Should Coins Have Weight Associated With It?

This isn't so. Paper was created, not because coins were too bulky, but because coins were actually worth something, and paper is cheap. Governments have tried over and over through the centuries to get people to trade goods with worthless paper that they could create out of thin air.. and they finally succeeded. Paper and then debit transactions were created out of greed, because promises and hope are easier to supply than something with real value (because you have an unlimited supply of the imaginary).

 

I feel once again compelled to point out Richard's intentions of allowing players to mint their own custom coins. Now.. if coins have no weight and all currency is just a piece of data somewhere.. then being able to mint custom coin would be impossible and pointless. You would have to be able to see it in your inventory.

Also, I think it'd be rather fun to be able to stockpile coin and bars somewhere. Besides, there is a certain value and sense of accomplishment to be able to physically see the wealth you've accumulated. What fun is it to look at a number? And really, who needs to carry all that around in their pocket anyway?

Weight adds value to currency. You have to decide what you will carry with you. You kill a mage and your inventory is full so you can only loot so much.. do you take the dagger? The reagents? or the coin?

Imagine you've slain a dragon and before you is its treasure horde. Do you really think you should be able to stuff it all in your pocket because coin has no weight or volume? Do we all just have magic pockets of holding?

 

Right now gold in-game is a bit too metaphysical for my liking. I decided to remake my character the other day, so I went through the process of emptying all my pockets, took off everything I'm wearing, said 'Ok. I now have nothing. Time to be reborn!' When I came back a new me, I suddenly realized the 500,000 gold that wasn't on my person (it's not in my pockets, and i can't drop it into a chest), got deleted.

Yes, my fault, but removing gold so far from the game that it's just a number counter on a GUI interface isn't fun for me.

 

Bit off subject, but why I wont buy BitCoins. That is virtual coin with not even paper (or a government) to back it up. Just a code.

Back on subject. I have seen the argument of coins having weight come up in any many games. Heck, a D&D campaign I was part of came to a crashing halt because one individual wasn't calculating encumbrance properly, and when the DM later question how he could afford both training and replenish his potion supplies after also keeping a new sword and plate armor. We should have been able to recover one or two items and if lucky enough valuable items to allow us to train. In the case of my friend, if chose not to train, we would have to exchange all his gold (at a 10% cost) to gems (He was a ranger, so didnt have access to a bank or a home. He had to carry all his possession on him or his horse, donating what he could not carry to charity.)

The problem when you can carry unlimited gold, all the sudden the game becomes "Monty Haul". My friend felt that he should have been able to take all those 12000 gold pieces, the sword, the armor, the belt, the 4 tapestries, 2 alibaster statue, and sell it all. The rules were unfair. But if the DM allowed it, the risks would be reduced. He could train to 5th level, buy more potions and maybe even that ring of badassesness that grants that dragonslaying. And since he can now afford that ring, lets go find that dragon so we get its hoard.

Encumbrance of money is a check on the economy in many game. But it also create new enterpeneur opportunities. I.E. guilds could be hired to transport sums of cash from one side of the world to the other just like stage coaches in the old west. Expedition companies could be formed if wanted to raid the dwarven gold vaults. In big cities, the best real estate would prob be near established banks. Certain rowhouse in Ardoris would suddenly have more value. Heck, new markets could appear. It may become feasible to hold on to certain Reagents, gems, and ores if it retains a higher value to weight ratio.

Coins in the bank dont necessary have to require a slot towards total. You can have unlimited gold per bank, and you could distribute cash through out the world. I personally keep cash in multiple branches just in case.

If you allow weight of coin, ya it slows down progression a bit. You have to plan a bit more and debate what to keep and what to leave to rot. I am certain PoT owners will gripe because decision of what NPC building to put in their town becomes more difficult.

But int the end, I believe that allow gold to have weight will also help balance the economy and extend the longevity of the game. The trick is finding that sweet spot of allowing someone to be able to carry enough gold while not frustrating them because they get encumbered to quickly.

 

Enter multi-denominational currency. Which would help manage your money by reducing the number of coins you have (and by extension their collective weight) while retaining your overall wealth. What is 10,000 gold now could be 10,000 bronze... or 100 silver or 10 gold in with no loss of value. Instead of transporting 10,000 coins you're now transporting 10.

 

I like the idea of gems being a unit of currency in addition to their crafting uses. Have to say, after reading the discussion so far my vote is leaning towards yes.

 

I'm in favor of having weight on gold and having a physical item that can be displayed in homes, spawned on the floors of dungeons to be picked up (like Skyrim, etc). Ultimately it won't matter what the outcome is because eventually gold will be replaced with rare items as a form of currency. This happens with most multiplayer online and MMO games. The Stone of Jordan ring, perfect gems, etc (Diablo 2), artifacts, powerscrolls, stat scrolls (UO), BoE Epic gear, (WoW), the list goes on and on. And whatever item(s) become the new currency will have weight and can be displayed.

 

I think coins should weight but it should be a tiny amount. My concern is game play and player retention. Since I don't have the game yet I am not sure if there is a Strength attribute in the game, which would determine a characters carrying capacity. If there is you will be forcing players to spend points in Str just to be able to carry things instead of skills, thus limiting/slowing player development. Which in turn would adversly impact playablity and player retention.

The economic side would result in keeping item costs low. The reason for this is that if a character is limited to the amount of "money" they can carry from an adventure they would have to make a number of adventures/encounters equal to the cost of the item they want to buy divided by their carrying capacity. So if even if they manage to kill a monster/mob with the treasure trove that would allow a chacter to by the equipment they desire, it would be a moot point if they could not get most of it home.

Game play side - what would the advanatge be to trying to kill higher level montsters? If you can not reap a material benefit from the encounter no point in trying. Just grind away at monsters who you know you can carry their "loot" so as not to "waste" any as a result of not being able to carry it. In over 30 years of gaming I have yet found a player willing to commit to that kind of grind.

Yes you should not be able to put a dragon horde in your pocket, but you also should not have a successful encounter be soured because you can not reap enough material benefit from it.

 

Right now, an hour of gameplay is one day of adventuring. It sounds to me that balancing goals should be allowing players to venture out and fight/gather/loot for an hour at a time. Weights of equipment, resources and other loot should be balanced to make such an outing between bank/vendor runs feasible. We already have encumbrance, this just adds one more piece to the puzzle.

Successfully looting big enemies is another part of the balance. Are they behind hordes of smaller troops that must be defeated to get to them? Will there be ways to save the loot for later? (like burying treasure as others suggested earlier in this thread). Will these treasure runs be fun and challenging, or repetitive and boring? So many aspects of a game can go either way, depending how it is implemented and balanced.

 

Maybe after you drag back your gold loot from a successful dungeon raid you can convert the gold to paper currency so we can use our bed matresses as a personal bank

 

I'm trying not to bite here... but it actually has a form of (digital) encumbrance. It is obvious to those that understand the algorithms, which is actually more than "just a code", but not so easy to explain especially if people are fixated on price or the lack of a government.

On topic: it seems like it could be inconvenient, but a fractional weight would perhaps not be much of a burden. Perhaps if someone was moving millions at a time then they'd be slowed right down.

 

I'd like to be there when the first thief steals a million coins - and collapses. First PK death due to coins

For me, the limits should be simple a person should only be able to carry one chestful of coins. Now how many coins there are depends on what the maximum value any one person can carry at one time. Enough to buy a village, a city a metropolis? whatever makes sense ingame.

 

The problem with other games is that they actually often discourage this by "binding" items to the character or player account so that rare items cannot be used as meaningful currency. I'm thankful that we a free from that line of thinking with Portalarium. We all know that games cannot perfectly replicate real life or they would not be fun (we'd all just keep "playing" real life all the time) - but doing something like what is being discussed in this thread the right way could add a ton of meaningful fun to SotA without any real burden added to daily adventuring (and especially for new Avatars) - it would be one of those things you discover after your Avatar starts "getting wealthy" or kills a significant powerful creature that was guarding a mountain of mithril (sorry couldn't resist).

 

In my opinion, gold is a commodity just like wood, ore, and cotton. People will farm gold if it does not have any weight to it. I look at it in terms of the ability that one could exploit it and just macro/script forever just looting gold if it has no weight to it. I agree with Bowen, gold should not be a magical component that does not have any weight, its loot just like a sword, an arrow, or any other kind of loot. In addition, I would put some kind of way to only make gold trade-able through the trade screen, which you would have to sign for. If one "locked it down" on the floor the only person who could release it would be the same character. If you put it in a chest, the only person who could remove it would be the person who placed it in the chest.

 

An Avatar may need this ability for his/her own residence. But out in the wild, if they give us a way to "bury treasure" (and correspondingly the need via weighted gold), it needs to be fair game for whoever comes along and finds it (treasurehunter skillset?) before we get back. I wouldn't mind a lock on the buried chest as long as then there is a lockpick skillset as well (but then you have the issue of the "master" locksmith Avatars and all these locked residences with locked chests inside ... I'm not aware of all the plans for crime/punishment in SotA).

From a technical standpoint, discarded/buried treasure is not a trivial idea to implement when using an engine like Unity and a framework of multiple instances and keeping track of every spot where something is buried or left in the wild and knowing which newly formed instances need to "know about" the details of what was left behind (and then also know how to instantly handle removing the treasure in all of those instances when it is found/picked up in one of them). But it can be done, and it sounds like it would be very meaningful to all sorts of aspects in SotA, especially aiming for a real sandbox feel.

 

I really like the idea of the buried treasure and such. My post was basically for tracking gold and gold transfers between people as to counter gold sales. Maybe if you found the gold in a treasure chest it would mark it in your journal. Same with the person burying the gold, It could have a journal entry also: *you have hidden your treasure (gold amount) well!* or something along those lines.

 

Lord Blake Blackstone, I like your well thought out suggestion. I think it would be an interesting game dynamic to explore.

 

OK so let me understand. You want realism in a fantasy game. You want gold to have real weight, but you want the ability to go to a skills trainer and magically increase/decrease your capacity to carry weight.

Madness, this is.

 

This isn't about realism vs fantasy. If the magic in the game world was infinitely strong, then really nothing should have any weight and our sword should fight for us (indeed our focus skill should even perfectly always auto-combine and stack) and our Avatar should gain levels and skills while we work and sleep.

The point is: items have weight, so should gold coins - neither need to emulate real life weights and neither need to overly be a burden to the players. But adding a way to non-intrusively manage the weight of lots of gold along with the weight of items opens up a lot of new gameplay (fun) activity possibilities. And if it is also implemented to somehow hinder gold-sellers, then that's just a very nice bonus.

 

I beg to differ. Going back to the OP: "Immersion - This one is simple, if you picked up a coin in real life, it would have a weight to it."