Black market suggestion
lcc
my pocket. So I would like to special order items from the black
market. I have been thinking about this for several days and have
suggestions of an easy option to be implemented. When a player wants
to buy something he should be able to plunk down a nonrefundable $10k
fee to have a random excellent item generated just as though he had
gone down to his maximum level in the dungeon and had a new level
created. Use the existing code to generate something meeting the
specification of the player. For example, I searched a long time to
get something with poison resistance on it. If the new code were
available, i could have specified that I wanted a shield with poison
resistance.
Let the player custom build certain specifications into the artifact,
with the option of having more random characteristics added at extra
cost. When the artifact is generated, the player either buys it at
black market price or pays a ten percent of purchase price rejection
fee. To cover the rejection fee, the player gets an estimate of cost
from his specification and deposits the estimated rejection fee prior
to creating the artifact.
This will probably not be unbalancing, and will encourage players to
end the game sooner, because they will be able to fill holes in their
equipment without endless scavenging of the dungeon...
Lonnie Courtney Clay
Eddie Grove
> I have 1.5 million gold at 2.6+ million turns. It is burning a hole in
> my pocket.
Go buy every item from the black market, and it will restock with new stuff.
Repeat until you have what you want or you run out of money.
Andy Gullans
I still like Lonnie's idea, because it's much cheaper than buying out
the entire Black Market inventory. Perhaps it needs to be tweaked.
At the Black Market, you can commission the shopkeeper to put out some
feelers for something special. Lay down $10,000 or more and specify
an item type, and there will be a percentage chance every 1,000 turns
of such an item showing up. The chance should be equal to, say, X/
10,000%, where X equals the amount of money you put forward. For
example, if you put down a commission of $100,000 to find a Ring of
Poison Resistance, there will be a 10% every 1,000 turns of the item
showing up in the shop. Please note that these 1,000 turns must pass
while the player is in the dungeon, not on the town level.
eddie...@hotmail.com
> I still like Lonnie's idea, because it's much cheaper than buying out
> the entire Black Market inventory. Perhaps it needs to be tweaked.
There shouldn't even be a black market.
I wasn't really trying to help him get stuff.
Go get stuff in the dungeon like a real adventurer.
He said his problem was that his cash was buring a hole in his pocket.
Eliminating his excess gold is the problem I was attempting to help
him solve.
On a related note, my most recent coding endeavor was to implement
money squelching. Seriously.
Eddie
pete m
The scavenging isn't (or shouldn't be) endless. You just have to
begin ASAP--getting to dl 98 makes a huge difference in drop quality.
And yes, the suggestion is unbalancing. Ideally you shouldn't have to
buy anything in town; that the town exists and is useful just
demonstrates that the game isn't properly balanced.
There are known problems in 3.1.x object distribution. Trying to
patch them by turning angband into even more of a game of shopping is
a big step in the wrong direction.
lcc
Oh well, I guess the consensus is that my idea sucks. I am a software
engineer. So I could write my own variant of Angband, same as vanilla
except for the town... It would have options for more than 24
inventory slots and custom order shopping and services. I thought up
some acronyms :
1) Demand Angband Master's Newly Invented Town
2) Newly Invented Town Want It Tonight
3) Need Interesting Treasure Want it Tonight
Anybody else like to play with acronyms?
Lonnie Courtney Clay
The Wanderer
> And yes, the suggestion is unbalancing. Ideally you shouldn't have
> to buy anything in town; that the town exists and is useful just
> demonstrates that the game isn't properly balanced.
I agree on the first point, and disagree on the second.
You shouldn't *have to* buy anything in town - but you should have the
option, and the option should not be pointless. People who don't want to
do it don't have to, but people who do prefer the element it adds to the
game should not be barred from being able to do so.
To whatever extent town-shopping is not merely useful but *necessary*,
you may - not "do", but may - have a point. I'm far from certain that it
is truly necessary past a certain point in the game, though.
Furthermore, I think the question of whether the town is necessary (or,
indeed, even useful) depends heavily on what kind of luck the player
gets in the dungeon, most especially in the early stages - and it's not
remotely reasonable to expect even a well-balanced game to guarantee a
minimum level of good luck in the dungeon, whereas it's quite reasonable
to expect a consistent minimum from the town.
IMO, having a town with buying and selling (and, potentially, other
things) is in fact critical to the feel of the game. There's a long
tradition of that type of thing dating back to at least the original
Wizardry, and while it's certainly possible to have a good roguelike
which doesn't include one, that does IMO make it a different type of
game from one which does - and Angband is by now very firmly established
as being in the "does" category; attempting to remove it (or advocating
that removal) is attempting to change that, and that - again, IMO -
requires much stronger justification than anything I've seen presented
for it.
> There are known problems in 3.1.x object distribution. Trying to
> patch them by turning angband into even more of a game of shopping is
> a big step in the wrong direction.
I wouldn't necessarily disagree with this, but that doesn't mean that
changes and improvements on the "shopping" side of things shouldn't be
made (as this seems to be arguing); it just means that they shouldn't be
relied upon as the sole fix. (People who want to ignore the town and
play without shopping shouldn't be dismissed any more than people who
want to include shopping as part of the gameplay experience should.)
--
The Wanderer
Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.
Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
Eddie Grove
> Oh well, I guess the consensus is that my idea sucks. I am a software
> engineer. So I could write my own variant of Angband, same as vanilla
> except for the town... It would have options for more than 24
> inventory slots and custom order shopping and services.
It's not that your idea sucks. It makes perfect sense within a particular
viewpoint. The most openly opinionated of us have an opposing viewpoint.
That's all.
If you are interested in store services, either from a playing or coding
perspective, you should check out NPP.
Eddie
pete m
This sounds about right. I played NPP for a while, but then moved
back to V. The store services and attenuated breath damage make the
game too easy (and predictable), but removing them would make the game
just painfully hard.
Duncan
> Oh well, I guess the consensus is that my idea sucks.
Like Eddie says (sort of, if I can put a few words in his mouth), it's not
that it sucks, but that it would be a different game at that point.
A lot of what gives Angband its "Angband nature" is that you're not
guaranteed to get things in any fixed number of turns at any given depth.
Beyond that, you are quite unlikely to get certain things at some depths
unless you spend a lot of turns there. So you face a dilemma- go deeper
without what you would ideally want, or hang out for some indeterminate
amount of time. Either way it's exciting when you get what you were
waiting for.
If you allow people to buy items with arbitrary properties from the BM you
eliminate the importance of depth from the game. You can just turn
auto-scum on (OK, <3.1.x reference there, but the point ought to be the
same in 3.1.x) and harvest ego items from the floor at 500' until you have
enough cash to kit yourself out with the equivalent of PDSM and Feanor.
One of the major precepts of Angband gameplay is that resources are not
really fungible. Another is that Angband is supposed to be difficult to
win. Angband has been gradually moving away from these two precepts since
about JLE (well, actually, since Moria ;), I guess, but that's before my
time.)
You could make a variant that allowed custom orders, and make it a good
game. But you'd have to add some form of tension to it beyond "what am I
going to find here, and what risks am I going to have to take to find it."
That's really the basic Angband mechanic, and your proposal would remove
it.
pete m
What eddie and Duncan said. In any case, software engineers are
strongly encouraged to contribute to the game! There are any number
of areas that can be improved, most notoriously, the GUI, which is
still a fundamentally flawed 1980's design. The game as a whole, of
course, is a 1980s design essentially without flaw :)
Hint: the right-hand "stats panel" and the bottom row "state panel"
shouldn't be part of the same canvas as the map(!)
Hint: it really6 sucks for small devices (320x200 screens) and for
languages with double-width characters like Japanese.
If you want to work on game play, focus on life in the dungeon, not
the stores. (The stores should exist to provide a buffer against bad
luck, not to present opportunities for good luck.)
Additionally, genuine improvements to object distribution would be
wonderful. Note that for gameplay changes, the KISS principle remains
fundamental. (A genuine improvement is one which reduces grinding
without botching the balance)
Hint: minor tweaks to gameplay are less likely to prove influential
than are fundamental improvements to the UI.
lcc
worked on a variant of Hack for the Amiga. I will not attempt variants
of Angband until I have played it for a year. It would be presumptuous
and unwise to write code for a game until I was thoroughly familiar
with the existing game. Since I have been playing 60 hours per week
since the middle of May, I like what I see so far. I was just
grumbling because I prefer to custom order my treasures rather than
waiting for the RNG to roll me an artifact which I *might* find before
leaving a level.
Lonnie Courtney Clay
Magnate
If you are putting that much time into Angband, you should try varying your
play style to explore the game fully. Playing for 2.6M turns without winning
is not borg-speed, but it's not fast either. If you set yourself turncount
deadlines (e.g. get to 1000' by 100k turns, get to 3000' by 500k turns, get
to 4900' by 1M turns, or whatever), you will find that the game changes
dramatically. Finally you can ignore turncount altogether and play
semi-ironman: just take the first down stairs you see, unless there is a
visible item that you want before descending (or, rarely, an easy kill with
a good drop). This latter style is now how I play, after years of spending
1M turns at 1950' scumming for resist poison. I promise you it is an
entirely different game.
CC
Paul J Gans
>CC
There is yet another factor, experience. Newbies playing Angband for
the first time have no idea as to what they face. Every turn in the
maze brings something new. As a result they generally play slowly
and die often.
Folks with much experience are able to choose different styles,
speed, ironman, whatever.
But most players are in the middle and need to proceed at their
own pace.
It is precisely these things that make angband replayable and has
maintained its popularity over the years.
--
--- Paul J. Gans