[CF-Devel] High level money drainage ideas

[pstolarc at theperlguru.com]

On Mon, 02 Sep 2002, Mark Wedel wrote:

>>
     
      Siphon money from high level chars: They have enough money that they won't
     
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      even notice it.  This is better solved by having some really expensive
     
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      items.  Something like in-game dungeon design, where real estate costs lots
     
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      of money, and so do tiles that the player can place.
     
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       The real-estate has of course been talked about.  That is really the only 
     
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     other way to get rid of money - other high valued items don't do anything, 
     
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     because no one ever buys them.
     
     
It's not the *only* other way of getting rid of money.  The "Lost Wages"
mapset that I was workiing on, on mids, was another way of draining money.
Gambling, pet fights, a pet shop (mostly for sending to the pet arena).

(These ideas are from off the top of my head.)

Maybe some really expensive to buy alchemical ingredients, for some weird,
but highly useful alchemical formulae that can only be obtained through
alchemy.

BTW, here's how I would implement the real-estate idea.  A special entrance
for the pseudoDM.  They enter a map that is a Platonic ideal of the real
map.  The monster gens don't work.  Monsters are frozen.  The pseudo-DM
player is able to walk through walls, pick up *anything*, and drop
*anything*.  Monster gens and treasure gens only respawn on the "for
players" map a limited number of times, but can be stacked to increase the
total.  When a player enters the map, through the for-players entrance,
then everything gets spawned. counts are decreased, etc.  I'm sure the
people who played with the idea will have something to say about it.

Next idea,; this can only be done a few times before it gets old, but
dungeons with an entrance fee.  It should be something fairly high, and
have a decent reward at the end.

Maybe some kind of health club map, with different levels of membership.
Not really anything useful, but a new map to explore and play around with.

A bar with expensive wine and beer.  I know that I, as a high level char,
spend a lot of time idle, just sitting around.  Recently, I've started
hanging around in bars instead of in bed.  I would "invoke create food
w_glass" on the table in front of me, but I wouldn't be adverse to spending
some money for some good wine.  It wouldn't be a huge drain, but it would
be a use for some of all that money.

Monsters that instead of causing damage, remove (steal) cash.  You need to
get a certain amount of money past the monsters to finish the quest
segment.  Difficult to fine tune against spell manipulation.

(Some of the following ideas aren't mine.  They're from my idea file.)

I had a quest idea for the castle in Lost Wages.  You have to run around
paying bribes to every little official, working up the chain.  "To see the
prince, you need a pass from the grand viceroy"  "You need a pass from the
clerk to see the viceroy"  Clerk sells pass, and "You need to get this
stamped by the secretary to the prince"  and so on.  And you're only
allowed in to the castle if you're nobility, (working in the nobility
quests from Scorn).

Custom Tombstones,	either change the appearance/description of tombstones
based on level, or allow the player to buy more expensive tombstones.  ie.
"Wooden cross nailed to the ground"  "small tombstone"  "large tombstone"
"small, gem encrusted tombstone"  And so on.

Anyway, I hope this counters the "only other way to get rid of money"
argument.  And maybe someone will see some ideas here that they like, or be
inspired with some ideas of their own.

-Philip