.

That's already there: "don't stack objects on the floor" birth_no_stacking.

[Dean Anderson]

Okay.

I've made a quick variant with non-restocking shops, and played it for an hour (the code changes really were trivial - just commenting out the call to "store_maint" in dungeon.c).

Now obviously this isn't long enough to grasp all the subtleties, but it's enough for first impressions.

And here they are...

1) This hits warriors a lot harder than spellcasters, since a spellcaster can buy one book and keep casting light or detect doors/stairs whereas a warrior very quickly runs out of scrolls.

2) In the early game, it really hits you in the wallet. At low levels you're normally picking up scrolls and potions at 50'-100' and bringing them back to town to sell so that you can afford decent non-magical armour and stuff. However, without restocking, the temple and alchemist very quickly run out of space and you're stuck unable to sell any more.

3) Food and torches are surprisingly unaffected, since there's plenty of both to be found in the dungeon.

Now obviously this can all be tweaked, but it brings us back to the $64,000 questions:

What exactly is the proposed change intended to achieve, other than a nebulous "make things harder"?

Which classes is it intended to hit?

And at what part of the game?