Is that gold in your pocket? Or are you just happy to see me?

Gold should weigh something. Its just not possible to carry thousands of gold pieces on your person. There's a reason Robin Hood robbed carriages ....

 

maybe they just convert the gold to some from of medieval credit card.

 

Agreed, if coins would have encumberance then the rich would have to invest in gems and such to take large sums with them.
This would fuel the economy further.

 

1000 copper coins = 1 silver coin
1000 silver coins = 1 gold coin

 

I'm inclined to agree. Gold is heavy. I've always found unlimited gold being just a number attached to your character to be somewhat ridiculous. Though I'm pretty sure we're getting actual coins in the future. Still, I expect anything that can go in my inventory to weigh something. Banks in-game exist for a very good reason. I expect to store my gold away and not carry every coin with me everywhere I go.

 

Indeed and Richard did say a few months back that we might have copper/bronze and silver coins as well. I'm hoping this will still be the case. If the base currency is the copper/bronze coin rather than gold and pricing is based around that.. then managing the money you carry should be that much easier in terms of encumbrance.

 

Something like that would be great, but I think it should be rather 10 to 10 to 10 (And we can add platinum or pure gold coins).
Though I would prefer harder math.

Something like this

 

guarding a wagon transporting gold from one town to the next sounds fun! Of coarse, so does robbing it!

 

I just want these in the game!

From my personal Ultima collection at www.sotamuseum.com :

 

this would be a great theme for player owned towns, guild scenarios, or just pvp owned towns. I love the concept of wagons transporting loot!

 

of course when we loot the wagon we will only be able to select 1 random piece of gold

 

And that'll be automatically ransomed back!

 

Question is, when the economy inflates (which it will) how will a player transact a trade securely for say 1mill gold coins? Coins and having weight attached them is fine! but there needs to be a mechanism to deal with large trades.

 

if its for housing or something like it it could just automatically withdraw from the bank.

 

this is where the old style UO comes into play using bank checks.

 

The discussion has come up before, but its never bad topic :>

It'll be especially meaningful to have currency as a specific item either if other metals are introduced, or if other forms of currency are introduced. Say, if a second continent eventually brings a second currency, or if a player guild wants a currency.

But yea. I'm a big fan of the idea of currency being a real item and not just something abstract. A lot just because I don't like the idea of a person carrying away thousands of gold coins from a dragon's den. But it makes it easier to trade gold with someone if you think about it, because you'd drag it like an item in the trade window.

I'd probably favor something that kept a little more gold valuable than 100 copper, just so its a valuable metal :>

I think something which is at least a 20 to 20 conversion is maybe better, maybe up to 50 to 50.

But if we need more types of coins, there are two ways this can maybe be done.

1. Different sized coins.

This doesn't need to be too complex. Naturally, in real history, coins have had many types of names. Farthings, shillings, crowns, pennies, etc. I would suggest something simple and easy to learn: naming the coin based on the mark on it. This could mean "crowns" or "eagles," and the types of coins we have in the game can be potentially expanded with new continents. With a certain type of coin name for each continent.

But let's say in Novia its "crowns." This is a very common name for a type of currency in the real world. In the game, you'd have "copper crowns", "silver crowns", and "gold crowns". Then you could have a "half crown" for a coin in-between the two values. So, like a gold "half crown." Or, you could have a "double crown," which would be a coin two times the normal value. So, silver "double crown." Both half crowns and double crowns have existed in the real world.

The same thing can carry over into other currency names. "Eagles" to "double eagles" and "half eagles."

2. Different alloys.

Personally, I'd rather leave platinum out of it, since its not an appealing metal, and naturally, alloys have made coins in the real world. Having coins with metal alloys might be a too complicated sounding solution, given the simplicity of "copper", "silver", "gold", though it would be interesting to see how metal-working is going to work in the game in the future. Are we going to be able to mix metals to make bronze, etc?

At any rate, in the ancient world, the alloy of gold and silver was "electrum". Which you see in D&D and other fantasy games occasionally. For similar names... After the fact, the alloy of gold and copper became called "aurichalcum" ("aurichalc" for short, "auri+chalc" = "gold+copper", also the 'h' was often left out of all the various spellings), but this wasn't the original meaning (the word "orichalcum" was turned into "aurichalcum", originally it meant "mountain copper"). An alloy of gold and copper was originally referred to as "luteum" and an alloy of silver and copper was "candidum." (Both are types of "Corinthian bronze" described by Pliny). Coin debasements that were mostly copper or bronze or some other material but with some silver were also called "billon" later on.


I probably prefer naming the coins, because I think its simpler than alloys.

 

I have a super rare hat.....I want 1m gold for it.

 

then it might take awhile...no one said its easy to reap gold off of peeps.....you might actually have to spend 10 min in game to make your $$

 

Also where there are gold coins.. there should also be gold bars. Of course, I'd also like to see copper/bronze and silver bars.

 

If it's ever actually worth that much then something has gone seriously wrong.