No-sell

[eMeM]

Why this stupid recommended and highly advertised no-sell option is now a default choice? Am I the only one who doesn't like it?

Money is not that important in Angband. Don't need special option to stop carrying useless junk to town level if you doesn't want to. That's what I do when I get rich, by then I can throw away useless artifacts. Good and average items can be squelched from the start of the game. When I don't have gold I'm not forced to sell. I don't have to recall, I can stay in dungeon as long as I want to and find everything I need if for some reason I can't afford it for money. At least sometimes junk items get cool use when you can sell them. Warrior is happy to find deep spell book early, it will allow him to buy stat potions from black market. I think it's fun part of the game but I read in every other thread that's annoying.

Again Am I the only one to think that now you are taking down that fun part by default?

[kaypy]

No, which is why its an option.

But you seem to be in the minority, which is why the default is the other way.

[Timo Pietilä]

Why this stupid recommended and highly advertised no-sell option is now a default choice? Am I the only one who doesn't like it?

Probably not, but I think you are in minority. For on-off type setting it is better to go with majority than minority.

You can turn selling back on if you like, so that's not a big deal.

[Nomad]

I definitely prefer selling games. Some of the most fun situations I've got into have been when I see something cool in the shops early on and realise I can just afford to buy it if I sell almost everything else my character has. I don't really tend to lug junk back to the town just to sell, aside from the odd OOD spellbook; what I like are the tactical decisions involved in deciding whether to sell useful items that would ordinarily be worth keeping so I can buy something else I really want. No-selling removes that option of sacrificing good items to buy other things, so it makes the town game much less interesting for me.

No-selling as default seems pretty unintuitive to me, especially for new players, but it seems most people here prefer it that way.

[quarague]

I think a lot of people prefer no sell (me at least) because it tends to make the game easier. With no sell you get significantly higher gold drops in the dungeon, meaning you are just as wealthly as in a sell game but without the hassle to bring stuff back to town. It also greatly reduces variance in your wealth, in a sell game you might an OOD spell book and be rich early on but most often you don't, with no sell you are fairly well off every game.

[Derakon]

The option to sell items isn't going away anytime soon if ever. So don't worry that you're being discriminated against or anything; you'll still be able to play the way you want to. However, like Timo said, the default options should be the ones that most players use, and increasingly most players here at least seem to prefer to play with no-selling.

[scud]

the default options should be the ones that most players use

Do other randartists *really* prefer to use the same randarts, game after game? To me it seems almost perverse to choose Exciting New Artefacts, then choose to re-use those Exciting New Artefacts for subsequent games.

[eMeM]

I guess most players use it right now because it's advertised in every second thread as a panacea for bad playing to make up for inventory management mistakes. With this becoming default all new players will miss old cool flavour of Angband selling game. I liked ZAngbands big wilderness with thousands of shops. Buying and selling is fun for me.

I never liked idea behind no-selling - "I don't want to carry things back to town, just give me more money instead". Why reward a player who doesn't do anything? You don't want to do it so you should cope with less or no money at all. No-shops-at-all ironman option would me much more reasonable.

Many things in early game are not useful but at least have some value you can change for something useful. All those items are new kind of iron spikes. Much more junk.

[Philip]

Insulting people who don't agree with you won't help your position much. "With auto_haggle set to default all new players will miss old cool flavour of Moria/Angband selling game." Haggling was a pain, the novelty wears off after your first shopping trip, just like recalling after every level because you have more egos worth 15000+ each than pack slots after ditching all renewable items was boring. I liked selling half my home to buy speed boots, finding OOD spellbooks, the Black Market in general, but I was too much of a packrat.

The things that aren't useful in the early game happen to be worth carrying with no-selling. Wands of magic missle used to be selling stuff, now they're a primary or secondary ranged attack, confuse monster is used to keep enemies in the middle of the room while you take potshots at them, staff of sleep monsters is used to make a getaway from a group of orcs. These things might have more monetary value than uses, but they're not useless. I leave stuff on the ground, sure, but I pick up the potion of boldness as opposed to a third set of magical armor.

[DaviddesJ]

Why reward a player who doesn't do anything?

Because some instances of "anything" are just tedious. Anyone can go back to town every five minutes and sell whatever they found. It doesn't take skill and it's not fun. It just takes time to get to the same place you would be otherwise.

It's like requiring people to move one step at a time because they should be rewarded for tap-tap-tapping, instead of using the "run" command to shortcut that whole process.

I wouldn't make it the default, myself. I think the defaults should be based in part on the history of the game, not just on how many people prefer to play today (which is in part due to their history.) But it's a good option.

[AnonymousHero]

I guess most players use it right now because it's advertised in every second thread as a panacea for bad playing to make up for inventory management mistakes. With this becoming default all new players will miss old cool flavour of Angband selling game. I liked ZAngbands big wilderness with thousands of shops. Buying and selling is fun for me.

"Bad playing?". Lugging stuff back to town is boring. Before you say "then don't"... what, exactly, is the alternative? To play suboptimally? Screw that -- I'm not playing a suboptimal game!

I never liked idea behind no-selling - "I don't want to carry things back to town, just give me more money instead". Why reward a player who doesn't do anything? You don't want to do it so you should cope with less or no money at all. No-shops-at-all ironman option would me much more reasonable.

You don't seem to understand the point: There are players (including me) who will play the more boring optimal game rather than the more fun suboptimal game. (Through no fault our own, some of us really can't help it.)

Having the option lets me say permanently and before I even start to get suckered into optimal play that I don't want to lug stuff back to town.

Luckily the maintainers can understand that viewpoint even if you can't.

[eMeM]

I think it's time to insult because it went one step too far. It was an option, now it's default. I don't get any reasoning no-selling advocate here and in other threads.

What on earth forbids you from using same Wands and Scrolls etc. in selling game? Who forces you to hold another armor or weapon if you don't want to?

Suboptimal? You say optimal play is to recall every time I hit full inventory? Did I miss something? What's the goal of Angband? When did money become so important? The strenght of Angband is it allows more freedom than regular CRPGs. You have choices, you're not forced to do anything. You can stay forever on 50', you can sell staff, but you don't have to. All no-selling players can do everything in regular selling game without real problem. But new players will never know what selling is now that this is not default. They won't have a choice. Not all of them suffer from so-called "optimal" play problem.

If recalling to town was such a problem my main reason lately is to restock arrows and 40 max limit makes me do it much more than selling does. I never considered recalling to sell a problem, more like an award for a good job in the dungeon. For me funding more junk in dungeon is more boring than recalling to town. Tell me what's exciting about items you're not gonna wear or use? What so exciting about all iron spike clones?

I looked at few recent char dumps at ladder and some no-selling had more than 10 million coins. What a joke. More like unlimited money cheat. You don't want to carry to sell, you want all item slots for consumables than you should at least struggle with money but no way it's tweaked to give you more than selling char has.

My note to developers - IMO it should be more about adding staff than removing. This option is far from being vanilla.

[Derakon]

So we're going to have another pointless flamewar thread about options? So soon after the last one?

[DaviddesJ]

I think it's time to insult

On the internets, it's always time to insult. Especially when the stakes are so low.

[fizzix]

The beauty about open source projects, is that anyone that doesn't like how something works is free to change it themselves. It just takes some effort on their part. Insulting developers of an open source project is probably not the best idea if the goal is implementing your ideas.