Should gold have weight?

[Umberlin]

I do think there should be a limit of some sort, even if it's not a weight limit, because in my mind it's important players think about what they carry around. Sort of like that player in a PnP game that always loads himself up with Alchemist's Fire never thinking of what happens if he gets set on fire. I do think he should have to think about that in a PC/Console game as well, it would definitely make you play more carefully, and I like systems that encourage players actually having to think about how they're building themselves, where they're going, what they're bringing and what they're planning to with all of the above when they get where they're going. Even how they're moving.

[Cantousent]

There should be a limit, and that limit should be decided by the setting. Even so, there are some players who will go out of their way to scrounge every bent piece of copper they can because they've got a cash fetish. I just don't want to end up worrying about making extra trips because of the money in addition to everything else. Maybe Obsidz could find a way to make it less burdensome, but why not just forget it as an issue and put their resources to things like art, level design, and characters?

[BasaltineBadger]

It would be just another meaningless layer of micromanagement, you could solve every weigh problem easily by dumping all extra gold in your house or exchanging it for gems.

[Gargantuan]

Could the fantastic world of Eternity have some sort of advanced currency system where paper money is possible, which itself has some weight, or have an abundance of fantastic malleable materials that have no perceivable weight and fashioned into coins? If gold has weight, maybe there should be a bank or something where hoarding of wealth can be done with convenience.

[KateM]

In BG2 you'd carry around tens of thousands of gold coins at a time. Gold was cheaper than dirt. In reality, a one ounce gold coin is worth about $1850 today. If inflation has not run so rampant in PE that a loaf of bread costs 5 gold coins, the weight should never be an issue, just because you'll never have enough coins in the first place.

[BasaltineBadger]

In BG2 you'd carry around tens of thousands of gold coins at a time. Gold was cheaper than dirt. In reality, a one ounce gold coin is worth about $1850 today. If inflation has not run so rampant in PE that a loaf of bread costs 5 gold coins, the weight should never be an issue, just because you'll never have enough coins in the first place.

 

Gold is probably much more common hence less valuable than in real world.

[KateM]

That kind of defeats the purpose of using it as money.

[Umberlin]

On the subject of the worth of Gold, who is to say that Gold is the precious material in the first place? What if the monetary system concentrated around something else? What if it didn't exist at all and the game used a trade mechanic instead? Giving items a sort of 'worth' in and of themselves not attached to money but in how one item would trade against another item, or how several items, possibly even particular ones, might be needed to trade for another. While not necessarily the most likely scenario . . . it's something interesting to think about none the less.

[Cantousent]

Yeah, I'd like more barter and less coinage myself.

[PsychoBlonde]

The real problem, for me, with gold having a weight, is that you need absolutely STUPID amounts of it to buy anything magical. That, and there aren't any in-game mechanisms for turning it into stuff that ought to be more readily portable, like gems and jewelry. Gems and jewelry in games are often LESS portable because they take up the same amount of inventory space as a full suit of plate armor.

 

If you're going to do one thing (heavy cash) in the name of realism, then you ought to do the FULL realism, which means a.) lighter trade items being readily available, b.) a barter system of some kind, c.) tiny, very valuable items taking up very little inventory space, d.) items with minor magical improvements not costing thousands or tens of thousands of times what a basic item costs, etc.

 

Failing all that, I'd rather they just treated gold like what it is: a numerical scorecard.

[LokiHades]

No.

 

My problem stems from a pack-rat standpoint and an inconvenience standpoint.

 

I like to pretend my adventurer is paying out of a bag of holding specifically designed to hold currency

[Luckmann]

While I'm a stickler for immersion and realism, I do believe that gold having weight would just add meaningless tedium to the game. It serves no practical purpose.

 

In fact, I would prefer it if wealth was entirely divorced from "gold" and instead abstracted into "Wealth" or similar, representing the total amount of Gold, Silver, Gems and whatever handy barter-things you happen to have on your person(s).

[chrisrobin]

There are much better ways to handle inventory management.

 

If it were going to go that route then it should be easy to manage to reduce as much tedium from the process as possible while still giving a satisfying amount of immersion. I enjoy money weight for immersion rather than inventory management, so I'd go with trading for higher value currency as long as it isn't a huge hassle to do so.

 

Possibly going more towards the Fallout barter system route of having low weight, high value items (drugs and ammo) become how you make big purchases with actual currency just being used to round off the edges of a trade.

 

Edit: Essentially, what Luckmann suggested.

Edited September 19, 2012 by chrisrobin

[PsychoBlonde]

Yeah, I'd like more barter and less coinage myself.

 

Ever play Gothic? You bought and sold 90% of your items by bartering, there was very little "coin" in the game, with one exception . . . you almost always had to buy armor upgrades with cash. Which meant you were always trying to get your grubby paws on whatever actual "cash" was available and then never, ever spend it.

 

It was an interesting system although they did not have any weight management whatsoever.

[Vin]

I'm definitely indifferent on the subject of gold having weight. It buys me stuff; I will hoard it.

That being said, the only thing I'm really curious about is where adventurers keep their gold. Five thousand gold pieces? Really? Where would you put that?

[dlux]

I am a packrat and I like to sell everything that I can find. If I have a few THOUSAND gold coins which are weighing me down AND there is also no possibility to deposit these coins in a bank, then I would find that extremely annoying and tedious.

I am indifferent if weight for gold should be included in the game or not, but it might be an interesting mechanic if it is done right and does not become a tedious micromanagement chore.

 

I like to imagine that the gold coins are pretty small and weigh like 3g a piece or something - so no huge pirate dubloons. So, if you have a few hundred coins then they would weigh like 1kg all together.

That might work. The only problem is that you would probably need an inventory showing weight in 1/1000kg or in grams. E.g. a gold coin weighs 0,003kg and a sword weighs 4kg. Together they weigh 4,003kg = 4003g.

[Jarmo]

Well maybe it should, but then there should be other coins beside gold and a hassle of exchanging them somewhere.

And, what I've not seen in any game, 100 pounds of gold should be, like, an enormous, gigantic, amount of wealth.

 

An ale shouldn't cost 1GP and wine 3GP, rather that 50 grams of gold should be good for a years worth of boozing!

 

Lot's of games start with copper, silver.. blah, blah and in the later game someone will give you 1500GP for getting her cat from the tree.

[Cantousent]

Ever play Gothic? You bought and sold 90% of your items by bartering, there was very little "coin" in the game, with one exception . . . you almost always had to buy armor upgrades with cash. Which meant you were always trying to get your grubby paws on whatever actual "cash" was available and then never, ever spend it.

 

It was an interesting system although they did not have any weight management whatsoever.

Yeah, that sounds a lot like the Fallout system Chris mentioned above. I like that idea. Limited money with a lot of bartering sounds appealing to me, but the real issue is that I don't want to worry about huge sums of cash taking up all my inventory/carrying capacity. Novel ways of dealing with the issue are all well and good if they actually enhance the gameplay.

[DarthAdamRG]

Definately not, it wouldnt really add anything to the game at all in my opinion.

[GhostofAnakin]

I voted for the first option, where gold should have weight but depending on the difficulty level.

 

I've always believed that there should be at least one easy level where things really are simplified or made easier for the player. Being able to carry gold but without worrying about it taking up inventory space is, IMO, one of those things. At higher levels, for sure. But there should be one level where it's basically like a walk in the park.

[Cantousent]

I actually started a thread about the weight of gold a while back. I'm going to repost an idea I had about alternate money.

 

What about something non standard? Different types of currency for different realms? I ran a campaign once where the characters could find black weightless tokens (They were interplanar so they had shape and hardness but not weight). Anyhow, there were machines left over from an extinct empire that took the tokens. The players never knew what they would get, but I kept track of their conversations they'd been having and I ran the machines as being able to take images and make them reality so that the players would get things along the lines of what the characters desired. Never too terribly powerful, but then again nothing in my campaigns is until at least level ten. After they got into the twelve to thirteen levels range, I upped the power significantly. I run pretty meager in terms of items, but you have to reward players somehow. Anyhow, to get back to topic, something like those tokens or pieces of some exotic metal or anything like it could add a different dimension to the game. I don't know that it's worth it to the devs, but it's an idea.

 

EDIT: As to you, GofA, it's not a difficulty issue. To a real grognard, money weight won't be difficult, merely time consuming. My argument isn't that it's too hard to deal with the money weight. It's that it's too tedious.

Edited September 19, 2012 by Cantousent

[descalabro]

I always felt it was stupid to carry 100.000 gold coins and still have to make decisions on gear because you couldn't carry everything. However, this gold matter shouldn't become tiresome for players. Anyway, I don't think the weight of gold was a matter on original book/board games, so I suppose that's part of the game style.

[general_azure]

The only way this could work at all is if gold were actually rare and valuable, with some lesser coins for spare change. Having to bring an oxcart/barbarian along to carry your purse while shopping spells does not exactly add to immersion or realism. Same for having to drop a bag of gold in the middle of the marketplace because you can't carry the stuff and have to get it later (the peasants won't have touched it). There's a reason successful coinage tended to be based on the rarest materials available....

 

Voted no, because the massive inconvinience/sillyness far outweighs the added immersion/realism.

[Entropious]

As I have already stated numerous times, I'm a great fan of "basic realism" within computer games, with gold weight being one of those elements that I always missed.

 

Besides, such a feature would be really fun. Imagine adventurers getting rid of most of their equipment to carry looted gold, only to be caught defenceless by bandits. On the other hands, if they decide to hide their gold in a log nearby, there's always a chance that someone will simply find this gold and rob it. Yummy.

[Ausir]

Why not have a "hardcore mode" like in Fallout: New Vegas, with gold weight etc.?