TheUnoNameless

I see where you are coming from, but $$$ rewards don't HAVE to involve a classic RPG economy system. Finding a hoard of gold is exciting. Looting goblin's pockets for 5 gold pieces is terrible. One of the possible solutions is to avoid mundane economic interactions - paying 3 gold for meal, etc, unless poverty is the entire point of the game (which it almost never is). Instead of giving out gold in tiny batches, it can be given in "chests" basically. You finished a job, you got a "chest". Buying that new shiny magic item costs 3 "chests". Buying 10 healing potions costs 1 "chest".

I think it goes back to implementation. Combat is usually the focus of the development, while crafting often feels like tacked on system, boring and unrewarding. Some would say it's better than nothing, but I don't think feature bloat is good.

I thought a lot about this today, started discussing in the original topic, but I'll move here now. It's a great discussion, but I think it should start with going back one extra step and asking the more rudimentary question - "WHY does economy have to be a necessary part of a roleplaying game?" which can be distilled even further to "what makes economy fun?" I know it is a genre convention, but sometimes conventions have to be re-evaluated, otherwise we will never innovate.

Hoarding money is not an issue, it is a symptom. The issue is that the entire gold economy doesn't work properly as a system. Think about it, in real world, dealing with money is almost never FUN. It's something we have to do to get to things that are fun - like binge drinking. Trying to shoehorn a boring real-world convention into a game about epic adventure is the actual problem.

- Consumables, but only as long as they are meaningful and interesting. Not +1 damage, but some cool effect that creates a new tactical situation. - Stronghold customization and unlocking "side quests". Basically have a little adventure that requires investment to unlock. - Interacting with game world - guilds, political systems, bribes, etc. - Hiring an NPC, as long as it's a cool NPC, not generic "mercenary" with no character. What I DON'T want to spend money on: - Magic items. Objects of power should not be sold, there's nothing interesting or heroic in shopping, no matter how expensive the item is. - Item repair. I hate the idea of interrupting the adventure to run to town and repair. Ugh.

This seems to be overwhelming statement so far. "I like getting gold, but I don't like spending it, especially on consumables". Again, let's try to put genre conventions aside and seriously think WHY do we need gold in game to begin with? Could it be replaced with some less distracting and more intuitive gameplay system? Let's say we need to track character's wealth to allow for an option of bribing - sure, sounds cool, but this doesn't require building up entire gold economy! You can just make a parameter "Wealth" that goes +1 when you find a treasure and -1 when you have a major expense. Cap it at, say, 5 (can't carry around more wealth), mission accomplished. No accounting, no gold sinks, no loot, clean and simple.

I think you can distill that "trends" bullet point to one: * Don't like time sinks for the sake of time sinks Actually the "I don't want to buy artifacts/nothing to spend gold on" bit got me thinking. Isn't the whole gold economy thing kinda unnecessary in an story-based adventure game? I don't mean open-ended sandboxes like F:NV or Skyrim, I mean games like KOTOR or Baldur's Gate. Shopping was never really heroic or interesting. It distracts from a story and introduces the whole bunch of issues into the game: How to make gold valuable? How to make sure it's not more valuable than actual Dragon Hoard? How to avoid the infamous D&D syndrome where magic items cost more than castles, yet are sold in every other store, and adventurers carry wealth of nations in their pockets? Looting gold from corpses is probably the most un-heroic thing RPG characters do, yet the genre convention clings to it like *cough* to Velcro. I think the underlying question should be "What purpose does gold economy serve in my story/game"? I know it's a major genre convention, like inventory, so I can see how players might be reluctant to step away from it.

This is the problem, you are comparing an MMO to a Single-Player game. In MMO, it's a viable choice to either grind dungeons or participate in crafting. Single Player game should have "dungeon grind" option to begin with! MMO is persistent and rewards time investment, neither of these things is true for single player games. EDIT: In the same way, money sinks aren't needed in SP, story-based games. You decide how much gold will be in game when you create it. There's no continuous influx, unless you have procedural content like Skyrim. Single Player games don't have economies to balance, so they shouldn't have "gold sinks", they should have items for sale that give value to gold.

I always struggles with the idea of crafting in single player games. What purpose does it serve? If I can craft better gear than what I find on adventures, treasures feel unrewarding. If I can craft generic items, very quickly crafting becomes obsolete. Same with durability - it pursues realism, but not only does it not actually 'feel' realistic (patched up broken armor should not be as good as brand new), it ends up a minor annoyance, distracting player from adventuring to run to the village to repair. Baldur's Gate 2 actually had great "crafting" system precisely because it wasn't really a crafting system. Artifacts that you crafted were unique, extremely powerful, and required you to trek across the entire game to collect the components. Crafting one actually felt like an achievement in both story and gameplay. I also noticed that two out of three crafting skills you listed are mainly producing consumables. I really hope you guys learn a lesson from Infinity engine games and elder scrolls games regarding consumables - unless you do them absolutely right, most players simply won't use them. I always ended up hoarding a trove of potions in BG, simply because most had questionable impact, took time to use and didn't make enough difference. This was ESPECIALLY the case for Skyrim - I think I ended up selling 90% of the potions I found. I couldn't see any visible effect of that +10% ranged weapon damage potion, so I'd rarely waste time on it. Single Player game needs different approach to crafting than MMO. Instead of using crafting to create generic items, integrate it into story. Instead of providing marginal benefits (+20% Frost Resist, etc), make potions rare, but give them visible, tangible impact on an encounter. A potion that instantly melts one of the non-special enemies. A potion that makes a character immune to some form of damage. Basically my point is, don't repeat the mistakes of other games with crafting, make it AWESOME!