Crafting

[Hoofhurr]

Inevitably the "value" of currency ends up being equated back to the time it takes to farm that amount. How is that any different than baselining that "value" at the time it takes to farm some consumable?

At least this way, you avoid the inevitable inflation since the item goes away and needs to re-farmed since there never are enough money sinks or bots throw that balance out of kilter.

I'm not a big fan of bartering personally, but I don't view the ideal of a "coin" or whatever sort of "token" that represents value is necessarily any different and just as arbitrary as picking one unit of any other item in game. As long as there's a way to equate it to time/effort to obtain other items it still works.

I guess the difference I see between coin and consumable is that coin usually drops from every single mob you kill while consumables are usually more intermittent in that you can kill several mobs and maybe only one consumable will drop. So it comes down to whether you might get 5 consumables per hour (if not every mob drops the consumables) or you might get 5.9993467 coins per hour. Per this example, and in most mmogs, coins are just a more accurate reflection of the time you spent because it drops from every kill. You might hit a bad run, kill 10 mobs in a row and never get your consumable to drop. I suppose that in this day and age where every weapon has its dps expressed to the millisecond and every game has an auction house so you can see exactly what your unit of currency can buy then it doesn't matter as much whether it's coin you're spending or not.

It is a convenient way to escalate value from level one to max level though where most consumables you find at level one have little value at max level.