This is about the only thing I'm genuinely concerned about in the game. I really hope Bethesda works out all the prices correctly for items that they can't be exploited. For example, you buy all the items needed to add a scope to a laser rifle. The laser rifle costs 400 caps and the items for the scope cost 30 caps. You sell the scoped rifle for 600 caps. Instant 170 caps reward by doing almost nothing. Hopefully they will do something where all weapons are worth the same. For example, a laser rifle costs 400 caps, but a fully modded laser rifle is still 400 caps.

The second part to this is endgame caps. In fallout 3 and NV, I had tens of thousands of caps just sitting around. Couldn't really buy any stimpacks or ammo because I was basically filled in those compartments. What I really hope is they give us reasons to spend the caps. New Vegas kind of helped this issue with the GRA, but I hope that Fallout 4 really expands on this.

What do you guys think?

Well... given that you can find most of the same stuff at the shop that you can scavenging, there's not an easy fix for this. Sure, you could make Stimpaks and Rad-Aways more scarce but available for purchase, but that's not exactly worthwhile. Perhaps certain crafting components could be extremely rare out in the field but available from merchants. Stuff like gold and other less common metals, radioactive material, etc.

There will always come a point when you have more money than there are things to spend it on - hopefully Bethesda can add some endgame money sinks with the new settlement system, but I dunno.

As for the actual money value of items, in one of those E3 interviews they're putting up on Bethnet Todd Howard was talking about how they're balancing the economy, and found that the new crafting and components system changed the paradigm so that people had to choose between selling loot, or scrapping it for components to use in crafting. I doubt there will be anything as blatantly bad as "craft a 400 cap Laser Rifle with 30 caps worth of parts", although we'll definitely be able to fix and flip items for caps pretty easily. Might not be worth crafting vendor fodder over gear you plan on using or settlement components, though.

In one of the recent interviews I watched with Todd, he was talking about the team working on balancing the economy with the scrap and crafting system, since literally EVERYTHING in the world now has a value as a crafting material. He said not one thing exists that can go in a player's inventory that can only be sold for caps.

He said the team was looking for money exploits, and most of their playtesters ended up hoarding items rather than selling them. With the crafting system, it seems players become fearful of selling anything in case it is the component they'll need later for a weapon, a piece of furniture, etc.

EDIT: And ninja'd by BOX MAAN. Good on you, sir.

Settlements

I think they will have high $ cap sinks.

Vendors all have limited inventorys so they may only have 200 caps so it doesnt matter if you can flip the rifle for a profit or not cause they may not be ble to buy it.

yeahhh it happen to any game, lol on the Witcher 3 w/o exploits for the mid chap 2 i was stupid rich on the game.

Crafted items should yield a profit, as this represents a skill that would be very useful to others in the wasteland. As long as any high value components are adequately difficult to obtain of course.

This issue is easy.. Have vendors who sell unique items and such for your settlement, or a vendor like in new Vegas that sells insanely priced items and unique weapons. These will give you things to spend money on. I think they should make shops that sell unique decor items, rare crafting materials, have ways to bribe people, ect ect.

So many ways to make the cap spending usefull.

I agree with the OP about keeping values the same.

Not really concerned about either of the things you mentioned.

In the first case, if the vendors have the usual Beth "limited money supply" thing, then I'll probably be exhausting that just from selling regular loot. And if you're the type of person to go out of your way to exploit a system (like, say, sleeping three days at a time in order to restock the shops), then it doesn't matter what systems they use, you'll find a way to take advantage. They can't really design around that easily.

In the second case.... eh, it's an open world game with semi-infinite resources. We end up with lots of cash in those games, it's just the way it is. I've never felt a burning need to have something to spend it on in OB/SK/FO3/etc. I just see that large cash balance as a sign of success.

Yeah, even though I had like 20,000 caps sitting back home in a chest, I STILL tried to carry as many gold bars from the Sierra Madre as possible. It pained me to leave them behind. I mean, they would have looked GOOD stacked on a bookcase to be glanced at occasionally in the future!

I had over 200k caps in NV due to that 37 gold bars trick in dead money lol

It's actually possible you get diminishing returns from crafting items. Like maybe that Fission Battery was worth more intact than the value it's components added to your Scoped Plasma Thrower.

I am not at all concerned about the economy in a single player game. Bring on the cap vault!

You can keep them all

I imagine what you value as scrap for crafting and as barter material will change from character build to character build. If you don't have the Science! Perk and don't use Energy weapons, then a Fission Battery IS worth more intact for you.

I managed to get out with 3 or 4 without exploiting anything.

I'm planning to make a simple mod that makes it so merchants all have 0 caps when you approach them (which I'm guessing is pretty much every time you trade). My explanation for this is that caps would be used to even out bartering trades and would only be used by merchants when absolutely necessary. Maybe I'll make it so the merchants have [100 caps - the protagonists total caps] to represent the merchants being willing to supply the caps if a buyer doesn't have enough.

The real reason I would be doing this, though, would be to balance the economy issue that occurs due to your unrealistic encumbrance limits. For example, if I got this rich while using brahmin caravans to trade loot between cities, or by actually collecting and selling truly rare stuff, or by investing in my own shop or settlement that is all cool by me. I would prefer to actually have to put some thought into it though.

I am also eagerly awaiting the introduction of backpacks and realistic encumbrance/weights mods.

The price on goods has always been off. Rare drinks and meds are far too cheap. I even stockpile booze and cigarettes but end up with tons of cash.

Worry with how powerful stimpacks could be being % based and possible loss of repairs for equipment removes a number of cash sinks :/

I hope there's a money sink like hiring Mercenaries to guard settlements. This will give you something to spend money on and also make life easier with regard to maintaining settlements.

I AM THE ECONOMY!!!!

But what if you still want that Fission Battery for the generator powering the lights in your settlement?

I just want a system that will allow me to dump high value items by allowing merchants to have a virtually unlimited bankroll not artificially capped at around 9K, where some merchant becomes glitched out if exceeded.

We need one of these, but in Mirelurk form
http://uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Mudcrab_(merchant)

Haha! Maybe a Molerat version too.

Also, I saw an interview with Tod where he actually said that this is one of things they were currently working on. Specifically, he said looking for crafting exploits for making caps. He also said that there was not much of an economy issue according to his testers because most players choose to scrap loot rather than sell loot.

That being said, I'm probably still modding my merchants to have zero caps. Even in hardcoe survival simulator mods like Dust where you have very little carry weight and few merchants, I was quickly rolling in caps due to weightless items.

Well there were two "super merchants" in Morrowind!