@woootbm
My comment on whether or not a player is "good" at a game isn't a subjective thing. I'm not utilizing some weird metric of "the average amount of players who finish a game" or anything similar.
I'm utilizing "If you play the game without grinding, doing the main story and about 30% of the sidequests" as a metric. How much currency do you walk away with? How much extra junk is dumped into the inventory of the player? Gold? Consumables? Equipment?
Every piece of Gold given is a piece the player doesn't have to earn. Every consumable given is one the player doesn't need to purchase. Every piece of equipment given is one the player doesn't need to purchase.
Every enemy slain likely drops gold or something equivalent to be sold. RPG's, in general, just don't require you buy much of anything to complete. These games are flush with consumables you'll never use. Flush with equipment that's stronger than what you can buy. Overflowing with money you won't really need to spend much at all (except for new equipment! So, once per new town visited!).
Even if you give your player "less gold", it doesn't solve the underlying problem of most of these games:
The Currency is basically worthless.
It is spent on so few things of actual value to the player, that it never really gets used up. It accumulates uselessly in the inventory. The player ceases caring if they're even EARNING money beyond the first 4 hours of the game, because by that point, they can afford any and every new thing in the path until the end of the game.
It's often 6x more efficient to heal with Magic than with Consumables, even when you half the healing power compared to a consumable and double the MP consumed for the magic. Most players will heal with Magic instead, as a result. So, no money spent on consumables except maybe an MP restoring item or two.
And hey, they'll only buy those consumables if your combat is particularly dangerous or you've got your "heal points" spread out far enough. Most RPG's do neither of these things... Combat doesn't tend to be that dangerous and "full recovery" points are very frequent, so you expend few of your resources and then get topped off before you even need it.
So, that leaves buying equipment. Which you'll do once per town, because shops don't change their wares and you won't ever be coming back to this town again unless a quest or something asks you to come back here. So, you'll spend your 5000 Currency here to outfit your party and move along. Stockpiling every piece of Currency you get from here until the next town.
And since equipment is usually your largest bump in stats anyway, there's not really a need to "grind levels" unless a player wants something. Like a rare drop from an enemy. Or to fill the bestiary. There's no reason to grind from Level 6 to level 10 in most RPG's. You'll hit that naturally and your equipment at the next town drops stats on you that are equivalent to having those extra 4 levels anyway.
All of this is coming form a player who is "average" at pretty much every game he plays. Including RPG's. I play them "naturally" and that's about it. I grind because I want to grind out for something, or because there's something I want/need from this area I'm grinding in. If there is no reason to grind, I simply don't. I rarely ever buy a consumable because the game fills my inventory with them. I buy equipment fairly rarely because most of it is garbage and only the "most expensive" stuff is worth a crap. Which, ultimately, saves me money.
If you give me a game where spending my currency nets me stuff that I want, I will probably be broke most of the time. This is pretty obvious when I play "incremental" or "idle" games. I'm almost ALWAYS broke in these games because I can spend my currency on upgrades! CONSTANTLY!
RPG's, on the other hand... there's very little to spend your currency on. Or at least... nothing worth a crap.
Even in Zelda. As old as the NES days, I had this problem with currency. I'd accumulate it and never spend it. Buy the candle once, never need purchase it again. Buy the shield in Ocarina of time once, never need it again. On and on. Never bought hearts. Never bought ammo. I didn't need to. Standard combat with enemies and opening chests gave me enough of everything that I never needed it.
But, the Zelda games sure are happy to dump a lot of money I won't ever spend in my wallets!
I play normally. Most people probably play normally. And, they're almost always flush with cash they can't spend by the time the game is over.
The issue is that there's nothing to spend it on.
