I bought every book, every weapon / armour upgrade, and finished every quest. Maybe I'm just remembering it wrong, but don't think I had much money left when I finished the game.

Well, I just checked my last save game for The Witcher, and I had 14532 orens, the best available gear, and more potions than I could possibly use. And I remember skipping some of the content, especially towards the end since at that point I just wanted to finish.

Anyway, my point was that since developers don't want to make players who just play through the story frustrated, they have to allow them to earn enough money to buy most of the stuff available.
Any optional content (which is mostly harder than the story content, and for which players typically expect good rewards) will only add to that, until you're able to afford everything in the game, and have money left over.

It's probably possible to make an RPG with a non-breakable economy (if only through making a purely linear game where the devs can completely control the amount of money available to any player), but it's pretty difficult, and any solution would likely create other problems.

And then there the players who actually enjoy breaking the game's economy, and see having a huge pile of money they don't know what to do with as an accomplishment, giving them a sense of progression on a par with character levels.
There are probably more of them than of people who're bothered by those same piles of money, so the developers don't even really have an incentive to try and fix the problem.

I can't really recommend it (though it's not the worst you'll ever play), GODS: Lands of Infinity (Special Edition) is an RPG built around an economic system instead of the other way around.

Most of the game is spent buying and selling to get what you want or need.


As for games like NWN and Baldur's Gate, I think you're supposed to get ridiculously rich. That's part of the game. It's not easy to get rich at all in those worlds. You're the only player with a save and load function, meaning you get the benefits of Groundhog-Day-style manipulation of the world.

I like that Fable lets you use your wealth to play Real Estate Mogul. And I like the fact that most RPGs have the best items hidden.

Money should be spent on low-level gear and consumables and upgrades, IMHO. The best stuff is always well protected by those who own it.

And, much like in real life, money has less value the more you have. If I owned a real meager Longsword +1, I think I'd rather have it than a meager couple thousand gold coins. Everyone has gold coins.

Well in theory you should spend it on stuff like glass armor and item enchanting fees and skill training, but if you're abusing the alchemy thing you can probably enchant all the constant-effect stuff you want without fear of failure. I don't really think glitch exploitation is a good measure, though... but I always end up with oodles of cash in Morrowind anyway.

The soul gem thing is just silly, though. That's one of the things that I'm very glad they changed in Oblivion. Being able to buy a stack of grand soul gems for cheap and then sell them back for 80K+ is just absurd. Of course, even that is only really a problem if you're using the creature merchants. I actually think that Morrowind has one of the closest things to an unbreakable economy in theory, because shopkeepers don't have infinite money to spend like in every other RPG. But because of a couple of silly things, it doesn't really work at all.

It will be interesting to see how the economy in Kenshi turns out after next big update.

The problem is pretty much that you run around and kill a lot of stuff and take the stuff of the stuff.
If you would kill 500 people and take all their stuff in real life and sell it you also would be filthy rich.

But in most cases it's ok since you (or your party) become a half-god by the end of most RPGs. There are some exceptions though.

Breakable. Normal bean-counting probably won't suffice, but some of the game mechanics can be abused all the way to Hell and back if you figure them out.

Yes, to a point, but if only a few percent of all the players use it, then the time and effort is probably (from the developers point of view) better spent on something else, something that a larger portion of the playerbase actually will use.

Fallout 1 had pretty good balance on caps and bartering, atleast in the beginning.

People simply didnt have enough caps to pay you the real price of the thing you were selling, especially if you had lots of points in bartering -> so you had to change "expensive items" to stuff you actually need.

I think that kind of bartering system is much more interesting, than the typical "I have xxx xxx xxx^10 credits in my bottomless pants".

I found a way to save caps here on my second playthrough a couple months ago when I got the Ultimate Edition.



SPOILER!!!



I had a bunch of the unique chips from collecting them and winning blackjack until I got banned at the casino in the Dead Money DLC. I then used these chips to buy hundreds of weapon repair kits from the sustainable vending machine doohickey in Elijah's room in the Brotherhood bunker after I completed the mission. You also get a voucher delivered daily (I'm pretty sure it's daily) in the small safe in the wall in the hallway which can then be redeemed for more chips that can be used in the vending machine.

So all those brush guns and 12.7mm sub machine guns and every other gun I had been stocking in chests in the Lucky 38 to be used for repair for future weapons could each be repaired individually to a high condition. Then I could sell them for bookoo caps or traded for large amounts of ammo and nukes. No more using five different guns to repair one gun to full condition. Some of the rare guns don't have other guns that they can be repaired with either.

It was a real good money maker for guns anyway. I didn't figure out anything like that for armor though.

edit: removed some rambling

This is pretty much the root problem. Hell, if the best loot is found from quests, bosses, and hard-to-reach treasure chests, I'd have to wonder why a game needs a money system at all.

Oh sure, there are consumables. But then you have to factor in Gamer OCD (see attached).

The problem with Fallout's bartering system was that, if your bartering skill was high enough, you could gradually barter NPCs out of every single item they have and leave them with almost nothing.

I can't remember for sure. I never paid any mind to barter and whatever perks that might be associated so I don't remember if there was a way to invest in shops or anything like that. I always sold to the robotron for the Gun Dealers and would trade for whatever mods, weapons and armor I might want and a ton of ammo and explosives and 8,000 caps at a time. The guy in the McCarran supply shack had good amount of .308 and 12.7mm ammo and caps (I think it is 8,000 again). I would make a round trip when I was ready but tried not to let it get too tedious.