Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General RPG Rules: Does money have weight?

Well, precisely for that reason, I don't think coins weight to be important in this peculiar game : you can teleport, so it will only make you do a couple more trips.

Money having weight is just one more thing to micromanage and it doesn't really add anything to the game but frustration. I'd rather just assume my character is smart enough to exchange for high value coins when needed or shopkeepers will accept a note of credit, etc etc.

No gold should never have weight. You trade items you can't carry for money. Trading it just for a bit less weight doesn't seem appropriate. It doesn't add anything to the game and is just a hassle to keep an eye on. That said, please make money very, very sparse. I HATE when I can't buy anything interesting anymore because I have so much money that I already bought everything. There are really only a few games that have their eco system working. Make selling gear 1/10 of the buying price instead of the typical 50%, and keep the drops rather low. You should be forced to make choices, gear towards a specific thing etc. Optional, difficult quests can yield some cash, but I don't think it's a good idea to get an epic item's worth of money just for moving from a to b.

I suppose my mind will only entertain the simple axiom of 'how can we get the most entertainment value out of it?'

Weight = more gameplay consequences and costs to take into account for balancing. Adds realism, but at the potential cost of fun for some players or effort spent on its development that's not going into other systems as a result.

No weight = standard way of going about it. Works well and allows you to concentrate on the balance of economy or put that concentration elsewhere.

A few methods have been named to try and mitigate or cross-breed the two ideas, but for my 2 cents worth of weight I'd suggest looking at how to make it entertaining first and foremost. For random ideas--

Perhaps having a 'Mysterious Banker' offer to give you a pyramid of treasure to instantly teleport all your monetary earnings into a pool of riches that could even earn interest! .... if you could just help him out with collecting some loans that were made by his predecessor...or for a percentage fee...or your account and your partner's both go to the same place to make you nervous, etc. You could have it similarly teleported to a bank that may be robbed by bandits or smuggled out by that Mysterious Banker himself at a certain point to track down as he goes missing yet the money you find instantly still goes to him as it's cursed to do so (or perhaps make it a Rune of Greed or a tattoo....or both!) - until you track him down and take it over for yourself of course.

Those all may be bad examples in practice, or very potentially frustrating to any player when you just take it away from a player - it'd need to be severely tested and thought about in implementation at least-, but I have to imagine there's a way to make it work in some similar fashion that can increase the fun somehow in relatively easy fashion and not decreasing the enjoyment while making sense in the universe you're in moreso than carrying around the net worth of 12 nations in your purse or having to teleport back and forth 4 times every room due to weight issues and weighing your own greed. There are much more entertaining ways to 'punish' that greed than loading screens after all!

I think that usually has more to do with them not wanting to reveal high level weapons outside of their zone. I think its kind of neat to have a teaser preview even if you can't buy. On the other side of the economy, I don't want to be forced to strip every corpse and cart all the common gear back to town just to keep up in gear. It ends up being an unending game of inventory tetris. I like to see drops tend towards 'uncommon' and up rather than every guardsman having a basic chain and sword set on him.

I believe Zukuu has a good point ! But also Brian Wright: you've a point too !
Maybe, but I don't know, D:OS have a skill like in Divine Divinity named "Trader's Tongue" to get better prices. But in DD even without this skill it was possible to become rich !

I believe this skill must make MORE difference than in DD ! And for the player who's not intrested in collecting more money to buy better gear he/she simply don't invest in that skill (or just 1 or a few points).

But I've read soon(?) the devs go explaining more about the skills in D:OS, so maybe then this case with the "does money have weight?" become more crystal clear ? I hope .

I think that having money that obeys the rules of gravity is more realistic in the real world.

However, in a game world, I am perfectly fine with an abstract means of payment. And I agree, there are no actual banks and you're not actually making a wire transfer for your brand new sword and you are not paying that new breastplate with a cheque (US: check) or so, and it is not very realistic by itself, but what would that add?

Having money with weight requires rebalancing of the game in many ways, and it is not trivial. Low strength characters for example could get heavily penalized by this mechanic, as they could even get in trouble paying for this one really expensive Fabergé egg they for some reason desire, because it costs more money than they can actually carry. Furthermore, I would detest having to haul cash back and forth all the time, because it's, well, 100% boring.

Alternatively, the weighted money could be balanced by introducing a system of banks etc. But having a realistic system here (which is the main reason for having weighted money in the first place) would be too elaborate I think, and the benefits would not outweigh the meta-game that you now have to play, which distracts you from the actual game. I dislike managing my finances in real life as it is, please don't bother me with it in a fantasy game.

Of course, there are a lot of compromises between having an accurate and realistic economic system, and weightless money. But the thing is, in the end they are still compromises, meaning that the realism will have to be cut at some point anyway, and I am personally content when that cutoff is made at "weightless money".

Having weightless money results in having quite the same principles as you would when paying through banks or some other alternative means because you can't carry your cash. The difference is that you're not actually performing all the steps in between to get your money to the salesman across the counter. I consider that a good thing.

And hey, I wouldn't mind if your money had weight and it was stored in your vault at the end of time. It could automagically travel back and forth between the vault and your pockets. Money at the speed of light, so to speak, but that would mean it has to have zero rest mass ... d'oh.

Wonder how many people enjoyed the inventory management in old days. Even when we play PnP games, we tend to close our eyes on encumbrance systems as long as players don't insist on carrying outrageously heavy things or too many weapons/sets of armor. Only exceptions are games which have interesting gameplays related with encumbrance: For example, heavy armor wear off the characters more quickly than characters wearing light armor and even in such cases, we ignore the weight of "backpacks". Seriously, even as a game master, I don't think there is a legitimate reason for me to force the players to keep tracking on their encumbrance, making them waste their time. So, no to inventory management.

Alternatively, it's O.K. by me, to have some encumbrance related restrictions in a limited way, if the designers have interesting gameplay gimmick which reflects bulkiness/weights. For example, characters wearing heavy armor may have fewer APs for their movements and/or other actions. In any case, if the designers are going for simulation factors, I'd like them to have meanings in gameplays rather than chaining the players to blind "realism." Just my two cents.

I sincerely hope that weight on gold is not added to the game, its a pain to deal with and will discourage exploration since you continualy have to move from exploring to the vendor to your house and back again to get rid of the weight all the time.

either that or make most loot so worthless that there is no point in even picking it up, thus theren ot being a problem with gold weighting anything.