Larian Banner: Baldur's Gate Patch 9
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Page 3 of 3 1 2 3
Joined: Jan 2017
snap Offline OP
journeyman
OP Offline
journeyman
Joined: Jan 2017
Originally Posted by Kalrakh
The difference depends on the story situation:

- Are you on the market in a big city? Of course you will be able to buy pretty everything as long you have gold.

- Are you in a prison on an isolated island? How the hell are those merchant prisoners and seekers getting all their stuff?

Making everything just more expensive would make economy more dire but in no way make immerssion more believable.

This thread is about the economy of the game, not about immersion.

Besides, it's more believable that the vendor sells books you can't afford than books you can afford. So it does make it more immersive to make stuff more costly.

If you want more immersion, then ask for merchants that make more sense. A lost spirit in a hidden or underground library that sell spell books for all school of magic for example instead of so many merchants all over Fort Joy.

Joined: Oct 2016
Location: Germany
veteran
Offline
veteran
Joined: Oct 2016
Location: Germany
Originally Posted by snap
If you want more immersion, then ask for merchants that make more sense. A lost spirit in a hidden or underground library that sell spell books for all school of magic for example instead of so many merchants all over Fort Joy.


That is what we are talking about. There are far to many therefore ruining economy and immersion at the same time.

If stuff isn't reasonable scarce, high prices are not understandable and therefore will just feel punishing for players. But if stuff is obvious hard to get, high prices are more logical. And if you give options like quests to lower prices you even improve the play value.

Joined: Jan 2017
C
member
Offline
member
C
Joined: Jan 2017
Wow.

ITT: people that want the first 2 hours of a new game to just be annoying.

Almost like starting an epic RPG adventure in a prison was a silly idea or something :O

Joined: Oct 2016
Location: Germany
veteran
Offline
veteran
Joined: Oct 2016
Location: Germany
We had that topic already. Where is the difference to game likes Skyrim for example? You start at the bottom of all there too?

Joined: Sep 2015
A
journeyman
Offline
journeyman
A
Joined: Sep 2015
I think it's just a matter of preferences. There'll always be people saying prices are too low/high. Personally I think economy is as much a part of game difficulty as combat is. Maybe even more than combat in early game.

I think different difficulties should have different prices. On explorer everything should be dirt cheap like it is now. No need to think what you buy, just buy the whole shop. On tactician on the other hand gold should be a constant struggle. Barter and thievery almost a must. Crafting is necessary if you want decent gear and some additional skillbooks at the same time. Every free piece of gear/skillbook found feels great. I was so happy when I found that battle stomp book pre-hotfix. Finally my warrior was going to have 4 skills, finally he got 2 cc. Battles became so much easier. Then when I found it after hotfix I felt nothing because I had all skills bought and 2k gold in my inventory.

Joined: May 2010
Location: Oxford
Duchess of Gorgombert
Offline
Duchess of Gorgombert
Joined: May 2010
Location: Oxford
Tying it to difficulty is a tricky one: I like my economy to be "somewhat challenging": I find it boring to have too much money to splash around and want to feel like I'm working for it, and if I make a bad decision, so be it.

But combat difficulty... I'm rubbish at combat and not very strategically-minded. So I'd kinda like "Explorer" there.

I felt much the same with the introduction of survival-mode on some games: I like actually having to do the essentials to keep my character alive and well, but I don't like the risk of being insta-pwned while I'm doing it or restrictions on where I can save.

I guess ideally the difficulty would be configurable depending on what elements you actually want to be difficult, but I'm not sure I see any game developer being desperately enthusiastic about something so complex, especially as different categories may be difficult to isolate without causing compromises.


J'aime le fromage.
Joined: Aug 2014
old hand
Offline
old hand
Joined: Aug 2014
So hopefully this is one more thing that easy modding can help. There is a modifiable piece of code:

key "GlobalGoldValueMultiplier","0.5"

This changes the global prices of items. I'm not sure if this effects how much gold you find, though. If this doesn't, you could simply increase the multiplier to make the prices as high as you want for your taste. If it does effect the amount of gold you find, though, it's not particularly useful, imo, and modifying the economy would require a bit more work.

Joined: Jan 2009
veteran
Offline
veteran
Joined: Jan 2009
Originally Posted by Kalrakh
As I said, there are far to many merchants for an isolated prison island. Perhaps there should be a few people, that sell stuff. But only a few stuff and really specific stuff. Somethings you perhaps only get sold if you do them a favor or you get it as a quest reward at the end. But before all, the merchants should not get new stuff at every level up and at every full hour gametime. This just breaks the whole immersion. Merchants can get back to normal, after you escaped and you are back in the freeworld, but on this island it is just odd.

Of course fights would need quite a nerf in a more dire situation with less good equipment at your disposal.


I have asked for some changes to Fort Joy for the sake of immersion, another floor and better facilities and quarters for magisters.

But while you might be right that having so many merchants around makes things less immersive, removing them could be a hell of a lot more trouble than it's worth. It would require a massive rebalance of the entire act.

First, all enemies around Fort Joy would have to be reduced to level 1 or 2 at most. Forget those level 4 skeletons, that will be too high a level to reliably handle. They'd have to drop to level 3 or 2.

Second, they'd have to change the drop rate so there's more weapons and gear to find. Gold doesn't matter if you have nothing to buy.

Third, they'd have to either give you more starting skills or else provide a bunch more free skill books, because without skill book merchants, you'll be using only the same three until the Seeker camp. Hope you picked them well and.or got the teleport gloves, because one mistake and you'll never reach the seeker camp at all.

Immersion can enhance the experience of the player, but only if it doesn't come at the price of boring or annoying them. There's no point in making the prison super-immersive if players get so bored or annoyed that they stop playing.

Joined: Oct 2016
Location: Germany
veteran
Offline
veteran
Joined: Oct 2016
Location: Germany
There are different ways to support players with skill books. You already are able to find some skill book all over the place. But current most of them are pretty obsolete because you probably already bought the skills from a merchant. You could also give skill books as quest rewards or make a quest giver teach you one skill of your choice (or one of your teammates).

And why do you need to lower the level? You just need to ajust their stats/armour and they skillset. At the moment it's one of the issues, that pretty every enemies fights you with the same skills as all the others?

The first act needs a rebalance anyway, because it at current it is not balanced at all and till the end game is fixed with all mechanics it won't be balancable anyway.

Page 3 of 3 1 2 3

Moderated by  gbnf 

Link Copied to Clipboard
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5