I had a XS gameplay idea to put a pin in for later. Some parts of the game will be similar in spirit to "dungeon" exploration from Roguelikes and one of the problems with that is excess loot. Players will want to carry out everything and sell it all to save up for something. So I had this idea:
At some point the player gets a comm frequency for a guild of traders somehow. When they want to sell stuff they bundle it all up and cache it. Then at some later point in game time the traders' recovery team gets out there and takes possession of the loot and credits their account. They can then use this credit to buy stuff. This opens all kinds of interesting possibilities. Like what if you could also have goods delivered to set places. So you rack up a bunch of credits before a long trip and then order a bunch of water caches and have them placed strategically along your planned route. These caches would not be inviolate btw. There would be a small chance some one else finds them both when buying or selling and you just get screwed. Maybe there could even be certain monster types that were like cache raiders and watched the players to try and raid their shit after they left it.
I think this adds new gameplay dimensions and neatly solved the "carrying everything back to town over and over" syndrome. Maybe players would still carry low weight high value items like gemstones or some such back to sell in person bc of the risk of them being stolen before the traders arrive to collect them but they would be free to keep "moving forward" into new areas instead of having to grind.
Also if we have consumable items like food and medicines lose potency and this value over time, this could fix another problem of "potion hoarding" in an interesting way. Players would be willing to use things and not hoard them if they lost value over time and they were reimbursed at the time of pickup. Then the choice becomes use this food now or get a severely reduced return in credits when the traders arrive later and the item is degraded severely.
I had a XS gameplay idea to put a pin in for later. Some parts of the game will be similar in spirit to "dungeon" exploration from Roguelikes and one of the problems with that is excess loot. Players will want to carry out everything and sell it all to save up for something. So I had this idea:
At some point the player gets a comm frequency for a guild of traders somehow. When they want to sell stuff they bundle it all up and cache it. Then at some later point in game time the traders' recovery team gets out there and takes possession of the loot and credits their account. They can then use this credit to buy stuff. This opens all kinds of interesting possibilities. Like what if you could also have goods delivered to set places. So you rack up a bunch of credits before a long trip and then order a bunch of water caches and have them placed strategically along your planned route. These caches would not be inviolate btw. There would be a small chance some one else finds them both when buying or selling and you just get screwed. Maybe there could even be certain monster types that were like cache raiders and watched the players to try and raid their shit after they left it. I think this adds new gameplay dimensions and neatly solved the "carrying everything back to town over and over" syndrome. Maybe players would still carry low weight high value items like gemstones or some such back to sell in person bc of the risk of them being stolen before the traders arrive to collect them but they would be free to keep "moving forward" into new areas instead of having to grind. Also if we have consumable items like food and medicines lose potency and this value over time, this could fix another problem of "potion hoarding" in an interesting way. Players would be willing to use things and not hoard them if they lost value over time and they were reimbursed at the time of pickup. Then the choice becomes use this food now or get a severely reduced return in credits when the traders arrive later and the item is degraded severely.