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Re: The random store selection

Posted: Tue May 20, 2014 9:55 am
by renke_
yayswords wrote:The inventory is randomed at some point. How are you going to prevent reloading it?
Not at all - if one has fun with save scumming I'm the last to stop him/her. It's more about balancing and "psychological" factors: Rerolling to worship the RNG god is an built-in feature of the current release, and therefor not at all cheating (the player invests time, the RNG gives better items); but not everyone is willing to invest the time (I got bored after 1 minute, I would _never_ stand this 90 [ninety, wtf?!?] minutes).

I got my dirty hands on one of your saves and the equipment was impressive - but I don't want a SOTW build balanced to your item quality ;)

Re: The random store selection

Posted: Tue May 20, 2014 10:30 am
by yayswords
Which leads to the question, what item quality do you want it balanced around? The average you're going to get from the shop? Okay, and then you didn't get the average. You got better and the game became too easy. You got worse and the game became unbeatable. Even if you make it harder to reroll it, you won't be removing the chance that someone just gets a crappy/godly selection on their first visit, and that will totally not mix with the difficulty of the game.

Economy is part of the challenge of an RPG. It should naturally be a crucial part of nightmare mode. I should go to the shop and think, what will suit my characters? What do I need badly and what can I live without? Would it be possible for me to not buy anything just to save up gold for that really juicy sword, would I be able to manage until then?

Right now there's a pretty sizable risk I go to the shop and see nothing I want to spend gold on. And then what. Do I throw my gold at monsters?

If we're supposed to rely on shops for equipment, then fill them with proper equipment. Let me decide between several upgrades. Reduce the flagrantly idiotic range of quality of items that appear. I'm sure you think it adds flavor to sell gear worse than my own starting equipment, but when that junk is competing for store space with items I would actually want, it's not exactly enriching my game experience.

(BTW - more shops in Dingirra reads to me right now as the extra casinos I need to equip the extra characters)

Re: The random store selection

Posted: Tue May 20, 2014 10:49 am
by jack1974
Haha I find myself repeating a lot: right NOW, you control only 3 characters. Things become different when you have 6 (but even just 4-5 is already different). There can be more or less "lucky" randomized equipment, but once you have 5+ shops to browse things will be different.
The rollback will be disabled in the final game anyway :mrgreen: You can still reload the game of course, but I can't prevent that :lol:

And how I could let you decide between different equipment? I do what Diablo 3 does, randomized items based on tiers. I think it should work :)

Re: The random store selection

Posted: Tue May 20, 2014 10:53 am
by renke_
[a reply to yayswords, jack broke the thread :)]
those are good questions, and I don't see an obvious solution.

food for thought, maybe useful as a starting point: what about a mechanism the enforces at least one green item per category per character (if the shop permits it, the forge will never be able to fulfill the weapon needs of a druid, same for Shagala and fighter armour).

Re: The random store selection

Posted: Tue May 20, 2014 10:54 am
by jack1974
And one last thing, the quests are those who will give the best equipment and let you decide your reward.
Shops now are made in a way that if I define base quality as Standard, there can be 10% chances that 1 item is of Fine quality (the next step) and so on. So if I define a shop of Fine quality, all the items there will be Fine with a few Masterwork. In the first act I've intentionally put low-quality shops. If I define just ONE shop in Dingirra with Fine quality and many items, that will offer plenty of variety to equip your team.
But as _renke said is not like your behavior is the "normal" expected one :lol: though I'm sure many people will reload, I want to make the game so that it can be won WITHOUT the need to do it. I got saves from renke and fabulaparva for Nightmare and AFAIK they didn't use that trick, so it's OK from my point of view.

Re: The random store selection

Posted: Tue May 20, 2014 10:56 am
by jack1974
renke_ wrote: food for thought, maybe useful as a starting point: what about a mechanism the enforces at least one green item per category per character (if the shop permits it, the forge will never be able to fulfill the weapon needs of a druid, same for Shagala and fighter armour).
I could try to do that but what would be the criteria? A druid can find useful a good staff, or good piece of armor/jewelry. I want you to wait the next act and then tell me if there's scarcity of good items to buy :wink: in that case I'll fix it.

Re: The random store selection

Posted: Tue May 20, 2014 11:06 am
by yayswords
You can let me decide between equipment by putting more upgrades in the store than I can afford to buy. Right now I have gold but crappy equipment so I reroll until there's less crappy equipment.
And one last thing, the quests are those who will give the best equipment and let you decide your reward.
I sure hope so. But there's a lot of equipment slots to fill... (Anima, I'm playing into your hands here)
I got saves from renke and fabulaparva for Nightmare and AFAIK they didn't use that trick, so it's OK from my point of view.
You designed nightmare because people complained Loren hard wasn't hard enough. What are you doing here, exactly?

(I don't want the "trick" to be required or not required, possible or not possible, I want it to have less impact)
what about a mechanism the enforces at least one green item per category per character
It's a start, sure. Don't see it being enough, but it's a start.

I could sum up my wishes really easily though. Let's say right now the store randomizes a selection of items with a quality range of 1 to 10, allowing the possibility of everything between absolute trash and a practical Hawk Blade. What if instead the range was 6 to 8?

Re: The random store selection

Posted: Tue May 20, 2014 11:10 am
by renke_
jack1974 wrote:I got saves from renke and fabulaparva for Nightmare
full disclosure: all my saves were with wimp (=normal) difficulty ;)
jack1974 wrote:I could try to do that but what would be the criteria?
I meant the normal comparison logic - I proposed this mostly as it is disappointing to visit a shop after restocking and not a single item is worth a look.

Re: The random store selection

Posted: Tue May 20, 2014 11:44 am
by yayswords
I get that this is just the first act though and it's shorter than the others and not worth a ton of emphasis, but I will argue night and day that relying on shops for items will not be okay just because you add more shops without changing anything about them. As long as shops are casinos, more shops just means more casinos.

Re: The random store selection

Posted: Tue May 20, 2014 12:21 pm
by jack1974
yayswords wrote: I could sum up my wishes really easily though. Let's say right now the store randomizes a selection of items with a quality range of 1 to 10, allowing the possibility of everything between absolute trash and a practical Hawk Blade. What if instead the range was 6 to 8?
Right now the store doesn't do that at all. If you found items too powerful, then is a bug :lol:
1) define "base quality" and level (but level is the same for all items, so this is just a generic value. Usually I pick a level that can be reached in the current act, or just pick the party level so I'm sure items can be used)
2) randomize, and there are few chances of a +1 quality item
3) now is hard because is the first act. As I said already, in next act I'll have most shop selling Fine items so there won't even be the problem.

the code is:

Code: Select all

                        if pQuality=="Rusty":
                            pQuality2=NonUniformRandom([("Rusty",10),("Standard",5),("Fine",1)]).pick()
                        elif pQuality=="Standard":
                            pQuality2=NonUniformRandom([("Rusty",5),("Standard",10),("Fine",2)]).pick()
                        if pQuality=="Fine":
                            pQuality2=NonUniformRandom([("Rusty",2),("Standard",5),("Fine",10),("Quality",5)]).pick()
                        if pQuality=="Quality":
                            pQuality2=NonUniformRandom([("Rusty",1),("Standard",3),("Fine",5),("Quality",10),("Excellent",5)]).pick()
                        if pQuality=="Excellent":
                            pQuality2=NonUniformRandom([("Standard",1),("Fine",3),("Quality",5),("Excellent",10),("Masterwork",5),("Rare",1)]).pick()
                        if pQuality=="Masterwork":
                            pQuality2=NonUniformRandom([("Fine",1),("Quality",3),("Excellent",5),("Masterwork",10),("Rare",5)]).pick()
                        if pQuality=="Rare":
                            pQuality2=NonUniformRandom([("Quality",1),("Excellent",3),("Masterwork",5),("Rare",10)]).pick()
pQuality is the store base quality, pQuality2 is each item quality (is a cycle that picks several items). So for Standard you'll get most time Standard items, 50% less time Rusty items and 2/10 Fine. I could remove the lower quality perhaps, so that store will always have at least the "minimum quality". That I can do :)