In the perspective of game design, how do you balance your money in your project ?
Based on what I want the player to be doing and how long I want them to reasonably work to obtain something in a shop. The monsters in the first area of my game drop 1-3 GP a kill (more commonly, you'll get that 1 GP). As such, a Healing Potion will restore 30 HP. The first three party members you get only have 20 HP max. The enemies that drop 1 GP a kill will deal 2 damage a turn. Without equipment, it takes 4 turns to kill these enemies (you'll take 6 damage). With equipment, you'll kill the enemies in 2 turns (you don't start with equipment). So, before you need to use a Potion, you'll fight about 4 battles without equipment and 8 with equipment. My HP Potions, therefore, cost 5 GP. The player is meant to obtain their equipment from the first quest quickly and if they avoid doing that, they will die.
The set of equipment is given to the player in the first two or three quests. Free. They are meant to be using this money to obtain Potions to keep them in the game (no dedicated healer class in the game, so my money is more valuable).
The first piece of equipment you can buy is some armor. Some Leather Armor. 35 GP for the Helm, 55 for the Chest, 25 for Boots, and 25 for Gloves. 140 GP total cost. So, you'll be fighting those first monsters for 140 total kills. That's very unreasonable. These prices are meant to push the player into finding new enemies to kill. Push them into finding the monsters that drop 3 GP per kill. Push them into going into dungeons to hopefully find treasure. Push them to sell old equipment to obtain the new equipment. What about the second Tier of Sword you get, how much is that? 40 Gold pieces. To kit up one character, just to the next tier of equipment, will cost 180 GP. 180 Battles... or... 60 Battles. 60 still seems unreasonable, doesn't it? But, if you consider that you can also sell the previous equipment to buy the new stuff, it takes about 30 battles. If you consider that the first fights are 1v1 affairs, but the ones where you fight the monsters with 3 GP are 2v2 affairs, it takes even less combat than that to kit up the first person. This, of course, also ignores any equipment you may gain from opening chests or that you've received from Quest completion. It ignores monster drops as well. Those monsters that drop 1 GP are also guaranteed to drop an item every single battle (it's a Quest item, but you can sell it) that is worth 5 GP every single time.
My money limitation pushes the player into interacting more with shops and the world at large. To consider behaviors they don't usually in an RPG. Who sells their items in an RPG? Unless you've got limited inventory space, most players just hoard everything. Furthermore, with a Dedicated Healer, most players don't even buy Consumables like Potions. They rely on the slow drip feed of finding those in combat or treasure chests. By the end of most RPG's, the player has far more money than they'll ever spend.
I've deliberately created gold sinks into the game. I've artificially increased how valuable my currency is. All in the name of keeping players from accumulating far more than they'd ever use. They are required to buy Potions. They are required to buy Antidotes. They aren't required to buy Equipment, but if they have extra money, they can spend their currency to get an upgrade they may not normally have. They are required to pick up Quests to get money rewards.
In my case, I have 8 weapons in total for my character and I arbitrarily decide the last weapons price to divide him by the number of weapons for the first one and after I addition it with the price of the first.
I think I have a nice progression system but I dont work yet on how make money.
1 ->1 875
2 -> 3 750
3 -> 5 625
4 -> 7 500
5 -> 9 375
6 -> 11 250
7 -> 13 125
8 -> 15 000
What do you think of this system ? How do you balance your money ?
Without a baseline of what your money is actually worth, I don't really have an opinion on this. The value of any currency is relative to how difficult it is to obtain it and how much of it needs to be spent.
Supply and demand.
If Sword 1 costs 300 Gold, and I obtain 100 Gold per fight, that sword isn't very valuable. It's as valuable as 3 fights. As valuable as about 5 minutes of gameplay.
If Sword 2 costs 1000 Gold and I obtain 100 Gold per fight, this sword is more valuable. It's as valuable as 10 fights. As valuable as about 17 minutes of gameplay.
If Sword 1 costs 300 Gold and I obtain 700 Gold per fight, the sword is practically worthless. I can afford it after just a single fight, so it's probably not very good compared to what I have now.
If Sword 2 costs 1000 Gold and I obtain 20,000 Gold per fight, this sword is effectively worthless. I can afford 20 of them after a single fight. They may as well be free at this point. Unless, of course, that 20,000 Gold came from a Boss Monster that took 30 minutes to fight or so. Then, suddenly, 20 of those swords are worth 30 minutes of gameplay. They're valuable again.
To make your currency valuable, you need to consider the Supply and Demand of that currency in your game. Otherwise, any number is just arbitrary. Value is relative and not absolute. 20,000 GP in my game sounds like it's worth more than it is in your game. In my game, that Tier 1 Sword would take 1,875 battles to obtain. How many would it take in yours? 5? 10?
What are the Gold Sinks you have in your game? How much Gold are you giving out per combat? How much Gold does the player need to reasonably spend each time they come to town? Each time they get out of combat to erase mistakes (missing health, removing debuffs, restoring MP)? What about Inns? What do they cost? How close together are towns?
You balance this by deciding how many battles you want the player to go through before they can afford something. How much money the enemies in the area they're at will drop. How long, in game, that takes to accomplish.
Consider that the first sword in my game costs 20 GP, but the player gets it for free and cannot buy another. If they sell it, they get 10 GP. The second sword costs 40 GP. They'll likely be using that first sword for quite a while to obtain the second one. The upgrades aren't "immediate". There's a chunk of time between each one.
Why did I want to do this? So that when players opened a chest or got a new piece of equipment, they would immediately open their inventory to see what it did. Equipment rarity leads players to examine that equipment. Games like "Borderlands" do this, despite dropping equipment frequently. It's sectioned off by "rarity" and "level". You don't even bother looking at anything lower level than yourself in those games. If you have a purple rarity weapon at your level, you won't bother looking at anything lower rarity than that (rarity in that game is white, green, blue, purple, orange). This is because the equipment drops are so frequent, you need a way to not waste so much time just looking at that crap in an inventory. Managing a menu screen.
I do the same thing by simply making equipment rare to come across. Rare for the player to obtain. If a chest drops a Sword of Light, you will look at it, because maybe it's better. It might be an upgrade. Or, it might confer a different advantage. It's been an hour since you got a new Sword. Your curiosity is going to get the better of you. It's also been 20 minutes since you were last in town and saw the equipment there. Is this Sword of Light worth more than the equipment for sale in the shop? If not, can it be sold for a good chunk of money to buy the Sword of Mage's Bane in the shop you saw? Just another way to make money valuable. Making equipment rare enough that selling it is a major event.
You need to create a series of systems that interlock and work together. A series of Gold Sinks and Gold Limitations. A series of items the players MUST BUY in order to keep the value of your Gold high.
Unless... you don't want valuable Gold. That's something else you need to consider. What do
you consider reasonable in your game? What do you consider valuable in your game? How quickly do you want players to upgrade their equipment? Every single new town they hit? Maybe there are two or three tier upgrades in a single town? How much grind do you want them to do nearby to obtain the last upgrade?
Value is relative. You decide what it is depending on how you implement all your other systems. Loot. Combat. Healing. Dungeons. Quests.
