A suggestion about Currency

[zavox]

Since the server has been online for such a long time and people carry an insane amount of gold, my suggestion would be to change the gold name and icons to silver, no change game mechanically, but in-game lorewise it would make a lot more sense that the standard of currency be counted in silver and not gold, and it would mean that for example a coil of rope wouldn't go for a handful of gold but instead a handful of silver which seems way more reasonable to me!

Just a suggestion purely for immersion, please tell me what you guys think about this suggestion!

[DM Mirror]

This has been in discussion for a while already.
Once decided upon, it will be made public of course.

[tjhyland]

What about Platinum?

[Afendaria]

and it would mean that for example a coil of rope wouldn't go for a handful of gold but instead a handful of silver which seems way more reasonable to me!

" Can you believe it?! A lute costs less than a coil of rope! Travesty! " - Vernon Menner 1362 DR.


I do like the idea though. Coppers, or Silvers, Fandars, or Thumbs, rather than gold coins.

[renshouj]

Honestly I'm just not sure how feasible it is to do that tech-wise, since GUI stuff is notoriously annoying to deal with and customise.

There's obviously the thought of making currency an actual item, but that also is a huge endeavor. All in all, while its easy to conceptualise this, it might be quite a beast to implement something like it in a satisfactory and clean way

[zavox]

Honestly I'm just not sure how feasible it is to do that tech-wise, since GUI stuff is notoriously annoying to deal with and customise.

There's obviously the thought of making currency an actual item, but that also is a huge endeavor. All in all, while its easy to conceptualise this, it might be quite a beast to implement something like it in a satisfactory and clean way

It would be pretty cool though!

Certain inconveniences bring positives to the table, i'd love to have physical currency, and a physical bank to stash money and things at!

But it goes to say, there are more urgent fires to put out before this should be something to concern the devs with.

[selhan]

I remember another server with the copper, silver , gold currency system was actually a very good one for what it was. But I agree such things would be a serious pain in the butt now far as tech wise. I think more things for the sake of coin sink just might be better for us. But even with that its might pose other problems. Yeah some people sit upon millions of coins while others struggle to stay afloat . Seems it depends on the players gameplay.

A. Those that constantly loots - Stays wealthy
B. Those casually loots - manages well enough
C. Those that hate looting - often poor
D. Those that manage to find other means to make coins without looting - normally got the time to invest / or clever

Auctions looking crazy lately. Good things sold cheap, junk sold high, rp stuff ranges from low to high, most things in auctions are the same items found over and over. When you take the population numbers on the server, alot of those common found things are not even sold because alot of people already has them lol, Most players dont want to sale the good stuff for coins and instead are in search of specific items in exchange for some goal or another. Hell I see people selling plain +4 Boots to NPC's now a days already when before it was a flat 100k. Yet I seein a couple of diamonds for 80k! lol Herbs starting to feel more preferred than wands due to price inflation lol idk Oil prices must be effecting BG! haha

[Ithilan]

Many cities and states across Faerun have their own currencies and mint their own coins too. Baldurs Gate is a massive trade hub, so they generally have everything from Amnian, Waterdhavian, Cormyrean, Silvearen and other coins in circulation. But the primary distinct currencies used are platinum pieces (pp), gold pieces (gp), electrum pieces (ep), silver pieces (sp) and copper pieces (cp) throughout Faerûn. Trade bars are also pretty commonly used. Exchange rates and currency values change in various periods of time though and around the time of troubles a bunch of them saw a decrease in value.

I generally never RP that I am running around with ten million gold on my character, but it can be a bit hard to navigate the IC wealth assessment, when people throw around absurd amounts of gold that could feed all the poor in the city and we do not have the distinctive different currencies. We also increased merchant purchase rates for loot over the years, causing further inflation despite introducing some money sinks, that are mostly one time investments, like player houses.

In the end I think it is so highly individual, like Sel eludes to, how much wealth a player or character has that it is hard to increase the immersion through a change, I think it is far more up to us players to convey the bloated effects mechanically of a game such as this, in a sensible way IC.

[lethzeee]

The in-game money / economics mechanics just doesn't resemble anything remotely "realistic" or "immersive" in any meaningful way, regardless of what name the base currency is called. We literally have unlimited money-printing machines (dungeons) and infinite products (merchants), any "economics" just falls apart when one thinks about the implication for a second. At some point the number of golds (or any other alternative way the currency could be called) one possesses simply lost all narrative meaning.

Would the infinite influx of currencies crush the local economy? Definitely. Is there any moral bankruptcy when the goodly PC purchases another super epic legendary sword for a million gold that marginally boosts their damage output by 1.5 per turn against a very specific type of enemies when they could use the money to solve world hunger and prevent thousands upon thousands of death this winter alone? Of course there is, Peter Singer's blood would be boiling if he's in the setting (maybe the adventurers are the utility monsters all along). And unfortunately by how the system works the best option is a suspension of belief and just ignore those problems because otherwise nothing would make sense. The system (and the setting, in extension) was simply not designed to play around those issues.

Tho it'll still never not be funny to me the mental image of how everyone just seems to possess the capability to count millions of coins in an instance with 100% accuracy down to the last digit and they all fit into a small bag.

[Heretic]

Since the server has been online for such a long time and people carry an insane amount of gold, my suggestion would be to change the gold name and icons to silver, no change game mechanically, but in-game lorewise it would make a lot more sense that the standard of currency be counted in silver and not gold, and it would mean that for example a coil of rope wouldn't go for a handful of gold but instead a handful of silver which seems way more reasonable to me!

Just a suggestion purely for immersion, please tell me what you guys think about this suggestion!

I would presume "gold" is just a representation of how much total wealth a player has in their possession (not counting off-screen wealth through trade, etc.) expressed in a common unit of currency. Players often RP offering bank notes or gold/platinum bars when exchanging large amounts of gold between each other since no one will realistic carry around 2Million individual gold pieces. In theory a player would keep that amount coinage in a bank (which exist IG - in name only) or other financial institutions and make arrangements with the institution to transfer large quantities of "gold" through paper agreements.

[Kitunenotsume]

I used to play on a server (EoA) where the currency was all in Dimes, and there was a decimal point in the currency display.*
Having Silvers instead of Gold would be awesome for immersion and RP utility.

I don't personally feel like smaller coinage would substantially affect the immersion of large transactions, because I was of the understanding that immense prices would already be paid for in Tradescript, Trade-Bars, Contracts, Gems, or other portable markers of value backed by banks run by regional guilds or the Temple of Waukeen, rather than a wagons worth of heavy precious metal.

Having standardized Trade-script items with a face-value and can be exchanged to/from that value at banks would also be neat. For example: instead of handing somone 10k/100k/1M gold, you have them a 10k/100k/1M tradescript item that then needs to be cashed at specific NPCs for full value. This would complicate some trade down from just "Throw money at the person" (Which could be resolved by trading normally), but would also be applicable to considerations like receiving single items trading in events/conflicts or placing currency for others to receive at dead-drops.


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Unhelpfully, the responce I got when asking years ago on how to replicate the feat myself was "I wrote a function to create the string I wanted and replaced the uis default gold counter with it". Perhaps someone else may have the patience to implement an ongoing runtime UI string replacement.