Should gold have weight?

[Intoxicated_Ant]

Should gold/currency have a weight associated with it? If you think it should, would you associate it with the difficulty level of the game or have it apply in all circumstances?

 

Personally, I would like gold to have a weight associated with it. I would like to see it applied no matter the difficulty level of the game. I would also like to see an option for rewards other then gold, such as expensive jewels or standing in the community. Another feature could be each companion you have gets a share of the gold you find. So that Orc hideout you just raided may have gotten you 1000gp, but between the five companions with you, the PC only get a certain share.

 

What are your thoughts?

 

EDIT: Added no weight option to poll

Edited September 16, 2012 by Intoxicated_Ant

[The Sharmat]

Why is there no "Gold should not have weight" option? A firm negative is not the same as being indifferent.

[Humanoid]

I'm generally opposed to anything that increases the complexity of inventory management. If necessary, the masses-and-masses of currency issue could be just explained away by abstracting your 'wealth' counter as "equivalent in standard currency worth of portable riches", like diamonds and stuff I guess. But even that to me is probably unnecessary.

[The Sharmat]

Yeah, dropping gold off in a vault feels like busy work to me.

[Intoxicated_Ant]

Why is there no "Gold should not have weight" option? A firm negative is not the same as being indifferent.

 

Fixed that for you, oversight on my part

[Darji]

Yeah gold is one of the things that should not have a weight. Anything else sure.

[mrverbal]

Personally, i think that the whole inventory management idea is bunk; yes, it's unrealistic that I can carry infinite things, but who cares? I find it hard to credit that anyone every opened up a game of anything and thought "OH BOY! INVENTORY MANAGEMENT!!!"

[JadedDM]

I recently played Pool of Radiance (the old one, from 1988), and gold had weight in that game. And it was pretty annoying. I was constantly weighed down by money through most of the second half of the game.

 

If money is to have weight, we definetely need some kind of storage for it. Like a bank, or a chest at home, or something like that. Otherwise, I think it will cause more frustration than anything else.

[Seagloom]

I'm torn on this. On one hand, I don't want to deal with the inconvenience lugging gold around would entail. On the other hand, it could lead to interesting dilemmas looting dilemmas. Slaying a monster at the bottom of a ruin and then having to decide whether to carry out a pile of gold or taking those possibly one of a kind, but nevertheless mysterious magic items could be interesting. Of course a situation like that would only work if there was no going back afterward. Otherwise you would just take the loot then come back for the gold later.

 

The pack rat in me says weightless gold though.

[Covnam]

I don't think gold should have weight. Doing so would just add tedium for no reason. Sure it might be more realistic, but not for any worthwile reason. If it had weight, then they would just as likely have a place to store all that money or just put in items of more value that weigh less, which just gives more work for the player to do to manage it without and benefit outside of making it more realistic. This is easily something where fun/gameplay overrides realism imo.

Edited September 16, 2012 by Covnam

[Muzrub333]

Absolutely. Everything should have weight, and bulk. Encumbrance is too often overlooked. No way should I be able to run around with 15 swords, (1 for every occasion), a few sets of armor, etc etc. That being said, we really need a house, (or at a minimum a bank), to store all that sweet loot. I also think we need a few types of currency. Let me take those 100gp to the bank for a few Plats, or a gem.

[Tale]

It's a low priority thing for me. If gold has weight, then they need to either have a very tight economy or banks, regardless of difficulty level. It's a neat feature, but I'm not sure it's worth the extra effort.

[Volourn]

Yes, it should have weight, but it's not a game killer. btw, What extra effort would be needed?

[Badmojo]

No, just no. this is one of those things were realism crosses from fun to annoying. I personally hate inventory managment, and the fact you run out of room. I would like to see something done, like only NEW items get weight added, each of the same item gets stacked on and only counts a fraction of the weight before. It is so annoying running out of room and having to go to a town, drop/sell everything, come back to where you were, and do it all again.

[Tychoxi]

I chose according to difficulty (though I would prefer independent gameplay options instead of a global difficulty setting) because personally I have become too lazy to want to deal with Inventory. I can barely handle my OCD when it comes to wanting to pick everything up and travel back and forth a zillion times between loot containers (ie. crates and etc) and "containers" (ie. NPCs and monsters) and merchants...

Edited September 16, 2012 by Tychoxi

[Tale]

Yes, it should have weight, but it's not a game killer. btw, What extra effort would be needed?

I was referring to economy and banks. If gold has weight, then equipment costs have to be considered. Can't have equipment that costs more gold than people can carry. And if people are going to be tossing money away to keep their weight down, then that's also a concern for what they can or can not buy later on.

 

Maybe it's not nearly the hurdle I imagine it to be. I've never dealt with it.

[elfbarf]

I'd rather it not weigh anything; I'm all for having to manage your inventory but having currency take up space/weight is just a pain in the ass.

[WDeranged]

Gold should only have weight if the world supports a system of managing it, just having a "bank" isn't good enough, what's the point in that? Now maybe if there was a whole questline revolving around the bank or economy in general than maybe it could be something cool, having your hard earned resources threatened etc.

[Volourn]

Tale; That's true. Good point. But, that would make the game economy system a little more complex which, for me, is a good thing.

Edited September 16, 2012 by Volourn

[LadyCrimson]

I'm indifferent, simply because I'm not into "reality" that much (fantasy games have all kinds of unreality to begin with, after all), as well as not wanting to micro-manage inventory more than necessary. However I wouldn't be opposed to it being an option you can turn on/off or something.

[Humanoid]

Thinking about it more, I'd go a step further and eliminate the concept of weight altogether. Instead implement some broad restriction on the bulky stuff you can carry: armour is always worn (had a discussion yesterday in making armour a non-item), and a character can carry a primary and backup weapon at most (Witcher 1 sort of did this). The idea then is that no restrictions need to be placed on managing the weight of various little knickknacks. No more shuffling stuff around just so you can pick up that little potion without getting encumbered.

 

It's something worth experimenting with at any rate, though if it turns out to be an unfun mess I'll be the first to recant.

[riderofsmaug]

I'd like that gold should have a variable weight level, but it would make inventory management cumbersome unless handled properly. If gold has weight, then we should get a vault in our house(if it hits the stretch goal, *fingers crossed*), where we can dump stuff off regularly, or a bank.

[Karkarov]

Heck no! This is a world of magic and such and my bog of holding weighs the same wether it has 1 gold coin in it or 1 million gold coins in it. Money having weight is just one of those annoying things that just get's in the way of fun. Long story short, inventory weight management mechanics doesn't add any "entertainment" to the package for the vast majority of players. If it doesn't make the game more enjoyable to the majority of players there is no real reason to include it.

 

Limiting inventory space is cool, just this isn't the way to do it.

[Volourn]

"Heck no! This is a world of magic and such and my bog of holding weighs the same wether it has 1 gold coin in it or 1 million gold coins in it. Money having weight is just one of those annoying things that just get's in the way of fun. "

 

Weighted coins makes things like bag of holding even cooler and more valuable.

 

 

"Long story short, inventory weight management mechanics doesn't add any "entertainment" to the package for the vast majority of players. If it doesn't make the game more enjoyable to the majority of players there is no real reason to include it."

 

Nonsense. Plus, stop speaking for others. Stick to speaking for yourself. Don't pretend to know what Timmy Of The Block wants or finds fun.

 

I personally find weighted coins and varied coins FUN. they makes games MORE enjoyable.

[Grimnir]

Making gold have weight crosses the line into tedium. Inventory management may be fun and novel for the first few hours but I expect to sink dozens of hours or more into this game and I do NOT want to get bogged down with this level of micro-management. Systems to alleviate this mechanic (banks/vaults/squires) are similarly silly and make the concept pointless to begin with.

Edited September 16, 2012 by Grimnir