Re: CF: Rampant volunteerism

[Mark Wedel <mwedel@scruznet.com>]

Anthony Thyssen wrote:

> | will pay for it (based on cursed, real value, and so on), then the player can
> | get a pretty decent idea of what the item is.  If standard default information
> | is given (which does not match the shop price), you then have a problem that a
> | player has no idea what he will get for the item when he sells it.
> |
> And is that bad? The player is always taking a risk with a un-identified
> items.  The shop may pay an ultra minimal price for items it knows is
> cursed, abd may not give the player full value if it knows it is worth a
> lot more but the player doesn't.  Life is tough and shop keepers may not
> be the best person to trust in getting value for money! Seller beware.

 I don't have a problem with players not getting much money if they don't
identify or otherwise properly deal with the item.

 What I do have a problem with is the player not knowing the fact until after he
has sold the item and it is too late.

 Currently, you know what you will get for selling an item by examining it in
your inventory.  If that value is no longer accurate, you now have no way of
knowing what you would get.

 There are ways around this.  A simple method would be for the shopkeeper to
tell the player what he will pay for that item he just dropped, but not actually
commit the sale until the player moves off that square (so he could easily not
take the offer or rescind something he accidentally dropped).

 
> A player drops 100 corpses, should he get full price if no corpses are
> in shop (maximum price for all 100), or the cost as if those corpses
> were already in shop (minimal), or should he sell the corpses one
> at a time to get maximum for the first then progressivally less money
> for each corpse.

 One problem here is to implement such a system in a reasonably efficient
manner.  Traversing all the shop objects would be pretty slow.

 You do a hash on item or achetype name.   But there is also likely be be
groupings that are difficult to deal with.  For example, food type objects are
likely to have limited demand based on the total food type objects in the shop,
and not based on the individual objects (for example, if a shop has 300 standard
foods, it is not that likely to be interested in boozes, even if there are just
a few in the shop).

 Furthermore, shop demand and price reduction probably needs to be based on
something a little larger than just the shop.  If we assume shop keepers are at
least a little aware, if they see someone wander into their neighbors shop
loaded down with misc weapons, and comes with just a few that the adventurer is
trying to pawn is his shop, he should probably know that the weapon market is
pretty saturated.  On the other hand, if shops specialize (only the weapon shop
will buy weapons), this may not be a problem.

 But I think the idea of diminishing returns for oversold items, and just how to
deal with some items needs further thought.  In some sense, this may be slightly
related to lore/identification, but on the other, those changes can be largely
independent to with how shops work.

David Andrew Michael Noelle wrote:
> 
>     Perhaps examining the item should take that into account and give
> different information depending on the environment.  Tell the player how
> much they think it is worth, and:
>  - If on a map where the character has a reputation, tell how much they
> think they would get for it _here_
>  - If in a shop, tell exactly how much that particular shop would buy it
> for, assuming it actually is what the player thinks it is.

 That could work OK.


>     I like that idea.  This could be implemented by showing a player exactly
> what an item is, without setting its "identified" flag, if the item's "lore"
> is less than or equal to the character's (intelligence stat + appropriate
> identification skill).  If the item's lore is only slightly higher, the
> character may perceive it as magical or cursed, but not be able to
> specifically identify it.  Otherwise, it would appear to be simply a generic
> object of that type.  The shopkeeper will most likely have a clearer idea of
> what it is.

 Display could probably be done with some new inventory icon that makes items
beyond the players lore high noticable.

>     Identification magic, from altars, scrolls, spells, and the like, could
> be assumed to make the true nature of the object obvious in some way.  A
> glyph of certification or something.  Once the spell has been cast, anyone
> who examines the item, including shopkeepers, knows exactly what it is with
> absolute certainty.  This is how the "identified" flag works now, and if it
> can only be set magically, it pretty much makes sense.

 Exactly why identify lets everyone in the world know what the item is has never
had a really good explanation (from a programming standpoint, doing it otherwise
would be very difficult).

 Note that you could totally remove the idea of identification from a
programming standpoint - when an item is identified, just reduce the lore to 0 -
thus, everyone knows what it is.

 At the same time, you could add some obscuring magic which raises the lore (for
players who don't want other players to know what they have)


>     Makes sense to me.  Without that magical identification mark, the
> shopkeeper can't be entirely sure of what he's buying, and will have to use
> identification magic himself before it can be resold.  How much less he'll
> pay should probably be a function of the item's lore.  The less sure he is
> of the item's nature, the less that shopkeeper would be willing to pay for
> it.

 Thats true.  The lore of the shopkeeper could be setable, so some shopkeepers
may be very good at knowing it is that they are buying, but may have higher
prices being a specialty shop or something.  I certainly would like to see a bit
more variation in shop flavor.


>     I agree.  The obvious place for describing whether you know what you're
> holding is the examination function, but there should be a way to easily
> pick the unusual items out of a pile.  Perhaps unidentified items with too
> high "lore" could be displayed as their archetype name and the word
> "(unknown)" or even just a "(?)"

 As said, the icons could be used. You could also add a inventory display switch
that shows 'high lore objects'.

 From a game standpoint, the player should probably need to either examine the
item (a nonzero time action), or use some skill (also non zero time) to know
what the item is, unless his lore is much above that of the item (for example, a
character with an incredibly high lore rating might be able to tell if a sword
is magical or not from some distance (no identification).  But that third level
character probably needs to spend at least some time examining the object before
he knows what it is .
-
[you can put yourself on the announcement list only or unsubscribe altogether
by sending an email stating your wishes to crossfire-request@ifi.uio.no]