Come to think of it, there is only 2 options if you want to fix money becomming worthless:

1: having extremely valuable items in stores, making players who want them have to get all that money to buy it.

Or 2, which I like more: Not giving us a lot of money in the first place.



!!

I hope you read this:
Now I'd like to see a system that somehow connects your current level and the loot you find-and adjust the price accordingly. An example: You are level 30. The bosses of dungeons may have one deadric armor piece or weapon on them. They are rare at this level, so they are worth 15 000 each. At this level, you won't be running out of a cave with 20 pieces of them, max 2, most of the time only 1 and sometimes even 0. Getting a few levels under the belt you reach the level of 40. Dearic armor appears in full sets now on bosses and even elite warriors in a cave may have 2 or three pieces. The increased amount of dearic items means deadric items value lowers to only 1500 each. (numbers are just there as an example, not a final version if this would be added to the game, which I sincerely hope it is!)

!!

Except shops didn't carry anything you wouldn't trip over after killing some bandits.

It would be interesting to see, at higher levels perhaps, "artifcact" collectors, who buy and sell really expensive items such as daedric and glass, maybe unique or powerful enchantments.
At least then there would be a shop that has items of value to anyone higher than level 15, and a potential place to properly sell unwanted high value items. It would have to be balanced, but it would make for a good addition.

I still think we need more gold sinks. Houses did it to some extent, potions used to be a gold sink but you would often find more than you needed and the handy heal spell you start out with...

Why not simply increase the prices of every single item sold by merchants? (while at the same time reducing the resale value, so you get less gold when you sell found or stolen items)

I just got an idea!

How about to spend money for [insert Guild/Faction/Rebel/Empire here] to help them or (to take them over --- in a fight between Empire and Rebels for a small village
Maybe it will affect their equip in important battles/more members/reputation.

And why not include a minor faction where you make progress by spending more money?
Todd Howard said we will have influence on the economy in one town.
So why shouldnt we be able to spend money on a town to help the guards/capelle (for the poors)/buildings, witch were destroyed by a dragon.

In Oblivion Improved (a bit like the Unofficial Patch just bigger) you had the possibility to investigate money on shop to increase their gold.

But It should be important to make it very hard (a bit like in morrowind if you wanted to collect the full deadra set)
to find better/best gear.

From me so far.

In Oblivion, there was almost no need to buy anything at all from merchants.

Inflation? Thats the least enjoyable way to do it.

What if there are really expensive items to save up for, and as I level I save up for it, now it goes up in price and and I make less money.
Inflation in a video game isn't inflation at all, its stagflation, prices go up but employment (or in this case income) goes down or stays the same.

Now if they did it properly, and only the items that are now available decrease in price, such as I farm daedric items so their value goes down then it might work. But then we also need regional economies, because daedric armor in one city doesn't mean there is any in another city.

And without gold sinks you will always have an unreasonable amount of gold and nothing to do with it.

Of course like most things its a balance of things that will solve the problem.

Perhaps I didn't explain clearly. I'm not talking about increasing prices over the course of the game.

I'm talking about from START, doing the following (with a mod, since it obviously won't be in the vanilla game):

1. All merchant prices increased by 5x (from start of game, all the way to the end). In other words, if an item costs 100 gold in the vanilla game, it now costs 500 gold.

2. All resale prices, when selling loot to merchants reduced by an additional factor of X (not sure what that would be, perhaps 2x, but it would be in addition to and separate from whatever dynamic economy elements are already in the game, such as NPC disposition, mercantile skill checks, etc.). For example, if you can sell an item for 100 gold in the vanilla game, now you might only get 50g from the merchant.

3. All fencing resale prices (for selling stolen goods to fences), reduced by a factor of 5x. In other words, if you can sell a stolen item for 100 gold in the vanilla game, you now only get 20 gold.

The result:

Early levels will be extremely challenging, low level spells will be expensive, and higher levels will still provide a lot of powerful, expensive items that give you a good reason to scrounge and save up for them. So you still have something to look forward to at high levels.

That might help, I agree some items should be worth more.

But it doesn't change the fact there was never anything worth buying in Oblivion.
The shops didn't carry anything until you reached a certain level, and by then buying it was a waste of time because you would find it.
And then they never carried higher level items.

I think - first of all - petty bandits should NEVER (excuse the caps) sport anything better than steel armour (except maybe for the occassional Jarlaxle-type thief-lord). That way you couldn't loot expensive armour that easily (and it would add to immerssion, cause why would a bandit be a bandit if he has an armour worth more than a normal person earns in his/her whole life).

Second, Imho carrying capacity should be drastically reduced. So that you can have a full set of heavy armour, maybe up to three weapons and one to two shield at the max.
So you couldn't run around with three full sets of deadric in the first place.

After installing mods to increase merchant prices, I had to work very hard in Oblivion to save up for:

(1) Spells, both purchased as well as those made at an altar became tremendously expensive, so I could only afford one or two at a time.

(2) arrows (duke patricks mod makes arrows more scarce)

(3) food and drink items (COBL Real Hunger, Real Thirst requires eating and drinking to survive)

(4) rooms in inn (Real Sleep Extended requires sleeping)

(5) powerful magic items (mods like MMM, Fran's, Supreme Magicka, etc., add a lot of interesting and expensive magic items to the inventories of existing merchants, as well as new magic merchants)

Money in Oblivion was way to easy to attain and way before the point of completeing the game you would have more money than you could spend.

I would like to see money given wieght to the ratio of roughly 1 encumberance point to about 250 gold, that way you couldn't carry too much or you need a safe house to stash your gold in.

I would enjoy my success much more if I felt like I had earned it, I would just mod the game so that quests and items reward less money, but I'm getting it for my PS3.

An equally preferable system would be to drastically raise the price of all items.

Way back when a sword was a sign of wealth, as they were more expensive than axes or maces.

Most knights couldn't afford a full set of plate armor.

I'd like to see a system that somehow connects your current level and the loot you find-and adjust the price accordingly. An example: You are level 30. The bosses of dungeons may have one deadric armor piece or weapon on them. They are rare at this level, so they are worth 15 000 each. At this level, you won't be running out of a cave with 20 pieces of them, max 2, most of the time only 1 and sometimes even 0. Getting a few levels under the belt you reach the level of 40. Dearic armor appears in full sets now on bosses and even elite warriors in a cave may have 2 or three pieces. The increased amount of dearic items means deadric items value lowers to only 1500 each. (numbers are just there as an example, not a final version if this would be added to the game, which I sincerely hope it is!)

^That pretty much removes a ton of problems with high level infinite money.

I can think of a few things I wouldn't mind see implemented: (some of which have already been mentioned)

1) Make rare items rare. The average bandit should have average bandit armor and clothing - probably little better than your own at lower levels. On the flip side, trudging through a very difficult dungeon should result in appropriately high-level loot.

2) Make mercantile matter. If you can't bargain worth a flip, merchants should try to take you for all you are worth. Shoot, at low levels, you might have to pay them to buy your stuff!

3) Require payment for goods and services that were free in Oblivion. The aforementioned fast travel would be perfect. Daggerfall required you to pony up for fast travel, and so should Skyrim. Prices should be steep, especially if you are going to the wilderness.

3a) Make eating and drinking mandatory, so you either go out and forage - or pay for a meal in an inn. Prices should be reasonable, since the alternative is kind of harsh. Buying goods in preparation for a hike in the woods would also require you to budget.

4) Rentable rooms, where you have to pay the rent every month, or your loot (in the home) gets confiscated. To encourage renting, only allow short term (tavern) rentals for a single night, renewable nightly. Apartments then have the advantage of allowing you to leave for a while, and still store your stuff. Also, anything laying on the ground, or in an unsecured storage container, should be subject to random theft.

5) Buyable homes - but with property taxes! The difference being that you only have to pay your taxes every 3-4 months or something, and you don't lose your stuff, you just lose access until you pay up.

There are plenty of ways to make money both harder to come buy, and easier to spend. It's a bit disappointing that most games allow you to swim in loot like Scrooge McDuck, while it would be almost trivial to make it difficult to hit "middle class", and nearly impossible to hit "stinking rich".

Ok, added justification.

First, reduce values rather than raise them, since you find more items than you buy, so the lower the price the greater the difficulty AND merchants become more useful since buying cheap weapons might be worth while once or twice.

Second, all valuable rewards should be discussed in terms of what you can trade them for, not in terms of amount of gold, unless you provide a long list. A 10,000 reward doesn't mean much if we don't know how expensive the stuff we want to buy with it is.

Thirdly, profit will always be unlimited in these games, so what really matters is scaling rewards to costs. Most money making methods should have rewards that follow some function of the time put into earning it. If most methods earn about the same profits per minute spent it would be easier to balance prices.

.... I found the problem even worse in Morrowind than Oblivion.

The issue with the large amounts of incoming cash in Oblivion was the lack of level-scaling in the merchants. There should always be a chance of finding something better than the stuff you have in a Merchant's inventory. When there's nothing worth buying, no matter how slow you gain cash, you still end up stupidly rich because positive income and no expenses has cash head toward Infinite as time progresses

Fallout fixed the problem by making Ammunition for weapons readily available from merchants, but sufficiently expensive to keep your cash down. However, the unreliability of weapons and scarcity of ammunition was part of the Fallout atmosphere, which TES cannot replicate without it seeming forced.

Even then, in Fallout, you still ended up with grotesque amounts of cash past the mid-high levels.

Diablo II and Torchlight kind of solved the problem, the former with the Gambling system (You knew what weapon/armor you were getting, and knew you were being overcharged for it, but there was a nice chance it was better than what you had) and the latter with the Enchanting system (When you had a piece of gear you really liked, you could invest more into it, at the risk of losing everything)

Heck, even Two Worlds fixed the problem with the Item Stacking system... You never could become complacent with your gear: Even with a "Best in Slot" item, you could continue to invest more into it, at diminishing returns.

But, character wealth in RPGs can almost always be approximated with a positive, cubic polynomial function.

I like these ideas^

Todd are you reading this?

why not simply reduce the resale value (price merchant will pay to buy items from you) at the same time you increase all the merchant selling prices?

you earn less gold from selling loot, and you have to save up for a longer time to buy each item.

I think it's been way to easy to get money since Morrowind. In Morrowind, I had over 100k gold before I hit level 10. They need to make money actually matter, and make the decision of getting that new sword, or getting those 10 health potions, a lot more difficult to make.




I really hope that you can stack duplicate weapons in Skyrim, or at least break down the item into its parts and then use your smithing skill to use those components to upgrade your weapon, so even once you've found the absolute best weapon in the game, you can still be excited to find loot in the hopes to upgrade your weapon (there should be no cap on how many times you can stack the weapon like in Two Worlds).

One thing I want them to consider in regards to economy, is not just how easy it is to become rich, but what there's actually to get with that money. I find that a lot the time (in past games) even if you do manage to get a lot of money you have nothing to do with it. I would like it if vendors actually had decent stock, full sets of armor and several variants, things so that if you want to buy it you can. It seems like too often you'll go to a vendor and have nothing to buy (save for a few cheap items like potions or ingredients/junk). It would be much better if you could go to a vendor and have a choice of possible things to buy, even if they're out of your item range (for example you're level 3 and only have access to iron and steel, you could go to a smith and buy/order a glass set for a premium). In New Vegas, they kind of tried to address this issue by adding the Gun Runners, but I found that didn't really help as much as I'd like due to the extreme price range for their goods compared to everything else. It became more practical to save your money, and then go out and find those guns rather than buy them for several tens of thousands. I hope Skyrim finds a good balance between these extremes.

If the price for every single item sold by merchants were increased by 5x, that would solve part of your problem, right?

I think the other problem you are referring to is simply a lack of interesting items for sale. I'm sure if the vanilla game does not have enough interesting items, there will be 30,000+ mods created for skyrim that add new items and even new merchants.

but if all the prices were massively increased, then even at higher levels, you would have some cool magical items or spells that you must scrounge and save up for, not to mention consumable items like arrows, alchemical ingredients and crafting supplies.

I didn't read all the thread but in Oblivion I had like several 100,000 gold and my mercantile skill was still only around fifty.
So I would be happy if they change the leveling system: Make the amount of money you bartered matter & not the amount of transactions.

If they have vendors like FO3 or NV that only have a set amount of money, and not infinite like in OB, then it should be slightly harder.I dont think they should have a lot of gold at one time either, it should be more like FO3 than NV, where the most they start at is around 500,maby a few vendors start above a thousand.NV, they all had like 3000 to 8000 all the time, so it was very easy to make money,almost as easy as oblivion.

A good way to fix this is to not have gold on every single character you kill. Or have caves that are empty because you know not every cave holds treasures

With the new economy system the merchants barter gold should increase or decrease depending on the state of the economy.