this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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I've toyed with this idea in my head for a while, and I think it has a lot of promise from a game design perspective. Like one problem players run into in Skyrim and others like it is that they wind up with piles and piles of gold that they don't know what to do with by the mid game - but if you linked staying at the inn, buying food and getting better gear to your reputation and tracked reputation separately in each of the game's holds, then you could really smooth out the progression and keep your "currency" relevant all the way to end game.
You could also track "peasant rep" and "nobility rep" separately, having your character be disrespected by the wealthy for most of the game and barring the ability to go to certain places behind getting enough nobility rep to be invited there. Once you start getting nobility rep, then you start getting quests for gold, and people start talking to you about investments, and you very quickly have more money than you know what to do with and can buy anything you want from peasants without thinking - but by that point in the game the lower classes don't have anything you need, so the currency that really matters is collecting reputation and favors from the rich to get rare goods and magic items and stuff.
It would be a pretty visceral way to create a feeling of "moving up in the world" for the player, and you could tie it into the narrative by having noble quests put you directly at odds with the people you were trying to help during the peasant quests. Imagine how powerful it would be if you come to a crossroad in the game, where it has dangled infinite wealth and access in front of you, and then after you learn to like the taste it forces you to choose between that and doing something heroic, giving a real cost to the choice to be a good person that almost every other game lacks.
It'd be more interesting than choosing between the racist blue team and the racist red team, at any rate.