Haggle affects starting money for TFN 1.1

Another mighty fine idea I’ve been toying with for awhile. What if you’re starting money, the money you get in the desk of your new haven, was dictated by your Haggle feat score. Well I wrote the python script last night and put the new entities in the pawnshop_1 map and tested it. To my delight it worked perfectly (after some finagling).

So now, the money you get will be based like this… 1 or less, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or higher. As of right now the highest starting Haggle you can have is with a Salubri w/ 6. And of course the lowest is with any character at 1. The money given will range from $50 to $500 depending.

I like this new idea and will include it in TFN 1.1.

It could be fun, especially for fresh players! New game and... Wait, wherethat $500 came from? on their faces.
But of us, old veterans, I expect to see a lot of Haggle-heavy characters...

This in combination with all quest money rewards being Haggle based suggests that the best thing to do with any character would be to decide how high you want your Haggle to ultimately be and then rush to reach that value as quickly as possible.

My feelings are mixed. On one hand it seems like a system that encourages powergaming, but on the other hand it does make Finance sound a lot more useful than in vanilla.

Now, I'm not one to predicate a decision based on conjecture, so what I need to do is create a second Bloodlines install and try out TFN for myself before I embarass myself with false assumptions.

Hm, the idea is sound, though I think the range is a bit large. 500$ starting money is a lot over the top, imo. And I'd start at 75, not 50.
Zer0, if you go for so much haggling, all the effort you put into the Osebo skins would be wasted, becaus nobody will want to play a fighter character, who needs at least the computer books, and never can afford them...
I think, I stated this before, rpobably more than once. Imo you are absolutely right that haggling in vanilla is about as useful as a pair of shoes for a goldfish. But the way you do it makes it the only worthwhile skill in the game.

-

After some thought I decided that Childe is right and that a range of $50 - $500 is too high. After looking at the other reward values in TFN I think the amount is a bit steep. However I still feel that $50 for Haggle 1 is appropriate but I would like to increase the amount by $50 per Haggle point instead of $100.

So the range would look like this...

Haggle 1 = $50
Haggle 2 = $100
Haggle 3 = $150
Haggle 4 = $200
Haggle 5 = $250
Haggle 6+ = $300

What do you think about a non linear approach. Something like:
Haggle 1 75$
Haggle 2 100$
Haggle 3 125$
Haggle 4 175$
Haggle 5 250$
Haggle 6 350$
A non linear approach could be interesting for other haggle opportunities, too. The higher the feat, the more xp you have to spend, so making the reward bigger is a good idea imo. And it would make spending all the money for the medium haggle books more worthwhile.

-

You mean base it on a percentage scale instead of a flat rate? Interesting idea, I like it. I'll play around with it when I get time. For now it works and that's whats important. Once the busy-ness of 1.1 calms down we'll revisit this. I'm trying to cram in 3 new quests in 1.1 otherwise I'd jump on this now.

I've been thinking about vendor haggling tables that reflect more on the needed xp for quite some time, too.
Perhaps something like this

haggle	xp	xp total	player sell	player buy
1	0	0	25	178
2	+3	3	28	175
3	+3	6	31	172
4	+4	10	35	168
5	+6	16	41	162
6	+8	24	49	154
7	+9	33	58	145
8	+12	45	70	133
9	+12	57	82	121
10	+16	73	98	105

player sell and player buy are % of item value. And if I use a table like this, I'd probably increase the player sell value for weapons from about 20% of item value to 50%

-

Dragatus wrote:

This in combination with all quest money rewards being Haggle based suggests that the best thing to do with any character would be to decide how high you want your Haggle to ultimately be and then rush to reach that value as quickly as possible.

My feelings are mixed. On one hand it seems like a system that encourages powergaming, but on the other hand it does make Finance sound a lot more useful than in vanilla.

Now, I'm not one to predicate a decision based on conjecture, so what I need to do is create a second Bloodlines install and try out TFN for myself before I embarass myself with false assumptions.

VtM:B has always been about powergaming, from the start with those damn books and character rewards.

How long was it till you saw walkthroughs telling you how many points to spend in what, when so that you could get each reward (whether from person or book) as soon as it was available. And who could blame them? If you didn't play that way you were giving up gobs of XP (over 100 I'm sure counting all the high level books).

What I fail to see is how it works out in RPG-terms as Mercurio had already planted the money in the drawer by the time the player character arrives in his/her apartment.

mouser9169 wrote:

Dragatus wrote:

This in combination with all quest money rewards being Haggle based suggests that the best thing to do with any character would be to decide how high you want your Haggle to ultimately be and then rush to reach that value as quickly as possible.

My feelings are mixed. On one hand it seems like a system that encourages powergaming, but on the other hand it does make Finance sound a lot more useful than in vanilla.

Now, I'm not one to predicate a decision based on conjecture, so what I need to do is create a second Bloodlines install and try out TFN for myself before I embarass myself with false assumptions.

VtM:B has always been about powergaming, from the start with those damn books and character rewards.

How long was it till you saw walkthroughs telling you how many points to spend in what, when so that you could get each reward (whether from person or book) as soon as it was available. And who could blame them? If you didn't play that way you were giving up gobs of XP (over 100 I'm sure counting all the high level books).

And I would like to see the powergaming purged out of the game so I can focus on roleplaying.

@ Dragatus: Do you have any good ideas how to purge the power gaming?

-

Dragatus wrote:

And I would like to see the powergaming purged out of the game so I can focus on roleplaying.

As someone who DM'd table top games for quite a while, I'm not so sure the difference is as black and white as you seem to perceive it.

Is it really any different than in the "real" world where a person will join certain clubs to look good on a college application or take certain courses to look good on a resume? Powergaming!!!

What's wrong with roleplaying a vampire who's been thrust into a strange new world and wants to become as powerful as possible in order to stay alive?

They tried their best, but by the end of Hollywood, the game becomes what all other RPG's do: One big quest to find new and intersting ways to kill stuff. Tzimiche, Hunters, Sabbat, Zombies all get to die horrible and spectacular deaths at your hands. And you get to earn sweet, sweet XP for bringing them to their doom.

Anyway, if you want to "purge" the "powergaming" out:

1) Go to vendors.txt and take out any books or occult items that are sold.
2) Under /cfg, go to skills.cfg and make the NPC damage equal to the PC damage for all weapons (or at least all guns). (ie: change the 8/2's to 8/8's)
3) Go to the baton file and triple the damage (since only police should be using that thing).
4) Under /items, go through the guns and raise the price of ammo by at least 3x.

Four simple changes, and you'll find much of the "power" gone from the gaming, and you get to role play a fledging kindred fighting, hiding, and praying to stay alive.

You can also go through experience.txt and lower some of the larger XP awards if you still think that's too much.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

@ Dragatus: Do you have any good ideas how to purge the power gaming?

-

Well, I figure making all the attributes and abilities about equally viable would be a good start. Of course it can't be perfect because the endgame is all about combat and you can't do much about it. But we can work with the early game.

CE and TFN have actually both already done much in this regard, by making previosuly useless abilities more useful. I'm just afraid TFN could go into the opposite extreme and make Haggle too important.

mouser9169 wrote:

Dragatus wrote:

And I would like to see the powergaming purged out of the game so I can focus on roleplaying.

As someone who DM'd table top games for quite a while, I'm not so sure the difference is as black and white as you seem to perceive it.

Is it really any different than in the "real" world where a person will join certain clubs to look good on a college application or take certain courses to look good on a resume? Powergaming!!!

What's wrong with roleplaying a vampire who's been thrust into a strange new world and wants to become as powerful as possible in order to stay alive?

They tried their best, but by the end of Hollywood, the game becomes what all other RPG's do: One big quest to find new and intersting ways to kill stuff. Tzimiche, Hunters, Sabbat, Zombies all get to die horrible and spectacular deaths at your hands. And you get to earn sweet, sweet XP for bringing them to their doom.

Anyway, if you want to "purge" the "powergaming" out:

1) Go to vendors.txt and take out any books or occult items that are sold.
2) Under /cfg, go to skills.cfg and make the NPC damage equal to the PC damage for all weapons (or at least all guns). (ie: change the 8/2's to 8/8's)
3) Go to the baton file and triple the damage (since only police should be using that thing).
4) Under /items, go through the guns and raise the price of ammo by at least 3x.

Four simple changes, and you'll find much of the "power" gone from the gaming, and you get to role play a fledging kindred fighting, hiding, and praying to stay alive.

You can also go through experience.txt and lower some of the larger XP awards if you still think that's too much.

I use the word "powergaming" as roughly equivalent to "minmaxing". It is the act of developing your character stats in the most efficient way to make yourself as powerful as possible. It's about finding and following "the best path".

The problem with powergaming is not that players try to make their characters powerful. That is only natural and I do it myself all the time. The problem with powergaming is that the designer made one path that is notably better than all others.

And I mean that in a general sense, not as a critiscism in regard to TFN or CE. In fact I need to praise Zer0Morph and Childe of Malkav for already doing a lot to purge the powergaming out of the game.

Basically when I say I would like to purge powergaming out of a game I mean to say that I don't want there to be one way to build your character that is more effective than all the rest. Instead there should be a number of different and about equally viable paths to develop my character.

Again, I know we can't achieve the perfect result because the endgame is what it is and you'll need to develop for combat sooner or later. But if it turns out that all the experienced players are creating high Haggle characters, then we probably have a problem.

Dragatus wrote:

Basically when I say I would like to purge powergaming out of a game I mean to say that I don't want there to be one way to build your character that is more effective than all the rest. Instead there should be a number of different and about equally viable paths to develop my character.

Again, I know we can't achieve the perfect result because the endgame is what it is and you'll need to develop for combat sooner or later. But if it turns out that all the experienced players are creating high Haggle characters, then we probably have a problem.

Well, the game itself actually did a pretty decent job of this. In the vanilla game, melee and guns were both viable paths (wesp's mods have pushed the game further toward the "guns" end of the balance as time has gone on). Unarmed was even useful, though I don't know if you could finish the game with it.

If you can get a hold of Tess's patch for the game, that gives a pretty good idea of what the unmodded game can be like, sans almost all the bugs. I'm not sure if Tess is even around or hosting it anywhere anymore. I'm sure I've got a copy of the next to last patch (the one right before the "gold" version) on my computer somewhere.


Here's one thing I've tried to put in to compensate for all the haggle money: make the "good" items - the body armor, tal'maheara blade, flamethrower and a few others I messed around with to be in their class, desert eagle and spas primarily, all available for sale, in the $3000-$5000 price range. Those numbers are just a starting point, and honestly are probably still a bit low. I also up the cost of ammo to $25-50 a clip.

To really do it right, you should take a character and run him through the game, standard like, but whenever he would buy an item or ammo, gift it to him instead so he keeps the money. Do this two or three times and you should come up with a pretty good handle on just how much money a character can expect to accumulate in playthrough. Then work backwards from that number to figure out what to price things at.

Ideally, you shouldn't be able to buy everything you want - one of the things Troika was good at was putting meaningful choices into the game: You want to sleep with Jeannette? You can't save Tourette. You want the body armor? Kiss your ghoul good-bye. And that last one isn't meaningful from a mechanical perspective, but they put so much depth into the Heather Poe character and your relationship. At least compared to most NA video games. Man, I wish someone would buy the rights to Xenosaga and finish that story - one of the best I've ever seen in a video game (as long as you've read some Nietzche and Jung and Gnostic texts so you can follow the references...), but I digress...

That would probably be the way to balance haggle. I may do that, but I'm a bit burned out on this game right now. Picking up EQ2 again for a while. I'd run it with three characters - haggle 0 (or 1, whatever the minimum is), 5, and 10. Carry out all the guns you can from places like the empire hotel, lotus blossum, and the beach house before you pick up the astrolite - oh, and it actually takes more time to drop them all in the lobby/on the beach/wherever and pick them up again than to simply run to a vendor each time, unless you're collecting different kinds of things, in which case you wouldn't need to drop them... Maybe once with running everything, once running some stuff, and once just picking up what you can carry.

Nine playthroughs at least through the start of Chinatown. At that point you pretty much are what you are and have what you're gonna have. Coincidentally, that's often the spot I'll stop playing, since I've seen the end of this movie...



And since I'm sitting here drinking and rambling, here's some unbalancing, but very fun (at least for a laugh playthrough) things you can do:

1) Turn off masquerade violations - in stats.txt set min and max both to zero. Then play as a Gangrel or Setite in warform. It's The Final Nights, who cares if mortals see you. They should tremble and fear before your awesome presence anyway. If you want to keep it challenging triple the damage on the police batons and glocks since criminal violations are still in place. (You'll actually see the Masquerade Violation message, but you're counter will never increase).

2) Set the attack speed on the Steyr Aug down to about .01 and give it a clip of 100. Watch things burst into flames before you even know they're there. You'll swear the bat drops you off right in LaCroix's office

3) Music: tracks I like - replace crypts_combat with Rockapella's Zombie Jamboree and twisted_and_disturbed with Led Zeppelins When the Levee Breaks. For the hubs After Midnight (the bluesy plugged version), Sundown, She Caught the Katy, and One Night In Bangkok are some of my favorites. Any good Ramone's song works for a combat file, you may have to trim the first few seconds.

Quote :

Here's one thing I've tried to put in to compensate for all the haggle money: make the "good" items - the body armor, tal'maheara blade, flamethrower and a few others I messed around with to be in their class, desert eagle and spas primarily, all available for sale, in the $3000-$5000 price range. Those numbers are just a starting point, and honestly are probably still a bit low. I also up the cost of ammo to $25-50 a clip.

Without looking at all the values this is an idea I really like. Getting money is one thing, spending it on books only another one. Basicly you get some positive options rather than getting forced to use a certain skill build.

I know Childe of Malkav (and possibly some others) have mentioned that Haggle is a must have in TFN, and without it your character will be underpowered, but I disagree with this. I personally think Haggle is very balanced especially when it comes to buying Lore books because of the need for Research to even use them. You can choose to invest greatly in Haggle but at the cost of neglecting other extremely important skills like Security and Hacking, or Seduction and Persuasion.

Haggle in TFN is very balanced in my opinion, not overpowered, and is certainly not required to make a powerful character. You can easily build an uber monster character with a Haggle of 1.