inventory solution: a "pit" where items can be dumped to instantly sell

Discussion in 'Suggestions' started by SkyMuffin, Mar 30, 2012.

  1. SkyMuffin

    SkyMuffin Member

    posted this in another thread, but i wanted to make its own thread to see what people thought.

    What if the inventory just had one space dedicated as a "pit", where any items you put into it were automatically transported to and sold to Brax for money?
     
  2. banjo2E

    banjo2E Member

    There's a function like this in the Deathspank series with the money grinder. However, I'm not sure it'll work in this game, because having to walk to Brax manually (or, on occasion, find him) whenever you need to sell something is part of the difficulty.
     
  3. Loerwyn

    Loerwyn Member

    I had a similar suggestion in one of my topics, and basically I think an inventory sell = Brax money is pretty unbalanced. Any game I've seen with a feature like that has a penalty for it. In Torchlight when you use your pet to do it, you take a survivability/damage reduction (due to the loss of your pet) but also a reduction in the size of your inventory. Sacred 2, I believe, gave you less gold per item if you sold via your inventory.

    I, personally, support this kind of idea but I think it needs to be balanced in some way. The most obvious reduction that can be made is a proportional (to difficulty level) percentage reduction in the money you get. It could be that Easy = -25%, Medium = -50% & Hard = -75%, which then doesn't punish those just wanting to get through it too much, but still encourages those on harder difficulties to manage better or to trek back-and-forth to Brax.
     
  4. banjo2E

    banjo2E Member

    Oh, I don't know. -75% on top of Brax already buying things for less than 10% of what he sells them is pretty steep.
     
  5. Glazed

    Glazed Member

    I agree, it's way too steep. I've already had this discussion in the other thread. Walking where you've already been simply isn't dangerous. There doesn't need to be a steep penalty to encourage people on harder difficulty to walk back. Even a 20% decrease will make me walk back when I'm trying to save up for a specific item. Random monsters simply don't spawn that often, and aren't that dangerous when alone.
     
  6. Loerwyn

    Loerwyn Member

    It was an example, not gospel ;) Just throwing out possible examples of how it needs to be balanced to offset the convenience factor.

    For me, personally, it's not so much that it's dangerous going back, but in the later floors (particularly 10+) you often have to go up four or five floors to get to a Brax store, and it's just time wasting.
     
  7. Null

    Null Will Mod for Digglebucks

    Why not just give an amount of lutefisk based on the value of an item. I think that's the simplest solution so that one could skol rather than need this.
     
  8. banjo2E

    banjo2E Member

    It'd have to be, like one lutefisk for every, say, 200 zorkmids you'd get for selling to Brax, or the Lutefisk Cube would be useless.

    ...unless we're making this an upgrade to the cube...
     
  9. Null

    Null Will Mod for Digglebucks

    This is meant to be an upgrade. An item could be given a minimum of one lutefisk.
     
  10. Glazed

    Glazed Member

    Exactly. The point of the sell-from-inventory feature (or sell-to-vending-machine feature) is to reduce this tedium. If you impose a penalty, you aren't succeeding in the effort because it's still economically better to take the long walk.
     
  11. Loerwyn

    Loerwyn Member

    I disagree. If you impose a penalty, you're countering the convenience. If there's no difference in the Brax price and inventory price, you've effectively removed the need for selling things to Brax - leaving him as just somewhere to buy from. That I think needs to be avoided. If you add a penalty, be it mild or otherwise, Brax will remain the single best place to sell your items and I think *that* needs to stay true.
     
  12. Glazed

    Glazed Member

    You didn't actually disagree with anything I said. :)

    So you agree that the point of this change is to provide convenience and remove tedium, and the penalty is a counter to this change. This is pretty obvious, but at least we both agree on it.

    The other thing I was trying to say was that if the penalty is too high, then people will never use the new sell feature. I mistakenly said "a penalty". I should have said "too high of a penalty".

    How much is too high? I don't know. Obviously, if you only get one zorkmid per item that you sold no one would use the feature. If the sale value was 75% off, I would still think that no one would use it. 50%? 25%? At some point, if the penalty is low enough, people will use the feature. They will like the convenience more than the money they are losing.

    I'm pretty sure you don't disagree with that. It's just economics. We may disagree at what point the convenience becomes worth it, but I'm sure we agree that point exists. And I'm sure you also agree that if the penalty is too high (whatever "too high" is), then no one will ever sell an item except to Brax. If so, then what's the point of even adding the feature if we make the penalty too high? That's all I was saying.

    However, I'm still not convinced there needs to be a penalty at all.

    Why does that need to be avoided? In terms of game play, what do really gain by forcing people to walk backwards to sell to Brax? Is it fun? Is it challenging? Is it risky? Is it gratifying? Is it emotionally moving? Why do you think this game element needs to remain in the game?

    There are threads on this forum with titles along the lines of, "What good is money? We need something to do with it." If money is so pointless, and most people don't even buy things in stores, then why even penalize people in any way for selling an item? They just get more "useless" zorkmids. However, there are uses for money, but they aren't terribly common.

    There are only a couple times when I even buy things, myself. Very early when there is a piece of armor in a slot that I have empty I'll buy it. Usually pants, or a belt, or gloves. These items are usually very cheap and I have no difficulty buying them. The other time is when I see some "miracle" item in an early shop. In my current game there's a Self-Righteous Sword of White Lies on level 2 for 30,000 zorkmids. That's not unattainable. I just need to clear out a few levels. I should be able to buy it after level 5 or 6, and it will still be good. But if you take away even 25% of the sell value of my loot, then I'm just going to have to make tedious walks back to the nearest shop once in a while. I need every penny. It's not a big deal to sell everything I find. Walking back has no risk. I'm just going sigh, make the long walk, sell junk, then wander back down to where I was. I don't even need to carry the items I want to sell. I'll can pile them up on the floor then pick them back up as I go back up to the shop.

    What's the point of making me do that? Why does that need to remain part of the game?
     
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  13. Loerwyn

    Loerwyn Member

    The reason I talk about a penalty is simply for balance, i.e. you need to pay a price for the convenience of selling from your inventory. Just as you lose a turn for activating an ability/eating/drinking, there needs to be balance for selling items.

    Money is largely useless, but I can guarantee you that there will be members here who have been short of change for Brax because he's got a 27k Zorkmid item on level 3. Doable? Yes, but it requires running around, picking up everything that you can and selling it to him. You can easily spend 20+ minutes running around picking things up to take back to him. Today I was playing it, found a 19k item on level 1/2 and then on 2/3 I found a 27k item. I have them now, but it required some jiggling about. This was on the easiest difficulty. If I was on the hardest with NTTG, I think it's unlikely I would have made enough for one of them by the end of floor 3/4. Could be wrong, of course.

    You made a point about money largely being useless, but above I gave an example of it not being so (as did you). In terms of balance, one has to assume that the currency has value, that it's not useless. And it isn't; it has a use in-game. Whether or not you get to use it is another matter entirely.

    What I'm saying is this; If you don't add a mild punishment then it pushes people away from the core functionality of the store. Brax should always remain the best place to sell your goods, because that is what he's intended for. If there is a reduction in Zorkmids for selling from your inventory, then it serves to offset the convenience factor, but retains the balance, i.e. Brax remains the single best place in terms of Zorkmids-per-item.
     
  14. Glazed

    Glazed Member

    You keep saying this, but you aren't explaining why. Why does penalizing inventory sales create balance? Why is this particular balance important to the game? Not every convenience in the game needs to be offset by some penalty. If the convenience/penalty trade-off is not interesting then it doesn't make the game any better.

    I agree that money is not useless. Obviously, I like it a lot or I wouldn't be arguing for getting more of it. I just raised that point as an example, that money is not the be-all-end-all in this game. Getting it a tiny bit more easily isn't going to unbalance the game.

    Your argument amounts to "I like it the way it is." That's not very convincing. It's a valid opinion, but it's not a convincing argument.

    I was trying to discuss it from the perspective of game theory. What sort of interesting decisions do you force a player to make by giving them less money when not selling to Brax? What sort of interesting strategies does this trade-off add to the game? In what way is DoD a better game because we added selling to vending machines, but penalized the player for doing so?

    I think the answer to these questions are "None", "None", and "It's not". By penalizing the player all you are doing is preserving the tedium of walking to Brax when the player really needs the money. Because if they really need the money, they will walk back to Brax. You are only taking away the tedium for people that don't really need the money. What does that accomplish? Why even add the feature at that point?
     
  15. Kazeto

    Kazeto Member

    He did explain. It's here:
    Or, if you can't understand it the way he wrote it, I'll try explaining it a little more.

    From the very beginning, Brax was intended to be the one place where you can sell items. That alone is acceptable, and enforced some inventory management on the player; how much of it exactly, and on which side of the border between challenging and irritating it is, depends on what classes you took. But the point remains that you are supposed to go to Brax' shop to sell things, which is not that hard on the normal setting, with guaranteed 3 shops per level. Of course it's an entirely different matter if you are playing with the "no time to grind" option, but normally, you do not need to travel 4 or 5 floors to get to the shop. Moreover, with most players having the horadric lutefisk cube in most play-throughs (again, we're ignoring the "no time to grind" mode, because using it as the base would be a stupid mistake, as this mode is *not* meant to be balanced when it comes to RNG giving you things the were supposed to be guaranteed), we can assume that unless they are compulsive hoarders that will sell absolutely everything because of some unfathomable reason, over the half of standard loot they get from floor 3~4 and above they can skol without losing a noticeable amount of zorkmids.

    Your penalty is having to go to Brax. That means there has to be some sort of penalty for using an option that allows you not to have to go to him to sell your items. In this case it's pretty simple - you can either walk to the shop, losing time, or sell items on the spot for less and use the time you saved to get more items, which would help you generate the same amount of zorkmids over time.
    Bonuses don't appear out of thin air but rather require some kind of fee (unless you have Wild Magic, but that's a whole different thing), and in this case what you want is a bonus (the ability to sell things without going to Brax) without paying anything.

    Your idea can be summed as "time is money, so give me something to accelerate this and that" and thus "okay, but the accelerator will cost money to use because time is money" is a valid response.

    His argument is actually a little bit better than you think, but you just weren't able to notice that.


    And now my 2 cents. You're saying that the penalty of 25/50/75/whatever percent of zorkmids for being able to sell things on the spot is too high, and nobody would use it. But most players change things they would sell like that into lutefisk, which they don't even eat, and most (if not all) items they get from tithing lutefisk gets changed back into lutefisk. So effectively, the price penalty for skoling items (which you can do on the spot, just like you want to be able to sell items) is 100% of price, and yet it's not too much for most people. Thus, a penalty of 25/50/75% would not be too bad either.
     
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  16. Lorrelian

    Lorrelian Member

    What Kazeto said.

    Except I'd like to see NTTG come with a starting room that always has a Fisking box in it, as I've had several DL 1s with no Brax, and it's kind of annoying. And, as Kazeto points out, finding stuff like that is much harder on NTTG. That's something I've come to expect, and if hardcore crafting is something I plan on doing I usually use "normal" mode, but having the lutefisk option built in for us NTTG fans would be nice.

    I'd also like some kind of script that forces at least one shop to spawn per level, for much of the same reasons.

    But these are minor issues. Really, I fell the HLC is supposed to be our money pit. It just doesn't give you human money, it gives you lye-soaked, stinky god money. And really, what's wrong with that?
     
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  17. Glazed

    Glazed Member

    Yes, that's the current state of the game. In fact, that's the only way to sell things. It's not that you're supposed to, you simply must. This topic came up because people desire an alternative way to sell things. Althea added that this could be possible, but there must be a penalty, a percentage off the price. I understood Althea's responses perfectly. I simply challenged Althea to explain why there must be a penalty. Your response simply restates the same assertion without offering any argument in support of the assertion.

    You are using the same assertion as Althea, but you also aren't saying why. Why does there "have to be" some sort of penalty? Why can't the game be changed to remove the penalty completely? Just because a certain level of tedium exists in the current game, it doesn't mean that that level of tedium necessarily needs to be maintained in the game. Or if it's removed, that you need to be punished in some other way to compensate. It is possible for minor core elements of the game can be changed to make it less tedious without taking away the difficulty, or otherwise unbalancing the game.

    If the game was released at version 1.0.0 with the ability to sell items from inventory at 100% value I don't think you'd be here saying, "Selling from inventory is overpowered. There should be some sort of tedious walking process involved in order to sell loot." I don't think that thought would cross your mind. I think you are attached to the current game mechanics because you are used to them. I can understand that. It's perfectly natural to look at a game you love and think that every game mechanic is there for a reason, and they're all part of what makes it such a great game. However, that's not necessarily the case.

    I'm trying to get you and Althea to question this assumption. I love this game, but I don't the game is perfect in its current state. I think there are some changes that can be made to reduce the tedium without impacting the difficulty of spirit of the game. It's a bad premise to assume the game is perfectly balanced in its current state, and that any new player benefits need to be balanced with penalties. Bonuses most certainly can appear out of thin air if they are added to eliminate boring parts off the game.

    I don't think that's a good summary of what I'm saying. I'm saying that walking around a lot instead of fighting monsters and exploring is boring. And I'd rather just get on with game, the fun parts of the game, finish it, and start a new character. I don't understand how you can support a game mechanic that just wastes time without adding to the fun or difficulty, and that I need to be punished in some other way if the developers decide to remove this boring bit. :confused:

    There was no argument. Just an assertion.

    I was talking about times when you need the money. If you need money you will not be turning all your salable items into lutefisk. Maybe just the cheap ones. At any rate, the economics of creating lutefisk is an entirely different discussion that I don't want to get into in this thread.
     
  18. Glazed

    Glazed Member

    I agree. I forgot to add in my post that I do play NTTG a lot. It's very common not to have any shops on a floor, or multiple floors. I don't think NTTG deserves to be completely ignored when considering game features. However, even when not playing NTTG, walking back and forth between shops all the time is still just as tedious when you are trying to save up money for an item. My argument applies to both modes.
     
  19. SkyMuffin

    SkyMuffin Member

    Personally, I really don't like it when games insert artificial limitations or difficulty...especially if that difficulty does not add much in terms of challenge or actual change to the gameplay.

    An example of this "artificial difficulty"-- Diablo II adding arbitrary elemental immunities to monsters in Hell mode. This forced players to build their characters only in very specific ways (literally only 2 or 3 ways about it for each character), otherwise they would not survive later on. Furthermore, it forced the player to grind for items just so they don't get slaughtered for no reason at all.

    Another example -- Town portal scrolls. Useless inventory management crap, plus death due to lag when you're trying to escape into a portal. Or "durability" ratings that did nothing except provide a minor challenge for the first 2 hours of the game.

    I don't want to play games that create artificial difficulty like this, because that "difficulty" ultimately translates to tedium, plain and simple. There is nothing fun about your weapon breaking in the middle of a battle. There is nothing fun about monsters that are suddenly totally invincible versus all of your attacks (not saying elemental damage is bad in DoD, but definitely if it's to the extreme that Diablo II did it). And there is nothing fun about endlessly shuffling around items and running back and forth to Brax.

    As Dungeons of Dredmor grows, and especially as the modding community grows, this item problem is only going to get worse. Players are going to find that they are artificially shut out of certain skilltrees or combinations because they simply do not want to deal with the tedium of inventory management.

    What makes this even more of a problem is that some skill trees that are item-heavy (Fungal Arts and Alchemy, for example) synergize with each other. Even more so, a whole lot of the recipes in the game yield better results when you have maxed your skills in the craft. Right now, there are elements in DoD that run counter-intuitive to the idea of a simple, streamlined user experience by forcing you to have the best odds of success only if you are constantly running around with a full inventory (or managing said inventory). If this were not a roguelike with an element of permadeath, we might not care as much, but unfortunately, that is where we are, and right now the best option for success in the game is to grind and deal with the tedium.

    I am sure i'm not the only person who thinks that this inventory management is really not that fun at all-- it's simply boring and often times annoying...especially after 100-200 hours of Dredmor.
     
  20. Lorrelian

    Lorrelian Member

    While it's not a perfect fix, if you add Bergstrom's Interior Dredmorating to your game it will add several new stores of varying sizes, increasing the likelyhood of your finding a store on every level. I've noticed Brax free floor spawning much less with ID active.
     
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