A common problem with multiplayer RPGs, to which dungeon crawls could also be susceptible if made for multiplayer, is item deflation. Basically, characters who grind through levels may find incredible equipment, and sell/give it to other players or to shops. This is intertwined with the classic problem of players interacting at different levels, but it's interesting to study on its own.
A shop of course can set any price the game deems fair; deflation is less common in shops unless a whole ton of valuable items are being bought and sold. Of course, the lack of deflation can also be a problem; obviously if someone is churning out tons of crafts while perfecting their skill, those crafts diminish in value. Fortunately, that kind of thing doesn't come up in a dungeon crawl.
It struck me the other day while responding to a developer forum post that one answer to the deflation problem is upkeep. Equipment will tend to wear down or wear out, even get damaged or destroyed. Consequently, a player must maintain an income high enough to ensure they can keep their equipment in good repair. This follows along with the risk/reward theory in Dan's Nightsoil system, which says that risk must be involved in the course of gaining items, increasing stats, etc., to avoid mindless grinding. Roguelikes employ a similar concept: Wait around a depleted level long enough, and you'll starve.
So this is my idea for combating item deflation: Make repair skills inaccessible to players, or make the work require an amount of money/material proportional to what a shop would charge. As an item increases in quality (or in the case of Roguelikes, enchantment level), its durability should only be affected a little if at all, while the cost to repair it should go up exponentially.
This way, if you have a common town for your players to meet in, and +17 longswords are ridiculously easy to come by, those same swords would also tend to wear out at much the same rate as a lowly +0. A newbie empowered by a +17 sword would gain little in gold, and soon their sword would break or lose its edge. Unable to repair it themselves, their best option would be to sell it to the store, which would give them a price based on what it would cost to repair it. The shop however would have the option of disenchanting the sword enough to make it cheap to repair, so they'd automatically calculate their best possible profit for the sword, and buy it from the player for a fraction (say, 50%) of that. Soon the shop would be loaded with +3 swords, and more seasoned adventurers would snatch those up.
I picture the formulas being something like this:
(item cost) = (base cost) × 2enchantment
(repair cost) = (base repair cost) × (degree of damage) × 2.5enchantment
(shop profit) = (item cost) - (repair cost) - (disenchantment cost) × (levels removed)
Mathematically solving for the best profit is complex, but a shopkeeper can simply keep calculating with more and more levels shaved off the item until they reach a point where their profit won't go any higher.
ID:29893
 Apr 23 2007, 3:26 pm
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Apr 23 2007, 3:54 pm
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Drumersl
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I think the economy system of games is a factor that is too far overlooked. It may be hard to implement but I think it would be well worth it. I would love to see a game in where prices are not set but are determined by the market. This kind of happens in some games but it is not built into the system.
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The item itself would be stronger in power to reflect the cost of using it, right? Otherwise I wouldn't see much point in using anything other than the worst class of weaponry available to get by for the sake of simplicity. I don't know if it's a fair comparison, but in Runescape you'd lose all but the three most expensive items if you died. Because of that, I only used three pieces of equipment at a time over the paranoia of losing too much if I died in a freak accident, and I don't play games to feel nervous. :( Then again, (to use your example) if +17 longswords were that easy to come by in the first place then having an extraordinary repair fee might be a waste of time if you could just chuck it and find another one for free.
As far as "mindless grinding" goes, a grind is a grind is a grind. The more a player has to repeat any kind of action to get what he's after, the more mindless it becomes. Throw in all of the risk you want, but you'll just turn it into a risky mindless grind. Perhaps one way to slow the rate at which items build up could be lowering the frequency of combat in general? | |
Well, in any decent Roguelike, items are less frequently gained from combat than exploration, except in the case of a monster zapping wands at you and so forth.
My thinking is, the repair cost would give players a reason to stick with equipment that's more in their league. Anything too far out of their league might be a boon but it would be impossible for them to adequately fix. | |
I can understand that. Equipment durability and upgrading/repairs is already done in Final Fantasy Online as a money sink to prevent people from being obscenely rich over time. I just think that it would be a shame that, in an attempt to ward off an experience grind, that you introduce a money one instead. Using FFO as an example again, part of a character's progression is in the items he is able to use, but the cost of using them begins to outpace their usefulness. This ended up having some characters carry a huge load of backup equipment (slowing them down and making traveling a chore) or other players fighting dragons buck-naked in order to guarantee that some sort of profit is made.
Stronger items were eventually found, and there were definitely players that became strong enough to use them, but they would end up to be so much of a hassle that people have to race each other to treasure chests in the game just to break even; money grind. (Although it's being tuned for the next update to make things more reasonable) Edit: You know, I don't think this is the first time where I tried to speak about games in general before realizing you were specifically talking about roguelikes. Maybe they're inherently different to the point where most of what I say doesn't matter, but I hope that my viewpoint still helps in some way. | |
Well typically a Roguelike is single-player, but if you get into dungeon crawls of the Darke Dungeon sort, there's multi-player interaction. Any kind of decent hybrid between the two concepts, such as Diablo, would have this issue. FFO mostly doesn't apply here because it's an MMORPG, and the gameplay is different in a lot of ways.
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