Story progression: Commodity price inflation

[Azurecyan]

So many games, as you progress through the story, have inns or certain services that cost money(of course). What bothers me the most is as you traverse through towns later on, each commodity differ in price, usually increasing as you progress; i.e. the first village you enter will require you to pay 10 coins to sleep at their inn, whereas the last village you encounter in the game will require 2000 coins to sleep at their inn or using a caravan in village 2 is only 20 coins whereas a caravan in village 9 is 400 coins.
Do you think prices should increase as you progress or should each town and village have varying prices(based on certain factors such as an upcoming war, during a war, certain disasters, etc), such as a poor village inn is only 20 coins, but an inn in the rich area of a city is 300 coins and a small village you encounter later on in the story is about 40 coins.

 

[mjshi]

The second works better for balancing and making sure the player never ends up with too much gold, but the second makes more sense if you want a cohesive universe, though it requires more thinking to successfully implement.

 

[Valryia]

Or you could implement a system (healer) that costs more money the more hurt you are. Goes for HP and MP and whatever P you use.


Shin Megami Tensei : Nocturne had such a system.

 

[Kes]

This can't really be separated from how you look at money in general in your game, how it is acquired, what it is needed for, balancing cost of items etc. etc.


You might be interested in this thread in Game Mechanics, which looks at this more general consideration.  It might give you some additional thoughts on the particular issue of inns by putting it into context.

 

[Andar]

The problem originates from very old games where gold/money was a way to count rewards. Back in D&D there was even a rule that one gold earned means one XP, and the monsters originally had no XP-value but only a gold value.


And if you work from that, you're basically required to increase the prices to keep balance  as the more powerfull monsters give more gold.


However, if you don't follow that mechanic and don't increase gold rewards on enemies (only XP), then you won't get into that loop.

 

[BigToastie]

It depends, generally this happens as you earn more gold, you need some form of money pit so people need to make some sort of choice rather than having 1000 gold spending 10 on an inn, why buy potions? etc.


I personally have them increased in larger towns because the general 'rent' in a town would be a lot higher then in a small village etc.


Inn prices vary on mine, as if you complete certain tasks for villagers it can reduce the inns price or reduction on all purchases in the shop itself!


TL:dr to your question, yes i think generally it should increase unless you have a reason to leave it the same.

 

[Crimson Dragon Inc.]

every game needs a money sink, if you make monsters give more gold the further in the game you are the higher the costs needs to be so as to prevent massive inflation problems in the players gold reserves unless they are massive grinders 

 

[Vexatious]

What I've planned is this.

Money has a finite value. Somethings in the start will feel out of reach, like even the most basic weapons.  An inn is a blessing.
Later, as a person becomes for fortunate through adventuring, it opens up a new possibility, suddenly you can sleep at the inn, but oh, there's a special room that serves food? Maybe this boosts something like health regen or max HP for a little bit.

I've always hated that's how they balanced money in games.  Instead, I think it needs to be taken creatively and worked around to make it feel a little more consistent with the world. 

 

[Wavelength]

The Inn thing has always been one of the most blaringly obvious forms of this Story (World) and Gameplay Segregation, because you don't even have the alabi of having different shops with different items/equipment.  How do the people in this town afford 6,000 Gold to sleep a night in a little log cabin, when the early-game work I did paid 300 Gold (which was more than enough to cover the 30 Gold to sleep in a nice inn there)?!


It's even more annoying because often, the player can inconvenience themselves to travel back to an earlier town to not have to pay the exorbitant rate!


Of the four games I've completed in RPG Maker, 3 have been - by design - in game worlds of limited scope where the player could visit any location at almost any time (and therefore it made sense for prices to be even everywhere), and 1 eschews money in favor of "credits" you earn for shops by accomplishing local missions (therefore limiting the absolute number of things you can buy in a given location).  Thus, so far I haven't actually tested out my "economy design" in a standard, epic kind of RPG.


But what I plan to do when I create an epic RPG with a big world is to not scale the amount of money the player gains from combat/treasure chests/quests/etc. as they get further in the game.  Experience and certain other rewards will scale so that the ideal solution isn't "grind weak monsters from early levels forever because they're quicker and easier than the ones you're supposed to be fighting", but money won't scale.  Therefore, the price of an early-game stay at the Inn will be the same price as a late-game stay.  The price of a Potion that cures 25% of your HP will be (approximately) the same in the first town as the last town, and your money - rather than your distance from the final boss - will be what gates you from buying that Sword of Supreme Slaying in the second town an hour into the game.  There will certainly be some challenges I'll have to get past, but the idea is that this not only creates a much more realistic economy and a more believable world, but also allows me as the designer to open up a lot of new freedoms to the player without gating them behind "how far into the game are you", and additionally creates some rewards for engaging in combat against earlier monsters (something I've always enjoyed doing in some of my favorite games).


I think another interesting way to handle it could be to have all inns/stores/services increase their prices as you complete more of the game (and therefore have access to the monsters/treasures/etc. that pay much higher).  No one even stocks Potions any more - you can only buy Hi-Potions now!  And all the Inns are charging 2000 Gold for a night's stay!  This wouldn't be realistic and the best you could do is hand-wave it, but I think it would actually serve the gameplay very well.

 

[Espon]

I normally just ignore inflated inn costs and just base the price on what kind of inn it is, but usually keep it very cheap.  It makes no sense for a nice inn to be cheaper than some run down shack with hay beds just because it's located further in the game.  The player already has to worry about buying new equipment and better healing items, the least I can do for them is give them a cheap way to heal up.