Loot and Economy

[fluffydino2000]

As Dragonmir rightfully said in the Ecosystem thread, we probably should have a thread dedictated to the looting and economy mechanics. The first thing that I don't think has been discussed elsewhere in this topic is locked chests (which Dragonmir also brought up).

So, what kind of locking mechanics will there be in SG and what kind of locking mechanics do you want to see? There might not be any, although I think considering the semi-realism of this game so far, it would be a little odd for everything to be accessible to everyone. This touches on other stuff besides looting but it is important to the looting system.

Something that I always liked about deus ex was that you could destroy doors as well as pick them/hack them. If destruction was involved for smaller objects (which has been mentioned as a potential feature) you could have a similar system for chests and other containers. Obviously for this to be necessary you would also need some form of locking system else it would be pretty pointless. Another thing to consider with this is that normally when looting from containers, a loot window would pop up, so you'd have to make the items appear in the wreckage of the container for you to be able to loot them. Making that effective may not be easy and simply clicking a destroy container button would break immersion a bit (for me anyway).

Another thing to consider is what will lock picking be like. Will there be a mini game, do people like lockpicking mini games? Personally, I don't mind minigames as long as it's not orientated around a number of attempts i.e. lockpicking is skyrim. With a realistic enough lockpicking mini game, it could be made entirely around player ability. If you wanted the character's stats to be involved some how you could calculate a dexterity if you will based off the physique and from there make the amount of precision the player has relative to that (if that doesn't make sense to anyone, look up lockpicking and you'll know what I mean, the amount of control you have over the tension wrench may be determined by the "dexterity" stat). Also, maybe thaumaturgy could be incorporated into opening things as well? A "Melt Lock" power in Energy perhaps.

 

[Parco]

what would be nice is as you mention, having the possibility to destroy chests, doors and barrels. this could have a huge impact in how other npcs are viewing you if they see you smash something or opening it with picklocking/key(or normally) without their permission.
But then i would like to see barrels and chests having limited storing capability, and so if you break one then all the stuff in it will fall out.

 

[Komuflage]

Breaking locks, doors and so on with brute force, would be really nice, few games allow it, but it ads enough to the game to be worth the time imo.
However, I'm kind of bored with lockpicking minigames, and you'll learn them to fast, and can then pick whatever you want.

I would prefer if it was automatic, and depends on the character stats (Even though there are no stats like STR, DEX etc) and a formula including those stats.
For instance, if you want to open a chest, u'll do a "behind the scene" roll from 1 - 10, multiply it by ur skill/stat and divide it by the difficulty of the look. And if you get 1 or above, the look will open.
However, if you get under 1, every time you try to open again, u'll roll the same amount, until you, reload the zone/Die/1H ingame time. (To prevent people from spamming "pick lock" until they manage to get it open)

However, again, since there are no stats, this won't really work. Maybe if there were some secondary skills apart from Ligt/heavy weapons, armour, insight etc. Although I doubt they'll ad that so far into development.

Roll * skill / difficulty.

5 * 25 / 150 = 0,8, lock wont open.
6 * 25 / 150 = 1, lock will open.

 

[fluffydino2000]

I too am bored of mini games which is why if they were featured I'd want them to be much more skill based. Picking locks in real life isn't all that difficult, it just takes time and patience. But that's for common pad locks, I've never picked a door for example, which would require more time and patience and dexterity (There are usually four tumblers in a pad lock but around eight in a door). If the game managed to reflect this and made picking locks in the game be an investment of about ten minutes, to learn the lock and work out which order you need to do the tumblers and how much pressure is required for each, then I don't think I would be bored with it.

It seems counter intuitive but since most lock picking minigames require mainly loads of picks (which I doubt would ever break, even back then), the actual skill involved with a more true to life mini game would probably entertain me. Especially since you could probably break a lot of the things you wanted to open and the only reason to do easier ones would be practice for the harder ones.

 

[Tom]

I don't think mini-games fit in this game. So there are some options for the lockpick mechanics:

Baldur's Gate Style - You try to unlock stuff. Fail, try again. That's it. Repeat until success.

Lockpick style - Locked chest + lockpick = open chest, -1 lockpick.

I can't think of others at the time, but that's basically it. Adding randomness to this business is usually bad, because the whole "keep trying until you succeed" is repetitive for stuff like that.

 

[Komuflage]

Adding randomness to this business is usually bad, because the whole "keep trying until you succeed" is repetitive for stuff like that.

That's why you make it like in Toee, where, if u roll to low to unlock it, u'll get the same roll over and over untill a certain time has passed (Eliminating the "repeat until success")

 

[fluffydino2000]

How do people feel about banks in games? Obviously it doesn't make sense in most single player games as you rarely get so many items to need a bank and if you do you buy a house. But, in most single player games, you don't lose your stuff on death. I'm not suggesting an item bank, as that would make it far to easy to get stuff back. But what about a bank as we know them (ignoring safety deposit boxes) where you only deposit and withdraw money? Otherwise, keeping hold of cash may become difficult. I know money isn't a big focus in gameplay but maybe you want stockpile your cash so you have when you want stuff - banks would help with this. For banks to work in Sui Generis, they would obviously have to be monetised in some way, otherwise who is running them and why. Maybe they're a service that tax pays for? Is there even going to be tax in this game?

Actually, now I think about it, how detailed will the economy be, if banks are featured, do they make money off loans? Is their a property market? I doubt we'll actually see any of this as intended development but might it appear because of the dynamic AI?

 

[Parco]

if they are gonna add banks i hope they wont be connected, by that i mean you cant deposit money in one bank and withdraw it somewhere else. also i hope they will only be found in the bigger cities, its kinda weird in some games where you can find banks at small/poor villages.
the way banks could work is that they take payment for a small % of what you have deposited each month or something (probably each day since its a game), banks would mainly be there to protect the money so this would mostly only serve the rich people any good, thats also why banks only will be found in cities.
the banks could also feature item storage, you rent a deposit box, the larger the box is the more expensive it will be.
banks would be a safer place to store money and rare items than at home or on yourself but not 100% safe as it can be robbed, robbing a bank will be hard as you need to deal with guards and then break into a vault, and if youre using too much time then other guards might have been notified and youll end up fighting an army.

 

[Komuflage]

I wouldn't trust a bank in medieval times, they would just take the deposit, and go to the next town and sell all ur items u stored.

Anyways personally I don't like the ideas of a bank, if you're gona loose everything when you die, you shouldn't be able to just store things you want to keep. (Kind of why I don't like the void spell) Placing money in ur house is a much better alternative imo, that way there's a reason to buy a house as well. (Bandits should be able to brake into ur house and steal your things)

 

[fluffydino2000]

Well yeah, I feel the same way about items, but money would just be too difficult to keep until you could afford a house. And, how do you afford a house if you can't keep your money? The way I see it, since you won't be spending money a lot, it doesn't matter if it's easy to keep, but if it's too easy to lose, you'll just ignore it entirely. And as Parco said, it'd probably be quite easy to balance if you just lost 5% of you'r account every week or something.

 

[Komuflage]

Hmm I dunno, I fell it would get tedious to be mentally "forced" to walk to a town to store ur money as soon as you get somewhat a lot of moneys.

 

[Parco]

i guess money would also be safe in the void pocket, but we dont know how the void spell will really work, like can we cast it only once a day, how long casting time is it, can we only use the void spell at specific places, can other casters "hack" into your void pocket, etc,..

Hmm I dunno, I fell it would get tedious to be mentally "forced" to walk to a town to store ur money as soon as you get somewhat a lot of moneys.

you can store at other places as well, and you dont need to store all of it, i look at banks as a place to keep my savings. so if i get robbed or something i can just take the long trip to the town and then i wont have to start completely fresh

 

[666jet]

I'd like to be the one to say I like the skyrim lock system it had a option for auto attempt maybe of they had a option for turn on auto attempt so no GUI would come on

 

[BrecMadak]

This whole locpicking + bank subjects remind me good old, but superb unbalanced Arcanum, and UO. Perturbation in a game like SG would not be a bad thing at all, even if it seems on first sight. On the contrary its unpeaceful impact would be felt exceedingly, and this is another thing that its on devs' hands - to break monotony where possible.

I think as you are used to unlock a safe for how, when you start over you are very unlikely to have a struggle with that. So to prevent this, some kind of numeric values are a must (UO like saving throwes)

Can't come up with a formula but I can say we need something like a both skill check + hand dexterity mechanic imo. Otherwise it would get boring way too fast when you come across a safe you would know that how to unlock it with ease.

On top these it would be really nice somehow if we could rob the banks in towns. Smaller banks would be easier to rob. But not only in a straightforward manner, getting debenture bonds in multiple ways f.e the possibility to make an irrefusable offer to one of the clerk in the bank or persuasion, favouritism, help him to promote etc.

 

[fluffydino2000]

I like the idea of being a medieval con-man. Should be fun without pesky CCTV. I personally think chance would get quite frustrating, but I can see how a mini game would be annoying too. Maybe if the movement of picks was procedural, like the other animations, and there were actually simulated locks. If this was coupled with the realism of not being able to see inside the lock but only hear and feel vibrations, it could be excellent. Although to simulate the feeling of tumblers dropping you'd probably need some visual aid. Also, to simulate it properly, you'd definitely have to move the camera up close to the lock and look behind the players hands, which could be tricky. Not to mention all of the time it would take to develop an actual lock simulation and loads of procedural finger movements and a hand control scheme. This idea is probably way too much effort for worth but it'd still be awesome.

 

[fluffydino2000]

I just had the idea that AI could dynamically price every item/service in the game. I'm sure this has probably been considered by the dev team before but I figure it might be fun to discuss. If the AI can constantly evaluate it's situation to determine what it would be most beneficial to do. Can it not also constantly evaluate the worth of an item in it's current state?

Prices in any economy are worked out entirely from supply and demand, how much can the seller sell a product for based off the supply everybody has. So surely since there will be demand in the game (and permanent supply, i.e. no spawning of infinite items etc.) price is calculable from either party. Now I'm well aware that varying prices will be in this game, but to what extent. Will they vary from a hard-coded baseline price depending on supply (how most games do it)? Will supply be factored into the equation? Will they be completely dynamically calculated (probably would need to simulate a market for a while until it balanced out)?