Why is the economy in any game so scaled down?

[MeatsOfEvil]

So I was playing Mass Effect today and I'm on this planet surrounded by these business executives, each of whom presumably incredibly wealthy. And this lady offers to pay me to plant a bug on another executive. Being the renegade that I am, I ask "what's in it for me?". "Money of course", so I do the deed and return expecting to be compensated. I've had my eye on this pistol priced at 320,000 credits and this could really help with the whole saving the galaxy thing. But then I was offered my payment: 500 credits. Really!? There was a dialogue option mirroring my thoughts, so I selected it and good old Shepard scolded the lady for her petty insult of a reward, as he rightfully should. "I'm sorry, did I say 500 credits? I meant 750". Case closed. Only 319,000 more quests to go until that gun I suppose. Seriously, I stepped on a spider earlier whose loot was worth more than that.

How come game economies are always ridiculously scaled down?

 

[Glamorgan]

Eh, not all games have that problem, but I do get your point.

 

[Mimssy]

Dragon Age was also pretty painful. Maybe it's Bioware?
I've noticed a lot of games money is hard to come by at lower levels and later on, when you don't seem to need the money as much, games throw money at you (Oblivion is a great example).

 

[Applejack]

Isn't that how they got wealthy? They con goofs. Like jobs paying minimum wage.

 

[Broken Blade]

On the flipside, by the end of Assassin's Creed II you can have every single weapon and upgrade and the best armor possible and still have so many florins that you could run down the streets of Florence scattering them with every step and not go broke for a good while. And get an achievement/trophy for your troubles.

EDIT: Oh, and don't forget that this economic system is being applied to ROME in AC:Brotherhood. I'm gonna be so rich by the end that I could probably BUY THE FREAKING CITY.

 

[Aidinthel]

In games the reward is based on the difficulty of the quest rather than what you'd expect in real life. Otherwise there'd be no incentive to do the more difficult missions.

 

[The Procrastinated End]

Well its not like you killed an army you walk over and talk to the guy.
And if you were rewarded with vast sums of money for everything that actually deserves it you could end up buying everything really fast.

 

[kickyourass]

It was a quest in which you walked 10 feet, talked to a guy and then walked back, you honestly expected more credits then that? Sorry if I sound rude, but what universe do you live in? Cause in this one, quests in games give you rewards based on their level of difficulty or how much you have to do, if you had to say, travel half way across the galaxy, and search several baddie infested planets to find the guy, you'd have been payed through the nose when you got back to her. But you didn't do any of that, you didn't even leave the room let alone the planet, so you were payed a paltry sum of 750 credits, which is pretty damn good for such a menial task.

 

[Straz]

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
It just depends on how functional the devs make their economy, if the mission scales etc.
In games such as runescape, mass inflation can actually occur due to players hording resources before selling them or sometimes even buying goods and then transforming them into their estimated worth in coins. This (Particularly the alchemy part) completely screws the economy, once you consider that all of the consumables had an intrinsic value, it being that of their use, whilst Gold Pieces have absolutely no intrinsic value except for that of a commodity.
So basically, consumables are destroyed and more pieces are added to circulation.
Bad.

 

[SimuLord]

Dragon Age was also pretty painful. Maybe it's Bioware?
I've noticed a lot of games money is hard to come by at lower levels and later on, when you don't seem to need the money as much, games throw money at you (Oblivion is a great example).

Oblivion is quite manageable at lower levels, although really who ever needs to buy stuff in that game? The only things that really need to be purchased are alchemy tools (mortar and pestle, etc.) and spells because they tend not to scale up in leveled loot. Better weapons, armor, and the like can be easily found in significant quantities.

 

[Mimssy]

Dragon Age was also pretty painful. Maybe it's Bioware?
I've noticed a lot of games money is hard to come by at lower levels and later on, when you don't seem to need the money as much, games throw money at you (Oblivion is a great example).

Oblivion is quite manageable at lower levels, although really who ever needs to buy stuff in that game? The only things that really need to be purchased are alchemy tools (mortar and pestle, etc.) and spells because they tend not to scale up in leveled loot. Better weapons, armor, and the like can be easily found in significant quantities.

Yeah, it certainly is. I was referring more to the fact that you're practically swimming in gold around level 15.