What game has the best economy/money/trading system outside of simulators/strategy?

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
One thing in video games is the money system is often overly simplistic and completely outlandish. It makes sense in a way, most people aren't in the mood to deal with a complex and reactive economy in their leisure time. They just loot stuff and sell a bunch of junk for gold or whatever in-game currency and get rich like that. At the end of the game, they're so filthy rich even kings would envy them.

What game implements an organic and interesting economy system that's believable and benefits the game? In TES for instance, merchants have a maximum amount of money they can pay for something and usually deal in a specific market. A higher charisma allows you to haggle for better prices and they restock their inventory every week. Shops have hours and you can invest in them to get better-quality gear. It's better than the usual kill 10 slimes to get 100 gold, but far from great.

So, who are some good candidates? I disqualify strategy games and sims because there are too many to choose from and the economy is often central to the gameplay rather than secondary.
 
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Classic World of Warcraft with the colored loot rarity. Soul-bound powerful items so you can't real world trade them and still have to engage with the game.
 
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One thing in video games is the money system is often overly simplistic and completely outlandish. It makes sense in a way, most people aren't in the mood to deal with a complex and reactive economy in their leisure time. They just loot stuff and sell a bunch of junk for gold or whatever in-game currency and get rich like that. At the end of the game, they're so filthy rich even kings would envy them.

What game implements an organic and interesting economy system that's believable and benefits the game? In TES for instance, merchants have a maximum amount of money they can pay for something and usually deal in a specific market. A higher charisma allows you to haggle for better prices and they restock their inventory every week. Shops have hours and you can invest in them to get better-quality gear. It's better than the usual kill 10 slimes to get 100 gold, but far from great.

So, who are some good candidates? I disqualify strategy games and sims because there are too many to choose from and the economy is often central to the gameplay rather than secondary.

The creativity is insane. You can either be a law-abiding trader or exploit the shit out of the merchants.


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Elaborate.
Instead of a cheap gold system the ingame currency are "orbs" which you can find/loot. But these orbs are not really currency. They are in fact crafting materials to upgrade certain stats of yr items. Each of these orbs upgrade something different. Some are very common, but others are more rare and powerful. So players use these orbs not only to craft, but primarily to trade them against other items. Its awesome.

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Some of the more old school MMOs, Everquest, FFXI, Eve online, even WoW.

Those markets are created organically by the players themselves. Eve Online is definitely the peak of this.

And yeah more recently, both Path of Exile games.
 
Elaborate.

It's an actual economy of supply and demand that enables actual value to be established for certain currency items relative to their strength and rarity. While most other ARPGs have an overly inflated and generally worthless currency like gold, Path of Exile and its sequel have currency that is actively used in trading and speculation, within a dynamic, player-driven market.
 
While not exactly leisurely...

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The Itadaki Street games immediately come to mind as an in-game economy mechanic that's organic and benefits the game. These games are a cross between like Monopoly and Mario Party. Each area of the map has its own economy that other players invest in - and the more a particular area (think color squares in Monopoly) get built up, the higher rents go. Players who have invested in a particular area have their overall wealth go up when rent is paid or other players invest. It's a fun take on the classic board game, and most of these titles have Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest tie-ins.
 
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