Temple of The Roguelike Forums
Development => Design => Topic started by: Etinarg on March 06, 2014, 10:27:54 PM
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I'm currently working on a RPG project once again, and once more I face the question how to set reasonable prices for my items. The items are the standard medieval-fantasy collection, axes, mace, sword, magic rings and amulets and the like.
How do you set up the item prices in your games?
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Supply and demand with a healthy derivatives market seems to work.
More seriously, I haven't seen a lot of roguelikes where the price was the real limiting factor in getting gear. Availability of any particular item is usually spotty at best (except in moria-derived games with a certain core set of very standard books, potions, scrolls etc.).
I guess the way to go is to get an idea of how much gold someone will have collected under normal conditions at certain stages of the game and make comparisons between those numbers and the kinds of gear you think are appropriate to buy at those stages. Then make some allowances for less normal play, i.e. farming/scumming/grinding, and probable expenses leading up to whatever stage. It seems most games use some system of base prices for different kinds of weapons and armor with multipliers for abilities conferred by ego or artifact types and for other pluses. With some calibration, this kind of system seems to work.
Shops and money lend themselves to design issues if items are reliably available at certain prices, so outside of certain core items, I would lean toward item availability rather than money as the limiting factor in obtaining gear through shops.
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I didn't intend to make money a limiting factor for acquiring items in shops. I just wanted to give items "reasonable" prices. Many games which I have seen had some quite weird exception in prices, which I wanted to avoid.
Problems are rather how to compare a wooden club to a dagger to a sword or a shield, price wise. I guess once I have set prices for a few items I can deduce all other prices from those.
In shops there will be mostly plain items being available, so one must be really lucky if one can buy a good magic item in a shop. For magic items I'll use a system similar to the one you suggested, raise the base price with some factors determined by the magic mods.
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Dynamic pricing system where the price for whatever the player needs is exactly one gold piece more than they have.
And the shop doesn't buy items.
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I didn't intend to make money a limiting factor for acquiring items in shops. I just wanted to give items "reasonable" prices. Many games which I have seen had some quite weird exception in prices, which I wanted to avoid.
Problems are rather how to compare a wooden club to a dagger to a sword or a shield, price wise. I guess once I have set prices for a few items I can deduce all other prices from those.
You could look at WFRPG or D&D prices, they are pretty reasonable.
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It is going to depend on how hard gold is to get, how common it is, and the utility of the item.
Super Sweet Game Breaking Item of Doom = As Much Gold As A Person Could Really Save In A Long Game.
Piddly Little Pile Of Shiz Dagger = 1 coin.
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You could look at WFRPG or D&D prices, they are pretty reasonable.
That's a good idea. I found a wiki with D&D item prices, and while the D&D items do not fit 1:1 to my selection, I think I can use it as a reference. Thanks :)
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I guess once I have set prices for a few items I can deduce all other prices from those.
The value has to be determined from some factors like material, size/weight, importance as item group/class, magic value, etc. Each item could have a generic importance value (something like 1-100) which compares to other items of the same class (weapons, armour, magic items, etc.) and from that the price could also be partly determined.
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I think this is one of the things that you really have to test when the game is almost ready. I found that I adjust prices all the time while testing to make it balanced. I also found that sometimes it makes for better gameplay to not have "realistic" prices. In my game food can be more expensive than a weapon just because it may be more valuable to the player.
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In my game food can be more expensive than a weapon just because it may be more valuable to the player.
The classical 5000gp bread. It could be interesting to make weapons so rare that they actually would cost more than a bread, but it can be difficult if enemies carry weapons and you can just grab them.
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The important thing is to offer interesting choices. If people can buy everything they want when they want it, your system is a failure.
I think game economies based on choosing which things you want for any given mission are more interesting than ones where you save up your allowance for 3/4 of the game until you can afford the best item.
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The important thing is to offer interesting choices. If people can buy everything they want when they want it, your system is a failure.
Shops have limited inventories, so even if the player is really rich, some items might just not be available in the shops. I don't think I'll make price the limit here, but generally limit the sort and quality of items which can be bought.
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The classical 5000gp bread. It could be interesting to make weapons so rare that they actually would cost more than a bread, but it can be difficult if enemies carry weapons and you can just grab them.
Well, most weapons are still more expensive (and some much more rare) than bread :). Also, I don't have enemies dropping their weapons for this reason (among others).
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Honestly, the "reasonable" item pricing is as much reasonable as you want it to be, regardless of the item's starting value. It really doesn't matter if a short sword costs 10 copper, 1gp or 100gp. You do however need to understand how easily the player can earn 10 copper, 1gp and 100gp. To keep the items' pricing concise you should create a few tables with pricing modifying factors to make your life easier and to make sure that a superior steel knife will never cost more than a superior steel battleaxe, rarity aside of course.
First, decide a base value for each item class (in case of doubt just use the items' overall weight and translate it into coin).
- Knife - 18gp
- Short Sword - 29gp
- Great Sword - 40gp
- Axe 30gp
- Battleaxe 48gp
- Mace 27gp
- Helmet 33gp
- Plate Armor 144gp
- Boots 12gp
Now create a materials table with its corresponding price multiplier (materials should dictate the item's durability as well as the items' score output for protection and damage:
- Common Wood *0.2
- Ebony Wood *0.4
- Copper *0.8
- Iron *1
- Steel *1.4
- Ebony Metal *2.0
- Dragon Bone *2.5
Now you can add another table for quality (quality should dictate the items' score for protection or damage):
- Broken *0.2
- Decayed *0.4
- Crude *0.7
- Common *1
- Balanced *1.5
- Superior *2.5
- Masterwork *3.0
To conclude this example we add the rarity table:
- Common *1
- Uncommon *1.5
- Semi-rare *2.2
- Rare *3.0
- Unique *4.5
So now lets see the output of some items produced using these tables:
Decayed Iron Short Sword (Common) = 29gp * 0.4 * 1 * 1 = 11gp
Superior Steel Battleaxe (Rare) = 48gp * 1.4 * 2.5 * 3 = 504gp
Crude Copper Helmet (Common) = 33gp * 0.8 * 0.7 * 1 = 18gp
Balanced Ebony Plate Armor (Unique) = 144gp * 1.5 * 2 * 4.5 = 1944gp
These modifiers need of course to be balanced with world setting itself. As I stated at the very beginning of this post, you should take into severe consideration how easily it will be for the player to harvest money. Restricting items appearance to the player's current level could also be a solution as well as changing the item's price range depending on the player's geographic position. Some cities could have scarce access to metals making everything they sell made out of metal costing substantially more. Please, understand that this was just an example, some multiplying factors do not make that much sense at all so free to revise them :)
I hope it helped in any possible way.
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Honestly, the "reasonable" item pricing is as much reasonable as you want it to be, regardless of the item's starting value. It really doesn't matter if a short sword costs 10 copper, 1gp or 100gp. You do however need to understand how easily the player can earn 10 copper, 1gp and 100gp.
I didn't mean the absolute value. I meant reasonable price relations between items. If a wooden club is 10 copper, and a dagger is 3 copper and a shield is 1000 copper, it seems to be odd.
So what I'm actually was asking is not the "realistic" or so price, but how to set up price relations among the items, so that the player won't point to the screen and yell, "These prices are outright silly".
The base values that you list are about what I am interested in, although I doubt that a battle axe should be more expensive than a great sword. And this is just the thing I wanted to avoid, and why I was asking. The axe is easier to manufacture and uses similar materials, so it should be cheaper than the sword. But how much? Also in relation to other items, like the mentioned bread.
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Then use common sense to create default values (starting values) for each class of weapons. If you think a great sword should cost more than a battleaxe then make it so. If you are seeking a plausible pricing range based on plausible crafting methods with plausible crafting costs and crafting skills, well you should probably consult historical sites related with such subjects. Unfortunately I don't know any.
But honestly, if you have your own world with your own world setting, the concept of plausible pricing range doesn't make that much sense. Plausible makes sense if you want to keep things plausible to the very world we live in.
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Unless you set some prices, play it and realize that the fun factor is reduced because of the prices (too cheap, too expensive), any further discussion is kinda pointless.. Endorya's breakdown is good, so you can use something similar as a starting point and then play->adjust->play->adjust and so on and so forth till you hit a sweet spot
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Unless you set some prices, play it and realize that the fun factor is reduced because of the prices (too cheap, too expensive), any further discussion is kinda pointless.. Endorya's breakdown is good, so you can use something similar as a starting point and then play->adjust->play->adjust and so on and so forth till you hit a sweet spot
Exactly my point. The values I did supply were not an ultimatum. There served as an example and to be changed as necessary.
@Etinarg
You could do this, present your item classes with all base values set so we can discuss them and tune them into the "plausible" criteria you seek, I guess...
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@Etinarg
You could do this, present your item classes with all base values set so we can discuss them and tune them into the "plausible" criteria you seek, I guess...
Thanks, but the discussion so far ... made me feel misunderstood. Some answeres were from Captain Obvious, and I felt like people are kidding me. Also I feel another depressive phase coming, so I want to retreat from this discussion till I feel better again. It's nice that you offer help, but at the moment I think I must take a break. The past days were too stressful with project demo releases and bug fixes, and I overstretched it already.
Some day I'll have new energy and continue. Must go slower, and put less stress on me.
Sorry. ... it's not even a roguelike project that I'm working on, it's an action RPG. I just thought I'll ask here for design advice, because you should face similar problems in your projects, but seemingly item pricing is not a problem in roguelikes, or comes rather naturally.
Good luck with your projects.
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I understand what you wish to accomplish but if you don't create something like I described previously (with tables and multipliers to compute the items' final price automatically) you do risk yourself creating unbalanced items, i. e. creating cheaper items that might be more powerful that expensive ones. To fight this add a certain amount of gold for each durability, defense and damage points as well as for each inventory size. I urge you to create a table with materials because a metal shield should cost more than a wood shield. For magical items add great values for their bonuses. For example a ring having the bonus: "+5 Strength" should also have its own value table, where each point of additional strength should be way higher than a sword's damage point value.
If you set everything well the output will never be surprising nor unbalanced. You just need to make sure that each item's features / properties are not under-powered / over-powered but this is a game play issue which is something that you will have to tune as you experiment your game.
As a player (this is my personal opinion) I won't pay that much attention if a battleaxe costs the same or more than a great sword (I mean a bit more, not absurdly more). What will worry me about is finding a fine battleaxe that might be too powerful, rendering loot useless during you character's progression for many level ups (or during a great deal of game play time if you don't plan to use a leveling system) until something better might come up. This will destroy the game for me turning it into a dull experience as it won't feel properly rewarded ergo motivated to play it.
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Thanks, but the discussion so far ... made me feel misunderstood. Some answeres were from Captain Obvious, and I felt like people are kidding me. Also I feel another depressive phase coming, so I want to retreat from this discussion till I feel better again. It's nice that you offer help, but at the moment I think I must take a break. The past days were too stressful with project demo releases and bug fixes, and I overstretched it already.
Some day I'll have new energy and continue. Must go slower, and put less stress on me.
Sorry. ... it's not even a roguelike project that I'm working on, it's an action RPG. I just thought I'll ask here for design advice, because you should face similar problems in your projects, but seemingly item pricing is not a problem in roguelikes, or comes rather naturally.
Good luck with your projects.
Sorry if somehow I did play a part on Captain Obvious. It definitely wasn't my intention. I hope you get back on your feet ASAP and I wish you good luck with your project.
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I understand what you wish to accomplish but if you don't create something like I described previously (with tables and multipliers to compute the items' final price automatically) you do risk yourself creating unbalanced items, i. e. creating cheaper items that might be more powerful that expensive ones.
Yes. But seriously, there are plenty of more important balance issues in my project than the item price.
Thanks again, but it's time for me to take a break. I'll work on some artwork and let the game design things rest. Usually artwork is fairly relaxing.
And no, the captain obvious part was earlier in the discussion. E.g.
"The important thing is to offer interesting choices. If people can buy everything they want when they want it, your system is a failure."
I wonder how stupid I must have appeared if someone thinks that this will help me :(
The sentance sure is right, but it's the basics of game design - interesting choices. And of course, put challenges to the player.
But it's alright. My projects use to get nowhere actually, but in the past it was fun to talk about design issues. This project is intended to become a long lasting sandbox sort of project for me - it's clearly too big for a single person, but I wanted to start on it anyways, and then see how far I can get.
Maybe I'll ask about design questions again, but my other question about where an evil overlord would hide items ran dry also - it seems no one is interested in sharing such thoughts, or it's deemed something uninteresting.
If someone knows about a forum, specifically about game design (not program design, and not graphics design), please let me know. Today I had bad luck with questions in two forums, but somewhere the people who are interested in game design talk must have a place, too. In the past the roguelike crowd was a good place to ask, since these games live from game design more than other genres. But maybe it's just me, and I ask the wrong questions, ask the wrong way, and can't deal with the answers.
The idea with the table is fine. I used that in a former project, and it worked. The tricky part is to work out proper multiplicators, and in some cases it should'nt be multiplicators to the base price but fixed sums added per level of the mod.
But I can't work on that before I have more of the game. E.g. I have no item materials at the moment. And I don't intend materials to play a big role. There is only one attack type, acid, which will be modified by material, and actually the items don't need a material for that, just an "ignore acid", or "resist acid" flag.
But I have some distrust in such table, too. They are too mechanic, and I think there should be some "hand crafted" exceptions, which will result from game testing ... but that I can only do if I have much more of the game. At the moment I only have a walkaround demo, some map generators, and a very incomplete list of "proof of concept" items, to check if inventory handing and item creation works.
Coppers are the lowest currency in this project. I must take care that cheap items will be a few copper coins, I want to avoid that all minor items cost 1 copper without any distinction.
Problem is, I have no simple items yet. But an arow, or a pebble, something like that should be among the lowest. From there I'll try to set prices for the weapons, which is the biggest group of items at the moment. Then implement shops and do some playtesting - I also have no idea yet what and how much my monster will drop. Item and treasure drops would have been one of the next design questions to post. But at least I can then collect some treasure and go shopping, and I'll see if the item relation are sensible, or if better weapons are unproportionally expensive.
Further question is how to compare armor to weapons, in some games armors are way more expensive but no so much more useful.
I had hope that people would start talking about such. Where to start, how to handle cheap items, junk items, how to set price relations between items or item groups (food, weapons, armor, ammo, light sources, misc. items), and finally when all that is set, think about magic item mods, or purely magic items which do not have any base functionality but the magic that they do, e.g. magic rings and amulets, also wands, scrolls and the like. There is also the question ho to set the ratio of selling used items to the prices of new items. E.g. if it's good if the player find one lucky valuable armor, which he can trade for a lot of other equipment. Maybe it's fine if such is possible, maybe it's not. Some games have limits how much gold a shopkeeper will pay out, but then there is other sillyness like all high lvel armor yielding the same 5000 gold or whatever the limit is from the shopkeeper, regardless of their real value.
This discussion didn't scratch any of such issues so far.
"The classical 5000gp bread. It could be interesting to make weapons so rare that they actually would cost more than a bread"
I wonder how this slipped in here. And from which game that is. Angband had fairly cheap food. And I wonder if this was meant as serious advice, since I would never have imagined to make a leaf of bread more expensive than a sword.
But I'm not sure if I want to add food to my game. It usually only adds hassle and no fun for the player. I mean there usually are no (see above) "interesting choices" in food, just to have food in order not to starve.
The project is too big already, I think food will not be on my design list till very late, or unless I get a real good idea of interestin things to do with food in a RGG.
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You realize this is the middle of the 7DRL week, right? People tend to use their free time furiously programming instead of very airy-fairy subjects. I don't program a 7DRL, that's why I answer :)
I think you got replies for the treasure hunting - what did you expect, 10 pages? Again consider this is 7DRL week. The less focused a question is, the more abstract/rare the answers will be... Talking about the difference in price of a battleaxe and a two-handed sword is totally meaningless without it being in the context of the game - what does a battleaxe mean for the game? is it good? is it crap? how does gold work? is equipment more important than food, therefore having higher prices? Moaning about the size of the project and asking theoretical/abstract questions tells me that anything that I will say will amount to blabbering as it's not a serious question to be taken into account, but rather a question for question's sake; the answer will not matter as you're not anywhere near the stage where you implement pricing, so many things could change till then, so my answer is worthless. And no answer is faster than a worthless answer. Aaaanyway too much time in my hands, hope I didn't sound to harsh, I just wanted to give some perspective. So don't miser, go back into programming *whip crack* :)
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@Etinarg
That's a fine post you have there, I mean, as far as information goes. I think that if you had posted that in your opening post the responses could have been different or at least less Caption Obvious ;).
I really don't think that people thought of you as stupid. Don't feel bad if they were not useful as you expected them to be as they had no idea what you have done so far nor they had a clue of what do you already knew / tried about item pricing. It happened to me a few times when posting about things that in my head were crystal clear but then I had a hard time trying to explain them due to its complexity and mainly for lacking precious details.
I see a great deal of myself in you, I mean, creating massive projects alone which never eventually get finished, not because their are impossible to accomplish but because you always end up doing everything by yourself. Hmmm... who knows? We could end up working something together. :)
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re: OP's complaints about the answers to his question: Seriously?
It's a question that is extremely naive: "Hey guys, I've got this project that you don't know anything about. How do you think I should set prices in shops you don't know anything about for items you don't know anything about?" If you asked this on a stackexchange style site, it would be closed in a matter of minutes as "not a real question."
Nevertheless, people try to give you a reasonable answer, doing the work of formulating a sensible question for you. You even got some good advice: If you're not sure how to come up with a baseline to work from, consult D&D materials -- words to live by. Your response: "Boy, you guys sure must think I'm dumb, giving me such obvious answers. I'm so depressed I don't think I can work on my project anymore. If only there were a place where people like me could just talk about game design."
If that's how you feel, well, uh, okay, but you don't need to post about it. I mean, come on, bud.
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I've said "Thanks" to the guy who pointed me to the D&D references first. The discussion could have ended there, it's been fine for me, I had something to start with.
http://forums.roguetemple.com/index.php?topic=3911.msg34752#msg34752
I didn't want to present my project in detail because it's not roguelike in large parts. I was afraid of just being told it's the wrong forum for such projects and not getting any answers at all. That's why I narrowed my question to just this one aspect of the game.
But let's quit this discussion, particularly if it only becoming personal.