Do you have to sell everything on the floor?

One of the things i like about crawl, is that you can't sell items - so you dont have to pick up trash and clog up your inventory, not to mention the backtracking to the shop. Do you have to sell everything on the floor in this game?

 

I would dearly love it if selling were left out. Having played various *bands for many years, I was skeptical the first time I tried a no-selling Angband game, but now I'm never looking back. I enjoyed the game vastly more when I didn't have to spend a bunch of time staring at my inventory, trying to figure out what to drop and what to haul back.

As was mentioned in Soren Johnson's insightful game design journal entry "Water finds a crack," a great many players approach a game as a puzzle to which an optimal solution must be found. Optimal gameplay is not *optional* with these players; they play optimally or not at all. So when optimal gameplay is not the same as fun gameplay, there's a problem. It may be optimal to spend a bunch of time playing inventory management and commerce minigames, but I won't enjoy it, and I'll probably move on to a different game fairly quickly.

Get the player's attention out of their backpack and into the dungeon; leave selling out.

 

You don't have too, I don't believe it is required. If you don't want to sell the stuff I think you can just drop it.

 

I honestly cant play a roguelike that doesn't have a town with stores in it. I don't know what it is, but I feel the need to come up for air every once in a while, if you catch my drift. I also like seeing items change that are available to buy. It fits into the entire loot portion of roguelike games. Ring of speed YES

 

I like paying occasional visits to town, too, but I don't like having those visits come every time my inventory gets full of crap that I feel obligated to sell. It's perfectly reasonable to still have the player visit town and buy shiny new toys. I'm talking about cutting out the bit where we spend so much time worrying about selling stuff *to* the stores.

 

This would probably be a problem with loot distribution more than anything. Generally in other roguelike games, only the best of the best items that you really cant or dont want to use are used as store fodder, the rest is left on the dungeon floor to rot because their value is so insignificant that there is no point in taking up space.

Exceptions such as 'vault' rooms like in Angband and such, but those are generally so deep that you are beyond needing money at that point and you're just picking unique items off the floor left and right for specific resistances and such.

 

So are we saying that we don't want junk items or don't want to sell junk items? If the 'junk' items can be ground down to powders or used to make ingredients for crafting then I don't see the problem. If the actually selling is the issue, why not offer a reduced return way of remotely selling objects? You know, tame a diggle and have it run items to the store knowing it'll drop some items or eat some of your money.

If there is no selling, then why would there be buying? (Rhetorical) You could try tying store inventory selection to what items have been sold to the merchant to make it worthwhile selling junk items.

But honestly, I think it's more of a difference in style of play. Some people hoard every item they see to make petty cash, while others save their inventory space to make the big haul when they find it. I don't think anything needs to be changed in the game because of differences in style of play.

 

Oh yeah. There is also the survivalist type of players who only use items they pick up and never buy or sell items.

 

It becomes more then just a manner of style though when picking up everything and selling them becomes a major source of income. Then everyone regardless of their style is required to constantly grab everything and run back to the store or they suffer a major disadvantage. Many games have found that players are much happier when they take the extra gold that they would have gotten from those 40 extra trips back to town to sell junk and just make it drop in the dungeons instead.

 

If the amount of gold found on the floor (via quests or drops) is sufficient enough to purchase restorative items comfortably, then hoarding junk items and selling them is used to acquire gold to purchase equipment that is slightly above your current level. I wouldn't call this a major advantage.

It's a decision of the player to take the time to acquire this extra gold. They could also decide to just forge on and find that equipment anyway through the means you say you want: Keep adventuring, ignore the junk items, and find the good equipment through perseverance and good tactics.

To me, it is a matter of play style. Why make them change game mechanics on something you don't want to use when you possess the will power to just say no to junk hoarding?

And to whom are you comparing your game play? One player decides to sell every last piece of junk they see, purchase their slightly more powerful equipment (which their entitled to for their hard work at hoarding) and they enjoy their play time. Another player decides to forgo picking up and sorting through the junk items and moves onto the next area and finds slightly more powerful equipment there (which their entitled to for their use of combat tactics) and they enjoy their play time.

The only thing that seems unfair is that one person bought their item and another found it. The person who bought the item, might find that item within the next corridor and have wasted their whole play time hoarding gold. Then the unfairness swings the other way.

 

It all depends on the degree to which junk items make up the gold you find. There are plenty of games where 90% of the gold you find comes from selling junk you find lying around. In these games you have to pick up and sell junk regardless of your play style. If it's only 10% then that's another matter entirely.

But I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of players who pick up every item and sell them don't do it because they enjoy doing it. They do it because that is the optimal playstyle. This is especially true in roguelikes like DD where failure to play optimally generally leads to permadeath. It's a lot different then playing a game where you just reload if the next fight is too hard.

Anyway not necesarily saying that DD needs to remove item selling. Some item selling can be fine, and I don't know how much it has (though there does appear to be a whole lot of stuff on the ground).

 

So optimal game play isn't enjoyable? :-p I understand what you're saying, if the economy of the game were half find/ half salvage I would understand completely. But if the stuff on the ground had dual purposes: sell them for cash or grind (or other methods) them into crafting ingredients I think that would alleviate some of the aggravation maybe. But that would only give you equal amount of clicking without running back to the store.

The problem is: Running to the store to unload loot is a time honoured tradition in rouge-likes (at least in my experience) and removing that would require an equivalent measure to provide gold. Increased gold drop, a reduction in item drops, or a way to do sales across distance. All of which will need some balancing.

(Sarcasm - Don't be offended) I don't know how else to have it appeal to everyone unless we remove all items and have living weapons that grow with the character and have increased health regeneration. Makes me think of Darkstar One where they removed all ship selections and just gave you the one ship to upgrade as you advanced. -blurgh- A bit of a let down that one. (Sarcasm has ended)

Anyway. The removal of the selling feature would clog up your inventory just as much as hoarding junk items. Would we need chests or extra bags to hold items we couldn't sale? After dropping something for the next upgrade would they still be there if we go back? I guess it wouldn't matter cause we won't be going back up to old levels.

An adventurer leaving a long trail of discarded loot as he delves deeper into the dungeon, dropping his obsolete gear as he acquires new items. Need a monster that is an eco-terrorist if we go this route :-p "You polluted my dungeon for the last time!" *squish*

 

I actually have to disagree about running back to town to sell being a classic part of roguelikes. The majority of classic roguelikes either don't allow this or strongly de-emphasize it (with more modern roguelikes going out of their way to stop it). The only major roguelike where this was an important part of the game was the angband line. Maybe your thinking more of action RPGs like diablo, where the town runs to sell are more classic? But even Diablo 3 is trying to do away with this to some extent.

Anyway obviously you wouldn't need extra inventory space without selling because you'd just drop what you couldn't use.

On the flip side the biggest reason in my opinion to have some selling in a roguelike is the random nature of the loot. If your wizard finds an epic sword he can't use, it's nice to be able to make some use of it by turning it to gold (or turning it into crafting materials like you said). This is much less annoying then having to pick up 40 suits of rusty chainmail to lug back to town.

 

Finally, even the Angband community is coming around on the selling issue. Here's a good current thread on the subject.

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=4550

And, interestingly, I seem to have coined a useful term there: mandatory optimization players. These are the folks described in my earlier post that feel compelled to play in optimal ways, however tedious or abusive those ways may be. They seem to be quite common. To make them happy, game developers should follow a very simple rule:

Make optimal gameplay and fun gameplay one and the same.

 

I just went through that Angband thread, and I think the problem of selling items for some people is way way WAY beyond anything I've ever experienced. I mean, I've been playing Moria and Angband variants since the late 80s and I can't ever say selling was tedious. The only time I did selling runs was at the very beginning of the game to get stocked up on food, fire, and recalls. Beyond that, I only kept uniques and the more valuable weapons that had pricey effects/stats on them and I always had enough money to buy nearly anything I wanted. Hoarding and selling stuff was never required for me, so I'm not sure why those people in that Angband thread are going on like its horrible.

I guess I'm asking, why are people hoarding items and then complaining about having to sell them all the time when: 1. The game gives you enough rare items that are valuable enough in themselves to make you rich enough to buy everything without hoarding, and 2. Why not leave the items on the ground if you don't want to hoard them?

The same can be said about Diablo 2, Titan Quest, etc. There are billions of items, but you really never need the money from selling them. The really rare ones you find can be sold for incredible amounts and are typically more than enough to buy what ever it is you might want if something DID happen to show up in the store that you must have. The inventory problems with those games were based around all the goofy runes, which are fun, but they took up inventory slots which made them unfun.

 

Pips has restated my long winded posts very nicely. Thanks!

The problem I see is that in games like Angband and Diablo, you have to trot back to the town to unload your items. It appears that in Dredmor there is a shop on every floor (or in a set increment of floors, maybe?). Which means you won't be scouring a floor, traveling up however many floors to town to unload, then returning to finish picking up the remains and move to the next floor. Which means if you feel compelled to hoard items to make petty cash, then you can without losing too much time.

Mandatory Optimization Player (MOP) sounds like a disorder. Are these the people who spam hadoukens on Street Fighter because they can easily beat the opponent? Who exploit bugs in games to accrue large amounts of gold (which removes the incentive to finish quests)? Who creates the optimal character on MMOs which makes all other character-types unnecessary? They don't want to play a game, they pull the soul out of a game.

In rougelikes, action-rpgs, PnPrpgs, it is thematic to do town runs. Your character takes a breather. The difference between action-rpgs, PnPrpgs to rougelikes is that there are story elements involved that make the town run interesting to the player.

If you trade fun gameplay for (soul crushing) optimal gameplay, you might be sufferering from MOP.

 

Call it a disorder if you like. Wonder all you want about what horrifying brain malfunction results in such thinking. Whatever your feelings on the subject, the fact remains that a great many players approach games that way, and they've got money to spend.

Differences between fun gameplay and optimal gameplay crop up. Some people are capable of ignoring the conflict, some are not. Developers, however, should never ignore such conflicts. The job of a developer is to create a set of boundaries within which players get to explore and make decisions and overcome challenges in as fun a way as possible. When the boundaries funnel players into routes that are *not* fun, the developer should make adjustments.

Oh, and debates about roguelikes should never contain the word 'rouge.'

 

The problem here is the only people that are effected are doing it intentionally. They have an option of not hoarding, and they chose not to. Asking for the game to be altered over a choice is a bit demanding, don't you think? I don't have any problem with the way Angband seems to be doing it.. no_sell flag in the options somewhere problem solved.

 

Yeah in the end it's not that big of a deal in most games. It's a little annoying thing that you have to do, but you do it and you move on. In Angband you pretty much had to pick up everything that wasn't nailed down at low levels, but at high levels the constantly resetting dungeon levels encouraged you to only pick up valuable items. Diablo 2 was much more annoying in part because so much of your inventory was taken up by potions, runes, charms and gems that even if you only sold quality items you were still making constant trips back to sell. Diablo 3 appears to be taking a lot of effort to address this, both by reducing all the stuff that clutters your inventory and by encouraging you to break down items for crafting bits rather then selling them.

Anyway as I said, most roguelikes don't even feature towns so clearly town runs are not thematic to roguelikes. But I agree that sometimes in games it's nice to take a breather and buy some upgrades (though I don't necesarily think that selling junk is an important part of this).

 

lol Didn't even notice the rouge. 'Forgot my blush this morning, so I'm dabbing on the rogue in the powder room.' What a durp moment

I like that we're actually having a debate about this and not an argument. Much better then trying to figure out how to pronounce paladin. But the same result, people have their opinions. And the majority have the money, so I guess we'll just have to go with their views. We'll have to wait for an independent developer to make a game that appeals to the minority in gamers... Oh wait!!