Damn it, stop making me rich!

[DionysusSnoopy]

Playing KoA: Reckoning i have 2.5 million gold level 34 and halfway through the campaign and probably spent throughout the game about 600,000 on training and various upgrades for my safehouses. I have tons of potions and was given my weapons and armor as loot or rewards.

It was more fun and tense at the beginning when i was broke and a greater healing potion was 1/6 of my total gold rather than a batch of ten being far less than 1% of my amassed fortune.

 

[tgbennett30]

Reminds me of the old AD&D Dungeon Masters who would have our party get hit by thieves if we started getting a little too rich

Dark Souls is the closest game to that, IMO - where you lose all your souls (money) if you get killed and aren't able to get back to your bloodstain in time.

Heck, make that an option under "super hard core" or some such - you're getting bigger and badder all game long, which makes you a bigger target for thieves, and you have one quick tough shot at recovery before a thief who just took your best sword disappears forever.

Or else have gang attacks by rust monsters

 

[mastermarty]

You want a game that will make you work for your gold? Try Europa Universalis III. That game is just a management course in disguise.

 

[z121231211]

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.

What I think RPGs should do is take out health potions, maybe even healing spells. Or make all healing items temporary (like the pills in Left 4 Dead). This may give more incentive to players to think about their situation because resources wouldn't be everything.

 

[defenestrate]

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

Problem somewhat solved.

 

[Malty Milk Whistle]

Play Dragonquest and frequent the DQVC. You will be skint within a few days.

 

[lord.jeff]

It'd help if games actually gave you something to spend money on, the only thing I ever bought in Skyrim was houses. I think adding in a hunger mechanic and other similar things would help quite a bit in slowing a player raise to riches.

 

[ablac]

I agree with you by the end of skyrim there is very little challenge because having the best skills and armor possible makes it nigh on impossible to die without throwing yourself of a cliff.

 

[Bostur]

I hear you. Virtual wealth is worth more if it is scarce. We will appreciate the phat loot more if we only get it occasionally.

There are ways to balance it. One approach is to use an economy that inflates with the player's level. If higher level players get more cash and have higher expenses it prevents the issue of getting behind the curve. It still makes it possible to be strapped for cash for a limited time. It's the part about higher expenses that many RPGs ignore.

 

[Agow95]

Your complaining that at high level you are too good, I thought that was the entire concept, if I spend a month becoming max level I want to feel like I'm max level, the level 50 Arch-Mage/Harbinger/listener/guildmaster/all of the above shouldn't beg for scraps from the tables of lower level people or the bodies of weak-ass bandits

 

[DoPo]

I feel your pain OP (and others that said the same) - many games just don't stop giving you stuff. If we go back from Skyrim to Morrowind, the thing was friggin' ridiculous: I start with only my clothes at my back and a handful of money. There is nothing actually stopping you from making money and you can do quite a profit even if you don't abuse the game. The first time I played it I came to a point where I realized I didn't even want to pick up money. It was just a waste of time to do it. I had several items that cost more than the economy of Balmora and the only way for me to wate some of the money was to train skills...which made me even more powerful and made more money (even more) obsolete as I literally had no need for money to take over the world.

Bethesda are a huge offenders here. But so are a lot of other games, mostly RPG but not always. For example, there is Assassin's Creed 2 - you start off pretty broke, with time you amass some money but you have to spend them for equipment/upgrades. I was pretty much broke most of the time in the beginning as I poured everything I could into the villa. And when I finished...nothing. I was left without a money sink. I didn't even get to pay for periodic repairs or something. And the damn thing just hosed me with more money I had no need of. Same thing happened in Brotherhood, but much sooner - at some pont I had no real need to renovate the other buildings, it was a pointless task - I had all the money I needed and I was constantly getting more.

Names escape me, but even games that don't have currency are not immune to this - healing potions are one thing to shower gamers with, for example. Shooters seem slightly easier on this aspect - there is a limited amount of ammo you can have...however if you have over a dozen weapons to choose from, it's suddenly irrelevant, as you'll barely be able to deplete one of the ammo types and there would be so many more to choose from.

To all people who say that mods can fix the thing - you are missing the point, the fact is that this is a trend in video games and the existence of such mods proves it. I'd rather I have mods/cheats to increase my resources than vice versa. I suppose the point is to satisfy the gamer by giving them a lot to play with but the effects are the opposite - it makes the game boring. Everything turns into a boring grindfest - why should gamers bother to use their wits and think of tactics to reduce damage done to them or similar? They could just go straight to the fight and shower in healing potions while mashing the attack button. Not creative but it works. And they don't lose anything because wasting healing potions is not hitting their resources. There is literally no reason to not do it.

 

[370999]

I don't know OP I tend to find that in rPGs I expect to be the badass monster near the end of the game. Usually the game makers care smart enough to include more powerful enemies and the like to balance out your new herculean strength. That said everyone likes to be powerful especially after not being strong.

I remember one game in new vegas where I palyed as a stleathy hand to hand character fighting for the legion. My God, taking care of both Camp McCurran and that camp near the lake was fucking hard and that was near the end of the game.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

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

which almost everyone does.

If they don't expect that by now, it's their fault for being so ridiculous. Seriously, this is a thing in pretty much all their games.

Anyway...

I had this problem in Saints Row the Third. I'd unlocked almost everything well before the end of the game, with little incentive to do more. More cash than I knew what to do with, and so on. And I'm technically already handicapping myself by not having the immunities and infinites, and I hate games where the only way to get any challenge is to artificially limit yourself.

Not quite in the same boat in Kingdoms of Amalur, but I've got like 250K in cash, armour and weapons that may not be the best but certainly are more than enough to handle enemies to my scale, and so many health potions I routinely sell them off. And if I did spend money on better equipment, I'd likely only make the process easier. I have a feeling it won't be long before I have half a million in reserve and the same problem.

I like some level of progression, but there's a fine line between becoming a badass late game and cakewalking through the second and third act.

The problem in Saints Row The Third is, that you don't need more than the fully upgraded pistols and the dual-pistol skill. Every other weapon except an infinite-rocketlauncher is worse.
And i feel you.. i've been there. I had the city controlled in the midst of the game and played the last chapter with absolutley everything unlocked. <.< Immunites are stupid.

 

[Ironman126]

I believe there was a mod floating around somewhere on Nexus that made weapons, arrows, and potions appear much more rarely then they originally do.

NINJAS!!!!

But yes, mods, mods, and more mods. Mods for everything. Mods for cool new weapons. Mods for cooler armor. Mods for making all those cool new toys nearly impossible to find. There is a solution. Unless you aren't playing on a PC. Then I pity you a little.

 

[dvd_72]

Have you taken a look at Metro 2033? I find that on the ranger difficulties I am allways scrounging around for ammo because even if I have more than enough for a particular encounter, you find so little that every little bit helps.

Hell, at the very end, after picking up every single round I could find I had to resort to my knife towards the tail end of the game. Now that was interesting all the way through!

 

[rayen020]

play turn based strategy games? those tend to make you work for your resources. unless you choose the economic strong race. but then you're making your own bed.

 

[Wolfram23]

Yep, not very good game design. But then again, I don't think it's easy to balance. On one hand, that overpoweredness is often what makes a game so awesome by the end, but on the other hand a game like Skyrim is supposed to stretch on for a long long time and it removes a lot of the fun.

The solution of course would be to scale drops and prices based on what you currently have, and difficulty.

 

[laggyteabag]

I find this problem a lot on games like assassins creed too, when you start the game you sit there and decide whether to spend those hard earned Akçe/Florins on a sword or some armour, or making Ezio look even more badass. But by the middle of the game you own enough shops you get 20,000 Akçe/Florins every 20 minutes, and you own all of the shops, weapons and armour so all you can spend it on is ammunition for your crossbow/gun or medicine/poison, and you don't even need to do that because most enemies have a load of ammo/medicine on their corpses!

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Snip

This is a major problem I had with Bioware games in particular. Starting with Knights of the Old Republic, it has become obscenely easy to get way too much coin too fast. In KOTOR, all you needed to do was win the Tatooine Swoop Race circuit. That would give you roughly twenty thousand credits, enough to last the whole game.

Mass Effect would end with your cash flow being in the millions.

Dragon Age was a bit harder, but once you got twenty sovereigns, you were golden. (pun intended)

Dragon Age 2 made even this a joke, where you would be capped out for all the gold you'd need by the end of act one.

The only Bioware game that made me feel strapped for cash was Mass Effect 2, because there you couldn't sell items back. You had a limited pool of cash, and if you wanted everything, you had to plan it out very methodically and use proper equipment to get the discounts.

 

[Lawnmooer]

Yeah... Amassing wealth is too easy sometimes...

In Skyrim it is so very easy, I don't even fully loot corpses anymore (I take only things that weigh 1 or less which is normally just potions and gold) but even then I end up with over 50k gold, all the houses fully furnished and nothing to buy (Then again I rarely buy anything in that game, only smithing materials, arrows and occasionally spells) since I can normally find or make better items. I play on Master difficulty all the time (And have done since my 6th character) I even try constraints such as "I will only use bows" and "I will not craft anything... At all" and I still end up stupid powerful and rich.

Fallout 3 and NV it starts off quite well (On the hardest difficulty + Hardcore mode) looking around for Stimpaks and ammo as well as desperatly trying to find a weapon that will do some real damage. Then after a while (Just picking up things that weigh 1 or less again) I end up with enough money to buy every item at all of the vendors 3 times over, have more Stimpaks than I'll ever need to use and have enough ammo to fund several wars (Both sides of them).

Titan Quest... I'm currently running around with over 700,000 gold and the only things to buy are potions which cost 150 each. I also have picked up over 200 of the sodding things and rarely have to use them (I don't get hit often)

Terraria started off with me feeling out of my depth, I couldn't fend off the Zombies and Demon Eyes that came out at night, my home was tiny and any minerals where hard to find. Now I have over 250 platinum, full sets of all the armour in game (As well as all the basic weapons) my house is fully populated and all I have left to do is farm enemies until I get the items to summon the 3 hardmode bosses. I've done all this by just exploring the one world I've played in.

*Sigh* I wish that games would either make it somewhat challenging to make money or give lots of things to buy throughout the game (Demon's Souls and Dark Souls do this quite well, since you use the same resource for both Exp and for cash and can end up losing everything you have if you die before touching your bloodstain. Also there are quite a few things to buy, new spells and miracles, upgrades for weapons (Both buying some of the resources and using souls to upgrade aswell), extra stat points (AKA leveling up) buying consumables (Which aren't easily farmed in these games))