A Bank Account Building Interest!

[HADEN OF LEGENDS]

Before I get into my banking system and how it functions, I MUST explain something to detail the reason as to WHY I use this type of system. Most people would say that's broken or CRAZY to do, until they hear as to why I did it.

Money in my game is extremely hard to get. I stress the word "extremely"! In the beginning of the game, you can buy the second cheapest weapon, the Short Sword. It costs 650. However, there are only 3 different monsters to fight in the area and only 1 of them provides you any gold at all for a victory. Do you know how much gold you get for beating it? 1..... You get 1 gold. The next cheapest weapon is a Long Sword, which takes a Short Sword and an Iron Ingot to craft it. The Iron Ingot costs 500. So to get a long sword, you have to grind your way up to 1150 gold for a simple +3ATK -1SPD. However, there are jobs in my game as well. You can go to the station to request 1 of 4 job classes and each class has 4 different jobs to chose from, each of them offering slightly more gold than the last because it is after all, slightly harder to complete. Do you want to know the maximum payout for the hardest job at the first station is? 35 gold. That's right.... three-five!

So now that we have established that even the crappiest of crap in my game is overpriced, and that you have to grind just to afford garbage tier equipment, we can explain my banking system! This system takes what would otherwise make you furious and turns it into a plethora of shiny over time!

My bank of course has the same 2 functions as everyone else's bank. You can deposit money and you can withdraw what you deposit. However, there is an additional option. You can pay 500 gold to gain 1 savings account at the bank. Also, you can pay 5000 gold to purchase a second savings account which is twice as effective as the first savings account. What do these savings accounts do you might ask? Simple, it gives you free money for absolutely no work! Don't get your panties in a bunch though, it's not going to quadruple your money in 10 minutes! The system works on a night and day system tethered by 2 switches and 3 common events. Basically, when the timer reaches 0:0:0 while the Night Time switch is on, the bank will add money to your savings account, if the savings account switch is turned on (meaning if you purchased the savings account). "How much money do you get in your account?" you ask? Simple, I'll provide the formula right below for both accounts.

Savings Account 1 Gains = Main Bank Account Amount / 20 = total.

Savings Account 2 Gains = Main Bank Account Amount+ Savings 1 Amount / 10 = total.

So imagine it like this. You have 100 gold in your main bank account. Night crosses over to day and the savings account 1 switch triggers. You gain 100 gold / 20. So you will have 5 gold added to your savings 1 account. If you have 200, you will have 10 gold added instead. So as you can see, it's not something that instantly pays for itself and some. You have to give it time to pay you back for buying the account and then give it time to accumulate any real amount of money you can work with.

Now, let's go to the seconds savings account. Main Account + Saving 1 / 10. Let's say you 1000 gold in your main account and 400 gold in your savings account 1. Your total is 1400 which is then divided by 10 which comes to 140. You will have 140 dollars added to your savings 2 account, then the savings 1 switch will trigger afterward since that is how I have it written. So first, gain 140, then gain 1000/20 which is 50. You will gain a total of 190 gold at the end of the equation. Is this easy for you to understand?

What do you guys think about the night and day system and using it to create a bank that gives you interest based money for depositing your earnings? Also, what do you think about the math formulas I have created to determine how much you will earn each day?

 

[bgillisp]

My suggestion would be to give the player a quest to earn a savings account. That way, they still have to earn it, but it doesn't make them totally broke. As it is, I see the price you suggest and I'm worried about it right away. Also remember the player is going to have to afford inns and potions, and if you are not making them dirt cheap a starting player can easily hit a case where they are losing more than they gain to fight monsters, which will cause a rage quit really quickly.

 

[Andar]

In theory, there is nothing against it.


But in reality, you have to


1) balance the earnings to everything


2) consider how long a player is willing to grind


Especially the second point will cause you problems - you should calculate how long it takes in real time to get let's say 100 gold as average, and then check how long has a player to play the grinding before he gains the gold for the next weapon.


Even an intense gamer rarely has more than 100 hours a week to play games - a lot of people are happy if they have 2-3 hours per day to play. And they don't want to spend weeks for minor upgrades, if you force that they'll play other games...

 

[Kes]

I may have misread/misunderstood, but there seems to me to be a fundamental flaw in this.

The bank does indeed pay interest - but have you calculated how long it will take for the average player to have enough spare cash (i.e. not needed for inns, healing items etc.) so that they can start putting it into the bank?  Those jobs that only pay 35 gold, may require resting at an inn or use of healing items to complete them, so that 35 is not all profit.  And once they start putting their money in, 5% of not very much isn't a great deal.  It's going to take a long time to build up enough capital to start generating decent returns, in absolute terms, which is all the player is interested in.

You don't tell us clearly how long in game play hours it will take for the switches to activate a payment of interest, but I can see players in desparation loading the game, going off leaving it running and have dinner, chat with friends, watch a movie and then come back to collect their (not very large at the beginning) interest payments, because otherwise it will be too tedious.

We cannot possibly comment in any detailed way on your maths as you have not told us the price of healing items, or of inns, or the possibility of finding healing items.  We therefore cannot possibly calculate the expenditure of the player, nor see how many battles the player has to fight in order to earn enough to buy one healing item.  Neither do we know how you have calculated your damage so we don't know how many healing items will be required.  At one gold per fight, I can see that unless everything is balanced to perfection, (skills, damage taken/given. healing etc. etc.) it could cost you more to fight than you can earn.

 

[stupid enough to like FF13]

To start off: this sounds incredibly tedious. Think about it: you have to do that "hardest job" fifteen times just to afford the first savings account.

Also, you describe it as having three separate accounts: the main account, "Savings 1", and "Savings 2". The first account determines interest based on the main account and puts it into "Savings 1". In other words, the player isn't making any money off of their accumulated interest. The same applies for the second savings account. So you'd have to constantly take the money out of the savings accounts and put it into the main account in order to get interest on your interest.

Also, assuming that you have the first savings account and you can do said "hardest job" three times a day, it would still take nine in-game days to be able to afford the long sword from scratch. Without the account, it would take eleven.

It is basically like saying, "Hey, you have to grind for an hour, but at least you won't have to grind for seventy minutes!"

 

[HADEN OF LEGENDS]

I may have misread/misunderstood, but there seems to me to be a fundamental flaw in this.

The bank does indeed pay interest - but have you calculated how long it will take for the average player to have enough spare cash (i.e. not needed for inns, healing items etc.) so that they can start putting it into the bank?  Those jobs that only pay 35 gold, may require resting at an inn or use of healing items to complete them, so that 35 is not all profit.  And once they start putting their money in, 5% of not very much isn't a great deal.  It's going to take a long time to build up enough capital to start generating decent returns, in absolute terms, which is all the player is interested in.

You don't tell us clearly how long in game play hours it will take for the switches to activate a payment of interest, but I can see players in desparation loading the game, going off leaving it running and have dinner, chat with friends, watch a movie and then come back to collect their (not very large at the beginning) interest payments, because otherwise it will be too tedious.

We cannot possibly comment in any detailed way on your maths as you have not told us the price of healing items, or of inns, or the possibility of finding healing items.  We therefore cannot possibly calculate the expenditure of the player, nor see how many battles the player has to fight in order to earn enough to buy one healing item.  Neither do we know how you have calculated your damage so we don't know how many healing items will be required.  At one gold per fight, I can see that unless everything is balanced to perfection, (skills, damage taken/given. healing etc. etc.) it could cost you more to fight than you can earn.

Well! Let us get crackin'

heheh,... bad pun.

POTIONS​

 ​

Well, you can actually buy jars for 10g and kill slimes and elemental slimes for different types of Slime Goo. Slimes also drop 1g  per slime that was in the fight. Each regular slime has a 1/3 chance to drop Slime Goo and respectively, each elemental slime (Fire, Wind, Earth, Water) has a 1/3 chance of dropping an equal element of special Slime Goo. You can take these bottles you purchased home and cook different Slime Goo together for different types of potions which can only be used in battle by breaking the bottle open, you do lose the bottles. However, these different potions have a different attribute for them to benefit you in healing and a second factor. For example: ​

 ​

1 Slime Goo + 1 Red Slime Goo = 1 Spice Potion​

-Heal 5% MHP & MMP every turn for 4 turns.​

-5% increased resistance to Fire Element.​

1 Slime Goo + 1 Purple Slime Goo = 1 Draft Potion​

-Heal 5% MHP & MMP every turn for 4 turns.​

-5% increased resistance to Wind Element.​

 ​

SLIME GOO SALE PRICES​

While you cannot sell your Slime Goo to regular stores as regular stores do not have the sell option, there is a man in the first town who will give you 1g + 1EXP per Slime Goo you give him and 3g + 3EXP per elemental Slime Goo you give him. So when you do the easiest job at the station for 15g to clean out the overpopulating slimes in the crystal caves, you will also be collecting plenty of regular Slime Goo for potions or to convert into G&E​

 ​

THE ALPHA SLIME​

^ You can also cook 2 potion brews together to formulate a stronger battle potion. In addition, there is a repeatable "Boss" slime called Alpha Slime, it's 3X the size of a normal slime, 10XHP/MP, 2XATK/DEF/MATK/MDEF and has Heal II and Recover II which both recover 15%HP but Recover covers the damage done to the Wind, Fire, Water and Earth Slime tagging along with it. This thing has a 1/3 chance to drop Silver Slime Goo (cuz it's silver) which you can combine with any of the other colored Slime Goos to get a potion that gives you 15% recovering for 4 turns instead of 5. It's Alpha Potion Fire, Wind, Water and Earth. So basically, each potion only costs what a bottle costs. However, all potions must break the bottle and be used during a battle.​

 ​

RAW FOODS​

 ​

Now, how about "other" healing items? There is a huge variety of foods that you can either purchase for not too much or that you can sometimes find. Also, you can use these items from the menu, unlike the potion counterpart. I'll list some of the items with their effects and their prices below.​

 ​

Mushroom​

-Recovers 1% MHP & MMP​

-25% resistance increase to State-Poison if used in battle.​

Obtain: 1g purchase at food shop; random locations placed throughout maps where a mushroom has grown; the field in the central town restores all 3 previously picked mushrooms when the night time clock hits 0:0 and a new day starts.​

 ​

Bread​

-Recovers 4% MHP​

-1% Crit & Evasion increase if used in battle.​

Obtain: 3g purchase at food shop; can be stolen off of random food shelves in some homes (effects karma).​

 ​

Beef​

-Recovers 8% MHP​

-5% increase to ATK stat if used in battle.​

Obtain: 8g purchase at food shop; can kill cows to get beef, but you lose the milk cow option.​

 ​

COOKING RAW FOODS​

 ​

Just like with Slime Goos, you can cook your food at the oven. Also, the more you cook, the more your Cook Skill variable goes up. The higher your Cook Skill is, the better the stuff you can cook using more ingredients, some of which get added to the list by reading books from some book shelves throughout the game. You can purchase about 25 different raw food items at most food stores in general and all but 1 of them can be used in cooking. I'll list some of the things you can cook and how to make them and what they do.​

 ​

Beef Stew​

1 Beef + 1 Carrot + 1 Potato​

-Recover 15% MHP​

-5% ATK stat increase, 5% Accuracy increase and 1% Crit increase if consumed in battle.​

 ​

Tunafish Salad​

1 Tuna + 1 Lettuce + 1 Tomato + 1 Mushroom​

-Recover 15% MHP & 5% MMP​

-25% increased resistance to State-Poison, +1% MHP/MMP Regen if consumed in battle.​

 ​

Honey Glazed Pork​

1 Pork + 1 Vial of Golden Honey [semi-rare item drop]​

-Recovers 30% MHP & 15% MMP​

-50% increased resistance to State-Poison and 5% DEF stat increase if consumed in battle.​

 ​

^ All of these can be cooked on the stove in your own home.​

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INNS & OTHER HEALERS​

 ​

There are Inn's but I have them functions slightly different in my game because I use states to restrict the use of a special item trait to be used every so many steps or just 1 time for that character. The Inn does not "Full Recover" the party. It doesn't give you MP back either. It does however give you back 999 HP which is hundreds more than the HP cap of the HP tank class of the game. The Inns also cost you 100g. You wont however be using the Inns unless you ABSOLUTELY need to and it's right there. You have a house. Just like you have a stove you can cook on, you have a bed to sleep in. The bed functions using 2 different features. One is for night time, the other for day time. You can "nap" in your bed during the day time, recovering your HP by 999 which then turns off the bed switch until the night time common event turns the bed switch back on. However, at night time, you can chose to sleep in the bed and not only recover 999 HP but instantly make it day time by turning off the nightswitch, turning on the day switch and restarting the timer. The day timer is set to 25 minutes. The night timer is set to 20 minutes.​

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You may also cast "Heal" at Level 4 or higher with the Spirit Warrior in your party, recovering 15% MHP for 15M. This ability can be used inside or outside of battle at any time~~​

 

[HADEN OF LEGENDS]

 In other words, the player isn't making any money off of their accumulated interest. The same applies for the second savings account. So you'd have to constantly take the money out of the savings accounts and put it into the main account in order to get interest on your interest.

You can sell drop items to put gold into your main account. Also, if you purchase the first interest account, you get a bank slip. This allows you to use your main account variable in a purchase of any items or equipment at shops or even to go to the Inns or eat out at a food joint. That's actually what you want, too. It makes it possible to leave ALL of your money in the bank. Also, you take out what interest you gain in the savings account to place into the main account to steadily increase your interest rates. Sure, it can be tedious collecting money, but battle missions are not the only missions in the game. You have numerous side quests like finding a lost cat for a little girl. There are also side-job events that reward not just gold, but EXP as well. It wont take too long before you are generating a hundred gold or so a day in your account. When you reach that number, the number just gets bigger at a much faster rate and it is more than worth the time. While you are spending your nights waiting on interest to kick in, you are also doing side events that level you up and some of which also earn you gold on the side, not as much as an official job, but some more gold is some more gold in this game. Eventually, you'll be 1 shotting slimes and getting more slime goo than you can craft potions with and you will be opting also to sell those to the man who wants them. Believe me, the grind becomes more than worth it. I already played 7 hours of gameplay on it and I'm at 290g interest right now.

 

[bgillisp]

Hmmm....no offense, but it sounds REALLY tedious as you described it. Potions that give only 5% HP? Why bother. Most enemies will probably do well over 5% of your HP per round, so I wouldn't see the point in using a potion in battle, even if it is for 4 rounds. Inns costing 100 G sounds like a no point feature honestly, especially if they restore nothing, but instead set your HP to 999 (and honestly, how is that inn in business? I can't see anyone else in your game world affording that 100 G cost, so how are they still open?).  

I'm also worried about what ksjp17 pointed out. As low as the G gains are and as hard as it is to advance, what is to stop the player from losing more than they gain per fight regularly? If that happens all the time, others will say your game is too hard, and will quit, before they get 7 hours in like you do and start gaining momentum. Now if you need it to be that hard, be sure to justify it in game somehow. Maybe you are a rebel and prices are high as no one will sell to you. Or, an escaped slave. Then, at least the player gets the idea that it is due to your situation in the game, and not just someone picking big numbers out of thin air, that just happened to be high. 

 

[Kes]

First things first

HADEN OF LEGENDS, please avoid double posting, as it is against the forum rules. You can review our forum rules here. Thank you.

If you want to reply to more than one post, quoting what was said, use the MultiQuote post bottom right.  However, rather than quote an entire post, it is sufficient to use

@username

blah blah

and then

@another user name.

So back to the thread topic.  I have looked carefully at your items, and frankly I don't see many players sticking with this.  Not only do I have to grind endlessly for basics, I then have to spend time faffing around cooking and making potions.  I do not think your healing items are strong enough, and I can see bankruptcy staring the player in the face - it is going to cost as much, if not more, to fight as they would receive in drops etc.

I've thought about bgillisp's suggestion of a story mechanism to justify it - but I don't think it's going to work.  It will still feel a broken system, no matter what story you put it into.  And if the numbers scale up in the way that you describe, then a few hours in the game is going to be broken in the opposite direction.  Money will be so plentiful that it will become meaningless, so any story you devised to explain the scarcity will fall apart in the face of over abundance.

And I simply cannot get my head around why you will not allow MP to be restored by resting/sleeping.  All it does is make it feel like the player is being forced to go through all this cooking etc just to get their MP.  It all just adds to the potential for tedium.

 

[bgillisp]

Yeah, I think for my idea to work, it would still need some rebalancing, and making sure the player had a way to handle the situation they were in. Though I do still recall playing some games where the goal of the first few hours was to survive long enough to start gaining money, but at the same time they started you with a decent set of starting cash and resting was cheap (5 G, or whatever their currency was), and you could earn that 5 G back by working for half the day. So, bankruptcy wasn't an issue, but getting ahead was.

I do think having free resting at the house will help. However, here is the question you will need to ask yourself:

IS

IT

FUN?

Or, will the player find it fun retreating to the house to rest every time early game, because they cannot afford to rest anywhere else? Or is it just padding the game to hit an arbitrary time of playing hours?

To better illustrate this, I'm currently playing Pillars of Eternity, and I want to smack whoever put the camping supplies system in the game, as all it does is force me to retreat to town, rest, return to the dungeon. It achieves nothing more than slowing me down for 3 - 5 minutes every time I want to rest, as I don't want to use up one of my few supplies as the merchants are not restocking them, so once I buy the few they have and use my collection up, that's it. No more camping supplies. As it is, all the system is doing is padding the game, and is accomplishing nothing else but make me consider playing another game rather than drudge back to town to rest yet again.

 

[stupid enough to like FF13]

You can sell drop items to put gold into your main account. Also, if you purchase the first interest account, you get a bank slip. This allows you to use your main account variable in a purchase of any items or equipment at shops or even to go to the Inns or eat out at a food joint. That's actually what you want, too. It makes it possible to leave ALL of your money in the bank. Also, you take out what interest you gain in the savings account to place into the main account to steadily increase your interest rates. Sure, it can be tedious collecting money, but battle missions are not the only missions in the game. You have numerous side quests like finding a lost cat for a little girl. There are also side-job events that reward not just gold, but EXP as well. It wont take too long before you are generating a hundred gold or so a day in your account. When you reach that number, the number just gets bigger at a much faster rate and it is more than worth the time. While you are spending your nights waiting on interest to kick in, you are also doing side events that level you up and some of which also earn you gold on the side, not as much as an official job, but some more gold is some more gold in this game. Eventually, you'll be 1 shotting slimes and getting more slime goo than you can craft potions with and you will be opting also to sell those to the man who wants them. Believe me, the grind becomes more than worth it. I already played 7 hours of gameplay on it and I'm at 290g interest right now.

Okay, so you do dozens of these various jobs and side-jobs, grinding up to reach a point where you're getting hundreds of gold per day in interest.

Then you proceed to do nothing but sleep for weeks at a time, and get out of bed to thousands of new gold coins in your account. Sure, you're doing nothing, but it's not "one-shot a slime and sell their goo" over and over. And with each deposit, your next night's sleep is even more lucrative, up until you can afford all of the prerequisite items you need to make the Ground Sword of Finance.

Even you describe it as "tedious" and a "grind". As you've described it, it's a system that requires extreme repetition of the same tasks up until a certain point where you can take advantage of the mechanics and become stupidly rich without having to do anything.

 

[HADEN OF LEGENDS]

My game is designed to chase exp and skills before the blades.

also @ksjp17 I would like to note about the early on lack of power to the items. You're forgetting what I said you could do with them. You can combine just about everything in some way shape or form and many of them can reach pretty high levels of potency.

For example, I explained combining slime goos to make potions, then I also talked about combining potions to make potent potions. The items work out fine. The only real grind within in the game as mentioned is the gold. It entices you to farm for drops and establish a financial arm at the bank because it's your way out of the never ending brokeness and also happens to be the final boss.

 

[Nebuerys]

Personally, I am all for encouraging the player to actively engage in the game's economy instead of passively earn all the wealth they need through battles and quests, but solely relying on a banking system to earn 99% of the player's wealth doesn't seem to fit in a traditional RPG setting.

It's expected from most if not all RPGs that better gear tends to become more expensive as the game progresses so with that in mind, how much will the gear and their subsequent tiers be priced? Traditionally, devs price their gear in such a way that the player will be able to afford or barely afford(to encourage a few minutes of grinding) newer stocks as they progress. With the banking system, its near impossible to predict the player's wealth because of these factors:

(1) In-game days spent by the player prior to seeing the new equipment. Some tend to spend too long exploring and level grinding while some just want to breeze through irrelevant areas, and/or

(2) Dedication of the player to invest and continuously engage in the system.

With the traditional economy, players earn a fixed and, I would like to stress this, controlled amount of money for every enemy they defeat or quest they fulfill. This is made so that extreme early or mid-game grinders are discouraged to grind even more because there are higher-paying enemies and quests if they progressed further, while penniless players will be able to farm for their gear in just a few hours if not minutes.

Translating that into the banking system, extreme grinders, or in this case investors, will most likely be filthy rich because of the exponential growth of their wealth while those who failed to give adequate attention on the system will be forced to not only farm for their pittance of a starting capital but also wait idly for their money to start generating enough to purchase for their needs. I believe this will only work if you can somehow put a cap on the interests or put a limitation to the system.

Of course, I am not, in anyway discouraging you to scrap the entire idea in favor of the traditional style, in fact I support it but urge a few tweaking. Here're my suggestions:

(1) Do not rely solely on the banking system. Make it so that players who have no care for it will still be able to earn a decent amount money through the traditional means but will fall a little short if they didn't invest earlier. Of course, they will still be given the choice to grind albeit a more punishing endeavor than if he decided to just leave money in the bank earlier.

(2) Make the banking system a one-time transaction with many limits as to not be easily abused but offers great payouts.

Example:

- The player may deposit a maximum of 10000 G in one account and can only have 3 accounts active. The cap will of course change depending on the player's progress.

- 10% of which will be payed to the bank for their services. Non-refundable if the player decides to prematurely withdraw his money. and

- The player waits n amount of in-game days to get his 33% interest from the remaining cash.

- When an account has successfully generated the interest. Player gets his money and may start another.

That way, players will be discouraged to abuse the system by keeping their computers on for an entire day just to get a juicy payout but not be too harsh when punishing the player for not utilizing the system.

 

[DosBuster]

I'm sorry, but this is not good game design. For one, the early game, the most sensitive part of whether a player continues or not in your design is insanely boring. They get 1 gold for killing a hard monster? Two monsters give no reward? What?

 

Plus the whole bank system is too complex a system to implement, I say that because someone will find a way to exploit it and then you'll just have players break through your design and render it null. I get it though, the system sounds cool from a technical standpoint, and is something cool to show off saying "I made this." That's not what we do.

 

We make fun. We take people away from their ****ty lives and make them feel good for once. Don't fall into the trap of making it about your programmer ego, just focus on making the consumer happy and getting you all that sweet money, then you can play Bank.

 

[Niten Ichi Ryu]

I do not find this an attractive system, 7hrs of gameplay for 290, when you said basic sword was 500+? not worth it.

as bgillisp said, always ask yourself: is it fun > just by reading all this I can tell you my opinion: It's not.

for me, you are going towards feature clogging with this game, between the library books for identifying monsters, the complicated banking system, the shields that can be weapons, the craving for hardcore yet strategic gameplay (in your terms) making every battle a possibly tough one.

For me all these things you want to implement will need you to hand guide players a lot in the beginning, else they just going to miss on all those features and your game will end up meh.

Remember that even though the Dev is you, and what you want to see in your game is important, you should really wonder: does the players want to see this, will they use this, or most important: will they understand these concepts.

Right now, I think you go for over complex things.

 

[HADEN OF LEGENDS]

It's a complex game concept and story itself that is developing. I want the game to be hard because it will force the player to play smart, not play with handicaps given to them. That's the problem I have with modern rpg games in general. I play them and step all over them without even thinking. I click a button and win, click a button and win repeat repeat repeat. I don't want that in my game. Sure, a lot of people prefer an "easy" game, but you also have those out there who like getting their aces kicked and learning different complex strategies to prevent it. You can't play an easy game and beat it then say you beat the game, because you didn't. The game beat itself for you. I don't find that fun at all. If you don't find the strict concept behind the mechanics to be "fun", that's personal flavor. Don't implement it in your games if you don't like such mechanics. I'm outreaching more to those who are hardcore thinkers in their gameplay strategies and the nine yards.

Yes, I have a lot of specific features in the game. The way I see it, a game with more features is a game with more to do. The more you can do in a game, the better it will ultimately be. Do you want a game that lets you bake a cake, or do you want one that lets you bake it and eat it when you finish? Same applies here to this banking system. Yes, I understand that the small gold collection at first can get frustrating, but it is designed that way to make you earn your way through the game, not have it handed to you like it's final fantasy and pokemon. I'm not bashing the titles either, I love their concepts and play them to, but I don't like most of the ease the game provides, it makes me feel like I'm a 5 year old. I'm too smart to be handed everything in life and I consider the same with games. I want to give the players a plethora, and I mean a plethora, of skills, items, optional functions and gambit-style risks that they can work with. It makes things more rich that way than a basic "press A" game style.

But ultimately you should appreciate a bank system like this being added to a game that gives you so little gold, because it means you have the option to increase the gold income in the end of it IF.... I stress IF, you "earn" that outcome. That's just me and just the way I like to do things and I'll say it like it is. If you don't like it, don't use it. If you don't want to play it, don't play it.

 

[bgillisp]

I think the problem you are going to run into is if you make the game too grindy, people are going to not play it. Most people don't have 7 hours to spend on a game anymore to earn 1/3 of the amount for the next weapon, especially the older gamers who have to work and have families to take care of. So you may want to consider that factor too. You say you are making the game hard, but I've *never* played a hard game that required that much work for no reward (and I've played many of the 80s and 90s RPG's, which were tough), so I don't know who your market is in the end besides yourself. Though, if that is what you want is a game for just yourself, go for it.

As for the OP about the bank (and only the bank), let's throw out the rest of the factors and look at it this way. What is to stop the player from investing money, then sleeping for 12 hours with the computer on, and becoming rich? Anything?

Personally, if you want to do a bank, here is what I would do:

1: Let the player invest any amount of money from the beginning. Most games do not charge for an account, but instead operate on the assumption that at the beginning the interest is so little that no one will invest 1 or 2 G into the bank.

2: Put in something to stop the player from resting and earning 100000000 G in 12 hours. Personally, I like how Might and Magic handled it, where each step increased the clock x minutes, and the player aged. So, you could run around in circles for 10 years and be rich, but your character was now 10 years older, and the stats reflected that (and yes, you could age to the point where you died of old age in those games).

3: If you really want to charge just to get the account, give the player a quest to earn an account. Maybe they can do a quest for the banker, and the reward is an account? Just make sure it is hard enough to reflect how much G it is worth.

 

[Niten Ichi Ryu]

@ Haden

"But ultimately, you should appreciate a banking system like this...! Ultimately, I don't. I'm an adult with a full time job and a family and can't "waste" 7 hours of my limited gaming time, waiting to make enough profit from such system to buy an amazing "Butter knife +1/2", but obviously you are not catering for me.

I tend indeed to play often in casual mode, not because I do not like a challenge, but because I want to experience most I can from a game between two feeds and nappies change, yet I never felt the game was beating itself for me.

Usually, if you play a game where you bake a cake, you will end up eating it as well, basics of having crafting as an utility, so I don't get which point you were trying to make.

Regarding your reply to my feedback on your banking system: "If you don't like it, don't use it, if you don't want to play it, don't play it, it's my way", well I'd say if you don't want feedback that goes against praising your system, don't ask feedback.

I'm more concerned about one thing: most of the feedback you received on this page is about the user experience, and will it be actually fun for a player, but you haven't addressed that yet, so I'll ask you the same questions I asked when you were exposing your shield ideas: Do you have some players beta testing this feature and do they like it?

and I'm not bashing or criticizing just for the pleasure of it, it's more that I see you seems really creative and energetic, and I hope you are not using all this towards a project that in the end would cater only to a relatively small "Hardcore gamers looking for complexity and difficulty" niche

 

[Wavelength]

Letting money accumulate just by waiting (unless there's some time-related deadline you're working against, like in Recettear or Wall Street) is the very definition of not "earning" the money, which goes against your whole stated philosophy anyhow.

Giving 0-1 gold for defeating enemies and charging 500 gold for a low-level equip isn't "earning" your reward either; it's grinding for it.  Not only that, but you will force yourself into a very uncomfortable design decision: you will either need to keep enemies very weak for a long time because the player won't be able to afford the low-level equips, or you will need to force the player to grind until they have 500 gold for that low-level equip (and do the same thing for the next level of equip as well) because the enemies are strong enough to require it.

Yes, I get that you can also sell monster drops, or get lucky enough to get the right combination of monster drops to craft something and then sell that, or do quests for paltry amounts of gold.  That's still not enough to justify your other player-unfriendly design decisions.  There's nothing in your game that makes the decision to give 0-1 gold per monster into one that increases player enjoyment, nor anything in the game that makes the decision to force the player to wait (read: leave the game running and go do something else) to accumulate gold in a bank account into one that increases player enjoyment.

Some of your ideas are good and some are bad.  When this many experienced RPG designers point out a bad idea, you should take the advice and drop or revise the idea so that your game can be better, instead of letting your ego get in the way.