Having copper and silver might be interesting for immersion purposes. But unless Larian add items with prices that require the use of those coins - they will be just a cosmetic addition, that will only confuse some players, who don't know conversion rates.
They're already in the game. Many mundane things like torches, most food, most things that common people use do not cost a single gold piece. Services like a night's stay at an inn don't cost a single gold piece even at a nicer establishment.
You want a game based on how the world is supposed to work but you also want one where people have their alignment bolted to their heads when you meet them so you know exactly who you are dealing with? At least be consistent.
I have played pen and paper D&D. But this isn't that, and the more you try to make it that, to try to shoehorn this into being that the more dumb systems you end up creating. A CRPG of D&D is its own separate thing and you have to cater to what the majority of people will find fun and challenging.
You also want to avoid what is called "Development hell" so you run an equation based on ROI (Return on Investment) of development time. How many X hours of development time would be required to add system like this and what would be the ROI for that?
The fact is Larian has been doing an amazing job focusing on what matters. They are evolving the genre in ways no one else is. Do they have to make adjustments? of course and they have to streamline because I don't think most people would love having to track 3 different kinds of currency. An essay on what a Gold piece is worth in a make believe place? Pass, you can make it worth whatever it needs to be worth.
Do I care if a system is added that creates three separate currencies, not really. Do I want it to delay the game by 20 minutes to get something like that. Nope.
But if you want to make a MOD that does this, then nothing is stopping you.
I want four denominations actually, including platinum. Five if you count electrum, but let's be honest, electrum is rarely used because it does tend to overcomplicate things and it wasn't even used in previous versions of the game. That being said, I would still be happy to have it if Larian wanted to implement it. I want this game to be as close to RAW as a CRPG can be, because it's how the source material works and that's what makes sense to me. If I choose to develop a module for the game, I want to be able to write it in such a way as it feels grounded in the actual P&P systems. Simple things like currency ground the world and make it feel more real. You may not think it's important, but to someone who cares about setting, it matters. Obviously I feel like it matters or I wouldn't continue to reply to you. We're clearly not going to agree but I hope you can see my point.
And believe me, I understand the concept of development hell. I backed Star Citizen in 2013. And yet, here I am, asking for this and defending my point to you, because it's something that matters to me. I know, crazy, right?
Regarding my alignment suggestion from the other thread, I don't want it to act as a nameplate that advertises your moral outlook. Please take another look at my responses there.
Jesus, that's needlessly hostile. I don't know why currency denominations is such a thing to get enraged over, but the D&D currency system isn't exactly something terribly exotic. Heck, it's less complicated than the US dollar. It's not like people are asking for Moons or Steelpence or Brass toals. Copper/Silver/Gold/Platinum is a simple as having 1, 10, 100 and 1000 dollar bills, and currently the game has us paying for everything in the equivalent of hundred dollar bills....which is a bit weird because BG IIII has a lot of 'vendor trash'-forks and empty bottles and apples etc that are obviously worth far less than 1gp. Copper pieces is just a more sensible baseline for the sort of economy Larian has set for the game.
Plenty of other games have multiple denominations-and it doesn't hurt the gameplay experience one iota. What it *does* help, is giving it that verisimilitude that's nice to have in video games.
Off the top of my head Dragon age, World of Warcraft, Drakensang all use different denominations, to no detriment to the player. Most games convert from one denomination to the other automatically as well, so there's no record keeping by the player.
Now if it's as easy as you think for Larian to just switch over that it'd be easy to mod, than by no means is it anything that's going to throw the game into 'development hell'. It would only improve the game by enabling a more sensible price range that allows for more nuanced pricing of goods and services. This is an area where the game could be improved and I for one would love to see Larian give it a go over. They probably should give currency a go-over at some point anyway because of some of the wonkiness with trading and currency being stored on different characters etc etc.
Thank you for the context and consensus.
It could all be stored in a money pouch so it could be both handled like an item that you can remove, and like currency used to buy an sell.
Yes, this is how I envision it.
