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What's with the rampant inflation of in-game economies?
Sorenson
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Registered User regular
So because unlike most of you fuckers I didn't have the luxury of heading out to get Fallout 3 on launch day or whenever my copy of it arrived back home I've been biding my time revisiting Oblivion with various mods and stuff. One of the bigger ones, Obscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, does what I guess are a lot of rather neat things, but one thing that absolutly pisses me the fuck off about it is that the developer felt it nessecary to jack up the costs of training an additional twofold (which has nothing to do with the similar decrease in skill gain rates, no sirree) - supposedly he wanted to do something about the copious amounts of money folks can accumulate (which is a load of bullshit seeing as how you'd only get into that kind of serious money at the earliest about 15 levels in, at which point you start to get near the endgame as it is).
He then follows this up by introducing a bunch of items into the loot lists, a good number of which go into the tens of thousands in terms of value. :facepalm:
My personal annoyance aside, this particular bit of madness demonstrates this strange characteristic, perhaps flawed logic or outright irrationality on behalf of the developer, that you see in the economies of so many different game worlds. For whatever reason, the prices for goods - usually, though not always, combined to weapons and armor - follow an extrordinarily high curve in regards to their value verses their capabilities, to the point at which for the value of a single item at the end of the curve, one could outfit a dozen or several dozen men with more mundane items of a similar nature that are only inferior to the high-end item by 50-60%, and with "extrordinary" items their values can be so inflated as to rival the entire GDP of a game province of no small size. For example:
In Oblivion: iron weapons are the low end of the spectrum, Daedric's the high end. An iron warhammer, once you hit master level in Blunt, has an attack power of 14, durability of 196, and a value of 60. The Daedric equivilent, on the other hand, has an AP of 28 and a durability of 784. How much do you think it costs? 750? 1000? 1500?
5000. For twice the damage and four times the durability you're paying an 8200% markup over the more mundane. But then again, there's the DWH's ability to hit ethereal enemies, so a more fair comparison would be a silver WH - a value of 200 and AP of 18. You're still getting royally screwed, though - the damage difference is only about 64%, but it's still a 2400% increase in price.
Another example: Final Fantasy Tactics. Cheap broadsword you get at the start of the game costs around 200 smackers for an AP bonus of 4 - on the other end of the line for buyables, Rune Blades, on the other hand, go for 100 times that, a grand twenty grand a blade.
Take a guess as to their AP.
He then follows this up by introducing a bunch of items into the loot lists, a good number of which go into the tens of thousands in terms of value. :facepalm:
My personal annoyance aside, this particular bit of madness demonstrates this strange characteristic, perhaps flawed logic or outright irrationality on behalf of the developer, that you see in the economies of so many different game worlds. For whatever reason, the prices for goods - usually, though not always, combined to weapons and armor - follow an extrordinarily high curve in regards to their value verses their capabilities, to the point at which for the value of a single item at the end of the curve, one could outfit a dozen or several dozen men with more mundane items of a similar nature that are only inferior to the high-end item by 50-60%, and with "extrordinary" items their values can be so inflated as to rival the entire GDP of a game province of no small size. For example:
In Oblivion: iron weapons are the low end of the spectrum, Daedric's the high end. An iron warhammer, once you hit master level in Blunt, has an attack power of 14, durability of 196, and a value of 60. The Daedric equivilent, on the other hand, has an AP of 28 and a durability of 784. How much do you think it costs? 750? 1000? 1500?
5000. For twice the damage and four times the durability you're paying an 8200% markup over the more mundane. But then again, there's the DWH's ability to hit ethereal enemies, so a more fair comparison would be a silver WH - a value of 200 and AP of 18. You're still getting royally screwed, though - the damage difference is only about 64%, but it's still a 2400% increase in price.
Another example: Final Fantasy Tactics. Cheap broadsword you get at the start of the game costs around 200 smackers for an AP bonus of 4 - on the other end of the line for buyables, Rune Blades, on the other hand, go for 100 times that, a grand twenty grand a blade.
Take a guess as to their AP.
14. Though to be fair to the RB it's also got double the Weapon Blocking chance as well as a bonus to Magic Affinity/Ability/Whatever, but that's beside the point
I could go on trolling for more and more examples, but I'm sure you've got the idea and have seen enough examples of your own. What I want to know is, why is this such a common occurance in game economies? Why is it allowed to continue being such a common occurance? While inflation is an understandable and unavoidable outcome due to demands for an item and the bidding wars that may erupt, why do devs feel that this inflation has to be on a scale of tens and hundreds of times when determining price compared to similar items as opposed to several times? Sorenson on
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Part of the problem too, I think, is the obsession with "epicness" that a lot of devs seem to have. In stuff like that you wind up as some demigod-ish figure who can smite entire armies with but a flick of your wrist and are more or less drowning in the local currency, but then it and the sense of accomplishment that you get from having acquired said currency is made to feel worthless when you see the prices of stuff you need to buy - in a more minimalist game (Ultima Online's mechanics spring to mind) you're just a badass normal who gets through scrapes by the skin of your teeth, so when you do make the big score the big score is a big score and really lets you go quite a ways.
1oz Bronze: $0.25
1oz Platinum: $822.00
Damn you price scaling for better items!
If you disagree, I will happily trade you 100 short bows for your Windforce.
Oblivion has a decent improvement over other games in the form of purchasable houses. They're a pretty big investment, and are quite satisfying to acquire. Of course, eventually you run out of houses to buy, and have to go get some mods.
Are you driving to the grocery store, or running time trials on the Nordschliefe? Are you stabbing a Kobold, or taking down a Lich king?
Monsters in the first town are completely easy to kill, shit like cute little bunnies or maybe a particularly vicious bee until you have to fight the boss snail at the end. Then by the end of the game you're fighting god-damned tyrannasaurs who can breath fire or call meteors down from the heavens. And noone from the nearby town that you can save or buy new weapons at seems to notice or care. It's like just another day for them, completly oblivious to the fact that world ending abominations of nature are living right outside their town eating hapless adventurers.
Can you imagine trying to start a career in adventuring from one of those towns?
The scaling is so big so that you have no choice but to be a high-level badass taking down high-level badasses to afford them all, not so a level one can get the magical mystical super-hammer-of-the-gods.
Even then if you're OCD enough it's not hard. In oblivion a level one can go to all the shopkeepers that have alchemical ingredients, buy them, make potions, and sell the potions for profit. If you just keep cycling around the world doing that you won't have much downtime. Then you're in the money and can afford anything.
Pikapuff: Point, but how many viable substitutes are there with the same general characteristics and potential uses as Platinum are there? Between the emission constol stuff and its use in electronics and lab equipment and its visual luster I'm guessing not many.
It's ridiculous. Maybe if RPGs dropped that upgrade mania and instead tried something more along the lines of specialty, such as a special zombie-b-gone-sword or the sword that mowes down enemies and lawns. Actually, it was like that during the first half of Final Fantasy X for me- granted, that's not a difficult game at all, but I still found myself keeping half of the weapons so that I could switch them at any time. Of course, that vanished when the freakier metal bars on sticks were introduced.
What really bugs me, though, are superfluous zeroes. Want that ammunition for 3 kajingies a piece? How about 300? Given that this is the least amount of zeroes, why the hell are the zeroes there in the first place...? Sometimes, bigger numbers just fall flat on their faces.
The problem with Oblivion (specifically) is that one's ability to earn money increase roughly exponentially* with time invested. As such, prices pretty much have to skyrocket too. As things stand, with some care it's already possible to march into the Market District for the first time with enough moolah to buy Apotheosis, which is insanely overpowered at low levels.
*okay not actually exponential. Polynomial, degree five or thereabouts. But you get the idea.
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This is the sort of problem that plagued many MMOs...inflation. The greatest example that comes to mind for me is Asheron's Call. Granted that was in large part due to the catastrophic effect of the plat-scarab bug, but it was alread well on its way to pyreals becoming worthless. WOW took a very clever approach to the subject: make an indispensable item expensive as fuck. Economy's recovering? Release an expansion with a newer, much more expensive item (epic flying mounts). I'll be interested in hearing if they continue that trend to WOTLK.
PSN: TheScrublet
PSN: TheScrublet
So, when I kill a monster and get 10 gold, I feel like I got more than if I got 1 gold, even if it pays for the same amount. Meaning that if you scaled gold by 10x but also prices by 10x, it doesn't change the actual value, but it feels like it is more. This certainly applies to Peggle, but I bet it is why you end up doing triple-9999's in Final Fantasy games also. You feel like a super badass!
Ultimately, though, games need a feeling of progression, and the standard RPG progression is ruins to riches. You start out with three copper and a wooden sword and end up with 3 million gold and wielding the Demoncocksmasher, Sword of the Ages. This is especially prevalent in jRPGs, but I've seen it often enough in western style RPGs as well. Fable 2, for instance, started me out with nothing, but I've already got a few thousand in a couple hours of playing and doing some blacksmithing. I feel like I've made a lot or progress already, and I've barely started!
Here's the real question: If you were playing an RPG based upon real life, and your starting character was yourself when you finished school, would you rather work your way up from there to a dreary middle-management position until you retire, or work your way up until you are Bill Gates or Brad Pitt or Ron Jeremy? Compared to where you were when you left school, those guys have all ended up a lot further along in life than the boring middle-management position. Well, depending upon how you value life
If we could go out and kill any stray cat and inside was a 10 dollar bill, you can bet the price of things would skyrocket. Especially the farther you get from your hometown.
That would be beyond awesome. Monsters that can absolutely wreck you from the start. No hope. As long as battles aren't handle with random encounters.
How about a game where everything is available from the get-go, monsters, weapons, and magic? No level requirements.
How about Monster Hunter? No levels whatsoever. Just a lot of hard work to get that armor and weapon combination you need to pass the next hurdle.
This item gives 1.8. Price? $20
This item gives 3.2. Price? $1529.99
Rabble rabble rabble.
Look I completely understand your point. But items scale for a gameplay reason and if you want to try to pull real examples into a game setting, then so will I (asking why extrodinary items have a huge price difference with little gain realistically). Edit: my two posts in this thread are in jest.
Higher quality, rare items always carry a higher price tag. I don't see why this is surprising.
But to extend the car analogy, where are the Z06's or ZR-1's of the game world economy? Not as rare, not as flashy, not as blinged-out and won't get you nearly the amount of medieval ho's wanting to take a look at your Staff of Penetration +69 (thanks Yahtzee) - but goddamn if it won't be powerfully quick for a lot less money.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
And that's just silly.
Instead of placing real value on stuff. Value such as "This sword as been with me for 90 levels, it's as part of me as I am as part of it. I will part with this sword only after I had died in honorable combat", instead we place monetary value on stuff "My sword is worth $20, and that sword is worth $100. So that $100 sword must be 5x better then my sword because it costs 5x as much!".
What would that accomplish in terms of game mechanics?
You could plot something like this into a Fable2 style game, with a social modifier being improved by wearing designer label boots of silence equating to new conversation options. But other than having NPCs chirping, "Is that a REAL Sword of Herbert's Slaying +17? Wow, take 10% off the prices of all my potions!" or somesuch, I'm not sure where this would be getting you. If you needed the fancier items to unlock conversation, which I know is not what you're talking about here, you know players would get violently deranged on the internet about having to grind extra gold for the frilly sword that only unlocks a quest but does no extra damage.
If we're talking RPGs, players expect to become more powerful, but at least in Western RPGs, they expect visual feedback. A high level item should look more unique and look more specialized than a lower level item.
If the in-combat effects of two items are the same, I guess I just don't see why you would need multiple items of a comparable tier for the sake of having the Reasonably Priced Used 'Vette of dungeon exploration in addition to the Ferrari.
Using my own example -- the character starts out wielding a Honda Civic. They face down the final boss wielding a Veyron. They have a reasonable number of upgrades which swing upwards in price as they progress through the game. In a simulated world with no modelling of scarcity and an infinite supply of money available to the player as they sink time into it, what difference is there between charging $10,000 for a sword +2 vs. $35,000 for a sword +2 with a glowing gem?
You get to like halfway through the game, and end up at Shitplow Village, a dinky little town that subsists on cabbage farming, and a bed is like 500 gold a night. What the hell.
Or why rats chase you down in a murderous rage instead of running the fuck away and hiding.
And when I shoot a fireball into a forest, why doesn't the fucker burn down?
Not always. In some games it's always a minimal flat rate based on the number of party members, in others it's based on your level which could logically be explained by the innkeeper figuring that you're big and strong and rich enough to afford whatever price he sets. Or something.
One thing that is interesting is how individual games have met or tried to meet some of the more realistic expectations from this thread. In particular, Morrowind, which does its best to fill the world with random quality items that you can get anytime you have the cash - or the thieving ability. And everyone who played the game and who didn't care about breaking it marched straight down to Ghostgate and stole all the godly green glass equipment as soon as possible.
But I did like the economy, how everything really had a set stock. In the first major town, I turned the local pawn shop into an emporium of magical wonder. I sold all of my junk there, extra magical artifacts, booze, everything. I laughed when the salesperson equipped all of it and looked like a freak, and when I'd pickpocket her and go through 10 pages of stuff, and when she got mad at me but couldn't move due to being weighed down with everything. That's how you do a shop.
This is what I like about "low magic" settings... like Dragonlance. Oh snap, you got a masterwork steel sword? Keep it for life.
Sixty -40- on Origin for some ME3 goodness.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/brilliantinsanity/
Dragonlance? Low magic? Pffft. Try Dark Sun.
You got a masterwork steel sword? No, you don't. It's a club made out of bone.
And your armor is made of chitin.
Now get back in the gladiator pit, mul.
A pound of iron is a fucking insane amount of wealth.
And then you see, on the head of the sorceror-king a tiara of diamondine platinum.
Sorceror-kings, in this setting, being miniature Iuz'.
Dark Sun is awesome, much better than other D&D settings.