all good suggestions, altough problems arise in several respects. Mainly having to do with the game world in which the game taxes place. The world is combination of elements of fedual japan and norse mythology. There is a distinct seperation betweent the peasents and the nobility. For one the peasnet econmey is essentially a barter based system. While most do posses money, its normally a very small sum of many saved away for emergancies. The peasenst pay a land tax which amounts to about 70% of their crops or production. This tax goes to the nobels who generally have vast reserves of cash which they spend on luxuries. There is a third middle class which consists of mainly of artisians and merchants. Who supply goods to both peasents and nobels. They also act as intermideries since a nobel would never meet with the peasents. So if the peasents are in need of something they would take their potiental to the town elder who would pass it along if they felt it had merit to the local lords clerk who then handle the matter as nessity required.
1)Taxes - So, there are fees in the larger cities for but they consists of merchants licences, export and import fees. While the in the villages there are no taxes unless you own land. There could be unoffical taxes levided by local bandits but the player can deal with those in their own way. They can even been the source of those unoffical taxes should they they have the extra npcs. As to the matter of the guard charging you a fee for carrying a sword, that wouldn''t work since the fact that you are carring sword raises your presence stat(I might call it respect instead but for now its presence) so the guard while make way for you. Since owning and carrying a sword means you are person of respect, wealth and power.
2)magic as currency - That wouldn''t work either since there isn''t magic in the traditional sense in the game. There are incantations which is more ritualistic form of magic, it requires foci(specific artifacts), regents(items consumed during the ritual), time, and concerentraion. Its also a powerful factor and a successful incatation will have a major impact on the outcome of battle. An example of an incation is summon storm, the caster summons a mighty storm over the battle field gusts of wind blow enemy arrows of track, rain creates mud and smuthers flames and lighting bolts strike down near the enemy. It takes a number of turns of inturpted chanting to summon depending on the current weather conditions also its the summoner has to keep chanting to remain in control of the storm. If they loose control it becomes a regualar storm and hampers both sides equally.
3)Things to spend it on - well there should be lots to spend it on. Also in terms of weapons only basic weapons will be available off the rack, so you could goto a smith and buy a dagger, spear, or axe. But if you wanted a quility item such as sword you would have to commssion it from the smith. Either supply the materials and money to have the weapon made. Or give him a larger supply of money to buy the material himself. The player can also craft there own items if they have the knowledge and tools.
4)Thieves attack - this could work. I could increase the likly hood that bandits and criminals would seek you out bassed on what your percived wealth is.
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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project: Ambitions Slave
In game funds.
That might also be a good reason to curb your own wealth. In Escape Velocity, if you became incredibly powerful and/or rich, bounty hunters would start to track you. It''s all well and good to have the finest ship in the game, but when you look behind you and see three just like it powering up their laser arrays you know you''re in trouble. For that reason, it''s actually easier to get through that game if you refrain from amassing wealth or conquering planets.
quote:Original post by TechnoGoth
I''ve noticed that in most games there is a trend to give the player more money then they can ever spend. Thus making money meangless and providing making it so the player can the maxium amount of all the best stuff. But is this a good thing? I personally feel it isn''t. So my question is how would players feel about being forced to but in an effort to earn money in game? This combinded with the player faced with recuring cost such as lodging, supplies, item and part maintence.
A major concern I''d have is if a job looked like a real job, as in Ultima Online where you had to mine or chop trees to make money. You can turn any task into gameplay if there are risks, choices and resource tradeoffs that lead to different outcomes (take Paperboy or games where you served beer or made hamburgers).
You can either have a balanced economy, or one which advantages the players (and ends up boring because you max out) or one which advantages the game world (which becomes frustrating).
I think you should ALWAYS have what you need to play the game at a basic, albeit diminished level. Look at FPS'' for this principle: Almost all give you a default, low power attack, just in case you run out of ammo.
If you don''t do this, you may end up with situations like the one I experienced with Diablo: I thought I could play a pure Rogue and put no points into magic, then encountered monsters that did massive magical damage; since the dungeon above them was empty, I had no way to play the game anymore. (imo, games should never give you the option to unwittingly fail by making uninformed choices).
btw, I didn''t see it, but how about tithing and guild membership fees as money sinks?
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Just waiting for the mothership...
I didn't read the entire thread, but I am catchin on some thoughts here.
I think the biggest concern here is not to introduce a new system to rebalance the condition (like the thieves encounter, or taxes), but how you acquire and spend the money.
Currently most RPGs have their Stone Golems have 1000 gold in pockets and the giant bettle next door keep 200 gold to purchase more webs. Generally speaking, monsters don't carry money, money don't have any value to them. However certain intelligent monsters or certain kind of monsters that has interest in glistening objects such as goblins, gremlins, or trolls may keep some. So, you don't get a random amount of money just by looting corpses of giant rats.
I am thinking of some sort of hunting job system. Player would visit a local guild, and the guild would assign a job to the player to kill 5 wolves that have been roaming Bob's backyard. When you kill the wolves, you would collect their fangs as proofs to the guild. You have 5 fangs, you did the job and get the reward.
Somebody mentioned that weapons available in stores mostly sucks. In some RPGs that's true. However I have played some games that does a great job on this. Ishar 2 only have weapons/armors in stores. You don't get a +50 long sword in a treasure chest you found inside the cave across the field. So if you want to upgrade your weapon, you must go back to town and buy them there. The powerful weapons cost your arms and legs. You normally get 200 gold for each monster you kill, and the monsters do not respawn unless you leave the map. And the powerful weapon costs 28000 gold each and the powerful armor costs 40000 gold each. And there are 5 people in my party. So the situation was pretty much as described, I spent my time most on killing monsters, but it worth the effort. The joy of using the most powerful weapon was there. But I was never be able to buy 5 piece of them, at most 2, way too expensive.
Anyway, my point is, the income and expense must be balance . If you allow random encounters and each monster carries a bag of gold, that is just the same as unlimited income. The only way to balance it is to have something that costs a ridiculously amount of money (seek the FF elements thread, I mentioned something "This item costs 1000000 gil and I have 500000 gil"). But I think it's just an excuse of a bad design. "Oh I see that players can have 500000 gil up to this point. Let's put an item that costs 1000000 gil!" OR, create a system where they will always spend money (since they will always get more money), such as food, sword maintenance, band-aids, new boots, clothes, etc.
In Zelda, the money you can earn is limited to the amount of money you can have. Although technically you can find pennies everywhere, you can't carry them all out with you. And the good thing is, you only use those money for certain things. You don't use them to buy weapons. You can have 0 expense if you want as long as you have all the necessary equipments (and those are free btw), but some quests still require money (or at least an item that costs you money).
[edited by - alnite on April 1, 2004 3:22:26 AM]
I think the biggest concern here is not to introduce a new system to rebalance the condition (like the thieves encounter, or taxes), but how you acquire and spend the money.
Currently most RPGs have their Stone Golems have 1000 gold in pockets and the giant bettle next door keep 200 gold to purchase more webs. Generally speaking, monsters don't carry money, money don't have any value to them. However certain intelligent monsters or certain kind of monsters that has interest in glistening objects such as goblins, gremlins, or trolls may keep some. So, you don't get a random amount of money just by looting corpses of giant rats.
I am thinking of some sort of hunting job system. Player would visit a local guild, and the guild would assign a job to the player to kill 5 wolves that have been roaming Bob's backyard. When you kill the wolves, you would collect their fangs as proofs to the guild. You have 5 fangs, you did the job and get the reward.
Somebody mentioned that weapons available in stores mostly sucks. In some RPGs that's true. However I have played some games that does a great job on this. Ishar 2 only have weapons/armors in stores. You don't get a +50 long sword in a treasure chest you found inside the cave across the field. So if you want to upgrade your weapon, you must go back to town and buy them there. The powerful weapons cost your arms and legs. You normally get 200 gold for each monster you kill, and the monsters do not respawn unless you leave the map. And the powerful weapon costs 28000 gold each and the powerful armor costs 40000 gold each. And there are 5 people in my party. So the situation was pretty much as described, I spent my time most on killing monsters, but it worth the effort. The joy of using the most powerful weapon was there. But I was never be able to buy 5 piece of them, at most 2, way too expensive.
Anyway, my point is, the income and expense must be balance . If you allow random encounters and each monster carries a bag of gold, that is just the same as unlimited income. The only way to balance it is to have something that costs a ridiculously amount of money (seek the FF elements thread, I mentioned something "This item costs 1000000 gil and I have 500000 gil"). But I think it's just an excuse of a bad design. "Oh I see that players can have 500000 gil up to this point. Let's put an item that costs 1000000 gil!" OR, create a system where they will always spend money (since they will always get more money), such as food, sword maintenance, band-aids, new boots, clothes, etc.
In Zelda, the money you can earn is limited to the amount of money you can have. Although technically you can find pennies everywhere, you can't carry them all out with you. And the good thing is, you only use those money for certain things. You don't use them to buy weapons. You can have 0 expense if you want as long as you have all the necessary equipments (and those are free btw), but some quests still require money (or at least an item that costs you money).
[edited by - alnite on April 1, 2004 3:22:26 AM]
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