Feature Request Reduce Amount of Items at Traders

[Lukovsky_]

Concerning different qualities of weapons:

I guess, due to the engine limitations, it is not possible to make the buy menu in shops/street vendors/blacksmiths to be like in AOP2?
The reason I'm asking is that the further in the game you are, the more frustrating it is to browse through all the equipment to find the best swords/guns, as they are always at the end of the list. So you have to go through all the worn/average/good/fine etc qualities of the same weapon. I know you can turn this option off but then you only have average quality of everything (when I switched it off, all my other weapons disappeared except for the average ones).
My suggestion would be (if it's not possible to change the menu's appearance) to maybe make the merchants/street vendors/blacksmiths to only have ONE quality of a given weapon? It would make things much more clear. And I really wouldn't want to give up on it and turn it off, as I really like that feature, it adds one more thing to take care about in the game.

 

[Grey Roger]

Would it be possible to reverse the order of items on display? That way the newest, best stuff is at the beginning of the row.

 

[Levis]

it might be possible to add some buttons to filter for quality, I will look into it cause I can see this helping a lot.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

There are already two systems in place to prevent the trader interfaces from becoming too cluttered:

1. As the player level increases, items that are "not good enough" for the player start to gradually disappear from the game

2. Traders already have a limit on the number of different qualities of the same item that they will have for sale
If I recall, this is set for 2 levels below the highest quality of that item in the trader.
Perhaps with the number of different weapons we have now, this number should be adjusted.
There should be a value that controls this somewhere in PROGRAM\InternalSettings.h .

Changing the order of the items displayed at the traders could be quite useful, but a "quality filter" button should not be required due to point #2 above.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

If you move the cursor over to the right side of the menu instead of leaving it on the arrow the menu scrolls at a very fast rate. I use this to quick scroll through a merchants items.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

^ Yep, that definitely helps a lot too. I use that all the time.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Don't know what happened there. Please try with the current version and see if it happens again.

My suggestion would be (if it's not possible to change the menu's appearance) to maybe make the merchants/street vendors/blacksmiths to only have ONE quality of a given weapon? It would make things much more clear.

PROGRAM\InternalSettings.h:

#define IT_WEAP_LOWQUAL_CUTOFF     1       // INT - (RPG_STYLE only) if a merchant has more than one quality of the same weapon, this is the quality cutoff below the highest quality weapon carried. Set this to 0 or 6 if you NEVER want cutoff (if lower weapon quality less than IT_WEAP_LOWQUAL_CUTOFF below highest quality weapon, then do not sell, buy only; EX:  ( Worn(1) < (Fine(4) - 2) ) = do not sell)

Perhaps set that value to 0 and see what happens.
Let us know if that helps or not, please!

 

[Lukovsky_]

I'd be quite curious to see some feedback on both the below:

Didn't have much time today myself to do things. Hopefully tomorrow I can do some finishing up from my end and test the above a bit too.

I didn't have much time lately to test it, will do it hopefully tomorrow, maybe even today. By the way, do I have to start a new game everytime there is a new fix? I've been doing that with the latest updates just to make sure everything will be correct. But is it necessary?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I didn't have much time lately to test it, will do it hopefully tomorrow, maybe even today.

Cool! I don't think you need to start a new game when you make that change.

By the way, do I have to start a new game everytime there is a new fix? I've been doing that with the latest updates just to make sure everything will be correct. But is it necessary?

Often you do, but not always. Depends on what changes are included.
If it is necessary, I try to note it in the opening post and it will be enforced in the game as well because you wouldn't be able to load your previous savegames anymore.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Don't know what happened there. Please try with the current version and see if it happens again.

PROGRAM\InternalSettings.h:

#define IT_WEAP_LOWQUAL_CUTOFF     1       // INT - (RPG_STYLE only) if a merchant has more than one quality of the same weapon, this is the quality cutoff below the highest quality weapon carried. Set this to 0 or 6 if you NEVER want cutoff (if lower weapon quality less than IT_WEAP_LOWQUAL_CUTOFF below highest quality weapon, then do not sell, buy only; EX:  ( Worn(1) < (Fine(4) - 2) ) = do not sell)

Perhaps set that value to 0 and see what happens.
Let us know if that helps or not, please!

Tested and this doesn't work because apparently setting it to 0 disables the whole functionality.
With the present code, using number 1 (Build default) makes for the least amount of items on display.

Does anyone still have any objections to the current state of this?

 

[Lukovsky_]

Well, I've done a bit of testing, Sea Hawk storyline, adventurer difficulty, level 40, Arcade mode. I'm using the latest fix. Concerning weapons:

I don't know how much was changed (or if anything) in this matter but right now:
- there are only French Court Swords and Hibernians available in shops, street vendors and blacksmiths. I haven't seen any other weapon available to buy anywhere and I've been to almost every town in the archipelago; I can still loot different kinds of weapons like before, they are just not available to buy;
- from pistols: there are horse pistols/braces of horse pistols, braces of flintlock pistols and muskets, nothing else; again - I can loot e.g the grapeshot pistols or the 4x braces of horse pistols;
- I couldn't find a gunpowder barrel nor the thing for bullets anywhere;
- literally 0 maps. No merchants ever had even one map for sell.
Actually, there are not many things to buy now, at least in my game. Only Gilded/Battle cuirases, the aformentioned swords/pistols, bandages, antidotes, navigation items and books. Nothing else, like the thieve's knifes, poisoned knifes, Borgia blades, stink pots/ether(?) bottles, generally the kind of stuff available from the first level which might be useful in certain situations later on. For example, I wanted to kill Santos and if I remember correctly, I've read somewhere in the forum that you have to use the Borgia blade, because otherwise he is invincible.
I'm not sure whether it is a problem with my installation or not, but everything else works very well, had only one crash after a couple of hours playing, much better than before. I will post my thoughts on other things in the main thread.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

What storyline are you playing? And what player level are you on?
I think if you get too high, pretty much everything starts dropping out of the game.

There should still be citizens who serve as sneaky traders who can sell you borgiablades and the like.
Anyway, it isn't Santos who is immortal; you are thinking of Blackbeard, but it is not required to kill him since you aren't required to go see him.

Sounds like we still have a fair bit of rebalancing ahead of ourselves.
I suspect we may have to leave that for the next public release though because balancing things well can get very time-consuming.

 

[Lukovsky_]

I was playing the standard storyline and had level 40 like stated above.
It's a bit weird because when I wrote the first post about it which was moved to make this thread, I had level 86.. And the problem was that there were too many weapons of different qualities (and almost all of them were available, except the really low ones like regular sabers and cutlasses). Now the problem is that there is almost nothing to buy.

Anyway, it isn't Santos who is immortal; you are thinking of Blackbeard, but it is not required to kill him since you aren't required to go see him.

Well, Santos was immortal when I tried to kill him. I was able to kill 3 out of 7 bodyguards he had and the rest were immortal, including Santos.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

How did you get to that level? Cheatmode?
Possibly the game doesn't work very well when you basically skip a large part of it.
Consider using Fake Level Up instead.

 

[Lukovsky_]

Of course with cheat mode, I wouldn't have time to start a new game every day with all those fixes.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

True, that. Hopefully soon we'll get Beta 3.3 out the door and we can play properly for a bit longer.

 

[Grey Roger]

Well, Santos was immortal when I tried to kill him. I was able to kill 3 out of 7 bodyguards he had and the rest were immortal, including Santos.

Santos is supposed to be immortal, at least at first. You need to work for him for a while. In due time you'll get a chance to kill him, and you won't need a special weapon to do it.

As for limited number of blades: perhaps this is the "minlevel" mod at work again? As you rise in level, lesser blades become rarer or don't show up at all, and if you're as high as 86, perhaps almost everything is now regarded as too weak for you.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

As for limited number of blades: perhaps this is the "minlevel" mod at work again? As you rise in level, lesser blades become rarer or don't show up at all, and if you're as high as 86, perhaps almost everything is now regarded as too weak for you.

Very likely. That is actually a stock game feature as well.

 

[Lukovsky_]

Santos is supposed to be immortal, at least at first. You need to work for him for a while. In due time you'll get a chance to kill him, and you won't need a special weapon to do it.

As for limited number of blades: perhaps this is the "minlevel" mod at work again? As you rise in level, lesser blades become rarer or don't show up at all, and if you're as high as 86, perhaps almost everything is now regarded as too weak for you.

Not exactly. When I mentioned the problem of too many blades appearing (the first post in this thread) I had level 86. Now, when testing at level 40, there are almost no items to buy; from swords there are only French Court Swords and Hibernians. Other items disappeared as well as I mentioned in the earlier post.
So the thing that seems odd to me is that at level 86 there were so many items that it was even frustrating to browse through all of them but at level 40 the merchants have almost nothing. And no sign of the Russian/Polish sabers as well.

I will do more testing with the latest fix by going to different town's shops at different level and see if the problem is still there; maybe it was just a faulty installation this time?

 

[Levis]

Are you playing in another storyline now?