My gf came up with this idea, I honestly dislike it.
If the price is too high it makes the player grind more, too low and its almost pointless..
I could understand a shopping key or even randomly appearing shops but the idea of paying makes me scream wtf.
So what are your guys questions, comments or ideas?
Paying to enter a shop?
Here's a twist. You get to go into a shop one time for free. Just to see what's in it. You can even buy something that first time. But the second time, you pay a small fee. Let's say, 1G. Now if you leave the shop without buying anything, the price goes up to 2G. However, if you do buy something it stays at 1G.
But the real question is this: what exactly are you trying to accomplish with: paying to get into a shop/shopping key/randomly appearing shops?
To expand further on Aplha's words, what he's asking you is what's the context.
let's define a few things first:
A-randomized shop
B-some sort of "key" to enter shop
C-pay to enter shop
Now you have your three different ideas, let's put it in the context of a game.
Dungeon Crawl: A and B OR A and C
RPG: A OR A and B OR A and C
Fighter: A OR A and C
As you can see, defining the genre first and inputting what would work in the genre is a sure way to figure out whether your idea is worth expanding.
Now, moving onto what you asked. Is it worth paying money to enter a shop? Yes, and no.
Again, its genre wise, but I'm going to stick with a dungeon crawl since it is the easiest type to explain.
Paying money to enter a shop, for a dungeon crawl, is in itself a useless idea seeing as money is such a huge factor in those games, you will either have to, as you said, go too high a price or too low. Yet, it's like anything. It doesn't work because you've only found the core of an idea, the expansion of that idea and how you approach it is what will define its uses.
Say every time you pay to enter a shop, the price doubles. So strategically, you'll have to calculate how much money you have, and if its worth going into the shop right now. This will cause a lot of strategic gaming, unfair deaths, hate/love towards the game etc.
Another idea would be that you can either use a key, or pay money. Yet if you pay money, you have to take a roll that defines how much money is wasted. So if you don't have a key on you, and you take a chance, you could end up losing all your precious gold.
So yes, your gf is both right and wrong at the same time. Paying money to enter a shop is, in itself, utterly useless. Expanding the idea is what makes it a worthwhile mechanic in your game.
Or to reword what I said: "What problem are you trying to solve?" or "Why do you want that feature in the first place?"
Why change the formula? You don't see games doing it. It does not make sense. You're penalizing the player to go into your shop.
Why change the formula? You don't see games doing it. It does not make sense.
You're in the Game Design and you're asking "why change the formula?"? Part of the point of Game Design is push if not break out of the box. And yes, this particular feature "doesn't make sense" because there's no context. Not because he's trying to do something akin to having grass to fall up.
I don't know about paying to enter a shop, but I can think of something similar.
In GW:Nightfall, there was a end-of-campaign vendor who sold unique armor. This vendor wasn't in a town or some persistent place, but was actually at the end of an instanced area that was only accessible once you defeated the last boss of the campaign.
This was done in a way to prove that you've beaten the campaign (or at least that's how I saw many used it), and to increase the difficulty in obtaining what was supposed to be a somewhat rare armor. On top of that, since the vender required a unique item to get his armor, it also made it impossible for someone to just trade that item to another player so that other player could then get the armor.
In essence, it made it so that there's no way to cheat your way to get the armor.
It's not quite similar to paying actual gold, but you could probably use that to similar effect. Some high level auction houses require payment to be access IRL, and it's one way to sort of show your status in a game anyway. Though for this to be useful in any way, you would have to make the shop that requires payment to enter actually sell something unique and unobtainable anywhere else - otherwise it becomes meaningless.
I don't think any other way would work that well - for example having all shops be pay to enter makes it just a meaningless and unrealistic gold sink, that's likely to just annoy players, while you could potentially achieve the same effect just by raising prices of the items in the shops.
I'd prefer having different shops buy/sell for different prices and have a black market where after earning trust or something unscrupulous individuals will offer to fence your goods or sell you some "hot" items for cheaper than the store. Maybe the stores only buy for half what they sell for while the other individual offers 60%-70% when they buy but they only need a few items at a time (randomly generated what they want?)
"Wirt" is an NPC from Diablo 1 that would charge the player to even look at the single item he had for sale, but it could be higher quality than the regular store had available. Maybe you'd get lucky, maybe not. It was a form of gambling, if you were really hard up for a significant upgrade and money wasn't a concern, making it an alternative to farming for drops, or when the regular quality gear for sale just doesn't cut it.
As the others pointed out, it can work within the context of your game. If there's a reason to do it, even if it's not always reasonable, you can create situations where the players decide whether to pay and having that control could improve their experience. Can they get a discount there, making it worth it for large purchases? Are premium items available that aren't normally for sale? A wider selection so they don't have to travel to six different places?
You could perhaps set it up as a festival, or bazaar. There could be an admittance fee, but none specifically for any one particular shop.
You could however, have shops/merchants who cater to specific classes, or those who have certain skills or are a certain level. The black market idea that Imbarns mentioned would be cool too. It's always great when shop owners will buy, as well as sell.
This topic is closed to new replies.
Advertisement
Popular Topics
Advertisement
