This thread is for ideas and suggestions for future Elder Scrolls games, and to keep all the discussion in one series of threads.


We have a long way to go before we get another ES game. In the meantime, similar topics will be closed and referred to this one.


Note there is a separate thread specifically for http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1595068-tes-vi-location-and-setting-speculation-30/ suggestions for future games. Please keep discussion of Skyrim in the correct forums.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1596006-official-beyond-skyrim-tes-vi-75/

Let's talk Economy. How can Bethesda improve Econonmy in TES6?

They could give gold wheight and reinstate the banking system.

Banking system? I'm assuming this is from Daggerfall or Arena? How did this work?

You could not hold unlimited gold, so you had to deposit it in one of the local banks. For large purshases beyond what you can hold, you could get a letter of credit. You could also take out loans, and they would send mercenaries to kill you if you never paid it back.

Not going to lie, that's sounds interesting!

I like the idea of weighted gold and the banking system. It'd be cool if the Bank became a faction as well even if just a smaller one giving you things like quest where you act a a mercenary and go hunt down debtors for them and other quest. As you rank up you gain more benefits perhaps you gain higher interest rates on your stored gold and lower rates on loans. Perhaps even become a manager with the ability to give out loans yourself to citizens. It could also have some interactions with the thieves guild too maybe a conflict where they try robbing it. It'd also be a good way to have a way to access all your goods if they made it so any items you deposited into your bank can be accessed from any other bank.

The real problem with TES economy though is finding a good balance of wealth. Early game im usually too broke to afford things i need and by the time I can afford them later I usually don't need them anymore. I rarely purchased anything while playing Skyrim. A game I think had a good economy on the other hand was The Witcher 3. I never felt rich but I always had enough money for something I needed, whether it was food or drink for health, ingredients for alchemy or new weapons, or some gwent cards I always found myself able to buy something worthwhile. It was something they did an interview on and spent a lot of time with balancing as they wanted the player to always be able to buy things but at the same time always be in need of money so they go looking for that next contract.

I really hope The Elder Scrolls VI is bigger than The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim combined.

The Elder Scrolls VI just needs to be really big and have most of the video games world map filled with content. Only the forests and wilderness should hardly have anything only they should have NPC's here and there, a few abandoned houses, and some villages spread out, but by the cities there should be farms, windmills, lots of houses on the outside of the cities, guard towers, etc stuff like that.

I want to see cities bigger than Balmora or the Imperial City in The Elder Scrolls VI, say as big as Balmora, the Imperial City, and VIvic combined would be a good size?

Also I really hope Bethesda Game Studios writes The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind or The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion level of side quests.

I tend to agree with this. I'm curious to see if they include a settlement system, like an improved version of Hearthfire, that we can sink our money into. Also if they brought back hiring enchanters for enchanting our gear or commissioning smiths to make us new weapons or armor or improving existing ones, that could be something else to sink money into.

I too wouldn't mind seeing the scale of the game going up a bit.

Daggerfall's economy was... interesting. I liked the scale of it, sure - you only need to spend like 5 gold for a room at an inn, training, spells and other supplies can sit around a thousand, and then in the lategame you're selling Daedric loot for tens of thousands of gold, and buying houses and enchanted items or paying Daedra summoners for hundreds of thousands of gold. But it still wasn't really that great - Mercantile was still utterly useless, all you had to do to make a ton of gold was level up and collect the loot on your scaled enemies, and there were plenty of exploits (like taking out a loan in a backwoods region, and never returning to pay it back).

The consistent problem in every modern Elder Scrolls game is that you always run out of things to spend your gold on as you start collecting more and more of it. I think a TESified version of Fallout's settlements might make a decent money sink (and source) if they designed it around upper-class style gameplay. You can purchase homes inside towns for 5k-20k just like in Oblivion or Skyrim, but then you can purchase farms, mines, and more elaborate homesteads in the countryside for 50k-100k - and instead of paying someone to furnish your home, you can buy furniture (or shipments of crafting materials) and furnish your home yourself in Workshop mode. Instead of creating a home for settlers, you hire workers and they'll produce you extra income as in Fallout.

The settlers in the settlements in Fallout 4 provide you extra income?

I though the settlers only work and set up shops for themselves and earn that money for themselves only.

I now hope settlement building is in The Elder Scrolls VI in this way

Is there any taxes at all? Like do the taxes go to your Player Characters (PC's)? I guess it's a tax if the settlers provide you the income. You take some of their money and they keep some of the money they earn?

They generate Caps which go into the settlement inventory and you can collect them later.


The biggest problem with wealth in any RPG is... The lack of maintinance costs. Primarily, the lack of any sort of taxation. This problem exists even in (most) D&D games, and ultimately makes characters dragons who just hoard wealth.


Weight and banking do nothing to really solve the problem, since any time you're spending money you're probably by a bank, and all they do is offer a simplistic storage system. Why not just use a locked trunk then? The banks in Daggerfall were only marginally better than the totally useless one in Wild Hunt...


There are a few things that can be done to alleviate the problem, but you're not going to eliminate it entirely. Fluctuating prices, maintenance costs and limiting gear-using enemies will remove some of the early game stress, but unless you implement some serious costs and taxes, you're never going to make money worth anything in an RPG.

It's pretty hard to incorporate maintenance costs without making them feel totally arbitrary and tacked on just to make sure we can't collect a pile of gold. Like, amassing a huge amount of wealth isn't the problem - it's not having anything worthwhile to spend it on.

True enough, though that only works for so long.


Though, I suppose the same can be said for Skills, Scaling, Exploration etc.


Alright... So... I'm go a say something here thats going to be radical, but.... I loved Fable 3. I thought it was far, FAR better than Fable 2, not only in story, but in overall design and thought process. But relevant to this... It gave you a use for your money beyond just buying houses and new gear (admittedly, by buying houses you could prop up the kingdoms treasury and make all the decsions inconsequential).


Combining that sort of management with Fallout's settlement system (with greater reliance on money instead of gathered resources) could create a massive money sink for those interestes. Both in terms of managing an entire town, and in a guild mechanic.

That is radical, lol! I will say that the property stuff was one of the few things I did like about Fable3. I wouldn't mind seeing something similar if it was an option. Playing wasteland overlord is something I really enjoy in Fallout4!

One way to make the money your Player Characters (PC's) feel like the money that you earn feel worthwhile to spend on should go to taxes. That is one way I see a good way to let some of the money you earn go.

Make the taxes be useful for stuff though. Whatever you get taxed on you can actually see the money being used and not go into a infinite void where it does nothing.

Isn't that where Taxes go thought?


More seriously, making their application practical could be difficult... The only potential implementation I can think of would have to tie into the dynamic 4x style trade that I've talked about before, with Taxes going up if the region's guard have to clear out more hostile locations (to cover the greater expense of the city/hold/county)...

Id much rather a management/investment system than settlement system. I'd rather throw spend money and make decisions than to go around building. Something like a mixture between Assassins Creed 2 and DA:I Skyhold. You should be able to invest money into shops and watch them update their inventories and even the shop itself. That kind of worn down weapon shop that used to only carry iron and steel weapons and only had 500 gold to spend now has dwarven and orcish and 2000 gold to spend and is a lot nicer and is actually generating you income.

I don't really care for how septims work in TES. My main concern is what you can do with it.

I think Skyrim/Oblivion did it more or less OK. There were always need septims at low~mid level to get the spell/training you need, then houses when you have more than you can spend on.

Gold weight and banking system seems like an unnecessary clutter for me. It's just one more thing to manage that really doesn't add much of entertainment value.

Taxation doesn't make sense to me either. Kinda hard to track down a guy constantly moving and raiding dungeons and find out how much income he made. lol

Poll tax/Property tax along with house/steward system might be OK, but I don't think a lot of pep will find it interesting.

If it's gold sink you want, you can always use the standard MMO method - super expensive enchanting material + low success chance + gear goes boom past +5 if fails. But I suspect you'd be playing an MMO instead of TES if that's what you want.

A real functioning economy though would be better for The Elder Scrolls video games.

If there is a short supply of items that you need the merchants raise the prices. Taxes should also exist based on the amount of income you earn a certain percent of the money you earn should go to the cities to pay for the cities guards and military.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was supposed to have a sabotageable economy.

One with Mods

Modding was always the main attraction for me in TES franchise. It's like having ton of free DLC around for modders and users alike. And when Beth put out official expansion and DLC, they sold like hotcakes since players were kept hot long time with modding and the new contents give more meat to mod. It's the most mod friendly game I've ever seen, and I totally appreciate it.

I want to see TES6 build further onto this success. While Skyrim was already very mod friendly game, there were some room to expand.

Prob the most important mod in Skyrim community is SKSE - Script Extender. I don't know any nuts and bolt detail on what it really does or how it works, but I noticed certain mods with special functions always required such 3rd pt plug in. Oblivion also had a similar mod. On top of that you're looking at Skeleton extender and High Heel support to get flowing hair and nice looking dress set. Since I mostly play female toon with 3rd view camera, this is pretty important deal. It'd be nice if TES6 could be constructed with these features built in, so modders can add a lot of functions they can't otherwise.

This isn't really about mod, but there have been something bothers me since Oblivion; helmets tend to replace hair, making the character bald. If it's difficult to make real hair colliding and being tucked in under helmet, you can always make helmets with built in hair filling the gap. The empty gap between back of my head and helmet is just horrible. I want to be able to wear these cool looking helmet without using "invisible helmet" mods. I have hunch this is something beyond what modders can fix legitimately.

I was wondering myself why they don't include a script extender in their games as most of the popular mods use them and seem to allow them to do more. It must be some technical reason as to why they don't though. Would probably work better if I knew what it actually was besides that thing you need to install to get SkyUI to work. But while I agree they should make modding easier at the same time them doing that scares me as they already really too much on the modding communities to make their games good.

On the subject of script extenders: yes, it would be nice. But if you're thinking this will eliminate a script extender for TES VI, no. No matter what functionality Bethesda programs into their next game, modders will want to do push the boundaries further. We will always need script extenders, because modders will always think of new things to do.

While it would be nice if Beth incorporated SKSE functions for us mod users to play with, I believe their first duty is to the game. It is wasted effort on their part to program functions into the game that are not needed by the game. I think they should concentrate on making the game work they way they want it to, and let modders add onto that.

Another thing from Daggerfall that I saw and think would be neat if brought back besides the banking system would be the need to identify enchanted items you find while adventuring. I saw it in a play-through I was watching and instantly realized kinda how silly it is that your adventurer who may be completely magically inept is somehow able to know what these magical items do. Of-coarse you's still be able to use the items but without getting them identified you wouldn't be able to tell what they do. You could even make an enchanting perk that lets you identify it yourself. It may seem like a system like something that's more annoying than it is immersive role-playing wise but it was something I thought was interesting.

Along with that I thought the survey it makes you take at the beginning of the game that establishes a background for you was really neat and the way it would start you off with different items depending on how you answered would add more variation early game. That and the Fallout NV Pro/Cons you could give your player would also be a cool feature to add back in.