RPGs that have very tight economies?

[rusty_shackleford]

By "tight economies", I mean you never feel like you have enough money for everything you want and have to allocate your money strategically.

I think I recall the economy being rather tight in Gothic 2 until near the end. If I was pressed to name other games, likewise, I'd mention Piranha Bytes games. The one thing they have in common in this area is monetary cost for training.
I really come up blank other than that. Perhaps, Underrail?

[Oyster Sauce]

Witcher 1
Undertale

[Valter]

Lmao I was just thinking about this the other day after I brought all the ATOM RPG merchants to ruin with my 199 Barter.

I played the GBA Fire Emblem games and those felt tight. Money not only purchases gear, but Class Promotions as well. I was often torn in where to spend it.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The Banner Saga 1. Your currency (supplies) used to buy items is also used to feed your refugee caravan. I remember I bought some accessories and then ran out of food on the last stretch towards Boersgard and lots of people died.

Aselia the Spirit of Eternity Sword: Another SRPG similar to TBS in that you have one currency that is used for everything. Mana is a finite resource that is extracted from the earth each turn by your extractors, and be used to either construct more buildings (which take several turns to build) or to power up your characters, so it also functions as EXP. Training a character costs 1 turn. Unfortunately for you, this is a game in which turns and mana are a both a finite resource. You get some bonus mana for completing the missions as fast as you can, and for snagging those limited time side objective like mana crystals or the superboss dragons. You have to savescum a lot not only because there is permadeath and the battles are really hard, but also because you occasionally need to rewind several turns to get a head start on construction so that you can have fortresses, teleporters, training facilities, etc ready in time at far flung outposts for later missions. Later on, the story becomes about the setting's dependency upon mana and how the magitek revolution is leading to famine due to there being less and less mana in the earth. At some point in the final chapter, your extractors will have pulled up all of the mana out of the earth and the apocalypse will begin. That's it. There is no mana you can get for the rest of the game. Fortunately I managed to savescum and beat most of the missions on the fastest time and grab most of the side objectives, so I had enough mana to get 16 characters (you can deploy up to 4 squads at a time with 3 characters per squad) to the level cap of 30.

Pokemon Colosseum: because you can't really grind. There are no wild Pokemon to grind or catch, and most trainers cannot be refought. The 50 Pokemon you see are what you get, and the guys you fight in the story are your only real sources of EXP. I had to think very carefully about which Pokemon I planned to use and committed to that. I remember the true final boss being very difficult and I did not have enough resources to endure a protracted battle to catch his shadow Pokemon, so I just had to KO him and end the game right there.

Trails games if you are playing on the highest difficult and know ahead of time that there are very expensive limited time items in each chapter that you need to buy in order to craft them together into an extremely powerful accessory towards the end of the game. Trying to buy 4x of each was very difficult. I think Kuro 2 was the first time I managed to be able to conserve my money properly and craft 4 of that powerful accessory for a 4 man party. In Reverie and Kuro 1, I wound up being too poor at certain points and wouldn't be able to purchase enough missable items and thus would only be able to craft 1 special trinket by the end. And then you are almost always starved for sepith to unlock your character's quartz slots. When I finished Kuro 2's story, I had only just managed to unlock all of the slots for my chosen four characters and not for anyone else.

[wndrbr]

Not an RPG, but should fit the bill since it's an open world game where power progression happens through the acquisition of better equipment.

STALKER Clear Sky.

The only stalker game with tightly designed economy and survival elements. You're constantly down, you're constantly trying to scrounge for supplies and money. Everything is expensive. There are money sinks everywhere - armor is expensive and can also be upgraded, weapons can be upgraded, new powerful weapons show up in shops before you can loot them off of enemies. Equipment degrades, so you must also spend money on repairs.

It's the only Stalker game that put me into situations where I actually ran out of stuff (medkits, ammo, crucial equipment durability) in the middle of a mission, and had to go back and resupply.

[rusty_shackleford]

Feel like near any game that decides to implement gambling will probably fail this unless it has some strict limits.

[Norfleet]

By "tight economies", I mean you never feel like you have enough money for everything you want and have to allocate your money strategically.

Basically any MMORPG with a player-run economy, since no matter how much money you think you have, somebody else has more and determines the market prices accordingly, so you're always broke.

[rusty_shackleford]

By "tight economies", I mean you never feel like you have enough money for everything you want and have to allocate your money strategically.

Basically any MMORPG with a player-run economy, since no matter how much money you think you have, somebody else has more and determines the market prices accordingly, so you're always broke.

Unless you're a westerner who can spare $50

[Norfleet]

Unless you're a westerner who can spare $50

You kidding, right? $50 of pay-to-win don't buy **** in these games. That doesnt' even begin to qualify you for whaledom. You're looking at $5000, minimum, if you're thinking to purely wallet-warrior your way to success, and that's MAYBE if you spend it WISELY. Which wallet warriors generally don't.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

By "tight economies", I mean you never feel like you have enough money for everything you want and have to allocate your money strategically.

Basically any MMORPG with a player-run economy, since no matter how much money you think you have, somebody else has more and determines the market prices accordingly, so you're always broke.

Money in FF11 Horizon was a real struggle until the last 100 of my 500 hours of playtime or so. There are only a handful of quests that give out gil in the thousands, and they are pretty difficult to do and require you to be pretty far along into the game (chocobo unlocks, having amassed a large enough net worth to be able to own good gear and supplies to reach these locations, needing to buy in bulk lots of items for rep turn in for the quest requirements, etc). The core gameplay loop is a 6 man party surrounding a single mob and grinding for 2 to 3 hours. Because loot drops are being divided amongst 6 people, your income is very low. You also have operational costs in having to pay a player mage to teleport you to a zone adjacent to where your group is going to exp grind, or having to rent a Chocobo, or having to buy buff food and invisibility powders off of the auction house. If you play a ranger or a mage, then you have to add on top of that the cost of ammunition or spell scrolls. I played a martial character and pretty much could only afford to upgrade my weapon every 10 levels, and wound up having to buy armor every 20 levels. I just couldn't afford to update my armor more regularly. And as I was closing in on level 75, I was still using level 20ish and level 40ish accessories because money was just so tight. When I got the other HQers into the game, I had to help bankroll their equipment and spells. I cannot imagine someone starting the game as a ranger or a mage without that kind of support right off the bat. Towards the end right as I was about to hit level 75, Kal and I had finally amassed enough money to setup indoor gardens where if you click on the plants every day, you will get a total yield of 100k gil after 30 days, so that could keep us comfortably afloat if we had kept playing.

[Norfleet]

And then the moment you actually want to buy anything on the market rather than be a chickenscratch dirt farmer, you'll realize you're flat-*** broke.

[Tadeusz]

It's pretty hard to make a tight economy in RPGs because there are usually endless spawns of items and monsters with those items. In order to implement a tight economy you need some bottleneck. It works in Gothic because there are no random spawns, the whole world is already there and nothing is added within a chapter. Banner Saga has a strict game sequence so there's again nothing excessive is added to the game economy. I don't remember other RPGs with something like that.

[gerey]

Witcher 1

You can break the economy easily via gambling, sadly.

Can't really think of an cRPG, or any game really, where I felt that the economy remained balanced beyond the hobo phase. There's simply not enough expenditure mechanisms in place to counter all the wealth you accumulate via loot or quest rewards.

A way to counter it would be to make the player pay for healing, magical reagents, equipment upkeep, food, camping supplies and taxes.

[Marcus]

By "tight economies", I mean you never feel like you have enough money for everything you want and have to allocate your money strategically.

I think I recall the economy being rather tight in Gothic 2 until near the end. If I was pressed to name other games, likewise, I'd mention Piranha Bytes games. The one thing they have in common in this area is monetary cost for training.
I really come up blank other than that. Perhaps, Underrail?

In Enderal, you had to constantly spend money on "learning books" in order to increase yours skill and crafting points.

[J1M]

For a significant part of Kingmaker the economy around building points is fairly tight, and it serves as an effective gold sink.

[1998]

Can't think of a single one. At best some RPGs with obvious, but mostly optional, money sinks. Like the fort management in nwn2.

By playtime until broken BG1 is probably pretty tight. You can buy pretty strong equipment early on but it could take a while until you can afford them.

[asf]

how do you carry all that gold around without carts

[1998]

how do you carry all that gold around without carts

Invisible slaves

[Kalarion]

Tower of Time's economy is pretty tight by nature (gold is XP, and there is no grinding).

[rusty_shackleford]

Seems like a common theme between the few games listed is they have money used for progression in some form.

[Tweed]

You'll never have enough money to buy everything in Knights of the Chalice 2's original module so it's strictly pick and choose between a few powerful items and letting the rest ride, besides what you spend on things like spell scrolls or potions. All of this is especially true if you're playing by Pierre's original "levels cost gold" rules. You might also want to save cash to get some items made for enchanting. Either way, there's a lot of nice stuff for sale and it's all outrageously priced, you also get a ton of nice items, some of which you'll be selling. I think KotC 1 is the same way, you never have enough money for everything you'd want to buy, but it's been long enough now that I don't remember.

[Acrux]

Levels cost gold is my favorite part of kotc2. It's similar to the AD&D rules where you had to find a trainer to level up and it cost gold and time.

[Norfleet]

Seems like a common theme between the few games listed is they have money used for progression in some form.

Money used for progression is one way to add a very large cash sink into the game, but the other one is a tightly constrained money faucet. If an infinite money faucet exists in the game, your economy flushes straight down the terlet. Even in a game like an MMO (where money is typically NOT used for level progression) can have its economy flushed down the tubes overnight if a money faucet appears.

[Tadeusz]

If an infinite money faucet exists in the game, your economy flushes straight down the terlet.

Is there an example of something like this? I remember enchantments in Lineage 2 which are a huge money sink but they are mostly optional and I don't think that they ruin economy.

[Norfleet]

If an infinite money faucet exists in the game, your economy flushes straight down the terlet.

Is there an example of something like this? I remember enchantments in Lineage 2 which are a huge money sink but they are mostly optional and I don't think that they ruin economy.

Well, first, what you said is, obviously, a sink. A money FAUCET is the opposite of that: A source by which players get money. Examples of that? Well, basically any time a money/duping exploit goes wild and isn't stopped before the money has bled all over the game.

[Tadeusz]

A money FAUCET is the opposite of that: A source by which players get money. Examples of that? Well, basically any time a money/duping exploit goes wild and isn't stopped before the money has bled all over the game.

****, read it wrong. Usually bots cause this so they can really destroy server economies.

[Norfleet]

****, read it wrong. Usually bots cause this so they can really destroy server economies.

"Bots" are just a scapegoat. If the server economy is being destroyed by "bots", it's because the devs have created a game designed to reward autism, and robots just happen to be better autists. The solution is not handwringing about bots, but to stop creating game designs intended to reward autism.

[The_Mask]

Dark Souls. The source of your income is your own skill. No skill? No income. Lots of skill? Lots of income.

[Oyster Sauce]

Dark Souls. The source of your income is your own skill. No skill? No income. Lots of skill? Lots of income.

You can just farm forever anywhere you want

[TKVNC]

I mean, it's realistic to have an economy that you eventually 'break'.

The same is true for real life, after a while, you have so much money that it simply stops mattering, as you can just generate more than you reasonably need to spend.

Perhaps this is less true for the average peasant working class salary-man, but it is still genuinely true for successful businesses, or those with high social connections - which realistically, is all that adventurers are in RPG's.