Vandraad said:Unneededs
Unnecessaries
Bloats
EDIT: Just to show how ridiculous a 5th currency is, when you're looking at a 100:1 exchange rate lets look at the numbers:
100 copper to 1 silver
10,000 copper to 1 gold
1,000,000 copper to 1 platinum
100,000,000 copper to 1Do you really expect players, or the overall economy to actually ever need a coin that is 100,000,000 times that of the lowest denomiation? You, VR, have said time and time again over the last 6+ years about your work on avoiding stat inflation so that every single point actually matters and yet with your economy you're expecting to see the need for 5 levels of currency?
In EQ, at level one, you could struggle with affording the coppers needed to buy some cloth armor pieces and basic food and drink was in coppers. Sure, you quite quickly moved onto mostly using silver, but unless you want to make level 1, 2, maybe 3 stuff free, you need copper.
By mid level if not earlier you were dealing with hundreds of platinum, maybe not dropped by monsters, but in trading with players and sometimes with vendors.
By quite a bit before end game, people were dealing in thousands of platinum regularly and tens of thousands and more for some rare items.
Not that Pantheon has to be like EQ, I'm just saying at no point did I see any massive, unreasonable leaps in money loot drops, vendor costs or whatever in EQ, yet we ended up spending the equivalent of 10,000,000 copper quite regularly. It's not really a weird thing and having coins for 100 platinum would have been very useful in EQ.
Why wouldn't something similar happen in Pantheon? Yes, they said they don't want stat inflation. This just isn't the same thing.
Even in RL we have pennies and pounds, regularly deal in hundreds of pounds (even with notes). Yes, when you deal with tens of thousands (100x100) and millions (another x100) you aren't using hard cash, but we have bankers drafts and account transfers and have had for a long long time. If we regularly had to make personal money exchanges in those amounts you can bet we wouldn't be carrying around suitcases full of stacks of 100 pound notes, we would make bigger and bigger notes, just like Pantheon will have plat and whatever.
I'm not even going to try and do the economics calculations - I know people study MMORPG economies for real life degrees these days - but I know that the progression of money 'earned' by a level 1 character versus the amount earned at max level, generally, does not follow anything remotely like the progression of a real life person's earnings, so I don't expect fantasy money to 'make sense' like anything in real life, any more than any other aspect of a fantasy game. I think if they tried to make fantasy economics anything like reality it would ruin the loot-related 'progression' of the game and have massive impact all over.
And, really, what's the point? Who cares if people earn coppers at level 1 and can amass 100 million times that at level 50? As long as it 'works' the fifth coin simply stops you having to carry tens of thousands of platinum or try and obtain hundreds of gems like we did in EQ. What's the problem?
Akilae said:Jothany said:......
If we're only talking about adding a 5th coin then I'm in favor of your suggestion for "Mithril". I don't think a 5th coin complicates the system; I was reacting to what appeared to be suggestions to rename all of the coins.
Sorry, I didn't realize what your point was. I totally agree with you from that perspective.
Vandraad said:Do you really expect players, or the overall economy to actually ever need a coin that is 100,000,000 times that of the lowest denomiation? You, VR, have said time and time again over the last 6+ years about your work on avoiding stat inflation so that every single point actually matters and yet with your economy you're expecting to see the need for 5 levels of currency?
I've seen inflation reach that level. In Asheron's Call, the single unit coin was a pyreal. By the time I stopped playing, the largest trade note available was 250,000 pyreals and would stack 100 to a slot (the same as most everything that would stack). Thus 25 million pyreals equivalence per slot. I wasn't wealthy when I quit, so I was still working with just one stack of them.
Wealthy players however had multiple slots full of notes. A few years after I quite playing, slots full of notes were taking up SO much storage space that the stack size of notes was increased to 250, i.e. 62,500,000 pyreals per slot. And players still had multiple slots full of them.
Sure, I'd love it if VR can keep a damper on monetary inflation. But planning one extra level of coin, on the optimistic chance that Pantheon might last so long that we actually need a higher level of money somewhere down the line, seems like a sensible choice. Given how much easier it is to code it in at the beginning, rather than retrofit it later.
Zorkon said:Ranarius said:Vandraad said:100 copper to 1 silver
10,000 copper to 1 gold
1,000,000 copper to 1 platinum
100,000,000 copper to 1Do you really expect players, or the overall economy to actually ever need a coin that is 100,000,000 times that of the lowest denomiation? You, VR, have said time and time again over the last 6+ years about your work on avoiding stat inflation so that every single point actually matters and yet with your economy you're expecting to see the need for 5 levels of currency?
I thought about that as well, but then I started thinking about coin weight. If someone DOES end up having enough money to get 1 "whatever they're calleds" then will save them weight due to coin weight.
That's the only reason I can think of having the 5th denomination. Yes, things did cost over 1000 platinum in EQ, and running around with 1000 plat was rough sometimes :)I'm starting to think, like some have mentioned Bank Notes, or Chashier's Checks for any amount you want to put on it would be better than a 5th coin. Do we expect this "whatever they're called" worth 1000 Platnum to drop from a Mob?
But then you would have to go back to a bank even more than coin weight dictated, because you'd be constantly needing to deposit oddly amounted bankers drafts so you could afford to get another, in no doubt a different amount, to pay someone for something.
Set up to trae for a while, get paid in Brads or Steels or whatever and a lot of the time you will be able to just pay someone else from what you are being paid.
I really don't understand what the problem is with a 5th coin. Or a 6th if that's the way the economy works.
It's down to the 'value' and 'progression' of coin loot drops, which of course should be linked to the 'value' (challenge? difficulty? time?) of making the associated kill and is linked to the XP rate which is linked to length of time devs want you to stay in an area which is linked to how long they think it would take for you to get bored doing similar stuff, which is linked to how many areas of your level range are available nearby, which is linked to.... etc etc etc. And it's also linked to the availability of banks and the ease of travel and the cost of travel and and and...
I know it would take me a damned long time to work out an MMORPG economy and that it would vary greatly with many fundamental variables of any particular game world. It's far from a simple matter but, if they *are* going to include coin weight, they can at least try and mitigate the carrying of thousands around by having as many coin types as are necessary to largely avoid that situation.
I kind of agree with Vandraad. I'd take a 5th currnecy if the 10:1 ratio from EQ carried over, or drop the 5th currency in favor of a 100:1 ratio. Both seems like a bit overkill to me.
If I had my preference, it would be the latter; that is, get rid of the 5th currency but maintain the 100:1 exchange rate.
But... to keep on topic, if the 5th currency is to remain, I think Mithril makes the most sense. I don't hate the idea of Quaids, but I also think it puts a little too much "real world" into the game world. I get it that we all owe Brad for this venture, but I think a fitting memorial to him in the game would be enough to pay homage to him in Terminus (I'm thinking, like, a quest line to get Aradune's flaming swords (vanity item only), or some kind of landmark, or a zone/city named after Aradune, or some lore surrounding him or something). I think naming a currency after him would sort of take me out of the game more often than I'd like.
Vandraad said:Unneededs
Unnecessaries
Bloats
EDIT: Just to show how ridiculous a 5th currency is, when you're looking at a 100:1 exchange rate lets look at the numbers:
100 copper to 1 silver
10,000 copper to 1 gold
1,000,000 copper to 1 platinum
100,000,000 copper to 1Do you really expect players, or the overall economy to actually ever need a coin that is 100,000,000 times that of the lowest denomiation? You, VR, have said time and time again over the last 6+ years about your work on avoiding stat inflation so that every single point actually matters and yet with your economy you're expecting to see the need for 5 levels of currency?
I get your point, but a lot of it depends on how the game is itemized. If by level 10 you are already looting silver pieces and by 20 gold and by 30 platinum, then it would be no different than EQ but in fact worse because 100k plat is now 1M plat, therefore a 5th currency would be needed.
I think a 100-> 1 scale means that copper can be used well into the teens and twenties and silver finally becoming a thing at that point. If that holds absolutely true, then yes a 100-> 1 itself should be enough. Developers could do something like copper drops are no more than 2xlevel or something. If they can do that then it would really help keep inflation low and the need for a 5th currency far into the future.
