Permanently available items

[Magnate]

I think scumming is more or less like cheating at solitaire. I don't think we should remove a feature just because someone might scum to take advantage of it. If there are simple ways to deal with it (without affecting non-scummers), OK, but I don't see any need to make radical changes just to eliminate scumming.

I fundamentally disagree with this. Good game design eliminates scumming to protect players from their own weakness.

Personally I would remove the BM altogether, but if we have one I agree that the BM should be the exception to the 0-or-100% rule. I would solve the BM problem a different way: make its stock never rotate on its own, only when @ buys something to free up a slot. (I guess this is just a lazy coder's version of forcing Sang-style "investment" in the BM.)

I really quite like the idea of the store contents being different from game to game (but fixed for each game). So one game might have !CCW, but the other only !CSW. One game might have plain longbows, the other plain xbows. I guess there would need to be certain items guaranteed every game (?WoR, ?PD, food, light, ammo), but this could work.

@Invisible Stalker: the free market idea has been discussed several times. My conclusion is that it's quite a lot of work for something that most people would view as quite a small improvement. But I'd happily test a branch which implemented it, and merge it if people liked it!

[Tibarius]

Which and how much items are available in stores should be derived from the purpose that should be achieved with the items. The hard job is to fix the purpose, because that will change from situation to situation.

If you start a new char you are looking for a start-up equipment. This means for me, shovel so that i can dig for treasure, more light to stay longer in dungeon before i must return up and more food. Basic mage /priest book #2 if i am mage or priest. More arrows as ranger. Whip as warrior/paladin/rogue. (I hadn't noticed until yet, that barehanded fighting can be almost as good as with a light weapon).

Later on, besides some emergency stuff like staff of curing / teleporting, Heal potions, etc. i mainly visit town to sell loot to have gold if something interesting in the black market shows up. The other point are stat potions / stat swap potions for me.

The availability of phase door, detection and healing in almost unlimited numbers takes a lot of the mage / priest uniqueness away. As playing mainly mages i feel about it that the warrior types (with a lot more hp and blows) are too good of with it (at least in the lower levels i played until yet).

I think the stuff offered is somewhat unbalanced either. As a newbie mage i often would like to get a wand of magic missile with me - but thats too expensive as start-up gear. But once i am level around 10, the damage of that wand is way too low to be used anyway (my mm spell does around 4d4 or 5d4 and the wand 3d4). On the other hand, if i am clvl 20 and haven't found any stat potions yet i would love to have some wands of acid bolts or frost balls because of the limited mana supply. Too often wand of confuse / sleep are offered. Maybe i haven't discovered their sense yet, but this spells look rather redundant to me. Those monsters you could require them for are usually not affected from them.

I like the BM, because it is always a thrill if it keeps anything usefull if i visit town once in a while. To prevent scumming for good items in it, it could change / restock only if the player has accumulated a certain amount of xp (maybe 3% of the XP required to next level). If a level 1 player clears the first level it could restock, while a high clvl player must dive down a good way to find enough monsters "playing" in his xp range.

The other shops could expand their offer dependant on the clvl. The mage shop (the one with the mage spell books) could have sometimes rare books available. Or just upgraded items, while at clvl 1 it sells wands of magic missile it sells wands of fire bolts at clvl 10 and wands of meteor swarm at clvl30 etc ...

Just thoughts of a newbie, no flames please

Cheers,
Tibarius

[d_m]

Awhile ago we discussed making store refresh happen only on character level-up. An easy way to solve the trivial scumming problem is to move to this model (or make it happen every N levels).

I could imagine exempting "always there" items from this. In that case you might as well give stores 99 of those items, because buyouts will trigger a store restock automatically. If you don't exempt always there items then that creates an interesting challenge. Hell, you could have some items (ammo) that are actually infinite (stock doesn't decrease when bought) and others (phase door) which are always readded on restock but are gone until the next restock.

The more variant-y solution I prefer is to have total fixed inventory with no restocking, and have N dungeon towns with "new" inventories along the way to act as artificial restocks. Requires the players to actually play the game to get to the new stuff, and means you can have exciting items in deeper black markets (if you want).

Anyway, two different ideas.

[fizzix]

I could imagine exempting "always there" items from this. In that case you might as well give stores 99 of those items, because buyouts will trigger a store restock automatically. If you don't exempt always there items then that creates an interesting challenge. Hell, you could have some items (ammo) that are actually infinite (stock doesn't decrease when bought) and others (phase door) which are always readded on restock but are gone until the next restock.

Why not just remove restock on buyout? It doesn't make much sense anyway. You would certainly need to avoid restocking on regaining a lost-level (unlike current stat draining.)

I'm not sure I like clevel as the metric for restocking, but I honestly can't come up with much better.

[d_m]

I'm not sure I like clevel as the metric for restocking, but I honestly can't come up with much better.

I agree that it seems a bit weird, but I think it might be good. I know Dean Anderson tried it and liked it (there's a thread around here somewhere).

[bulian]

Its impossible to keep up with this forum or the current development any more.

[tony]

Its impossible to keep up with this forum or the current development any more.

for realz?

[Magnate]

Its impossible to keep up with this forum or the current development any more.

For a long time I blamed the search function on here, but I've come round to the view that although it lacks Google's ease of use, it does actually get you what you want after a few tries. If you look for threads with "store stock" you can in a few minutes catch up with most of the previous debates on this topic. The main problem is that reading old threads is less interesting than jumping into new ones with brilliant ideas that have been discussed before.

Keeping up with development is easier than keeping up with the forum: the changes.txt file tells you what's happened in the dev versions since the last release's changes file, and trac.rephial.org shows you the tickets which are scheduled for fixing for the next release (and the one after and so on).

[Max Stats]

I would solve the BM problem a different way: make its stock never rotate on its own, only when @ buys something to free up a slot.

I could really go for this idea, if we have a "buy and discard" command for individual items, along with the "buy-out-the-store" command that has been proposed before. Heck, I would like these commands whether this idea is implemented or not.

I really quite like the idea of the store contents being different from game to game (but fixed for each game). So one game might have !CCW, but the other only !CSW. One game might have plain longbows, the other plain xbows. I guess there would need to be certain items guaranteed every game (?WoR, ?PD, food, light, ammo), but this could work.

I think CCW is a pretty essential item. If you don't get a very good list of guaranteed essential items, you will have scumming in the form of "start a game, check the stores, and if I don't see what I like, restart."

[jens]

So I guess the question we should be asking is: what items do stores sell that are useful in small quantities but unbalancing in large quantities? Those items should then either not be sold at all, or modified so that even large quantities are balanced.

I like this idea. One thing though: it should be clvl dependant. Getting large quantities of CCW that fully heal you would be way to much, so these should not be offered in the store until you passed a ceratin clvl (around 20-30). There might be other things that should be regulated by level as well.

[Jazerus]

But is the BM really a problem? As it stands, it is as scummable, no more and no less, than the floor of the dungeon. Harder, actually, since restock takes a lot longer than stairhopping and really good items might be out of your price range until later in the game. The random rotating inventory that is "straight from the dungeon" is most of the thing's charm, and the BM is certainly the most exciting thing in town. I'm not afraid of change for good reasons, just wondering whether maybe there's a bit too much change for change's sake going on with this idea.

[Magnate]

I think CCW is a pretty essential item. If you don't get a very good list of guaranteed essential items, you will have scumming in the form of "start a game, check the stores, and if I don't see what I like, restart."

!CCW heals 20hp more than !CSW. The portion of the game where that's a significant difference is negligible.

[Derakon]

IIRC CSW also doesn't clear poison and may not clear some other status ailments that CCW does, so there's more than just the HP issue at stake here.

Then again, generally I find enough CCW in the dungeon to keep myself going. Aside from my initial purchase (after my first dungeon dive to around 800' or so) I usually don't need to top myself up all that often. Being a bit more conservative with C*W potions, such that I never needed to buy them, wouldn't hurt me all that much. It'd be harder on the newbies, of course.