Level feeling with 3.3.1?

[Jungle_Boy]

Do you have any ideas on how we could possibly maintain split level feelings without them being "shop here" signs and without having players complain about them being inaccurate?

From the complaints I don't think there is a problem with the danger feelings. In role play this could be construed as skulls on the wall or @-shaped scorch marks where a previous adventurer met his doom.

The problem seems to be in the level rating for items. For one I think it should take slightly longer to generate this feeling, not much, but more than one room which it is sometimes currently. I think perhaps artifacts should have a minimum level feeling of 'something worthwhile' that would probably be the only other change I'd make.

[Zyphyr]

I pretty much ignore the treasure portion of the feelings, unless I am 40-50% cleared and trying to decide between clearing more or moving on.

The danger portion, on the other hand, I find quite valuable.

[Magnate]

I'm pretty sure that using Clvl or the characters abilities as a base for price is a bit skewed - even if it would work.
I just find the idea of shopkeepers charging YOU more because YOU would like that item better than uncle bob over there... a bit unsavory. It makes me feel like my high level warrior should be able to send in the town idiot with some cash, so he can buy that nice MOD for me at a discount.

of course, as you're the only adventurer really wandering around, shopkeepers raising their prices as you accumulate more wealth and buy more things doesn't sound all that unreasonable. them shopkeepers SHOULD see dollar signs when you walk in with 2.5 million gold - it's not like you can hide it in your back pocket. (even though it doesn't weigh anything or take up any inventory space... harrumph.)

You're right that any character attributes (stats, clev, class, whatever) have been prevented from affecting object power for precisely the reasons in your first paragraph. You're also right that in a single-player game there's no real need for this - we could, if we wanted, use a pricing system that charged you an amount which depended on something's utility to you at that particular moment, i.e. depending on how many blows you got with a weapon, how much +speed you already had, etc.

The problem with the latter approach is abuse. If you see a fabulous heavy weapon in the BM (Mace of Disruption, say), you just drop all your +STR and +DEX gear until you can only get one blow with it, which will make it cheaper. Then you buy it, pick up all your +stat gear so you can get 5 blows with it, and re-sell it at a massive profit.

A contrived example, but you see what I mean. If we used clev instead of stats, I can see potions of lose memories suddenly occupying a slot in the home alongside those of restore xp.

That said, if anyone wants to code up a rating algorithm that uses stats or clev, and has mechanisms for avoiding abuse, I'll be happy to test it. There are enough drawbacks with the current algorithm that I'd have no hesitation in replacing it with something better.

[AnonymousHero]

If we used clev instead of stats, I can see potions of lose memories suddenly occupying a slot in the home alongside those of restore xp.

Just use the "max clev ever achieved" instead of clev.

[sethos]

Yup - use the characters undrained stats and level maximums, and disregard current equipment, to price items.

This would mean that an item can be a "good deal" if your gear is where most of your boosts are - since gear mods would be ignored - it should also make weapons more expensive for warriors and less so for mages, but I think that's altogether reasonable.

I think that would close any loopholes, unless you can think of others?

[Magnate]

Yup - use the characters undrained stats and level maximums, and disregard current equipment, to price items.

This would mean that an item can be a "good deal" if your gear is where most of your boosts are - since gear mods would be ignored - it should also make weapons more expensive for warriors and less so for mages, but I think that's altogether reasonable.

I think that would close any loopholes, unless you can think of others?

If we assume for a moment that this would work for weapons (and I'm not sure that we'd get sensible prices if we ignored gear mods to stats), how would it work for armour? If you ignore gear, you ignore the weight of what's being worn, which is a huge factor in determining the utility of a piece of armour at any particular point (for non-warriors at least). Or are we saying that only weapon pricing is broken at the moment, and we can leave armour and jewelry as-is?

I think if we were serious about moving to current-utility pricing, we ought to have a kit optimiser to work it out. Since lots of people would like a built-in kit optimiser, this might not be a bad thing! (Someone has already written one, so it's not like anyone has to start from scratch.)

[Derakon]

I still think the amount of value we'd get out of this can't come close to matching the amount of effort required to implement it. And I really don't think it makes good gameplay sense for the shopkeepers to change how much they charge for an item based on how useful it is to you.

[sethos]

Derakon, I'm beginning to see us this way

Me<---------------------->You

I'd make the line longer, but I think the point is made - we are on opposite sides on just about every discussion.

That being said - I've seen you to have very good points and be very persuasive, and I'm glad that I don't see flames and indignant remarks flying as I have seen in so many other places.

In short, I've a healthy dose of respect for you, though I'll probably continue to disagree with most of what you say.

[buzzkill]

And I really don't think it makes good gameplay sense for the shopkeepers to change how much they charge for an item based on how useful it is to you.

What he said. (OTOH, if it's good enough for wearables, why not consumables. What would you pay for a WoR to DL87? 1/2 your of your 1,743,237 GP? probably).

[Derakon]

Sethos: hey, disagreement is good! Helps us to better justify our positions...or if they aren't justifiable, to make us realize we should abandon them. The trick is keeping things civil.

To explicate on my stance, then, in my opinion the player is not the only adventurer here; he's just the only visible adventurer. Way back in the day you used to be able to get player "ghosts" that were still alive, and showed up in town. These went away when ghosts were removed, and probably wouldn't come back because the town's supposed to be safe (so having a high-level ranger slinging spells and arrows at your poor level-13 rear isn't so great), but in my own personal envisioning of the "real" Angband universe, they're still around.

As soon as you introduce more than one buyer into the economy, you greatly change the dynamics. Shopkeepers who change their prices based on who they're selling to tend to be unpopular. Hell, people are trying it now, in the real world, and buyers generally get annoyed if they know they're not getting as good a deal as they could be. When your buyers are heavily armed and spattered with the blood of ancient dragons, you probably don't want to piss them off...

So basically, I see good socially-motivated reasons for the shopkeepers to want to gouge everyone equally.

As for whether or not someone wants to implement it, hell, that's their business. I just wouldn't want to play that way, and these days Vanilla frowns on options, so I'm not clear on how such an effort could integrate into the main development effort.

[bio_hazard]

I'm starting to come around to prices not changing depending on the current condition of the player.

Prices should certainly certainly take into account the future value to a player. It wouldn't make sense for better equipment to cost less because the player can't activate/can't wear without massive penalty/can't swing more than once. Should big armor cost less for mages? Should a high ego weapon that they rarely use in melee cost less for a mage? This doesn't sound right to me imho.

I think the "sell back" problem could be solved by either further lowering what shopkeepers will pay, tagging bought items to be more deeply discounted, or tagging BM items so they can't be sold in another store.

Honestly, it's an exploit that hardly needs fixing- if someone wants to hoard lose memories enough to make a little money, they are probably only going to be able to do this a couple times in a full game, and they are giving up an inventory slot and a home slot to do so (not counting restore potions which are otherwise useful).

[Magnate]

JFTR, I don't support a move to current-utility pricing either. I just wanted to show that as the author of the current oft-derided pricing regime, I'm totally open to discussing and potentially implementing alternatives.

At the moment we have a pricing system that reflects a pretend market economy, where shopkeepers do not change their prices according to who you are - they are constant for all adventurers in the pretend world. Which means it has to use absolute values for things whose utility varies greatly according to what class and level you are, what other gear you've found, and your personal preferences.

Just in case anyone wasn't aware, the pricing model was designed around what one might call "ultimate utility" (instead of current utility) - i.e. it rates things according to how useful they are for an endgame character with endgame kit. This is why, for example, regen is rated the same as +1 WIS, and why base4 resists are much cheaper than high resists despite being much more important. It might seem obvious that that's wrong for much of the game, but it is at least consistent with the rest of the modelling.

The assumption of 5 blows is another example of problems caused by the endgame assumption. I'm hoping that the new v4 combat system will allow me to design a way around it, but it might not.

So since we are again discussing pricing (and this is the first such detailed thread for several months), I'm very interested in whether people think either:

- we should choose some other benchmark than "endgame kit" for setting the values of different attributes, or

- if there is a way of calculating the value of more stuff empirically. Just as we currently calculate the value of damage-altering attributes by the amount of additional damage they offer against the range of monsters in monster.txt (leaving aside the fundamental issues with blows, the values of slays relative to each other are empirical), I have long aspired to calculate the values of resists in the same way (using the power of monsters whose attack it resists). What about regen or telepathy or stats or anything else? Can anyone suggest ways to calculate their value without arbitrary constants?

[Estie]

The pricing for endgame kit is pretty accurate, but as Derakon has stated, once you are at that point prices dont matter anymore. While I think variable prices that change with character properties are generally a bad idea (think nethack: Adinohopos outrageous prices for food when you are hungry), the only idea I have would be to have 2 kinds of shopkeepers: those who evaluate according to early game needs, and those who do according to late game (as its now). When the game starts, its all early game type and they gradually change towards endgame type as the game progresses.

Weird prices however arent a big concern, its when pricing is used for other evaluations like level feelings that it can become one. I like the fact that evaluation of properties changes as the game progresses; I am rather afraid that the new combat system might streamline those bumps away. Maybe thats just me though.

Evaluation of weapons:

Currently, early game everyone wants str and dagger, lategame all stats are the same and everyone wants MoD.

This should become: early game hobbits want dex and dagger, trolls want str and lance; as for lategame, there was dispute. Derakons combat revamp goes in this direction and we will see how it turns out.

Evaluation of armour:

AC from armour comes with 2 penalties: weight which results in negative speed and mana reduction (ignoring the minor to hit malus).

The problem is that both penalties are very severe early game and a trifle lategame. Speed from 0 -> -2 is bad, speed from 35 -> 33 not so much. Mana from 30 -> 15 is bad, mana from 250 -> 235 not so much.

This means that early game, the robe is the best armour type, while lategame its the one with highest AC.

Is this situation good or bad ? Some consequences are:

- lategame, everyone wants the same stuff; Isildur drops, it gets equipped by mage or warrior.
- early game, noone wants the rare out of depth heavy armour junk (unless to sell it....)
- not even warriors who suffer from only 1 of the 2 penalties; I find that the extra weight allowance from high str is much better used by carrying more staves of id and potions of ccw than by getting a bit of AC.
- lategame, you cannot give the melee guy more protection than the ranged guy. Melee is intrinsically more hurting than ranged, but the only way to give some advantage to balance melee is to increase the damage compared to ranged.

[Magnate]

The pricing for endgame kit is pretty accurate, but as Derakon has stated, once you are at that point prices dont matter anymore. While I think variable prices that change with character properties are generally a bad idea (think nethack: Adinohopos outrageous prices for food when you are hungry), the only idea I have would be to have 2 kinds of shopkeepers: those who evaluate according to early game needs, and those who do according to late game (as its now). When the game starts, its all early game type and they gradually change towards endgame type as the game progresses.

Weird prices however arent a big concern, its when pricing is used for other evaluations like level feelings that it can become one. I like the fact that evaluation of properties changes as the game progresses; I am rather afraid that the new combat system might streamline those bumps away. Maybe thats just me though.

Well, the adaptation of the power rating system to the new combat system is quite specific to v4 and unlikely to affect V for quite a while, so let's put that to one side (since my main objective in this discussion is to see if there are immediate improvements to ratings in V). I quite like your idea of two different kinds of shopkeepers, but as you say, this isn't really about prices, it's about the algorithm that lies underneath them, which is used for level feelings and randarts as well. For randarts it's appropriate that endgame ratings are used (that's why the algorithm is biased that way in the first place). For level feelings, how about simply using a depth slider? So for example, instead of assuming 5 blows when rating a weapon, why don't we assume 1 + depth / 20 blows, capped at 5? Then we can actually do a useful adjustment based on weight (something like assume +0.5 blows at each of 9lb, 6lb and 3lb, capped at 5). Not using actual stats, but an approximation so that light weapons are rated more realistically compared with heavy weapons during the early portion of the game.

This would mean that weapons got more expensive as you got deeper, but that doesn't seem like a terrible price to pay to fix the basic problem.

- lategame, everyone wants the same stuff; Isildur drops, it gets equipped by mage or warrior.

This is a fundamental issue with V combat and won't be changed for quite a while. Once we implement player evasion/absorption in v4 this might be different.

- early game, noone wants the rare out of depth heavy armour junk (unless to sell it....)
- not even warriors who suffer from only 1 of the 2 penalties; I find that the extra weight allowance from high str is much better used by carrying more staves of id and potions of ccw than by getting a bit of AC.

Is this still true, even though heavy armours are now twice as good as they were, relative to light armour? This was changed in 3.1.2 and there were quite a few positive comments (as well as the inevitable detractors). I remember seeing dumps with people wearing heavy plate for the AC, even if it cost them some mana etc.

- lategame, you cannot give the melee guy more protection than the ranged guy. Melee is intrinsically more hurting than ranged, but the only way to give some advantage to balance melee is to increase the damage compared to ranged.

Sorry, I don't understand this one. Is it related to armour weight, or something else?

[Estie]

For an evaluation of early game weapons, the big spikes are the very light weapons: dagger, MG, whip, rapier, perhaps trident. Cutlass is already too heavy for many blows. Simply adding a constant amount for those would make a good approximation. So have the base dagger 1d4 cost whatever it costs now +1k; then modify for enchantments as usual.

Of course it'd look a bit silly, longsword (+0,+0): 100$, dagger (+0,+0): 1000$, but heh were pricing for usefulness. More elaborate systems that take weight into consideration and smoothen the gap between light and non-light can be constructed, but I dont think its necessary. Starting with cutlass, the decrease of blows gets compensated for by increase in dice, more or less.

Improving AC on heavy armours has not done much in making them more valuable. The thing is that the threat to life and wellbeing comes mostly from elemental attacks, not physical.
Ive said this before, imo the game lacks archers. Im not sure how hard/easy this would be to program, but I imagine giving some monsters like, say, the uruk a limited ranged attack (maybe 10 shots, after that he becomes melee orc) that requires to hit and does high damage; not 1-hit high, but 2-3 hit. The ai uses the ranged attack for as long as its available.
This would btw go a long way in making the game harder :P

Current physical ranged attacks are a) weak and b) alternated by phases where the monster tries to get CLOSER into melee range; if anything, it should try to keep its distance, but I am not suggesting to go that far.



The other thing is that speed penalty in the early game is really harsh. If the choice is to take on a speed 0 melee orc unique with 30 AC and speed 0 or 80 AC and speed -2, I am not sure what I would pick, maybe the 80 ac is a slight advantage maybe not, but in all non-melee situations, the higher speed wins. So id definitely not lug the mail and rather phase a bit more for the orc boss.

Here is an idea: you could give characters an armour allowance for weight.
So if they pick up a 40lb mail, their weight and speed takes that into account as before. If they, however, equip said mail, the speed calculation substracts a certain amount from that weight. This can be easily justified as it is easier to carry a platemail worn than it is in a backpack.

The exact amount can depend on class, str, con, whatever. It should probably show up on the character screen somewhere, alas.
Note that the "weight" entry doesnt change; only the speed entry might.


Protecting the melee guy:

What I mean is that if both warrior and mage use the same platemail, they are defensively both on the same level. So the advantageous ranged attack of the mage must be balanced by doing less damage than the warriors melee attacks.

In classic D&D, mages are not allowed to use plate and thus have low ac. They have to avoid melee or perish.

Physical vs elemental damage aside, imagine this:

Suppose that we'd give all metal armours immunity where light armours have resists. So a leather of res fire would correspond to a plate of imm fire; furthermore, this would be the only way to get immunities.

Now add a harsh mana penalty for metal armours, so mages with immunities cant cast spells. In this situation, you have a vulnerable mage who has to do alot of avoidance work and a sturdy warrior who can shrug off damage to get toe to toe. The warrior doesnt have to have the best damage; but you lose universal usefulness of items: if Isildur drops, the mage is disappointed.

Doing exactly this would not be a good idea; I just wanted to show one way of making variable defenses. Currently, in lategame only offense varies.