Just felt like making a topic to discuss the economy in single-player RPGs. (Economies in MMOs are outside the scope of this topic; while there's a lot of discussion that can be had about them, please leave such posts out of this topic, and make a new topic of your own if you want to discuss them.)

Anyway, I have noticed a few approaches, some more common in JRPGs and others more common in WRPGs. What made me think of this is that I recently played some Morrowind (typical? WRPG economy), then Paladin's Quest (typical JRPG economy), and am now playing Lennus 2 (JRPG, but economy is not typical).

In any case, there are three situations with respect to the distribution of items (typically weapons and armor) in shops that I have identified.

1. Each town you reach has better equipment than the last; furthermore, you are usually expected to be able to afford new equipment at each town, though it might take some extra fighting in some cases. The later in the game you reach a town, the better the equipment available; in particular, late-game small towns have much better equipment for sale than early-game cities. This is common in JRPGs; it's seen in the Final Fantasy series as well as in Paladin's Quest. Dragon Quest is similar, but later in the game, you stop being able to easily afford everything. Note that this works best if the game world is linear, or if monster difficulty is significantly higher in some areas (which would then have better items for sale).

2. The best items are generally for sale in cities; furthermore, the best items for sale are often buyable relatively early, if you are somehow able to get enough money for them. A small town, even if it's in a dangerous area, is not going to have the best stuff for sale. Furthermore, you are not expected to be able to afford everything when it is first available. This approach is more likely to be seen in WRPGs. Morrowind could be an example here, as could Arena, but not Daggerfall or Oblivion (more on that in a bit, though Oblivion does have some exceptions). I have also seen this approach in SaGa games (SaGa Frontier is a good example of this; note that the Game Boy SaGas are more like typical JRPGs in this regard). Lennus 2 is also something like this; it's like a typical JRPG at first, but then you reach a place called Gloucester where suddenly endgame equipment is for sale (there's still the issue of having enough money).

3. I could call this a "progressive economy"; merchants start out selling weak items, but the same merchants sell better equipment as you progress in some manner. I could put Daggerfall and Oblivion in this category, where shops sell better items when your level is higher.

So, any thoughts on this? Any other games that defy JRPG/WRPG stereotypes? Any games whose economy doesn't match up with any of these?

Personally I love how in Morrowind and most Piranha Bytes games your character advancement is tied to earning money for training. It adds nice context to all your mercenary work and questing.

Have you played Might and Magic 5: Darkside of Xeen? If so, that game shows how requiring money for advancement has its issues; in the late game (especially if you're playing it as part of World of Xeen), the XP you get far outpaces the money available for training, and the game keeps giving you XP and no money, resulting in frustration as you can't actually use the XP you gain. (MM3: Isles of Terra doesn't have as much of an issue here, as there's more money to be found in that game, even though the level up mechanics are the same.)

Also, Morrowind's economy is easily broken, and even aside from that, there comes a point where you have more money than you know what to do with.

Incidentally, the problem of too much money late game appears in some other games as well; the first two Final Fantasy games are a good example. In FF1, if you spend time leveling in the final dungeon you'll max out in gil; FF2 adds another digit to your maximum gil, and it has buyable Elixirs as a money sink, but (in pre-GBA versions) you don't have enough inventory space to carry all the elixirs you can afford.

3 is clearly the best approach. 1 is more suitable for a linear game, 2 forces the player to go to specific locations which they may not want to otherwise. As much as I hate to say it, Skyrim has the right idea. Everything scales to your level, so you kind of naturally get new and better gear as you play, whether from a store, in a chest or from an outlaw's cold dead hands.

Not to refute any of your assertions, they might even be true tendentially, I just noticed that all your games of reference for "WRPG" are open world action RPGs from the same company, and that seems a bit risky for making general statements about the whole genre.

Well, if you want some variety, we can look at:
* Baldur's Gate 2: Once you reach Chapter 2, you can explore much of the world, but the best equipment that's buyable is in the big city, and you won't realistically be able to afford it all right away. Some items aren't sold until later, but that's only a small portion of them, and they're still sold in the city, aside from those sold in the Underdark. So, that would fit most closely with 2.
* Might and Magic: World of Xeen: Better equipment is sold in later areas, but you can go to those later areas early in the game. This would fit most closely with 1, even though the game is open world (though Darkside restricts access to the two highest level shops until you actually play through most of the main quest).

Perhaps someone could describe how the classic Fallout games (the ones not made by Bethesda) are in this regard?

iirc there is no scaling or attempt to separate high-level content from low-level. You can just walk into endgame areas from the get-go and I'm sure you can get your hands on endgame gear with a low-level character if you know where to look. Though most of it is in the hands of difficult enemies or in containers protected by difficult enemies, or not realistically affordable early in the game. FNV was also not made by Bethesda and I think it's somewhere in-between. It definitely has some level-scaling, with e.g. the Gun Runners selling more advanced equipment at higher levels, but otoh you can just walk into Quarry Junction and fight Deathclaws within 5 minutes of starting the game.

I think it's question of the
"gameplay efficiency" <---- vs ----> "realism"
scale.

JRPG tend to sacrifice plausibility for the sake of a slick design. Often you can't even buy arbitrary stuff, equipment is only for one specific character and so on.
WRPG, and especially open world games often try to be more "world simulation". Additionally to the useful, usable and affordable stuff there'll be lots of clutter, junk and equipment you either can't use or can't afford. The latter is of course also a nice "carrot on a stick" motivation - seeing this "Sword of Ultimate Slaying +5" at the vendor for 12,000gp when all you can afford is the Short Sword of Woe for 50...

I guess it's the same reason why Japanese characters have swords double their own size, while western RPG characters have weight limits ;-)

Those are of course tendencies only. There are "streamlined" western RPGs and - I imagine - also more "realistic" Japanese games.

There's another way to classify game economies - whether there is a market for certified pre-owned swords. "One careful owner. Full logbook and service history" etc...

I see 4 main categories

1. Sale of second hand goods and recycling is banned by royal decree - You can't sell anything back. I can't think of an RPG example though - it tends to make item rewards useless.

2. Stores are strictly limited by what they buy - Underrail is a good example. The shop will accept 1 leather jacket and 1 firearm and no more. Come back tomorrow if you want to offload anything else.

3. Stores buy anything up to a gold cap. Oblivion is an example. A subtype would involve stores only accepting the type of goods they sell.

4. Stores have unlimited money to pay for your pre-loved items. Vampire The Masquerade: Redemption is a good example. Spend skill points correctly and they will even repurchase stuff they just sold to you, for more than what you paid for it.

Games in category 4 probably need to have heavy restrictions in item drops to stop players from being showered with infinite money.

JRPGs typically fall into category 4, and the item drop issue is addressed by simply not having item drops be that common. Yes, this does mean that an enemy that uses a sword against you won't always drop the sword.

There's also the fact that stealing works differently in JRPGs. As first seen in Final Fantasy 3 (though FF5 is where the mechanic started to feel interesting), stealing is a combat action, and when you successfully steal, you get an item from the enemy's steal list, which isn't always the same as its drop list. And no, if you decide to kill the enemy rather from stealing from it, you won't get the item that you could have stolen. Makes no sense, but keeps you from having large numbers of common equipment without working for it.

(And yes, JRPGs have both rare drops and rare steals.) I believe I've seen RPGs that simply don't have an option to sell goods. I know I've seen RPGs that don't even have stores in the first place, so there's no such economy.

Actually, The Magic of Schehrezade (NES), which has both shops and turn-based combat (though not as the primary battle system), has no way to sell items, but then again enemies don't drop anything but money, the rare immediate pickup (in action battles), or the occasional consumable (in turn-based battles).

I believe Ys games (which don't count as RPGs in my book, but still have an economy) also have no facility for selling items, nor do Zelda games (at least those I've played, which includes up to Majora's Mask and the Oracle games). Once you buy something in these games, it's in your inventory for good.

I could also mention the original Dragon Quest, where you can only sell equipment when buying new equipment. I could also mention a Japanese Famicom RPG whose name translates to "Stargazer", which doesn't let you un-equip a weapon without buying a new one, but I wouldn't count that particular game (which was featured in Awful Games Done Quick 2020) as being representative of the RPG genre.

I prefer soul trapping. Just summon a ghost, trap its soul, then sell the common soul gem for massive profit.

RPGs where you might get more money than ways to spend them have one good this - you don't need to pick everything on your path, only valuable or useful ones.

On the other scale is Witcher3, where you need to visit random houses and steal valuables because apparenty average peasant have more valuables than quest givers these days.

Also - in M&M World of Xeen it's good idea to put all coins and gems into bank, that way they slowly grow, the more you put in the faster it grow.

One question: Are the best buyable items sold in the most dangerous areas of the world, or are you better off looking in major cities (or areas where someone has a reputation (in-game) of dealing with such items)? If the former, it's roughly a case of what I call 1 (albeit with the option of attempting advanced areas early); if the latter, it's clearly case 2.

Incidentally, I could mention Final Fantasy 2 here. It's sort-of a case of 1 (typical JRPG economy), except that it is possible, but not exactly easy, to reach the town of Mysidia early. Mysidia has expensive equipment that is affordable by the time you're supposed to go there, but you can get there early if you're able to run from everything (or abuse save-load to skip encounters, though that happens not to work in the PlayStation version). On the other hand, it makes logical sense for powerful equipment to be sold there, as it is a town of magic. (Then again, why does Salamand, a small town in the mountains that manages to elude the war somehow, have better equipment for sale than Altair (at least pre-Mythril)?)

Or, the game could put only valuable or useful items in the game, so that there's no possibility of picking up junk. JRPGs are somewhat like this; as I mentioned, enemies don't usually drop the items they're carrying, and while there's items to be found in town, the game will usually give you nothing rather than junk.

(With that said, sometimes JRPGs will put obsolete items in later game chests, but that's not always done, and could usually be considered a minor game design flaw when it does happen. (Or it could be an intentional trap, that that one Cloth in Final Fantasy that's guarded by a group of "enemies win first" mages.))

I haven't seen that strict a restriction on selling items.

The closest I've seen is SaGa Frontier, where each shop that will buy items has a list of items (something like 7 or 8 maybe?), but has no limit of the quantity of any given item that can be sold.

SaGa Frontier 2 has an interesting approach; you can't directly sell items, but you can turn your items into chips, which you can then sell for crowns. You (usually) get less money with each loop of this, and you need to find suitable places to do this, but it does let you convert items into money. One interesting aspect of this system is that the number of chips you get from an item doesn't depend on the item's condition, and if an item breaks at the end of battle, you get the full amount of chips. You can't chip steel, however.

Interestingly enough, SaGa Frontier 2 is also unusual in that, while you can get your items repaired, doing so costs more than buying new, but the structure of the game means you typically can't return to shops, and might not be able to shop when you want to.

(Note that SaGa Frontier and SaGa Frontier 2, despite being in the same series, are best regarded as completely different game; while there are a few similarities (technique sparking being the most obvious one), the games are actually quite different.)

This reminds me; in WRPGs, often I'll do a quest or look it up online, and find that the reward is either something that can be easily bought, or a small amount of money; in some cases, the time would be better spent just fighting random enemies for their loot.

In JRPGs, while there might not be as many side quests, their rewards tend to feel more meaningful.

By the way, I forgot one difference; of my cases, in case 1 you can usually get enough money by killing enemies, while in case 2 you often need to sell items to get the money you need. It's not just WRPGs here; this pattern is even seen in games like Lennus 2, which is a JRPG in pretty much every regard other than the economy from Glouchester onward.

I've never been one to make a direct line for the broken and exploitable mechanics in RPGs. I know tons of people do, but it's just never been my thing. I'd eventually have more money than god in Morrowind of course, but it would take me a long while to get there.