Fix for the economy?

[durbal]

At the moment I'm not able to hexedit currency values for items (needle in a haystack) so I'm just kindly asking the devs to at least include a 'No Unlimited Gold after Raedric's Hold' option that makes gold have more than a symbolic value and having to actually choose whether or not I want to rest or get a magic sword.  Currently unlimited resources and endless XP kill replayability for me, and I can only seem to fix the endless XP.

 

Related to that: anyone know how to hexedit item values?

[sparklecat]

Personally, I ended the game with under 5k and without buying everything I wanted.

[Luckmann]

Step 1: Restrict size and access of Stash, impose encumbrance limitations and limit merchant gold.

 

Step 2: Rescind order due to massive whining from clueless casuals that cries about convenience and how "hassle" gets in the way of gameplay.

 

Step 3: Give them a happy meal and roll them into the ball pit at McDonalds, they'll still be as happy as ever.

[Gromnir]

Step 1: Restrict size and access of Stash, impose encumbrance limitations and limit merchant gold.

 

 

step 1 is not exactly original ideas, and such stuff is actual commonplace in most crpgs.  all step 1 accomplishes is folks engage in ridiculous extreme efforts to extract every copper from a map, and then they still complain 'bout the overabundance o' credits, gold, ring pulls, whatever.  heck, Gromnir has done such over-the-top nonsense in a few games... though we don't complain when we indulge in such excess.  

 

small frame were a wonderful perk for fo:t that decreased carry weight but rewarded us with +1 agility.  were a no-brainer 'cause we could encumber folks with literal tonnage o' material, but as long as they were standing in an exit hex, we could travel the wasteland.  once vehicles became available, encumbrance became even more pointless.  could do similar stuff in all the pre-bethesda fallout games, but fo:t had the most extreme maps for 1007 abundance. after the fo:t st.louis and kansas city maps, we were never in need o' funds, or ammo, or anything.  is not the kinda thing we did in most games, but particularly given the expense and paucity o' .50 ammo for our brownings, we did resort to degenerative gameplay.

 

the thing is, fo:t were not an exception.  fo:t were the rule.  the vast majority o' crpgs, particularly open-world crpgs, have broken economies.  all the extra side-quests is offering rewards and 1007 proportional to critical path.  there is necessarily gonna be enough 1007 on the critical path, so folks who do side-quests will always have more... everything.  regardless o' the efforts o' developers to curb player excess, such exercises is doomed to fail.  is not worth developer efforts to be fighting that battle. 

 

*shrug*

 

obsidian showed wisdom by not adding ultimately useless features to poe.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Luckmann]

 

Step 1: Restrict size and access of Stash, impose encumbrance limitations and limit merchant gold.

 

 

step 1 is not exactly original ideas, and such stuff is actual commonplace in most crpgs.  all step 1 accomplishes is folks engage in ridiculous extreme efforts to extract every copper from a map, and then they still complain 'bout the overabundance o' credits, gold, ring pulls, whatever.  heck, Gromnir has done such over-the-top nonsense in a few games... though we don't complain when we indulge in such excess.  

 

small frame were a wonderful perk for fo:t that decreased carry weight but rewarded us with +1 agility.  were a no-brainer 'cause we could encumber folks with literal tonnage o' material, but as long as they were standing in an exit hex, we could travel the wasteland.  once vehicles became available, encumbrance became even more pointless.  could do similar stuff in all the pre-bethesda fallout games, but fo:t had the most extreme maps for 1007 abundance. after the fo:t st.louis and kansas city maps, we were never in need o' funds, or ammo, or anything.  is not the kinda thing we did in most games, but particularly given the expense and paucity o' .50 ammo for our brownings, we did resort to degenerative gameplay.

 

the thing is, fo:t were not an exception.  fo:t were the rule.  the vast majority o' crpgs, particularly open-world crpgs, have broken economies.  all the extra side-quests is offering rewards and 1007 proportional to critical path.  there is necessarily gonna be enough 1007 on the critical path, so folks who do side-quests will always have more... everything.  regardless o' the efforts o' developers to curb player excess, such exercises is doomed to fail.  is not worth developer efforts to be fighting that battle. 

 

*shrug*

 

obsidian showed wisdom by not adding ultimately useless features to poe.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

Case in point: Step 2.

 

You may applaud.

[durbal]

Eh, I found the sequence corresponding to item values I think.  Gonna test then just make all basic loot essentially worthless (as it should be).

 

I can possibly make all inn rooms expensive as well.  The only problem is the stronghold.

 

Thinking about this, the game would be a lot better if it had some sort of time limit a la Fallout 1 so that you can't just freaking rest everywhere.

[durbal]

Hrm, yup, found the item values.  Time to go through the process of changing all basic item (and Fine Robe) item values.

[vyvexthorne]

But these are all things you can do yourself as you play the game aren't they?. You don't have to grab every little item and sell it.. and you don't have to rest everywhere if you don't want to. The great thing about these games is that you can play in different ways each time through. You can limit your own xp by side stepping certain quests and not killing every creature you come across.  You can take a full party with you to make the adventure easier or you can just go it alone to make it harder. Lots of different options present themselves when you stop playing how you think the game should be played and just play how you like to play.

[Gromnir]

 

 

Step 1: Restrict size and access of Stash, impose encumbrance limitations and limit merchant gold.

 

 

step 1 is not exactly original ideas, and such stuff is actual commonplace in most crpgs.  all step 1 accomplishes is folks engage in ridiculous extreme efforts to extract every copper from a map, and then they still complain 'bout the overabundance o' credits, gold, ring pulls, whatever.  heck, Gromnir has done such over-the-top nonsense in a few games... though we don't complain when we indulge in such excess.  

 

small frame were a wonderful perk for fo:t that decreased carry weight but rewarded us with +1 agility.  were a no-brainer 'cause we could encumber folks with literal tonnage o' material, but as long as they were standing in an exit hex, we could travel the wasteland.  once vehicles became available, encumbrance became even more pointless.  could do similar stuff in all the pre-bethesda fallout games, but fo:t had the most extreme maps for 1007 abundance. after the fo:t st.louis and kansas city maps, we were never in need o' funds, or ammo, or anything.  is not the kinda thing we did in most games, but particularly given the expense and paucity o' .50 ammo for our brownings, we did resort to degenerative gameplay.

 

the thing is, fo:t were not an exception.  fo:t were the rule.  the vast majority o' crpgs, particularly open-world crpgs, have broken economies.  all the extra side-quests is offering rewards and 1007 proportional to critical path.  there is necessarily gonna be enough 1007 on the critical path, so folks who do side-quests will always have more... everything.  regardless o' the efforts o' developers to curb player excess, such exercises is doomed to fail.  is not worth developer efforts to be fighting that battle. 

 

*shrug*

 

obsidian showed wisdom by not adding ultimately useless features to poe.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

Case in point: Step 2.

 

You may applaud.

 

poor reading.  note we specific noted lack o' complaint by Gromnir?  the thing is, even if obsidian had put your suggested features into the game, folks would have gotten around the limitations and would still complain 'bout too much gold rather than the features intended to block excess.  the step 1 suggestions don't work, and can't work in a game with an open world.  

 

so, no applause for bad reading skills.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[scrotiemcb]

Adding encumberence and limiting stash doesn't really solve anything. Players could always return to pick up extra loot, and would be encouraged by game mechanics to do so. So you'd end up with a situation where the fun way to play (just go through once) is opposite the min-max way to play (multiple trips). Thus encumberence is an anti-fun mechanic.

 

Now, limiting merchant gold, that's the real winner. It gets to the root of the problem - the liquidity of loot - and confronts it directly.

[Tigranes]

Adding encumberence and limiting stash doesn't really solve anything. Players could always return to pick up extra loot, and would be encouraged by game mechanics to do so. So you'd end up with a situation where the fun way to play (just go through once) is opposite the min-max way to play (multiple trips). Thus encumberence is an anti-fun mechanic.

 

Now, limiting merchant gold, that's the real winner. It gets to the root of the problem - the liquidity of loot - and confronts it directly.

 

I can never understand why anyone would so be so anally retentive to make several back and forth trips to sell loot, and then complain about it. 

 

Limiting merchant gold is an effective solution, though what it does is it makes players feel they have a bazillion loot and annoys them. I'd have been OK with half+ enemy loot breaking upon death, and everything costing a lot more.

[Gromnir]

 

Adding encumberence and limiting stash doesn't really solve anything. Players could always return to pick up extra loot, and would be encouraged by game mechanics to do so. So you'd end up with a situation where the fun way to play (just go through once) is opposite the min-max way to play (multiple trips). Thus encumberence is an anti-fun mechanic.

 

Now, limiting merchant gold, that's the real winner. It gets to the root of the problem - the liquidity of loot - and confronts it directly.

 

I can never understand why anyone would so be so anally retentive to make several back and forth trips to sell loot, and then complain about it. 

 

we didn't understand why people would re-roll literal hundreds of attempts to get ideal bg, iwd or bg2 abilities, but not only did folks do so, but many folks actual claimed that they enjoyed the ie game re-rolling and that they considered the use o' console or a mod to give them the ability scores they wanted diminished such enjoyment as it were cheating.

 

...

 

made no sense to us, but it didn't need make sense to us for us to recognize that folks were genuine and serious 'bout their re-roll claims.  if it were only one or two people who engaged in such degenerative re-rolling, we could have discounted them as aberrational, but it were a fact that many such folks indulged in marathon re-roll sessions even when ability fixing mods and console alternatives were available.  regardless, our ability to grasp the pleasure derived from such insanity were complete beside the point, eh? 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[durbal]

But these are all things you can do yourself as you play the game aren't they?. You don't have to grab every little item and sell it.. and you don't have to rest everywhere if you don't want to. The great thing about these games is that you can play in different ways each time through. You can limit your own xp by side stepping certain quests and not killing every creature you come across.  You can take a full party with you to make the adventure easier or you can just go it alone to make it harder. Lots of different options present themselves when you stop playing how you think the game should be played and just play how you like to play.

This argument is presented a lot and it's frankly silly.  Imposing hard restrictions before playing the game is different from imposing soft restrictions while playing the game.

 

How much resting is too much?  How many items can I sell?  How much should I be allowed to rest?  These aren't questions of self-control -- the idea that I can just limit myself to not doing certain things in the game only allows the player to decide at that moment what to do or not to do.  Future actions cannot be adequately planned for since they are unknown.  A hard-coded restriction means that possible future actions have already been effectively decided by the game.  The only time self-limitation works is when it is essentially hard-coded into the game already and the limitations are different in degree, not in form (e.g. playing a game with no ironman mode available but never savescumming).

 

As an example: imagine I play the game with limited gold income.  As I'm playing, I find a few enchanted weapons which aren't relevant to my current party members.  I decide I don't want to sell them because I'm trying to limit gold income.

 

Now imagine that I've hard-coded item values so that the economy will be more limited.  Now, the game has effective foresight and has already decided how much gold I will acquire throughout the course of the game (imagine all possible randomization rolls being made and stored at character creation -- effectively the same as making the rolls on the spot). Now, I find the same weapons in the first scenario but decide to sell a few of them in order to enchant one of my current party members' weapons, but I have modified the game so that the economy stays relevant. (I realize I could buy and sell the items over and over to 'bleed' the excess gold out and accomplish the same thing, but that's tedious -- also, camping supplies and such wouldn't work with that method).

 

Now repeat those two scenarios ad infinitum.  In the first scenario, I will either never sell any items or I will only allow myself X amount of gold, or I will make some decision at that moment about whether or not selling the items is appropriate (based on little other than my personal feelings at the time and violating the premise that self-limitation is equivalent to hard-coded limitations since the game never allows any 'give').  (Gameplay-wise, this is boring too).  In the second scenario, I don't yet know what will occur.  Perhaps I find multitudes of useless items.  Perhaps I find none.  My decision at this moment can only be based on present knowledge, not some knowledge about how much gold I will allow myself to acquire in the game or knowledge that I will never have money issues since I will make some personal decision that selling items when in dire straits is appropriate.

 

The second scenario is what makes games (and really, everything) entertaining -- it allows the audience to experience something that they did not fully expect.  It allows them to effectively exercise free will.  Omniscience, as in the first scenario, removes that element and hence removes (or severely limits) decisions. (At risk of being mocked, this is a philosophical argument of why free will cannot exist with omniscience).

 

To show the silliness of the argument I can reduce it to absurdity: why play the game at all when I can just close my eyes and imagine my own game?

 

Essentially, it's an issue of how much foreknowledge a player can have before a game becomes boring.  This is at the heart of replayability.

Edited April 17, 2015 by durbal

[KDubya]

Limiting vender loot just means that you have to go to multiple venders to cash out. This just makes for more of a hassle.

 

If it is a problem  you could adjust the amount of loot that survives the death of the previous owner, If you blast them with a fireball when you loot them you find burned leather armor and melted plate, death by weapons could leave bullet holes and dents that need to be repaired by a blacksmith. This would reduce the amount coming in.

 

To increase the expenses you could raise the prices for magic items at the store. Instead of 4,000 for the blunting belt make it 20,000. now you won't buy any expensive stuff and then complain on the forums about the big tease of cool loot that costs too much