House value (bug?)

arakira · 2013-12-05 04:03:28

I read that the house value (on the house list) is the sum of the money in the vault plus the money carried by the wife. However I see a house in the neighbourhood which shows 1800$, but when I meet the wife inside it appears she is carrying 1865$. Maybe the large numbers are floored for the sake of visibility?

colorfusion · 2013-12-07 14:00:28

I think the values are floored and that the higher the value of the house, the greater amount this is done by. The idea is also to make it slightly harder to find your own home by the exact money you have.

Last edited by colorfusion (2013-12-07 14:01:37)

jasonrohrer · 2013-12-09 11:24:25

Yes, all values are rounded so that at most two significant figures are shown, and the rest are replaced with 0's.

48 => 48
538 => 530
25,343 => 25,000

This is done so that the more players we have, the harder it will be to find your friend's house in a very long list... even if your friend says "I have $1905," you'll have to search through a long list of $1900 houses.

ZenRose · 2013-12-09 13:02:13

Have you ever considered/tried not showing the house value? Maybe still sorting the houses by descending value still though. I think it would add more uncertainty/tension into some of the decisions to be made.

largestherb · 2013-12-11 19:45:10

ZenRose wrote:

Have you ever considered/tried not showing the house value? Maybe still sorting the houses by descending value still though. I think it would add more uncertainty/tension into some of the decisions to be made.

i like this

Simoon · 2013-12-12 10:46:19

largestherb wrote:

ZenRose wrote:
Have you ever considered/tried not showing the house value? Maybe still sorting the houses by descending value still though. I think it would add more uncertainty/tension into some of the decisions to be made.
i like this

No! Do you really want we all become paranoid?
... Well, apparently we are here for that

jasonrohrer · 2013-12-14 14:44:28

Whoa! This is a HUGE idea....

After all, in real life, you break in not really knowing what might be in the house that's worth stealing.

Still, I wonder about "blind" sorting like you're suggesting. Maybe sorting by number of deaths or something else? Also, if the value isn't shown, why should the other stats (attempts/deaths) be shown? It would be pretty cool to just have a list of names with no stats at all.

And it seems like there should be some way to "discover" that a house has a lot of money in it. You know... like the way rumors of hidden wealth lead to robberies (at least in the movies). So... maybe upon scouting, if you get close enough to the vault, you can mouse over for a value estimate? Well, but that would mean the value estimate would need to be in the protocol for the house check out, which means that people would just sniff the protocol to get that value without ever nearing the vault.

Hmm... actually, rumors could spread about a robber who has been successful in a bunch of houses. "Mr. Stevens just robbed 5 people this afternoon... I bet his vault is loaded". But it could be set so that you never know for sure.

Anyway, this would be a MAJOR change to the climate and strategy of the game.... and it's kind of late to be making major changes like that. I mean... we've been robbing houses based on their estimated value for 10 months now, and a bunch of aspects of the game are built around that (like leaving some money in your house to attract robbers for their bounty).

Thoughts?

largestherb · 2013-12-14 18:31:20

a list of names organised by wealth, but without any other identifying stats is indeed a big change, but i kind of like the idea a lot..

i always laugh kind of laugh to myself when i walk down a street and i see a cardboard box in someone's front garden that says SAMSUNG 1080P LCD SUPER COOL 60" TELEVISION or PLAYSTATION 4 or other easy to sell things in places like craigslist where a lot of people wont mind paying £200 cash for a ps4 with no cables or box.

also of course there are the very, very few dodgey people you invite into your home for innocent tasks (plumber, painter, plasterer, phone-person, probably some other professions that do not begin with p-people) who take a mental note of what kind of fancy items you have scattered around and either come back later or tell their cousin or .. you know, whatever.

there is a house across the road from me that was burgalarised five or six times in two years, i was even fortunate enough to see a movie-like scene of an alarm going off and some people bundling into the back of a white van that then proceeded to speed off, almost crashing into a poor learner driver.
one christmas they were robbed by the people who had installed their new windows - the installers had intentionally installed the windows in a way that the glass-unit could be easily removed from the outside!
i am not sure why their house was repeatedly targeted. it can't have been the same people each time, as the window-robbers were caught. surely they wouldn't return to re-burgle somewhere they got caught?

well i am a bit feverish and not really on-topic here, but a neighbourhood that consists of just some names with no graphical representation to try and guess a value from would be tricky. hmm. a tough one

ZenRose · 2013-12-14 23:30:07

I agree that it is a major change. I think that sorting by value would give an appropriate rough estimate, which I think is still important. Also that showing visits/deaths could help give ideas about how the house is doing but that they could be wildly misleading based what assumptions you choose to make about how to interpret the data at hand (which is awesome). Showing just the visits/deaths doesn't thematically make sense in terms of a robbery-sim realism check already so I'm not concerned about the dissonance / disconnect from reality increasing if the house value column was removed.

As I said earlier I mostly thought it might be worth considering because then it becomes harder to count the tools you think you need versus the known payoff and decide if you can break even/profit from the endeavour (or maybe I'm the only one that does that.)

dalleck · 2013-12-15 01:50:18

A couple of things...

jasonrohrer wrote:

Whoa! This is a HUGE idea....
After all, in real life, you break in not really knowing what might be in the house that's worth stealing.
Still, I wonder about "blind" sorting like you're suggesting. Maybe sorting by number of deaths or something else? Also, if the value isn't shown, why should the other stats (attempts/deaths) be shown? It would be pretty cool to just have a list of names with no stats at all.

This would even out the distribution of rob attempts between all houses. If sorting is based on attempts/deaths stat would it mean that a house jumps to the bottom of the list each time it is edited? It would make it interesting, as wealthy houses would be no better off than beginners at being 'ranked' on the list, and houses at the top would be truly established. If someone can create a house which withstands robbery attempts without any edits it would remain right at the top and everyone would know that while it may not be a wealthy residence, it certainly must be a tough maze. Which is thumbs up in my book.

jasonrohrer wrote:

And it seems like there should be some way to "discover" that a house has a lot of money in it. You know... like the way rumors of hidden wealth lead to robberies (at least in the movies). So... maybe upon scouting, if you get close enough to the vault, you can mouse over for a value estimate? Well, but that would mean the value estimate would need to be in the protocol for the house check out, which means that people would just sniff the protocol to get that value without ever nearing the vault.
Hmm... actually, rumors could spread about a robber who has been successful in a bunch of houses. "Mr. Stevens just robbed 5 people this afternoon... I bet his vault is loaded". But it could be set so that you never know for sure.

Could rumors be simply "John Lee McGreggor has died!" or "Mark James Spicer has murdered two innocents!" or "Patrick Wayne Little has committed robbery!". Then the players can put the pieces together. Perhaps just do an ongoing rolling update of what has happened since you last ran the game with 5 seconds between messages?

jasonrohrer wrote:

Anyway, this would be a MAJOR change to the climate and strategy of the game.... and it's kind of late to be making major changes like that. I mean... we've been robbing houses based on their estimated value for 10 months now, and a bunch of aspects of the game are built around that (like leaving some money in your house to attract robbers for their bounty).

Whatever happened to the second server?

Last edited by dalleck (2013-12-15 01:54:39)

arakira · 2013-12-15 06:45:04

What about changing the names of all your neighbours after you die? I mean, the houses would still there but every single player would see a different list of names. Added to some randomness in the list order (for example all neighbours within a 20% range could be randomly swapped in the list order) and a larger pool of players (after a steam release), this may discourage repetitive suicide runs or cooperative tries.
Every time you die and take a fresh start, it would be much more difficult to find that specific house on which you want to suicide run again. Also, finding the house of your "friend" where to drop your tools would take much more time.
Fresh life, fresh neighbourhood.

joshwithguitar · 2013-12-15 08:53:21

My biggest worry with getting rid of house values is that it would strongly discourage robbing as the payoffs would be random and mostly not worth the tools. This would lead to less bounty money in the houses which would make them even less worthwhile to rob and so things could really stagnate.

jasonrohrer · 2013-12-17 11:00:38

Yeah, Josh, that's the kind of stuff that makes me hesitate too.

Right now, the game has a pretty calculated feel, and it's always fair, which is really important. When you outsmart someone, you feel smart... maybe a bit lucky sometimes, but mostly smart.

I think that not showing house values would remove the calculation aspect and give the whole thing a lottery feel.

And the calculation stuff (like, what tools can I use to get into this house without spending more than the house is worth?) isn't totally dry. You have to study the house and look for the cheapest weakpoint. If the house is worth more, suddenly something that used to be a strong point becomes feasible. I think that's pretty cool.

ZenRose · 2013-12-17 12:03:16

Fair enough. I think that those are all good counterpoints. Thank-you all for the solid discussion.

arakira · 2013-12-30 02:28:54

Would it please be possible to see the value of the house? It is often useful to know, to check if my house is worth brute-forcing or what tools I could afford. Right now I have to sell all the items to see my house's value, and even with the "sell half" button checked it can be many clicks.
I would love it to be displayed on screen, or maybe a "sell all" button in the backpack window?

jasonrohrer · 2013-12-30 11:25:00

How about a SELL EVERYTHING button on the backpack/vault screen that sells everything you have in both vault and backpack? Then the Undo button could undo that with one press.

arakira · 2013-12-30 11:36:50

That would be perfect!

arakira · 2014-01-25 09:26:19

There may be a problem with the rounding algorithm, because sometimes I see 3 significant figures, the 3rd one always being 1. For example, I see a house with a value of 27100$ right now...

jasonrohrer · 2014-01-25 17:00:53

AHA!

I tracked this one down.

So... if you leave tools in your backpack and then leave your house for a long time (and don't rob anyone), the tools are "force-returned" to your vault for you (so you can't hide tools in your backpack while you're out of the game).

When that happens, the value of the tools are added to the value estimate for the house directly, WITHOUT recomputing the proper rounding (it's done with a single SQL query that just adds the saved value of the tools right to the value of the house).

Of course, those two amounts may have been rounded at different scales. Like... 2100 worth of tools (rounded) added to a 22,000 house (also rounded) will make a 24,100 final value estimate.

The Castle Doctrine Forums

#1 2013-12-05 04:03:28

House value (bug?)

#2 2013-12-07 14:00:28

Re: House value (bug?)

#3 2013-12-09 11:24:25

Re: House value (bug?)

#4 2013-12-09 13:02:13

Re: House value (bug?)

#5 2013-12-11 19:45:10

Re: House value (bug?)

#6 2013-12-12 10:46:19

Re: House value (bug?)

#7 2013-12-14 14:44:28

Re: House value (bug?)

#8 2013-12-14 18:31:20

Re: House value (bug?)

#9 2013-12-14 23:30:07

Re: House value (bug?)

#10 2013-12-15 01:50:18

Re: House value (bug?)

#11 2013-12-15 06:45:04

Re: House value (bug?)

#12 2013-12-15 08:53:21

Re: House value (bug?)

#13 2013-12-17 11:00:38

Re: House value (bug?)

#14 2013-12-17 12:03:16

Re: House value (bug?)

#15 2013-12-30 02:28:54

Re: House value (bug?)

#16 2013-12-30 11:25:00

Re: House value (bug?)

#17 2013-12-30 11:36:50

Re: House value (bug?)

#18 2014-01-25 09:26:19

Re: House value (bug?)

#19 2014-01-25 17:00:53

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