Not many RPGs really provide some meaningful way to spend your money though. You only need to buy equipment in early stage of the game, and most of the better equipments are from quest rewards or slaying bosses. Potions and repairing are not usually a big problem, especially if there're repairing or alchemy skills.
Only buying houses and decoration in TES and later fallout, and the training in M&M really made me feel like to care more about getting money.

Well, generally, doesn't breaking game economy mean you can relatively easily get more money than than you can spend and I ran out of things to spend money on in Runescape years ago, have 600k+ in bank and can only make mithril stuff. Could easily have millions if I could be bothered with. Mind, I haven't really been playing for... 2+ years so things may have changed. I also have never been nor do I intend to be a subscriber so things might be different in paid side of the fence.

It's a wild guess, but Spells of Gold maybe? You play as a merchant there, so your sole purpose of finding items is to sell them :P

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/spells-of-gold

Sea Dogs, maybe? It has a "real" economy aspect when you have to trade goods judging on supply and demand (different prices in different regions etc)

Does Metro 2033 count as an RPG?

I suspect that it is a case of "better safe than sorry" from the developers side. As a player's spending habits is one of those things that they don't have direct control over (outside of putting roadblocks in the way that forces the player to buy a specific item, or taking the Might & Magic approach and forcing the player to pay money for their levels), and they don't want to put a player that buys every single object at a disadvantage later on, in case that player needs to buy some healing potions or there actually is one of those "needed" objects up for sale late game. So they just shower the player with money.


New Vegas is actually a semi-exception to this rule. While you get a lot of caps, there are also some worthwhile things to spend them on later on, and if you do spend your caps on these things (not going to spoil anything), you'll not feel like you have enough money to buy the entire wasteland. These are by the way things that you can't find anywhere (and for a good reason).



I think part of the problem with most CRPGs is that you are not given a reason to spend any gold.
In the second chapter of Neverwinter Nights I had this much money. Money had no value in that game. And sadly that seem to be the norm for most CRPGs.

Yes, it makes sense but it's still a pity since a thriving economy would be interesting but probably hard for the developers. One possibility would be that some NPCs trade with each other in time intervals so the player would have to learn patterns of how some NPCs behave and could then make a profit and be able to afford late-game items that actually rivals any crafting items or lost artifacts.

As for NWN, I had 400k at the end of my game but I saved items at a ridiculous pace because I was afraid I would stumble upon a deep dungeon and I wouldn't be able to get out.

I just stopped picking up anything that was not better than what I already had by that point in the game. I just could not be bothered.


I agree that that would be a rather interesting system, having a dynamic economy and letting the NPCs actually interact and trade with each other in a natural way. Sadly I don't think anything like this has actually been used in a CRPG (possibly the above mentioned Spells of Gold, though I've not played it). I wonder if enough people would actually feel like something like that added something to the game to make it worthwhile though.

If I remember correctly, when I played Morrowind as a thief who pretty much stole anything he could get his hands on, I finished the game with about 3 million gold. In later games like Skyrim, I think they tried to fix this buy adding things like upgradeable houses, but it is still pretty broken.

But wouldn't that be the point of a better ingame economy? A major part of RPGs is the ability to make decisions and live with the consequences of those actions. Shouldn't it be natural for that to include how you spend your money?

Diablo 3 and WoW, since the economy is player driven and you'll never be able to break it.

The problem with balancing RPGs, especially the more open-world ones, is that people can play those games very differently.
There are some who will do every quest in the game, and explore every nook and cranny for loot and enemies. But there are others who'll mostly do the main quest, with maybe some side quests and exploration on the side if it doesn't take them too much out of the main story's way.

It's impossible to balance a game for both playstyles and everything in between, in terms of cash flow. And while an xp cap is acceptable to most players, I don't think a money cap would be all that popular.
All the devs can do is try to put a lot of optional money drains in the game, but it's never enough.

Would someone like to break the economy of Entropia Universe? ..that would be game killer. :)

Im not into it, but my friend has been for few years.

It is possible. I don't remember having any money to spare in The Wticher.

The Witcher is a linear, story-based game. Sure, it has sidequests and optional combat encounters, but it's nowhere near as hard to balance as an open-world RPG like Skyrim.

Also, if you didn't have any money to spare, you must have missed plenty of sidequests, trophies and fights, because while I was nowhere near swimming in as much cash in the Witcher games as in, for example, Fallout: New Vegas, I still had a lot more money that I knew what to do with.