Matrulak said:@Liav
The story wasnt meant to be pro coin weight. For me it is an example, where coin weight was not a good thing. Since i had to travel pretty far to get to the trading area, i almost was not able to trade at all, at least when it comes to expensive stuff. While i understand that coin weight might avoid people from farming cash mobs 24/7 without leaving, coin weight should not prevent trades ... I just did not see someone mentioning that point in this thread (or they know a trick that i do not know).
And yes, i have stories to internet problems as well. Even though i find it entertaining, it did not enhance my playing experience in any way ;)
My mistake. I guess I misunderstood the intent of your post.
I actually never thought of coin weight as an anti-farming mechanism. I don't think it would work for that purpose regardless but it's interesting.
Edit: As to the responses about emergent gameplay, I don't think I could reasonably describe something implemented in the game causing very predictable outcomes to be emergent gameplay. Emergent gameplay, at least as I understand it, are things that happen outside of what the developers initially intend, which they then allow to stay in the game. Coin weight having a predictable outcome and requiring a workaround isn't emergent, that's just how it works.
For the record, I'm in favor of coin weight.
Up to and even including imobility. IMO it brings a lot to the game. From reasons to go to town, to small bags of copper or silver pieces laying on trails for noobs to find (that have never had enough gold to weigh them down and leave them wondering WTH is this here for? Slowing down the gold farming. To the satisfaction of coming out of a long day in a dungon with your purse so full you can hardly drag it (expecially after having been droping your copper and silver and you know the heavy purse is full of onlly Gold and Plat)
There are many reasons to have coin weight. If you dont consider my reasoning valid, your welcome to your opinion as I am to mine. (Not going to debate it... Devs will decide, WE dont have to agree..we just give our opinions)
I think you're making baseless claims still. That coin weight slows down gold farming for one. You've shown zero evidence that is the case, and there's zero reason for me to believe it's desirable to stop gold farming in the first place. I don't find farming to be particularly harmful. What about it is harmful? If your complaint is about RMT, then that is something that exists independent of farming itself.
All in all, I question just about everything you've said and I think some of it is presented as fact as opposed to an opinion. Regardless, it's probably better if we just drop it because this is going nowhere.
I am also in favour of coin weight, Anything that makes you have to reconsider, and think about what you have to do is good in my book. I like that you have to make descions on even the small things
And great fun in pvp game also "You get ganked, ganker fills his pockets on your fine coin stash gets encumbered waddles slowly off into the distant to meet his fate!" whats there not to like.
Easy idea here:
They have already said they will have weight reduction bags in the game. I know back in EQ, getting a good set of them was a bit of a prized thing that you were proud of having accomplished - and having accomplished it, you felt just a little more powerful because you had overcome an intrinsic difficulty of the world (you didn't get weighed down by the junk in your bags).
Why not do the same with coin?
Coin weight is a mechanic that I didn't care much about in old EQ, and definitely don't miss in today's EQ (nor in any other game I've played).
If you want to "force" players to occasionally have to run back to deposit their cash gains, make it so that you lose some percentage of your money on death...that should do the trick nicely.
Coin weight in EQ1 really didn't deter anything, it was just an annoyance in reality.
If it's in game I will deal with it, but I wouldn't be disappointed if it was excluded either.
Being that we will need to carry extra situational gear with us, and things, adding coin weight just hinders the objective of adventure.
In EQ1, I seldom carried more then 50 plat with me unless I was shopping in the EC tunnel, because I always had several styles of weapons I carried, and a couple extra armor peices because of their clickies or effects against cetrtain types of mobs, plus a shield. I was almost always teetering on my weight limit just heading out.
In groups with friends, we often just had the person with the most unused carry weight loot all the coin and we'd split at the end of the night. Or if we had a druid or wizard, we'd take short breaks, or excuse them from a few fights, for them to go sell and do coin exchanges. it really was amazing how much money you could make if you could just unload all those Fine Steel weapons instead of passing them up because you're encumbered :) .
I would rather deal with a portion of coin being lost upon death than seeing it play into being encumbered. As I mentioned previously in the thread, I will be playing an ogre warrior which historically should be able to carry more weight than any other class/race combo in the game. The "annoyance factor" of coin weight would probably affect me less than the overwhelming majority of players, but I still just don't like the idea of it. Losing coin upon death though ... that's something I remember from EQOA, and I could probably get behind it. It punishes people for death rather than being another hindrance added to micro-management. I think coin loss upon death would help satisfy the desire people are looking for in needing a reason to regularly visit the bank. I would go so far as to say it would be cool if there were special vendors that are located deep in a dungeon where you can buy stuff with your coin. They offer cool stuff but there is an inherent risk of trying to shop there ... if you bring a boatload of money and die on the way, you stand to lose a lot. Perhaps there should be a cap on how much you can lose upon any single death rather than using a percentage.
Coin weight does nothin but cuase frustration becuase if im in a good group and geting huge drops of copper while in it and have to leave becuase i simply cant hardly move anymore i would be very dissatisfied, plus like Liav sad it hasnt been proven that it make it easier for gold farmers, in fact most people who are the best gold farmers usually do Tradeskills, or hunt down loot, while getting money, it simple logic.
I don't have a significantly strong opinion on coin weight one way or another. But if it's going to be a thing then I'd prefer it if it always automatically rolls denominations to the least-coin totals. One thing that really did frustrate me in EQ was having to choose to either leave a camp to go convert your coppers to plats, or destroy them so that you were not perpetually encumbered.
I don't have any strong feelings one way or another, but I'm not sure why it's any different to have to run to town because you are overweight carrying all the fine steel weapons you looted versus having to run to town because you've looted so much coin.
Part of playing a monk in EQ was the challenge of keeping your weight down. You had to forgo some loot/coin to be effective. If you think of monks as being pious and poor, perhaps this was enforced RP or just following the game lore as it was intended. A seven foot ogre warrior could carry more than a 3 foot gnome wizard. It all seemed to make sense at the time. It was a fact of life and you worked with it as best you could.
If coin is not going to have weight, are we just carrying around debit cards then? Do we need "bankers" or just bus terminal lockers?
You know, an interesting thing here is that in a very real sense, coin weight is a different version of things that this communtiy adamantly argues in favor of. For example, travel. By and large, I think it's fair to say that the majority of this community wants meaningful travel. But what is meaningful travel? It's a time sink that may or may not offer challenges. A time sink that makes you interact with the world AND perhaps the community of players in the world. You gain NO advancement from the game because you ran for an hour to get from point A to point B. In fact, from a pure game perspective, you probably lost out... becuase instead of doing something to advance your character, you were running.
What is coin weight? In the end, like travel, it's a time sink. It's something in the world you have to deal with (the weight of the coins is making you move slow, etc...). To deal with it, you have to go somewhere (a bank), or interact with someone in your community (trade with someone)... or buy something from a vendonr... or abandon it entirely by dropping it on the ground. Dealing with coin weight gains you no advancement from the game. In fact, you probably lost out... because time you could have spent advancing your character, was instead spent dealing with the coin.
Which sort of raises an interesting question. Why do we absolutly WANT some time sinks that provide no measurable in game gain of any sort, and absolutely NOT want others? Interesing for (I think) a very important reason... that being that I think the the proper choice of such time sinks by the developers may really elevate the game, while improper choices may harm it.
hmm.. hire 2 npc's to carry your treasure chest for a big investment or ambush a tax collector and his cart with a swarm of guards; what's a player to do
Some heated debate here.
A part of me wants coin to have weight, but the other side of me wonders if that's nothing but my mind playing the nostalgic game. Everyone here is looking at a game like EQ, taking big parts of it that were good and assuming that all the little parts that made the whole were also good by default.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. "Inventory management was important in Everquest, coin is a part of your inventory and had weight, therefore coin was an integral factor in why inventory management was important" - this is a fallacy. I hesitate to get behind it.
Also going to have to get behind Liav on his point. The party that makes a claim, or proposes a thing, the burden of argument falls on them to support that claim. It doesn't fall on the person to prove why it shouldn't be added, it falls on the person who proposes it should. Not saying nobody here gave good reason for why it should be added, just saying that I agree with the general point (unless I am missing the point myself).
Anyway, like others said, it's not a game break to me. I couldn't care less if coin had weight, or not, but nor do I necessarily agree with the reasons people are so ardently for it.
Tralyan said:Also going to have to get behind Liav on his point. The party that makes a claim, or proposes a thing, the burden of argument falls on them to support that claim.
The problem with the statement is that it goes both ways:
Party A says: Game element X is really, really, really important!!!!
Party B, says: No, it's NOT!!!
THEN... what has happened in this thread, is that one of the parties says "You need to prove your claim!!!" - without ever acknowledging one very important thing:
Party A was being honest from their point of view (hopefully)
Party B was being honest from their point of view (hopefully)
Making a declaration that ONE of the parties has "burden of proof" indirectly (or perhaps even directly) implies that their position is invalid. It is absolutely intended to put that person on the defensive. EXPLAIN YOURSELF! If you don't or can't, then you only prove that you are wrong!!! (That's pretty much the message being sent)
It's a debate tactic that will only cause strife in a commumity that SHOULD BE trying to work TOGETHER to make the game the best it can be.
Conversations and disagreement... good. Ad Hominem attacks, attempts to discredit or marginialize the opinions, likes, dislikes, and ideas of others in the community... not so good.
I would like to reference the second question from the FAQ:
1.0.1 It sounds like Pantheon is bringing back a lot of older MMO game mechanics. Is Pantheon a clone of older games or a modern MMO?
Pantheon is most definitely a modern MMO with modern graphics and new and exciting features and mechanics. There are already emulators out there that are clones of earlier MMOs and Visionary Realms has no desire to make another emulator. That said, we also feel that many of the features and mechanics of previous MMOs have been abandoned in more recent games, resulting in a less challenging, compelling, deep, and social experience. Pantheon, therefore, will indeed bring back some of these conventional mechanics and ideas but with a fresh perspective, some tweaks and revisions. We also understand that while gamers tastes don't fundamentally change over time, their situations, lives, and responsibilities do. Likewise, some game mechanics often associated with earlier MMOs involved inordinate amounts of downtime, overly severe penalties, too much competition over content and resources, and even downright boring or overly repetitive gameplay. Our intention, therefore, is not to bring back everything from the old days, but rather to pick and choose those which make sense and are needed to make a fun, social, cooperative, and challenging game.
Considering the above, I think it's important to explain how you feel coin-weight makes sense or is needed to make a fun, social, cooperative and challenging game. I personally don't think it delivers on any of those metrics. This is just my opinion, but managing coin-weight sounds more like a matter of inordinate downtime and downright boring/repetitive gameplay. We need to remember that VR is looking to attract an audience much wider than just the original EQ crowd. I don't think coin-weight will resonate with most gamers who don't have experience with it. It doesen't even seem to resonate with half the players who do have experience with it. Pick your battles. If you over-burden players with unneccessary tedium you're on a fast track toward people wanting insta-travel or other conveniences to help alleviate the struggles of boring timesinks.
If we're going to get technical, the default position is null, or in this case a given feature not being in the game. It's very practical. The alternative is that we assume that the developers will already include every minor feature from every MMO in existence, and then they have to sit there and pick apart the why nots.
Precedent is also important in a case like this, which is why I have mentioned numerous times that EQ is in the extreme minority of games that have had coin weight. I'm a die hard EQ player, but I am also a die hard Vanguard player. We have many FFXI players here, as well as many WoW players. I have many good memories of EQ but I can not reasonably say that coin weight played any part in my enjoyment of early EQ whatsoever. None of the players of any of these other games ever had to deal with this and I imagine they'd be hard pressed to say their experience would have been improved if it were included.
I don't particularly enjoy the "sterile" style of pointing out fallacies in everything someone says. I'm simply disputing the claim: "it is logical to include coin weight in Pantheon".
I have nothing more to contribute here really, I just wanted to explain myself. Tralyan said it in a more palatable way than I did, so at the very least I'll take the blame for being crass.
oneADseven said:Considering the above, I think it's important to explain how you feel coin-weight makes sense or is needed to make a fun, social, cooperative and challenging game. I personally don't think it delivers on any of those metrics. This is just my opinion, but managing coin-weight sounds more like a matter of inordinate downtime and downright boring/repetitive gameplay. We need to remember that VR is looking to attract an audience much wider than just the original EQ crowd. I don't think coin-weight will resonate with most gamers who don't have experience with it. It doesen't even seem to resonate with half the players who do have experience with it. Pick your battles. If you over-burden players with unneccessary tedium you're on a fast track toward people wanting insta-travel or other conveniences to help alleviate the struggles of boring timesinks.
The social aspect of it is very easy to explain.
Unless you're going to be destroying your coinage, you are going to need to go to a bank to deposit it. In order to go to a bank, you are going to have to go to a city. Where there are cities, there are players and NPCs. So, unless you are anti-social, and I am not saying that there is anything wrong with that, you willl be interacting with various people in town.
One thing I will say about coinage, either way, is that it shouldn't drop off of just about every mob on the planet. In the old EQ, alot of mobs dropped coin that either couldn't or shouldn't be carryting it. As an example, some "animals" dropped money (why would they have money), skellies dropped money (where would they carry money), some "monsters" carried money (what would they do with money), etc. One thing that I would hope, and this may have alreay been discussed in a different thread (and probably was), but I would hope that the drop loot table and the pickpocket loot table are separate like they were in EQ to avoid the petty squabbles that invariably come about.
There is also an anti-social element tied into it. Instead of being able to continue playing with your group, you need to go to town in order to be able to move again. Instead of having an extra 50 silver to spend when you do eventually get to town, that silver is gone forever because you couldn't loot it in the first place. That sounds like potential trade opportunities (social interaction) being flushed down the toilet in the name of inordinate downtime and downright boring gameplay.
As far as what drops coin, I agree with you. There are plenty of mobs that have no business dropping coin ... but what they should be dropping are components that are somehow tied into crafting. It's one thing I really miss about FFXI. Just about everything you could loot had some sort of value. I would much rather make my coin by selling materials and engaging with the trade community than straight up looting it from corpses. It's even better when you can see +1 or +2 versions drop of these same items.
Liav said:I have nothing more to contribute here really, I just wanted to explain myself. Tralyan said it in a more palatable way than I did, so at the very least I'll take the blame for being crass.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what will be on my tombstone.
"Here lies Tralyan. At least he was palatable."
I'm weirdly ok with that.
-------
As for the social aspect, I'd argue with that while also prefacing my argument by admitting it's purely anecdotal. I'm playing P99 at the moment, and anytime I struggle with coin weight while out "in the bush", I certainly won't just go to the bank in the city. Rather, I either just delete all my copper outright, or go to a local vendor and buy some friggin' rations to even out the coin distribution. I'm willing to bet this practice isn't unique to just me.
Anytime someone would go to the bank to exchange currency, I'd conjecture that this would be done regardless of weight. Weight is an annoyance that is solved by deletion or buying nonsense at a vendor (a vendor that isn't even in town) you normally would've waited to go to town for. That doesn't create social interactions, that just creates arbitrary breaks in my game play.
Heck, now, instead of going to town to buy those rations and sundry items, I instead buy them out in the North Karana gypsy camp just to get rid of copper. That effectively cancelled out whatever social interactions that might have been gained by going to the bank to get rid of those copper.
oneADseven said:There is also an anti-social element tied into it. Instead of being able to continue playing with your group, you need to go to town in order to be able to move again. Instead of having an extra 50 silver to spend when you do eventually get to town, that silver is gone forever because you couldn't loot it in the first place. That sounds like potential trade opportunities (social interaction) being flushed down the toilet in the name of inordinate downtime and downright boring gameplay.
Also, that.
One solution that would have worked in EQ rathrer than getting rid of weight... I THINK... would hve been to make equivalent amounts of cash weigh the same thing. Because what did people do with their cash? They converted it to a higher denomination of currency, and suddenly it had a lot less weight.
If, for example, 10 copper = 1 gold, then I would contend (if weight existed) that perhaps the weight of 10 copper was the same as 1 gold... rather than having one copper coin weighing the same as 1 gold coin.
sDazL said:
Something similar existed in EQ also. Ppl would carry around diamonds and other precious gems, as they were stackable and had almost no weight, but could be sold back to merchants at only a small loss.
About linked banks... I think they will be linked, but would be interesting maybe to see a few different banks (even with different currencies?). Would make sense if not all races used the same currency. But thats a different topic I guess =)
Converging into gems would be the more realistic and time period consistent I think, unless a paper voucher gets introduced (Tang Dynasty during the 7th century)
This could turn into an extra level of economics; espcially if merchant npc's get cleaned out by game mechanics.
It should not go so far as being a game mechanic al in itself, where it keeps players away from other content, unless it is considered a "trade" skill.
Though I could imagine it fun in a PvP environment when a money lender's player guild detachment gets raided when they transfer cash to a deprived city; never played PvP myself.
It could also add inventory display if the character had a seperate belt gem pouch.
(edit: typo's)
As an EQ1 monk player coin weight was a huge deal. Staying under 14lb at low levels was bloody hard as a newbie and coppers and silvers were never worth picking up unless there was a bank or vendor near by. Some times I would pick leveling spots solely based on if I could bank or convert my low coins into something more transferable. I would vendor mine gems and spider silk to convert it or worse comes to worse buy and sell back a fine steel quarterstaff (never figured out how those were fine steel, its wood)
Kalok said:*snip*
One thing I will say about coinage, either way, is that it shouldn't drop off of just about every mob on the planet. In the old EQ, alot of mobs dropped coin that either couldn't or shouldn't be carryting it. As an example, some "animals" dropped money (why would they have money), skellies dropped money (where would they carry money), some "monsters" carried money (what would they do with money), etc. One thing that I would hope, and this may have alreay been discussed in a different thread (and probably was), but I would hope that the drop loot table and the pickpocket loot table are separate like they were in EQ to avoid the petty squabbles that invariably come about.
I will second the consept on not liking all mobs having pocket change. Some mobs like bandits and other humanoids with pockets or the occasional ooze that ate an adventurer it makes perfect sense but I would rather see mobs having rare drop "harvest" items that can be traded with NPCs for cash or traded to crafters for goods or cash. This would require a pretty robust crafting system. Something like a leather vest made from wolfhide has one set of stats, from rhinos another and drake a third. Don't get me started on the crafting system as I go nuts over them.
Trasak
P.S. 187 totally ninja posted me almost point for point