Card Shop?

[mtgrares]

Go Dennis.

I didn't add the card shop initially because I didn't want to deal with money or card prices.

[mtgrares]

Moved topic from "Developer's Corner" and merged with the previous card shop discussions. (This is the most admin stuff I've every done, ha.)

[DennisBergkamp]

I think when having a choice between a rare, multiple commons or multiple uncommons still wouldn't solve the problem of maintaining the price list though, we would end up with the same imbalance. At least with the price list, we can make exceptions for cards that are ridiculously overpowered, and jack up the price for those.
Also, the price list is in fact very easy to change (since it's just a text file after all), it's a bit trickier to maintain though (since new cards would have to be added, but this is also the case with pics).

I think the trading binder idea is really cool, but it might be a bit tricky to code. And it's something that could be done in addition to the card shop.

[Rob Cashwalker]

The price list can be semi-auto-updated via a download interface similar to card pictures.
For that matter, check this out:
http://www.magictraders.com/pricelists/current-magic
Maybe we can work with this format, average the prices for cards with multiple printings.. apply some variation for each visit the the card shop.... The URL is static, but the data is dynamic.

[Chris H.]

Hmmm, when forge starts up it creates a list of all of the cards found in cards.txt and will assign a rarity value to any of these cards provided that the cards are listed in one of the three rariy files.

The code can then assign a price of:

10 to every common,
50 to every uncommon and
200 to every rare.

Forge can then look for a file in the quest folder named "prices" and if it is found can then read in the data. The card prices in this list would replace the values calculated by the above menthod. The prices file would not need to include each and every card … instead it just contains the name and new and adjusted price for a small sub set of the total cards included in forge.

The code can then vary these prices card by card by + or - 5 to 25 %. This will help to create the illusion of having a separate price for all of the many cards included in Forge.

In essence, the price list is optional and it only contains replacement price values. At first, it would only inlude a few cards in this list. As time passed, we may find that someone(s) in our user base finds the time, interest and inclination to make additions to this list.

Someone may volunteer to provide adjustments for the various counter spells. They might raise the cost of these cards by, lets say x3 to x5. At a later time someone might provide adjustments for the various other types of threat removal spells, x7 to x12 ?

This way there is no need to add in the new cards and prices to the price list for each new beta release.

[Chris H.]

This way there is no need to add in the new cards and prices to the price list for each new beta release.

`
To further my idea:

I copied Dennis' list and used my spreadsheet to sort by price. This allowed me to easily delete the numerous cards which still have the default price of 10, 50 or 200. This left me with the cards that have had their price changed from this default value.

With my recent idea, the prices list would at this time only contain these entries:

Black Lotus =120000
Ancestral Recall =110000
Mox Sapphire =110000
Mox Jet =100000
Mox Ruby =60000
Mox Emerald =55000
Mox Pearl =55000
Balance =15000
Wrath of God =15000
Godsire =250
Gatekeeper of Malakir =120
Wild Mongrel =80

[apthaven]

Here's my list on some overpowered cards and my price lists for them. (Feel free to modify, if needed)

Bazaar of Baghdad - 500
Baneslayer Angel - 2000
Black Vise - 50000
Counterspell - 1000
Dark Ritual - 500
Darksteel Colossus - 2000
Demonic Tutor - 5000
Land Tax - 1500
Library of Alexandria - 500
Lightning Bolt - 300
Master Transmuter - 5000
Necropotence - 10000
Path to Exile - 500
Regrowth - 1000
Sol Ring - 25000
Stuffy Doll - 5000
Swords to Plowshares - 1000
Tarmogoyf - 1000
Tinker - 500
Tolarian Academy - 1000
Vampire Nighthawk - 120
Yawgmoth's Bargain - 15000

You might also want to give Planeswalkers more value too. They are of course worthy additions to most decks, so players who buy them should pay more definitely.

[DennisBergkamp]

Chris - yes I was thinking something similar (except I'll probably just read all the values from the pricelist first, then whatever card doesn't have a number yet, gets a default value assigned according to rarity). I think it's good to have a full price list though (even if currently almost all of the values are just the default 10, 50 and 200), because it gives a lot of flexibility, anyone can change these values.


Apthaven - these cards are definitely stronger than most other cards, and we should change those values... however, comparing some of the cards in your list to the real life prices, they're not that close (Black Vise is only $0.50, whereas Baneslayer Angel is around $50, Tarmogoyf $60+ and Bazaar of Baghdad over $200!)
This brings up a question, should we follow the real life prices as closely as possible, or come up with some kind of model ourselves based on the usefulness of a card in the realms of Forge? I think both options have a valid case: real life prices reflect the power of a certain card quite accurately in most cases (since there's more demand for them), and it would be easy to assign values (we'd just assign the dollar value times ten or so). But on the other hand, in real life certain cards get overpriced a bit because they're T2 (Tarmogoyf, Baneslayer Angel) or because of sentimental value (?) (Dragon legends) or because they combo really well with certain cards (I'm guessing Bazaar of Baghdad falls into that category - I'm not even sure if the cards it combos with are in Forge yet - apart from Squee maybe?)

So I don't know, those are things to consider...

[DennisBergkamp]

Currently I do have a (seemingly) fully functional shop in quest mode, so far this works:

- A small amount (based on number of wins) of credits is made after each win.
- Cards can be bought (selection is based on number of wins) or sold (at anywhere between 25% - 60% of full value, based on number of wins) at the card shop.
- Selection of cards offered at the card shop get renewed between every match (restarting forge will show the same list of cards).

I'm sure we need some balance tweaks, not just in the price list but maybe also in the amount of credits earned/sell prices... I'll upload it to SVN so you guys can play around with it

[Rob Cashwalker]

The point of Forge is to play powerful cards that you rarely would ever have the opportunity to play with in paper. If we over-value the most powerful cards just to limit their availability, then we might as well eliminate them from the card pool in quest mode entirely.
If the card shop doesn't have a given card in stock during a given visit, then it doesn't matter how expensive it is anyway. Use the MOTL real life prices as the baseline, scaled by ten, varied by a random factor, and call it done. Best thing is we don't have to maintain the list.

[Chris H.]

I downloaded r573 with the new card shop and have just started a 10 match "test" quest. I like the new card shop and purchased three cards to help my starting deck. I went BW since my starting pool had a Voracious Hatchling. I purchased a Kismet to go along with the deck. Why not, it might help to slow down the computer.

I understand that I will never have enough money to buy that mox that I lust after … but I guess that we could still see one as a random rare if we get lucky. I like what I see so far, and I realize that for a first revision somethings may change at a later date.

[DennisBergkamp]

The point of Forge is to play powerful cards that you rarely would ever have the opportunity to play with in paper. If we over-value the most powerful cards just to limit their availability, then we might as well eliminate them from the card pool in quest mode entirely.
If the card shop doesn't have a given card in stock during a given visit, then it doesn't matter how expensive it is anyway. Use the MOTL real life prices as the baseline, scaled by ten, varied by a random factor, and call it done. Best thing is we don't have to maintain the list.

This is true, however, some of the hardcorde quest guys plays hundreds of games (even though the quest length is only supposed to be 10 or so ) Moxen should be easily buyable at that point (if you're lucky enough one shows up in the card shop). Selling random crap rares would net a lot of credits.

There has to be some way to easily convert the pricelist on magictraders.com into a usable format.

[Huggybaby]

A lot of work has gone into pricing just recently for Magic Album:
viewtopic.php?f=32&t=2324
So don't reinvent the wheel if you don't have to.

You might want to get a hold of our sponsor MTGMintCard too, he knows all about pricing.
viewforum.php?f=60

[Rob Cashwalker]

There are two formats on MOTL, comma/whitespace-delimited and pipe-delimited. Probably, just tweak the code that reads card-pictures.txt.

[mtgrares]

Obviously pricing is very complicated (which is why I didn't do it in the first place). It is hard-to-impossible to make everybody happy because short and long quests have vastly different goals. Maybe later the shop prices can be split up, one list for short quests and another list for long quests.

This reminds of me of the problem of which cards to include for sealed, draft, and quest and the ultimate solution was to include all of the cards.