Damn it, stop making me rich!

[Denamic]

Self-challenge.
Put a restriction on yourself and you can have the challenge back.
Like only fight using your fists, never drink potions, be a pacifist and never kill anything that you do not have to kill, etc.
Or play on hardest difficulty and install mods to make it even harder.
Deadly dragons + Master difficulty = death.
Problem solved.

Edit: Oh, right. PS3. Sucks to be you, I guess.

 

[boag]

Step 1: Give money in an RPG weight.
Step 2: ?
Step 3: You're forced to reduce your profit!

Problem somewhat solved.

This is the best idea ever, NV chained you to reality by ggiving ammo weight, I often wondered where the hell was my character carrying the 200 lbs worth of bottlecaps.

 

[fenrizz]

Personally I like being über rich.
More caps than I could ever spend, enough mini nukes to cause a 2nd nuclear holocaust and an nigh eternal supply of stims and chems.

Feels good man.

Spoiler: Pic related

MINE, ALL MINE!

It's good to be king!

1st world problems....

Thank you for your insightful and thought provoking contribution to this discussion.
Original content like this is rare to see on the internet, and I can do nothing but applaud your heroic efforts to contribute positively to this here fine discussion.

Keep up this most excellent work, dear boy!

 

[WanderingFool]

OH! I got an interesting idea...

Make RPG inventory systems like RE4s inventory system. Basically, have your characters strength have a visual appearance in the form of a inventroy grid, with light items take up fewer spaces and big heavy items taking up alot of space. So if your character wears heavy armor, that armor will be in their iventory grid, and take up alot of space. So you cant carry twenty swords on you because you can only fit 3 in you inventory. Various light items, like food, drink, and potions would be stackable in some cases. As for the ingame currancy, like others have said, give it actual weight, so you cant carry mountians of it.

Additionally, dont give the player a "safe place" to store their belonging they are not using. I would call this the Minecraft SMP storage system. You find a chest in the wilds, you loot it. Whats to say that random chest isnt infact someone secret stash? Or you use your lock-picking skill to break into peoples houses and rob them blind. Why not make that happen to you? If you cant carry all the gold, you store it somewhere; if there is a banking system, you store it in a bank where its safe, but where it will actully cost to store it (thus draining ever so slowly your funds). Or you could simply hide it in that old chest you found near that old tree stump near So-n-so-agrad. Its free, but you run the risk of someone finding and taking it (just like you probably did to somebody else. Not even a home you purchased would be safe from NPC theives.

Implemented these could be either a great improvment... or not...

 

[CrunchyRay]

We're almost talking about two different types of games here. Do you want to play an RPG or a Simulation?

In an RPG, your character gets richer, more powerful, and winds up with a lot of stuff. If you're a badass, then things should be relatively easier. At the start, a few measly Draugr are a problem, but once you can cause them to explode with a thought, you feel pretty powerful. The Harbinger-Archmage-Dovahkiin should be able to plow his way through the Legions of Hell. Would you expect any less?

On the other hand you have Simulations. If you want a detailed economy, or to worry about food, holding a steady job or going to the bathroom, then play Dwarf Fortress or The Sims or Railroad Tycoon.

Realistically, nobody could be head of every faction and all the other titles you accumulate in the Elder Scrolls 'verse. The Archmage would spend all his time running the College, not diving into dungeons. For me, once my last Skyrim character got 100 Smithing and 100 Enchanting, I built the awesomest set of armor and jewelry I could imagine. So awesome that my character was virtually invulnerable. After I whacked a few Ancient Dragons to death with three blows of my axe, I declared that I had "won" the game, and started a new character.

I think it would be pretty nice to have a more detailed economy in an Elder Scrolls game, but you'd also need more people floating around. For a country-sized area, the population is really sparse.

 

[Xanadu84]

When you have too much stuff, the game becomes too easy by virtue of rewarding a players success, and the game remains playable and, probably, fun.

When you don't have enough stuff, the game becomes frusterating and unfun up untill the point it becomes unplayable.

Player skill varies, so you have to chose between lots of stuff, and some people being properly challenged, some having it too easy, and less stuff, some find it challenging, others find it a frusterating mess and return the game.

Which do you choose as a designer who wants people to have fun?

 

[Jowe]

What about some sort of dynamic experience, where if your rich, the game has more expensive items. If your very stealthy the enemies get better at spotting you, if your incredibly tanky, the game provides more enemies etc. Something like the L4D of having the overseer AI that changes the experience depending on how well your doing.

Obviously this would be frustrating if it happened an equal amount to how much better your getting, so maybe some sort of option, so you can turn it on if you want it kind of thing.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

well, stop being so good at these games then!

you can just start to suck like the average gamer out there and stop shoving the problem onto the developer, ya prick!

in all seriousness, though, yeah, a lot of games do this, but I find that I'm always short on cash in Mount and Blade, so not EVERY game does it, right?

 

[Sonic Doctor]

I'm almost 100 hours into the game and I think I'm around level 40 something, and I've never had the feeling that I'm rich, and I even steal every last coin I can pickpocket off of every person I see. I don't even pay for training of my skills, I hand over the money for training, pickpocket it back and then hand it to them again to train again, and pickpocket to finish.

I even sell 95% or more of all that I carry from looting enemies. What I'm getting at is that I've never broken 20,000 gold held at one time. If I did, I would pay that 20,000 gold bounty on my head in Markarth. I've sold everything I've felt I can sell and buy all that I need or feel I need, and I haven't felt that I was rich. I've even become a near master blacksmith and I'm still not making enough money to keep up with my purchases.

So, I guess it is a matter of how you play that determines how long it takes to be rich and stay rich.

The most fun I had with Skyrim was in the first 5 hours or so immediately after the game removed the training wheels and set me loose on the world.

What are these training wheels you speak of? Because after I escaped the dragon attack in the beginning, I followed what's his face (don't remember his name) to Riverwood and met his friends and whatnot, he said he would go on ahead somewhere, and I said, "Okay you do that, while I go off and play the game, explore, and whatnot." That only took like 40 or so minutes tops.

Heck, I think I was at least 60 or more hours in before I even set one foot on the steps to High Hrothgar to meet the Greybeards.

As I've said, I'm only almost 100 hours in, though I've been taking a break, and the last actually main storyline quest that I did was where I witnessed for the first time, that one dragon resurrecting another. It's something like only the 7th or 8th main quest. So, in that almost 100 hours, I've barely touched the main story, I haven't even picked a side yet.

Though at last count, I've only killed like 17 dragons.

 

[teebeeohh]

and this is why not allowing you to haul tons of crap around is good. because if you severely limit the stuff you can carry around with you it puts a dent in that curve and if employed right(by making you think about what you take with you from your home to explore dungeon X that will contain enemies of type Y and leaving the rest at home because it is too heavy and will prevent you from taking any significant loot with you) it could to all the stuff you have not make you overpowered but just able to tackle different challenges.
but unfortunately there is this one guy who plays skyrim for half an hour on the weekend and he is the core demographic and publishers think it would scare him away if the they included ways to play the game that resonate more with other kind of players.

 

[Sun Flash]

I get this problem too. Although to switch it up a bit, I make sure to dump all my swag off at my house, and make sure I only have 2 or 3 health and stamina potions as well as a few hundred gold in my inventory left. Also, I sent my follower home, so I can't have them carry my burdens for me.

I also change my gear from time to time, down grade to steel for example, and just use what I find in dungeons for the next few quests.

It's not perfect, but it does the trick.

 

[blackcherry]

The original resident evil(and the remake) had the right idea. Make the easy setting quite easy, so most people can complete the game without dying too often and with enough health and ammo to make things comfortable. Then when you start normal...ammo is scarce, health even more so. Enemies do more damage and appear in different places in larger numbers.

Hell, I breezed through resi 4 onwards just because, in comparison, those games were super easy even on the hardest difficulty compared to the older games on 'Normal'. When I completed 'Hard' I felt like some sort of gaming superhuman!

But then, they aren't RPGs, so perhaps its the wrong example to bring up.

 

[Zydrate]

Assassin's Creed had an issue with this as well.

I've done Brotherhood a couple times now, and since some of the best (buyable) items are locked by extremely rare items, I just make due with lesser equipment (Successfully, I might add).
The AC series is great but they need to balance out their money systems.

 

[Dosbilliam]

ESC > Settings > Difficulty > Master

thank you....
but I'm already there, currently playing FO: New Vegas on hardcore and I have 263000 caps 20000 NCR dollars and about the same in Legion Denarius.
I have a stock pile of Weapons and armour in my suite at the Lucky 38 and more stimpacks than I can shake a stick at (I've probably got the stick somewhere as well) and....

I've not even gone to see Ceasar yet!

Don't get me wrong, it's great to beable to buy any gun I want, it's just I buy it and then remember I have another five of them at the casino!

Here's an idea, drop a load of cash. Give yourself a limit to the amount of money you can have at one time, make a mod?

playing it on the PS3, so no mod, and I don't know what it is, I'm programmed to pick up everything in RPG's, then I repair guns and armour, then pick up spares, and repair them....
basicly my characters all have OCD!

Let me guess...once you pick up everything and repair your stuff, you only used maybe two or three of the things you picked up for repairs?

 

[Fat Hippo]

I definitely agree, I hate it when RPGs do this (most of them).

If you're playing Skyrim on PC I can only recommend this mod called "Cutthroat Merchants": http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=2762

It makes everything more expensive, while you get a lot less for your loot. This definitely stabilizes the amount of gold you get, and makes the game more fun, in my opinion.

 

[Malty Milk Whistle]

I have a brilliant solution to this problem. I'm incredibly paranoid that no matter how hard whatever challenge I'm currently facing is, the next one will be much harder. As such, I may at some point late in the game have near limitless resources, but I'll be too petrified to actually use any of them. For example, in skyrim I'm always terrified too purchase anything with my mountains of cash, because who knows, the next merchant might have something I like better! Ahhh! Or all the potions in pretty much every fantasy rpg ever that I refuse to use because the next boss might require them more. Consequently, I tend to think games are way harder than they are, and end boss fights are almost incomprehensibly easy.

NOTE: This playstyle is not recommended for the sane.

Yes. I spent over 3 hours grinding for the final boss of Dragon Quest IX , only for the ordeal to be over in 8 minutes....

 

[Lionsfan]

I think it's a fine line to walk. On the one hand, nobody wants an easy game once they've put in 30 hours of work or so. On the other hand, people want to feel like they're stronger/more powerful/richer if they've put in 30 hours of work. Go too far either way and people are going to *****

 

[Yellowbeard]

I agree.

Whatever happened to adaptive difficulty?

 

[Zelcor]

I dunno if anyone's played it but Tibia....oh that game is fucking awful

Gold not only had weight, took up slots in bags (which sucked if each bag had only about 8 slots or so) at 100 gold a stack. AND if you died RNG determined which items would stay with your corpse as you get rezzed GOD ONLY KNOWS WHERE and if your gold bags (which I refer to as the bag that's slots are filled with all the gold) gets picked and someone makes it to your corpse before you do guess what they are now slightly richer.

I hate that game so much it's so bad