Is There Too Much Gold in the Game?

[CdrPlatypus]

fallen can we get a nightterror difficulty at some point?

[xdesperado]

Oct 23, 2014 22:47:47 GMT -5 fallen said:

xdesperado - great feedback! Thanks for sharing from another angle. I agree, it depends a huge amount on your play-style, and how often you return to camp, etc. I like to avoid camps by spending big on potions, so my groups have smaller stockpiles.

My recent groups have all been very SP intensive so camping after every battle is almost a must. Even then they can burn a lot of consumables in short order.
My play style leans towards the aggressive maximum damage in as short a time as possible approach. So making empowered attacks constantly and not being shy with the spells.
It's effective but you pay the price of having to use more consumables and camp all the time unlike with a much more conservative approach to combat.

I can already tell my latest group is going to be the most expensive to keep running I've played yet and they are just starting their escape.

[crimsonking]

Imho e1 is well balanced in terms of money and loot. This changes for e2, but also somewhat depends on playing style. The biggest issue with this is that the value of healing talents, sacrifice and SP gear is massively decreased when You can buy more potions than you'll ever need.

One solution to this issue could simply be to raise the gap between buying and selling prices. Also, much fewer but better drops will help. A third is to take the violet potions from the shops since then you have to decide to heal your damage dealer either with his own AP or with a healing talent. But the best was would probably be to make the better potions you can buy in e2 much much more expensive.

[vdx]

Playing styles and playing expectations seem to be the under current to the gold discussion. Which leads to two more questions that might help flush out this topic:

1) Playing Style:
A) Completion Percent: Are you a competition who scours the map for every fight? The extra gold, XP adds up after a few maps. Converse is that a few avoidable tough fights could eat up your potion stockpile.
B) Camping Frequency: Are you a frequent camper? Using a campsite vice potions to saves both looted potions as well as purchased potions, resulting in a build up of potions. (Those lower SP potions found in EP1 are great for Vras in EP due to his lower max SP.)

2) Playing Expectations:
A) Do you expect your party to be able to afford the very best equipment at every town?
B) How much awesome equipment do you expect to find? Enough for every one, or just enough to have to decide who gets the good stuff?

Also on this topic:

3) Self-imposed limitations: Nothing stops a player from imposing his or her own rules on the game. For example, I simply didn't buy potions up until this play through at the Cult Temple. Between Camping and loot, I had a nice stock pile built up. I also have a DODGE based party which takes a lot less damage which requires a lot less healing. However, when I went to stock up on a few potions this play through, I realized I had enough gold to buy an essentially unlimited supply as I will run out of enemies long before I run out of potions.

For me, I like grinding. I think having to fight extra to go up levels and to afford better equipment creates a nice range of difficulty. Do you head right into that dungeon, hoping you find enough to make it --or--do you spend some time earning the gold to buy the best available?

One of the challenges of the random drop approach to chests, esp with needing gear for numerous builds, is the game requires enough drops to ensure that randomly each party gets something they can use, however to do that means you end up with tons of stuff that you can just sell, adding to the gold problem.

[En1gma]

I think the issue here is those of us who don't play anything like we do. This needs to be balanced for the least of us, not those who have certain types of builds. Some players I'm sure do organic builds that I'm sure they are quite fond of, and I'm sure would be upset if the total amount of gold (that these players need) was nerfed. Some people play potion heavy builds, others will buy weapons they don't need, so they buy replacements for them.

Just keep this in mind- if people buy the game, then are forced to restart game after game because of poor choices or planning, leading to having no gold left, these people aren't going to buy the IAP characters, are going to leave poor reviews, and worst of all aren't going to tell friends and family about the game.

[fallen]

En1gma - agreed, as with all balancing choices we have to be very careful. My experience is generally that the economy in E2 could use some tweaking, and that there is a huge variability in how much gold my groups end up with depending on their Talent builds even (not even completely based on playstyle). If my Vraes is jamming Stone Skin and Phalanx Shield, this is going to have a big impact on my economy.

[plunk]

The description for Nightmare says rewards are scarce, that implies very limited resources, that makes no sense if the game gives players enough gold to finance a party that chugs potions down every battle.

Keeping a high gold income in Easy and Normal? Sure, the game says gold is rich and abundant. If anything there should be more gold. Maybe even Hard too. But harder difficulties should have players managing their finances not going on huge shopping sprees.

Or at least change the description for Nightmare to rich gold. Because that's what it feels like.

If people are forced to restart on Nightmare because their build is expensive then guess what? The description says rewards are scarce, so the game properly warned you. Play on a lower difficulty next time.

[xdesperado]

plunk
Look at your party makeup and play style, then try stepping outside your comfort zone to play other ways.

Just because with your style of play and selection of heroes/talents you find the resources overly abundant is no reason to nerf them for other styles and combinations.

The idea is to promote as large a variety of possible ways to play the game successfully as possible, not to force players to use a certain style of play and combination of heroes/talents to "beat" the game.

[plunk]

Again, I'm talking about a mode that the game explicitly says rewards are scarce.

Nightmare should be about forcing players to deal with very limited resources and high enemy difficulty because that's what the description says it is not encompassing every playstyle. That's what Easy and Normal are for. Maybe even Hard, since the game claims resources are balanced.

When you can update your party's gear and still buy a bunch of potions to spam a bunch of costly skills, that is not what comes to mind when someone says the word scarce. At the very least get rid of that descriptor because it's false.

[xdesperado]

plunk I guess your definition of what Nightmare difficulty and my definition are different.

I believe that you you can have an incredibly tough setting and still allow a very broad range of possibilities in play style. They need not be mutually exclusive. Any game that forces you to play a certain way to succeed is a failure in my books. Give me meaningful options and let me use them, don't railroad me into a set means of success in the game.

Remember trying the nearly endless combinations of heroes and talents is what will keep me and many others playing the game repeatedly.
We're not solely focused on simply "beating" it and grabbing a high score for some leaderboard then moving on to another game because our attention span has been stretched to its limits.

[plunk]

Except the game already lets players do anything. It doesn't force the player to play on Nightmare and doesn't do anything to them if they don't even play a single Nightmare game.

Hard gives balanced rewards and if a reasonable playstyle is gimped for gold, sure that's a concern. But Nightmare is not about giving balanced rewards it's about scarce rewards. Some play styles which rely on abundant or even balanced resources will fail. And that's the player's fault for picking a difficulty setting that practically says it won't give them enough money to fund their build.

There's 3 difficulties to coddle or accomodate every play style. Why the remaining 2 have to do so is just ridiculous. Make players make optimal or really tough choices in Nightmare.

[xdesperado]

plunk so your saying that because I enjoy playing a very SP intensive group that can be forced to spend a lot of resources even when camping continually after every battle, I should be barred from playing on Nightmare where I meet the most challenging monsters that can push my heroes to their limits trying to survive?

I can just as easily argue that the game needs to be nerfed on Nightmare to penalize/make it impossible to run and hide in a corner at every battle and use Vraes as a mobile wall to plug the only possible line of attack. Thats not a "logical" possibility in many battles where your moving to meet with an enemy force of unknown strength and composition, but instead using flaws in design to exploit the system.

[plunk]

If a player enjoys not investing in even a single defensive option they're pretty much barred from Nightmare. Don't see why doong the same for another playstyle that the description of the difficulty flat out discourages is unreasonable.

[xdesperado]

It's meant to force players to utilize sound tactics and a well balanced party both offensively and defensively.
Just as you say a totally offensive party that's neglecting all defense should be barred I say that a totally defensive party that relies almost exclusively on basic non empowered attacks and acting like a turtle should be barred.
Nerf the basic attacks in later episodes so the become largely in effective against most monsters even when they are heavily debuffed, penalize scores based on length of combat etc.

[plunk]

Except the description of Nightmare doesn't say that. It says pitched battles and scarce rewards

Meaning a party has to survive pitched battles and work with scarce rewards. It doesn't say a party has to survive with limited normal attacks or whatever.

If the description of Nightmare contained "a mode where turtling and normal attacks are heavily discouraged" then sure feel free to point out how turtling and normal attacks are still very viable options.

Oh and I feel you brought up turtling and normal attacks because that's what I use. Guess what? I don't care if the game forces me to change my build (other than my concerns with how the game is super slow) like I said Nightmare should be about making optimized choices, if those change then my choices will change to reflect that. And which play style to chose should be part of those choices. The only thing I'm partial to that affected my build is me being partial to winning the game.