Quick access to shops

[ffordesoon]

@tuluse:

If there's vendor trash, there's a problem, because it's tedium for the sake of it. The method I outlined is the best way to fix that problem, in my estimation.

If there's no vendor trash, and shops can be entered without any loading screens, there's no problem, and this thread ceases to be relevant.

I'm going on the assumption that there will be vendor trash, because marginal utility decreases as scarcity decreases. It's a fundamental problem of economics. Also, not every item will be useful to every player, and there will always be people who use the resources at their disposal effectively enough that they have a surplus. Why punish careful play with increased tedium? Who does that actually help?

And, you know, they have eighteen months to make this game. There are going to be some Band-Aid solutions to some problems, there are going to be at least a few bugs, and not everything will be balanced properly. That's the nature of the beast when you're making a sandbox RPG, particularly in this amount of time. Reducing tedium to a minimum will mitigate those factors substantially for a lot of people.

[tuluse]

@tuluse:

If there's vendor trash, there's a problem, because it's tedium for the sake of it. The method I outlined is the best way to fix that problem, in my estimation.

If there's no vendor trash, and shops can be entered without any loading screens, there's no problem, and this thread ceases to be relevant.

I'm going on the assumption that there will be vendor trash, because marginal utility decreases as scarcity decreases. It's a fundamental problem of economics. Also, not every item will be useful to every player, and there will always be people who use the resources at their disposal effectively enough that they have a surplus. Why punish careful play with increased tedium? Who does that actually help?

And, you know, they have eighteen months to make this game. There are going to be some Band-Aid solutions to some problems, there are going to be at least a few bugs, and not everything will be balanced properly. That's the nature of the beast when you're making a sandbox RPG, particularly in this amount of time. Reducing tedium to a minimum will mitigate those factors substantially for a lot of people.

It's only tedium if two other things are true.

1) You need to collect vendor trash to have enough money to upgrade at an appropriate rate

and

2) There is no danger or downside to traveling around. If there is then you have to make decisions about whether or not it is in your best interest to unload the vender trash or not.

[Joby]

This is actually a topic with incredible implications for game design and ties into the "old school" thread. I could go off for hours on my personal thoughts on this (and I say personal, not official), but since I need to do some work today and can't post my twelve part volume exploring this subject, let me see if I can condense it down a bit.

Current flaw in many RPGs: skills and inventory are evolutionary shadows of their ancestors with little thought now to their purpose and use.

Whoa... that statement is obese with depth and meaning. What I mean is back in the good old days of an RPG your party of four might come across three health potions in their adventures. You would need to choose who would die if things got tough. The scarcity of resources made you value them and manage them... and value the management of them. Remember the day when a single potion was a beacon of light and hope in a hopeless dungeon? When you would seriously sit and think if that short sword you just found was worth replacing your battered long sword... sure it did less damage but if your sword broke in combat you'd be dead! These were the days of old school RPGs and true inventory management... these were the days when skills and inventory were carefully considered and managed.

Now, fast forward to present day action RPGs... like Dungeon Siege and Diablo. Health and mana potions flowing from the corpses like the blood from their lifeless corpses. Piles of weapons and armor being vacuumed up like stellar gases near a black hole. You and your party storm across the landscape like a tornado in a trailer park, laying waste and devouring all in your mighty path. Weapons and equipment that mortals would be unable to hold or use by any form of modern Physics bejewel your god-like husk. You carry more upon you than any store offers to sell in any major city. You are a small government with your supplies, depleting all cash reserves of every merchant you come across as you demand he buys your supplies. For your god-like will to sweep across the countryside, managing inventory and selling your items is an insult. You have things to do. Can't this crap be handled automatically?!

Yeah... old school RPGs and modern RPGs are quite different in their use of inventory and skills. Modern RPGs are obese with glittery trinkets to make you feel bigger and better, yet leave you caring less about the god-like epic weapons of lore. Managing inventory is a shadow that still exists because... well... (in my best Douglas Adams character voice)... "It's a bypass... You've got to build bypasses!" It's an RPG... You've got to have inventory! But why do you need to manage pennies when the nations of the world throw their gross domestic product at you in volume?

You shouldn't need to measure the ocean with a teaspoon.

However, imagine a post-apocalyptic world where there no longer is an industry. No one makes anything new. The only things that remain are the things that haven't broken down, haven't yet been destroyed. Clean drinking water doesn't get pumped into every bathroom. Bullets aren't able to be purchased in volume at Walmart. Everyone scrambles for the table scraps from a meal that took place a couple decades ago... and there isn't much left.

Imagine a world where a sharp knife is more valuable than a pistol with hard to find ammo. Imagine a world where you have a desert to cross with 4 people but only have water for 3 of them. Imagine a world were you have to decide if your one party member who keeps stealing your morphine should just be shot or kept alive and allowed to pilfer the supplies because he's the only one who can purify enough water for travel.

Scarcity creates a whole new level of game play that makes you WANT to manage your inventory. These were the RPG systems of yesteryear... and why inventory and skill selection was important. Why have skill selection if you will end the game as a total bad ass who is perfect in everything? Why did you need to even think about learning skills? Why have inventory if you are always overflowing with equipment that you'll never use?

Quick access to shops aren't solutions to equipment management... they are merely a patch to a system that has become meaningless.

Think of a world where you WANT to manage inventory. That's a world where you shoot your party member and leave him in the desert because he fills his pockets with gold bars and slows your party down rather than carry a liter of water and stay light to travel through the desert faster. That's a world where you customize your gun to ensure the 7 bullets you have are used in the most efficient manner possible and enter most fights with a knife. That's a world where you tell your party members arguing over a corpse, "Axes don't need to reload." That's a world where you take a dump in your pants when a Scorpitron comes out from behind a building.

[undecaf]

**big post righ above**

Talking words I like to listen (read) -- and eventually experience first hand. More of this, please.

[b0rsuk]

This begs for a discussion about food&water.

Food has become meaningless in modern RPG games. True, in many old games food was largely meaningless (for example one of my favorites - Ultima III Exodus; it's only a meaningful expense in the early game). So players said "food is stupid ! Get rid of food !".

Instead of removing it, it could be fixed. No, not just by making it a time limit. Imagine if food/water is relatively easy to come by, but weighs quite a lot and is only available in limited number of places. Then food ceases to become a time limit or a travel tax. Instead, it becomes the radius you can travel from a safe place. You can only travel so far before you run out of food, actually you need to turn around when half of your food is gone. You could just continue and reload if you don't like the result, but I consider that cheating. It's much more interesting if there are ways to learn about an oasis or another source of food, so you can extend the reach of your travels.

Joby: an interesting read. Hopefully more people at the team think like you.

A common argument is: "This is a fantasy. I don't want to babysit my character in a fantasy. I want an epic adventure." Well, I don't know about you, but for me "awesomeness" represented as a ratio between achievement and challenge. Is "Quest for Fire" a shitty movie, just because it's about "cavemen" who protect their sacred fire ? Not at all. They live a nomadic life, move from place to place, they don't know how to make fire and the one they got was from a lightning or somesuch. Because something as trivial (to us) is as hard to get, it becomes much more valuable.

A traditional rite of passage (to prove your manhood) among Maasai people is to kill a lion. All by yourself. With a sharp stick, a spear. Would you say it's pathetic because a spear is a cheap and poor weapon ?

[tuluse]

This begs for a discussion about food&water.

Food has become meaningless in modern RPG games. True, in many old games food was largely meaningless (for example one of my favorites - Ultima III Exodus; it's only a meaningful expense in the early game). So players said "food is stupid ! Get rid of food !".

Well this really depends on what the themes of your game are.

For example in Baldur's Gate, there is no shortage of food or water. The next town is usually less than a day's travel away. There would be no point to making the player consider where his next meal comes from in this game.

Now Wasteland, which has survival elements, is a horse of a different color.

[b0rsuk]

Well this really depends on what the themes of your game are.

For example in Baldur's Gate, there is no shortage of food or water. The next town is usually less than a day's travel away. There would be no point to making the player consider where his next meal comes from in this game.

In Baldur's Gate, there's even no shortage of magic. It's a high fantasy setting and no one even raises an eyebrow when he sees a magic item. In Forgotten Realms magic items are seemingly more common than metal tools. Unless you mean gold - gold is extremely common yet supposedly the most valuable metal. A dagger is worth one gold coin...

[tuluse]

Well this really depends on what the themes of your game are.

For example in Baldur's Gate, there is no shortage of food or water. The next town is usually less than a day's travel away. There would be no point to making the player consider where his next meal comes from in this game.

In Baldur's Gate, there's even no shortage of magic. It's a high fantasy setting and no one even raises an eyebrow when he sees a magic item. In Forgotten Realms magic items are seemingly more common than metal tools. Unless you mean gold - gold is extremely common yet supposedly the most valuable metal. A dagger is worth one gold coin...

Well like I said it depends on themes. In Baldur's Gate it was supposed to represent how those with power took what they wanted from the common folk who didn't have a say in what happened. It was also supposed to represent how power scaled up in the universe. There were beings with more power than you could imagine, and they were able to get what they wanted. Hence why you couldn't just run back to Candlekeep.

So common items being near useless makes perfect sense.

Also, you assert that gold is common, do you mean on Earth or on the Sword Coast? Because I have yet to read a sourcebook that gives a geological survey and tells us how common gold is.

[paultakeda]

If you don't walk to the shop you may miss a random encounter, be it combat or a side quest or anything to do with interacting with the town the shop is in. For some games, maybe not a big deal. For WL2, I feel like it's a big deal.

Here, play this one. So minimalist and yet so true to the mechanic... no trash items and you can hit the "shops" instantly.

[ffordesoon]

I still agree with what I said earlier.

However, I'm a fan of Day Z and Dark Souls and Spelunky and NetHack. So I agree with Joby's post as well. And his solution is best: we should want to manage our inventory.

[Joby]

Hopefully more people at the team think like you.

I was I could retweet that and favorite it.

We are all very committed to making sure Wasteland 2 is the kind of experience that made Wasteland infamous and not just a modern game system thrown on an old property. We want you to FEEL as if you are playing Wasteland again.

[CaptainPatch]

That's a world where you tell your party members arguing over a corpse, "Axes don't need to reload."

From the movie "Zulu Dawn":
Corporal Storey: [to the soldier next to him, referring to the ammunition] Soft 'eaded buggers these. Flatten out against the bone. Smash 'em out.
Storey's mate: But bullets run out... and those bloody spears don 't.

[ForeshadowingPeanuts]

I'd rather see NPC merchant companions; you can trade with them on the spot, but since nothing is easy and simple, maybe they're a little more expensive? Maybe they replenish their stock and funds when you visit a settlement? Maybe they're useless in combat? Maybe they attract robbers to the party when travelling? Maybe they help the party when haggling with other traders? ...I'm out of maybes, but you get the gist of it.

This seems like an elegant solution. This, or some sort of base camp with pack animals you can set up where you can get rid of all of this horrible world-immersion vendor-trash that loud people dislike, but some people are quite fond of. I for one am a fan of being able to collect crafting components, food ingredients, random ammo bits and whatnot to store and save for a rainy day. Fallout 2 had a car with a big trunk, Dragon Age: Origins had a base camp with a vendor. There are easier and more creative solutions than sterilizing the game of "vendor trash". There have to be.

It's amusing to me when folks say you've never seen an action movie where the hero has to sell stacks of scrap metal for petty coinage while ignoring Mad Max and Waterworld Man selling trinkets for supplies in Barter Town and...er...Water World. Just because you don't prefer that level of immersion doesn't mean that other people don't.

[CaptainPatch]

In Baldur's Gate, there's even no shortage of magic. It's a high fantasy setting and no one even raises an eyebrow when he sees a magic item. In Forgotten Realms magic items are seemingly more common than metal tools.

An aspect that I have speculated upon over the years is that plentiful Magic retards any meaningful development of Science. The "tools" of Science are drawn from what is available, common and accessible. In a world where it is Magic that is common and accessible, things like Engineering and Architecture never properly develop. Why bother when a gifted wizard can simply shape walls umpteen feet high and umpteen feet thick by reciting the right phrases and funneling in an adequate amount of mana? Why develop gunpowder when a Magic Missile is so much more available via scrolls and spells? Why develop Medicine when clerics are as accessible as the corner Pharmacy is today?

Even worse, plentiful Magic depresses the advance of Civilization in favor of "sticking with what we already know, and already suits our needs"? Change is Bad, because it upsets the social equilibrium. Ergo, Democracy is never likely to develop because the Wealthy elite Powers That Be have more or less bought any serious practitioners that have come to their attention.

Now, in terms of post-Apocalyptia, substitute Advanced Tech for Advanced Magic. If the "key to success" is Advanced Science -- as it was with Wasteland with its Power Armor, energy weapons, robots, and cyborgs -- who is most likely to be The Powers That Be?

[Gizmo]

Well not quite. Merchants would set up were there is the most foot traffic because they sell more things then. There is a reason that most restaurants in most cities are downtown, even though the rent is one of the highest areas. So shops in convenient locations within a town make sense.

True when there is competition, but it's so often a weapons dealer, an armorer, an herbalist, and an alchemist; if your the only game in town, people come to you.

Likewise... In a Wasteland setting, if there is just some guy with a shack full of army surplus... people come to him ~wherever he sets up shop, no?

[Zombra]

Just read Joby's posts. Have never had more faith in inXile than I do now.

[ffordesoon]

Here, play this one. So minimalist and yet so true to the mechanic... no trash items and you can hit the "shops" instantly.

That game is fascinating. Also, profoundly depressing.

[Color Blotch]

There's no better way to put it than Joby does: why automate inconsequential and routine aspects of gameplay when you can actually make them matter (and thus not inconsequential and routine). And if you can't make them matter, why even have them in the game?

[tuluse]

Well not quite. Merchants would set up were there is the most foot traffic because they sell more things then. There is a reason that most restaurants in most cities are downtown, even though the rent is one of the highest areas. So shops in convenient locations within a town make sense.

True when there is competition, but it's so often a weapons dealer, an armorer, an herbalist, and an alchemist; if your the only game in town, people come to you.

Likewise... In a Wasteland setting, if there is just some guy with a shack full of army surplus... people come to him ~wherever he sets up shop, no?

Well, 1) if they know he's there, and 2) if that's the case than a town would actually rearrange itself so he was in a more convenient location. People wouldn't want troops marching through their front yards every time they need some ammo

[CaptainPatch]

Likewise... In a Wasteland setting, if there is just some guy with a shack full of army surplus... people come to him ~wherever he sets up shop, no?

Well, 1) if they know he's there, and 2) if that's the case than a town would actually rearrange itself so he was in a more convenient location. People wouldn't want troops marching through their front yards every time they need some ammo

Right. One of the usual aspects of City (or any size community) Government is that it zones the real estate within town limits, sooner or later. It's why nearly all major European cities in the Middle Ages had Market Squares and smaller communities formalized a Market Day which would set up in the central square/area of the community.

_Services_ such as eateries, transient lodgings, smithing, etc. would often set up in the local subdivison/district of larger communities to primarily service _that_ area. "Respectable", permanent businesses -- tailors, alchemists/pharmacists, etc. -- could set up a permanent shop (with the practitioner's residence) in any part of town that they could afford (usually somewhere in the vicinity of the center of town). Things like tanneries and blacksmiths were usually relegated to the fringe of the community because who wants to have a smelly tannery or noisy smith as a next door neighbor?

If the Wasteland communities are coalescing into something permanent and stable, I would expect them to develop much like the larger communities of the Middle Ages.