Automatic pricing quirks

[Pete Mack]

Starting a list of questional estimates in autopricing. (I've forgotten a couple.)

- Sold a Lance of *Slay Dragon* (+10,+14) for 25K. (Selling price is 44K)
- Bought a Crown of Lordliness {ESP} from Black Market for 36K. (resale is 11K).
ADDED:
- Amulet of Charisma (+6) (116 GP)
- Ring of Flames [+13] (800 GP) -- Brand is not used in computing price. (5-10K is reasonable estimate.)

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

Starting a list of questional estimates in autopricing. (I've forgotten a couple.)

- Sold a Lance of *Slay Dragon* (+10,+14) for 25K. (Selling price is 44K)

This is a bug. Assuming it had +2 pval it should have been worth about 15k (86 power). Please post the relevant stanza from your pricing.log file.

- Bought a Crown of Lordliness {ESP} from Black Market for 36K. (resale is 11K).

This is WAD. Without the ESP it's not worth much (depending on its pval) - +WIS, +CHR, susWIS, susCHR and rFear. The ESP is responsible for about 2/3 of its power rating (again, depending on its pval), and about 80% of its monetary value.

Your point is perhaps simply that ESP is still undervalued (it's currently worth as much as fire immunity). Or maybe (given your other post about +CHR items) that +CHR is undervalued. At the moment +CHR and susCHR are ignored when adding power for multiple abilities, and they are only worth +1 power each. So the item's cost would be very similar if it was just +WIS, susWIS, ESP and rFear. This is to avoid over-rating CHR on randarts (by which time it's irrelevant). I guess it depends on how important people think the limited-money part of the game is. What is that - the first two or three dives?

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

- Amulet of Charisma (+6) (116 GP)

Ok, this is perhaps a bit cheap. So it raises a couple of options:

1. Just increase CHR _POWER from 1 (power per plus) to 2 or 3. (cf 8 for CON, 6 for STR/DEX, 4 for INT/WIS).

2. Make pval power non-linear. At the moment a +6 pval is worth 6x a +1 pval of the same stat. Perhaps it should be something like 1x, 2x, 4x, 6x, 8x, 10x ... we did toy with this early on in the randart development, and ended up abandoning it because it doesn't map well onto equivalent damage (items with big pvals turn into sick weapons) - but I'm happy to have another go.

Keep up the good work Pete.

[PaulBlay]

Originally Posted by Magnate

What is that - the first two or three dives?

That depends very much on how you play the game and how experienced you are. Angband appears to be very much balanced around the experienced and power divers, which is fair enough but I personally prefer a more casual and less competitive approach to gaming.

[Magnate]

(thinks more)

I think part of the problem here is the CHR is totally unlike all other stats, in that its only use is in town. If you found a +6 CHR amulet on the dungeon floor you'd leave it there, unless you were still in the really-strapped-for-cash portion of the game (first 10-20%) in which case you might make space for it in order to save money on consumables. Otherwise the only reason to bring it back is to sell it, and I have no problem with the new algorithm making that less desirable. In fact for 116gp you might actually buy such an amulet, whereas you would almost never buy it at its old price (of what, several thousand?) - by the time you could afford it, you'd probably have enough money not to need its benefits.

That doesn't mean CHR isn't underrated. It's just that we're looking to fix the evaluation of something which is only relevant for a small portion of the game.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by PaulBlay

That depends very much on how you play the game and how experienced you are. Angband appears to be very much balanced around the experienced and power divers, which is fair enough but I personally prefer a more casual and less competitive approach to gaming.

Surely the opposite is true - the slower you dive, the more stuff you sell and the quicker you make money??

[PaulBlay]

Originally Posted by Magnate

Surely the opposite is true - the slower you dive, the more stuff you sell and the quicker you make money??

The slower you dive the less the stuff you sell is worth.

[Daniel Fishman]

Slower diving means you have more money at a given dungeon level.
Faster diving means you have more money after a given number of dives.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Daniel Fishman

Slower diving means you have more money at a given dungeon level.
Faster diving means you have more money after a given number of dives.

Correct. When I said above that money is only scarce for a small part of the game, I was referring to a small proportion of the dungeon. If you dive slowly, this proportion is smaller than if you dive fast.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Magnate

Ok, this is perhaps a bit cheap. So it raises a couple of options:

1. Just increase CHR _POWER from 1 (power per plus) to 2 or 3. (cf 8 for CON, 6 for STR/DEX, 4 for INT/WIS).

Raising this to 2 makes a +6 CHR amulet cost about 500gp. IMO this is sufficient - yes it will still pay for itself, but if you're prepared to use a slot in your home for that, that's fair enough. (For those who think it's still not enough - is CHR really worth more than half as much as INT or WIS??)

So that just leaves the crown of lordliness. The CHR is irrelevant there, it's really all about the value of ESP. Currently it's valued at 20 damage per blow (40 power). Would you give up more than 100 dmg/round for ESP?

A plain iron crown of ESP [0, +0] is worth about ~3.5k (x3 in the BM) - exactly the same as a weapon of 20dmg/blow. Again, I reckon that's about right.

Please bear in mind that anomalies in the new prices need to be considered relative to each other, rather than to previous prices. ESP was dramatically overpriced previously (in terms of its value as dmg/blow). So don't think "well if I can get 3k gp for a weapon of slay orc then this is too cheap" - because you can't anymore. Weapons of slay orc (and in particular slay troll) are much cheaper.