Game is a bit too lenient?

[DJDiceZ]

After playing a while, several thoughts crossed my mind:

First, there's never a reason not to haggle. It's way too easy. And it gets a bit tedious.

The game should give you a reason not to, perhaps haggling too much can lower your reputation, or maybe the game could have some sort of economy stock market style. Perhaps abusing haggling could reduce its efficiency. Perhaps haggling with someone who clearly needs your potion and isn't very fortunate would be a negative reputation boost.

Secondly, reputation and choices: They lack impactfulness. I hope they will become more deciding factors in the full game. If that ends up being the case, the game will be great.

Perhaps the game could use some difficulty levels. They wouldn't be too impactful but they would make it harder to have herbs, get money, haggle, maintain a reputation and such. Or easier.

Lastly... I think it's kinda lame that everyone just wants the best tier of potion and pay a ton for it. It trivializes the game in a lot of way, be it economy, lack of need for recipes (and thus makes the recipe pages skill awkward, then by extension the whole skill system awkward, then collecting skill point becomes less interesting, etc...), managing your herbs, and just having variety in the requests.

Sometimes i wanna see npcs who have no use for a super strong potion and just want a weak one. Not everyone is rich either. Some npcs who want more than one potion, and some who want combined effects. Some npcs who'd give you a bit of a puzzle to find what potion they want rather than go ":O" and say it's perfect. Some who just want to see what you got and want to buy weird potions with weird effects and such.

Granted there's probably some of that in the full version, but i just want to provide feedback so that the game can get improvements before it is out.

[nobody]

I support the tiered potions idea. An NPC who just got a scratch should not need, or pay for, the same lv3 health potion that would fit for a badly wounded warrior. But the problem with that is we are going to have some space issue with the recipe book, as I am already running out of slot with my 14-page book.

[team fortifier]

I thought haggling too much DOES lower your rep, did I miss something? For a while I was haggling every customer to get the last penny. They paid up but each one gave me negative rep.

[DJDiceZ]

Originally posted by Bruh Moment:

I thought haggling too much DOES lower your rep, did I miss something? For a while I was haggling every customer to get the last penny. They paid up but each one gave me negative rep.

Either i didn't play enough, or you were just giving potion to "evil" characters, which lowers your reputation (likewise refusing to sell them a potion increases your reputation).

[Joe]

I disagree that haggling should be more punishing. Haggling (and its modern equivalents, sales or market research) are so universal because in real life, there's pretty much no downside and everyone does it and expects it. If anything, its more punishing than it should be because the idea that someone will lower their first offer because they didn't like yours is (while not impossible) rare and exceedingly silly, although I realize that's a gameplay balance thing. Although, as I don't love the minigame, it wouldn't break my heart if they nerfed it or gave us a reason not to.

[DJDiceZ]

Originally posted by Joe:

I disagree that haggling should be more punishing. Haggling (and its modern equivalents, sales or market research) are so universal because in real life, there's pretty much no downside and everyone does it and expects it. If anything, its more punishing than it should be because the idea that someone will lower their first offer because they didn't like yours is (while not impossible) rare and exceedingly silly, although I realize that's a gameplay balance thing. Although, as I don't love the minigame, it wouldn't break my heart if they nerfed it or gave us a reason not to.

"Realism" is an argument that rarely works when it comes to game design. The problem is that haggling is always better than selling, virtually impossible to not get a positive outcome, and fairly boring, as you stated. Hence why i want a reason for the player to make choices (having to make choices is what makes these kind of games interesting), but i wouldn't be opposed to instead changing the way haggling work so that it's just more interesting. In its current state you might aswell not have a sell button, as it's just a "pay to be lazy" button, the cost being the missed opportunity for profit.

[tayzyboy]

lots of games use repuation loss to offset haggling - OK you got the extra 5g off that guy, but they are gonna be a bit disgruntled.

[DJDiceZ]

Originally posted by tayzyboy:

lots of games use repuation loss to offset haggling - OK you got the extra 5g off that guy, but they are gonna be a bit disgruntled.

Or rather not be rewarded with a reputation gain. Not that reputation is that big of a deal in this case.

[AlP]

Originally posted by Bruh Moment:

I thought haggling too much DOES lower your rep, did I miss something? For a while I was haggling every customer to get the last penny. They paid up but each one gave me negative rep.

It depends on the quality of your potion. If you make a potion with a level 1 effect, the NPC may say "I'll take it, but won't pay a lot for it.". In that case, haggling will make the NPC angry.

[DJDiceZ]

Originally posted by AlP:

Originally posted by Bruh Moment:

I thought haggling too much DOES lower your rep, did I miss something? For a while I was haggling every customer to get the last penny. They paid up but each one gave me negative rep.

It depends on the quality of your potion. If you make a potion with a level 1 effect, the NPC may say "I'll take it, but won't pay a lot for it.". In that case, haggling will make the NPC angry.

I've always done that and i don't remember ever getting any reputation loss for it