I used to praise the game about the fact that it absolutely did not require to start every dialogue with a Charisma-based character to have options in spades and that even low charisma characters were completely viable as main characters.
While this remains GENERALLY true, my endorsement was severely crippled by the full realization of how the economy works in the game.
I think having your Charisma/persuasion score affecting the vendor's prices so heavily (and I mean HEAVILY... In some extreme cases we are talking about differences like paying an armor 7k rather than 20) is a complete mistake, because it encourages a very specific type of meta-gaming.
What's even worse is that the game has a potentially-half-competent attitude system that it barely makes any use of.
You can save someone's life multiple times in a row and still have zero attitude (and zero discount) with them as a vendor, while gifting them random trash is the most efficient way to alter that value.
To add insult to injury, the system also uses a bizarre level-scaled solution which (ONCE AGAIN) encourages annoying and immersion-breaking meta-strategies.
For people who aren't aware of it: the amount you need to gift to a merchant to get bonus attitude is multiplied by your level, so temporarily respeccing to level 1 is an exploit that allows you to gain maximum attitude bonus with a minimum amount of coins.
Of course it would easy to argue "Well, just don't use these exploits/tricks", but it would be so much better if they weren't an option constantly tempting the player by being so trivially easy to leverage (and at the same time such an annoying tidbit of busywork to make use of it).
More specifically, it would be so much better if:
- prices were far less dependent of individual charisma in general and they used some global value applied to the entire party, rather than fluctuating based on who started the conversation.
- attitude was manipulated by the story/quest completion (i.e. how you behave toward that character or his faction previously) more than anything else
- the player was simply not offered the option to influence Attitude with bribery. Let alone in a way that scales proportionally to level.
Last edited by Tuco; 16/07/24 08:15 AM.
