Idea: Item Parts

[Tom]

Here is an idea that I'm bouncing around in my head to make the game less one-dimensional just about gold:


Every item consists of parts. For an axe that's a stick and a blade. For a sword it's a handle and a blade. For a ring it's gold or silver and some gem. For a scroll its parchment. For a potion its a flask and so on.
The cost of these items is included in the price of them when you buy them from wholesellers. But if you can provide the parts, you can get the items cheaper.

All of these items are also loot in dungeons. Parties bring them back to town and sell them on the market square. Shopkeepers can go to the market square and buy them, based on a reverse auction system. Meaning that they start at some price X, let's say double their base value (meaning you save nothing at all if you buy them at this price). Then every day that nobody buys, the price drops. When someone buys, the price rises. When the price hits the base value, a random amount of that part disappears (wholesellers buy them) and the price rises again to some value.

This introduces competition to shops. You want to have something, but others probably want it as well. Oh look, this is crazy cheap right now, buy for later? Or just buy one part here just to raise the price and make life for the competition more difficult?

[De-Legro]

Too me, it is approaching crafting, which is something I have little interest in.

[Zakilevo]

Yeah I am not a big fan of crafting either. There are too many games like that. And it gets tedious real fast.

[Tom]

Agreed, that's something that tickles me as well.

But I want something else besides gold. Something that shops can compete for. Maybe just very special and rare items? But they should be good for something.

How about trophies? From the endboss, parties can sometimes bring a trophy. You can buy these trophies (auction-style) and it will add to your shop rating, but not cost maintenance (like shop sections do).

[De-Legro]

Agreed, that's something that tickles me as well.

But I want something else besides gold. Something that shops can compete for. Maybe just very special and rare items? But they should be good for something.

How about trophies? From the endboss, parties can sometimes bring a trophy. You can buy these trophies (auction-style) and it will add to your shop rating, but not cost maintenance (like shop sections do).

Gold should be secondary, reputation should be everything. Then again reputation should be able to be converted to gold and vice versa.

[Crayne]

Once the range of attributes that can be influenced by items is sufficiently large and diverse, random generation of rare items with attribute adjustments would give shops unexpected things to bid on, or buy.

I like the idea of trophies though, as a boost to a shop's reputation (come see the minotaur's huge...head at Solid Simon's ;)).

[Tom]

Yes, I think we should add a reputation stat. Right now, we have customer loyalties, but they are specific to parties.

Reputation could be built by parties being successful in dungeons with stuff bought from your place, as well as marketing measures and trophies.

[De-Legro]

Yes, I think we should add a reputation stat. Right now, we have customer loyalties, but they are specific to parties.

Reputation could be built by parties being successful in dungeons with stuff bought from your place, as well as marketing measures and trophies.

Would reputation be a single stat?

I can think of things like reputation for fair prices, reputation for fine weapons/armour/whatever. reputation for selling needed items (which I guess is something like loyalty)

[Tom]

Reputation would be a single stat. I don't want to complicate things too much, and if I break it down it very, very fast goes into a territory where I need to write half an AI to do the evaluation.

Right now, the idea is that selling items that help in a successful quest will get you reputation, and trophies will get you reputation. Later on, there will be some additional actions that can get you reputation. Also, reputation will drop over time, so if you stop doing things, people will start to forget about you.