I always love the mod http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=mods.detail&id=2901 for Morrowind. I briefly attempted to create something http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1072984-reqzwipz-willowedge-inn/page__st__80__p__15975561__hl__willowedge+inn__fromsearch__1#entry15975561 for Oblivion but the project ran out of steam.

I'd love for Skyrim to include a quest to own and operate a bar/tavern or a shop of some sort. You could hire workers collect gold, invest in upgrades and defend against thieves and gangs. Hell, why not include a cutthroat merchant guild that you could join (east empire company?). It would be a nice change of pace from go here kill that, collect item rinse and repeat.

Thoughts? Ideas? Vitriolic anger? Indifference?

Edit: Here's a better idea of what I mean.

"You meet an ailing shopkeeper (weapons and armor) who's son has just been killed in a dragon attack (whatever) he has no one to take over after he dies so he offers to sell the place to you for a large sum after you complete some quest (avenging his son's death or retrieving something from his son's dead body). After purchasing said armor shop, Let's call it the Yagraad's Plates and Points, you hire a shop keep (again quest required) and now instead of selling all your stuff to random merchants you stock the store with your loot (said items appear in display cases). Instead of getting 30% of the item value you receive 40% minus the shop keeps cut. You can then purchase upgrades for the store, nicer ambiance maybe a smith in the basemant to auto repair the crap you stock and now you receive 50% of the item value.

Patron's come in and out, your reputation goes up, you have to hire a guard

The drawback would be having to wait for the inventory to clear out from the shop. The rate of sales could be dependent on your mercantile skill or your fame/disposition in the town. You could possibly hire a town crier to advertise for you or if your the deviant sort you could burn down the competing businesses."

The shopkeep could get kidnapped you'd have to rescue him or her, you could lose items to theft until you make an agreement with the thieves guild.

You could also be approached by angry marauder orc types who want to sell their items to your shop. You could agree and take a cut from the sale of the questionably obtained items or you could deny their offer and have to confront them.

Ect Ect Ect.

http://i843.photobucket.com/albums/zz357/themythofanst/dovahkiintoaisle5.jpg

You should allow for multiple selections on the poll....I think that is an option right? The way its set up makes it seem like you only would want one of those options.

I wouldnt mind owning shops, however I dont really want to have to keep up with them if I dont want to. Sometimes I wouldnt mind managing, but I dont feel like being burdened into taking care of a shop.

Well, I took the "stupid" answer only because it was the sole none of the above response. Just not interested in owning a busines :shrug:

VITRIOL VITRIOL! :flamethrower:



nah I'd like the idea, i mean why not? get a little gold on the side, more RP oppurtunities, make it so people who play as chars that do not often kill can have a source of income

It would also be nice to be able to upgrade busnisses to increase the amount of income they bring in. The bigger/better the place gets, the more radiant AI could come in, especially in taverns.

Better places could have better items also.....Personally it would be really neat to see all shops able to be owned.

Yes. I assume we will again have ownable houses etc, and it would make sense and/or just be cool if these could also be in part the source of our revenue (ie, liv-in tavewrn or farm). Having a sustainable income source, I believe, adds alot to rpg games, kinda makes me feel I have my own place in the world.

It's a nice idea. How would you go about letting the player have fun and with out it being just a house that spits out money?

Poll is biased. I want the option "This idea is stupid. I want more side quests rather than devoting effort to pointless things that are completely different from the gameplay style of the Elder Scrolls series."

It would attract quest givers, give radiant story something to work with, also you wouldn't need to travel to far to get updates on whats happening around skyrim, since different regions have different factions, one can surmise not everyone will be talking about the same thing, what better that to attract a motely crew of people to a affiliateless Cozy Tavern? since you can befriend NPC's to a greater degree than Oblivion and morrowind, why not give them a location to meet you? and what ever benefits that come with it.



the reason i didnt yell NO %%%%$$$ OFF IT WILL DIVERT TIME AND RESOURCES AWAY FROM MAH SKYRIM, is because stuff like this can be added as *cough* DLC.....not so much with stuff like Multiplayer...and besides its another player owned asset, why not?

I suppose by making the management portion optional. Quests could help too. Maybe your shop is getting robbed at night. This could create a mission to track down the bandits, eliminate them by some means, and then tracking down suitable 'guards' to keep an eye on your shop after hours and when you arent around.



Ouch. Thats a little harsh isnt it? Its only completely different than the gameplay style of the ES if you want it to be. Technically, the gameplay of the ES series is what Bethesda makes it to be, and could include almost anything.

Plus managing stores/businesses isnt outside of the realm of ES IMO. Not at all.

Well Wayfarer's Rest was a really great interpretation of a player owned business. You had to buy a land deed, hire construction workers, hire a barkeep, dancer, cook and a couple guards, stock inventory and pay for upgrades. You had a nice little office and bedroom in the lower levels and random patrons would appear in inn every so often. Obviously at the end of the week you would collect gold, so in that sense the house did spit out money but it required some questing before hand.

I'd love be able to run an item shop for a spell, just for the Dragon Quest 4 reference if nothing else. A merchant's guild might've been interesting too, maybe a way to make mercantile more interesting as a skill, though that's probably moot now it's been ditched.

A mead hall could be pretty cool.

I'd like to think the gameplay style of TES isn't just "kill this and take its items".

I like this idea, especially having your own tavern. Would be cool to manage the tavern when you feel like it, deal with business issues and customers for a while. Then, when you feel like going on an adventure, having a barkeep employee that you could tell to manage the place a while so you could slay some dragons and do other epic things.

That last option is just stupid. The people working on water are not the people designing the quests. They can work on both at the same time.

Now with that out of the way, I have unfortunately never played the mod the OP mentioned. I'd like to know how they managed to keep it interesting and keep it from simply being a cash cow. Simply running a tavern/inn/shop sounds rather dull to me, personally.

:facepalm: it was a joke.

I read the poll, and voted the closest thing to 'no'. My opinion matched the poll in so far as "this idea is stupid"; and for the same reason that I consider the player's house in Fallout 3 as 'stupid'. :shrug:

Having a house implies a lull in the events that would allow him free time to contemplate the mundane. That's just wrong for an RPG in my opinion. Its fine for a back-story, and its fine to "save the family home", but its not fine to turn it into a farming sim, or to play at decorating the house. In Fallout's case... The PC should be far too pressed for time (which is unfortunate, given their design goals for FO3), and in Fantasy... there is (or should be), far too much else to do, to ever consider 'settling down' during the time frame of the player's experience.

:flamethrower:

Worst. Post. Ever.

The Elder Scrolls series has always been primarily a questing skill based open world action adventure game. This idea is like a tycoon sim. It would take forever to design and balance, let alone implement, and it plain doesn;t fit. TES games work on an action based system (talk to this person or complete this to further the story/quest) but a shop gives you time based income. If you hired someone to run it for you while you're off questing, it would be a constant stream of income, and you could even just wait for a while and get free money in moments. If you put in bandit attacks at regular intervals, this would mean that firstly your shop is really freakishly hated by the whole world of criminals, but also it would just become a chore and a hassle to get rid of them each time. If you have to manage it all the time, and make sure to do the right thing in order to stop it failing, then it overrides your capacity for adventuring and questing because you can't just delay it like normal quests, as it affects your income stream. These are a few basic issues in the balancing of this and making it a fun element for the player that fits within the world and gameplay style.

This effort from the developers is something I would rather go into side quests and making good story and world, so maybe you could add that to the poll (even if it's "just a joke").

...............so i guess the part where even the Morrowind manual and the Oblivion intro says HEYA welcome to the gameworld, go out and go do somthing doesn't apply anymore?

Wait... I edited it.

I'm also entirely serious too. Its a disappointment to me that they included it even in Oblivion; but in Fallout... unforgivable.

I dunno....I just disagree. I dont think everything in an RPG needs to be time based and rushed. There should always feel like there is plenty of time to do whatever you want IMO.

I kind of feel like what you describe is a "Beat the world" mentality, rather than a "Live in the World" train of thought that I follow.

I didn't say that it has to be time based and rushed (*always, at any rate), but I do disagree that there should be time enough to 'do whatever you want'. That ruins it IMO ~devalues anything you would choose to do; and would seem to remove a large incentive to play the game more than once or twice.

I also prefer a game that holds you to a clock for reasonably time sensitive events. See I can recall in Fallout where once the timer on the nuke is set, you have to leave before it explodes... There is not enough time to 'do whatever you want' in the area... and when it detonates, that area is forever off limits.

I would want an NPC to leave if I don't show for the meeting, and be annoyed when we next spoke; even refuse outright (and possibly permanently) to deal with me again, if I missed the appointment.

I always thought it was very RPGish to acquire a stronghold. Though, the houses in Oblivion didn't exactly fit that bill.