I was revisiting EQ via Project 1999 recently and got to thinking...what is the purpose of having copper, silver, gold, and plat from a gameplay perspective? Why not have a single denomination like "gold?" Diablo 2, for instance, proved that you can have a robust economy with a single denomination. Were the four denominations originally included for a specific reason do you think?
Anyone have stories or insight on why having multiple currency denominations ended up being useful?
Almost entirely a D&D tradition. Even there gold usually became the primary measuring tool. Sometimes a DM would give you a massive horde of cash, but in copper so you could not really move it before bags of holding.
In a game world there is really no reason to have more than one denomination unless the coins can be used for something not tied to their use as currency. (like melting down gold coins to make gold bars for making jewelry)
Check this out, Aradune even give his 2 cents (pun intended, lol)
http://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/4185/economic-factors-amp-currency
xrotzak said:I was revisiting EQ via Project 1999 recently and got to thinking...what is the purpose of having copper, silver, gold, and plat from a gameplay perspective? Why not have a single denomination like "gold?" Diablo 2, for instance, proved that you can have a robust economy with a single denomination. Were the four denominations originally included for a specific reason do you think?
Anyone have stories or insight on why having multiple currency denominations ended up being useful?
People didn't really use gold to buy items though in D2. They used it for gambling other items off an NPC. I don't recall ever getting anything of importance for my gold in D2 other than runes and gems. Maybe early on it might have but I can't recall. Gold basically became something that you just ignored until you accumulated a large amount of it and then went off and traded it for very minimal returns, or gambled it yourself.
I like the multi denomination currency system, it seems more lifelike. I didn't like how you had to exchange it at the bank when you got full but it wouldn't be a big deal if they made you do that in Pantheon I suppose.
I would like for the currency to be important in the game. Even if only for the sole reason of trading items. This was an aspect of EQ that a lot of people got into. Sure sitting in EC tunnels isn't everyone's cup of tea, but when you ask people of their memories of EQ inevitably that pops up. Not to mention there was hundreds of people sitting in those tunnels nonstop so that alone should tell you that it was a success. I prefer more of a bazaar type system, but if there isn't one and I have to peddle my finds in a particular zone or area I'm fine with that.
I don't like the idea of gear being bind on pickup unless it's raid gear. Being able to trade and upgrade your gear as you level is so much fun. Stopping to harvest or craft and make money to afford that shiny sword someone is auctioning and finally buying it is very rewarding in it's own right.
Brad's post was referencing having multiple base currencies in the game. For example the humans, elves and dwarves could in theory all make their own coins. Different NPCs would only take coins of one source or another and some would take multiple types. This is a cool idea in general but it does make for some challenging player to player trading and in theory there could be fluctuation if the cash sinks between different currencies were not equally attractive (say you really want a house in one kingdom over the others).
The only way I could see this work is if the game world was enormous to the point that you could choose to never leave a kingdom your entire characters life cycle. We are talking if all of live Everquest is one kingdom arranged on a continuous map. Other kingdoms would be of the same size with areas between kingdoms. Really only possible with crowd sourced zone development or procedurally developed and likely cloud hosted.
Xrotzak is asking why we have Copper, Silver, Gold and Platinum rather than just Kingdom Marks. One base currency with different subdivided value.
xrotzak said:I was revisiting EQ via Project 1999 recently and got to thinking...what is the purpose of having copper, silver, gold, and plat from a gameplay perspective? Why not have a single denomination like "gold?" Diablo 2, for instance, proved that you can have a robust economy with a single denomination. Were the four denominations originally included for a specific reason do you think?
Anyone have stories or insight on why having multiple currency denominations ended up being useful?
My theory is that in EQ coins had weight, and being able to exchange copper > silver > gold > platinum allowed one to carry more "cash value" while maintaining weight restrictions.
It's also a very simple matter of making the determination of value easier. Do you really want that simple Ration you buy off the vendor at level 1 to cost 1GP then, because its 'value' is so much less than, say, a Leather Tunic, its cost would need to be 2000 GP? You need a currency with different denomination to make the granular control of costs easier. Otherwise you end up with a monetary structure similar to the Yen (a single denomination currency) were you get exhorbitant numbers representing the cost of something.
Then, as others have pointed out, when coin had weight, it was a good way to up-change to reduce weight. Hopefully coins will have weight in Pantheon.
Do you really want that simple Ration you buy off the vendor at level 1 to cost 1GP then, because its 'value' is so much less than, say, a Leather Tunic, its cost would need to be 2000 GP?
Interestingly, though, these transactions ended up being a small portion of the transactions that players did. Mostly, players hoarded pp and traded it to other players for items.
My point still holds because the relative value of player traded things still do take into account the costs of NPC items. The cheapest, simplest item from an NPC does form the baseline for the entire economy. So that 1 GP Ration when compared to the Sword of Striking does set a cost relationship. That sword then would see a value, potentially, of tens of thousands of GP when GP is the only denomination you have.
I'd like to see them have some items that retain their value when buying and selling to a vendor. In the real world people used to buy gems and jewelry that were easily carried and then when they needed cash they could sell a gem for about the same cost as they bought it for. This saved them from lugging chests full of gold around.
So in Pantheon there could be some kinds of jewels that you can buy from a vendor and then sell back to a different vendor for the same (or only a very small loss) cost. These would be specific jewels that have no other real use (not used in crafting for example) other than to be a way to change large sums of cash into a light weight item that you can have on you that won't weigh you down. This could even encourage savy players to go out and sell these gems to other players out in dungeons who don't want to go find a vendor to offload their coins. Players could charge a little bit more than the gem costs just for the trouble and make a little profit off those hardcore players who don't like going back to town all the time.
Just an idea.
GoofyWarriorGuy said:I'd like to see them have some items that retain their value when buying and selling to a vendor. In the real world people used to buy gems and jewelry that were easily carried and then when they needed cash they could sell a gem for about the same cost as they bought it for. This saved them from lugging chests full of gold around.
So in Pantheon there could be some kinds of jewels that you can buy from a vendor and then sell back to a different vendor for the same (or only a very small loss) cost. These would be specific jewels that have no other real use (not used in crafting for example) other than to be a way to change large sums of cash into a light weight item that you can have on you that won't weigh you down. This could even encourage savy players to go out and sell these gems to other players out in dungeons who don't want to go find a vendor to offload their coins. Players could charge a little bit more than the gem costs just for the trouble and make a little profit off those hardcore players who don't like going back to town all the time.
Just an idea.
this - and Trasak's comment had me thinking of being able to melt the coin down into copper ingots, silver ingots and gold ingots. To be then smithed?
OR- per your idea- a small bit of copper melted down and the rest of the copper coin used to buy a certain gem- maybe amber. The resulting copper ring with the amber gem mounted representing total value of the copper coins, much lighter and easily transportable and convertable into local currency in the new realm- depending on the crafstmanship- when sold. Faction dings on both ends as well as craftsmanship could affect overall turnaround price to be balanced, overcome, or profited from. This is where having friends of other races would be helpfull to make the initial and final exchanges, and a small skill check on smithing and jewelrymaking for the ring.
Perhaps the same enchantment rules can apply. Either sell the copper for the amber and make the ring to sell in another realm, OR, enchant the amber and copper ring to make a magical ring with some benefits that you cannot sell. Maybe you can only get amber in one realm, and in the new realm you can only buy different gems with copper (like Halas mechants not having malachite back in the day) So you have to choose, do I fund myself for travel to the new realm? or stay a while and see what magical properties this ring gets, and stay a bit more to get another ring to exchange for funds later.
I could see the non-enchanted copper amber rings having a direct monetary exchange value(the risk being bag space, very liquid , faction risk), and the enchanted copper-amber rings having a fluctuating inter-player value (also with bag space risk, less liquid, no faction risk).
Manouk said:this - and Trasak's comment had me thinking of being able to melt the coin down into copper ingots, silver ingots and gold ingots. To be then smithed?
This could be a great way to help remove coin from the game, if one could use their coins versus mining for ore.
So far, during streams I recall seeing copper and silver in game and it automatically rounds up when you hit 100. I would assume that means copper, silver, gold, and platinum are in game (or will be).
I wish they wouldn't round up the currencies though when you hit 100. I liked the meta-gaming (balancing encumbrance of gear/money) and the social interaction it creates with players who may offer services of exchanging money or selling items for players that are camping spots and don't want to leave. This use to be a way for noobies to make money back in Everfrost in EQ. Players camping ice giants wouldn't want to leave so they would pay noobies to sell their fine steel weapons and pay them to exchange silver and gold to platinum.
That is an awesome player interaction that you are going to lose with auto-rounding currencies. It also moves encumbrance towards a non-factor. It would be like making mana or other resources less important which takes away from the game.
If gold is a single money, then as Vandraad stated, price will quickly climb from the basic cheap service (ration, food and drink, whatever) costing 1 gold to a mid budget weapon costing 10.000 or 100.000 and a very rare item costing 1.000.000.000. Thus, money can't weight anything because if you're expected to carry thousands of gold pieces of loots everytime you go adventuring, then you would be crushed under the weight.
I'm not in favor of games where you carry 10.000.000 gold pieces constantly withouth hinderance.
One currency means outrageously high numbers. I don't at all like the idea of things costing thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of gold or platinum or mithril or ..... Though eventually extremely rare and valuable items will cost large amounts of the highest currency. But even then it should be hundreds or thousands not hundreds of thousands or millions.
Given a traditional 100 copper = 1 silver, 100 silver = 1 gold, we have a gold piece worth 10,000 copper. Are the economics of the world different because an item costs 50 gold instead of 50,000 copper. Of course not (ignoring carrying weight of money). But it just feels really wrong to see huge numbers for not really rare and valuable items. This shouldn't be a game with the currency of the Weimar Republic.
Fulton said:Manouk said:this - and Trasak's comment had me thinking of being able to melt the coin down into copper ingots, silver ingots and gold ingots. To be then smithed?
This could be a great way to help remove coin from the game, if one could use their coins versus mining for ore.
Motivation for the melting down of large quantities of coin could be for the reclaimation of rare trace metals for high level smithing found only in coins like Goblin Brass, Orcish Tin or Gnollish Nickel or the like.
Can further mix it up as players adventure and loot currency from monsters and that currency mixes with bank currency or in inventory, its all coppers but city coppers have Ogrish tin in them and Looted coppers in thronefast have Orcish tin in them. As more adventurers go out and pilfer coin from monster racials, the RNG will determine from your smelting (or maybe the economist? or both?) what percentage of monster racial vs terminus racial tin you can get, so on day one 100copper smelted will yeild 1pct Ogrish tin if you take it out from the thronefast bank but on day 10, as players bank and mix copper they loot, 100 copper when smelted may get .8pct ogrish tin and .2pct orcish tin. And this could vary for silver and Gold, Gold racial trace metals being more precious. ( or maybe silver, silver looks better on screen gold, meh)
The savvy smith would want to go back to those cities to exchange copper (or silver or gold) to banks in areas where those various moster racials are more prevalent, that drop coin to withdraw that coin to smelt for higher percentages of trace monster racial metals.
Intuitively, some sneak-up-from-behind learning can be infused in pantheon in early smithing recipes in iron and bone. (vikings, bone ash + iron = steel or rudimentary form thereof they thought they were infusing the animal spirit in the iron making it stronger with the animal spirit which is also cool) where the budding smith burns down odd bone chits that must be used as currency and mixes it with smelted iron to forge a blade and the blade is stronger or has some small enchantment. Or an Ogre, learning pottery and mixing iron with liquid stone (clay~concrete) and leaving it near lava to dry and that stonehammer becomes stronger and does not crack when fighting the lava monsters. (romans, relationship between rebar and concrete and heat expansion=skyscrapers!)