Paper Money. Old world money. Whatever you want to call it.
I feel like it should have a more prominent use, people should hang on to it, it shouldn’t just be something you throw away. I also think that when trading with NPC’s you should be required to t=have the paper money with you, and not just be able to see the price and trade.
Realistically if the world ended like it did in this game. People would still hang on to their money, this soon after the cataclysm. They wouldn’t realize there is no society to revolve around it, so they would keep it with them, they would try and withdraw money. I’m suggesting having NPC’s, zombies, players, all that stuff carry money, give it uses, and make it more common
But with so many people dead and thier money laying about everywere, it could be an easily exploitable system for scavangers and bandits with no proper system to manage the flow. Like I could secure a bank and steal everything, Which is more money than a poor settlement is willing to exchange for. An honestly considering the now greater demand for base necessities like food and tools, plus the greater risk in traveling and trading between communities. The only way I could see this able to ‘marginally’ work is if the value of money is diminished to the point were you’d need thousands if not millions of dollars/cash/moolah for anything remotely useable.
You don’t keep it? Paper is pretty useful for a lot of crafting recipes. I recall that the refugee center will also pay a better rate for it since they make their script out of it. Collecting coins can be a nice supplement of copper supply as well, and the wallets it all came in make a decent patch leather source.
If you want to trade currency, you do need it with you. The prices listed in the trade screen are barter values, not actual cash you’re moving around. And factions like the refugee center I mentioned prior do manufacture their own paper currency. If you trade with them, it’ll have a pretty good value to it.
They already do, most zombies have wallets on them with coins and such. Survivors, not as often, since the ones you usually find randomly are looking to barter for loot, not random papers.
This makes sense in regards to people having pulled out a lot of money if they could, but generally speaking, murderous monsters and nuclear explosions have probably brought bigger concerns to the forefront for the average survivor than “Can I withdraw my 401k” or “Does the government still exist”. Most survivors at the beginning are still in the “I need food, clothes, and something to keep these monsters from eating my face” stage of problem solving. Fancier questions like post-apocalyptic economics and societal structures will have gotten little thought.
If your goal is to argue “Money should be somewhere near its current real world value”, then that’s gonna be a dead end road. The projects had these debates for a decade now, and they never go in favor of “Old money should be valued”. In the short term view, nobody will prioritize cash over food, so nobody will give you food for cash, and in the long term, the preexisting paper money has lost all association to the economic surplus it represents, having been looted or destroyed, so has minimal real world value. What replaces it is also a popular discussion topic, but these faction scripts are quite a reasonable and realistic mid to long term alternative - Even if people did agree other things had value, local currencies have always been a thing historically. Apocalypse is likely no different.
yes it could, but I’m not talking about that.
realistically, if a cataclysm like this happened, people would go to their bank and withdraw, not realizing it wouldn’t be as useful as it is in a society.
I know that the game starts in some weird time warped period after the cataclysm, but canonically it starts ~3 days after. but my point is people wouldn’t realize things won’t be getting back to normal, so they would think money still holds it value, leading to you (the player) being able to ‘buy’ stuff with the money.
Also no I don’t keep it, its a space filler, doesn’t have any uses, and paper is extremely common, in pretty much every single building (also I literally can’t recall any time I have ‘needed’ paper for anything). Coins don’t give enough metal for how tedious it is to carry them around, and there is much better sources of copper. And same thing with wallets, the material they provide, is outweighed by other sources, and how tedious it is.
I know, but what are those barter values based around? Money. And I still think, at east earlier on in the cataclysm, people wouldn’t realize money had lost its value, so the early survivors would still need money, and use it for trades. Also a side note: I don’t know how much this would add gameplay wise, but maybe sometime in the future, the bartering system could be changed beyond “this is the exact item price, it will never change based on anything, and you have to add your pricing to a ‘cart’ before you ‘check out’”
I may have not yet experienced it? but I don’t think I have ever encountered a survivor actually looking to trade anything, beyond “get me this item for a quest so you can recruit me”
Yes that is kind of my goal, I believe that at least early game, money would still hold value, at least until people realized nothing is going back to normal. And then later game, I believe some of the bigger factions should simulate supply and demand, increasing and decreasing prices, not it just being universally the same throughout every single faction.
Also another side note: pls make merch, and other coins be able to stack in inventory. It’s quite annoying when you complete a quest for 200 merch and then have to scroll through each one in your inventory to find a different item.
Literally just a UI convenience, since it has to be denominated in something. It’d be more confusing to try and denominate them in “scrapcoin” or “jiffycreds”.
No, they wouldn’t, they just need to agree on the value of their goods and which ones they want to trade for what.
Then your belief is wrong, and that’s all there is to it. Feel free to employ the forum search functionality if you want to see where this conversation goes, I’m growing tired of rehashing it.
Im sorry. I may be confused on the point of this forum. I am under the impression it is used for players, fans, etc… to put out their ideas, what they think would make the game better etc…
Dont get me wrong, im for sure not going to learn coding just to add this little detail to the game, but little did i know that this idea was “wrong” or that the forum, shouldn’t be used to put out ideas because “you are tired of rehashing”. But not everyone has been here since 2013, and not everyone knows every single topic that has been created since then. I understand that you are a developer or patron or whatever. But because you remember a specific topic from 2014 or whatever doesnt mean everyone does, which also doesnt mean that the post is centered around if “you are tired of it”.
I appreciate you explaining the U.I and stuff. But telling me that my idea is “wrong” doesnt help anybody, i came here to argue for an idea, and if i made a compelling case, i hoped someone who is more devoted to the game then me, would add it maybe.
Also this game has over a decade of history, i can tell you for sure. Im not going to search through the thousands if posts to see if someone had a similar idea in 2016, for fear of “boring of the developers”. If i have what i think is a good idea, i will post it.
Among other things, sure. Its more for the community, not really any particular developer hotspot of attention. Remember, devs are mostly adding things they want, or things they think they need to then make the things they want. Just happens that the peanut gallery over here convinces them of an idea once in a blue moon.
Its not wrong, and your not somehow forbidden from it. I was simply saying I have grown tired of rehashing it. All the other interested parties in this conversation are more than welcome to carry forward.
s’not about boring the developers. s’bout the fact that this ‘good idea’ has been proposed probably a dozen times already in various ways, and each one falls to the same problem, which is inane bickering on what situation they might be willing to trade their last bottle of water for a piece of paper they can find anywhere, to the first and last person they’ll see in a week.
This game is incredible, it is probably one of the most detailed and complex out there. There is an innate problem with the reception to the community it seems though. Which I will admit as a relatively new player is off-putting.
And that was my goal. Not to offend anyone, which somehow seemed to happen as a collateral.
That’s the thing, it doesn’t have to be their “last” of anything, Most people wouldn’t trade their last necessity anyway. But I think it would make the game more immersive, where you would have to search around and find little scraps of paper to get some food, as a second alternative to finding your own. It would also slightly simulate an economy, creating even more variables and things for the player to have to think about. I’m assuming (if) someone were to add this they would make sure Npc’s aren’t just giving away their most valuable items for paper. I feel like this would set up a lot of other features in the future, so it wouldn’t be just a giant waste of time. Because right now the bartering system is a little dry, functional, but dry. Maybe hiding the values to make the player have to guestimate what is worth trading, or even having Npc’s and factions offer trades themselves?
Just some ideas I think would improve that area of the game. And for the people getting pressed about this: there is no reason not to improve, its almost counterintuitive to not improve. But once again its just some ideas.
Don’t worry, no offense has been given. Just exasperation knowing that the topic will turn into a grind, yknow?
Welcome to the apocalypse, where all manufacturing and agriculture at scale has ceased. Everything anyone would care about is the last of anything.
You still haven’t explained why this person would want my scraps of paper. If he wants my bullets, he will ask for bullets, not offer me scraps of paper for them.
Remember, any currency represents value, at its heart. If you can just go out and find dollars, why would this person who can go scavenge food want my dollars. He presumably found as many as I did, and can find them by the same means I did.
Settlements with merchants and their own script are all the economy that remains. They even value some goods more than others, like the guy who will pay special for certain bulk and preserved goods. The old world economy is dead, it died in nuclear fire and biological contamination. There’s nothing in that economy left to simulate. Stands to reason its tokens of value are just as dead.
I can agree with this, NPC interactions in general are pretty dry.
Hiding the values would be stupid, hiding relevant information from the player would just lead to frustration when you want a thing, and have no idea how much value you should bring for it. Having NPC’s offer to trade themselves isn’t a problem, but more of a situation - Wandering merchants aren’t really a thing, and having someone run up asking to trade with you and all they have is a bottle of water and a pair of filthy shoes they’re willing to sell would be weird. Finding the right characters to do so would be a challenge, as it doesn’t make much sense for someone to wander with a rickshaw through a hellscape with a whole bunch of valuables.
I agree with the sentiment, we just disagree over whether it would be an improvement. I believe that old world currency having any monetary value beyond its paper would be a massive economic regression in the games system, back to when NPC’s used to be willing to take cash card value, and you’d clear someone of everything other than the clothes on their back with a credit card you found in a random basement. It was removed because it was stupid.
Several points that need making or improvement on.
“Money should keep its value!”
In terms of an “apocalypse” or a large scale war, money would not matter for the locally affected people. People would not care about getting [insert_now_dead_government_currency_here] in exchange for supplies or a particular service they can provide in a time of need. The people that are trying to, you know, avoid being killed will most likely want to trade in goods, and the goods values would be very much based on their availability, importance and ease of acquisition.
1.1. The moment a war starts, there are several side effects towards economy (be it localized or international), and one of them is the currency losing a ton of its value or outright becoming worth as much as dust in the international panorama. And once the war is over, it would then take years - decades sometimes - for it to go back to pre-war levels, this assuming the affected country would not change it’s financial / economic policies radically or have a specific economic philosophy forced upon them by a bigger country.
Realistically if the world ended like it did in this game. People would still hang on to their money, this soon after the cataclysm.
No. Of course, this game has become a mishmash of all of the scifi tropes any given person can throw into it but even in the event something as preposterous as what happens in the game happened in real life, no one (literally no one) would be wanting to keep their money for trading purposes. The first thing most people would do in cases like these (ie a world war) would be to grab all the essential stuff (medication, long-term food, comfortable but durable clothing, some tools) and leave to a safer place. No one would care as to whether the government is still around or if the economy is still doing its usual “haha funny red bar in graph goes up” thing. People would be more concerned with surviving -ie not dying.
This could mean trying to find and go to a government bunker or a mountain, or a cave, or somewhere, preferably away from an urban environment, that is unlikely to be targeted by military equipment. And no. No one who wants to survive would go out of their way during a war / apocalypse to go to their bank and withdraw all their money - because the banks would also be closed too.
2.1. Not everyone carries money with them - in some countries, it is more likely people will pay by card than with money. I don’t know what the case is in the USA because each state has its individual quirks, but if I judge it based on the game alone, literally everyone who owns a wallet has money with them, this includes every single possible zombie that has an inventory.
2.2 You can still withdraw money in the game in the ATMs. You can also deposit money and add it to your cash cards to them spend through vending machines - said ATMs vending machines that literally should not work after the powergrid is turned off but anyway. So the money DOES have uses other than serving as paper for crafting - which by itself is a much better use than depositing it in your cash card.
The “Bartering System” is not based on currency. The currency we see, as someone else pointed out, is just a visual guidance for you to have a familiar thing to look at. In-World the characters would not tell you “this is worth dollars.” - in fact, some NPCs even tell you stuff is worth Merch or Coin, with one in particular telling you how much they hate that system. So when you see an item having a barter value of … idk. “300 dollars”, that’s just for your guidance to understand that this is a valuable thing for the setting, so you can expect other survivors to pay you with really good stuff if they want your particular item. This is based on a “service-for-service” system, sort of - kind of like in medieval times, most craftsmen would pay for eachothers’ services with their own: the blacksmith would sharpen the tailor’s knives in exchange for the tailor mending their clothes. In the event of a large scale war: no one, literally, would take your pre-war currency in exchange for a piece of their food. We’ve had enough wars in the past 150 years to know this for a fact
“Simulating an economy” doesn’t work - even though we already kind of have that with the Hub money, the Merch, etc, which honestly is kinda offputting knowing that they work everywhere as a centralized currency, when they should only be accepted by the people issuing them as an “IOU System”, but I digress.
“Money” is just a generalized and centralized (government-controlled) way for people to have an easier way to access goods and necessities IRL - if the issuer of that “currency” collapses, that currency stops holding any value it may have. In this case, as someone else pointed out: the economy has died the moment the large scale war began. (now called “Cataclysm” or “apocalypse”). THe entity responsible for printing, valuing and distributing the currency is dead and half the remaining population is mentally unbalanced due to “reasons™”. The player already has “a lot to have to think about” in regards to how to survive, where to go, where to find sustenance and what to do after that. Money, literally, would solve none of these problems, because everyone already knows that the world is screwed - which is why most of the NPCs you find are alone, scavenging for survivability. That’s why there are already bandit groups and other factions established with their own goals and internal “economy”. And all of them don’t recognize money as a valuable thing. Even “precious ores and gems” are worthless too for 99% of the survivors.
Hiding relevant information from the player is a bad practice, and that is already something that happens in the game a lot - hiding the radiation levels from the @ screen, or having the nonsensically-cryptic Temperature System in the + (Clothing Layers Menu), or the lighting system being controlled by a “Bright, cloudy, shady, dark, very dark” system that has been intentionally misleading due to the “variable light system” that doesn’t work properly and doesn’t properly report to the player (one can be in “very dark” and still be seen by a creature anyway, which can lead to unfair deaths because the system is both poorly implement and poorly explained to the player.). So no, “hiding the values” would be a silly thing to do.
“I am not learning how to do code to do something so small.”
Something that looks “small” does not mean that it will only take 2 minutes to figure out and implement. It’s kind of weird everytime I see this argument because you are essentially just downplaying the effort that goes into “small” things. And this is not even mentioning when some of the stuff suggested can actually mess with or outright break other functionalities.
You also don’t need to “learn how to code.” Json editing is easy if you really want to do anything in terms of modifications or additions and there are guides for it. But keep in mind that you saying you don’t want to bother doing something because you demand someone else to do it will actually just have people completely ignore you and your input. That’s a very presumptuous attitude at best and very akin to saying that other people’s actual efforts into adding stuff to the game is not valuable enough for you to consider learning the 1% of the skill you need to do it yourself.
The only thing real money can have value to is vending machines. They are programmed to. In game they don’t take paper and coins and only accept cash cards. Cash cards in game are unrealistic but convenient.
No, I think money should keep at least some of its value, but also, it doesn’t immediately plummet to nothing as long as their is atleast a little bit of what its actual value is based off, still exists (the U.S gold reserves for example)
I don’t think you understand, most people wouldn’t even realize they would need to trade from now on, a nice thing about humans in general, is that they have hope, so the survivors would most likely hope and believe things would go back to normal, and then realize over time it wouldn’t. But they still would keep money thinking they could but stuff, which would lead to early game, buying from Npc’s.
Obviously people would find shelter, they also would look for loved ones, and try to take their most valued possessions. The Jumbled timeline in-game mixes up some of the details, and I think it would be easier to accept the idea if it was based off a legitimate apocalypse.
Also once again the jumbled timeline mixes stuff up, since the game takes place some time in a alternate nearby reality, most people would most likely carry a card, which by coincidence is completely beside the point. Idc what kind of money whether its paper, or card, I still think it should have a more prominent even if only early game.
That was completely throwaway idea for improving the current trade system, so don’t worry I’m not stuck on that.
This absolutely is small compared to the scope of the game, and at no point did i say it would take two minutes. I realize someone would have to put time and effort, and im not that invested into this idea to do it myself, but if someone else is inspired, this is who its for.
That’s learning how to code.
I’m not born with knowledge no matter how easy it is.
I don’t know where in the post thread you heard anybody say or even reference anything close to that. But I was suggesting ideas, and trying to defend the idea, not demanding anything.
Once again, at what point did anybody say that?
I don’t seem to recall saying that I don’t care for other peoples efforts. I was seeing if someone with knowledge for what they’re doing likes the idea and would want to add this in some way. Clearly that’s not you, but I can still try.
Anyway I can tell I’m fighting for a lost cause, but maybe someone out there likes the idea and can add this as a mod or something idk.
Why? The U.S dollar hasn’t been backed by any hard currency for decades and, even if our paper money still were certificates of exchange for silver the way they used to be, why would silver still hold value to anyone?
Cash WOULD have value, but only in bulk or as a nostalgia/ego thing.
There was an old 80s apocalypse novel I read a long time ago. Basically a meteor hits destroying most of humanity and SHTF.
But, in the middle of the destruction was this one car dealership owner that lived at and maintained his business.
The protagonists were in need of a car - in particular a SUV.
Dealer had like 12 SUVs. They wanted to bargain with the guy, but had nothing to trade for it. But they DID have 100K or so in 1980s cash (around 250K today).
The dealer eventually agreed to it for the mere fact that if he would have sold the SUV before the apocalypse, it would have been the best deal he would have ever made.
Thing I do not get, though, is cash cards. Those things would be worthless since while yes, there are machines hooked to portable power and have cellular/satellite communications and satellites would still function for a few years, the bank databases would go down in a week, tops.
Paper money only gets its value from the federal reserves and wealth of the country it represents. If there is no government, paper money is no longer valid. And coin values are supposed to be equal to the metal they contain.
But in the apocalypse, I would prefer some bread fair above coins…
Nothing, both normal and reinforced vending machines can be bashed open (No disassembly recipe) with enough application of force. Doing so will usually trigger an eyebot and ensuing police robot response though. Buying items will not trigger an automated robotic response.
