gold Gold Theory

[Perang Cemen 188]

Yo there are you using gold in your game? eh no, not that Gold, I mean gold is kind of money and alike you use to stay at INN, buy item, and many more.

How do you get gold in your game? defeat monsters, find it in treasure chest, do some quest?

Have you thought where the gold come from? I mean you need to kill monster to get gold right? so where did this monster get the gold? some people say they sell the monster dead body but, why the gold already increased right after they defeating them, is there people in that place and buy them right after they defeated?

I know this just system of the game but some game use this as nice theory like E*rth Bound, they kill enemy but didn't gain money, they will gain it after they reach town(and go to ATM of course).

Treasure contain gold, who was put chest filled with gold in monsters lair?

This is also system of the game I don't have tell you why that chest was there anyway, and people seems don't care about it.

Get gold as reward from quest, only this make sense among all above, people ask you to do something and you gain money from it.

 

Do you have your own? or there something you want to add? or you want to say I was wrong? leave the comment now!

Yay! Sorry I just love to say that, yay!

[roninator2 257]

The discrepancy has always been there as a simple way to give the player their rewards without having to deal with carrying items in inventory to bring back to town to sell for money. However it is still a valid concern for the nit-picking player. lol. I however would raise the issue to another point. Where do the monsters get the items that you could be rewarded with? How does a slime carry a perfectly new shiny sword? And not use it in battle?

[Perang Cemen 188]

6 minutes ago, roninator2 said:

Where do the monsters get the items that you could be rewarded with? How does a slime carry a perfectly new shiny sword? And not use it in battle?

I think you need to see RM XP RTP-Battler slime, inside the slime there a sword but I'm not sure it is shiny, those slime need a hand to use that sword, since they made of water I bet they can only hold the sword.

yay for slime! eww... sound weird well forget it.

[Kayzee 4,033]

Personally I kinda like it when most enemies don't drop gold at all and gold is actually kinda hard to come by. Makes sense for humanoid enemies to have a bit of it, but finding coins stuffed up the butt of some bat is silly. I don't even really agree with enemies dropping sellable 'vender trash' that will just be sold for money either. I rather keep the money handed out by enemies to be kept at a minimum and have it so when you get 1000 gold in a chest somewhere it actually means something. Some of my favorite RPGs were the rare ones where most enemies had nothing or chump change and the rare hidden treasure hoard or powerful enemy with a fat wallet or expensive thing you could sell had a real impact. But most RPGs, and especially JRPG style ones, have a huuuuge problem with rewarding you so much money so often that shopping almost becomes a pointless mechanic unless you introduce some equally huge money sinks. Being able to farm gold or drops you can sell for gold is just too easy to do in most games and doesn't often come with any downside. There is no sense of economy or logic behind it.

 

And heck, what do you even use gold for in most JRPGs? In my experience, I usually get a huge pile of it and blow half of it on new equipment every time I get to a town that is one or two stat points better then your old one, and blow the rest on getting 99 of the cheapest healing and however many of the next cheapest I can afford. Wash, rinse, repeat. I don't even have any real meaningful choices on what to buy, because every new town there is a bit of equipment that is just linearly better in some way then the one I am using, special attributes be damned. So why offer so much special equipment if most of it is situational at best for that one boss that uses x element or is weak to x element, and of the rest any but the most powerful option might as well not exist. I can just go into the menu and spam healing after a battle when I get low, so buying a lot of cheap healing means I effectively can heal all I want between battles and only really have to worry about conserving MP. So why not just heal the party after every battle? At least using items in battle costs a turn and there is a reason for buying the more powerful ones.

Edited July 25, 2017 by KilloZapit

[+ Takeo212 1,079]

I feel repetitive, but I'll say I again;

In Tales of Eadris I intend for money to be earned and not in huge amounts. My game will revolve around mainly material grinding and crafting, and as you craft you gain levels in that skill (for instance, crafting a metal dagger will increase your metalsmithing skill and will unlock more recipes are you get better at it). Through this, you can also either keep the equipment/items you craft, or sell them for money to buy other equipment/items.

 

Enemies do not drop money either, unless their a humanoid - and even then, they will drop little. If you kill a begger, you'll get a small amount of money. Kill an imperial and you'll get more money. I'm considering a drop table of sorts for slimes, since they can "absorb" items and money, once you disperse it, you should be able to obtain it's innards essentially.

You can buy materials such as wood and stone, but you can also chop/mine the materials yourself so if you want to craft items for money, you can harvest the materials yourself and get a higher profit. 

 

Each town has it's own economy. Trading towns will have higher prices and higher demand for materials (meaning you can sell to certain traders for more profit) and poorer and more independent towns will have lower prices but possibly no trading system.

 

Essentially, you gotta earn your money. Yea, NPC's will give you quests here and there (Hey adventurer, care to earn a few coins for some hard work?) so yea, you can get some odd "jobs" on the side to help you get money, exp and some materials, but overall you gotta try earn your money.

 

Crafting is optional of course, so feel free to sell your materials/extra equipment instead and just buy the stuff instead. It may be costly later on though, but those Dragon Scales do sell for a lot. But that fire resistance to help you get those Dragon Scales will cost a gold coin or two.

[lonequeso 1,921]

Quote

But most RPGs, and especially JRPG style ones, have a huuuuge problem with rewarding you so much money so often that shopping almost becomes a pointless mechanic unless you introduce some equally huge money sinks

OMG! Yes. Games tend to overcompensate a lot when it comes to $$$. I don't mind if monster drops gold and items that make no sense for them to carry. I'm not expecting a game to be hyper realistic (I doubt I'd enjoy one that was), and making things more convenient for the player isn't a bad thing normally. Unless you overdo it like most games do with money. 

I do feel like a game should make you chose what you spend your money on wisely however you acquire it. I noticed RPG's now are getting better at that. I think part of it is now you can do so much within a game now in terms of development so it's a lot easier to make tons of things the player can choose to spend money on. It makes money more valuable simply out of the sheer volume of things to spend the money on. 

 

That's more or less how I balanced money in my game. It still requires some tweaking (what doesn't?), but when I play test, I find myself having to choose more carefully about what I buy than I do in a lot of RPG's I've played. There's ten playable characters to equip armor and weapons for plus items and, of course, Inns. Equipment and items are expensive enough that you can run up a huge tab pretty quickly so you have to choose carefully about whose equipment to upgrade and how much to set aside for potions and other items. 

I kinda made a tier system without actually making a tier system. There's progressively better weapons and armors ex. Copper > Iron > Steel, and there's usually a standard armor or weapon piece and a few more high quality pieces that are more expensive. Do you spring for the super awesome shiny armor or settle for the cheaper one?

 

I should mention that part of the reason my system is working well is because I limit the amount of monster encounters. You're not running into enemies every ten steps. Battles focus on quality rather than quantity. less battles = less chances to get money.

[Kayzee 4,033]

I have to wonder what a 'hyper realistic' game economy would look like exactly, especially since all of economics is pretty much a giant game in the first place. I mean outside of an MMO where a real player driven market is a thing, how would we simulate that? Track every item being made and sold and their distribution? Maybe but it seems a bit over the top and really shouldn't amount to much unless the player starts going around killing all the weapon smiths in the world. I am not sure that would actually be that bad of a game to play. It might be pretty interesting to see the things you do, like freeing a monster infested mines or stopping bandits from making trade unsafe, result in economic prosperity for a town which would lead to cheaper princes and more goods. Should their be trends? Towns of workers most of which there for a particular resource or industry?

 

Though that sounds more like a kind of wargame scenario actually. To zoom that far out on issues like that is not something most RPGs tend to do. Most of them are instead more focused on a personal story of a few heroes who save the world from a singular threat. I do think it's an interesting kind of hook for a RPG setting though. As an RPG player you shouldn't need to bother such high level mechanics, but the backdrop of the setting and the general design can be informed by working all this out before hand. The important thing is working out why the world you are in is in the state it's in and what you can do to fix it.

 

Maybe I have been reading too much Worm and it's associated fanfiction lately, but it's really a interesting example of this in action. The story mostly involves lots of high-stake battles with superpowered people beating the crap of each other, but a lot of the interesting stuff is the worldbuilding about exactly how and why the world came to the point where the status quo people in costume and their minions run around beating the crap out of each other and treating such things like 'a game of cops and robbers' while everything slowly spirals into economic ruin. Little details like how the city it starts in was once a fairly big harbor that got a lot of money from shipping, until first someone scuttled a ship to block the harbor as part of some strike and then things getting worse and worse and worse.

 

Makes me wonder about the history of why monsters and bandits are roaming everywhere in RPGs. I kinda like the idea of a game where the real threat isn't some dark lord or evil empire, but a sort of decline and economic depression. What if the game started some time after the evil empire was overthrown and the dark lord cast down? The monsters are still roaming the land, the army of light and the heros of the war spending most of the time held up and defending their boarders, bandits and outlaws run free and unmolested because there are few forces with the will and resources to take them all out.

 

More importantly it's also a nice kind of sanity check for balancing things if you think it out. Working out how much money the average person should have, the rough level of supply and demand for equipment, Why bandits and monsters would or would not have gold and how much and what areas they would be in. All sorts of things could be thought out a little more carefully, following the money trail so to speak. You shouldn't start in a town of poor farmers and have infinite level 1 slimes show up right outside, which even a farmer could beat, that gives more income in one battle then the farmer makes all year. You shouldn't be able to buy expensive metal equipment for chump change when there is no obvious mine nearby (or you haven't cleared it out yet). You shouldn't expect much in the way of cheep supplies from a town that has been cut off from trade by a major bandit party.

 

The fiddly details of why isn't something the player needs to bother with. Heck I don't even think in most RPGs the player should need to worry too much about buying out a towns stalk of supplies or having a limited money from a shop owner for them to buy items from you. I am just saying, a minimum of thought about this kind of thing might make for some more interesting gameplay when it comes to money and where you can get it and where to spend it. Give shops a point more then healing items and linear upgrades, have them fill a rule in the larger economy, make 'quests' have to do with solving a town's issues that prevent it from doing more, have monsters give rewards that have a point in this kind of ecosystem rather then just give rewards to give rewards, have the biggest sources of gold be in the from powerful monster's hoards or a large bandit group's spoils, so on and so forth. That's all it really takes I think.

 

Edited July 26, 2017 by Kayzee

[lonequeso 1,921]

^^RPGs are slowly drifting in that direction. Worlds seem to be not only larger, but functional. You can explore and kind of see how everything is tied together into a working society and economy. How far it will go only time will tell. As technology advances so does developers' ability to make more and more complex worlds and economies. I wonder if there's a glass ceiling with players. A point where the game is so intricate and complex, player stop finding it fun, and it turns off all but the most hardcore gamers. 

 

A friend of mine plays an FPS like that. I wish I could remember the name. Battlefields are insanely large to where it literally takes hours to walk from one side to another. All the physics regarding how characters move and weapons act are as accurate to real life as technology allows. It's a niché game because most people are like me and just want run around shooting people in a wild firefight instead of spending hours planning a strategy then slowly, carefully moving into position, and then finally engage. I wonder if a hyper realistic RPG would suffer the fame fate.

[Perang Cemen 188]

 

Economy are so damn complex! I am just simple-minded person so I made up some weird theory about gold in game...

So I didn't get confused to whatever text above me hehe...

 

The gold come from fountain of gold then that gold send to monsters and treasure chest in world of RPG.

The gold was already there at first you play the game but the gold in that fountain will never increase.

Then that fountain sends the gold to monsters and treasure chest in all over world, not only that they send it to shops too !

As you fight monsters, enemy and alike you gain gold, also from treasure chest. then you use it to buy item from shops, the shops send it again to fountain.

when you sell your item to another shop and that shop located in poor farm and what you sell is something crazy like DOOM BRINGER SWORD that cost 1000000 G above, sound immposible for poor shop like it buy that item from player but that shop can still be able to buy it, why? because Fountain of gold send it to all shop.

 

This is sound like a loop, they go from gold fountain and go back to that fountain again.

 

Something fishy in my head,,,

-Player can't get loan from shop...

-There only one kind of money (G)

-Only Player can use Gold...

-bla bla bla

-bla bla bla

-to many to write

 

Oh well I shall put these theory on one of my game.

(you may ask "why?")

Because I just feel like it.

Edited July 26, 2017 by Perang Cemen
...

[Kayzee 4,033]

2 hours ago, lonequeso said:

^^RPGs are slowly drifting in that direction. Worlds seem to be not only larger, but functional. You can explore and kind of see how everything is tied together into a working society and economy. How far it will go only time will tell. As technology advances so does developers' ability to make more and more complex worlds and economies. I wonder if there's a glass ceiling with players. A point where the game is so intricate and complex, player stop finding it fun, and it turns off all but the most hardcore gamers. 

 

A friend of mine plays an FPS like that. I wish I could remember the name. Battlefields are insanely large to where it literally takes hours to walk from one side to another. All the physics regarding how characters move and weapons act are as accurate to real life as technology allows. It's a niché game because most people are like me and just want run around shooting people in a wild firefight instead of spending hours planning a strategy then slowly, carefully moving into position, and then finally engage. I wonder if a hyper realistic RPG would suffer the fame fate.

 

That FPS sounds like what I heard about the Arma series, which is probobly most famous for the mod DayZ. For RPGs in terms of a huge world, the closest I can think of is Daggerfall, which features huge walled cities that look like they are made for thousands of people and it can take days to get anywhere, but there is a fast travel system between locations at least, though you still need to walk around the huge city and ask people for directions to places (they eventually just mark it on your map though).

 

Anyway, it's important to remember that gameplay abstractions and design abstractions are not the same things. Designing a realisticish economic model for your setting and keeping the scale of industry or civilization that implies doesn't really mean you have to design gameplay that forces you to deal with any of it. Honestly I rather have a RPG where cities are mostly just menus or have a mini overworld for towns rather then either making you slog through huge huge maps or shrinking everything down like most RPGs. It's not like realistic design needs to imply that the gameplay can't be abstracted to make things easier. I mean, there is an appeal to a game where you have this huge to scale world that you explore on foot, but not every game needs to be that.

 

The idea of a whole town being represented by a few buildings was always a design abstraction. Even if it would be logical for a town to be much much larger, it's been abstracted for simplicity and technical reasons. How many games are there after all where a 'city' of a few buildings and maybe a dozen NPCs at best get destroyed or invaded but maybe a few squads of bad guys and the game's story treats it as a major war between powerful nations. If it was a movie or TV show or something it would be a lot more to scale. Usually. I mean some movies and TV shows do the same thing to a lesser extent, like showing a few scattered fights for a major battle. It's just been a lot more obvious with lots of games because of the way a lot of them let you sort of freely roam around. It's most obvious in overworlds but they allow the game to change the scale to show greater distance traveled. The thing most people don't really think about is that to an extent most all maps in games are like that, especially RPGs.

 

12 minutes ago, Perang Cemen said:

 

Economy are so damn complex! I am just simple-minded person so I made up some weird theory about gold in game...

So I didn't get confused to whatever text above me hehe...

 

The gold come from fountain of gold then that gold send to monsters and treasure chest in world of RPG.

The gold was already there at first you play the game but the gold in that fountain will never increase.

Then that fountain sends the gold to monsters and treasure chest in all over world, not only that they send it to shops too !

As you fight monsters, enemy and alike you gain gold, also from treasure chest. then you use it to buy item from shops, the shops send it again to fountain.

when you sell your item to another shop and that shop located in poor farm and what you sell is something crazy like DOOM BRINGER SWORD that cost 1000000 G above, sound immposible for poor shop like it buy that item from player but that shop can still be able to buy it, why? because Fountain of gold send it to all shop.

 

This is sound like a loop, they go from gold fountain and go back to that fountain again.

 

Something fishy in my head,,,

-Player can't get loan from shop...

-There only one kind of money (G)

-Only Player can use Gold...

-bla bla bla

-bla bla bla

-to many to write

 

Oh well I shall put these theory on one of my game.

(you may ask "why?")

Because I just feel like it.

 

You mean like there is a mechanic where there is a set amount of money in circulation and getting money from chests and drops comes from that amount while buying stuff from shops returns your money to it? That's actually a really really interesting idea... don't know if it would be practical though.

[+ Takeo212 1,079]

But if you buy something from the shop and the money goes back to the fountain - doesn't the shop owner end up poor? xD

 

[Rezanta 373]

If I may put my two cents worth the effort:

 

You can't get much money off some of the creatures of Scalvose for my game, but I decided to borrow an idea from the Monster Hunter series.

 

There are dragonic wolves, known as Frezeragas, that you can get certain parts of their body, whether it be some fur, a spine, or a tear, that you can sell to gain money. While it's easy to get rich by selling them, the highest chance you can get an item is 1/13, which means you'll need patience (excluding bosses) to gain cash to stock up. Every cent counts for a long stretch of the game, and I like keeping my game a fairly hard, but doable, difficulty.

 

As for an example, Kingdom Hearts tends to not have bosses drop any loot. You have to farm smaller foes for your munny, items, and even equipment and forge items.

Edited July 26, 2017 by Rezanta

[Perang Cemen 188]

9 minutes ago, Kayzee said:

You mean like there is a mechanic where there is a set amount of money in circulation and getting money from chests and drops comes from that amount while buying stuff from shops returns your money to it? That's actually a really really interesting idea... don't know if it would be practical though.

Why don't you try add gold to player ex: max gold is 999999 and you add treasure chest contain 1000002 gold, but when you open menu and see your G just 999999, so the rest 3 G would be go to fountain, same for sell item if you already have max gold the shop will just send the rest of your money to that fountain, but something like this is rare happen, only if the player are crazy enough to keep defeating enemy to have max gold.(and I'm the one of them)

6 minutes ago, Takeo212 said:

But if you buy something from the shop and the money goes back to the fountain - doesn't the shop owner end up poor? xD

 

Who care about those shop, they didn't use money anyway XD.

expect you have see shop owner go to another shop to buy material to make item.

Very weird for me, if they do that, which mean their shop will be closed, then what about player who want to buy potion? then they go on adventure have lot's wound can't buy item since the shop is closed and eaten by monsters, who gona play game like that...(Me of course)

[roninator2 257]

55 minutes ago, Kayzee said:

You mean like there is a mechanic where there is a set amount of money in circulation and getting money from chests and drops comes from that amount while buying stuff from shops returns your money to it? That's actually a really really interesting idea... don't know if it would be practical though.

 

The idea that came to my mind was each shop has a limited amount of money and if you want to sell an expensive sword, the shop owner may not be able to buy it. So you can't take the second best weapon in the game and go to the first weapon store you ever visited and sell it there. Cause the weapons at the first weapon store is selling basic swords at 100, so they could only buy something for maybe 500, yet your powerful sword is 100,000.

To that extent maybe the shop owner could offer 500 for it and if you accept, by by weapon for a measly 500 gold.

[Perang Cemen 188]

30 minutes ago, roninator2 said:

The idea that came to my mind was each shop has a limited amount of money and if you want to sell an expensive sword, the shop owner may not be able to buy it. So you can't take the second best weapon in the game and go to the first weapon store you ever visited and sell it there. Cause the weapons at the first weapon store is selling basic swords at 100, so they could only buy something for maybe 500, yet your powerful sword is 100,000.

To that extent maybe the shop owner could offer 500 for it and if you accept, by by weapon for a measly 500 gold.

I have doing something like that.

(how? you may ask)

first all price is 100,000 G from basic sword to Ultimate sword.

then specify the price at first shop, that sell the basic sword into 100 G, so when you sell whatever at first shop, they will only pay you 50G no matter what weapon you have, and at second shop you can raise it into 300G and etc etc.

so you can make shop like have a economy level based where they are like in poor or rich place.

(Like BoF, an old game, in village they sold potion at 10G and at town 30 G, so I always go back to village if I want to buy something)

 

[lonequeso 1,921]

Quote

That FPS sounds like what I heard about the Arma series

Yesss! That's the one!

 

Making a complex economy that the player still only interacts when buying and selling things doesn't seem like something a lot of devs would want to invest time into. It's not really necessary. Kinda feels more like a "let's do it just to see if we can do it" sort of thing.

 

@Rezanta- Drops like that are common in a lot of games. I view it as a cheap mental trick to make you feel like your getting more stuff. You're not. You're really just getting gold. Yet knowing this, it still works on me o_O. Dragon Age 3 at least used them for crafting and research items so the items were more fluid in use. That's pretty common, too. It would be interesting to see a game with a barter system where those animals pelts or whatever may be really valuable to some NPCs and junk to others.

[Rezanta 373]

@lonequeso Well, you can use them in quests, getting better armor, getting through the main story (a little cheat around the drop rate of the Lunar Coil, for example), and even a collector specialty. I borrowed more than one idea, but gold is already hard to come by in most regards, so I made it easier on the player if they find said methods.

[Kayzee 4,033]

If drops can just be sold for lotsa gold, having enemies drop stuff is basically one step removed form just having them drop gold. If they can't be sold for much and are intended more for other uses, then that's a bit different. Honestly I also like the idea a few games have where shops have restricted lists of items you can sell to them. Having to hunt around a bit for the right place to sell your stuff makes it a bit more interesting.

[+ Takeo212 1,079]

True. For an for-instance, killing a Dragon in ToE will give you a high chance to obtain a scale. However, most of the time they'll drop a broken scale" since you kinda just attacked and damaged the things body. As a small chance of dropping, you can obtain a "dragon scale" that is undamaged. These can sell for alot of money.

 

However, you can also use it in crafting. A dragon scale can be used to make a powerful accessory for instance, maybe a "flame resistance" buff that will help protect you against any future dragonfire that the Dragons will use. 

 

Maybe even collect a few of them to use in armour smithing and make a dragonscale armour for your paladin. Collect it's hide and you can make dragonhide armour for your light armoured allies. Combine the scales with the rarer, sturdier ores you find and make yourself new weapons. 

or sell it for alot of money and get some supplies that way. Hey, potions are nice right?

 

I want the player to have to choose during various situations between selling materials, and keeping them. Each enemy has a pretty constant drop table (slimes drop gel, wolves drop pelt, beats drop fur and meat, spiders drop fur and occassionally string and eggs, aquatics drop scales, birds drop feathers ect.)

 

The player will get alot of materials, and it's up to them if they wish to level up their crafting skills and sell their wares (which after balancing, should give you a better profit than just selling the materials) or sell the materials upright and get a quick handful of coins.

 

If your selling those pelts for 5 copper each, you better start saving if you want that fancy armour at 2 silver each. 

[Kayzee 4,033]

I do have to say that I am not sure drops and crafting are the answer here, at least not on their own. After all, farming is farming regardless of if it's for drops or gold. In some way farming for drops for crafting is even worse, because not only is the player staying in place doing the same thing over and over, the player is also fighting the same enemy over and over, and the player has to jump through even more tedious hoops to get any value from it. If the optimal way to get anywhere is player sitting there and farming x ingredient for y recipe that they can craft then you can bet your ass that's what the player will do, over and over. Heck if both gold and crafting exists, it's easy to take advantage of one to game the other in some games. If the player crafts the same cheep thing over and over for x skill experience and then they can sell it for y gold, it's not too different from just getting gold after a battle.

 

Can drops and crafting offer a more fun experience then just buying stuff with gold? I think it's possible, but too often it feels like to me like it's just a more winding road to the same place. And in that case, have you really solved anything? Maybe going through that extra effort makes it more rewarding, but I don't think so. If the endpoint is the same in most cases but you have a few more steps in the way, I don't see the difference except extra annoyance. That's one of the reasons I prefer crafting systems that are more about customization and creativity and not just 'get x things to make y thing', or when crafting is used in survival games where resources are limited and you have to explore around for them. Because sure, making that awesome dragon armor is awesome and all, but it's a bit cheapened by the fact that all it involves is walking back and fourth and getting lucky enough.

 

On the other hand, it does bug me when I play an RPG and my inventory fills up with treasure and drops I am never going to really use and are only really good for selling, so in that sense I do wish a lot of RPGs had some kind of crafting just to make use of a lot of the dead weight in better ways then just as vendor trash. Just about anytime I see one of those one use attack items in a older Final Fantasy game I wish it could be used to give my sword a elemental attack or something. Just about every time I see equipment for characters I am not using or that is already obsolete I wish I could melt it down or fuse it's attributes with my current equipment to upgrade it. I guess that's the thing, that you can think of crafting as "How do I get the stuff to do something cool?" or you can think of it as "What cool things can I do with what I already have?" and depending on the approach there is a different feel to it. I like crafting more when I think of it like the later rather then the former.

Edited July 27, 2017 by Kayzee

[lonequeso 1,921]

Quote

Can drops and crafting offer a more fun experience then just buying stuff with gold? I think it's possible, but too often it feels like to me like it's just a more winding road to the same place.

It is, but it gives the players something more to do. The biggest advantage with crafting is customization. The best crafting systems allow players to micromanage their stats far more than you can effectively do with just shops. A shop that has 20 different variations of the same armor is going to be far too cumbersome. So let the player experiment and see what items give what bonuses and discover how they want to build their equipment on their own. 

[Kayzee 4,033]

You know, I guess this crafting stuff is all somewhat tangential to the talk about gold it's self, but it fits into the larger discussion about 'the economics of fun'. After all, gold is just a resource you can use to get stuff. A lot of RPGs are in some way really about more resource management then anything else. So what makes earning and spending gold fun isn't too far removed from what makes crafting fun. Or hack even what makes RPG combat fun. I have given serious thought before about merging gold, MP, and experience into one thing, thinking about what a game would be like when you have to think about if you want to spend a resource on doing a powerful magic attack to an enemy, getting better equipment or items, or making yourself stronger. Might be interesting.

[PhoenixSoul 1,404]

Hmmm...but what's the point of having gold drops if you can't carry any?

 

In Project: False, the only way one will be able to carry 'gold' (Opal), is by equipping an item that will allow one to increase their Opal Capacity.

 

Even then, if enemies drop Opal, it won't be much...