Money (and Charisma)

Dan <angband.TakeThisOut@cruelfood.com> writes:

> I think you could get many of the same benefits by changing the Black
> Market slightly instead of eliminating it. You could stock it at game
> creation with a fixed inventory of items that are useful but aren't
> available from other stores, like *Identify* scrolls, some potions of
> mana, and similar items.

[I've suggested before that *all* stores should stock either a fixed amount or
an infinite amount of each item, with no restocking.]

It might be useful to have =SI, =FA, =stat+3 for sale at high prices
so that an unlucky player can still get what is needed to dive.
Perhaps define what are essentials at 2000'.

I use multiple ?telSelf and/or ?telLevel purchased from the black market in
most games. I also buy -telOther whenever it is available, anywhere from 0 to
3 a game. Perhaps some of these should count as "deep essentials".
Conceivably the 5th spellbooks, but I am really unsure about those.
I guess ?*ID is essential as things are now.

I buy other things of course, but most are luxuries rather than essentials.
I'd most miss ?*destruction and !speed. Speaking of which, IMO !speed should
be available in the common stores *if* you can scum for it easily at 50'.


Eddie

Wow. I've got some things to say.

Games are collections of interesting choices.

I'm not quite sure what other 'more pressing issues' there are. Money, charisma,
and shops are currently are not implemented very well. This has some objective
merit because there are large amounts of money you are left with that has no
purpose, things getting cheaper while you get more money is at cross purposes,
and your choices are basically non-existent. No fun to be had. This issue has as
much weight as any broken system in the game. Since no examples of more
pressing issues are provided, they really can't be addressed.

I'd like to address 'people can play variants if they don't like vanilla'. The
maintainers job is not to just implement non-gameplay user-interface elements.
If this were the case the dungeon would never have been expanded to 100 levels,
monsters would not have been added, and we'd all still be playing Moria. If you
like the current version, or a past version - they aren't going anywhere. The
maintainers job is to mold the game to his vision.

> I'm seeing two opposite suggestions in this thread. One is to
> basically get rid of shops, by making monsters drop essentials like
> food, light sources, ammo, and spellbooks more frequently so you don't
> need them. The other approach seems to be to make shops more
> dependable, by adding shop services and making it easier to get rare
> items from them. Ultimately, I don't think that either approach makes
> the game more fun.

Now to the discussion. Here are the key issues.

What about the current situation is unsatisfactory?

What are the correct steps to repair and rebuild the current situation?

Our biggest problem (all IMHO) at this point is we have completely failed to
answer the first question. We all understand something *is* unsatisfactory, but
remain undecided as to what it is. Eddie says the problem is one of squelch and
identify (and by proxy, tmj), others say the problem is shops, some say the
problem is the stat charisma and others have different ideas about the problem.
I would be willing to wager that there is a different idea for every person
involved. To paraphrase someone more wise then I: Any idea how many of us have
to agree to get the situation to change?

One. Takkaria. (Andrew Sidwell)

Luckily he listens to us, so here's my take.

The problem is lack of interesting choice. Why do I have a eleventy bazillion
gold? Oh wait, I don't give a flying f@&$ because I can't do anything with it.

There are a lot of factors involved in this. The first is identifiable and
related to squelch, the 100 level dungeon, and item generation.

The long story short, dungeon used to be 50 levels. Items didn't stack on the
floor. Some monsters dropped dozens of items to compensate for the fact that
many would be destroyed. Then someone implemented a 100 level dungeon. Then
floor stacking. Hence too much junk.

I have *solved* the tmj problem in Steamband. Solved. dungeon is 50 levels,
monsters drop reasonable amounts of things, and all drops are interesting.

More on this in a minute.

> If you get rid of the shops, then you pretty much may as well get rid
> of the town completely, and you'll basically end up with a hack
> variant instead of Angband. I'm not going to debate the merits of the
> hack/nethack style of game, but Angband has always been fairly
> distinct from them. I like the Angband-style gameplay better.

I agree 100% with this statement (which is the same reason I don't like
wilderness variants ((excepting hengband))). Angband is about the cycle between
the dives and the town. There are other ways to play, but at it's core it's
about a dive, and then coming back to rest up and prepare for the next dive. It
is a large part of the games character and appeal. 'nuff said.

> I think that making more basic items drop from monsters will be a bad
> change in the way Angband plays. While the basic items are always
> available in the store, you have to leave the current dungeon level to
> go get them. If you're on a dungeon level with a checkerboard vault
> and your spellbooks get burnt, you have to decide whether to abandon
> the level or try to proceed without your books. It gives you
> interesting gameplay decisions to make as to how much backup equipment
> you carry.

Agreed.

Since it's about this cycle of up and down, it seems to me, what you should get
from the store are "Essentials". What this list consists of is entirely up for
debate. I think these "Essentials" should be always stocked in a set amount. I
have a difference of opinion of what should be included in this list - I would
never consider stocking potions of life in steam in the store. But hey, it's not
my call - except in steam.

I agree that items from monster drops is a viable idea, but IMHO isn't very
Angband like.

If the tmj problem is solved and dungeon drops are all 'interesting' and stores
are all filled with 'essentials' then the serve their purpose of providing
'essentials' rather well.

What is the purpose of stores now? I should also note that the above process
*doesn't* produce very interesting choices.

> I think making the shops considerably better has its own problems.
> Angband has replayability because you'll end up with different sets of
> items each time you play, which gives you interesting tradeoffs to
> make when selecting equipment. If you make it really easy to get that
> one item you need to fill a resistance hole through shop services or
> whatever, then the game gets a whole lot less interesting. Every game
> will play out like every other game, and there won't be any reason to
> keep playing.

I agree. If you always stock, say, Shield of Elvenkind, that's pretty -- well,
I"m sure you can figure out your own derogatory phrase.

However, if you have to *pay* the store to increase it's quality of stocked
items (at first the shop only carried CLW. Well, then you'd be interest in
paying it some money to stack some other necessary items like Restore stat
potions.) Then some interesting choice develops. Pay the Weapon smith for larger
weapons? (Oh, wait, that's just in steam where bigger force and dice can make a
heavy weapon better than a light branded one. . . ) Pay the Armor smith for
better armor available? Pay the magic store for better books? etc. Then you're
back to A) having something to do with extra money which you can balance by B)
having more advanced items not be available until later without having price
being the limiting factor.

> I do like the recent changes that have made certain staples like ammo
> and Word of Recall more prevalent in the stores. And a lot of the UI
> improvements are welcome. I'd like to see gameplay-neutral changes,
> like having items automatically inscribed with the monster and level
> they were dropped, than dramatically reworking aspects of the game
> that I think work fine.

This is nice, and since the codebase is totally open, you're free to copy and
compile any of the UI changes takk makes without implementing any of his
gameplay changes. But he's maintainer, and frankly I expect him to do that job -
not just futz around with the codebase for years without making any changes to
make the game more fun.

P.S. As an aside, I agree with Timo that having a 'web board' for disscussion
was a terrible terrible idea in many respects. But much like the process of
evolution, if the newsgroup doesn't survive (which I don't find likely) then the
newsgroup really wasn't viable enough to survive. (ipso facto)
--
-Campbell

- Join the steamband group by sending an email to
steamband-subscribe.TakeThisOut@Yahoogroups.com !
- Visit the Steamband web page, and follow the progress of Steam! (and view my
art!) http://angband.oook.cz/steamband/