There have been a few threads on the mercantile skill nut maybe one more won't hurt

I personally view it as a soft skill and wish they had dropped it for something - well more skillful to do than just sell a single item at a time in order to upgrade it

However if they are going to have it in the game then i think it is worth tossing around some ideas on what would make it useful for roleplaying

I want to be able to not increase my skill level by choosing not to barter - just accepting the merchant's offer

If I have stolen from a merchant in town I don't mind being refused service at another store - let me get some real consequences for my actions rather than having to go to jail for petty crime - then I might have an opportunity to do a quest to restore my reputation with the merchants

Buying and selling really doesn't feel skillful to me - doing some quests that involve trading could be fun - seeing as we can do crafting in this game - discovering a local resource or making something unique and then selling it at a store could fell more like an achievement. Having quests that are time limited to sell certain goods and achieve a maximum profit might be fun.

I really didn't like the way you could pump up the disposition of a merchant to get a discount - surely they should be immune to that sort of flattery or magic - I'd rather have some innovative ways to get discounts from them - why not use the fame points for something useful - if doing a quest that helps a town getting a temporary discount could be useful

Am just saying I'd quite like the mercantile skill to feel a bit more skillful this time round - what do you think?

I would really like mercantile to be deeper in skyrim. I'm hoping that there will be some cool mercantile perks. I think that it would be really cool if you could buy a shop, like once you reach a certain level in mercantile, you can purchase a shop. I would NOT like the system in fable, where you can buy any property/shop you want that you can afford. shops should come up for sale occasionally (or maybe if the owner is suddenly murdered one night...hehe). I would love to roleplay a trader and watch locals I've gotten to know come into my store and shop. It would be a much cooler way of selling junk/lesser gear at the higher levels. you could even exploit commodity rates in different cities by traveling to get better prices and selling the items in your shop. This would add a really cool dimension to the game and enhance replay value and leaving stuff to do after the MQ is finished, which is crucial IMO.

I actually think Mercantile has been folded into Speechcraft. Perks will be used for specialization and anything related to Mercantile. That's not confirmed, just my thought.

@OP I like the option of using magic to charm NPC's/merchants and raise disposition, thus getting better bargains.

I like this idea, especially the part about selling the useless crap that clutters your inventory from time to time, like plates and goblets, at your store where you can sell them to towns people for a slightly higher price than if you sold it to a merchant.

I kind of liked how it worked out in fallout 3/NV. You would come back to town with a large haul of heavy things to sell, but the shops hardly ever had the money to pay full price for your 20 suits of armor. That lead to a little meta game where you would weigh your different options. What whould you sell now, what whould you sell latter, what would you buy to balance out the deal. I think mercantile should work like that only with some perks added. Maybe a perk that lets you buy and sell trade items at the same price or a perk that boost the amount of gold merchants have. Things like that.

"Do you want the skill to increase only if you successfully barter"


Have you heard of this thing called "Learning from your mistakes"

An unsuccessful (but high stakes) barter attempt would likely yield you more experience in the subject since you'd likely find out what you did wrong. Would need to be implemented correctly, of course.

They should remove the whole concept

I don't want to be buying and selling cheap items like iron arrows back and forth to a merchant to be able to level up the skill.

Maybe you could get a nice little supplementary exp. boost if you succeed in a barter. Just spare me the hours of repetitive trading ala Oblivion somehow.

The charm skills and or potions that raise disposition would be a nice carryover as well.

Exp. should tick up if you can make a profit. No exp. for selling stolen goods (only cash).

If skills are handed like in FO then both Mercantile/Speechcraft will be fixed. Skills check during dialog is a great idea, esp for speechcraft/Mercantile.

I just want it to better complement stealth playstyles. True, in the grand RPG scheme of things, it's fitting that thieves would be the ones with a penchant for gold. However, in reality, getting gold in a TES game is universal. To that end I'd like to see a more robust Bribe system, with good skill gains for using said system. For example, your mercantile skill (via perks or what have you) would let you attempt to pay off a guard that catches you. Or more special dialogue options where you can bribe a guard to go have a drink for a few minutes, ala Umbacano's manor in Oblivion.

I'm sure the new economic system is also being designed with Mercantile in mind. It'd be neat if you could set up trade routes to get hard-to-find goods and even tradespeople into the remote areas of Skyrim, with a bit of profit for yourself in the process. Or perhaps planting your own fences in cities. Or being able to invest in shops as if they were actual investments - giving a return or loss on your gold based on several economic factors. Something like Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, but a bit more robust and interesting. Or, heck, the ability to run a shop out of your home. Stop selling your plundered goods to other merchants and sell them directly to other "adventurers" yourself! The perfect way to fence stolen goods.

No.

I think you're right on that, actually.

Anyway, the first change Bethesda needs to make to mercantile is fixing the issue in Oblivion where your skill would increase by a flat amount for every transaction regardless of the side of it or how much gold was involved, thus meaning that the best way to train mercantile was to sell large amounts of items one by one, which is not exactly my idea of fun, and yet given how slowly mercantile increased, there wasn't really much choice if you wanted to become good at it, once they've had that fixed, there are a lot of things they could use to improve mercantile gameplay, whether it's actually changing the skill or changing how the economy as a whole works, but before you start worrying about doing more complex things you have to make sure all the basics work properly.

I would love the option to buy a shop, hire a shop keeper, and sell all the armor and weapons I'll be making as a master smith :whistling:

It never made sense to me that selling 500 arrows, one at a time, made me a better merchant than being able to sell them en masse. If Mercantile remains as a skill (which seems unlikely if it's [hopefully] absorbed into Speechcraft), you should receive full exp for selling a full stack of items.

I'll just riff a bit on mercantile.....

First though - the poll could've used an "All of the above" option, or multiple checkboxes, for the last question. I think lots of things should affect pricing - at least the things listed there, and probably more.

So.... the first fix should be to set skill increases to money exchanged rather than the number of items. There's simply no reason that selling 100 arrows one at a time should increase your mercantile skill. I've been playing with a mod that sets skill increases to septims instead of items for years now, and it works fine.

However, I would think that the sheer number of septims that have exchanged hands should be the least important part of it. It should add to skill, but not a whole lot. Bartering should have much more to do with it. Maybe just a straight multiplier. To make up some quick numbers - if a merchant has a default purchase level of 60% and you barter that up to 65%, you gain double experience. If you barter it up to 70%, you gain triple experience. Whatever.

There have been rumblings of a more dynamic town economy, with the potential of things being priced lower in some areas and higher in others. If that's the case, it should figure heavily in mercantile. The best experience one could gain in it, in my opinion, would be from buying something cheap in one place, then selling it for a profit in another. That's really the fundamental idea of mercantile, so if it's indeed possible to do that in Skyrim, it should be the best source of experience.

I hadn't considered mercantile quests, but sure. I'd like to see them. More quests is better.

Mercantile and disposition should be handled pretty much the same as it was in Oblivion. Disposition only affects the default pricing - the deal the merchant is willing to offer just because of who you are. Getting from there to a better deal would rely on mercantile skill. Maybe increase the best deal possible based to some degree on disposition, but the process of getting from one to the other should only rely on mercantile skill. I could see intimidation being effective, but only for a single transaction, and with consequences. You could intimidate a merchant into paying more or charging less than he'd prefer, but the next time you go back to that merchant, his disposition will potentially be lower and his starting price (and possibly best price) worse. Maybe modify that with an aggression score (or whatever Skyrim might use for that), so that a particularly weak merchant will be more likely to fold and give you a better deal and more willing to keep going along with it, whiel a more aggressive one will be more likely to tell you to get the hell out of his store.

There should not be infinite money available. I don't care how much people whine about not being able to sell their 20 daedric cuirasses in a single trip to a single merchant - the merchants should have a particular sum of money available to make purchases and that's it - when it's gone, it's gone. And the amount of money they have at a given time should be dynamic. Don't just replenish it every day - instead, if it's a busy time of year or a particularly good location or whatnot, they should have a fair amount of money and should get more fairly easily. If it's a little out-of -the-way store with a lousy selection in a depressed town - they're just not going to have a whole lot of money available - ever. And I could also see money depending relatively directly on what you sell to them. If you sell a nice piece of armor to a merchant and the game (oh no! a dice roll!) determines that he sold that armor to another customer, then he's got that money available to buy more stuff. If the armor's still sitting in his inventory, then that's that much less money he's got on hand.

Just some stuff rattling around in my head..........

The problem, is that in Morrowind the money limit was entirely unrealistic in quantity. Merchants who are suppose to be wealthy should have the means of buying whatever you bring in. Go to your local pawn shop and you would be surprised at how much money they can give you for your goods.

It is unrealistic that a shop could only buy one or two suits of armour at a time. You are showing ignorance of economics. A shop would have enough liquidity to satisfy the needs of a lone adventurer. What you are asking for is not realism, but fake-difficulty.

In Fallout, the currency is limited because bottle caps are scavenged, not made. This is not the same as TES where gold is actively mined and minted.

I have my fingers crossed for the introduction of a merchants guild.

Hopefully the skill is removed - If a sword is worth 500 gold it should sell for 500 gold and not only fetch me 340 until I manage to individually sell over 9000 arrows and reach 100 mercantile.

1. I really do wish we can sell multiple items at a time so I'm all for it.

2. If there is going to be a merchantile skill, or some form of it, then bartering should be the way to raise it. just selling items raising skill just doesn't make sense to me. So yes again.

3. I really don't see why they should refuse to trade with me. I think I would just find it irritating. If you steal from them and they don't catch you it shouldn't matter and if you steal from their competitor they might be wary but should still trade.

4. The more quests the better. If that is the only way to raise the skill then there might be a problem, but I really don't concern myself with my merchantile skill anyway. But having more options for quests is a good thing imo.

5. I think it should be based on reputation and disposition, but mostly on rep so I chose that one. Just don't want a minigame for disposition. Or at least a better one than OB.

The problem with EVERY fantasy economy is the Hero becoming an unlimitted supply of everything.

I've always hated the barter/mercantile skill because they don't work in this type of game. Barter skills work in Sandbox games like EVE Online(And its predecessors) and Mount&Blade because of the robust Commodity system, where you're selling goods you have to purchase from elsewhere at lower prices, and supply and demand are taken into account. However, the problem is The Elder Scrolls are trying to apply that when it's using the

The only non-commodity economy game that got a barter skill anywhere near correct were the first two fallout games. Barter became a viable skill because of the difficulty in acquiring cash, and rarity of EVERYTHING needed for survival, as well as the ability to actually barter without the need of an actual currency. They also strengthened the trade system in that game by making the sell value of the player's items static, so any item could be used as a Currency. However, unlike Fallout, the Elder Scrolls have a Production economy, not Scavenger economy, which should make any given merchant's items sell at a static value (or governed strictly by supply and demand, not the merchant's Barter/Mercantile skill), while the items You try to pawn have the flexible value.

The merchants in any town can be assumed to have a solid enough customer base that they don't need to offer specific discounts to you, while you're the travelling Salesman trying to unload the assorted unique trinkets you come across like they're really valuable.

I don't like limited store currency, where you can leave the register empty after selling all your stuff. Instead, the developers should choose between whether they want to go with the unrealistic "Vendor Trash" system, where merchants transmute your stuff to cash. Or they should go after a more "Realistic" but very, very frustrating system where the merchants actually pay attention to what they're buying.

Whether to go for "Realistic Pawn Shop" or "Vendor Trash" system depends on the anticipated buying/selling habits of the PC. "Pawn Shop" Does NOT work in any game where merchant inventories are completely irrelevent to the player after the first few levels (When's the last time you made any significant purchases in Oblivion or Morrowind at higher levels?). What needs to happen, for the sake of enjoyability (if not realism), is have merchant inventories be level-scaled (including Dungeon-loot table materials), so the player is more than just a supplier of Worthless Expensive Junk.

In fact, level-scaling town loot with dungeon loot is somethign that isn't done enough, and is actually unrealistic if you want a workable believable economy: As you sell valuable stuff to merchants, because they buy it, it means there's a market for what you're selling. By selling unwanted magical arms, armor, and artifacts, you end up outfitting other adventurers (Even if you never see them nor evidence of them, they can be assumed to exist in the compressed 90% of the world), who go out exploring the 90% of the world between the 10% you can play around in. (Watch out people! I take BIG STEPS!), and bring back and sell different loot to the merchants, so there's always the chance of the merchant having something you want or need. ("Heya Mr. Dhovakin, A mage just brought in this magic suit of Ebony Armor you might be interested in). It also allows the shop to sell stuff that's above your level (That Rusty Iron Longsword you sold last month was bought by some farmboy... he came back in full Steel armor yesterday and carrying a Dwarven Longsword... Interested in seeing the Falmer artifact-weapons and Chainmail armor he sold? Or how about this nice new selection of scrolls?)

It would even justify the level-scaling of townspeople's loot as well: The rich and priviledged would want fancy shiny loot, weapons, and armor for prestige, and when you destroy the demand for those 100 Iron Swords you sold last week by bringing in thirty or so Dwarven weapons, the old stuff goes on clearance, and purchased by the lower classes for self-defense against thugs and gangsters who bought that nice selection of Battle Axes you sold last month, and the middle classes would buy those shiny steel swords you supplied so they'd have shiny weapons that say "We're still richer than the poor guys with Iron weapons!"

And I don't know of any Elder Scrolls game where you can still shop from someone you stole from: If you paid the fine, you didn't really steal from them because they still got paid for their stuff. If you went to jail, they aren't trading with you because you can't buy stuff from a prison cell. They're too busy running around like morons to trade from you if you resist arrest. And if you're not caught? They're trading with you because they don't know you stole from them. And really, where's the logic in refusing to take the money someone's offering for what you have they want when they've already proven they could get it without paying?

And I also disagree with the Mercantile experience being monetary benchmarks instead of based on quantity of sales: Who's the better merchant, the guy who someone to buy a 2-GP apple for 5 GP, or the shmuck who sold a Priceless Suit of Heirloom Armor worth hundreds of millions of gold for 25 GP and a feather? According to the "Mercantile should be based on Gold Value" crowd, the guy who sells the armor for 25 GP's the more skilled merchant. Personally, I think XP should be based on either individual sales (As in Oblivion). The guy who convinces a merchant to buy each individual arrow he has to sell does learn the art of trade faster than the guy who just sells everything he has at bulk for a reasonable price. Just think of it this way: What is your character actually saying to get a merchant to buy an item? The solution to Oblivions "Sell one arrow at a time" is to have the merchant's disposition drop with every sale of a non-unique item because you're wasting their time. In addition to making each sale less profitable, once the merchant's disposition drops low enough, they will cancel all transactions and kick you out of the store for the day (once the day's elapsed, the disposition could reset to "1" above the kick-out threshhold). To make up for the occassional forced disposition drop (Making identical transactions in a day may become impossible), each daily unique sale could raise disposition by 1 (Instead of basing it on an arbitrary cash limit).

I really think this game needs a trading system. It would add to role play and it would make it possible to get rid off/buy items of high value without money changing hands.

In regards to role play I might want to play a hunter type who does not care about gold, who might pick up some valuable loot, which I would want to trade for something else valuable, but not for gold. E.g. a magic staff for which I have no use for a new magic bow which I really want.

Practically, currently I'd have to find someone with enough gold to buy my item and then go buy the one I wanted instead of it, which is silly and not always possible. You end up with expensive items you don't want, and you can't buy the neat ones you do want. Introducing a trading system would sort that out. It could easily work the way buying/selling does now, where the items have values, there's a modifier for disposition, there's bartering etc., only the items values would be measured against each other as if you were actually trying to buy it. Then you could get rid of your 10,000 gold magic staff for which you have absolutely no use cause you're a hunter, and get the nice 5,000 gold magic bow which you would really like to replace your old wooden short bow.

If you don't care about the gold, but only the items, why not just trade them??

Thieves should get XP for bartered, stolen goods? I don't see why not.

Curious to see what sort of perk selections they will introduce for this particular skill. Hopefully it's not shallow.

Well, you dont have to barter in real life, so of course it doesnt feel skillful, if you actually had to try and convice someone to buy your crap for x amount of gold and they said yes, sounds skillful to me.

I second this