Uhm, the economical and crafting sistems stil need some more loving..

[Mindless]

150? No, you get 166 skill with 10 supporting base ability. 110 base skill at level 20 and 8.5% bonus per base ability point above 5. So if we're counting +2 Junkyard Surprise, you can get up to 166 crafting (or any other) skill with 8 int (or other base ability).

Oh F*ck! Wiki "Every point in base ability above 4 increases the effective value of dependent skills by 10%, while every point below 4 decreases it by 8.5%." is Wrong!

True formula(calculated with help of my chars): 8.5(not 10)% bonus per base ability point above 4(not 5!).

But you can put skill points into other skills as you level up. You don't need to max every starter skill every level, especially if you're in a position where that's not required to progress or in need of those skill points. I usually never pick biology when I start out, but I put 20 points into it when I first level up just so that I can get the doctor feat, but that leaves me with not having maxed one or two of my starter skill, but I make sure I sacrifice the skills I don't need to have a high level at the moment, relative to my character level of course.

It's semi right)
You need only  "full investment" in battle or psi skills(guns+throwning, melee+throwning, 2-3 psi skill). Let it be 2 skillpoints.

You can do "almost full investment"(Up to 85!!!) in hacking+lockpicking skills(You are not masochist, nor some crazy powergammer right? And don't tell me "i don't need any of these cuz i'm super-pro!" or"Lockpicking and Hacking for Loosers!"). 2 skillpoints.

Dodge+Evasion - comes in combo variant imho! Good one if you are not planning to go in full metal panic unit(95% encumbrance metal helm, boots, armor) or full stealth run(well, good luck here!). + get Tabi Boots and Siphoner Leather for moar slippery! "full investment" in this one for me, but its depends on your play style.

Stealth - you don't really need this if you are don't plant to be super ninja or go for pure sniper. Yep, sneak mechanics is not the best here and all quests can be done with +stealth items and brain(main component!).
Traps - you don't really need this, but it can be rewarding in exp equivalent(if you are playing classic variant) but without perk it can be veryyy long way to take all mines(Rathound King Lair, hehe).
Pickpocketing - nice one! Some items can be only pickpocketed from npc's + alternative way for moneymaking. But not really necessary one.
Crafting skills -  see above( I prefer Mechanincs+Electronics combo for guns user; Tailoring, Mechanics, Electronics, Biology hard combo with very specific points allocation for psi user)
Social skills - money not a problem(i want but really can't spent skillpoints into Mercantile) , intimidation < persuasion, that's all.

All i can tell that 40(120) skillpoints is very small amount that you must allocate(in comparison with the Fallout, you can train some skills from NPC/items and it's cool!).
Yep, some skills needed for quests...

[hilf]

150? No, you get 166 skill with 10 supporting base ability. 110 base skill at level 20 and 8.5% bonus per base ability point above 5. So if we're counting +2 Junkyard Surprise, you can get up to 166 crafting (or any other) skill with 8 int (or other base ability).

Oh F*ck! Wiki "Every point in base ability above 4 increases the effective value of dependent skills by 10%, while every point below 4 decreases it by 8.5%." is Wrong!

True formula(calculated with help of my chars): 8.5(not 10)% bonus per base ability point above 4(not 5!).

I can confirm it's less than 10%. 10 in an attribute gives 50% increase, not 60%.

[screeg]

In reply to the start of the thread, I have to say again that making people run around to different merchants to sell your junk always was a bad idea, still is a bad idea, and always will be a bad idea. There are a dozen different smart ways to manage an RPG economy, throwing in pointless chores for players to contend with is not one of them. It stands out especially in a game so thoughtfully planned out and executed as Underrail. Ferchrissakes, change it back!

[screeg]

Happened to be reading a blog post by a talented indie developer (this guy's explanations of good game and level design should be read by game developers of any genre), and saw this quote, which perfectly matches my own opinion about "chores" in games:

Herein lies a golden rule of game design: If the optimal way to play a game is to do something boring, players will still do it even if it makes their experience less enjoyable. Thus a well-designed game should strive to avoid rewarding this kind of behavior.

[Elhazzared]

I don't see how trading can be a big part of the game. To put things into perspective. Trading means aquire goods in one place and sell them at higher prices on another place. That is what trading really is and if Styg did that, people would get even richer with trading... An RPG is not a trading simulator, there are many games out there doing that already with varying degrees of success.

If we were to implement real trading into the game then merchants would buy everything at normal prices but they would have a specific item or two that they would buy at a much higher price, encouraging players to sell those items there instead of any other place which would mean the player would still be going between towns selling things where he would be paid more and buying things from merchants to sell to anothers for a profit.

To a degree this wouldn't be as bad of a system as the current one because at least you could get the normal price for the items you have anyway, but it would still create a pointless chore to get more more money, whether or not needed... I suppose I can say (and I say I because it's my point of view and not everyone else) that underrail currently is suffering from a maledy that many games suffer. It's trying to be more than what it is. And what It is is an isometric RPG. Pulling mechanics that fit into other games just to make this one seem more realistic or simply to try and give it more depth is not the right way to go about it.

[UnLimiTeD]

I respectfully disagree.
Trying and failing is far better than not trying, and producing the next Call of Duty.

Herein lies a golden rule of game design: If the optimal way to play a game is to do something boring, players will still do it even if it makes their experience less enjoyable. Thus a well-designed game should strive to avoid rewarding this kind of behavior.

As such, games should not encourage to go back to shops at all. Now, that either means no loot sides the occasional thing the player will likely need, or... what?
I for one am content with loot I know I won't be able to sell, so I can just leave it to rot.

[Elhazzared]

I respect trying and failing. But one thing is to try and fail, another thing is to try, fail and just leave it as it is just because you wanted to be different.

You are content to loot only what you know you'll be able to sell. That is a point of view.

Mine is that if you are just going to look at the loot and then go "meh, don't need it cause I can't sell it anyway" and as such ignore it, then you remove the reasons for exploration and sidequests.

Why would I go and explore or do sidequests if I cannot sell the loot? Because  make no mistake. The rewards of exploring and doing sidequests is the loot. You search the place, indiscrimatedly kill whatever crosses your path and what is your reward for all aof that? Loot.

If you suddenly say that what your reward is nothing but a waste of time because you can't sell it, then really all there is to it is follow the main storyline and don't bother with anything else. it's just pointless.

If you want to force players into chosing what they take and what they leave behnd you make a game that has no merchants at all and no monetary system. You then limit the inventory size either by space or weight and force the player to chose what he wants to keep and what he has to live without... Unfortunatly such systems do not work for RPGs. they are mostly meant for roguelikes.

[Fenix]

Trading means aquire goods in one place and sell them at higher prices on another place. That is what trading really is

No, it isn't. You forgot about "found something, scavenge something, marauding someone" and then sell at some place what you loot.

If we were to implement real trading into the game then merchants would buy everything at normal prices but they would have a specific item or two that they would buy at a much higher price

No! Go sell something in your local supermarket. )
There is specialization, and if someone buy something that he didn't specialized in, he buy it at low cost.
And buy at much higher price only if it's really rare and valuable.

You then limit the inventory size either by space or weight and force the player to chose what he wants to keep and what he has to live without... Unfortunatly such systems do not work for RPGs. they are mostly meant for roguelikes.

Well, it worked well in Fallout, System Shock, well, Arcanum, BG series?

[Elhazzared]

Stealing or findng something and selling is just that, selling, not trading. By definition trading you go around, buying cheap selling high.

If we were to implement a real trade market like what you see in trading games then all merchants would buy everything at normal prices and expensive for items that they really need though I suppose it would be fair to say some items they'd have in surplus and buy at low prices too. At any rate this wouldn't fit an RPG.

I will not talk about BD series nor System shock since I didn't play them.

Fallout buys everything at the same price, the only modifier is your barter skill, not whether they need it or any such non-sense. Arcanum similarly buys everything at the same price. What changes the price is how much people like you which is affected by your beauty and possible quests made (race too depending on the place)... As a matter of fact did you ever had a problem in fallout selling loot? No, you might have had some problems carrying it, but there is no respawns so you store all loot of the area in one container and just go back and forth until all is sold (this only creates unnecessary busywork that beneficted the game in no way). As for Arcanum it's a non-issue because with all the party memebers you have you'll just be able to carry everything no matter what area you clear and in arcanum merchants don't even have money limits which makes it even better than fallout in that aspect but given how much longer after fallout it came it's only natural that they improved the formula. The carry weight is there only cause since it makes no real diference.

So as you can see, neither does underrail has a true trading system nor would it benefict the game in any way. What we are left with is a subpar economic system that still gives us too much money, doesn't encourages us to go out of the beaten path and frustates the players for not allowing them to sell their hard earned loot.

Not everything is bad of course. The early game as far as economy is concerned has improved. Even with the little I managed to tolerate of this economic system to play I could reasonably say that you get a lot more necessary starting money. But past that things are much worse than when I started playing.

Therein lies the problem. Not only does the current economic system aggravates players (yes not all of them but some right now and I imagine a vast majority when the game goes live), but it doesn't encourages you to go off the beaten path. What does that makes of the game? Well if players are not encouraged to go out of the beaten path then only a small part of the gamers will actually bother to see everything the game has to offer, that kinda makes a void where the developers spent time creating all those areas for nothing... It's exactly the same as I've always said about the GMS vault. It's a waste of time to go there! Why even design an area whose only purpose is to waste people's time? Most players are either going to go there once and never again touch it in any following playthroughs or they will read the wiki, see that tehre is nothing to be had there but a huge waste of time and they will not even go there once. This basicly means that developers wasted time doing something no one will care about.

A good game design will have players be rewarded by risk and time investment. If it's not worth it, players will ignore it and that nullifies the whole point of the developers having spent time and thus money in creating those areas.

[Fenix]

Stealing or findng something and selling is just that, selling, not trading. By definition trading you go around, buying cheap selling high.

So there is NO trading in game, so your appeal to "trading" do nothing.
There is looting and selling, not trading. Problem solved.

Fallout, Arcanum, SS, BG - all have inventory and\or weight restriction.
Restrictions mean choice.
No restrictions mean no choice.
RPG is game of choices by definition, so even bad choice better then no choices at all.

[Elhazzared]

It's not my appeal to trading. People are saying that the reason for this bad economy system is because it encourages trading and trading is a part of the game. I was merely telling it was not true, the game has no trading component to it whatsoever. Glad you agree on that.

Fallout and arcanum (will only talk about the games I know) have only a small limitation, not a huge limitation that severely hampers the enjoyment of the game and make exploration and sidequests useless.

In Fallout you don't chose what you keep and what you leave behind. You just waste some time going back and forth but you don't chose.

In arcanum you don't chose too, you can carry everything with you, the weight limitation is there just cause, there are no instances that you cannot do without carrying all the loot.

Similarly, in underrail you don't need to chose to leave everything behind, nor do you have to chose to only sell a few things. You can carry everything by taking huge loads of time, this is aggravated by repawns. You can sell everything, you just have to sit around doing nothing for 45 minutes for the merchants to reload. However this is highly contrived.

The game will always have restrictions. But those shouldn't be related to inventory space or merchants buying stuff. Why? Because it completly nullifies the point of side questing and exploring. You do that for extra loot and extra money (both being directly tied together). If you say that people can barely transport anything at all because some items are absurdly heavy and can't sell everything within a reasonable timeframe. People are just going to ignore the game. Now I ask you, how much of the game is sidequests and explorable area? I'd bet over 50% So players are encouraged to ignore most of the content because of a bad decision? Is that right?

Decisions come from, what skill set are you going to use? What options you take to solve quests and side quests. What equipment do you use.

[Eliasfrost]

Underrail incentivise you to not do what you do El, by making that stuff aggrevating and boring. The game outright discourage you to pick up everything, that's what I meant a few pages back when I said that the point of the looting in Underrail is not to hoard, it's to scavenge. You are supposed to leave stuff behind. And it is - no matter how much you disagree with that or how annoying it is -  your choice whether you want to participate in that system or not. Just like how I don't like the way stealth characters progress in the game (I have already aired my opinion on it so I won't repeat myself) you just have to readjust your expectations and simply deal with it, just like everyone else. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh but it's the reality of it.

[Elhazzared]

Again, If I do that then I am discouraged of doing any sidequests and exploring. Really all I need to do is the main story line as I'll already get more loot than I can sell. What incentive do I have to go on exploring or doing sidequests when I will not gain anything from it?

That is the whole point. The current system doesn't just discourages you from picking everything up. It discourages you from playing more than half the game.

[Eliasfrost]

You get materials that can be used for crafting, you get better guns, ammo. You also get oddities if that's the xp system you play with. There's lots of reasons to go off the beaten path.

[Elhazzared]

I don't use the oddity system, never liked it but hey, it's optional so no harm there!

As for finding material for crafting, still not enough reason, you don't really need crafting and if you absolutly must then merchants have enough stuff from what I hear so again, not reason to get off the beaten path. You are encouraged not to do anything of the sort because you get no tangible rewards... Maybe if you are really needing a level or two but I doubt you'll need it anyway.