I think monetary system should look like this

Copper sticks/squares -> Gold coins -> Bank Notes (if money have weight)

Why sticks or squares? Copper and gold are of similar colors, so form is what would make them totally different

Regarding weight (hardcoe mode?)
I think 1 copper should weight 0.01 pound, 1 gold- 0.02 pounds (gold is ~2 times heavier than copper)
100 coppers (1pound)=1gold(0.02pounds)
So it would make sense to exchange copper into gold when possible
During barter your money would appear together
(54.34= 54gold and 34copper or 5434 copper, or something in between)

Why not silver? Silver is commonly used as weapon/armor material and alchemical ingredient (garlic+silver=perfect poison against vampires)
Also it would make monetary system overcomplicated (also too bad).

http://www.viking.no/e/heritage/en-money.htm
Real life Vikings had plenty of foreign coins, and copies of them, alongside the ones they minted themselves.

And lest we forget, Tiber Septim was of Nordic descent, so no racial reason not to use the term for their coins.

If anything that makes my point, the reasons they had so many coins were because they got them in trade from other nations and because they were making new ones over time without taking the old ones out of circulation. Unless the Devs decide to put a bunch of different coin types in the game it would make more sense that after 200 years the coins would have a different guys face on them. That said I think the Septims in Oblivion had Tiber Septim's face on them not Uriel's so it probably doesn't matter anyway.

i would like it if money was drop-able as well. Also, i think it would be nice if we could give people money and see them actually use it...ie-give a beggar 500 coins and next time he is wearing nicer clothes and he doesnt ask you for money

... Might not be Beggars are often the eyes en ears of a local thieves guild and might easily act up there role as beggar when they are not beggars or are actually 'rich' .... A good beggar is pretty good in acting ....

Do you think that we will be able to smelt gold nuggets into coins?

That would be counterfeiting, and any sensible nation would have both banned that and attempted to make sure merchants won't accept coins not made by the state.

Not necessarily. Any nation's coins that were known to have a reliable weight in precious metal could be in widespread use. And you get things like the situation in medieval Europe, where the minting of silver and copper was widespread, but not gold coins, so important transactions might use gold Bezants, foreign but trusted coinage.

I'll admit that foreign currencies might be accepted, but we're talking about counterfeiting here, not foreign coins.

^ Appreciate that, but he was talking about melting pure gold to make coins, not the most efficient method of counterfeiting, and the stamp on an official coin would often be nothing more than a guarantee of weight.

First cheap items need to have more difference in price for realism; an iron dagger is worth more than a potato. I say multiply the price of expensive items with 10 to give more room at the bottom.
As for gold having weight, gold is very expensive for it’s weight, you can easy carry enough gold to buy a good house for but not enough to buy a expensive mansion and few items except jewellery and special products have a better value to weight relationship, so daeric items would be worth less than gold for its weight. Daeric artefacts, expensive jewels and small expensive items like scrolls is worth more, Daggerfall had gold being worth less than elven armor so you always dropped gold for loot at high levels.

Well I know thats just example thats imperial gold currency will have name even there is no more Septims dynasty.

What is a gold are? A miserable pile of coins :teehee:

Copper, Silver and Gold coins would be perfect for me. That way 'worthless' goods could still be worth a few coppers instead of having 0 value like in Oblivion

I agree fully. Just because something is realistic doesn't mean it's a good idea in a game, and giving money weight is, to me, one of those things that falls into the category of being realistic but detrimental to the entertainment value of the game. The only thing I want limiting how much gold I can carry is how much I can actually earn.

And I definitely want to see gold being droppable again, it may seem pointless, but I quite liked being able to put gold on display in my house, and given the amounts of gold I'd usually get in past games, it's not like there would be much else I can actually do with it. Oblivion even had a model for the gold coin item on the ground, it's just that you only got to see it when gold coins were placed on the ground in the construction set, you couldn't actually put them down yourself.

As far as having different units of currency, it's not important to me, though I guess it would have the advantage of somewhat reducing the feeling that you're carrying around an absurd amount of coins on you, it could also potentially allow for more variety in the price range of low value items since Bethesda could work with numbers smaller than one gold piece.

Septims should stay Septims, who cares if they are all dead? Most currency has dead folk on it.

I liked the old septims/drakes but since the empire has fallen maybe Nords have created a new currency. Squirrel skin? Nordcoins?

-Emp-

Maybe they'll have a new currency and septims too because they must've been used at some point, although they will be rare.

So now they should be called Medes? Or Ti... Ok, sorry, won't post that. That will be just plain wrong and impossible.

True....

The economy of Oblivion was necessarily unrealistic. Consider Morrowind, where the price of Daedric loot was perhaps 20,000 or even more, it was practically unsellable because no NPC could buy it for what it was worth. The Oblivion economy was much better balanced for the player's benefit. (Plus, in Morrowind, there would have been some wealthy merchant SOMEWHERE who would have been able to afford such an expensive item as a Daedric dagger, and there wasn't a merchant I can think of that could afford 10,000 to buy a dagger...)

I do like the idea of gold having weight and being droppable so that you have to carry fistfuls of gemstones around to convert into gold to buy things.. That does sound REALLY good.

having only 'gold pieces' as currency does seem a little basic.

credit letters, bronze, silver, copper, amber, jade coins FTW.

would give more substance to the world.. and say you have a woman who's lost her son but only offers 5 copper coins... you would help her for the goodness of it rather than just a quick buck.

There was a merchant who could afford such barter. Only two problems- he was drunk and he was a mudcrab :biggrin:

Price levels should be like in TES3, but there should be elite merchants who deal only with expensive and rare weapons/armor and spells (+5k price)
of course such items needs to be really rare, not falling out of every bandit.

Also there should be purpose for gold.
In FO:NV money was tight because repairing armor (especially Combat armor MK2) was expensive, so most of the time I was running around with half broken armor and empty purse (not to mention those expensive implants)

So maybe do something similar in TES5. repair hammers could have different types (like in TES3) but each type could repair only regular equipment (and limited by material)
for example (just few materials)
Apprentice- chainmail and iron
Journeyman- ^^^+ elven and silver (with special perk- enchanted chainmail and iron)
Master- ^^^+ dwemer and orcish (with special perk- enchanted elven and silver)
Grandmaster- ^^^+ ebony (with special perk also glass, daedric and everything else enchanted)
(cost of hammers should increase 5 times with each next quality. 5>25>125>625)
to repair enchanted weapons and armor and also regular glass and daedric you need to go to elite armorer and pay high sums of money (or advance till 100 Armorer and pick special perk allowing to repair magical equipment by yourself.

Comments?

Yeah, I think both the economy and the gold needs a fix. But, remember: we have two phrases:

"worth its weight in gold"
and
"worth its salt"

Which I think should serve as a reminder: valuable substances are good currency. So yes, gold should have some weight-- but we should consider just how much weight. Consider how much weight is realistic, how much weight would just be inconvenient and not fun, and also how much buying power each gold coin should have.

Let's do some math, here.
Gold weighs 19.32 g/cm^3.
A penny is 441 mm^3 which is .441 cm^3. So a solid gold penny would weigh 8.5 grams, which is .018 pounds. So, a hundred solid gold pennies weighs 1.8 pounds, which is about .8 kg.

A septim in-game looks larger than a penny, though. They seem to be larger even than quarters or US dollar coins. A Susan B Anthony dollar is about 1.102 cm^3, so a solid gold version would weigh 21.3 g or .047 pounds. So, 100 solid gold dollars would weigh 4.7 pounds

So, how much is 4.7 pounds of pure gold worth? Well, as of right now gold is worth 47.8 US dollars per gram, so 4.7 pounds of gold (which is 2,131 g) is worth $101861.8. So one coin is worth $1018.

(Those number seem high but I double-checked the price of gold. Remember how darn expensive a gold ring is.)

If a septim is a solid gold coin, then one septim, which seems to be about the size of 3 dollars. So a solid-gold septim would weigh about .14 pounds and be worth about $3,000. (Let's check this: if a copper coin = 1 dollar, and 100 coppers = 1 silver, and 10 silvers = 1 gold, then 1 gold = 10*100=1000 copper coins or $1,000. Which is 1/3 of my number up there, but that is still expensive.)

Since 1 septim buys a potato, then either potatoes are the best damn objects ever or a septim isn't solid gold. Depending on the metal the gold is alloyed with, the coin could be very light (like aluminum, 2.7 g/cm^3) or not (copper 8.92 g/cm^3, silver 10.5 g/cm^3). Note that aluminum is really heard to obtain without electricity.


So this brings up several things.

One: The coin is physically too large. If the coin is going to really represent a proper value, it's gotta be closer to the size of our coins (American or Canadian or British coins are about the right size.)

Two: The scaling in the game is off. One septim = one potato. 2000 septims = a shack. A shack = 2000 potatoes. I don't know exactly how we do property prices but I don't think the scaling is right. Imagine, if you would, if each septim weighed the same as a penny. Then carrying 2000 pennies... well, a penny weighs 2.5 g; 5000 g = 11 pounds, which is 11 pounds of metal. Honestly that's not that much, until you consider that by volume, a septim appears to about the same volume as 6 pennies, and that makes 2000 septims weigh 6* 11= 66 pounds, if a septim is made of a comparable alloy to US pennies.

Three: we have to factor weight in somehow. Valuable items are said to be worth their weight in gold; if a daedric item weighs 10 pounds, then (if anything, a daedric item must be) if it's worth 10 pounds of coin, it's worth... well, if a septim is a penny's weight, then it's worth 2000 gold. If a septim is 6 pennies' weight, then a ten-pound daedric item is worth 1/6th of 2000 or 330 septims. Daedric gauntlets, at a weight of 12 pounds, are worth 1350 septims in oblivion, and in morrowind one gauntlet weighed 15 pounds and had a value of 12,000 septims.


Basically-- it's highly unrealistic not to have weight, yet, with the current scaling system, weight would make buying and selling expensive things impossible. Also, the scaling-- as in the price of a potato vs the price of a house is messed up.

I think coins should be handled like they were in Oblivion. I see no need to overcomplicate things. I do, however, hope there will be the option to place your coins in containers, chests, etc. etc.

I'd like different coins. Preferably something original, instead of the common gold.

The amount of money is ridiculous, I always just used my imagination, and pretended I was carrying promissary notes, or had banked money with the stores I had visited. Put 100 pennies in a bag, then think what 250 bags would weigh, the price of Rosethorn.