one thing i've always found odd is the fact that i can carry the amount of gold on my person as twenty daedric claymores would weigh.
i hated dragon age, but the one thing i did like about it was the money system. i liked that there was gold, silver, and copper.
that way 1 gold is like 10 silver and 100 copper. then you can make ten copper equal what one gold was worth in oblivion.

also it makes it better with the value of forks and stuff like that. a lot of those things in oblivion had no value, but if you made it like five copper it would seem like a more believable medieval economy.
then you could have classes of townspeople where the average peasant would make 50 copper a week, and the average nobleman made like 5 silver a week.
this would make it way more believable and immersive without complicating things too much.
(i am just throwing out numbers for the sake of the example. don't take me too literally)

also, on an unrelated note i would very much like being able to stack my coins around my house like in morrowind :biggrin:

this was also how the economy kind of works in version 3.5 of dnd according to the handbook. i always liked the system.
but what do you think?

I think it sounds good, but I don't think it will be changed to this in Skyrim. You never know, though.

I really, really hated the money system in DA:O. Realistic? Sure, except for how a hundred coppers magically turn into a single silver coin. Mostly it just annoyed me because money should be intuitive. If I have to teach myself to read, say: "G 7 S 30 C 73" as 73,073, instead of just reading, "GOLD: 73,073", it annoys me.

Part of the reason perhaps is that gold is not an inventory item. I mean, they could make it work better with the new Skyrim engine, but in Oblivion, Gold was a system of points, and that's all. Couldn't make it have weight if you wanted to. This may be a good idea, but this could make gameplay impossible unless banks and bills were added. You couldn't carry 50,000 gold pieces to buy a house. It'd be very hard just to carry 500. I wouldn't say this is a question of hardcoe vs casual, but practicality. It doesn't help that Gold is one of the heaviest metals out there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(United_States_coin) weigh barely anything, but gold coins can weigh much more.

Also, as I've ranted about to the point of nausea in other threads: a civil war and an empire on decline would probably make banks and cheques less than feasible in Skyrim.

I think they should have banks, and I think you should be able to get a job at the bank, where there's a mini game where you have to match sub-prime mortgages with the right interest rate.

I have no idea what the last half of that sentence means They'd best have instructions if that makes it in!

Or package good loans with bad to get AAA security ratings? That's just silly. Septims aren't fiat, they can't print more to bail you out!

I haven't played vanilla Oblivion in so long, I had forgotten the trading system. Weight for gold and a variety of currencies would be very nice. More importantly, the gold cap for merchants in Oblivion didn't really make sense. Apparently, they had an endless supply of gold, but couldn't spend more than a predetermined amount on any one item. That was actually pretty odd. :blink:

I hope something like Living Economy and Cutthroat Merchants mods will be built into Skyrim (without the occasional windfall glitch of course).

Maybe not print them, but the practice of adding a little extra lead to the melting pot to stretch the money supply is an old trick.

If it's immersion versus ease of play, I would choose 73,073.

I don't want all that. Seems annoying. I think they just have to balance it out a bit more. Often felt like a lot of stuff was too cheap, some too expensive and it was generally too easy to get money using certain methods.

or i could just kill myself

This is where economics and gameplay aspects in FONV really shines. Although I agree that gold should have weight and denominations and other currencies, they should learn a lot from FONV. Everything just seem to have a purpose. Get the most money? Combine so that you get two items near top value, how far depends on skill. Manage weight? Combine to max sacrificing the potential money gain. How much you get depends on skill. Maximize barter? Sure, but you have to sacrifice something that may be more useful. Or keep selling and carrying more of the cheap stuff to get by. No merchants around with money? You'll have to sleep for a few days, but that's gonna cost you in foodstuffs and water. Everything is just so well connected. Seems to me gameplay was a very high priority with FONV.

It's not "making money have weight for the sake of making it have weight", it's a lot of gameplay thingies that are connected so well it just appears natural. If caps had weight in FONV it would be a nightmare, unless other stuff was balanced out to make it work. The same should apply to Skyrim. You can't just add weight to gold and call it a day.

But if done right, with appropriate gameplay elements like banks and balanced with the rest of the game, sure - I wouldn't mind, in fact I would love it. Makes the gaming *deeper*, something that severely lacks in TES games.

Feeling a little like a broken record here, but collapsing empire and civil war are not great conditions upon which to found a banking industry.

In my opinion, I just didn't like the way Bethesda prioritized money thus far in their games by making all things purchasable by money. You need money for skills. You need money for spells. You need money for possessions. You need money for amour and clothes. To give your money to one thing is to deny everything else. Either you have great skills but poor clothing, or you have great clothing but no skills.

Mathematically it makes more sense to put your money into your skills because you use them all the time for everything, but you only need a +5 Health Ring for having 5 extra Hit Points and it doesn't help with anything else. If you buy the ring, you can't get the stat increases. The stat increases are NECESSARY but the ring is just DESIRED. So you have to always go without your desired treasures in pursuit of greater power.

Why can't money be reserved for possessions, food, clothing, donations (to help others), and bribes (for corrupt officials who will not otherwise help anyone), and leave Skills, Spells, Magic Items, and Stat Increases to other methods of implementations such as through REWARDS. You help the Mage's Guild, they reward you with Spell Currency for gaining Knowledge. You help a wise trainer of Agillity with a quest, he rewards you with training in Agility. You help a rich Prince defeat a rival quietly, he bestows to you your choice of 3 magic items with varied and useful magical properties that you can't get anywhere else but because you helped him. You do a job for an Alchemists, he teaches you Alchemy, or gives a choice of some potions you can select in repayment, with a "Reward" value assigned to different potions so you can't buy everything, just some things depending on how big your help was to him.

Then money doesn't have to be everything, in a game where, quite often in my experience, there is never enough money and what you do get can only go to one thing: skills, leaving all other aspect of your character undefined until you're 40th level. I want to have fun enjoying my character's cool possessions MUCH earlier in the game, right away. Heroes often have access to more than just the usual folk.

1. Because it gives you a lot more flexibility - it's a good idea to give you a form of reward that you get to invest in whatever you want.

2. I disagree. The main problem for me is that I always had too much money, and it kind of ruined my character progression. In Morrowind you could get to level 70+ and still have money to buy anything you want in a few hours. Besides, you don't take into account that the best items were almost never for sell in previous TES games.

What I would really want to see is a considerably more balanced economy, where it would be harder to make a fortune overnight by stealing.

Old discussion, Daggerfall had gold with weight, one septim weighted 0.1 the same as flax seeds or other light ingredients and was worth less. As armor and weapon in Daggerfall was far more expensive you dropped gold to carry more elven or better equipment.
Yes a gold, silver and copper coin system would solve it, but gold is very valuable for it weight so just keeping it weightless is no big issue.

I agree 1 million percent

paying 5 gold for a wooden bowl just seems wrong :shakehead:

I think if a big part of this game is going to be a Civil war within Skyrim where half the population and towns are trying to stay with the Empire and the other half is trying to secede and become an independent Nation then it would make sense to have two currencies.

Septims could remain the currency for the cities and towns wishing to stay with the Empire and the other currency (whatever Bethesda decides on) could be for the other cities and towns wishing to secede.
It would definitely make things interesting.

You the player build up a fortune in Septims only to travel to the other side of Skyrim to another city that is trying to secede from the Empire and uses the other currency and you find out your Septims are worth less than nothing there.

There of course would have to be some sort of median in place so why not make it Gems and Gold/Silver Nuggets?

You could trade in your fortune in Septims for rare gems like Diamonds, Rubies, etc.... and then travel to the other cities and your fortune stays intact for the most part.

The better disposition you have with the NPC your trading your Septims to for gems the better deal you get and the same way when you get to the other city trading your gems in for whatever currency they now use in place of Septims.

I just think there needs to be something more now in Skyrim 'concerning economy' than there was in Oblivion.

There definitely needs to be a better balance for gems and gold/silver nuggets (if they even include them again).

Whats the point of having this rare diamond as loot if its worth less than nothing like it was in Oblivion?

Thank God for all the Mods that balanced it out in the end like Living Economy (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4432) and Fixed Gems (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4826).

I'm keeping my expectations for Skyrim to have a better economy system in place drastically low but I am at least hoping it to be 'not as broken' as it was in Oblivion.