Damn it, stop making me rich!

[dills2]

fallout 3 and nv didnt have this problem with caps however in nv i ended up withat least 1100 9 mm bullets which was to much when you got maria but in that game you would buy a weapon and be broke for a while.

 

[mrhappy1489]

That's why I like RE Remake and the Tenchu games; fairly limited inventory and a character whose moveset cannot change. They know what they know, you have to make do with that.

That's why I like Monster Hunter games; if you don't watch out and time your attacks you are gonna get raped wearing that shiny gear of yours.

RPGs just allow stuff like exploits and min-maxing...turning you into a God before you can say "Hey, I'm getting pretty good at this". That's what you get for making the manipulation of numbers the predominant mechanic of the game.

Would be nice to play a RPG that offers a constant challenge regardless of level or abilities. Haven't played it (yet), but I suspect The Witcher 2 may fit the bill.

From what I have heard, it gets really easy after a while of play, but the start kicks your ass. I call it, Darksiders Syndrome, for obvious reasons.

 

[him over there]

I think a great way to fix this is give you a limitless supply of everything. But him over there you say, that's a fucking stupid and totally contrary idea! Clearly you have never played a videogame in your life and live off of other peoples wasted time and condescension.

Okay that last part was true but here me out, you have limitless supplies of everything, but what you can take with you is extremely limited in both quantity and compatibility. Sort of like RE4's attache case but without having to pause for everything. I understand that it won't solve the problem of feeling like a rich bastard but the best way I can think to tone that down would be to make you need to constantly consume what you have, since you can still horde things no matter how scarce they are and making them totally finite also means the game is finite considering they're there for a reason.

How the limitless thing helps gameplay would be that it forces you to prioritize and conserve what you have. It would probably work best with a checkpoint system. Maybe a chapter or level based game that let you change your set up every death to figure out just what you need to get by what's stopping you. essentially an rpg where instead of eventually having everything or going down one path you gain more xp and skill points, but you totally re-allocate them before every encounter for maximum effectiveness. Something like :"Oh no I can't have the frost and fire resist perk but I know in this encounter I'm better at evading and taking down the fire guy so I'll take the frost resist this time." Or :"I'm playing a wizard but these guys are immune to magic, time for a consequence free overhaul." Holy shit I just realized I'm trying to make min/maxing the entire point of the game, maybe we should back up just a little.

Of course in an RPG you can min/max or grind and sometimes you don't have to because they throw massive amounts of xp at you and eventually it is inevitable that you become an omnipotent lord of death. Which is why Pokemon's system works so well. You can't be an unstoppable badass because every pokemon has specific strengths and weaknesses as well as the uber rock paper scissors type advantages. Which I think should be the way to go in rpg design. They don't have enough strategy in them. Would pokemon be amazing if they used incredibly awesome ai that was similar to the metagame players? of course it would.

So just find a way to severely limit what you immediately have or have to constantly consume or choose between things and you shouldn't accumulate anything to crazy.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

The problem is we are all more experienced gamers, and we expect to resource manage, and because of that we end up encumbered with ammo and weapons we are saving for that special moment... we also take the time to go out of our way early on to stock up on free ammo for later in the game...

I once watched my cousin play Skyrim... He usually plays CoD, Battlefield and Fifa and the like, and to be hones I was surprised to see him with the game... He was near the start, and was playing through the cave where you find the first shout, the one where you retreive the golden claw for the shop owners. Not used to the mechanics, or the way the game works he spent a lot of time just running round finding enemies to beat up... that was pretty much it... he didn't use stealth, he didn't use a bow... hell I let him get to level 6 before I pointed out how to increase his skills on the level up! He looked around for weapons or armour, but only took the biggest and best stuff, but would ignore valuable trinkets if he found them, as he saw no need for them...

Of course, everyones gameplay is different, and the way he plays is not wrong, or anything, but it left me wondering what he would do if he found a part that he got stuck at... a hard boss or something. He would probably just bugger off somewhere else, and come back with a bigger sword later on I expect, where as most of us would stop and look for an alternative solution... I also don't imagine he will ever try alchemy, or summon any allies, or bother finding ammo so that he can use a bow... tha just doesn't interest him. I also thought that if it came to trying to gather money for a house or something that he probably wouldn't bother with that either...

What I am trying to say is that for the game to be accessible to everyone they have to make it so that people not used to it, or with different styles can play too... Say for instance that somehow my cousin loses his sword (I once pressed the wrong buttons in the menu on oblivion, on a steep slope and dropped a dagger, it fell down the hill and landed in some grass... I never found it again during my massive search...) and had to rely on a bow later in the game. The game will still provide many arrows so that he, and people like him, can still play, even if they fire many arrows and hit nothing (as I expect he would, he plays in 3rd person, and sometimes seemed to struggle to hit enemies with a sword with his erratic 'Halo style' close combat!)

Well... that's one reason it could be anyway!

 

[Dfskelleton]

I've recently been playing System Shock 2 (brilliant game), and I like the currency system in it. It has tons of uses for nanites and while they're not scarce, they come in small portions and are absorbed quickly. You can use them to hack machines, revive yourself after you die, and purchase items in vending machines. It can be hard at times, but not usually in a cheap way.

 

[Smeggs]

Seriously?

I was frustrated and annoyed until I got ALL TEH MONIEZ.

Unlike cheat codes which make me an unstoppable force (i.e. ruining the game for me) becoming rich off of my own dungeon crawling and such is like more of a minor superpower. By level twenty I had finally cleared 20k, and proceeded to be reduced to near vagrancy after buying my new house and all of its furnishings. I like being able to go, "Shit, running low on mana potions, let's go buy out the apothecary's stock of them."

In Dark Souls I seriously didn't start totally enjoying it untilo I found a quick, super cheap way to farm Souls.

I suppose people just feel differently on the matter.

 

[Vanilla_Druid]

The Ogre Battle series made money a valuable resource since it was required to use characters. it is also somewhat easy to burn through money in Fire Emblem due to weapons always breaking and forging silver weapons costs an arm and a leg.

 

[Savagezion]

Wow, some people take themselves too seriously/dont understand the meme. And as many have said before, its a difficult problem that people are quick to point out, but cant offer solutions.

The thread is offering a solution. Bethesda said arrows were going to be more powerful but harder to keep in stock. However, they are abundant and dirt cheap if you ever would need to buy them. My archer sells arrows for 0 gold to merchants. Potions are only mildly scarce because they aren't sold by the bushel at vendors. However, they are often just lying around in great number in caves. There is so much money available in the game, it is a viable strategy to train your levels with cash.

Bethesda's economy model is wonderful compared to Rockstar's. "Thanks for stealing a car, here's $50,000. You want to buy my nightclub for $2000?"

The solution is to quit making costs so low and then throw money at the player so that they can use it to solve everything. You want to do that? That is what "Easy mode" is for. Many "hard" modes out there today just mean baddies with more HP and hit harder, which can be entirely solved with health potions which you can usually buy with the ungodly amounts of money thrown at you as well as superior gear. This negates the purpose of even having a hard mode as "Easy" is just extreme overkill in these situations.

 

[Right Hook]

It's how you play and the difficulty you play, I have a friend who is level thirty in Skyrim, not on a hard difficulty and yet he has little gold, one house without any upgrades and a wife that has gone missing...it's funny how it somewhat reflects his real life.

 

[Fijiman]

I am an absolute pack-rat in games like the Fallout and Elder Scrolls series. The way I play, by the time I've got about 30-35 hours clocked in I'm usually very well-off as far as money goes and I usually have plenty of extra supplies lying around my house. However, because I'm a giant pack-rat, I don't mind having lots of extra stuff unless I'm actually carrying it.(I hate non-removable quest items that weigh even a few pounds) I also have to agree with your point on Bioshock. I love the game, but it was constantly switching between me either having a full wallet and plenty of supplies to scrounging for every dollar and bullet I can get.

 

[VoidWanderer]

And that's the big problem with Computer RPGs.

As a DM for pen and paper ones, I have no problem with dicking players over with money (Thieves Guild, or taking advantage of their distractions). With CRPGs you can't really do that, because the story is set in stone, there is no true fluidity. Sure it may bend depending on morality, but that's a whole other problem entirely.

This is why I prefer games with player housing and not the silly Fable stuff either. Great money sinks and you feel good looking at your house fully decked out... I do anyway

 

[hazabaza1]

OT: it's an age-long problem of designing an RPG for both the casual and completionist crowds. People who don't do any sidequests/exploration deserve to have a fair chance at winning the game, and people who do all the sidequests will find the game easy because, well, otherwise you'd be screwing the people on the other end of the spectrum. Of course, as was mentioned, Dark Souls doesn't do this. But does Dark Souls even have any sidequests to begin with? It's a fairly linear game designed for a hardcore audience, and it's not a "pure" RPG to begin with.

If you try to meet all the side characters and covenants and follow their stories, I suppose that could count, but I certainly understand where you're coming from.


OT: Nier had this problem in massive amounts. The first half or so of the game you were piss-poor, and buying a new weapon was a proper investment. 60% in or so, and all of a sudden, you could buy stacks of the best healing items with pocket change.

 

[deidara]

Meh, I don't mind being rich. I have self control, if I want a challenge, I'll make a challenge for myself. And if I don't, then great I can buy whatever I want.

 

[illas]

Dark Souls (again) old friend. Dark Souls does it right.

But I agree with you, and this all stems into the challenge of a game. An unchallenging game will persist on making things easier for you to continue along right to the end, and a challenging game strips you of these extras and leaves you with the bare necessities.

After Dark Souls, I don't want to play half the games I have because they are so overwhelmingly generous.

Ditto.

Dark Souls has make it quite difficult for me to take past and present Triple-A titles seriously. Particularly, I find the gap regarding tolerance for mistakes to be massive.

OT: I wonder if one played Skyrim realistically - ie: not searching every jar/chest/corpse - how the money Vs ability to spend it ratio would work out.

 

[PatrickXD]

A game that sort of fixed this problem for me was STALKER. Sure, they still throw too much stuff at you, but the weight restriction was harsh until you reach end game gear. It was also way easier to get myself in the feeling of 'Pickup what I need to survive' as opposed to 'Pick up everything'

 

[x EvilErmine x]

I think I've been doing it wrong then, in Skyrim the most gold I've had at one time is about 10K Septims...but then I don't generally do the whole loot everything in sight thing. I only get loot from chests and non human enemys. The only time I take anything from a human corps is if it's a quest item or something like that.

Though i did brake the bank in the first Mass Effect game, I had so many credits that the game just said nope you cant have any more money coz we have ran out of numbers. So it was a little bit of an understatement when i started the second one and got a bonus for bringing across a rich character. I was like no shit, I could have bought the citadel.

EDIT

Snippy

...Snip
OT: I wonder if one played Skyrim realistically - ie: not searching every jar/chest/corpse - how the money Vs ability to spend it ratio would work out.

It does have a significant effect, I'm level 37 and it's still daunting economically to buy stuff like sole gems and what not from merchants.

 

[VeneratedWulfen93]

You should try Metro 2033 on one of the Ranger-difficulties...I played it on Ranger Hardcore. No crosshair, no HUD unless you toggled it, you get ammo at 1-3 rounds at a time (though I freaking swear I never found 3 rounds at once..). And the ammo is never enough. You only get a few chances in the game to buy some ammo and guns, and the currency is military-grade ammo. That just happens to be the most powerful type as well, meaning that you actually need it to survive tough parts of the game.

I often found myself running around with a knife, despite the fact that I was careful to only shoot one bullet at a time and aim for the head. Great game, great story, amazing atmosphere.

With that said, I completely agree with you. I hate having too much shit thrown at me that does nothing but make the game less challenging. I hate having too many potions especially, and not just in Skyrim. I play through Kingdoms of Amalur right now, on the hardest difficulty, and 95% of the time I don't need anything but health potions. And hell, I don't even need those 90% of the time.

I did that also but I just stockpiled shotgun ammo for the heavy automatic shotgun and after the library the rest of the game is a breeze.

 

[Cyrus Hanley]

I'd say that I spend ~90% of my time in Fallout: New Vegas just managing my inventory - going back and forth between my apartment in Novac and the places I visit to dump all the crap I've collected, maintaining weapons and armour that I collect solely for sale, and travelling around Nevada trying to find a vendor to sell all my stuff to.

Not that I'm complaining, I just find it amusing to be sitting on 30,000 caps and enough food and water to last me 'til the next nuclear war. Getting shot in the head was probably the best thing that ever happened to my character.

 

[Skulltaker101]

M-M-M-M-Monstersnip

mafia: city of lost heaven had you at one point loose all your money and clothing due to an assassination attempt by burning your house to the ground.

i think mafia 2 had one of this events, too.


i once played a Space flight simulator (forgot its name) where you also lost all your credits.
i could deal with starting with nothing again in mafia but when i lost all my credits in this space flight/combat simulator i was close to fist fighting my monitor.

what i am trying to say is that there is a damn thin line between feeling its okay to lose everything and thinking that the dev of a game are trolling you into grinding for hours again, making their game longer.

and i think this line is too risky to implement in a game for developers.
plus they want you to feel like 'you're the man' and that you have archieved something no other could do.

and they don't really expect that you will pick up everything

which almost everyone does.

Wasn't a fun old game called Tachyon: The Fringe, was it? I know that at one point there you lose all of your money and shiny ships and get given what is essentially a flying bucket and get kicked out of civilized space. Happens pretty early though, so I don't think it has the same impact.

I would appreciate a game that acts like an RPG, but has mechanics similar to an MMORPG, the principal difference being the careful level-scaling that can only be accomplished by people with the same mindset as whoever came up with the Lives system for old arcade games...that of a "Keep them playing, because the more they play, the more money we get!" attitude.

 

[Zydrate]

I think New Vegas did it well. No matter how rich I got, thousands of caps still went to ammo, fully-repaired guns to replace my crap (While keeping the deteriorated versions to repair), implants, and ammo again.
I've been broke at max level while still remaining well equipped. THAT'S a proper balance.