QCF Design Community

Hi Dislekcia,

After digging in the code and doing some tests, I became convinced that the probability ordering for quest items
is the actual ordering in which the items were unlocked.

DERPs are not affected and all players have the exact same list ordering, which is the one described on the forum page: http://www.qcfdesign.com/wiki/DesktopDu ... Shop_Spawn

But for regular plays, two fully unlocked kingdoms won't have the same spawn probabilities for quest items because
they are based on unlock ordering.

I would like your opinion on two things:
- A. Do you confirm this behaviour ?
- B. Would you consider this as a bug or a feature ?

For me it definitely seems like a bug as it makes the game experience different for two players with a fully unlocked kingdom. I don't mind if a player wants to rig the shop by only unlocking the items they want (like Tower did recently for Curious VGT) but I do think that two fully unlocked kingdoms should be equal (aside from return locker customization).

If confirm that it is a bug, I will try to fix it in the EE mod eventually, in which case I would like your opinion as well on how it could be fixed. I hesitate between:
- 1. Force the ordering to be the same as DERPs
- 2. Change the algorithm to have the same global probability of getting a quest item, but have a uniform distribution among quest item (but keep the exact same probabilities for tier1 and tier3 items)
- 3. Change the algorithm to have the same global probabilities of getting tier1, tier2, or tier3, but have a uniform distribution among all items of that tier.

I would really like to know your opinion on all this.
Personally I'm fine with either solution, though maybe 3. would change the game too much: according to this calculator, Orb of Zot is more than 10 times less likely to spawn than Dwarven Gauntlets.

P.S. :

Even though this is addressed to the original game devs, players are more than welcome to give their opinion on this too.

I'm nobody important, but I'd go with 2 simply because that's how I assumed it's worked for years.

I like #2, and one option for accomplishing it would be to shuffle the order of quest items randomly before running the shop spawn algorithm each run. #1 is fine too. I don't like #3, I'd rather Yendor and Zot stayed super rare.

Hi srid,

I've lurked for a while, but this was finally the thread that made me create an account to join the discussion

Would there be a chance to keep the existing behavior (opt-out of the new algorithm) if you make changes (or make the order customizable by the user, even if in a user unfriendly way like a config file somewhere)? I didn't realize that the algorithm cared what order you unlock things, but I definitely deliberately unlocked all quest items in descending order of usefulness, and would be sad to have my kingdom "nerfed" by this change.

I know its a valid argument that different items are good for different situations so it's hard to determine a single "optimal order", but I've always had the opinion that more CP is always useful, while low CP/GP items can be 100% useless if found in the wrong situation, so my unlock order looked something like this (using "item name (CP/GP ratio)" format where CP/GP ratio comes from wiki):

Gloves of Midas (4.5) -> Viper Ward (4.0) -> Soul Orb (4.0) -> Balanced Dagger (3.7) -> Rock Heart (4.3) -> Venom Dagger (3.1) -> Whurrgarbl (3.0) -> Martyr Wraps (3.0) -> Blue Bead (2.0) -> Everything else

In addition to "Higher CP/GP" > "Lower CP/GP" you can see I also preferred unlocking small items to large ones (you can carry a lot more items at once if they're small). If I were re-doing my kingdom with the knowledge unlock order matters, I would definitely go straight down the list of CP/GP and be very very happy with that choice (I'm actually considering doing it now, but am hesitating because I'm not sure what changes you'll make). I can always scum for a particular item I need (platemail for VHOS for example), or two if really necessary, but for the vast majority of runs I want the vast majority of shops to contain high CP/GP items.

I hadn't paid attention to exact ratios, but I always felt like I found Gloves of Midas more often than any other item (I thought it might be confirmation bias though, as I care more about gloves, which generate gold and I have to think about when to convert, much more than "convert on sight" items). If you fix this "bug" with no opt-out, it would be a definite nerf to my playstyle in my kingdom, and would make me sad

Currently, if you need one or two core items, you can scum for them without too much trouble. Scumming for "high average CP/GP ratio across all shops" would be much harder to do, you need almost every shop to get a good item, not just 1 or 2. Since high CP/GP ratio items are also generally cheaper overall (none with 3.0 ratio or better cost more than 16 GP) your odds of buying everything (or nearly everything) are much better with a CP/GP heavy list than lists weighted towards other items, which means the contents of all shops matter. Clearly, scumming to get "all shops perfect" is much harder than scumming for "1 or 2 shops containing what I want".

I guess high CP is a crutch that I may need to live without, but I really like CP heavy classes and playstyles (Rat Monarch, Vampire, Half Dragon, Transmuter, and Tinker are so much fun to play that way) with gods that like converting (JJ and Glowing Guardian) that full randomization would be a double whammy: average CP earned per run would decrease significantly, AND average cost per item would go up which means fewer total items bought/converted (for rat monarch refills and piety from deities that like conversion), with no way to reasonable scum for a "good" layout.

#1 Would make me very sad, most of the great CP/GP items are towards the bottom of the quest list, so having a good CP run would be much harder than randomized (I think), since Gloves of Midas are around the halfway point (so neither appear more or less often than random list), and the next 4(!) best CP/GP items are all in the bottom half (Viper Ward, Soul Orb are 15th/16th, Rock Heart is all the way at 18th, and Balanced Dagger is 12th), making good CP/GP runs harder to find overall.

#2 would also make me sad, since my current kingdom is much "better" for CP/GP, but I'd be more ok with it than #1.

#3 seems crazy, Orb of Zot should definitely not be as frequent as Dwarven Gauntlets

Hi sj121, and thanks for joining

It's always heartwarming for us modders to hear from people playing the mod. Hope you're enjoying it!

Thanks a lot for your feedback, you do have a point. We are always very reluctant to change the base game behaviour,
unless when it's about fixing something clearly identified as a bug. Which is why I asked for Dislekcia's opinion, I am still
not sure if it should be considered as a bug or an undocumented feature.

While, even for the base game, I consider that rather harmless, I'm inclined to change it for the mod simply because
we are adding lots of new quest items and those items will have a much lower spawning rate than the original game items,
which seems a bit strange and counter-intuitive for me.

But you do have a point, and we will consider this idea of having a switch to enable/disable the feature. On the other hand, it still feels a bit unfair to me that two players with fully unlocked kingdoms don't have the same chances in the game simply because of the order in which they completed it. Return lockers are not a problem as you can change them any time you want, but this feels kind of unfair to me.

Another option could be to allow the players to fully chose the quest item ordering themselves, but I'm not sure we would want that either. Don't worry as I won't be implementing a fix anytime soon, not before we release the South anyway.
So we still have plenty of time to reflect more on the subject.

On another note: welcome to the forum!
One of the things I love the most with this game is that every player seems to have his own unique preferences and playstyle, don't hesitate to share feedback about the mod or even videos of your achievements on the other threads, I'm really interested to see how Monster classes (especially Rat Monarch) fare in Vicious EE dungeons

Thanks for the response srid.

I understand broader the concern that two fully unlocked kingdoms being different is unintuitive and that it feels especially wrong since players aren't warned the order they do things will affect the kingdom in a permanent and immutable way. I also understand that as a mod developer, it stinks that your items appear less frequently than any base game items because they're unlocked later.

I just wanted to point out there's one playstyle that's currently possible which players might be enjoying (even if it is the result of dumb luck in accidentally setting their kingdom up the "right" way) which would be negatively and disproportionately impacted by the fix.

Since you expressed some willingness to consider mitigating the impact this has on players who like the existing behavior (even if it is determined to be a bug and warrants a fix), here are some of my "fix mitigation" ideas (including the ones I mentioned previously, but now in a nice list that's easy to reference, and lettered instead of numbered so it doesn't get confused with your list):
A.) opt-out
B.) config file
C.) List order can be partially customized in game like "Locker" and "Return" slots (and maybe for a gold cost)--maybe up to 5 "Preferred Item" slots or "Best Seller" slots that will always be at the top of the Quest Item section of the list (so using no prep it would be Basic -> Preferred -> Quest -> Elite, using Quest item prep it would be Preferred -> Quest ->Basic -> Elite, and using Elite item prep it would be Elite -> Basic -> Preferred -> Quest). Unlike Locker and Return slots though, it would have to exclude Elite items I think, which could be a source of confusion.
D.) Additional preparation option (So along with "Quest Items" and "Elite Items" you could add "CP Ratio Items")

Option A is the one you said you might consider, but upon further reflection I don't like it much (it was just the first thing to come to mind). If I upload a video of me doing something amazing, and someone else wants to try it out, but I am opted out with a unique kingdom setup, its very hard for anyone to try to replicate.

Option B levels the playing field, but (as you indicated) I think it gives too much control to players on what should be a random process.

Option C supports any given playstyle equally well (some people might just want all the mana items at top, others want all attack items), but makes it harder to tweak so its less prone to abuse than B, fairer than A, and is probably my favorite option, but seems like it could be difficult to implement. I don't think you need to worry about ordering

Option D could be easier to implement (as a guess) as it uses a fixed list (items sorted by CP/GP). I'd only want this if other players also chime in and think its a good idea, I would feel bad if you did it just for me, as it does cater to one specific playstyle, but I do think it *could* be warranted because as I mentioned before, its much harder to get the right setup for a conversion heavy run by scumming than for most other shop configurations you might want.

I think C and D would be phenomenal if you have the time.

> It's always heartwarming for us modders to hear from people playing the mod. Hope you're enjoying it!

I am! You guys are awesome.

> or even videos of your achievements on the other threads

I'm looking into the best way to do this now . I used to play on a poorly supported Linux configuration that had tons of visiual glitches that would have made for terrible video. I'm now on windows and bug-free, so there's actually some potential for quality videos

The initial design for the Kingdom progression was to have players end up with very different kingdoms after they'd made their binary choices during progression, but it turned out that really didn't make anyone happy because of the kind of content game DD is.