Problem

Some players may like the randomness of shopsanity, but not the illogical behavior (both gameplay-wise and story-wise) of a seller being able to have a very obvious bad deal, and call it a "special offer".

• Gameplay-wise: wasting a shopsanity space in an illogical way may be "fun" for some, but not for others. You may want to add more value to shop offers, and make collecting rupees more important for your gameplay.
• Story-wise: if you buy it, you're stupid; if not, the seller is stupid. Why does someone have to be stupid?

Currently, the workarounds only partially solve this and/or have undesired side effects:

• Using "affordable" settings (10 rupees) affects important items too.
• Using plando/json is possible, but only to disable things entirely, e.g. "!Junk" or "!R*" to disable Recovery Hearts and Rupees in "special deals".
• Or you'd have to specify/restrict all special deals, defeating the purpose of Shopsanity being random ...

Solution

I propose a setting "No obvious scams" in Shopsanity. It would limit the randomly assigned prices with a maximum, based on the logic below. It doesn't need to change the random distribution, just cap to a max after assigning what would be the random price. It applies these invariants:

1. Rupee prices cannot be more than what they're worth.

   Can't sell a Blupee for 50 rupees. What's that, sentimental value?? Maybe a collector's rupee??

2. A repeatable purchase must be cheaper than any repeatable purchases of bigger quantities of the same item available in the same location.

   If 30 arrows can always be bought for 60 rupees, then 10 arrows can only cost 59 or less.

3. A special deal must be cheaper than any repeatable purchases of the same item (and of bigger quantities of the same item) available in the same location.

   If 30 arrows can always be bought for 60 rupees, then a special deal of 30 arrows can only cost 59 or less. Another special deal of 10 arrows must also cost 59 or less.
   Note that it's fine for the special pack of 30 be cheaper than the special pack of 10 because both can only be bought once. Only the repeatable purchases impose a limit to other prices.

Same location above can mean the same shop + all shops in the same area. So, with entrance randomizer off, that would be all 3 market shops together, and both Karariko shops together. If this is too complex to implement, then at least limit prices in the same shop.

Of course, this should be a setting, because players may also find enjoyment in the absurdity of obvious scams.