If you want to create a github account, you can head on over to FLARE's code page and file the issue there.  I went ahead and confirmed this issue on the latest build, though, and I'd be happy to file it on your behalf.

Filed!  

Believe it or not this is actually an intentional feature.  It srves to prevent some inventory shenanigans, i guess.

That reminds me, we can make this an option to turn on/off in the engine.

I think it's silly to force the player to trek back to town to play pawn store simulator. Just convert items to gold instantly and keep playing.

I prefer having the option to sell without returning to town - the constant trekking back and forth to sell, along with Inventory Tetris, made the original Diablo almost unplayable for me.  I'd personally rather be fighting than juggling inventory.

Also, in a game where the economy is largely dependant on selling the loot you come across there is no such thing as stuff you don't need.  Yeah, you could pass up that Awesome Mace that you can't actually equip, but if you do you'll never be able to afford the Godlike Sword from the corner vendor..

I started thinking about this issue after playing Torchlight a while back. In that game you can load your pet dog/cat with items and send them to town to vendor items automatically. This helps keeps the action flowing.

I think in Diablo 3's alpha/beta there was a feature to turn items into gold, but it was removed before release.

Anyway, I like the feature of being able to pawn items directly from the inventory. It saves a ton of time, and I think players will get used to it quickly.

If the "magic" nature of this is disturbing, we can probably make a lore explanation for it. If we want to be fancy, we can say there's a transmutation item that converts things to gold. Or if we want to be simple, assume the hero stashes these vendor trash items and sells them automatically when reaching town. But this doesn't really interest me. It can simply be a feature as far as I'm concerned.

Probably not for Flare 1.0, but I might convert this into a "disenchant" style feature. Some items might break down into gold, but others might break down into wood or steel that can be used to craft new items.

Note, I might make a drag location for pawning items right on the inventory menu. Instead of having to use the shortcut, someone could drag an item onto this icon to pawn it. I also want a similar "send to stash" shortcut to the inventory menu. I think we'll have both of these in place for 1.0.

MAGIC HAS NO PLACE IN FANTASY GAMING. /sarcasm

But seriously, I wouldn't mind, you know, even a one-off explanation from an NPC.  "If you ever feel overencumbered, don't forget your Advanced Phlebotinum, which can turn useless clothing into gold!" I like my lore to be internally consistent.

I rather liked Dungeon Siege's solution, which was that there were vendors spaced across your quest such that you had to do some inventory management, but not so much that it was terminally annoying.  It wasn't always perfect, but this is Dungeon Siege we're talking about here.

Diablo 3 removed the feature because it's solved by that games infinite free Town Portal.

@ClintBellanger: You could always give your protagonist a demon/fairy/whatever sidekick to explain the magic pawnshop effect.  As a bonus, it's good for exposition and comic relief, especially if your hero is the 'silent protagonist' archetype (see: every Zelda game since Ocarina).

You could also impose an appropriate penalty for the instant sale - "I'll take care of that for you, for a 25% cut.  If you don't like my fee, feel free to walk your stingy ass back to town and pawn it yourself."

I'm with MoikMellah on this one. I think there should at least be some convenience penalty for that. Sometimes the trekking back to town is part of the gameplay. If not, why not just incorporate the following condition:

• If item is better than the item player is already using then
• drop item for player to pick up
• else 
• drop gold instead.

even more convenient! No need to hassle with that annoying "convert it to gold" button on all the items the player is never going to use.

Define "better"?

Maybe I'm willing to sacrifice damage for some spell effect?
Maybe I want a slower but harder hitting weapon over a faster but weaker (per hit) one?

If the game decides what you should wear, you might as well remove equipment alltogether...

Good point.

With items that have more than one stat, "better" is to be determined by the player. They have to weigh the bonuses and drawbacks of any given piece of equipment.

We could replace "better than the item the player is already using" in that condition with "an item the player can use at all". So equipment that is, say, only usable by a specific class (not the player character's class either) is never going to be used by the player, therefore the game shouldn't bother dropping it and should instead drop gold.

However, you could argue "What if the player wants to trade that item to an allie who IS able to use it". I think my point is that there is a tradeoff between convenience vs. choice. The more convenient you make it, the less choice the player has. Some choices are just not worth it and convenience is better, but some players draw the line at drastically different places than others.

"If the game decides what you should wear, you might as well remove equipment alltogether..." This is an excellent (albeit extreme) demonstration of what I am talking about. Makes it REALLY convenient for the player, but eliminates all choices relating to equipment.

Having no ability to covert items to gold, on the other hand, presents the player with even more choices: Is this big bulky peice of armor worth the money you'll get from dragging it back to town to sell it? No? then don't pick it up. Inventory space vs. sale value is an equivalent sacrifice to "Maybe I'm willing to sacrifice damage for some spell effect?"

I'm not neccessarily saying everything must be dragged all the way back to the merchant if the player wants gold for it, just that the level of convenience vs. choice that the player may want should be considered. I feel that making things convenient without any drawbacks means it isn't a choice. Who the heck would NOT take advantage of a convenience with zero drawbacks? A game with fewer choices is more like... a choose-your-own-adventure book where you don't really get to choose your own adventure.

Hoarding items to drag back to the vendor isn't a fun mechanic. But seeing new loot drop is a bit addicting, even if it's trash. (Arguably this is bad design; addicting is not the same as genuine fun).

Dropping auto gold isn't a terrible idea, but I rather the player make that decision.

Embraaaace the magic sell-anywhere mechanic. I will make an engine option to toggle it though.

I wasn't arguing for hoarding and dragging. I was arguing for a player's ability to weight the benifits and drawbacks of two options. If you can insta-sell at a reduced rate like MoikMellah was suggesting(convenience fee) that is a choice. Stingy players have the choice of trekking, lazy players have the choice of selling at penalty rates.

If you can insta-sell at the same great rates as the vendor, why have a vendor at all? I guess to buy stuff from them... but no one is ever going to sell stuff to them, so that feature is then unneccessary.

Edit: "that feature" = the feature of being able to sell to a vendor, not the sell-anywhere feature.

@MoikMellah: Off-topic, but are you implying Link was a vocal protagonist before Ocarina? :D

The vendor screen is nice for buyback. And serves as a reminder to sell anything that's been taking up space in the inventory.

It would be easy to add an instant-sell penalty (e.g. instant-sell gives 10%, vendors give 20%). We'll see. I think it's a bad idea to even add the option. If a gamer has to stop and consider whether to instantly sell or hold onto an unusable item, I'd feel like I failed as a game designer.

"If a gamer has to stop and consider whether to instantly sell or hold onto an unusable item, I'd feel like I failed as a game designer."

Really? ...I... Do you feel like you failed in any of the other places that the player has to stop and consider some decision? I don't mean that snarkily. I'm truly curous how producing a situation where the player has to make a gameplay decision could be seen as a design failure.

Is it because holding on to an unusable item is clearly a bad decision? It will only take one mistake for the player to never hesitate on that decision again. Same as any other obvious bad game decision.

Decisions related to the core gameplay (combat, questing, character advancement) are great.

Most other decisions are bad. Example: right now the death penalty in Flare is 50% gold. An optimal player would hoard items, and only sell them when they're ready to buy an item (to minimize gold loss). This exposes a terrible design. A player has to break immersion to decide whether it's best to hold or sell an item that is useless to them. At what point does the player stop and think "wait, what am I doing? This isn't fun". So the death penalty needs to be changed.

Player choices should be fun and interesting, that's the basic guiding principle.

Gotcha. That makes sense... I think my confusion stemmed from the fact that I consider inventory management a component of core gameplay.

Also, great example. death penalty could be 50% gold + 50% items not equpped? Ooh... harsh. I see your point.

My opinion is going to be controversial here, but it's worth sharing.

There are things that players love, that are addicting, but are poor game design. I think it's borderline unethical to waste a player's time that way.

Obvious example: slot machines. All the colors, flashing lights, sounds, random chances, etc. are perfectly tuned to addict the player. But is a player having genuine fun? They're getting the same addicting chemical releases, but they could be doing something more enriching. Something with substance.

I decided early on to not support Lootris in Flare. That's a term from Diablo where items take up more than one slot, and the player would often spend time rearranging their inventory to carry a few more items (stacking them perfectly like Loot-Tetris, thus the term). Some people find this really "fun". I actually like the larger item icons for art reasons. But just because it appeals to our obsessive-compulsive personalities doesn't mean it's a wise thing to have in a game. If a player doesn't have to obsessively rearrange their inventory, where will they spend time instead? More questing, more combat, more dialog -- elements with vastly more substance.

I think wasting a player's time is a "cardinal sin" of game design. Perhaps I have the luxury to believe that because I'm not trying to addict people to my game, or make a living off some free-to-play model. I just think it's unethical, and I wish we could break gamers of bad habits. We shouldn't be tempted to pour 1000 hours into our favorite game, collecting every item and unlocking every achievement. That player could be experiencing new games instead, new core gameplay with nice substance.

I don't plan on supporting Achievements in Flare. I think it artificially extends a game's playtime, when a gamer could be out enjoying other things (games or otherwise). I don't plan on supporting New Game+ modes either -- again, artifically extending a game. How about we have games that are a few rich hours and done.

I don't begrudge games that do Achievements and New Game+, as I can ignore those options easy enough. But if a game's design is up to me, I really enjoy trimming the fat.

I agree re. addicting features that are not also fun and enriching are unethical.

I dislike lootris, moreso in the diablo franchise than in the might and magic franchise. I think it wasn't so bad in M&M because the inventory was nearly 4 times larger than diablo games.

I don't usually go for achievements myself, but they sometimes encourage the player to seek out the very enriching features they might have otherwise missed.

New Game+ I can't see a problem with. If the player liked the game so much that they want to try it from a new perspective, newgame+ gives them that opportunity. The alternative is nothing. no additional playing. I agree than newgame+ is not as good as more real content, but I don't agree that newgame+ is worse than nothing. :)

wasting player's time is wrong. At least wasting it unneccessarily. A faraway place that is exotic and a challenge to reach is utterly ruined if you the designer decide that all that intervening distance, with monsters and challenges, is just wasting player time so you cut it from the game or add instant-teleport-to-wherever-you-want-to-go features. Once they reach it, sure, offer some quicker travel options.

By all means, trim the fat... just be sure you aren't trimming all the challenge along with it.

@Clint: I think you may be making the mistake of taking your personal tastes and extrapolating them to laws (even moral principles?)  It's problematic to denegrate players who might enjoy things like inventory shuffling or making a cost-benefit decision on an item, or question the veracity of their feelings.  Honestly, I think it's much more immersive to have to decide how much stuff you'll take than having a bag that can carry 46 polearms as easily as 46 daggers.  Some people don't dig that.  Clearly, it should never be the central focus of the game, but that's a separate issue.

Honestly, I think the issue of a player constantly killing monsters and schlepping loot back to the vendor is not really a game design issue; it's a game balance one.  If the game is properly balanced, there just won't be any need for any extra grinding to proceed.  This isn't an MMO; there's nobody to compete against except the environment.

And anyway, to me the idea of a single central area with vendors is kind of problematic anyway; having the hero constantly recrossing his own path doesn't make for much of an adventure.  Having the quest be more of a journey lets you place vendors in the hero's path, hence no extra schlepping.  That's my personal preference, anyway.

Hmm... Redshrike's journey/several-vendor-outposts suggestion does seem to eliminate a lot of the problems. With proper balance, the player should fill up their inventory just about the same time they reach the next town. No trekking back to vendors, only continuing forward with the journey. Some players will seek loot and grind more than others, resulting in overfull inventories before the next outpost on the journey, but that is the player's preference I guess.

Clint is definitely approaching game design from what I see as a more artistic point of view - think of how much better Dickens might have been if he hadn't been paid by the word (begin flame war with Dickens lovers....  now).  As far as moralizing goes, Clint is far from the first to approach game design with morals and ethics in mind.  

Braid designer:  http://www.smh.com.au/news/articles/ethical-dilemmas/2007/09/19/1189881577195.html  

Or a google search for "Freemium Ethics".

As far as being immersive goes, I have come, I think, at least 90 degree around since this thread started.  It's sometimes a bit overrated - let's face it, who can carry 46 polearms (or even two?) in the first place?  And why does the vendor want your crappy second-hand polearms that stink of goblin, anyways?  Who's he going to sell them to, Other Hero?

For my part, I think I'd like to disable remote-selling in Polymorphable, just because a) there's very few items to take up inventory space, and b) one returns to town between every dungeon, anyways, as it is the center of the Polymorphable universe.  It seems like a pretty sound decision for FLARE, though, and I think a player would acclimate to it pretty fast, just as we've acclimated to unquestioningly killing every goblin man, woman and child, expecting vendors to buy ALL our crap, and the given likelihood that our entire world takes less time to travel across by foot than Central Park does.

In Flare's current alpha demo retreading ground is definitely an issue. When we're designing the final maps for Flare 1.0 I plan to add teleport waypoints spaced out just right to take the player back to town when it's appropriate. We'll try to avoid dungeons that end in dead-ends, instead having some that loop back to the beginning (I tried making the Ancient Temple a circular route for this reason) or that end with a teleporter point back to the action.

Obviously it'd be better to have several towns. It's just too much art to create at this point. Future tile sets will better support having multiple towns/cities in a game. This first game will hopefully get us enough momentum to build more ambitious projects down the road.

I agree with what's been said after my last post.

Especially on addictive gameplay not (always) equaling fun gameplay.

I think that when we design dungeons, we should keep in mind the total amount of possible loot the player can find on one run. They should be able to pick up every item without worrying if their inventory is full (assuming they enter the dungeon with a nearly empty inventory).

As Clint said, we'll use looping dungeons and the like to make it easy to return to town. Now, there are two reasons the player should want to return to a town:

1. To turn in quests for rewards
2. To possibly buy rare items from leveled merchants with random inventories

Neither of these cases mention the player selling items. But if we properly space the chances the player has to return to town, selling/stashing items during these visits will become second nature.

As for the question of "why do merchants want to buy my junk?", I think we can imagine they break down your old items to trade to people can make new ones. I believe Clint has even mentioned the possibility of letting the player themself do the break down -> craft task. No idea if that should actually be in a game like this, but its an interesting concept.

I think it's fair to say that, in a world where merely travelling from one town to another means being beset by goblins, there will always be a steady market for weapons.

Ahahaha.  I'm staying home.

Hahahah. The merchants are probably selling all your old crusty weapons back to the goblins.