Good or Bad? Shops in RPGs

[Gregz]

As a money sink our DM just let us buy things... and then he just destroyed or stole them. Fireball spells would melt items we carried. Bottomless pits were a favourite as he knew most people would grab for the ledge with both hands. Some didn't, mind you.

I like to think a cursed item is one created when it first claims an adventurer's life through greed. Some items we met were sheer serial killers.

 

[DraQ]

You mean weapons? In medieval Europe for example, it was common for people to bear arms, iirc. I know that where I live (Estonia), the right of native peasants to bear swords was taken away after a failed rebellion (Jüriöö, against their foreign overlords, Danes and Germans) in the mid 14th century, before that it was thought of as normal for a man to carry a weapon. And this was the case here, where the natives were under the power of foreign overlords (who had conquered them in early 13th century).

My memory is quite hazy on medieval history, but somehow I doubt that the spread of weapons was heavily controlled elsewhere in medieval Europe either.

This. The problem isn't shop selling stuff, it's shops selling high level stuff and buying any old shit you bring to them.

A good fantasy game should have large variety of mundane weapons of various types and varying craftsmanship.
Plate armour should be exclusively custom made (for crapload of money, taking time and possibly only if you had certain social status), mail would be more universal and reusable, but still very expensive to make with little supply. Magical or exotic material stuff should be fucking rare and expensive, to a lesser degree so should high craftsmanship weapons.

Actually, Morrowind wasn't that bad in this regard - high level gear couldn't generally be found in shops, stuff like suits of ebony (let alone daedric) were only found on people who could afford them, lived fuckload of time and accummulated fuckload of power allowing them to eventually get this kind of stuff (Fyr, some vampires) or in treasuries. Glass armour could technically be bought, but I don't recall seeing it anywhere but in Ghostgate, where you don't really find normal travellers and where elite Buoyant armigers can be presumed to buy their elite stuff. And so on.

 

[Emily]

there was acctualy just one deadra set of armor in the original morrowind,in the whole world how cool is that? :D ( havent really played expansions since i heard they suck)
Ebony was not sold anywhere btw as far as i can remember, only richest ppl had ebony. Redonian councilman and that imperial guy if u recall corectly.

 

[DraQ]

there was acctualy just one deadra set of armor in the original morrowind,in the whole world how cool is that? :D ( havent really played expansions since i heard they suck)
Ebony was not sold anywhere btw as far as i can remember, only richest ppl had ebony. Redonian councilman and that imperial guy if u recall corectly.

I think you could find one ebony bracer in a pawn shop somewhere.

Also, why are you not using English?

 

[Emily]

Not very good at it, so i use broken one : (
Hopefully it will get better : D

 

[DraQ]

A lot of people here aren't native speakers and yet they don't use cellphone abbreviations like "ppl" or "u".

 

[Johannes]

A lot of people here aren't native speakers and yet they don't use cellphone abbreviations like "ppl" or "u".

y u care so much

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Dude, if today a fat Kwa can simply walk into any of countless guns stores and buy pistols, rifles, shotguns, body amors and shitloads of ammo to "protect his home from thiefs/communists/terrorists", how do you think that would be if there where a actually dangerous world, filled with monsters and wild animals between the suburbs and his favorite McDonald's?

And is not like the whole world economy is based on weapons, is just that usually you can only browse the weapons store inventory. Fallout had bars, bookstores, restaurants, cassinos, drug dealers, water merchants, farmers, brahmin breeders, repair shops, slavers, mercenaries, medics, whores, gecko skinners, a car dealler, uranium mines and even a nuclear power plant. Again, some had more emphasis during the game, but it's a fucking game, you can't expect them to allow you to enter the kingdom's Household Store and browse their whole stock of cutlery so you know that the economy is "real" and peasants have where to buy spoons...

Besides, when done right, stores are really fun. I love to reach a new town/merchant and see what's available, including that insanelly expensive magical/rare weapons that I'm gonna have to save money and sell lot's of stuff to be able to buy someday. And they offer freedom for customization, you can sell that useless +1 bow and buy a fire sword that you needed much more. Some games ruin the fun by giving you enough money to buy the whole store, level-scalling the itens available or only placing good itens on dungeons & bosses. but for most of the time I love having stores available in games.

Same here. Like I said, its a question of setting.

I think my favorite stores are the ones in San Francisco in Fallout 2. After spending lots of time maraudering, adventuring, looting, killing and such, you finally arrive at San Fran, where mean super-death monsters roam around, and there's a bunch of shops that sell ridiculous ammounts of ammo and excellent weaponry. My answer is to simply open the car's trunk, use my NPCs as mules and lead everyone on the most epic shopping spree ever. All that loot you guarded, all that money you stored in your pockets, etc, its all going to San Fran to get your party ready for the end-game. especially if you're going to fight in Navarro or Enclave. It makes all the early adventuring feel really rewarding.

 

[Phelot]

I've been playing this game...

• Shops only sell basic goods
• You can loot some gear from enemies, but fairly rarely
• Armor is personally crafted to it's recipient
• Recipient needs to be measured so the armor fits
• Crafted armor needs readjusting to ensure optimal fit
• Instead of replacing the old armor with +1 one, you improve the existing ones
• Personally crafted and enhanced armor is the biggest money sink in the game
• Gear remains useful throughout the game (due to variety of elemental resistances and skills associated with them)
• Characters come better at using new gear through use

And this is in a jRPG...

Can we get a name?
I'd like to try it sometime.

I'll show you how to play in my white van.

 

[Phelot]

Anywho, if it was worth the effort, I'd like to see a JA2 shop system (I keep parroting this) and inventory system. Basically, have shops that give you a price based on the condition of the items and whether or not they're even interested in the item type. You'd think some helmet you pulled from some dude you killed by smashing his head in would be damaged and maybe not worth all that much, except for scrap. It'd be a pretty cool thing to try and make a reasonably realistic economy in a game, although balancing would likely be a nightmare.

For me, one of the points of cRPGs is looting and selling crap along with building my character. Please don't take away mah shops!

 

[sea]

First off, it's worth considering what role money serves in games, because I think the problem isn't shops, it's money (gold) and what it's used for.

• Getting new stuff. Obviously, money is a universal agreed-upon method of exchanging goods and serves, so a money reward is theoretically better for the player since it lets players pick what they want, rather than get stuck with the reward they were given.
• Sense of forward progress. Money is a measure of upward mobility in the game universe - you start out with nothing and end up with everything. Having lots of cash on hand feels great to the player, especially if there is risk of losing it or a need to spend it.
• Provides a way of mediating game mechanics which otherwise are difficult to control. Resurrections in D&D CRPGs usually cost money, for example, because the designers want to limit abuse of suicidal strategies (or at least, that's why they should). You can try using XP or some other currency/points/etc. for these kinds of game functions, but money is the most logical.
• Story reasons. Many games have quests centered around amassing a lot of money. This is actually a really good way of designing a scenario - it lets the player effectively choose how to reach that goal, whether it's by solving other goals, by stealing, etc. Can feel a little artificial and can be done poorly (like Dragon Age 2's first act or even Baldur's Gate 2) but as a means to an end it's totally acceptable.

Obviously this question is most relevant to the first point, getting new stuff. This is how money is primarily used in a majority of games, and the other uses mentioned are generally secondary. If a game doesn't give you enough to spend your money on in shops, and there aren't any alternate uses for it, you have a game economy that begins to look very broken and silly, also reducing verisimilitude.

When we think about the role money really serves in most RPGs, reflecting the player's progress through the game, it becomes clear that there needs to be an alternate solution to the problem. While "balance the game better" sounds easy, in reality it's a very fine tightrope - money needs to be easy enough to obtain so that the player never gets stuck, but it has to be hard enough to get and valuable enough that it needs to be saved up. Since it depends so much on the type of player (do they rush the game or search every house? do they sell all the loot or just toss it away?), there is basically no perfect solution.

What I think works best is to give gold a strong secondary (or even primary) focus other than shops, so that at least when one use breaks down, the other can still theoretically be relevant. Treating money as an alternate form of XP makes the most sense given how much it resembles XP in the first place. The Gothic series, Risen, and Elder Scrolls all to varying degrees do this, and I think Gothic's solution of typing player skill progress to money is probably the best and most realistic solution. In Gothic, at least before the player gets to god-level, the decision to either level up or buy a suit of armor is a very, very real one, and it gives the player a lot to consider. While I wouldn't say Gothic also maintains the absolute best stores (usually crafting etc. works better), stores are still handy because they provide the player with a method of filling holes in their character build (such as buying health potions vs. brewing them).

There are potentially other ways of giving money a use that are worth considering. Long-term quest goals like the ones mentioned above are a good solution, but most games only feature one or two of these and don't go far enough. If this content is too optional, it also starts to become viewed as a money sink, and when you start to include player houses you end up with what is effectively a game balancing mechanism that relies entirely on the player's vanity and completionism - not really a good thing in my mind.

Of course, if you want to talk about the realism of shops - that's just game world design. I don't actually have a problem with say, Diablo's merchants having tons of powerful artifacts, because the game makes it clear that the things practically grow on trees anyway. On the other end of the spectrum, Fallout's shops make sense - smugglers have drugs and extremely powerful, rare weapons, regular merchants have basic supplies, specialty merchants have books and other things, etc. When you have a game world where a level 1 trader has epic-level artifacts stuffed in his pack ready to be sold for millions of gold (Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, in some cases), well, I'm of a mind to simply blame the person who didn't think things through. Really, verisimilitude outside of the shop's role in the game mechanics is a minor thing and only laziness or idiocy will mess that up.

 

[Storyfag]

For once I'd like to see an RPG in which you couldn't just put on any old armor without any penalty whatsoever. Visitting a blacksmith to commission a fitted armor would be pretty nice. Perhaps if he was particularly skilled the armor would be able to absorb more damage due to its superior craftsmanship. No selling your rusty goblin swords, though, you should make money through quests and such

It's called The Witcher

 

[Falkner]

Anywho, if it was worth the effort, I'd like to see a JA2 shop system (I keep parroting this) and inventory system. Basically, have shops that give you a price based on the condition of the items and whether or not they're even interested in the item type. You'd think some helmet you pulled from some dude you killed by smashing his head in would be damaged and maybe not worth all that much, except for scrap. It'd be a pretty cool thing to try and make a reasonably realistic economy in a game, although balancing would likely be a nightmare.

You mean, like in Betrayal At Krondor?

 

[MicoSelva]

 

[DaveO]

Necroing an old thread just for click-bait? Sorry, I must ask the mods to temporarily ban you.

 

[J1M]

I don't like shops or crafting in most games.

Shopping usually requires spending a lot of time looking at items that are 99% of the time not worth purchasing. Then, if you do find a good one you have to decide if the designer is going to grant you enough currency in the remaining game to buy the best items later or if you should pass for that reason.

Crafting is similar in that usually 99% of what you can make is pointless and often you don't find the required materials until an item is no longer desirable.

However, I am very open to ideas that combine these two types of systems. For example, an NPC that will craft you a fire-proof breastplate if you bring him a ruby and some currency. I also prefer if that currency was something like magic dust from destroying other magic items over a common currency like silver.

Maybe your enhancements are unlocked and attuned instead of forged and sold, so it serves as a form of progression system too.

 

[Goldschmidt]

I much rather shop in a game than in real life. Exceptions are gaming, book and comic shops. Or ancient stores with odd curiousities.

 

[Rafidur]

Shops are limited by how interesting items actually are.

If you only shop to replace your bronze armor with steel armor and gain +10 def, that's a bad system.
If you make the trek to the desert town because they're the only ones selling fire swords, which you need to kill boss X - perhaps only sold after doing a quest to bring 5 sandbear scrotums to their blacksmith or something - now that might be a good system.

 

[Seusin]

I just need separate but equal shops. So one shop outlaws Niggers, another outlaws women with no visible husband or father or other male of importance etc.

 

[Norfleet]

I think the economy of shops in RPGs is not really adequately explored. As we all know, we rarely, if ever, actually BUY anything from shops. It's typically commonplace to finish the game with millions of gold, most of it gained by vendoring shit.

Now, you realize that as rich as we are, it is common that shops buy things for 25-50% of their value, at best. These guys are making an absolute fucking killing off us. Consider how these goods must be flowing: We kill some banditos and sell their shit to a shopkeeper. The shopkeeper turns around and sells this shit, obviously, or he wouldn't be in business. Who does he sell it to? Probably those banditos. Those banditos use their shit to rob the peasants. We kill the banditos, take all their shit for ourselves, and sell their gear back to the shopkeep. The cycle repeats. Guess who's getting richer and richer off this?

 

[Storyfag]

I think the economy of shops in RPGs is not really adequately explored. As we all know, we rarely, if ever, actually BUY anything from shops. It's typically commonplace to finish the game with millions of gold, most of it gained by vendoring shit.

Now, you realize that as rich as we are, it is common that shops buy things for 25-50% of their value, at best. These guys are making an absolute fucking killing off us. Consider how these goods must be flowing: We kill some banditos and sell their shit to a shopkeeper. The shopkeeper turns around and sells this shit, obviously, or he wouldn't be in business. Who does he sell it to? Probably those banditos. Those banditos use their shit to rob the peasants. We kill the banditos, take all their shit for ourselves, and sell their gear back to the shopkeep. The cycle repeats. Guess who's getting richer and richer off this?

Hey, chill it with the antimerchantism!

 

[Norfleet]

Shops are limited by how interestinguseful items actually are.

FTFY. Buying an iron sword to replace your bronze one is, at least, USEFUL. Being offered 30 kinds of interesting-sounding items that ultimately prove to be of no practical use because they are too niche or expensive consumables (that you, being an RPG player, will hoard until the end of the game) is of no use.

 

[Johannes]

I think the economy of shops in RPGs is not really adequately explored. As we all know, we rarely, if ever, actually BUY anything from shops. It's typically commonplace to finish the game with millions of gold, most of it gained by vendoring shit.

Now, you realize that as rich as we are, it is common that shops buy things for 25-50% of their value, at best. These guys are making an absolute fucking killing off us. Consider how these goods must be flowing: We kill some banditos and sell their shit to a shopkeeper. The shopkeeper turns around and sells this shit, obviously, or he wouldn't be in business. Who does he sell it to? Probably those banditos. Those banditos use their shit to rob the peasants. We kill the banditos, take all their shit for ourselves, and sell their gear back to the shopkeep. The cycle repeats. Guess who's getting richer and richer off this?

The player is getting richer in the currency that really matters, xp

 

[Nifft Batuff]

It's so much more fun if you acquire items through exploration and combat. Shops are boring.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

merchants with infinite currency and merchants that buy anything(at full price) despite it being entirely unrelated to what they deal in are examples of near universal bad design without any effort put forth. At least put some effort in, devs.
And hey, if you want to pretend you cared at all: simulate an economy a bit, rotate stock, have prices and products available reflect what's actually happening in the game that might be causing demand, shortages, etc.,