It seems to me that a lot of these arguments are making a lot of assumptions about coin. It's going to really come down to details on this one. There's going to be some people that won't be satisfied unless coin is weightless and they can carry their entire fortunes with them wherever they go, and there's going to be some people who won't be happy unless coin weight management becomes more important than managing inventory slots, and the vast majority of people in between will be happy with some coin weight, just with different ratios ranging from, 'I want managing my coin to be something I have to take into account' to 'I never want to think about coin management, but it would harm my immersion if coin was weightless' to many different ideas inbetween.
My personal takeaway from this thread is that while there's going to be a lot of people unhappy either way, I think the proponents of coin weight will be a lot less upset if they make coin weightless compared to how unhappy to opponents to coin weight would be if coin had weight. Weightless coin would probably cause more net happiness, not because more people want weightless coin, but because I think the people who want weightless coin will be angrier and complain louder if they don't get what they want compared to the other group. Again, there's no official poll here on what the actual population ratios are, and even if there was it would hardly a representative sample, but assuming a bell curve for 'desire for weightless coin' is a pretty safe statement.
Zorkon said:Yea!! Coin Weight is IN per Joppa in tonights stream.
I'm so glad to hear this... making World's, Not games!!
For as long as they bring in things to balance this approach it wouldn't be too bad, but if they simply just add in coin weight and not have a way to get rid of it, cept by traveling all the way to a bank and than back to where ever you came from, would be pretty disappointing, again could be something good, if they bring in something to midigate its affect, i would hate to walk 20 minutes to a bank just to walk 20 minutes back simply due to coin weight.
I watched the stream last night and was greatly encouraged by the list of April's accomplishments. I've worked in IT for more years than I want to make public, and the development goals reached were awesome. Nice job guys!
Just so you know, I've pledged more for this game than any other, want it to succeed, and support it. I'm going to mainly play a Monk.
I was so happy when Joppa said a while ago that the coin weight mechanic would not be in game. I do not support the new decision to reverse their stance on coin weight and now have it in the game. Coin weight was the "Great Sin" Everquest visited upon casters, and to a far, FAR greater extent: the Monk class. It was an oddly specific detriment that added nothing to the game. It was as though they wished to make it hard core for the class, just to make it harder.
There's a bunch of the funny little stories in this thread: giving a noob tons of copper to root him, emptying the bank of coin to buy that item in the Commonsland tunnel and then moving so slooooowly etc.
But what coin weight did to a Monk's AC was not funny at all. It seemed SOE's decision to have coin weight was a punishment for the monk class (and yes to a lesser extent for casters): it was something that diminshed their ability to function, that did not impact ANY other class. Fighters, Rangers, Paladins, ogres, trolls never gave this a second thought because it didn't hurt them. It hurts Monks quite a bit.
I want VR to make THEIR game, but I hope they mitigate this decision and soon. Maybe they could allow for auto coin upgrades: you have 1000 copper and it auto-converts to a silver piece like DDO does, or maybe you have a quest so that while coin weight retains weight, it no longer impacts your AC.
So, I'll watch how this works out and hope for the best. I trust the Devs, and look forward to a full explanation as to why they reversed this, and just pray that they don't revisit the "EQ sin" on monks again without some mitigation option.
Nagasakee said:I watched the stream last night and was greatly encouraged by the list of April's accomplishments. I've worked in IT for more years than I want to make public, and the development goals reached were awesome. Nice job guys!
Just so you know, I've pledged more for this game than any other, want it to succeed, and support it. I'm going to mainly play a Monk.
I was so happy when Joppa said a while ago that the coin weight mechanic would not be in game. I do not support the new decision to reverse their stance on coin weight and now have it in the game. Coin weight was the "Great Sin" Everquest visited upon casters, and to a far, FAR greater extent: the Monk class. It was an oddly specific detriment that added nothing to the game. It was as though they wished to make it hard core for the class, just to make it harder.
There's a bunch of the funny little stories in this thread: giving a noob tons of copper to root him, emptying the bank of coin to buy that item in the Commonsland tunnel and then moving so slooooowly etc.
But what coin weight did to a Monk's AC was not funny at all. It seemed SOE's decision to have coin weight was a punishment for the monk class (and yes to a lesser extent for casters): it was something that diminshed their ability to function, that did not impact ANY other class. Fighters, Rangers, Paladins, ogres, trolls never gave this a second thought because it didn't hurt them. It hurts Monks quite a bit.
I want VR to make THEIR game, but I hope they mitigate this decision and soon. Maybe they could allow for auto coin upgrades: you have 1000 copper and it auto-converts to a silver piece like DDO does, or maybe you have a quest so that while coin weight retains weight, it no longer impacts your AC.
So, I'll watch how this works out and hope for the best. I trust the Devs, and look forward to a full explanation as to why they reversed this, and just pray that they don't revisit the "EQ sin" on monks again without some mitigation option.
I played monk as well and despite the problem of encumberance, it didn't bother me that much and made me think forward and focus on having at least one high weight reduction bag. Coins are obviously another issue but nothing exclude having weight reduction coin pouches or simply LESS trouble with weight than what we had in EQ (which was scarce to be true).
Monk's concerned about the amount of coin they have. I'm not sure how any monk of any religon would feel about that one. (David Carradine rolls over in his grave)
"A monk may be a person who decides to dedicate his life to serving all other living beings, or to be an ascetic who voluntarily chooses to leave mainstream society and live his or her life in prayer and contemplation. The concept is ancient and can be seen in many religions and in philosophy."
I'm not so sure they should mitigate the coin thing for monks at all... ultimatly they are making a mmoRPG, if a player chooses to be a monk, then they should be a Monk. I would like to see them balance it creatively (weight reduction coin purse is not creative) allowing the monk class to level ascetically. A small example of what I'm talking about..
The big tough brawny Warrior plows through food and water one per hour of gameplay.
The ascetic Monk however doesen't eat but one food every 10 or more hours of gameplay.
Then if they could apply this through everything else... one step of a Wizard Epic's require them to collect 2 Diamonds and 5 rubies for turn in, the equivalant step in the Monks epic requires a pebble that are in abundunce laying on the ground at the top of some mountian.
I understand your concerns, but Brads statement "I want to make Worlds, not Games" was powerful, and I don't want to see it compromised. Rich Monk's is beyond a compromise of that, it's a blantent disreguard IMHO.
This is a pretty bad decision IMO. If they do put this in then the encumbrance needs to have nothing do with strength and every class needs the same number of coins as a baseline, say 1000 coins is encumbered no matter strength, and 1200 coins is heavily encumbered. It's really dumb that a warrior with max strength (as is required by his class) gets to carry 20,000 coins, and a mage who has max intelligence (as required by his class) can carry 200 coins. It adds nothing to the game, but it does take away from the fun, it's annoying and no one can tell me that they "enjoy" being encombered and having to go back to town while the rest of their party doesn't have to go back to town just to dump coins in the bank. It's a terrible idea.
Oh it's a mage and they can't carry that... Well then guy, try fighting with 4,000 coins hanging all over your body. Add an extra 100 lbs on coins to any fighter and see how they perform. If this goes live and strength classes get to carry way more, since we are keeping in tune with reality then perhaps have them drop 0.5% of their coin with every swing or when they take a hit. Perhaps they aren't encumbered for movement, but for the weight, their fighting skills go down percentage-based up to 100% degraded when encumbered (they are 50% of the way to encumbered, they lose 50% dodge, block, attack, and when they are encumbered they are -100%).
Brooks said:This is a pretty bad decision IMO. If they do put this in then the encumbrance needs to have nothing do with strength and every class needs the same number of coins as a baseline, say 1000 coins is encumbered no matter strength, and 1200 coins is heavily encumbered. It's really dumb that a warrior with max strength (as is required by his class) gets to carry 20,000 coins, and a mage who has max intelligence (as required by his class) can carry 200 coins. It adds nothing to the game, but it does take away from the fun, it's annoying and no one can tell me that they "enjoy" being encombered and having to go back to town while the rest of their party doesn't have to go back to town just to dump coins in the bank. It's a terrible idea.
Oh it's a mage and they can't carry that... Well then guy, try fighting with 4,000 coins hanging all over your body. Add an extra 100 lbs on coins to any fighter and see how they perform. If this goes live and strength classes get to carry way more, since we are keeping in tune with reality then perhaps have them drop 0.5% of their coin with every swing or when they take a hit.
That is actually a very cool idea!
At the end of each fight, that Ogre Warrior that just got a full heal from the Cleric (who now needs to med), has to pick all his little piles of coin back up. I know they always ignore the fact that they just got healed and complain about needing to wait on the casters to med.
Weight seems fun and inordinate amounts of gold would be awfully heavy. I'll never forget hauling pieces of furniture around in EQ2 near launch at a snails pace...
that said, limits could force returns to unload or manual dropping of cash in the wilderness to continue killing mobs with the group.
Building on what @Brooks said...
Why not use npc thievery to encourage inventory management instead? It could be an escalating chance with more gear and cash.
When you die and/or suffer a critical hit maybe you drop some non-equipped gear and cash you're carrying to the mob. If you kill the mob, you Usually get all the gear and cash back. That way you can still walk with the group if you need to go just a little longer and you just risk some of your hard won loot
I had posted my thoughts in the news thread but it looks like the conversation is going to be here so I will repost what I said there.
My thoughs:
Glad to hear that after our discussion a few streams ago that coin weight is added back in. It's falls in line with things like consumable and reagents that add gameplay elements that most mmo's now days don't have. Thank you!
With the discussion that banks matter again I hope that the discussion on weight also includes coins not automatically changing to higher denomination. If weight and banks matter then players should need to use a bank to do coin exchange. I think of the meta-gameplay aspect back in the day in EQ where a high-level player was farming a spot and would use noobies to make merchant/bank runs for them in exchange for keeping the change. New players would sell items or have low level players exchange coin for them. It was a great way to get new and old players talking and helped noobies make some money.
Also, regarding the 5th type of currency, great idea! If you haven’t completely set in stone yet, consider adding the 5th coin as electrum and placing it between silver and gold since electrum is a combination of both. Copper->Silver->Electrum->Gold->Platinum.
Evoras said:FWIW:
To make 'coin weight' work, there is a need for 'trash coinage' to be burdensome, but higher coinage to maintain a high value so fewer actual coins are needed. This is where many traditional (MMO) games make an error - and it is more to do with (worry about player) maths than programming or intent.
Typically :
10 copper = 1 silver, 10 silver = 1 gold, 10 gold = 1 plat
So 1 plat = 10x10x10 = 1,000 copper
This means that the kind of 'expensive' items that players deal with on a day-to-day basis (of which NPC never deal with) soon start to cost hundreds, if not thousands, of plat. This means that gold becomes 'burdensome' and hence equated with a trash-coin. So, developers consider either 'zero-weight coinage' or 'auto-exchange in bag' as the way to go since this avoids the problems. Otherwise by level 30 you have everyone having to ditch silver and even gold to avoid carrying cash.
Potentially - a solution : (NB: arbitrary convertion chosen below for demonstration purposes)
100 copper = 1 silver, 50 silver = 1 gold, 25 gold = 1 plat
So 1 plat = 100x50x25 = 125,000 copper
Now we see that levels 1-10 will likely work in copper with a smattering of silver and almost no gold. Lower-Mid levels will start to work mainly in silver with a good proportion of gold. This allows players from level 15+ to use plat as a 'wealth unit'. It has little weight, but is valuable enough to pay for items with just a few coins. Eg: 8pp = 200 gold which is 10,000 silver. More than enough for *any* purchase up to level 20-25 or even higher.
More 'extreme' conversions: These would give you better 'scarcity' but may feel odd to many players. The maths, though, would be much easier initially (consistent)
100 copper = 1 silver, 100 silver = 1 gold, 100 gold = 1 plat
So 1 plat = 100x100x100 = 1 million copper.
As in the previous example, 8pp = 800 gp = 80,000 silver! Players will be dealing in silver (as a non-trash coin) until level 20-25+. Gold would be only likely to become 'commonplace' after this.
NOTE: Medieval Europe through to the Renaissance (and beyond in many areas) worked with multiple currencies and variable exchange rates. With little 'formal' maths skills they were able to deal effectively using little more than ledgers, knotted strings and abaci. The conversion rate between 'pennies' to a 'pound' was approx 120 pennies to 1 pound. Given that the 'halfpenny' was a common coin (initially cut in half by merchants from a penny) this meant that the peasantry were dealing with 240 'half-pennies' to the pound (not that they ever saw one). They managed ... because failure to do so would result in starvation or imprisonment for lack of tax.
I thought they are using the standard D&D (book version) ratio 100:1 (Icould be mistaken if they said that as I saw the vod late last night as I was about to head off to bed) I personaly like this as It now forces players to pack smart and chose between having that extra coin in there pockets or the healing pot they might need later on. But overall nice presentation I do like the history lesson on economics during the medevil ages I was entertained by that, thank you.
bigdogchris said:I had posted my thoughts in the news thread but it looks like the conversation is going to be here so I will repost what I said there.
My thoughs:
Glad to hear that after our discussion a few streams ago that coin weight is added back in. It's falls in line with things like consumable and reagents that add gameplay elements that most mmo's now days don't have. Thank you!
With the discussion that banks matter again I hope that the discussion on weight also includes coins not automatically changing to higher denomination. If weight and banks matter then players should need to use a bank to do coin exchange. I think of the meta-gameplay aspect back in the day in EQ where a high-level player was farming a spot and would use noobies to make merchant/bank runs for them in exchange for keeping the change. New players would sell items or have low level players exchange coin for them. It was a great way to get new and old players talking and helped noobies make some money.
Also, regarding the 5th type of currency, great idea! If you haven’t completely set in stone yet, consider adding the 5th coin as electrum and placing it between silver and gold since electrum is a combination of both. Copper->Silver->Electrum->Gold->Platinum.
So like the old AD&D coin system where they had electrum, but those coins were rare (like a US 2 dollar bill rare) and even more rarely used. Elecrtum was used mainly by merchants and traiders in D&D to move currency around without having loads of gold and/or silver for bandits to target them as the coins themselves where useless, so when they got to there destination they would take it to a local currency exchange place and convert it to proper full coins and the electrum would be melt down, seperated and reforged into actual coins again, as best of my memory.
Zorkon said:oneADseven said:I agree with you Wandidar. If coin will automatically convert then I think it's perfectly reasonable that coin has weight ... hell, I would even prefer that it does.
If it's automatically converted then I don't understand the point of it having weight in the first place. The point I seen of it having weight was to create small threads of interaction between players.
Reason to use the bank
Bags of coin on the paths
Coin running
If it automatically converts this is all eleminated so I don't see a point in it.
Not thinking of sour grapes... just really don't see the point. Kind of like "Tits on a Boar" yes, the Boar has tits... but why? (Saying my father used to use)
Well I rather see players think and use heads when packing like in situations where "is the healing pot more useful then a pocket full of coins?" type situation. It makes players think what they are going to take with them on there journey depending on where they are doing. Going from one biome to the next to a town to buy something? take a change of clothing and some extra coin with them, going to explore a cave or do a raid? Take less coin and/or no no coins and more items that will be useful.
I am not a fan of coin looting in general outside of non-primitive humanoids. Even then it would be better if they were “Ratkin copper coins” that needed to be taken to a currency exchange vendor to turn it into useable coinage.
Giving coins mass but not volume also seems like odd selective realism, mostly being done for nostalgia reasons. We still are seeing a slot based inventory system where a ringmaile shirt made of 1000s of rings takes as much bag space as a single gold ring, which is incidentally about the size of a coin that has no volume. So much more could be done if you had a volume value to all objects and a list inventory. Item stacks would only be for condensing inventory listings not sneaking more value into the same volume slot.
Coins having weight will unequally penalize certain classes which seems counter to many other game design decisions. If there is a penalty then there should be some buff in return like “Sustained by Earth and Moon” while unencumbered monks do not need to consume food or water. This could partially be offset if at least some weight reduction bags were flat values rather than % values and you could put your stack of coins in said bag.
Honestly kind of going to feed into this whole mounts being more about holding bag space and not be about movement speed, than coin weight could easily be managed during deep dungeon dives, Like if your Mounts actually is able to hold such items, including coin than you can continue to love doing what you are doing wihtot having to leave said spot, or at least just walking outside of the dungeona nd simply just walk back in after they are done.
You can even make a Tradeskill or two make a Campfire or Tent that can be created like a safe spot for mounts to be made available for a short amount of time or until the next combat phase to adjust your stuff accordingly, and continue to play with your friends until the group splits up.
Plus if you have mounts hold coin, and Hold bag space, you can effectively lessen the amount of bag space you can actually hold, and have it more dependent on the mount itself, i love how people are talking all about wanting thing to make sense, but miss that it would be impossible to actually have 6 backpacks or one HUGE backpack on your back while wearing a full set of plate armor and a shield and weapon and able to fight effectively, just have a traveler's bag, on the player and have everything else funnel to the mount and make bag space just as important as weight.
This i would love to see in the game, it solves the issue of bag space and weight be ultimately confining, and also makes them important at the same time by using another feature to one make one more important(aka Bag space), while making coinweight still important but not miserable, and also makes 2 tradeskills have something they can bring to the party that isn't directly tied into their class, it a bunch of wins in a ton of areas, i just hope it works out the way the Devs want it too.
Well, since people are on board with this horrible idea let's not forget that metals weigh different amounts. Silver is denser than copper, gold is way heavier. One Cubit foot of copper is 559 lbs whereas Gold would be 1206 lbs. So if you convert your money to gold you should only be able to carry half of that amount. One cubic foot of Gold weighs 1,206 lbs. You could also make it take bag space too, because you will need to store your money somewhere. If they are going to size, that's fine but I'd suggest we allocate bag space per weight and size then. Each bag can carry 8 slots or X weight, and our bag space will be limited by size and weight. So you may have a warrior that can carry 4 cubic feet in total space which is 8 slots in the backpack, but 3 of those may be occupied with "gold" space, or twice the space if it's Silver. We could also make sexes carry more, we can't ignore the extra muscle mass from testosterone that males have. Everyone should have to drop their bags on the ground when fighting too. Can you imagine trying to fight with 1000 gold coins on you, or 100 if you are a mage...
This is a horrible idea, it adds nothing but frustration to players. It is not balanced within classes because they have different strength levels. Someone shouldn't be penalized on the amount they can carry based on their class. No one wants to have to break off and go to town twice as often as the rest of the group just because they are an intelligence-based class.
Brooks said:Well, since people are on board with this horrible idea let's not forget that metals weigh different amounts. Silver is denser than copper, gold is way heavier. One Cubit foot of copper is 559 lbs whereas Gold would be 1206 lbs. So if you convert your money to gold you should only be able to carry half of that amount. One cubic foot of Gold weighs 1,206 lbs. You could also make it take bag space too, because you will need to store your money somewhere. If they are going to size, that's fine but I'd suggest we allocate bag space per weight and size then. Each bag can carry 8 slots or X weight, and our bag space will be limited by size and weight. So you may have a warrior that can carry 4 cubic feet in total space which is 8 slots in the backpack, but 3 of those may be occupied with "gold" space, or twice the space if it's Silver. We could also make sexes carry more, we can't ignore the extra muscle mass from testosterone that males have. Everyone should have to drop their bags on the ground when fighting too. Can you imagine trying to fight with 1000 gold coins on you, or 100 if you are a mage...
This is a horrible idea, it adds nothing but frustration to players. It is not balanced within classes because they have different strength levels. Someone shouldn't be penalized on the amount they can carry based on their class. No one wants to have to break off and go to town twice as often as the rest of the group just because they are an intelligence-based class.
Well i can see why people might not like this idea of coin weight, i don't think anyone actually thinks that your money is actually going to be occupying bag space, or think gold coins are going to weigh more than copper coins, or most of what is said in this post is invalid, as it isn't going to be a thing, it just going to have its own weight and be in its own storage or sorts, so it basiclly only afects you in the weight aspect of it and not the other, and I already wrote a solution to solve most of the problems it can represent while also keeping it just as important, who knows maybe they already have an idea to make it work in their own way, time will tell.
Yay - incoming deleting money...
This is one of the mechanics that crossed the line between an additional feature that was "interesting" to have, and a cumbersome mechanic that lead to solely wasteful actions, like destroying money. They better end up having "coin purses" that reduce coin weight to 0, or the game will end up like in EQ where money becomes more of a nuisance than a desire (people carrying around and trading in Peridots which vendor for 10p (or other gems) instead of using the game's actual currency on some servers while simultaneously deleting what would translate to thousands of platinum over the course of several hours (because exiting their dungeon/abandoning their party to use the bank is just nonsensical).