Way too much money

My most recent character is a Samedi with a haggle feat of 7. That's a fairly good score and should probably allow me to afford quite a bit. However, I just reached chinatown and it's gotten a little silly. I'm sitting at over $6,000 in my wallet, AFTER buying all of the skill books from Akeem and Jimmy, multiple times in the case of the books that can be used twice. I also have a hacking feat of 8, and I haven't even bothered to go back and hack ANY bank accounts. I also stopped bothering to collect money from Venus after the first couple of times.

I suggest rebalancing the money gains so that you need a high haggle score AND lockpicking/hacking just to afford all of the skill books. If the player wants to afford all of the armor and weapons too, maybe make them have to consider selling off their occult items. Either that or make the books at least twice as expensive.

How much money have you spent on weapons and armor? Have you bought any occult items?

Dragatus wrote:

How much money have you spent on weapons and armor? Have you bought any occult items?

I spent about $900-1,200 total on weapons and armor so far. I haven't bought any occult items, but I just checked and I can afford all of them that pertain to me without going back to hack any bank accounts. I feel like I should have to pick and choose, but maybe that's just me.

I don't think, making the books even more expensive is a good idea. My character is haggle 5 and I have skipped about half of the books. I'm about to enter Griffith Park now, and it's only recently that I have any money to spare. And what I have is probably just enough to buy ammo for the bloodhunt, and if Mercurio sells it, the body armor.
Ok, I didn't bother much with hacking accounts and picking strongboxes because I consider humanity loss for a few bucks too high a price.
I have bought 6 low grade, 4 mid grade, and 2 high grade books, the 3 armors, the Steyr, some ammo, Saulocept, and the Weekapaug Thistle.
I think, the balance between base money and the bonus for high haggling is a bit off in TFN.
Having to chose is a good idea, but not if you can afford nothing at haggle 3 or less and drown in money at 8 or so...

Childe of Malkav wrote:

I don't think, making the books even more expensive is a good idea. My character is haggle 5 and I have skipped about half of the books. I'm about to enter Griffith Park now, and it's only recently that I have any money to spare. And what I have is probably just enough to buy ammo for the bloodhunt, and if Mercurio sells it, the body armor.
Ok, I didn't bother much with hacking accounts and picking strongboxes because I consider humanity loss for a few bucks too high a price.
I have bought 6 low grade, 4 mid grade, and 2 high grade books, the 3 armors, the Steyr, some ammo, Saulocept, and the Weekapaug Thistle.
I think, the balance between base money and the bonus for high haggling is a bit off in TFN.
Having to chose is a good idea, but not if you can afford nothing at haggle 3 or less and drown in money at 8 or so...

Perhaps just nerf the quest reward bonuses from haggle a bit then? It will remain valuable as a pseudo dialogue skill regardless, and who doesn't love literal five dollar whores?

I enjoy 'balancing' threads, I find them fun to figure out what the best option is.

After including the Hacking and Lockpicking rewards and not hiding any of the items that are found outside of the main 4 hubs or the pier/haven, it makes sense that you would be swimming in money with a Haggle feat of 5.

This has been changed in TFN 1.4 quite a bit. I've hidden every single item in the game including some quest items, keys, and things we took for granite like the morphine in Malcolm's office that you can give to Mercurio for XP and Humanity. Now these items must be found with Inspection making you choose between Inspection or buying the Morphine from Trip for $100. Situations like this will force you to invest in Inspection or miss out on many sellable items. This will spread out your XP or you can choose to specialize and be great at 1 or 2 things but miss out on other things. Money won't be quite as abundant in 1.4 because you simply won't have as much XP to invest in Haggle, or you can invest in Haggle but miss out on sellable items that you previously had access too.

I'm playing a female Baali with the Lemonade Stand background and I'm struggling to make decisions on how I want to play her. My Haggle started at 4 so I have money, however I don't have the Inspection to see anything so if I want to heal Mercurio, or con Copper out of his money by selling him the stake, I have to buy these things. It's a wonderful balance in 1.4 and I'm excited to release this update!

Zer0Morph wrote:

I enjoy 'balancing' threads, I find them fun to figure out what the best option is.

After including the Hacking and Lockpicking rewards and not hiding any of the items that are found outside of the main 4 hubs or the pier/haven, it makes sense that you would be swimming in money with a Haggle feat of 5.

This has been changed in TFN 1.4 quite a bit. I've hidden every single item in the game including some quest items, keys, and things we took for granite like the morphine in Malcolm's office that you can give to Mercurio for XP and Humanity. Now these items must be found with Inspection making you choose between Inspection or buying the Morphine from Trip for $100. Situations like this will force you to invest in Inspection or miss out on many sellable items. This will spread out your XP or you can choose to specialize and be great at 1 or 2 things but miss out on other things. Money won't be quite as abundant in 1.4 because you simply won't have as much XP to invest in Haggle, or you can invest in Haggle but miss out on sellable items that you previously had access too.

I'm playing a female Baali with the Lemonade Stand background and I'm struggling to make decisions on how I want to play her. My Haggle started at 4 so I have money, however I don't have the Inspection to see anything so if I want to heal Mercurio, or con Copper out of his money by selling him the stake, I have to buy these things. It's a wonderful balance in 1.4 and I'm excited to release this update!

Man, I was already hyped for the presence and auspex changes in 1.4. Now you're just getting cruel. Put me in torpor until it's out, please.

Zer0Morph wrote:

things we took for granite

Did You Mean: Taken For Granite? (Click me, I'm linkbait)

Griff wrote:

Man, I was already hyped for the presence and auspex changes in 1.4. Now you're just getting cruel. Put me in torpor until it's out, please.

Yeah Griff, 1.4 is freaking difficult because of the plethora of choices on where to spend your XP and suddenly everything has become necessary and valuable. Not being able to see anything including things like Pisha's fetish items, the morphine for Mercurio, the stake for Copper, the keys to people's offices, etc... REALLY makes you think twice about dumping all of your XP into Haggle. And now that Auspex and Presence really serve as a function outside of combat, suddenly those two disciplines appear on the radar as viable choices to specialize in too.

Too many choices in 1.4? Perhaps, but we love choices don't we?

Oh, did I mentioned that I made Malcolm leave the clinic when the Blueblood with the broken down car does? No more free blood. Oh yeah, and the dancing guests at the Skyline leave too if you attack anyone, no more free blood there either. Suddenly Seduction seems more viable.

Eliza wrote:

Did You Mean: Taken For Granite? (Click me, I'm linkbait)

Have I told you to kiss my butt lately?

Zer0Morph wrote:

Oh yeah, and the dancing guests at the Skyline leave too if you attack anyone, no more free blood there either. Suddenly Seduction seems more viable.

You mean Boris' place at the hotel? Becasue I don't remember any dancers in Skyline apartments.

Dragatus wrote:

You mean Boris' place at the hotel? Becasue I don't remember any dancers in Skyline apartments.

Oops yeah, Empire Arms. Typo

Zer0Morph wrote:

Oh, did I mentioned that I made Malcolm leave the clinic when the Blueblood with the broken down car does?

Why would he leave? He has the whole night shift. Also what happens to his patient then, will he dissappear too?

Zer0Morph wrote:

Oh, did I mentioned that I made Malcolm leave the clinic when the Blueblood with the broken down car does? No more free blood. Oh yeah, and the dancing guests at the Skyline leave too if you attack anyone, no more free blood there either. Suddenly Seduction seems more viable.

If you want to avoid constant feeding on him, make him human combattant instead of pedestrian. Comabttants don't refill.

Zer0Morph wrote:

Eliza wrote:

Did You Mean: Taken For Granite? (Click me, I'm linkbait)

Have I told you to kiss my butt lately?

Bad idea. Then you have a clean butt and Eliza has a bad taste on the tongue.

I do agree though, that the game has balance issues at least XP and money wise. I recommended removing the xp gain from hacking already. I feel like I have no use for either the XP or money in the game after a certain point (which is around hallowbrook). Of course I could invest the money for books, which I need research first. So, its wasting XP to maybe gain XP (aka skill points). And for what? More XP due to skill requirements?

The same is with money. I think there need to be special gimmiks to buy. Custommade Guns, stuff like that. For special customers. Maybe a lockpick that gives +1 to lockpicking, because its that damn good. Or some laptop and stuff. I certainly would like to have more money dumps. Different cloths could be another one. I want to individualize my character somewhat appearance wise. After all, its an RPG and most skyrim mods you see are new wardrobes, etc.

I got like 8000 cash and nothing I want to invest the money into (why should he learn unarmed combat and so on, he is a hacker after all, most weapons are dropped - and no please don't remove the loot from the goons). I feel like a god damn millionaire, but cannot buy me something special.

Is there some script to make grenades? Would be aweome. We give the game so many options to earn money and xp, but I think we are at the step where we either should make it harder to level up your character (new Malkav way of increasing XP cost) or give other goodies.

As a storytell we could call that crunchy bits. Every character wants its crunchy bit. This can be totally different. From an RPG spotlight during the session, a good fight for someone that like the combat, a new bow for the player that like to play archers only, and so on. Now, with a pc game its somewhat different, but also not. Players look for the best ranged weapon, the aggravated sword, the best occult item, etc.

We should give them more. Reward them with something special. A quest only for certain players (hacker quest) could be one thing, but additional goodies to buy and invest in like a high-end laptop that gives a hacking bonus (or additional money from hacking, or whatnot) could be even more appropriate.

Cretino is right, even though I do not agree with everything he says or wants, that the game really only supports 3 ways of playing it. While we might never be able to change that fully, we should give the player to try anyways. Incentives for new ways to play need to be implemented.

wesp5 wrote:

Zer0Morph wrote:

Oh, did I mentioned that I made Malcolm leave the clinic when the Blueblood with the broken down car does?

Why would he leave? He has the whole night shift. Also what happens to his patient then, will he dissappear too?

Cutbacks on the budget, I dunno. His patient leaves with him. Apparently Malcolm healed him and went home.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

Bad idea. Then you have a clean butt and Eliza has a bad taste on the tongue.

Eeewwww...

@Kyoden

Remember, you're playing 1.3.1, not the new 1.4 and I agree with you guys that 1.3.1 is too abundant with XP and Money. I do have ideas on new inventive ways to spend your money but I don't want to give that away just yet. Plus I know 1.4 with its new features and systems make everything tougher so let me continue to design, play test, and reward balance and we'll see where we are in a month or two.

I'm thinking I may have a 1 month beta test for 1.4 specifically for balance testing. I'll want someone to build an Auspex/Inspection character, another for Presence, another for Haggle, another for Hacking, another for Lockpicking, and see where we're at.

No, Malcolm didn't go home. He's searching for the missing patient. You know, the girl with the internal bleeding who by rights should be dead when he is finished with the bullet in the head guy.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

No, Malcolm didn't go home. He's searching for the missing patient. You know, the girl with the internal bleeding who by rights should be dead when he is finished with the bullet in the head guy.

A doctor going to search for a missing patient? Uh, I would think that would be something the police would be called to do. Which makes it a problem with the Masquerade, since it brings up the obvious quest of how the hell she just walked out of there perfectly healthy when she was never treated - and even more how she walked out in bloody clothes and nobody stopped her. So maybe you may have to do more before she leaves, like first convincing Malcolm that she has already been treated(perhaps lying that the other doctor he mentions already arrived some time ago and treated her), and you would have to either convince the nurse at the front desk to do the paper work to release her(or perhaps you could forge the paperwork from Malcolm's PC, or from the Administration office). Perhaps the details in her patient file would need to be changed as well, after Malcolm is convinced of it.

If Malcolm does disappear from the clinic, it would more likely be that he'd be somewhere you could not access, like locked in his office - perhaps making it so that the key you have won't work(if you still have it), and if you never picked it up, that key is gone.

Really guys, you're over thinking this WAY too much. Malcolm left, the dude with the bullet in his head died, so he went home to make sweet love to Paige his wife. Nuff said...

kyoden wrote:

Cretino is right, even though I do not agree with everything he says or wants, that the game really only supports 3 ways of playing it. While we might never be able to change that fully, we should give the player to try anyways. Incentives for new ways to play need to be implemented.

When did I ever say that? I must be genius.
But Zero is right: recently im glad that it will be hard to just powergame-playthrough with all the new systems.
I believe Fortitude+Wits+Ranged will be the way to go, but only time will tell.

Well, I gave it some thought and even though Inspection will be more relied upon in 1.4 and you won't be able to see any items, keys, etc... without it, I decided to do a mass XP and Haggle reward rebalance anyways.

Basically, I went through the entire game and when outrageous amounts of XP are rewarded to the player, I took a little off the top. Then I went through the entire game and wherever Haggle effected the money reward amount, I shaved some off the top of that as well. Then I reduced all occult sell values by 25%.

I think a combination of the rebalances along with the Inspection System will definitely make TFN 1.4 much tougher on deciding what to invest in. You shouldn't have gobs of XP and money by the end of the game but should still be pretty powerful by Chinatown. The best to really know is to get a team to play through it as different styles of characters and see what they think.

One thing I was very careful about was not reducing money or XP in Santa Monica, I took more from Chinatown and Hollywood and left SM alone because the crazy amounts of XP and money come later in the game and I want the player to still feel like he's making progress early on.

Nice, have you give the "goodie" idea some thought? High end equipment and stuff. Those could be incentives for the next playthrough to go that route as you can see that they are supported.

I have given some thought to it but we'll need to sit down and really hash it all out. Right now I'm short on free items since I reintroduced all the new occult ones. I like the idea but need some time to figure out... Ideas from you and the community are always welcome.

Zer0Morph wrote:

Really guys, you're over thinking this WAY too much. Malcolm left, the dude with the bullet in his head died, so he went home to make sweet love to Paige his wife. Nuff said...

I think Malcolm should stay there until you finish the Werewolf blood quest. But making it go earlier isn't a bad idea

Zer0Morph wrote:

I have given some thought to it but we'll need to sit down and really hash it all out. Right now I'm short on free items since I reintroduced all the new occult ones. I like the idea but need some time to figure out... Ideas from you and the community are always welcome.

PM'd