[Concept] Make "Gold" more valuable?

[HarvestWombs]

So I came across this "idea" while playing Path of Exile. Let me quote PoE's website.

Path of Exile does not have a gold-based currency. Instead, you occasionally find valuable Currency Items of different rarities that allow you to modify your equipment. You can either spend these items to improve your character, trade them with other players or NPCs, or hold onto them for later use. For more information about the currency system, check out this old development diary entry.

In this case I will just be using the "no gold, trade, and item" part

To start off, Items are worth *insert name here* (undecided)
These will be low values, here is a system I came up with recently.

Code: Select all

Quality           Worth
Normal:           1-10
Magic:            6-20
Rare:             16-40
Crafted:          25-60
Set:              35-80
Unique:           45-100

The "currency items" you find will be worth 1 point, since other items are not worth as much

Since this is "replacing" gold, monsters will not drop anything but items, or else that will be weird results.

Thoughts?

[Xaphan]

Making gold more valuable is someting I've also done in my mod, but not that way.

I simply made the NPC buying your items at 10% of the price they sell it, and monsters still drop gold, but a bit less. This mean that you gain gold slowely, and you want to keep it to spend it on some items that have to be buyed from NPC like dyes, some crafting materials, stash scrolls and salvage kits, or other that don't drop often like powerfull scrolls. Also, every items have a cost based of it's power, so weapons and become more and more expensive to buy (but also sell for more) and the magic prefix and suffixes on thems do not increase the price of the item.

As of now, this is simple and make gold more usefull, and I found this to be a nice idea overall.

Also, an other idea I have is, since I've removed identify scrolls, to change the price NPC identify your items, and make unique and sets items drop unidentified. You then have to show them to an NPC that will identify thems for you for a certain amount of gold).

[Desocupado]

Path of Exile does not have a gold-based currency.

Nor does Diablo 2.
----
A currency is only relevant for a realm / multi-player game. The reason is because it makes trading easier.
Check my blog for some relevant discussion Gaming behavior and Numbers: Gold - Currency x Token

As far as a modded Diablo goes, all you need to do is making gambling MUCH more advantageous (and perhaps change prices around a bit).
Gambling is pretty good as far as Gold sinking goes. Selling expensive Gems/Runes/Jewels would work too.

Another option is selling really expensive items that upgrade magic items to their Set/Unique/Rare counterparts with a cube recipe.
Make a different version for each item tier (normal exceptional and elite) to ensure adequate gold scaling.

Another good way to control gold better - make npcs buy items for 1% their gold value (effectively making selling stuff to them pointless)
I'd remove Identify and Durability mechanics - they are just silly and work-some mechanics better replaced by less gold income.

Don't forget to go to itemstatcost.txt and skills.txt and remove/reduce how much items with skill bonus are worth.

[JDS]

As in real life, gold is only as valuable as the stuff you can buy from it.
In order to make it more valuable, make better stuff available from vendors.
If you need at average 2.000*50.000 = 100.000.000 gold to get some unique normal armor, then 1.000.000 gold is not worth a lot.
If you can get that armor by spending only 20*50.000 = 1.000.000, then that million of gold will be worth a unique armor!

If the best thing a vendor sells is a health potion or a town portal, then gold is completely useless above some few thousand gold.
If instead you can buy perfect gems or high level runes, then that gold will be able to buy you a runeword.

Note that gold acts as a chance-remover. Everyone gets about the same amount of gold, but not the same amount of runes and great items.
If players can buy these things, then they can remedy a lack in one domain. As such, it unifies the playing experience.

The scaling of gold is completely irellevant, it's the ratio between what you can get for money and how much money you get.

PS: Sorry for necromancing... I seem to do that a lot.

[azianX]

A currency is only relevant for a realm / multi-player game. The reason is because it makes trading easier.
Check my blog for some relevant discussion Gaming behavior and Numbers: Gold - Currency x Token

This was a phenomenal read, thank you for this article, cited article.