I agree with your distinction between subjective and objective. Your points are still, largely, subjective, because you are saying the system is BAD FOR YOU. For example:
The current system breaks game immersion
This is PURELY subjective. Evidence? I find this system, SUBJECTIVELY FOR ME, increases immersion, or at least balances practicalities of game mechanics with immersion. If it OBJECTIVELY broke immersion, then it would mean it breaks game immersion for EVERYONE. It doesn't.
That is, without recourse, a subjective argument on your behalf. That is fine, but be aware that it is a subjective argument no matter how much you say otherwise.
makes the economy system utherly impossible to balance
I do not agree with this statement.
I can see some areas for improvement with the economy, and certainly after a certain point I have accumulated a large amount of money. I can also see plenty of solutions that do not involve discarding the current system. I think part of the issue here is how we define "balanced"; you want the game balanced towards one style of play, whereas I find the game, as it stands, appeals to my personal style of play. In this sense, I will argue that there is a degree of subjectivity here in your claim as well.
A traditional "vendors purchase anything and have unlimited cash" approach would be much EASIER to balance, but I'd (subjectively) find this boring, because I enjoy the current system and the (slight) strategy involved. Also, again this is an immersion issue - for me, the concept of a merchant who will buy or barter ANYTHING is unrealistic enough to break immersion FOR ME.
wastes either player time to pick up and sell everything, or wastes developer time in all the areas that are created and are not going to be used most of the time because there is no point to it.
This is not Diablo. There are reasons for entering areas other than just collecting loot. This is something of a conflict between HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME and HOW THE GAME IS DESIGNED. For one, I DON'T PICK UP AND SELL EVERYTHING, and the greatest pleasure I have found in the game has been exploration. I loot tactically and selectively. I role play a bit. I'd actually like the system made even more strict, so that greater emphasis on strategy needs to be employed while looting. (I'm probably in a minority here though.)
I break down a lot of stuff I can't carry so that it isn't an entire waste (although I really would like more breakdown options...) I use my Player Home to store components between looting runs, and typically target specific types of components (this definitely could require expansion and balancing, true, but that is not a function of the economy per se) and I have gained immense satisfaction from the game. While the crafting and economic system are far from perfect, I absolutely disagree that it is broken or immersion-destroying, and I whole-heartedly disagree that it means there is no point to visiting areas.
On the contrary, I visit those areas because they're THERE to be discovered, and this for me is truly the charm of the game.
not being able to balance the economy because of the limitation of merchants buying stuff. You can adjust prices all you want, it's not gonna make a diffence because you'll always have enough, too much or too little money no matter if you do sidequests or explore.
EVERY game economy can be gamed. As it is, I only started gaining too much cash near the end of the new content.
For most of the game, I've had more or less just enough cash for important things, have crafted some things to fill in the gaps, and when I've really wanted a big ticket item, I've gone out, explored a lot of the out-of-the-way content and looted and traded intelligently until I could afford it. (For example, there was one particular quest where I required a very substantial amount of cash. There are various ways of getting that cash. I looted abandoned places and robbed bandits for it, and rather enjoyed the experience.) This sounds to me very close to the ideal balanced economic system you described. It isn't perfect, but it is not unbalanced to any degree that can't be fixed with tweaks. I think it is absolutely workable.
It seems to me that your problem is that the current system DISINCENTIVISES loot grinding, and you want loot grinding. I loathe loot grinding (and level grinding). Subjectively speaking, I think the current system WORKS because it discourages loot grinding, without outright preventing the player from doing it if they wish (or need) to.
The very fact that I have not had the same problems as you, and in fact have almost entirely had THE OPPOSITE EXPERIENCE from you, suggests that:
1) We have very different styles of playing, and
2) The game is balanced more towards one style than another, which means
3) All of your arguments are based around YOUR STYLE OF PLAY (including your unsupported argument that the system is impossible to balance),
4) Which makes your arguments subjective.
I am sorry, but that is what subjective means. If you say "This OBJECTIVELY DOESN'T WORK AND IS IMMERSION BREAKING" and I say "But it works for me and I find it immersive" and then your statement is subjective, not objective.
Feel free to make your arguments based on how you feel the game should play, but don't try saying it is OBJECTIVELY anything when it is in fact based precisely on how you feel a game should play.
It is my personal opinion that the current system
i) is workable (and does in fact work for me rather well)
ii) is potentially enjoyable (because I actually enjoy it), and
iii) should remain in the game, although I accept
iv) it still needs tweaking.
Like your opinion, this is purely subjective, for what it is worth.
Evidence that the current system is immersion breaking. It encourages players to stop doing what they are doing to go sell/drop loot and then return to the mission they were doing... Now you don't have to do it! But the system encourages you to do it with carry limits that are ridiculous and some items which just weights far too much for what they should. Players tend to do whatever makes them most money, I belive you agree with me there. So if the game says, you don't have space to carry more but you want to make as much money as possible, then you are encouraged to stop what you are doing (thus breaking game immersion) drops stuff at your house or safe point and then continue the mission... This is not subjective, the game objectively encourages this behavior in players thus the game objectively breaks game immersion. Whether you can find a way around it byt not picking up everything in order to not break the game immersion that is a way you find to do it, not what the game encourages you to do.
If you disagree that the economy cannot be balanced, that is merely a point that you disagree. I can say that hitting with your head in the wall is not a bad thing with no negative consequences to you but that is just a disagreement, not a matter of it being subjective or not because it will hurt you and possible cause brain injury.
A balanced economy doesn't lets a player just have too much money and buy whatever he wants. But the fact is that you get to the GMS with whatever equipment you want. By this point you barely started the game, you shouldn't have a fully decked out character and still left over money but it is what it happens. Too much money floating. You say you only have too much money floating by the end game. Then you are doing something wrong. By the time you finish the junkyard in the previous economy system you already had everything as good as possible and several stacks of money. As far as I've seen and also other players imput, this even worse now.
A balanced system does not gives a player that much money just from doing the main quest. The main quest should allow you get some new equipment but not all. Why? Because you are supposed to be immersed in the game finding more about it instead of just doing the main story line. So you make the economy system reflect your need to get out of the beaten path in order to get all you need.
Sadly this is not possible at all with the merchant limits. It doesn't maters whether you go off the beaten path or not because you don't need more loot, you already have more than you can sell anyway so going off the beaten path will wield no more money. You can lower the money but you'll end up with a you never have enough no matter what you do or it will give you always about enough. Basicly the system has no way to have a variable for accounting what you do. This is very objective and this objectively makes the system bad. When a game tells you that it doesn't matters what you, you always get the same results, that's bad design.
However if you do say that this is not true, then please prove me wrong and show me how can this system possibly be balanced. What changes does it needs to become balanced while still maintaining the core principles of weight limits and buying limits.
Yes this is not diablo but similarly, players should be rewarded for what they do. If you want to even put it from a game immersion perpsective. So you find this guy who says his girlfriend is trapped in a place with burrowers. Now this things put the fear in the heart of everyone in the underrail and he's asking you do dive into a nest to save his girlfriend. So from a realistic point of view, would you do it? You know the odds are you're not coming back alive nor saving his girlfriend. Who just goes on a suicide quest like that especially after you've seen what happened to him who nearly died and not trying to save his girlfriend, he nearly died just trying to get out alive leaving her to rot in that place... but wait? Didn't he said he found a place intact that they were scavenging. Suddenly this suicide quest can make you a very rich person if you can pull it off, all at the same looking like the hero of underrail.
This is a real perspective from a game immersion point. But the reality is that you are not going to be rewarded to go down there and save the girl. Why? Because the merchants already bought all that you could sell.
Exploration. Ok sure, the game doesn't gives you a reward for exploring but if you want to say that exploring is reward enough then I'd say once! You do it once, then you know everything that is there. Replay value of exploration with the current system equals to none. You don't need to go and see what's there, you already know what's there and besides, there is nothing to gain in doing so.
thus it can safely be said that the game does not encourage exploration nor side quests. It encourages to stay in the rails because aside perhaps the first time just to see how it is, you don't have anything to gain from it. It just wastes your time going there and as such it also wastes the devs time put into making these areas which will not be used or will rarely be used.
Now I will agree that we have different styles of playing but I will not agree that all of this is subjective. What you have presented so far is opinions that something objectively bad can be enjoyed by some people. And I get it that you like these bad systems, but they are bad systems none the less and the majority of people tend not to like bad systems.
Really I cannot wait for the game to be realeased and see if either the developers will make a beter economy system or if they will leave it as so. I don't belive they will at this point because as Styg said. He won't be adding more stuff to the game because it takes time and costs money. But if this is so I do sincerely hope modders pick up this game and make it good.
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