Re: CF: Rampant volunteerism

[Anthony Thyssen <anthony@dragon.cit.gu.edu.au>]

Mark Wedel on  wrote...
| Scott Wedel wrote:
| > The trouble with shopkeepers giving no money for cursed items is then
| > shopkeeper has just identified the cursed items for the player.  So if
| > a player doesn't have detect curse then shopkeeper has significantly
| > helped the player.
| 
|  I see that as no worse than it is now.  Right now, a player can actually sell
| cursed items for money, and the shopkeeper will still identify them.
| 
|  In most cases I can think about, knowing what the cursed item is isn't really
| going to do any good - at that point, it definately is not worth anything, and
| at current time, I don't believe there are any cursed items that are really
| useful.
| 
And this is the problem with the current system. The shop pays for stuff
it shouldn't.

| 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.

Simularly a shop may NOT auto identify items on its floor, wanting more
for a cursed item than it is really worth.  Of course if the shop
re-sheilving is put in place this put on the shielf should then be
identified, and cursed item may be just removed (sent out for melting
down and recasting?) instead of shielved.

|  the above is also a problem with the supply and demand model.  If value the
| player gets paid varies depending on the reputation of the player in that shop
| and how much of an item that shop has, then on field value costs are difficult
| or not very accurate - if sold to the shop in navar city, maybe it is x, while
| the shop in scorn is 5x.
| 
I wouldn't have it go that far. Even if price drops linearly by only 1%
foreach item with a minimum boundary of say 20% base, then you still can
sell a lot of items before price gets too low.

Of course for somethings a lower price limit should probably vary with
item type.   Gold should never recude in price (gold is still worth its
own weight is gold :-)  Metal items may reduce to say 80% of its base
price (1000 daggers can be melted down and sold as raw metal). Wood may
have a lower limit of 50%. But flesh with its `limited shielf life',
stinky nature, special storage requirements etc, may have a lower limit
of 20% base price.

Summery of one posible scheme
 * price reduces by 1% or even less for each item already in shop
 * a lower limit for this reducion is done based on the elements that
   go to make up the item...
        + gold/silver 100%   (never reduces, unless a curse reduces base price)
        + iron 80%    + wood 50%    + flesh 20%

Figures and scheme of course could be different but you get the idea.

Weather the count of items includes the items being sold is also an option.

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.


  Anthony Thyssen ( System Programmer )    http://www.sct.gu.edu.au/~anthony/
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