Games where money mattered the least

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I've played Borderlands 2 a lot recently (which I've mentioned in all too many threads already), and come to realize that money has absolutely no meaning in it. You're never short for cash, and the only time I've considered it to matter for one bit is when I use the gambling machines, but even then I can make the money I gambled back in 10 minutes or so. Maybe once or twice in the whole campaign I come across an item of the day which is slightly better than my current gear, but the sum is always so small it makes no difference at all. Even the penalties for respawning don't mean anything since the inflow of cash is so massive.

So I started thinking. This wasn't the first time I'd felt this. My other experience was with FF Tactics Advance (a phenomenal game BTW), where I hardly used the money for anything, save perhaps at the very beginning to buy a whole stack of Dash Boots and other accessories. The player has so much money in the game and there are so few things to spend it on it becomes entirely meaningless.

What other games can you mention where money had so little meaning it might have as well not have been there at all?

 

[Xaidor]

Definitely Skyrim,
I only ever used Gold to buy house supplies in Hearthfire, and some ingots for Smithing.
Other than that I was swimming in money, with nothing to spend it on. I'd buy an entire hump of Ebony ingots, and I would make that money back incredibly fast.

Assasins Creed 3 as well, swimming in money once you got your meaningless upgrades.
Too much sofa selling.

 

[Malbourne]

Well, in Okami you'd practically trip over any items you'd consider using, so the main appeal of money would be to buy fancier weapons and whatnot, impermeable stuff. But if you were as intent on wreaking havoc as I was, you'd find plenty of hard cash inside pots and pans, bushes, trees, crops, baskets, hearths, lanterns, mailboxes, rocks, and chests (who keeps their money in a chest?). It becomes almost moot by the time you hit the second act.

On a slightly unrelated note, in Muramasa: The Demon Blade, it takes practically a whole playthrough before you hit ryo (10,000 mon equals 1 ryo). It seemed a tad odd. On-topic, it's pretty easy to find items, making shops a little less than necessary. If anything's worth spending money on, though, it's the restaurants!

 

[Arean]

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

The crafting in the game is blatantly overpowered, and getting the required components is relatively cheap. I never found a single weapon or piece of armor that could come close to matching my own Mastercrafted Gear, and ended up finishing the game with something in the ballpark of 15 Million gold, because I had literally nothing to spend it on, and I could sell all the legendary drops because apparently I was playing the greatest smith known to man.

 

[Requia]

Definitely Skyrim,
I only ever used Gold to buy house supplies in Hearthfire, and some ingots for Smithing.
Other than that I was swimming in money, with nothing to spend it on. I'd buy an entire hump of Ebony ingots, and I would make that money back incredibly fast.

People keep saying this but in my quests to buy all the houses I never had an easy time, I mean you can generate a gazillion gold worth of equipment crazy fast but that doesn't mean the merchants have the gold to buy it from you. Can spend perks to get it but that's more than a little crazy given the level scaling means falling behind in combat if you do.

Edit: on the other hand I'm not sure what you'd use gold for other than houses? the equipment they sell is complete crap compared to anything you make yourself.

 

[Auron225]

In the vast majority of games I've played, money was pointless. I find it much more difficult to think of a game in which money wasn't pointless. Bioshock Infinite and the Mass Effect series are the only ones I can think of at the moment.

To name a few in which money has no purpose;

Assassins Creed 2
Bioshock 1/2
Red Dead Redemption
Xenoblade Chronicles
Skyrim
Kingdom Hearts (all of them, except possibly for 3D as I haven't played it).
Most FF's

I think they best way to do it is make it impossible or excruciating difficult to buy every upgrade and don't have enemies drop ammo like pinatas.

 

[lacktheknack]

Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness.

You could break into homes and steal the jewelry, you could hunt for valuables in the sewer, and you could steal another guy's money that he asks you to fetch... but once you have enough money to buy the quest item from the pawn shop, the money is never used again for the rest of the game. The pawnshop even gets exploded.

Great job, guys. Stellar.

 

[sXeth]

Dark Souls 2 (the first one to a lesser extent). Sure, you could buy the items, but you can find 99% of them (or get better versions) out in the world. Levelup's start having a rapidly diminishing return fast, and upgrading tends to be more an effort of finding materials then the paltry soul requirements.

Far Cry 3 was pretty inflated too. The only expensive thing was if you wanted to buy a gun before getting a radio tower to make it free, which was fairly rare.

 

[crazygameguy4ever]

Probably Assassin's Creed 2.. once you upgrade the villa and get the upgrades the amount of money you get is just insane and serves no major purpose outside of buying a few supplies when you run out.

 

[Robert Marrs]

Most recently I would have to say south park stick of truth. As much as I loved the game it had some serious rpg mechanics issues one of which was never having to spend any real money short of a few quests.

 

[FoolKiller]

In the vast majority of games I've played, money was pointless. I find it much more difficult to think of a game in which money wasn't pointless. Bioshock Infinite and the Mass Effect series are the only ones I can think of at the moment.

To name a few in which money has no purpose;

Assassins Creed 2
Bioshock 1/2
Red Dead Redemption
Xenoblade Chronicles
Skyrim
Kingdom Hearts (all of them, except possibly for 3D as I haven't played it).
Most FF's

I think they best way to do it is make it impossible or excruciating difficult to buy every upgrade and don't have enemies drop ammo like pinatas.

Actually I think that Mass Effect has the other money problem. And it's a problem in any in game economy. There is a magic tipping point from when you're struggling for cash to having more than you could ever spend. In Mass Effect, the counter would stop just short of 10 million but I had several times that by the end and once you're tricked out in the best gear, it just continues to accumulate.

Borderlands had one achievement where you had to spend 8 million so it was boring just getting the money but there is absolutely no point to it. And worse is the sequel where each DLC had its own fucking currency and no exchange available. On top of that, you could never buy the best gear. It was always just luck of the drop at which point there is no need for money.

 

[Qvar]

Dark Souls 2 (the first one to a lesser extent). Sure, you could buy the items, but you can find 99% of them (or get better versions) out in the world. Levelup's start having a rapidly diminishing return fast, and upgrading tends to be more an effort of finding materials then the paltry soul requirements.

Well maybe you, I always had the need for more upgraded weapons/armor and could never get my hands on enough souls to buy enough titanite for all of them.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Due to how quickly and easily it is to find, I'm leaning more towards The Legend of Zelda. Specifically Link to the Past, Link Between Worlds, Awakening and, Ocarina of Time. Enemies bleed health, ammo and, rupees after all and there aren't enough items to buy or, mini-games to play to justify all the mad cheddah' you're going to find while saving Hyrule.

I remember how once you get to a certain point in Assassin's Creed 2 money becomes absolutely worthless too. Yes, you can throw some to distract people but there have been times where I've played AC2 seeing how much I could throw away, spending more than a half-hour at a time tossing coin but making no substantial dent in my wallet.

At this point I think there have been more JRPGs wherein I would ignore money than JRPGs wherein I would spend a lot at shops. Pokemon has free hotels and I only regularly buy Pokeballs. In most Final Fantasy titles I only buy tents/cottages, ether and, phoenix down.

 

[Radoh]

Other than the ones previously mentioned I'd have to say Mafia 2 comes to mind first.
It doesn't carry over between chapters or whatever, and it will give you an amount at the start of each chapter that's indicative of how well your character is doing at that point in his life, but other than buying clothes I cannot remember a single other thing it gets used for other than a fetch quest later in the game where the money is the thing you need to fetch.

 

[Evonisia]

The Saints Row series and the BioShock series comes to mind. Not a single game in either of those series requires any desperate search for money (unless you're a car hogger in the former, a health kit hogger in the latter or an ammo hogger in Infinite), and money just keeps piling up in the truckloads.

 

[scorptatious]

Most games I've played I usually never have to worry about money. P4G though, I usually just BARELY have enough money to buy the weapons and armor I need. This probably wouldn't be an issue if I went out of my way to farm Gold Hands. Which I didn't do very often as those guys can be tough to kill without the right set up. At least until late game.

P3P meanwhile I don't seem to have as big of an issue. You can get large quantities of money through chests, and gold hands (which are much easier to kill in this game) drop items that sell for A LOT. Eventually, it kinda made having a job kinda pointless mid game. Which I kinda find dissapointing, as I kinda liked relying on jobs to get money in P4G.

 

[DrOswald]

In the vast majority of games I've played, money was pointless. I find it much more difficult to think of a game in which money wasn't pointless. Bioshock Infinite and the Mass Effect series are the only ones I can think of at the moment.

To name a few in which money has no purpose;

Assassins Creed 2
Bioshock 1/2
Red Dead Redemption
Xenoblade Chronicles
Skyrim
Kingdom Hearts (all of them, except possibly for 3D as I haven't played it).
Most FF's

I think they best way to do it is make it impossible or excruciating difficult to buy every upgrade and don't have enemies drop ammo like pinatas.

In most Final Fantasy's money is actually really important until you reach a certain point near the end of the game where it suddenly becomes entirely useless. For 90% of the game most of the best equipment available is purchasable in stores and you wont have enough money to buy it all, requiring you to make decisions on what is most important. This is how a good money system works - it should drive interesting decisions. However, at the end of the game you will be using all unique end game equipment that cannot be purchased. At that point money is useless. It is just what people remember because it is what happens last.

 

[Fat Hippo]

I think it would be shorter to find a list of games which do it right. Practically all RPGs shower you with an overabundance of cash if you do any of the side quests at all, and make the entire mechanic utterly pointless.

One exception which comes to mind is Baldur's Gate II, that game let you buy some absolutely insane equipment at the Adventurer's Mart, and with 6 party members, you had plenty of slots to fill. And buying this equipment was definitely a good way to prepare for some the crazy fights the game likes throwing at you, or just round out the weaknesses of individual characters. (Like a belt of Hill Giants Strength on Viconia and the like)

 

[MysticSlayer]

Assassin's Creed 2: It was incredibly easy to acquire vast amounts of wealth through exploring the world, looting corpses, and collecting the revenue from the Villa. I had the Villa built up very quickly and didn't have to worry about my money at all for over half the game. By the end, I'm rather certain my gold count was in the tens of millions, and I was basically throwing money away just because I could.

Xenoblade Chronicles: Once you reach Colony 6, money means nothing. If you don't have enough to buy whatever you want, then you're likely doing something wrong. I think even the most powerful weapons were easy to acquire for me halfway through the game. All I had to do was wait for them to become available.

 

[Artaneius]

Diablo 1 and 2, Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Skyrim, Assassin's Creed 2, Legend of Zelda games, and Final Fantasy series.