It would add to the realism of it if it were droppable. I think in doing it that way though it means that people will just go around attacking each other all the time to try and take your coin.
I’m not a major fan of PVP so I wouldn’t want to have to keep looking over my shoulder every time I wanted to go into town to buy something expensive. Plus it would really suck if I’d earned 30k coin through hard toil just to have some shopkeeper gank me and keep all my money anyway! Or even if I’d died by any other means, I wouldn’t want my hard-earned coin to be picked up by someone else (or worse, for it to disappear before I’d even had a chance to recover it).
We use debit cards. Always have your money available, and if it’s lost or stolen, just get a new one
I think it’s also worth noting that not all of your fortunes will be in the form of coin. You will still need to store valuables in a safe place while you wait to exchange it for coin at the market.
I personally also like the idea of carrying a chosen amount of cash around with you. It adds drama to your adventure. How much do you want to risk? Going somewhere dangerous - maybe take less. I’m not a fan of features that exist outside of the game world.
That it can be dropped doesn’t mean it has to drop when you die. I mean tokens don’t drop on death but can drop or am I mistaken?
I mean you could make it as an additional death toll which I’d support. But I’d just like to show off my wealth in form of coins instead of just a number. As @Zouls said it makes it more weighty.
@james[quote=“james, post:103, topic:3217”]
I’m not a fan of features that exist outside of the game world.
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What do you mean by that?
Features that exist in a GUI rather than (somehow) in the game.
For example, should the mini-map be a part of the GUI layered over the game automagically? Or should it be a map you hold in your hand, or a GPS device you hold in your hand, or some other in-game representation.
Oh now I get it and I completely agree. It might not always be the most practical solution but most of the time it makes the game more immersive and believable.
I’m a bit of a “function over form” kinda guy. I don’t much mind if my money is physical or digital in game, so long as it is manageable. I certainly don’t mind dropping my wallet on death (or more specifically, my victims dropping their wallet) so long as a fair, easy and convenient safeguard is in place. If we have physical droppable money, I want to be able to remotely bank it after a big score, even if there is a fee to do so.
Btw - I’m also function over form kinda guy as well.
For example, consider the minimap again. I don’t mind the minimap showing up in the GUI (as it does at the moment), and I don’t require it to be scribbled onto a piece of parchment that then floats in a player’s hand - but I do think players should need to craft a minimap item and carry it with them to enable the minimap function + GUI.
(Having said that - I’m not that fussed. But for money I think there should be some drama to collecting, transporting, etc.)
We have portals that transport us to other worlds… why not carry a coin cube around that can instantly transfer money back to a counterpart coin chest stashed somewhere safe.
You could have it that, until you make those things, you have to carry your coin around with you or manually transport it to your safe area. Best of both worlds!
Edit: I do like the idea of having to craft your minimap before you can use it as well!
The way I imagine it, if I suddenly scored big while out adventuring but I am not yet ready to return to base, I should be able to make a choice between either keeping that money on me and risking loosing it all, spend the resources on a warp home and end my adventure now, or pay a fee to have a select amount of money transported to my safe back home. You could have this service as a crafted item (like the coin cube suggested by @Stretchious) or a tamed carrier pidgin pet. This could also require 5-10 seconds to process to deter money dumping in combat situations.
This way, I still have to be careful taking my money to market as I have to carry it on my person, but I don’t have to go home every time I accumulated a little while adventuring.
The tamed carrier pidgin pet somehow got me
It’s so neat to imagine. You could store valuable items in baskets and boxes which the pet is carrying. If you should be attacked by a wayfarer and die, the pet could turn and rush away back to a secret safe spot. Depending on the pets speed up, like a panic turbo boost dash. This could increase the chance saving some of your goods, but also, the pet still would be in danger as well. And you would need to find it again.
That´s exactly what I meant to say. Absolutely agree with you there
I also quite like your minimap idea/example.
And ultimately nullifying drop-on-dead because you would carry 0 coins around all time and only teleport some in when you are right in front of a shop. Definitely not a fan of in-field money teleporting whatsoever.
Apart from the drop-on-dead debate I also have to say that I´m a bit disappointed by that implementation of currency. I really hoped that you would go for a more creative way of incorporating money into the game. For example like in Metro where currency is also used as ammunition or like in Gothic (or Piranha Bytes new game ELEX) where gold and coins are pretty much useless and Ore is used for trading, bribery, etc. but also for crafting.
It could, for example, be called Oort dust and it could be used to open Warps&Portals in addition to “just” being a currency.
What I meant by the coin cube was that it would ultimately be a one-way transaction - it would only be able to move money from the cube to the other side. Not the other way around.
Plus it would not nullify drop-on-dead if there were a timed action that needed to be performed (and could be interrupted) before you could open the box and deposit coins as suggested by [quote=“Havok40k, post:112, topic:3217”]
This could also require 5-10 seconds to process to deter money dumping in combat situations
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You could make the build requirements for such a thing quite expensive or difficult as well - up until the point where you are able to build it, you just have to carry however much money about that you want and take your chances.
Threat when exploring is really important, and coins need to feel really valuable. So I share all the goals discussed here.
Another thing that’s really important is that player shops and trading are useful and widely used. Not allowing players easy access to their currency could quite literally cripple the economy, it’s quite at odds with some other goals.
Death penalty is important though. Lord of the Rings would have been a pretty boring adventure if there was no threat on the way to Mordor . All items in the game will have a very clear coin value, as will game effects (like durability – ultimately that can translate to coin). So there’s a way to impose a cash penalty from a player without explicitly needing to deduct it from their purse. Dropping some items or taking durability damage ultimately effects you in a meaningful way.
Finding a balance for this kind of thing is really tricky. Too high and people won’t leave their home, to low and there’s no threat and nothing feels meaningful. I’m not sure we’ll know exactly how to balance this or what the penalty will be until we’ve got some more systems in place, but I expect we’d scale the penalty based of some heuristics to do with how long you’ve been away from home and how far you are. Example: die in your base, low penalty. Die on the way to the capital, medium penalty. Die on another world, hours since being at home, high penalty. Tension and threat ramps the further you dare to travel.
That’s our current thinking </friday evening brain dump>
Honestly this sounds very very bad to me, it is quite the opposite of player run economy if everything has a coin value, the things worth should be what people are willing to pay, if the prices are already predetermined the players wont be able to decide its worth properly.
On shops blocks and being able to sell lots of things: we don’t want to stop that, we actively encourage it. But we also want shops to feel like big, interesting and visually exciting places to visit (and not just a block with a bit of dull UI). Physically represented in world stuff is so much cooler to us, it’s why we’re pushing so much in that direction
people have to discover before they can buy, just as I like 