Should crafting resources be the currency we use?

[TankHunter678]

I do not believe there will be sentient mobs.

Even if there were sentient mobs there would be no guarantee they use a currency (assuming they had one) anywhere near what we use. If they did why we would be part of an invasion force in a war between 2 (or more) governments where we would not even be mining for resources but killing/enslaving the locals to make room for our employers.

 

[Col. Kernel]

Even if there were sentient mobs there would be no guarantee they use a currency (assuming they had one) anywhere near what we use. If they did why we would be part of an invasion force in a war between 2 (or more) governments where we would not even be mining for resources but killing/enslaving the locals to make room for our employers.

Exactly. And the other, meta, reason I don't want to see them is that dropping gear is fabricating money out of thin air.

 

[Demigan]

Why do that artificially when, by using the crafting mats themselves as currency you can have that occur very organically?

Because it doesn't matter if you call the common currency "money" or "material X", it's just a matter of what you like to call it and both would happen just as organically if they worked under the same system. Well, it doesn't matter as long as you use the currency as a crafting material.

I like the idea of building/base upkeep, but there's no reason it can't be done with mats as well.

Exactly, because there's no difference other than the name if you do it right. But if you name it the common currency it'll be more easily recognized by new players as the go-to material to gauge the value of something.

Then you have the problem of where non-mat currency comes from. Does it drop from the native wildlife? Do you find it while thumping? That concept is ludicrous. Do lions drop $$$ or rifles or ammo IRL? Do bears? No, but animals, native wildlife, could easily have valuable bio materials. This is easily justifiable in game. I do not believe there will be sentient mobs.

And there you have not only a solution but also an easily justifyable way to gain currency from wildlife/plantlife/ground. Biological materials/compounds could be the common material that's used as currency, and it doesn't matter if you get it from a bear, the biosphere or mining, it's all plausible.

 

[TankHunter678]

Not sure what you are arguing demigan.

The idea behind a barter vs common currency is that people trade for what they need with what others need. The resources for both end up leaving the system via being consumed by the crafting. This generally is going to result in the rarest resources having the highest value due to being the most needed for crafting.

This also results in common materials becoming effectively worthless due to how common they are. Looking at Path of Exile people do not trade for ID scrolls. ID scrolls are the most common dropping currency item next to Orb of Transmutation and Orb of Alteration. No one trades for them because they are so common and easy to get. But a person who gets a mirror can trade for entire inventories of currency items because of how rare and valuable the mirror is and how much return can be gained from it. As it allows one to copy perfect items wanted by a meta build to trade for a lot of currency items.

This results in materials that easily stockpile not being used as a common currency. They have little value because they flood the market. They would only get some value by being important in the creation of complex crafting items or as a resource you can trade to vendors. Even then most would go just drill it up themselves due to how available it is.

Common currency when you look at it is pretty much a system created to allow a nation to gather material wealth under its control from the populace. As the populace puts trust behind the common currency, expecting that currency to be stable and give them a certain amount of resources for a given amount of the currency. When the system has long been used by merchants to manipulate the perceived value of a resource. Not to mention nations would print currency in order to make themselves look more wealthy or to pay for things they did not have the resources to back up. Which is what lead to the situation of The Great Depression and why the Gold Standard was abandoned. Trust was lost, the bubble collapsed, and suddenly it came out that there was just not enough gold to backup the value of the money. Turning the paper money into something worthless until trust was restablished.

 

[taiiat]

trying to stop saturation is difficult. having one less type of Credits doesn't directly do anything to this. only having an appropriate balance between income/expense does.

could you make no global Credit type work, and only Crafting Credits? perhaps.