I thought Morrowinds bartering system was absolutely amazing.
+ It felt very 'real' and medieval to be accepting items in lieu of money sometimes, and bartering in the way you imagine people did barter before fixed prices and assembly lines.
- By the time you had Grand Soul Gems with Golden Saints in them, the suspension of disbelief did take some damage, when you traded a merchant his entire stock for a stupid trinket.
( Of course that would be fixed if the Oblivion-invented "Soul-ratings" on the gems stay in SKyrim, and the prices stay duly nerfed )

Oblivions bartering system also had some features that were cool, like haggling - which was indirectly there in Morrowind, where you could simply name a price, and then get a "yes" or "no"
But by and large I felt Oblivions bartering system was pretty poor. What ? Oh, you can only pay 1200 for my daedric cuirass ? How about for 5 of them ? Still 1200 ? But if I sell them separately ? Oh, that's much better... It just felt a little dumb.

Ideally I'd love a marriage between the two - where the Haggling options and the investment-thing stays, but with the system otherwise reverted to how it was in Morrowind.

Ideas, general discussion, calling me names, all welcome.

I liked parts of Morrowind's system better (like the trading items for items that you mentioned), however it felt a bit clunky at times. If they streamlined it in Skyrim and made it more user-friendly, it'd be perfect.

Like in fallout, one single trade could consist of several different items sold, and bought, and the difference of gold was given to you, or to the trader, depending on the sale. The haggling thing in oblivion is kind of like the offering system in morrowind. You could offer to pay this much, or receive this much for a item, and it would be refused if too high. Just like oblivion, oblivion just used percentages instead of gold

:facepalm:

I completely forgot about the Fallout system. I'd definitely support that kind of system in Skyrim.

I prefer Morrowind's system.

Actually, I am hard-pressed to think of a difference between Morrowinds and Fallouts trading systems.
Well, if they are already taking advantage of lessons learned from Fallout, that's probably how they'll make the trading system, I guess.

There wasn't, really. The interface was just a bit more streamlined.

I prefer Morrowinds bartering it reminded me of medevil times, in Oblivion I just kept moving the bar based on my barter skill and their dispossition towards me and left it it felt rather mundane, I would like to see as system similar to Morrowinds just make it a little more streamlined and fluid to use.

+1

the Morrowind trading system was a little bit too time consuming.

Morrowinds. So when my skill is high enough I can spam, uh that is, buy and sell the same object back and fourth over and over again until I have about a billion Septums.

On a completely different note ( Which I just remembered because of that thing with soul-ratings );

God, I hope they make it so I can see which souls are in which soul-gems again. Instead of just knowing that it was a "grand" soul, I liked being able to see the specific soul.
I had the entire Lava-pit room of my Telvanni Tower covered in nicely laid-out patterns of soul-gems containing the 'surviving' members of House Dagoth. I would go down to check on them every now and then... Dagoth Vaner, Gareth, Gires, Goral, Rather so many... Each and every one a reminder of a past victory. I gave them a few ash-statues and stuff to make it cozy for them, of course.

Aah. Laughing at defeated enemies like the arrogant Altmer mage I pretend to be in my computer games. Good times.

Could this be yet another victory in favor of III over IV ?

Damn you all !!!

I never actually got the hang of Oblivion's haggle system, so I just didn't use it. I prefer Morrowind's. Though I really don't truly care all that much.

I liked Morrowinds system more then Oblivions. Then again its "persuasion" mechanism was easier to use then Oblivions so haggling for prices didn't seem as difficult in Morrowind.

Well by chance I play as an Altmer and I did this too: I had one soul of every creature in Morrowind, I kept several sould of Golden Saints and Winged Twilights and I had the souls of House Dagoth it was great!

Agree, bring back named soul gems. Combined with black soulgems it would be awesome and give nice roleplaying options.
I would also prefer to have different sizes of souls for different enemies so you want to track down and soultrap boss monsters.

Definately Morrowinds bartering, how it was in oblivion really annoyed me.

Neither system really worked well. Traders need more character for it to work; a trader should not only be limited by type of goods and money s/he has, but also by how much s/he wants to spend, how high his/her chances to sell an item are etc.

Very expensive items should not be easy to sell to your average trader, although some might be stupid enough to be talked into it (given a high enough skill level of course), and some might be intelligent enough to actually be able to find use for the item and gladly pay everything they have for something they'll sell for twice that money elsewhere.

But as long as every trader is the same and none has common sense, I'd favor Morrowinds system over Oblivions in general, given some changes and fixes of exploits.

I don't think beth is going to use either of those, so I'm not going to vote until poll is updated with "A brand new idea, explain"-alternative.

But comparing morrowind and oblivions system.. Both had major epic fails in them. I really do believe fallouts system, with and enchanted version of bartering would be cool, but really, does it have to be a mini game? In fallout 3 it's not, and it works beautifully.

Barter: to trade by exchanging one commodity for another

In Oblivion, it isn't possible because you're changing item for gold. If I cannot trade potato for a carrot - it isn't barter and therefore isn't good. Voted Morrowind.
:)

Careful what you wish for...

Of the two, I definitely favor Morrowind's system, in spite of its problems. Being able to barter for items, and being able to "unload" valuable artifacts after some negotiation, was far more realistic, at least until the same merchant bought the 3rd or 4th (or 200th) of them at the same price without ever being able to sell the first, or when your Mercantile skill hit the point where you could buy items and then sell them right back for more money.

In Oblivion, having every merchant with an unlimited amount of cash, but never willing to spend more than a few hundred Septims on a single purchase, was awful. Essentially, it was a way to fix the exploit "bruise" by amputating the limb. The concept of arranging a transaction "balance" was interesting, but it needed a bit more development.

In both cases, the lack of gradual inventory turnover, and the lack of price change according to supply, left a lot of room for improvement.

I sort of want them to find a way to make it so that shops don't automatically want to buy everything you have for sale. In fact, they should make it so shop keepers don't even want to buy things except under certain conditions. It's just that, I have never gone to a CVS and then sold them everything I possess but don't want.

I am ok with the Oblivion system if the traiders have enough gold to get a propper value out of high priced loot but I would prefer to go back to the Morrowind system (especially if they bring back the Scamp - he was awesome)