Ballin': An examination of money in games.

[Feldschlacht IV]

Almost all RPGs and many games of all genres have some form of currency. This topic isn't to cast doubt on the viability of such a system; I like money, real and fictional. This topic is however to discuss how money is used in the games we play, and how to better utilize the player's hard earned money in our games.


There are some games out there that I've played where money is either a one trick pony to begin with, or money loses its value later on in the game entirely. The former can be fine if its stuck to, but the latter I don't like very much, games like FFVIII have you accrue a massive income by the end of the game with pretty much absolutely nothing worthwhile to spend it on. Final Fantasy VII narrowly avoided a similar fate by having most money be funneled into Chocobo breeding, but in general, having a ton of money in a video game and nothing to spend it on kinda sucks!


The earlier Final Fantasies don't suffer from this, mostly because basic supplies are extremely expensive, and later on in the games, the fact that your equipment is found and not bought is balanced by the fact that, okay, now you can buy elixirs and thrown weapons, but for a fantastic high cost. This isn't a bad system, and it works, but it may be too primitive for your own design.


Some cool uses for money I've seen are things like the ability to invest money into shops like in Tales of Xillia, or Shop Clout like in Romancing SaGa (basically, the more money you spend at a specific branch the better stuff they sell you), and so on and so forth. 


Basically, what money systems in games have you liked, what are your ideas to keep money interesting and relevant? Namely, what are your thoughts on any of this in general?

 

[trouble time]

Almost all RPGs and many games of all genres have some form of currency. This topic isn't to cast doubt on the viability of such a system; I like money, real and fictional. This topic is however to discuss how money is used in the games we play, and how to better utilize the player's hard earned money in our games.


There are some games out there that I've played where money is either a one trick pony to begin with, or money loses its value later on in the game entirely. The former can be fine if its stuck to, but the latter I don't like very much, games like FFVIII have you accrue a massive income by the end of the game with pretty much absolutely nothing worthwhile to spend it on. Final Fantasy VII narrowly avoided a similar fate by having most money be funneled into Chocobo breeding, but in general, having a ton of money in a video game and nothing to spend it on kinda sucks!


The earlier Final Fantasies don't suffer from this, mostly because basic supplies are extremely expensive, and later on in the games, the fact that your equipment is found and not bought is balanced by the fact that, okay, now you can buy elixirs and thrown weapons, but for a fantastic high cost. This isn't a bad system, and it works, but it may be too primitive for your own design.


Some cool uses for money I've seen are things like the ability to invest money into shops like in Tales of Xillia, or Shop Clout like in Romancing SaGa (basically, the more money you spend at a specific branch the better stuff they sell you), and so on and so forth. 


Basically, what money systems in games have you liked, what are your ideas to keep money interesting and relevant? Namely, what are your thoughts on any of this in general?

One system I've been tossing around in my head is donating money to towns to reuild/expand them(since the world is more or less post-apocalyptic). As they rebuild the locals produce goods that are better than what they had and that's more to spend your money on. Also I've toyed with the idea of a secondary currency of "requisition points"(inspired by the game Warhammer 40k game Deathwatch) that lets you, well, requisition equipment from the military (it's also not really spent so much as you can return the equipment later for a full refund) and also maybe you can get more requisistion points by rebuilding towns (since the whole requisition thing is based on reputation). Basically it's a big system of cash dumps leading into more cash dumps.

 

[Aoi Ninami]

Tower of the Sorcerer allows players to spend money on increasing their stats, an unlimited number of times, but the cost goes up quadratically.

 

[Feldschlacht IV]

How do you guys address the issue of money having varied uses as time goes by?

 

[trouble time]

Well my game does what you mentioned the final fantasy games did, with one difference in that  skill items,like the thrown weapons mentioned earlier, are probably going to always be the majority of what you buy. There's a more limited supply of weapons and armor in my game and there probably won't be many you buy with regular currency since the character's starting equipment is supposed to be higher quality than what most civilians have access to (or in a few cases the characters just don't or can't wield weapons). The healing items that do exist are meant to suppliment your parties natural healing in the same way skill items are meant to help your party deal extra damage (or extra status ailments or something else). Basically you're going to be buying about the same thing thoughout the game in my game. It also makes a bit of sense story wise since most people don't have access to the healing items and the like the party does, hence their cost.

 

[Ashouse]

Whatever you do, don't go Legend of Dragoon. I felt like a pauper the whole way through. What was worse, shops had very expensive items that I NEVER could buy. I think you had to game shark to get those. There was pretty much nothing left after the essentials and I grinded.

 

[KoldBlood]

What @Ashouse said. I loved Dragoon but item management was a pain.


I balance my "Gold" income for the player around the player having enough money by the beginning of each chapter to buy everything they will need for the chapter but not everything they will want equipment-wise. On the item spectrum I leave enough money for a decent assortment of items to carry the player through to the end of the chapter, unless they are under leveled or spamming the crap out of items for whatever reason (don't forget to include things they will find in chests and drops from monsters). They should be able to buy some of the "extras" they wants without being able to deck themselves out with EVERYTHING from the beginning of the chapter. This of course assumes the player isn't grinding for money between shop visits, at which point I'd have to say more power to them.


Equipment is pretty much my main money sink as items stay the same price, at least in my game. One money sink I used EVERYTIME I played the game was in Paper Mario, they had a character who could cast a spell on Mario that would give him random benefits in battle from increased attack to increase exp after the battle. Depending on the amount you spent with her the spell would last a couple of battles or a lot of battles. I LOVED this because the cost-to-power ratio felt justified to me. The same system could probably be evented in RPG relatively easily.


In my own game, I use elemental resistance accessories as a good money sink for the player. I think accessories are awesome for this because they aren't usually necessary to beat the game but can give smart players an edge if they want to invest in them. I use a 3 slot accessory system with elemental rings that provide a 20% reduction each. If the player wants to go full protection they'll have to spend a lot of that extra gold + use up all three slots for that element for the full 60% reduction. This is also good because it gives the player some choice in customization: Do you want to go full protection from one element or slight protection from 3 different ones? I did the same thing with state resistances as well except the rates are 50% instead of 20% each so you can go full immune to one state if you wish.


My personal game mechanics aside the point is, depending on the game, there's about 7 or so elements, 8 or so states, 6 parameters, +HP, +MP, +EVD, +HIT, +CRI, etc. (for your standard party that's usually x4). That's a lot of accessories to buy! The trick is tweaking the pricing of the accessories so that they aren't so expensive that players will just pass on them (like Dragoon) but not so cheap that they'll have the whole set by the end of the 2nd chapter. The cost-to-power ratio needs to be justified to the player or they'll just pass over it.

 

[Ashouse]

Yeah, I wonder if they even tested that. I kind of doubt it. It's a shame, the economy was the games only major blemish... Well, and killing a character and replacing him a short time later with his twin in combat. (Not that they were twins just that they were exactly the same in combat. It was like you hadn't lost/gained anyone/anything, and I think that could have been handled better.) Still, I was one of the ones who really enjoyed the game all the way through.


I'm working on a system of multiple curencies. You can buy standard gear with coin. You can only buy better gear through trade, but since I'm exploration focused, the best gear will be found. I like it that way. I hate when I spend a bunch of cash on something equipment wise and then find the same thing in the next dungeon. That really grinds my gears.


sry mods, that was sposed to be an edit not a double post. The forums aren't working correctly from my phone browser.

 

[Ashouse]

My personal game mechanics aside the point is, depending on the game, there's about 7 or so elements, 8 or so states, 6 parameters, +HP, +MP, +EVD, +HIT, +CRI, etc. (for your standard party that's usually x4). That's a lot of accessories to buy! The trick is tweaking the pricing of the accessories so that they aren't so expensive that players will just pass on them (like Dragoon) but not so cheap that they'll have the whole set by the end of the 2nd chapter. The cost-to-power ratio needs to be justified to the player or they'll just pass over it.

You could also space them out and not make certain ones available to them until they reach a certain point. This would keep them from being OP before you're ready for it.


sry mods, that was sposed to be an edit not a double post. The forums aren't working correctly from my phone browser.

 

[KoldBlood]

@Ashouse Yeah, I've been thinking about doing that in my play tests.


Another good money sink I remember from the Paper Mario series was Badges (basically the skills of Paper Mario). They were super expensive but really handy for the player to have. Not to mention they usually sold a duplicate of ones that were hard to obtain normally so if you didn't want to go through the side quest or search the countryside to get it you could just dump 300 coins on it at the shop and call it done. This is another thing that would be super easy to implement in RPG Maker, assuming you're using a skill system where the player purchases skills for their characters.

 

[eadgear]

There's a game where money is important through out the game (can't remember). They followed a money system where in a quest, the reward is 1000 coins and then the estimated expenditure is 800-900 coins. Basically you are doing the quest not for money but for clearing the game.

 

[ZiTeKu]

There's a game where money is important through out the game (can't remember). They followed a money system where in a quest, the reward is 1000 coins and then the estimated expenditure is 800-900 coins. Basically you are doing the quest not for money but for clearing the game.

If I my, my answer to your problem, Feldschlacht is pretty much this. Make sure people have to buy stuff any time they hit a city. I rarely botter on this unless i'm designing a D&D Campain, so here how I usually do that in DnD:

• I force living expanse. In other word, either rise a lot the price for stay a night in the inn, like make sure it's equal to one or two random battle, while forcing the player to pay to gain information (hitting a pub), or force him to use consumable. For instance, if he is a archer, he must restock arrow. he may produce his in the wild, but they need to be worse than the arrow he can buy at a town. If he is a swordsman, he need to repair his sword at a given point or it will break. Like the archer, he can savage weapon from enemy, but these weapon must be worse then their town counterpart.
  
• Don't make money scale at all, unlike exp. In other words, a night at an inn will cost 2 gold piece for all the game. Buuuuuut... money will be extremely rarer. All non-humanoid monster won't have any, and it isn't sure that even them will have cash. This way you can control the income of money with chest and dangerous side-boss-fight, where player will want to defeat that bloody dragon, because... ehi, shinny! This, tough, make the game spin way away from the normal jrpg to a more western style, imo.
  
• Use different coin in the game. Instead of using the basic gold sistem, use item as coin, so every country will have his own and you will be able to force player to need new money in every area. It also make an easier job at scailing the item price.