Side note: I think the power of editing the title would be amazing…

My game has an unique money system.

Instead of picking up money directly, you first collect scrap, and then you turn it into a slightly random amount of money.

Scrap comes in lots of 0.1, 1, 5, or even 10, depending on the value of the material. Scrap with a 1+ value can be found alongside small Wire Balls, which are the most basic Scrap material and they give you 0.1 RT. What is RT? It's a value known as Reciclyng Tally, and is used both as a currency for conversion, material or to upgrade gear.

Picking up Scrap raises your Recycling Tally, which you can bring to a Scrap Machine and turn it into money.

The system is as follows:

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1 RT = 5 Gold (base value with no upgrades)

For each world clear, it multiplies by 1,1x (maximum of 20,9x by clearing all 19 worlds).

For each player level, it multiplies by 0,01x (maximum of 0,99x by reaching level 99).

Then, it's divided by 2,5.

Example:

The player is at World 5 (5,5x), and they are level 20 (0,20x), but only has 1 RT, so:

G = RT*Area(RT*Lv)/(2,5) (Gold equals Recicling Tally multiplied by current area, multiplied by Recicling Tally by current player level, then divided by 2,5)

5*5,5(5*0,20)/(2,5) = 27,5(1)/(2,5) = 27,5/(2,5) = 11 Gold.

1 RT in World 5 and Level 20 equals 11 Gold.

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So, if the player had 200 RT instead…

5*200 = 1000

1000*5,5(1000*0,20)/(2,5) = 5500(200)/(2,5) = 1100000/(2,5) = 440000 Gold.

200 RT in World 5 and Level 20 equals 440.000 Gold.

Some basic goods cost over 2000 Gold, and some may even cost 20.000 Gold.

The scrap machine has a chance to generate additional 1,2x or subtract -1,2x. Thus meaning it may generate 528.000 Gold or 366.666 Gold.

Depending on the game stage, prices rise or lower.

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Thoughts? I think it gives too much Gold for only being 200 RT and in such an early point of the game.

Catomax26 said:
Thoughts on the money system for my game? [NOT RELATED TO PROGRAMMING]

It's also not related to Writing (thus it was off-topic in the Writing forum). Moved to Game Design. Here's how to find an appropriate forum for a new topic:

1. Click Forums in the left navbar.
2. Click the Browse tab.
3. Scroll down through the list of forums.

Also, please don't shout.

Tom Sloper said:
Also, please don't shout.

…Your bot is broken.

The evidently sophisticated conversions you describe are a solution, but what are the problems it addresses? For example:

• What does the player buy with gold?
• Can the player use scrap for other purposes (e.g. crafting), making it a useful resource?
• Why do prices scale up with game stage, requiring more generous scrap conversions to compensate? You could have neither, improving predictability from the player's point of view, and directly give appropriate amounts of wealth.
• Likewise, why do conversion rates have a huge (+/- 20%) random component? I'd expect both too rich and too poor players to be disappointed compared to an optimal gold amount that lets them buy what they should buy and no more.
• Paying accordingly to the square of the amount of scrap brought to a converter rewards accumulating as much scrap as possible before converting a huge haul. Why is it more fun, or at least "better", than converting scrap whenever a converter is available?

LorenzoGatti said:
What does the player buy with gold?

Better gear and consumables. These are kinda expensive because it's advised to go carefully than chug away your healing items.

LorenzoGatti said:
Can the player use scrap for other purposes (e.g. crafting), making it a useful resource?

I haven't thought of that, maybe using it to upgrade gear via a forge? Idk.

LorenzoGatti said:
Why do prices scale up with game stage, requiring more generous scrap conversions to compensate? You could have neither, improving predictability from the player's point of view, and directly give appropriate amounts of wealth.

Because you can only get money that way and you only get scrap by lots of 1 per thing found (example: you only get a small trail of scrap that is worth 1 RT on the area), because i kinda find illogical the need of killing monsters and stealing their life savings, and money being scattered in obvious places just so the hero can come and steal else's treasure. I also do this to promote irl recycling, god no one takes ambiental issues on real life seriously.

LorenzoGatti said:
Likewise, why do conversion rates have a huge (+/- 20%) random component? I'd expect both too rich and too poor players to be disappointed compared to an optimal gold amount that lets them buy what they should buy and no more.

It's more like a devil's gambit. The chance to lose or win is low, so you almost always get a good sum. Still, you have to find the scrap to raise your RT, and it is not an easy task; you still need to get your hands on some RT first, as some healing items cost 5000 G and they increase in price as you progress (yes, you may have discounts too depending on your skills and if you pay regularly or reach milestones).

LorenzoGatti said:
Paying accordingly to the square of the amount of scrap brought to a converter rewards accumulating as much scrap as possible before converting a huge haul. Why is it more fun, or at least "better", than converting scrap whenever a converter is available?

You can pay whatever amount of RT you like. Still, only paying a single RT can give you some helpful cents, but it's advised to keep it all huge so you can see the benefits rolling in. Still, there's a maximum of RT, so you can't just grind money that easily (it starts at 75). The thing is to scavenge as much scrap as possible, then bring it to the converter and see your income, because instant money is good, but i also think of it as a way to give a refresh to money systems.

Another “what do you think about my numbers/formula” post. Specific numbers are way too low-level to discuss on a discussion board like this. We don't have the necessary context, so we don't know if your formula makes sense and we don't care.

Try actually actually prototyping and playtesting your game. That will tell you if your numbers or formulas need to be tweaked. Until then, it's all pointless conjecture.

@a light breeze It's just a concept, god damn it. I kinda hate when veterans are so aggressive and flamboyant when treating things like this. I'm not saying it's a "see how it works?" post. I just want some feedback.

Catomax26 said:

I'm not saying it's a "see how it works?" post. I just want some feedback.

But to get some feedback, you need to explain “how it works” and why.

The only things you almost explained are that in your game the player collects scrap (and, by implication, explores the environment), sells scrap (and travels to reach scrap-buying machines) and does something else that requires spending gold (on an unknown mixture of equipment, services, recurring losses and living expenses, bribes and charity, etc.).

No context to tell what numbers and mechanisms are good or bad: that's why I tried to comment based on general principles and patterns that should apply to most games (minimizing useless complications and useless variance, not disrupting a carefully balanced economy with excessive randomness, shaping incentives to favor fun strategies).

a light breeze said:

Try actually actually prototyping and playtesting your game. That will tell you if your numbers or formulas need to be tweaked. Until then, it's all pointless conjecture.

I'd add that you are likely to need deeper changes than tweaking numbers and formulas; even your best and most developed ideas are only a first guess, to start iterating actual game designs until they are satisfactory.

For example, does the three level system of scrap units, abstract RT and gold pieces pull its own weight in terms of complexity and meaning? Bartering standard scrap units as de facto currency, with gold coins as one of many rare resource types, seems more natural in a game about scavenging and recycling: the strategic complexity of collecting diverse resources might be better suited than the financial complexity of conversions and gambling.

Catomax26 said:
@a light breeze It's just a concept, god damn it. I kinda hate when veterans are so aggressive and flamboyant when treating things like this. I'm not saying it's a "see how it works?" post. I just want some feedback.

You get this feedback only from prototyping your game. We can't give you that.

And we are not aggressive veterans. It's just obvious you spend too much effort on planning details and balancing an imaginary game ahead of time.

You can do such balancing stuff only once you have a playable prototype, not before.
If you want to balance something, tweaking it to make it better, this something has to exist.
Tuning the radio, so the signal becomes better and less noisy, requires a existing signal.

That's friendly advise and there is no aggression on our side.

Let's say your game becomes a success, and you make part 2, then part 3, like it's commonly happening.
Then you can do such design and planning ahead of time, because your former games serve as prototype for the next.
So it can work, once you're a veteran yourself.
However, personally i doubt it would be good to work this way even then. Game design is stuck since a decade, and this iterative way of progress surely is the major reason for that.

That said, my personal impression about your money system is: It's too complicated. I would not grasp the math just from playing the game, so it's unpredictable and not something i could use to optimize my playing.

Once you work on a playable prototype, you will come up with better ways without any effort, when it's time. It won't feel like a problem at all most likely. The real problems are: Movement, camera, combat, AI. As said before. But you do not solve these problems on paper. You need to play it.

@Catomax26 Gotta love how you ask for feedback, and your response to feedback from some world-class and veteran game designers (including one designer with over 200 games going back to the early 1980s) is to insult them when they offered exactly what you said you wanted.

Trying to stay on topic, my thoughts are that you're trying to balance out an economics game so you can't look at the micro scale alone.

You've got Scrap, Wire Balls, Recycling Tally, Gold, and World scores. You didn't write it, but you likely have a large collection of other items in your game that you buy, sell, or use in progression trees in some way. That's all an economics model.

The exact costs on a micro scale don't really matter that much, especially at this phase. At this phase in development you're best looking at a flow of economics that builds something fun and creative. Think about the broad economy, not the specific cost of a specific item.

How does the broad flow work for your game? Do you have fun ways to get all the pieces a player needs? Are players gaining any item in the system too rapidly so it's not fun or unchallenging? Are players gaining any too slowly so they feel like they're grinding or feel like they're restricted? Is it the right level for the game you're building?

Do you have reasons to introduce interruptions or restrictions or disruptions in the flow? For example, in a multiplayer game if one player is swimming in Scrap and another player has a surplus of Wire Balls, then a trade between players is in order. A game designer can build social structures both to help other people and to hinder competitors depending on your design. A simple good example is Settlers of Catan, players can trade 4:1 with the bank or trade with other players, players may decide a 1:1 trade is valuable and appropriate, players may decide 2:1 is appropriate or push for 3:1 or 3:2 so a player gets an advantage or because part of the economy is flooded, players may talk openly or privately and decide not to trade at all to slow down a player in the lead. Alternatively, in games where daily online play is encouraged the design might allow a certain number of trades per day, or you might have a way to pay as an alternative to trading as part of your monetization strategy. You might have disasters in your game destroying pieces of the economy, or modifying pressures. You might have players in the game who can apply pressure like hoarding a specific resource (e.g. it is difficult to get Wire Balls) or flood the market (e.g. Wire Balls are now effectively useless) or otherwise manipulating the broad economy of the game. Knowing why you do those things is part of your design.

Games typically need both sources and sinks, you'll need to understand what generates items in your economy and what consumes them. In short-running games often the sink is the end of the game, collecting the most resources triggers the end of the game. In other games items break or get destroyed which is a sink, items are consumed that are a sink, or items might outlive their usefulness and need to be discarded which can be a sink.

Once you know how your economy works and understand that it is stable, balance comes after that. The bigger the game, the more important balance becomes. In very large games even tiny adjustments can have a huge multiplicative effect, adjusting the cost of something by 1%, sometimes adjusting by 0.1% can make an enormous difference to highly competitive games. In that scenario the ability to adjust the cost by a small margin is more important, if you're dealing at ratios like 2:1 or 2:3 the design adjustments are more coarse, if you're adjusting the cost in the in-game store from 1000 to 1003 or 995 you've got more fine-grained control.

At this phase the numbers don't matter. The scale might matter depending on how you want to fine-tune your economy later on, but that's not at this phase. Often at this phase it is better to push the limits outward to the point the game breaks in fun and terrible ways so you can better explore your options, rather than limiting it to what feels good.