Inspiration Behind Merchant Manager Series

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Introduction

Merchant Manager Volume 3 had a lot of plugins that focused on providing alternative uses for gold. Usually, gold is a resource that's mainly used to purchase items, equipment, and a place to sleep with nothing else in mind. This plugin adds three more gold sinks for players to dump their hard earned digital gold into.

Hospital Shop

This is an article written by Yanfly.

The hospital system was originally created for Yanfly Engine 6, one of the many Yanfly Engine's from the RPG Maker VX era. It was originally inspired by Disgaea, though not all aspects of it were replicated. The reason why I opted to create such a system for RPG Maker at the time was because gold really had no other value at the time other than to buy consumable items and/or equipment.

At the time of its original creation, players had a hoarding mentality. They would not use items (namely Elixirs) that they found because "Who knows when you need them" and JRPG game design was often made that you did not have to use consumables to get past hurdles. Inns were another potential gold sink, but because of how cheap they were in comparison to everything else, resting at an inn might as well be free and it did not make a dent in player gold. That would leave equipment as the sole target of spending your money. Except there was a problem. JRPG's at the time would often litter dungeons with powerful equipment to make sure the player does not fall behind. This equipment would often trivialize what's being sold in shops at the time, too.

So in other words, there's just really no reason to use gold at all. It became a resource that just piled up over time without any real purpose. With that in mind, I started seeking ways to make gold always relevant. That's when I came across Disgaea, a Nippon Ichi Software game that is all about numbers. There were no inns in that game that gave full healing for a flat cost. Instead, hospital costs would scale upward depending on how much damage was taken.

This ended up causing the following effects in player mentality:

The more damage taken, the more gold has to be spent to heal.
- If there is not enough gold to heal, that means some party members will remain damaged.
Players started paying attention to how they played the game.
- They would not carelessly position their party members in places that would allow them to take unnecessary damage.
- In turn, players would start looking for ways to improve at combat to minimize damage and how to maximize battle efficiency.
If players did take damage due to a large battle and there was limited amounts of gold to heal with, players had to prioritize certain characters to heal.
- This meant that players started to understand which units were key to their success and helped them win at the game.
- This also allowed players to know where their weakest link was and learned of which unit to train.
- Players became more self-aware of their own progression.

The hospital system adds so much engagement when used correctly and properly balanced. It becomes a tool for indirectly teaching the player what and where they are lacking.