Blarg-a-rant! You spambot are not rid of me yet.
Been doing some random rampaging about on the Halobox. Got to thinking about various crafting and economic stuff while doing all the mindless looting, especially with Diablo 3.
Leaving aside 'gamey' stuff like farming and such-like, Sanctuary may well be getting its collective ass kicked, but it's physically growing. The increasing incursion from the demonic and angelic realms are leaving behind a lot of war materiel, wreckage, and extraplanal corpses. It's established canon that people actually make a living salvaging and looting battlefields, some of which are old enough that it requires mining to get at things. This strongly implies that all this stuff is permanent, as opposed to the usual decay into nothingness metaphysical goodies are subject to.
Another thing is that gold is ridiculously abundant, even from realms is shouldn't be expected to be used as currency (the High Heavens) or even be used for exchange at all (The Burning Hells, Pandemonium).
Combined, these facts can actually explain why most everybody is living in shacks, picking crap from between their toes. Inflation has gone utterly berserk, along with incursions leaving the land tainted, whether with various nasties leaving corrupted remains to do nasty, cursed stuff, or more literally with poisons, metals, and energies constantly littering the soil. Granted, all of this is focused in a few relatively discrete areas, but it wouldn't take much for some extradimensional jackass to carpet-bomb even bigger areas, especially with the current state of humanity; teetering on the verge of extinction. Its actually a wonder that there is an economy working at all.
I never really think about these things, but what you say makes sense. I usually just rampage about and get rich, this is why I like you.
ReplyDeleteNot really. I haven't seen any game where the economy is "real," except maybe Diablo in the Depression era "check out all this useless gold" sense your friend mentioned. At best, it is usually just a power check for the player: you won't have game-breaking power until you can afford Item A, at which point it should no longer be game-breaking, if we planned this right and you haven't been gold-grinding. In no game, except Assassin's Creed II-III (I say through instead of and because there were a couple subtitled entries between the two), in a very superficial sense, is the world a better or worse place because of your contribution to the local economy.
ReplyDeleteNo one really thinks of it, maybe because the algorithm to mimic a realistic economy with only 1 individual (the gamer) contributing (or not) randomly would be crazy difficult. Maybe devs are worried it may come off as too political. Or maybe they just figure we'll leave economy worries to people playing strategy games. Like you said, the lack of a real economy hasn't really affected my gameplay.
I posted a link to this entry and a friend had this to say.
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