Ya know, I never noticed :shrug:

I just sold, bought, and [censored]ed about being ripped-off

no kidding... i could rob an entire town and be lucky if i came out of it 1,000 gold richer.

clothes and other misc. items need to cost more if they're going to be called "exquisite" or whatever.

seems like everything that should've cost alot of money, was 20 gold at the most.

Agreed. I'd rather hunt treasure than mundane arms and armor. It's a little bit ridiculous to enter a dungeon in search of, I dunno, the legendary giant ruby that lies within, only to find that the killing the guards on the first floor and taking their armor netted you the same amount of cash.

The best way to balance things out is to make traditional treasure the main source of cash for adventurers. Precious gems, jewelry, metal, art, ancient artifacts, that sort of thing. Adventurer-centric items like weapons, armor, lockpicks, and potions should mostly be things that you buy, not things that you sell. However, it would be nice if they had randomly generated quests that reward you for locating/crafting certain items -- they would create the illusion that, rather than there being an unlimited market for shoddy fatigue potions from dubious sources, you are responding to the need of some other NPC with your sale.

EDIT: NPC crafters should also have slots for raw resources that they want (so, smiths would want raw ingots of metal, alchemists would want reagents and trophies, and so on). They buy inputs and sell outputs.

MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAFT!
i love mine craft :3

on topic - i think the whole view on how you obtain items needs to be totally revamped, i mean how many times after level 10 would you go to the local armourer to by armour or wepons? in my case, not many.

think about it though, our economy and pricing isnt so because one day somebody said "well i think we should have a definate price. diamonds shall be expensive and rocks shall not", it is because of an objects rarity, and so far, nirns natural resources seem to be quite similar to earth resources, which would therefore mean the economy is similar

Buying a sword in the early periods was the equivalent to buying a car, It's was pretty freaking expensive, and it was common for swords to be passed on within a family for generations, being re-fitted when it got dinged up and sharpened down until it was significantly thinner than it when it was new. Owning a sword was a big deal.

Not really. A sword should cost 50x more than a piece of cloth

Nah, if anything swords weren't expensive enough. Modern weapons (and pretty much all consumer products) are not applicable to comparison because they are mass produced. In medieval times, weapons were custom made by a hand - meaning that hundreds of hours went into a single piece. Weapons were status symbols at the time, much like cars are in modern times.

Put in a modern anology, the difference between the weapons used by peasants versus royalty would probably be the same as the difference between the modes of transportation used by billionaires versus the middle class.

I think the other element to consider is rarity. Oblivion's pricing of weapons was broken in that weapons were not very rare - and many should have been EXTREMELY rare. Rare items should be priceless. The other problem is how to implement these dynamics in a way that doesn't break the game's economy. Morrowind handled it by limiting the amount of gold a merchant carried. I liked Morrowind's system because even though you may have a Daedric dai-katana that's worth 120,000 you'll never get more than 10,000 for it because that's all the gold the average merchant carried (not to mention that you'll never get the "sticker price" for it - except for the scamp in Caldera). What I didn't like about Morrowind's system, however, was that you could never sell very much loot at a single time (merchants would run out of gold) and you would have to wait 24 hours for the merchant's gold to be replenished. Oblivion solved this issue, but for some reason it also lowered the prices of everything considerably...not sure why though as I felt it deprecated the overall sense of weapon/armor value.

Anyway, these are my somewhat scatter-brained thoughts on the matter.

Well it wasn't as much a pain as i think about it but i didn't like it thou.

but what about trading? in the middle ages we had a huge landmass that almost no one trekked until the high middle ages, we can run across the map, also goods of high value would usually travel across land while bulkier items would travel through the sea, this really can't be applied to well to Tamriel, there is only so much on the coast and there arn't that many rivers, also we can't mine class or ebony and really think of how much GOLD coins you can get in Oblivion, its way different then our amount of gold

Not that it much applies to me really, but I think the real question is what is Skyrim's economy like these days? Is there an enormous gap between the wealthy and the poor? Just how valuable are certain items to the majority of them?

My thinking is that an item like a Daedric dai-katana should feature aspects that discourage one from wanting to sell it in the first place, and not just by making it's list price so high that no merchant could possibly may half of it at one time, like in Morrowind. Sure, that has worked on me (I've never sold one, because I buy back so much crap from Creeper that it isn't worth the time) but it was annoying because there wasn't anything else to it to make me want to hold onto it really. I can get more out of an Adamantium Axe, for half the weight, and axes are more my style anyway.

What I'd like to see implemented isn't realism in relation to the real world, but what just plain makes sense. I love Morrowind to death, but there's a lot of elements to it that just don't make sense to me, like the above. (Which is something I've been working on correcting with my mods for the most part.)

Let's say that somewhere in Skyrim, there's a merchant who is also a smith and high-level trainer. Now, being of so such skill, it only makes sense such an person would be in great demand, so, unless the player has a really, really good thing going with said NPC, the prices for their services should be pretty high. When the player offers up a high-end Daedric item, that NPC should still be at least a little reluctant to want such a thing, as they didn't get where they are from handing over heaps of gold to characters who apparently have nothing better to do but kill Dremoras. After all, they should really be thinking: "What does this person covered in Daedric and hefting Eleidon's Ward want with gold? Clearly they're deadly enough to get whatever they want without having so much as a few hundred Septims in their purse..."

And on such items themselves, there should be no list value in the stats, as most NPCs thus far in Elder Scrolls games aren't truly wealthy enough to purchase them, and the ones that are don't buy things from the player (like Orvas Dren), and without that, it doesn't make much sense for there to be a base value attached to such arguably-priceless items. The player should only find out what they can get for them when they offer them.

Further that, I'd like to see greater-reaching consequences for going from town to town attempting to fence something so high-profile as a Daedric dai-katana. Like a criminal element that decides such a thing would be better off in their possession than yours? Or an Umbra-like warrior looking to upgrade their killing capacity?

really jewlery and the like should be way way more expensive, specially precious jewels.

like another guy say a diamons is worth more than an ak-47


therefore lowly iron weapons should be way cheaper

otherwise this game doesnt even make sense

the way i see it, nirn is in the high middle ages, probably further than that.
the provinces have already been conqured and consolidated and trade would be good (im guessing)

i think that you shouldnt be able to find armour and weapons in caves and the like unless there is a specific reason for them to be there.

That is one of the dumbest comparisons I have ever heard.

how? that is just the most extreme luxury and the most extreme weapon. The stupidest comparison would be a fern to a moon rock.
Aerograt compared the hope diamond to an AK-47

The problem is that there are diamond mines all over Tamriel, not just in the jungles of Black Marsh or something, so acquiring them isn't nearly as difficult. You also don't have one company that maintains such a stranglehold on the continent's diamond supply, or provinces within it where the inhabitants are forced to mine for them so that others can live in palaces. Okay, the latter-most did happen in Morrowind for a time, but obviously that's all over with now.

Not to mention that no one in Tamriel really makes anything out of precious gems, and seem to value more useful things, like Soul Gems, or Raw Glass and Ebony.

You're comparing rare diamonds and swords in Oblivion to rare diamonds and nuclear bombs in reality. How does that strike you as a reasonable comparison?

the hope diamond isn't in any elder scrolls game, it is just to show how luxury and weaponry compares in this universe, so it would make sense in Oblivion, you need to open your mind man

but what if you can only reach oblivion by opening your mind?

/hippie talk off

I mean, the comparison between the hope diamond and the nuclear bomb is specious because a diamond can really only be used by one person, whereas the nuclear bomb is a weapon wielded by a nation and a military as a whole rather than a singular person. The best comparison would be maybe like an XM-25, some kind of futuristic rifle with advanced optics and "smart" munitions.

But as people have said, even swords made of "lesser" materials took great time and skill to make, so they have a value inflated from their base materials. So yes, Iron Sword > bundle of wool. However, the lowly materials (and also lower craftsmanship) of such a weapon would reduce it's value, so that an exotic good like gems, gold, or even a cloth like silk (or medicine, rare commodities like purple dye, spices) would be of comparable or greater price. Then of course you get into master weapons made from the finest materials and forged by the best artisans (look up Ulfbert swords...so popular with vikings people made forgeries) which are similar in value to half a dozen farm animals, a small pile of gold (in game...5,000) a bred and trained warhorse...

Maybe not that specific diamond, but there are still rare diamonds and similar luxuries. It doesn't make sense at all. If the swords in Oblivion could wipe out everything for 50 miles with a single use, then it would be a fair price comparison.

As it stands, it doesn't make sense for your average sword to cost more than the most expensive clothing or gem in the game.

To Keltic Viking and Dragonbone: You're arguing with a 12 year-old. Seriously, I'm not kidding. Just thought ought to know.

If only to make stealing actually worth it, fine and expensive quality materials should sell for much much more than in oblivion. There should definitely be more of a range of high end and low end gear, like in Morrowind. I don't want to see common bandits wearing daedric, orcish, dwemer, or ebony armor. Those should be exceedingly rare.

I mean, I'm not trying to beat him at a debate or anything, just expressing my opinion in general to the forum. But hey, I was 12 when I started Morrowind. s'cool.