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Didn't know where else to put this, so I'll just put it in here.
I modified the seedy shopkeep in achaeus. Check this out:
[MEdit][265646] 265646>
show
Name: [seedy shopkeep]
Area: [ 58] Achaeus
[b]Sig: [(none)][/b] Creator: [(none)]
Act: [npc sentinel protected]
Act2: [noquest]
Vnum: [265646] Sex: [male ] Race: [goblin]
Level: [ 120] Align: [ 0] Owner: [(no owner)]
Hitroll: [ 0] DamType: [none]
Movement: [ 1570] Number of attacks: [0]
Hit dice: [120d195+9000] Damage dice: [14d35 + 120] Mana dice: [ 0d0 + 0]
Affected by: [detect_invis detect_hidden infrared]
Affected by2: [none]
Armor: [pierce: 0 bash: 0 slash: 0 magic: 0]
Parts: [head arms legs heart brains guts hands feet fingers ear eye]
Imm: [summon charm]
Res: [disease]
Vuln: [magic]
Off: [none]
Size: [medium]
Material: [unknown]
Start pos: [standing]
Default pos: [standing]
[b]Wealth: [ 9000000][/b][color=#FF4000]!!!!!!!!!![/color]
Script Kwds: [none]
Short descr: a seedy shopkeep
Long descr:
A seedy shopkeep stands here, hoping to swindle another sucker.
Description:
This is a seedy goblin shopkeeper who is not the most intelligent being
in the vicinity, but knows how to swindle a fool. He wears some kind of
unidentifiable brown garb adorned with metal chains.
Shop data for [265646]:
Markup for purchaser: 110%
Markdown for seller: 75%
Hours: 0 to 23.
Number Trades Type
------ -----------
[ 0] weapon
[ 1] light
[ 2] armor
[ 3] artifact
[ 4] treasure
Number MobProg Vnum Trigger Phrase
------ ------------ ------- ------
[ 0] 265646 grall 100
[MEdit][265646] 265646>
I don't know what to make of this. I experimented with the wealth setting several times, and when i tried to set a wealth of more than 1000 i got "you can't do that - get an imp to sign the mob if you want to do this". So how the hell did someone set the mobs wealth to 9 mil???
Looks like people have been exploiting this wholesale, and it explains why some people spend all their time just whoring expensive equ to this shop. I've now set the wealth to a sensible value, so if anyone complains, you know why.
On the off-chance that one of you guys set this to 9 mil, I presume there's a good reason - and there's a good reason why the signing code failed. Might be worth checking the other shopkeeps in the game, cos this now explains why certain people suddenly have so much gold. Fuckin morts. This kind of thing really pisses me off.
Scott.
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I assume this is a scripting device:
(from achaeus.are)
#MOBILE 265681
Name money mob~
ShortDesc a money mob~
LongDesc A mob for money stands here, waiting to die.
^M~
Description ~
Owner (no owner)~
ImpSig (none)~
CreatorSig (none)~
Skeywds none~
Race human~
Act 1
Act2 2
Level 1 Alignment 0
Hitroll 1 Hit 1 13 0 Mana 0 0 0 Damage 2 8 1 Movement 23
AttackType 0
Attacks 0
OffFlags 0 ImmFlags 0 ResFlags 0 VulnFlags 0
StartPos 8 DefaultPos 8 Sex 1 Wealth 4999999
Parts 2047 Size 2
Material unknown~
#-MOBILE
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well, let's see…. 9000000 amounts to.....
45000 to 90000 GOLD and 0 to 4.5m SILVER on that one mob. O.o Crazy.
But... how ELSE people are supposed to make money? There are few mobs that give any descent money when you kill them, and most are usually in PoA. Making the shops all nerfed so you can't sell anything pretty much destroys the point of having any kind of value on objects since most if not all shops would be unable to BUY it.
Acquiring wealth should not be frowned upon. Sure, there are those that go to extremes. But what about those that bot to level faster? Should we make it so hard to level that no one does it? No, we make it so there is no reason to bot or those that do are brought up short.
I know I use that shop alot, mainly to sell reboot items I swipe or the crapload of loot I amass over time, like 30+ swords from the achaeus guards. Should I be able to sell them? Yes and no. Sure, I should be able to sell them, but only if the shopkeeper hasn't run out of money or is still interested in them. But given a clean slate, the shopkeeper has nothing in its inventory and its money supply is sufficient, I should be able to see most items that have value and it accepts.
Instead of nerfing the ability to sell alot of things to any given shop, why not lower the VALUES on all the objects using a formula based on its level. If the value is less than the computed value already, leave it alone. If the value is more than a certain percentage OVER, it gets RESET. All pfile objects get reset at load. Just a thought. Another thing is to make the replenishment of wealth gradual. Don't make it come back every repop, but rather trickle it in based upon various parameters. Selling something may deplete the wealth of a shop by a great margin, but the fact remains, it should be possible in the first place, just not easily repeatable without making it frustrating. It would just take time for the shop to acquire its own wealth.
I'm thinking from the point of view of the player. If every shop can't buy anything and the only place to get appreciable wealth is dangerous to get to, where does that leave them to get any money to buy things they need?
There was also a point made by Vizz that the few people that are on stats wealthiest are the only ones with 1+ million gold. Well, isn't that the point OF that particular stats list? To show the top 10 active players with the most wealth. If all the others in the game are either inactive or far below 1 million, then it is due to their inexperience, lack of playing, or general inactivity that is to blame for their gold being so low. Of course, another reason could be that they've SPENT their gold faster than they could keep it. Those that are on the list have *bothered* to get gold and have played long enough to acquire it, as well as didn't spend it unless required. You should note that most a vast majority of those on stats wealthiest are mostly older players.
Now... for another topic: there should be ways to get wealth that doesn't rely on level and being able to get to the expensive stuff. I don't want to turn the "stats wealthiest" into a list no one wants to be on (or for that matter, impossible to BE on or even *pointless*)
Anyways, enough of the rant.
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Hey guys,
I have to study for a quiz on tues, so I'll summarize my position:
I don't think there's anything wrong at all with selling stuff to pawn shops, or making money that way. But as Vizz pointed out it was kind of ridiculous the sort of money people could make by slangin' easily found items. I set the wealth so they would pop with 1-3K gold for each of the pawn shopkeeps in Plith, Olaria, and Achaeus; the wealth function is actually useful here since it allows a range of fairly random values each reboot.
Mainly, I just don't want people all flocking to the same source for their cash money. It will eventually be nice to have areas with hidden heaps of treasure, perhaps like Smaug from the Hobbit but not with the tiring cliche of dragons, but these things obviously take time and manpower to build, so we gotta stick with what we got for now.
Talking to Stareve a couple of days ago revealed the more underlying problem, which I think Nib pointed out in his reply: items that are easy to find but whose value is ridiculously high. She showed me some obsidian some such from Aeth whose value was 125,000\. 1250 gold, and all you have to do is kill some drow. Theoretically, if we narf the items that you can spam sell to the shopkeeper for mass gold, we should be able to set his gold back up to a higher value to compensate for things like a higher playerbase, which we'll eventually get! ;)
Maybe I (or you guys feel free to do it if you want) should code up something at boot that detects any item with a disproportionate value at boot and prints a message to the logs. The problem with trying to do this automatically is that there isn't a good way to quantify difficulty of obtaining the item, like time spent having to do precursors to obtaining the item (if you have to do some huge quest that takes you days vs just killing a NPC).
But we can probably make an approximation using things like level, flags set, etc…
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How about a temporary extra2 flag called "no_value", which forces all instances of the object to load of with no value, regardless of what is set on the index. A quick IMP command could scan all objects that have this set and correct them. Items that are imp-signed would be ignored of course.
