Just a thought : why would an escaped death row prisoner in the fantasy equivalent to the middle ages be carrying around 20,000 pieces of gold with him?

The idea I'm proposing is that not every transaction in Skyrim be conducted with currency.

Eg: your character has some random mushrooms and a potion or two on him, he goes to a trader and offers what he has. The trader then shows what they'd be willing to trade for the goods offered. You get a party hat in exchange for a few mushies. (This can be simplified using the trade interface, such as when you begin the transaction, the traders inventory are greyed out, but when your offer meets the sellers target for an item, it becomes selectable.)

Of course, a few of the more well-off traders in the larger cities would have the option for buying and selling with gold, which would work in a similar fashion to previous ES games.

I think that this method would have the added benefiet of giving value to even the most worthless items :

Eg: you stumble into a cabin in the middle of a blizzard & find a dishevelled olf Nord sitting by the fire. She says to you "You know, I really have a craving for a pair of callipers. I'll swap you this enchanted ring for a few sets."

so in effect, the 'value' of each item type could change depending on who you're selling to. But you wouldnt know that someone has a fetish for fur boots (just an example. honest.) until you try to trade one pair with them & they surprise you by offering you their house.

Thoughts?


[EDIT: spelling]

Well, I am really hoping for a system where a more rural, backward community would have no real interest in gold that you could barter item for item with, but some fatcat city trader would probably not interested in some magic beans but pure septims/stones.

I like the idea of being able to trade/barter with items.

A mix of both would be nice. In the big cities (like that port town they mentionned) it would make sense to use currency, but in a small village barter would be a viable option. It would make those wolf, bear and lion pelts much more interesting.

Fallout/Morrowind barter system is good for me

your misusing the term barter. barter doesn't only mean trading goods without the use of currency. barter is basicly arguing for a better price (whethor you selling or buying) you can barter with currency: example; sword costs 50g, you offer 40g, and since your very good at bartering you get the discount.

I would like to see Morrowind's system back.

You always could barter/trade in MW and OB, you just move items around between the shop keep and your own inventory until you have the right combo of what you want to buy/sell/trade.

Not sure it needs to be anymore in depth than that. But there should be more shop keeps with realistic amounts of gold so that items listed as being valuable actually are this time...

This is true, they just used gold as filler for the difference.

I don't see why someone wouldn't want to have both. The alternative would be to make both transactions separately, one to sell you're old sword for money, and the other to use that money to buy a new sword. I think if the value of everything where to be drastically lessened, it would preserve the economical hardships of the character for a much longer time. Gold is just another form of barter, but is an item with a more universal value. Not everyone can use a sword, but gold can be used to buy anything (so long as you are not in some big economic trouble that causes gold to become worthless, such as inflation)

Usually barter means the exchange of goods and services for other goods and services, e.g. blacksmith fixes a plow for a bushel of apples at harvest time. I think that this system would add depth to the game for all reasons mentioned but I would hate to have to drag around a bag full of celery just in case i meet some one who wants a stick of it. Because of this I believe that bartering should play a minor to equivalent role as gold, allowing for dynamic interactions while poor and simplistic interactions when rich.

No, It didn't work that way in Oblivion. If the other person didn't have any money, you wouldn't be able to barter, as they would not give goods for goods directly like in Morrowind.

OP's idea is more complicated when you could just implement a trading system similar to Morrowind, Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

You simply set up a screen similar to Fallout's where your inventory and the shops stock are shown side by side, and you can offer the items you want to unload, and select what you want from the store and a counter will show how much gold will be transferred to or from you for the transaction.

The Fallout bartering system was one of the best trade systems I saw, When I played Morrowind for the first time, I was kinda dumbfounded when I saw that a barter system like the one in Fallout and the face they cut it out and replaced it with the one I used in Oblivion.

I'm voting for a system similar to Fallout's.

And then you wait 24 hours for the gold to refresh...

Pure barter.

Theres an established currency already.

200 years ago, you mean. To have a currency you need an organized central government with a mint and access to a relatively rare metal, since I assume economy in the TES universe hasn't abandoned the gold standard (or whatever equivalent to gold there is on Nirn (e.g. ebony)). If Skyrim is deteriorating into city-states or principalities, there's no way to regulate currency value, exchange rates, etc. One septim could buy you one beat-up used shoe over in City-state A, while 1 septim in City-state B could buy you a bottle of wine, cheese, and a silk brocade shirt.

Bartering, IMO, would be nice to consider, but I would rather see a full blown economy. Supply and demand should be implemented and arbitrary value (this item is worth 100 gold) should be tossed out the window. Scarcity should be real and abundance should be plausible.

I.E. if you invade the mine, kill the workers and burn the equipment, the abundance of that product would stop increasing. In the case of iron, the whole tools industry would be turned upside down, but as the price of equipment (weapons, farming implements, building materials) goes up, so do the things that were produced using those (mercenary wages goes up, soldier pay drops as states have trouble affording their equipment, food and housing increases, etc.) Obviously, people would notice and would rush to fix it: whatever government exists sends recon then if necessary an army, then rebuilds the mine and eventually things return to normal. This gets more interesting when you consider dragons are said to be free roaming and terrorize the country side.)

Currency should be capped. As in there is only so much gold in the world and it is only mined at such and such a rate and only so much has already been mined. Many games just create wealth without considering where it comes from or where it goes when you sell it. In oblivion this was apparent when bandits suddenly had glass armor everywhere.The effect of this was that the player got rich and the real value (the value the PC assigns to gold) drops. I think it would be interesting if having masses of gold meant you really were rich (buy the mine and stop production if you want instead of raiding it. would lead to whatever people used the produce would not have it. As in that group gets their weapon material 'there' so buy it and shut it down = they don't get anymore weapons.)

Currency should be capped (again). Consider games like WoW. At higher levels money becomes trivial, anyone can go out and loot for a few hours and make a million what becomes truly valuable is the items that drop very rarely. And in this way gold becomes a non-currency and is replaced by items -- it's not "ill buy that for this much" it's "ill trade you for that". If you eliminated "drops" as it is and said "there are only so many items" (adjusted as people join / leave the game) gold would instantly become everyone's first priority. because with enough you could buy what you wanted. Instead of just finding it in the auction and hoping you would get lucky. Furthermore buying things like supplies (potions) would be less trivial as there is not an infinite supply. you would have to struggle to manage resources.
This is especially possible as TES5 is a 1 player game AND because of radiant AI.

I loved the general idea of the Fallout's. You can trade for pure caps, or give them an item in exchange for an item and the difference in caps. I would like to see it improved however. Like how for the most part you can sell anything to anyone. Why would one person want to buy 10 of the same guns from me? They wouldn't.

Yeah, the Fallout system is close to what i was thinking, but put a lil bit more depth in there. eg someone might value cheese wheels above all else, and would give anything for one, but their neighbour would hate cheese & wont give more than a half eaten apple for a pile of the stuff.

of course, the traders with specific tastes would be undocumented & a bit of a hidden quest to find

I was ok with the idea until trading worthless calipers for enchanted items. FONV combined with varying prices for preference and supply and demand would be sufficient enough for me. One problem though; fast travel makes everything way too easy, and no fast travel makes everything way too inconvenient, considering there is no penalty for fast travel whatsoever.