Why is the Economy in this game so unbalanced?

[SadonicShadow]

New Vegas is not the only Fallout with a really unbalanced economy but it is by far the worst offender. New Vegas is an amazing game in every respect and it is my favorite Fallout hands down but the lack of balance when it comes to trading and getting money bothers me alot.

Starting out the game feels balanced money wise. Getting enough money to buy decent weapons, ammo, armor, meds etc can take some time but once you start leveling up and playing the game more any semblence of balance goes out the window. Whenever i want money in this game i have to do one thing and one thing only. Sell weapons and armor. That is it. That is all it takes to get so much money that you don't know what to do with it all.

I can clear out Camp forlorne hope and walk away with multiple NCR Ranger armor, anti material rifles, Snipers etc. Jury rig them and you have easily 30,000+ caps worth of weapons and armor. I also use ceasars drop boxes with its delicous amounts of ammo and that is another 20,000 caps without any effort. I end up with more ♥♥♥♥ to sell then the vendors in the game have caps to spare even after i use barter to buy items i need.

Even if i dont cheese the game with ceasars drop box or murdering forlone hope every 3 days just selling all the expensive weapons i get from killing high tier enemies on my travels gives me a ridiculous surplus of money.

I personally feel Obsidian could have done a much better job at balancing this games economy because currently it just feels like easy mode. There is no sense of scarcity or need to conserve anything because you can just buy more of it in vast amounts and it wont matter.

Fallout 3 did a better job at balancing the game. Caps were harder to stock pile because item values were much lower. A fully repaired Sniper rifle in Fallout 3 sells for 300 caps. That same rifle in New Vegas sells for 4100 caps. I dont even think there is a single item in Fallout 3 that sells for that much let alone 8000+ caps for anti material rifles and ranger armor.

Obsidian should have drastically lowered the item values by using Fallout 3 as an example and then using logic to increase/decrease prices based upon the geographic location. For example vendors near lake mead would sell water for 20 caps where as a vendor at Mojave Outpost might have to sell water for 40 - 60 caps a bottle do to scarcity. Same goes for ammo. Gun runners have cheaper ammo in higher quantities but a traveling merchant will screw you over for a couple rounds of 9mm.

There was so many things that could be done to make the economy feel more authentic and have it make sense. I know this sort of turned into a rant but i felt it was something that needed to be said. The economy is broken. does anyone know of any mods that would overhaul the economy and bring it more inline with my ideas?

[psychotron666]

>economy is broken, too easy to make money
>uses jury rig to repair equipment to make the money (a perk that requires a 90 repair skill and level 14 minimum)

Who would have thought that a high level perk would help out so much?

[life is a simulation]

Im not 100% sure this mod will meet your requirment but i tried

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/62899

The mod rehauls the price for armor and weapon so u wont get rich by selling them as the amount of caps the vender has is also lowered and it does a few other things to make it as fnv as it can get

[SadonicShadow]

Originally posted by life is a simulation:

Im not 100% sure this mod will meet your requirment but i tried

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/62899

The mod rehauls the price for armor and weapon so u wont get rich by selling them as the amount of caps the vender has is also lowered and it does a few other things to make it as fnv as it can get

Thank you for the link! This looks like a mod that tries to directly address my concern with the economy. I will try it out and see how it is.

[kwil]

Can't agree on this one. NV heavily improved the economy from Fallout 3 where you'd get a bunch of money and end up having nothing to spend it on. My complaint is more that this gives less incentive to explore and find stuff on your own. But leave your barter at its minimum and I think it's at its best balance that way.

[SadonicShadow]

Originally posted by psychotron666:

>economy is broken, too easy to make money
>uses jury rig to repair equipment to make the money (a perk that requires a 90 repair skill and level 14 minimum)

Who would have thought that a high level perk would help out so much?

The perk is easily one of the most useful perks in the game. Its almost insanity not to get it.

[Lucifer69]

Who uses barter anyways? I've never leveled it. The game throws caps at you. Get 9/10 luck and you can cheese gambling to no end.

Just increase the cost of everything by 100% and decrease sale value by 125%. Reduce the bonus of barter to nearly nothing. Reduce loot rarity to half vanilla value. After that kill the exploits like the one I mentioned then you'll be complaining about not having enough.

Funny that it takes that much effort to make the game almost unplayable. Even then you can still manage.

[Vassago Rain]

It's almost like it's a roleplaying game with a 3d engine, and 'making money,' or 'running the economy' aren't things that were even remotely part of the design sheet.

[LSD]

Most RPGs snowball like this. Bethesda games are the worst offenders.

[SadonicShadow]

Originally posted by LSD:

Most RPGs snowball like this. Bethesda games are the worst offenders.

Thats what i hate. Early and mid game the loot/trade economy is balanced fairly well but once you hit late game it just spirals out of control. Fallout 3 was the only one where i found it the most balanced but even that diden't stop me from being able to horde north of 100k with ease and afford all the ammo and supplies i could ever want from every single vendor. The good thing about Fallout 3 was that the vendors inventories were alot more modest. They might have only a handful of decent guns here and there and you could not buy hordes of ammo in bulk like you can in New Vegas. Further more the values on items were largely regulated so you couldent sell a few guns and have 15k with ease.

Personally speaking if i was in charge of the trade economy balance in a Fallout game i would have placed a great deal of emphasis on looting for 90% of your items with barter being a small part of the game if you need to pick up odds and ends for crafting or need a few mags of Ammo, etc. It should not be the whole sale buy everything in the game at one place with the vendor having 8,000 caps to trade with every 3 days. It just takes away any sense of late game challenge.

[Mister Holdout]

I didn't know being able to make lots of money in a Vegas-themed game was a bad idea.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also, you should know that there are really expensive items in this game.
Personally, I like it that way because you feel like you made a big purchase.

[SadonicShadow]

Originally posted by Mister Holdout:

I didn't know being able to make lots of money in a Vegas-themed game was a bad idea.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also, you should know that there are really expensive items in this game.
Personally, I like it that way because you feel like you made a big purchase.

Nothing wrong with money being a central theme in the game i just feel the developers could have done a much better job balancing it so that it diden't feel so overpowered. There are indeed alot of really expensive items. Most prominent being the special weapons that the gun runners arsenal added but to me all those expensive weapons dont even feel that expensive because all i have to do is trade a few good weapons that are easy to get and its mine with little effort on my part which is unfortunate because like you said. It is a big purchase especially in the context of early or mid game but late game the price in negligible.

If item values were heavily nerfed across the board and the upper limit of vendor cap availability being 1 - 2k with ammunition and weapon counts reduced in vendor inventories it feel alot more balanced especially if the big purchases like GRA weapons maintained their current values i couldent just outright buy them with a bit of guns and armor i picked up but have to really work and save my money before spending a significant chunk of my wealth on said purchases.

[Vassago Rain]

Originally posted by SadonicShadow:

Originally posted by LSD:

Most RPGs snowball like this. Bethesda games are the worst offenders.

Thats what i hate. Early and mid game the loot/trade economy is balanced fairly well but once you hit late game it just spirals out of control. Fallout 3 was the only one where i found it the most balanced but even that diden't stop me from being able to horde north of 100k with ease and afford all the ammo and supplies i could ever want from every single vendor. The good thing about Fallout 3 was that the vendors inventories were alot more modest. They might have only a handful of decent guns here and there and you could not buy hordes of ammo in bulk like you can in New Vegas. Further more the values on items were largely regulated so you couldent sell a few guns and have 15k with ease.

Personally speaking if i was in charge of the trade economy balance in a Fallout game i would have placed a great deal of emphasis on looting for 90% of your items with barter being a small part of the game if you need to pick up odds and ends for crafting or need a few mags of Ammo, etc. It should not be the whole sale buy everything in the game at one place with the vendor having 8,000 caps to trade with every 3 days. It just takes away any sense of late game challenge.

This has been proven to not work very well both in fallout 2 and tactics. By the end of both games, you scrounge for big piles of trash items, money, and other valuables to trade for the mandatory sets of power armor, special shotgun ammo, and etc, never spending more than you have up until that point, for any reason, since you're gonna need that mega inventory for the last stretch. Oh, no, your battle medic can't actually do medic stuff, because his supplies are too expensive, and you gotta save up for slug shotgun shells? Too bad! Just mutate his good natured trait for fast shoot, since he's always using the jackhammer, anyway.

[Zsrai]

Simple solution: Don't loot and sell everything under the sun? I pick up the gear I will use and leave the rest, instead of loading up on 10 Varmint Rifles (or Sniper Rifles, or Anti-Material Rifles, etc.) and running back to town to sell all the time. I do the same thing in other Bethesda RPGs since the economy is always skewed towards the first few hours and then garbage later on.

[Lucifer69]

I can get most of my characters to north of 1 million in the first 4 hours of a new game provided I start with at least 6 luck.

Don't even need loot. Just cheese the casinos.

[red255]

In skyrim the alchemical potions you create dwarf the value of anything else you could possibly loot. so I don't bother looting anything but alchemical reagents.

with the crafting system you can get filthy rich without ever leaving town.

what do you USE your caps for in fallout 3? what are you buying that requires a huge stockpile of caps? if the most expensive thing is 300 caps does it really make the game more broken or less broken when you can buy a sniper rifle with 300 tin cans

instead in New Vegas you can buy a sniper rifle with 4000 tin cans.

not really sure your differnce. weapon value just increases the cost of its repairs. you'll be filthy rich in either game after you put points into barter skill