Suggestion for a new price system for weapons.

[Warrior]

MAngband economy is very different from the economy in all other variants. This is mostly because you can buy equipment from other players if you have the money.
But how much should things cost?
The storekeepers rarely offer the "correct" price and few players value the same items exactly the same.

One example, my current weapon, a Blade of Chaos of Extra Attacks (6d5) (+16,+15) (+2 attacks) sells to the weapon shop for 17091.
Most would agree thats a pretty nice weapon. Lets see how it compares to another similar weapon:
a Katana of Extra Attacks (3d4) (+7,+7) (+2 Attacks) This one sells for 12798. The difference is 4293.
Considering also that the base price of a Blade of Chaos is 4000, ten times the base price of a Katana it becomes obvious that these two weapons, in the eyes of the storekeeper... well they're practically the same!

I have some suggestions on how to correctly calculate the selling price for most of the high end excellent weapons.

(I'd like to say that when I came up with this it was mostly meant to be a system for players to "quickly" determine how much a weapon should be sold for to another player. However it should definitely be coded into the game so that the storekeepers would offer the "real" value of the items. I am aware that this, at least for certain variables could require a lot of work).

So, here's one way, it's simplified a bit more than it should be if it was to be coded but I'll edit this post later with some more exact values if needed.

Holy Avengers and Defenders have a base price of 25k. They can also get up to an additional 75k for high AC and Stealth/stat bonuses.
For HA an extra 25k for +3/+4 AC and an extra 25k for 3/4 Wis.
For Defenders 25k extra for 5/6 AC. 50k for higher than 6. For stealth +3 or higher extra 25k

Westernesse and Extra Attack weapons have a base price of 50k.

Blessed weapons have a base price of 25k but can get an additional 200k depending on ability and wisdom bonus.
(most of this if they have ESP). I'll get back to this tomorrow.

For those weapons with plusses to hit/dam that adds up to less than 22 points each point has no extra value.
(this to avoid enchant to hit/dam being abused as a quick way to gain lots of money, 23-25 should probably be removed too).

Between 23 and 25 each point is worth 1000.      Example +13,+10=23*1000=23000
Between 26 and 30 each point is worth 2000.      Example +14,+13=27*2000=54000
Between 31 and 35 each point is worth 3000.      Example +16,+17=33*3000=99000
Between 36 and 40 each point is worth 4000.      Example +18,+19=37*4000=148000
Between 41 and 42 each point is worth 5000.      Example +20,+21=41*5000=205000
Between 43 and 44 each point is worth 6000.      Example +21,+22=43*6000=258000
45 points and over is worth 10000 each point.      Example +22,+25=47*10000=470000

Thats all for tonight but if I have the time I'll continue tomorrow.

[Berendol]

I made a program long ago that had a realistic pricing program - similar to what you're talking about - built in. The full source is included, and if you can stand to look at VB code, I suggest checking it out. I used the standard price figures from the economy at the time. There's a lot of real(virtual)-life figures built in, that people generally agreed on.

Here's the website: AMPFI

[Warrior]

I've been at your site a few times before but didn't download AMPFI until now, it's a nice program but as you say on the website the prices can be off by a LOT sometimes.
I suspect however that I'm doing something wrong.

I tried entering an identical blade of chaos as I did in the the example in the first post here and it suggests 21000 which is still quite far from the real value of it. Of course, with my system it'd be worth roughly 150000 which is still way too low IMO but it's getting better. Since weapons have much larger plusses to hit/dam the deeper they get it'd also make sense to balance this all the way through the game.

I know my style of playing might be too conservative for most but I don't think a level 22 character should be able to buy, and even less _expect_ to buy that incredible rapier that you just sold to the weapon shop.

But when the game puts such small prices on those items most players (besides those who play deep enough to find them) automatically think these weapons aren't all that special. But they are! They're beautiful weapons and it hurts my soul and my heart starts bleeding (getting carried away here) when I see perfect weapons or other objects being misjudged and underpriced every day!

[Domino]

Heh and that's why players used to get pissy when I wouldn't sell them balance dsm for 100k etc etc..

Most people realy have no idea how rare these things realy are since a few of us are good enough players to hit the bottom regularly.   Thus these things become fairly common in the stores.

When you've walked to the bottom solo with no support from another player.. well then you understand why we think this way.

I've always been a proponent of rare things being horribly expensive.  Sure guys like us generally have a nice hoard of great things but we also spend a LOT more hours playing than the general casual player.

There was a time when I wouldn't sell gear to people who died frequently for ANY price simply because the thought of some realy nice ultra rare, essentially unique piece of gear going poof because they sucked at playing realy cramped my ethics.

As for other things well, I start from black market value and go up simply cos I'll have that item in 3 weeks when a  new/broke player CAN afford it instead of it being gone in 30 seconds.

I'd rather leave something cool in the dungeon than let someone get it for shop prices.  It realy skews the difficulty of the game when a level 20 gets some piece of gear from 6350 for shop value and they come to expect that.

[Berendol]

I would be quite happy to see the rarity and manufacturer's suggested depth of an item factored into its price somehow.

Maybe the ego-item/artifact rarity multiplied by the item kind rarity would make a good value multiplier?

I think the other bonuses of the object should add value as well, such as resist fire, free falling, slow digestion, breathe nexus, etc.

My idea is to take the base price, add the base modifier price (ego/art has this), add the bonuses to the price, and multiply that sum by the sum of the base and modifier rarities.

For items with a modifier: (base price + modifier price + (sum of bonus prices)) * (base rarity + modifier rarity)

For items with no modifier: (base price + sum of bonus prices) * base rarity

I have noted that there aren't a lot of added values to item prices. And the ones that exist are sort-of unbalanced for multiplayer, like EA.

I have also noted that the ego items in MAngband don't have rarity numbers associated with them. So, we don't need to factor that in.

By my system as outlined above, your Blade of Chaos of Extra Attacks (6d5) (+16,+15) (+2 attacks) which has a rarity of 8 would be worth 168,800 if RES_CHAOS isn't worth anything and the EA ego bonus is assumed to have a rarity of 1. The Katana of Extra Attacks (3d4) (+7,+7) (+2 attacks) would be worth 126,400.

[Domino]

That's a decent start Berendol, though I'd probably value a BoC EA weapon like that at around a mil to start..

One of the things I think about too is that once you get something past +15 which is the highest bonus you can enchant by hand the value needs to have exponential growth .

[Warrior]

I think what _should_ be done is to go over all the objects in the game and put correct prices on them.
Time consuming but not all objects had to be changed.

However, as far as making a system for the game to be able to determine the "real" value of items, I've been spending quite a bit of time looking into this. I've tried with all kinds of combinations of the factors available (rarity/depth/base price) and I don't see any way to make a formula that works correctly for all items, armor, rings, food etc.

This is because if we use only rarity*depth it will price shallow objects to almost nothing and if we use base price*depth or base price*rarity certain things will come out as super expensive without really being extremely useful.

However, after long hours of testing I came up with one good suggestion.

Base price * depth  / 10.

(This means that objects with base depth <500 ft will be worth less than today and objects found >500 ft will be worth more than today).

It would result in the following:

Tulwar, 200 * 6 / 10  = 120.
Katana, 400 *18 / 10 = 720.
Two-Handed Sword, 775 * 30 / 10 = 2325.
Blade of Chaos, 4000 * 70 / 10 = 28000.

For excellent items you multiply this number with its rarity,

Weapon of Extra Attacks probability 1 in 30 = rarity 30.
Weapon of Slay Orc probability 1 in 10 = rarity 10.

Then divide by lowest rarity of that object type (for weapons this would be 10).

Finally add the price bonus for the ego type.

This means a a Blade of Chaos of Extra Attacks would sell to the shops for 28000 * 3 + 10000 = 94000.

A Katana of Extra Attacks would sell to the shops for 720 * 3 + 10000 = 12160.

Both examples assuming the weapons are +0,+0.

This means that the Katana of Extra Attacks would now be sold for approx. the same as always but the Blade of Chaos would be sold for 94000 plus the price bonus for the high enchants to hit/dam, 93000 (31x3000) and for a total of 187000.

So, (new) base price + multiplier for ego rarity + ego base price + my suggested price bonuses depending on the enchants to hit/dam/other from the first post in this thread.

I agree with what Angus said in an earlier post, the BM price is for the most part a fair place to start but with some objects like for example this BoC EA even the BM is way off.

If prices were calculated this way, low level characters will make less selling for example a sabre (250ft, 25$ instead of 50$ for a +0,+0) but if they find a bastard sword they'll make more (700ft, 490$ instead of 350$ for a +0,+0) The increased prices for the occasional ego item found <500 will make up for this.

Mid level people will make a bit more money and high level people will probably make about the same as always since most the items we bring up are worth more than the weapons would be anyway, it's all just a matter of balance and... well, bugfixing.

Well, unless I've missed something I think this is a very good system and it'd be nice to get some feedback on it.

[Berendol]

Well... your math is another way of getting there from here.

You're right about one thing, though: Prices on items need to be rebalanced for a multiplayer environment with a persistent multiplayer economy.

I suggest that we make high-level consumables available from a store, but make them expensive.

That solves the following two issues:
1. High level players don't like scumming for their heal pots. They complain about it a lot.
2. The money supply will explode hugely when we increase prices on deep and rare items so much that people will scum vaults for vendorable ego-items into the endgame, in essence making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Does anyone want to post in the item trading forum in a separate thread a canonical or otherwise list of reasonable prices (the price point at which they'd buy or sell)? I'd like to see something like:

POTIONS
* 5000 Handsome Goodness
* 10000 Burly Man Musculature
* 25000 Psychadelic Visions

That would help us devs a lot, not to mention your own trading enterprises. You don't have to actually have them, use them or keep them in stock, just say what they're worth to you.

[Warrior]

What are you saying? Is there something wrong with my math?
I'm no mathematician or economist and I'm not especially skilled or experienced with presenting suggestions like the one I made so I'm sure it's lacking in many respects.
However I think I understand and care more about mangband balance than 99.9% of all players who ever tried controlling the @.

The problem I tried to address is as follows:

How can you make a system that lets the game correctly price the rare and powerful items in the game.
How can this be solved without affecting the {average}, {good} or {excellent} finds for the majority of players. (Those playing < 5000 ft).

Based on my own calculations I think I found a way to solve that problem (for weapons at least).
But if you, the programmer, tells me that my suggestion won't work, for technical reasons or because it's too much work thats ok, I don't know much about programming.

I might have misunderstood your examples in your previous posts, but when you ended up pricing the EA katana at more than 120k I thought there must be a way to leave the "normal" excellent alone and only adjust those that are *really* rare.

Because if anything is going to unbalance the game, making "normal" excellent worth that much money would be it.

I'll make a post in the item trading forums about how some objects should be priced a little later.

[Berendol]

No, that's not what I meant at all - I'm just continuing the discussion. Computers are for math, after all, and MAngband shouldn't shy away from doing math. Your solution is another way of fixing the problem, and it seems to value items a little bit below what other people are talking about, that's all. So, it's another way of getting there - better or worse, I don't know.

I've had an epiphany and figured out that if we only use math, no matter how simple or complex, to adjust the prices, then we're kind of ignoring part of the problem. That is, the base prices are set incorrectly for a multiplayer economy. Once we can all agree on a reasonable set of prices, we can go from there.

No offense meant!

[Warrior]

Oh ok, I wasn't sure, thanks for clarifying  :)

Anyway, yeah, I definitely think that if we were to add a system to make the game better at pricing the exceptional objects like rare/deep item types with extreme plusses, it is better if the prices are too low than too high.

I haven't tried this formula with many objects other than weapons yet but here's one.

Lets use a Golden Crown of Telepathy as an example.

Golden Crown, base price 1000, base depth 45.
1000 * 45 / 10 = 4500, new base price.

Telepathy Rarity 1/14, Ego Base Price 50000.
Lowest Rarity for Helms 2/7

4500 * 14 = 63000 / 3.5 = 18000 + 50000 = 68000.

This is too low, I'm gonna look at obj-long.spo and obj-good.spo and come up with some more suggestions on new base prices.

[Berendol]

Look at the Angband 3.0.x ego-items files too, since they have rarity implemented.

[Fink]

Here's a problem that occured to me about some of the ideas above, that I can't quite figure out:

If the values of weapons were increased accross the board to better reflect their true player-ascribed value instead of their current wimpy store value, it would effectively equate to accross the board even inflation: the level 20 priest who finds a defender they arent allowed to use will sell it for 75k instead of 15k. The level 50 player who finds a really sweet westerness at the bottom will sell it for 125k instead of 25k (or whatever). The net effect of all this is that everyone will have more gold accross the board, so we will be in exactly the same boat now.

If the level 50 player tells a level 25 "sure, ill sell you this sweet weapon.... but its gonna reeeeeeealy cost you! hheehehe!" the level 25 player will say "np, i've got 1.2 million in my house from all the stuff Ive found thats now worth 75k instead of 15k" etc.

I guess what we really would like is for the store to sell stuff at the beefy, "proper" price, but buy it at a crappy existing price. In the end, we have a problem late-game of there being too much money floating around. Although, come to think of it, perhaps it really isnt a problem at all: by the time you are at the bottom, the equipment you need is rare enough that the only real option is to find it - having 20 million in your house in cash really doesnt help you. I remember my last mage - the character had a house not for cloaks, but just for kollas. I had awesome kollas - stacks and stacks and stacks of them. But they were all useless to me because I need even *rarer* stuff. You could have stolen all my money, and I wouldnt have cared all that much - I couldnt buy the stuff I needed (blade of chaos westerness or doomcaller): I could only dive for it.

So, I guess the point of my rambling here is to ask this: what *exactly* is the problem that we are trying to address with the ideas we are chatting about in this thread? Because if the result is that I get even more money earlier in the game, perhaps that would increase some of the economy problems we have instead of making them better.

[Warrior]

I dont' have time to read through all the posts here, most of them made by myself at a point where I had too much time, but I think it's not as simple as what you're saying, fink.

To use the example with the defender:

Their base price would be 25k and
" For Defenders 25k extra for 5/6 AC. 50k for higher than 6. For stealth +3 or higher extra 25k"

So a defender would, if perfect, sell for roughly 100k, (not counting the bonuses to hit/dam which would very rarely go above +25 points total wherever a low/medium level character would be lucky enough to find one).

And how often do you find a perfect defender? Not very often. Buut. I agree with you, it might be too risky to increase the prices for things thats possible to find for low/medium level characters.

But the main goal of my posts in this thread wasn't to increase the prices of normal "good" to "very good" excellents, I don't think a long sword defender +12,+10 [+5] (+2) should be worth a lot more than it is today. But a Blade of Chaos EA +16,+15 +2 definitely should.
As should a long sword defender +22,+25 [+10] (+3).

And this is the answer to your question.

Items from the bottom, in all their power and beauty, shouldn't sell for the same as items from 500ft, which they more or less do today. And the reason they shouldn't is because it's unbalancing.

I think my first post, with the increases in base price for EA/Defender/Westernesse/Blessed was a bit too much even though perfect weapons are hard to come by.

I agree with Domino on this:

I'd rather leave something cool in the dungeon than let someone get it for shop prices.  It realy skews the difficulty of the game when a level 20 gets some piece of gear from 6350 for shop value and they come to expect that.

I don't think balance will have to be a problem, if we change the way some objects are priced, as long as we don't rush into it (mangband isn't exactly full of rushing into anything these days).

[Fink]

You know, come to think of it, if we accept that people in the endgame just have too much money, and that's that, then perhaps it wouldnt really be a problem if the high-end versions of items sold for a beefier amount. Lower level players would still be selling their HA's and Defenders etc for the usual amount (ie, non-uber version of those weaps), but if they wanted to buy a sweet one from a high level player, they would then have to shell out the big bucks.

It wouldnt really matter to the highend player, because they already have grillions of AU sitting in their house.