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• Thoughts on Booty

RavenRed: Just a quick couple of thoughts on Treasure and Booty.

Firstly, I think the player carrying round millions in gold is highly silly. (Yes, that's an opinion, and it's mine) But how to make this less silly? Weight!

Part One: (how many) Pieces of eight!

Gold, Copper, silver and Mithril would all become items of differing weights. Adamant would be dropped (not amazingly Tolkienian IIRC)

These would become separate items in your inventory*, with their own weights. (i.e. 2000 Copper Pieces (20lbs), 400 silver pieces (1.3lbs), 500 gold piecesTogether, they would add up to your total GP. These items may be dropped as is necessary, in either your home or the dungeon floor. Of course, beware of Novice rogues and the like. <evil grin>

Gems, on the other hand, would become singular items (in the sense of "a handful of..."), which would have their own, higher value. The gems are not negotiable on their own in stores, and do not count towards your total GP until they exchanged for Gold at the Black Market (or Bank, if implemented).

Ego Types could also be added, from Uncut (-10%) to Finely Cut (+10%), to enhance their value.

Part Two: Plunder Plus

The second idea is more of a flight of fancy. (:))

Treasure should extend to valuable items rather than just treasure as described above. Once again, these are not negotiable until sold.

And so on, and so forth. Additionally, Rings/Amulets of Adornment could actually gain some use, with their value being increased by an order of magnitude or so...

(NB Item Values should vary by +/- 20%)

Once again, ego-types could be quite fun, with Fake (-90% value) and Elf-Made (+15%) being two examples...

This will mean that players will need to reserve some space for booty in their inventory, which will once again give players juggling between the useful and the valuable...

Yeah, so?

This system will change the way in which money is approached in the game. Your capacity to carry money will become a limitation like food, flasks of oil and ! of CCW. You'll have to recall once you're full up, and homes will become highly valuable places to store your cash whilst you're nimbly darting around Moria. Gems and items will becoem highly tempting ways to carry large amounts of cash, and highly risky to destruction and/or theft!

In short, it'll change treasure from something easy to obtain and carry around to a resource with limitations and temptations on it.

2cworth and counting...

* Or possibly outside. To save spots for REAL inventory, they may be considered separate from the inventory system, and merely be numbers adding up to an additional weight on the player.

Chatter

ReenenLaurie: Well, in general I like the idea (especially as in 3.0.0 you'll have a home which looks a bit like a "level".

{Off topic} It does increase "micro-management", but if it means that the amount you can carry is finally dependant on your strength, and not the amount of letters between A and Z, then I am very much for it. Inventory management is by far the worst part of the game, and I do hope that it will change in 3.0.0. A system with bags, backpacks etc. (even bags of holding? - rare unique find probably) would genuinely make the game better. {/Off topic}

KhymChanur: About the home-like-a-level thing: that's just an experiment, and there's no guarantee it will stay like that.

Orvin: I like the idea of adding some restriction on the value of coins that can be carried, but I suggest restricting by quantity without adding a weight consideration, since that is just too evil. Long before money becomes too heavy to hold, I think the player will run out of places to hold it, so I suggest adding a "bulk" characteristic to money. Gems and other precious objects would have a lower bulk/value ratio than coins.

NerdanelVampire: I think this is an unnecessary complication and would lead to things like buying and selling things becoming a lot more complicated and needing more keypresses. We shouldn't let realism hinder the gameplay.

Orvin: I would like to see gems have a greater purpose, since they figure prominently in Tolkien's books. Perhaps, there is a way to do this without messing with the coin system: Make gems much rarer and unique, named items. If the player finds one of these fabled gems, he can bring it to any of certain places in exchange for a very large cash reward.

NeilStevens: Oh, gems will play a role in ToME 3 alright, but it won't have anything to do with money. See Developers Corner/Development Discussion/Runespells and basic 2.x rod tips for details.

Orvin: I love this new gem system, but not all gems need to be magical. What I am suggesting are unique gems as part of treasure hordes, simply valued for their beauty and rarity, but not possessing magical powers. Maybe, a way for this to add to gameplay would be as follows: 1) rare valuable gems can be exchanged for money, but only in hard-to-reach places, 2) black markets accept these gems in lieu of coins as payment, but at a much lower "exchange rate" than they are really worth. So, a low-level player who has found a treasure gem will have to decide whether to make the perilous journey to exchange it for 100,000 gold, or exchange it for an item selling for 30,000 gold at the black market.