would it be possible to have npcs get and use restore magicka potions? that's like a huge setback with npcs to not utilize them. that would be epic if it can be replicated from the restore fatigue to use them!

It looks easy enough to do so.

Call me crazy, but I never saw anything wrong with the way Morrowind's Economy is. That's why I thought all Economy adjusters were just crazy.

If someone could explain exactly how it's buggy, I'd like that.

Fixing the economy would take significant work to be sure. Many problems have been addressed, like the player getting free things, and the like, but at its heart, this isn't the true problem.


Problem A: Stagnant Economy The problem really lies on the fact that the economy is pretty much stagnant by default. The economy does not react to the player dumping armor on a merchant, which would drive the supply of armor up and thus the price down, so the more "Steel Armor" you dump in an area, or even on a merchant, the smaller amount he should give, in theory. This of course is in a direct relation to the demand of Steel Armor, and of course, dropping one or two suits on a merchant won't drive the price down to 10 gp. The biggest problem in all of default Morrowind is that the economy is not fluid, and is not well established. It would take a ground up revitalization to fix the economy.


Problem B: Player Wealth

What's wrong? Not much for the world around you, but for the player, wealth is something that is easy to acquire and hard to loose. This is probably the breaking point of the entire game, as you do not have to purchase significant amount of things to get by. You have no liabilities, not taxes to pay, no food or clothing to buy, and essentially, you are a monetary black hole. In reality, this probably goes back to Problem A, but this addresses the player specifically.


Problem C: Currency and Value

The currency is not well established, and the value system is somewhat broken. The entire idea of the value system would work, but you would have to pin down the actual value of a Septim. Values are abstractly and inefficiently assigned, which may or may not be a game breaker. In my eyes, it is. The fact that one unit of wickwheat is the same for paper or other things is very unrealistic, and establishing the septims store of value would greatly assist in balancing out the values of all things within the game.

Currency establishes three things that make it an effective tool in economics. These are Unit of Account, Medium of Exchange, and a Store of Value. There aren't really inherent problems with having only one unit of currency, IE the gold piece, but it is pretty unrealistic to do so. When someone wants 10,000 gold pieces for something, they don't expect you to dump 10,000 gold pieces into their lap. Transactions of those kinds usually deal in promissory notes (IE banknotes) that can be redeemed for that amount of gold, (which in turn establishes a new medium of exchange, as these banknotes can be traded between two parties as easily as it can be redeemed.) Forcing a merchant to purchase something at its true value would allow for the establishment of banknotes and other things that could assist in balancing out the economy of Morrowind, or allow players to make total conversions with a much better economy than Morrowind, as Morrowind's economy must be fixed from the ground up.




It isn't broken, par sey, but it is significantly unrealistic.

Yes, but can NPCs be made to use player-made potions? Also, do they recognize other effects in potions, like shields, invisibility, or pretty much any beneficial effect?


Yes, I know. There was talk of a mod that would at least change item prices depending on the region you are in that would require MWSE somewhere.

The barter mechanic with mercantile fix is broken, so far as you can buy things back for less than you sold it for at only 20 mercantile skill, if you talk up your disposition enough. To state the obvious it turns into a free money generator. It's the underlying Morrowind behaviour which the original bug (intentionally) covered over. I'm not going to deliver half a fix, because it already changes the barter mechanics to the player's favour; I'm aiming for something more neutral. My balance target is at least not selling things back over marked price (which the original did not allow either) at 100 skill. It's not a hard cap, If you go past 100 mercantile you will still get better prices.

NPCs already drink player-made potions. They are programmed to only drink health or fatigue potions, though it's easy enough to add any spell effect. The problem is there's no AI to govern the use of other spell effects, the NPC will chain chug any and all potions without regard to the usefulness of a potion.

any chance in having the option to remove the .exe version check (at our own risk)? this could at least let us try and see how well this patch works with the steam version.

Shouldn't Mercantile be an opposed check against the other party? And disposition be a direct influence upon closing the gap between the opposed skill checks? Or is this how it works already? Can you post the formula for this equation?

Also, I don't think that you can force a value on a merchant by using the MWSE. I havn't done real research, but I think it cannot be done by scripts.

I would really not do that.
I don't know how Steam works in detail, but as far as I know it uses encryption, overlays and/or hashes laced through the executable (most copy protection systems do). Hence, you would have to decrypt/RE the entire code segment, removing all Steam checks. I can almost guarantee introducing the Steam library into the engine (even if it's run after, like UPX) changed the offsets of the code necessary for MCP's fixes, so any offset patches (and a number of SnR patches) will fail, or just corrupt the executable.
Unfortunately, the only real thing to do is wait until the new offsets are found, the Steam version is made compatible, or someone around Bethesda/Valve decides to make the MCP an official patch (which would be a nice show of support to the community).

I support option to not check the executable (with a proper warning) - as long as backup is created all should be fine.

Oh, wow. I figured out gloss maps. Going to make a separate post on it.

In other news:
Mercantile is an opposed check, and disposition is just another modifier on top. Merchants in Morrowind are typically in the 10-30 Mercantile skill range which means you outskill them quite easily.

Here fatigue is 0 at a full bar and 1 at an empty bar;
player rating <- (merc + per*0.2 + luck*0.1 + (disp - 50)) * (1.25 - fatigue*0.5)
merchant rating <- (merc + per*0.2 + luck*0.1) * (1.25 - fatigue*0.5)

ask % <- 100 - 0.5 * (player - merchant)
sell % <- 50 - 0.5 * (merchant - player)

Hmm, is it even possible to fix the ground plane rendering?

I'd say it's possible but would take a very long time. The CS editor doesn't render it properly either, so you wouldn't be able to paint the textures accurately there.

i'm really curious about the gloss maps!

Kind of a tossup then. The original behavior was stupid, but if fixing it requires nerfing the disposition effect is hard to say which is worse. The ideal fix, IMHO would be to tweak the formula so that you could only buy and sell at the base price under more or less ideal circumstances, and perhaps hard cap it so you could never do better than that. But keep the relative importance of skill and disposition more or less intact. I don't know how hard that would be though.

if that could be implemented, i wonder if it's possible to fix the exploit of selling items worth 1 gold sell for full price when sold alone.

One point of disposition is equivalent one point of mercantile which is fairly stupid sounding to me, and that can't be altered by a GMST. I guess an economy mod could compensate by doing a +50 mercantile on all the merchants though.

I guess in keeping with vanilla I'll change disposition back, instead I would cut the 0.5 multipliers to 0.25 so there's less price deviation.


That is very simple to do.

That's cool this is still being worked on. :goodjob:

Not intending to perpetuate the argument, but I would hardly call it half a fix. Mercantile didn't work properly, and now it does. The rest of the problem would be having unskilled merchants. If your skill is higher than theirs, then it makes sense that you can buy low and sell high. Of course disposition factors in too heavily. Changing how it affects the price is no longer a fix but a balance issue, and I think it should be separate. If there is room to include it, I think it's a great addition. It's a case of separate issues contributing to one problem, and each should have it's own solution.


I had no idea. I haven't used companions much, but they always say that they can't use player-made potions. Well, if it's possible to make them use Restore Magicka potions, what about other effects? Any info on making NPCs cast 0 Magicka spells?


I had no idea disposition was that much of a factor. That is indeed ridiculous. We know merchants are not smart in Morrowind. The whole reason I argued so much was to leave room for mods just like you have mentioned. If people feel that they acquire money too easily, they will search for mods.

I sincerely apologize if I seem intrusive with my suggestions. I know it's your project, and in the end you can do whatever you want. It's just that I feel there should be a distinction between a fix, and a tweak. I have some issues with the UMP/MPP because of that. That said, I respect what you are doing and I'm glad to be testing this wonderful project.

Just want to point out my http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1009286.

Arsuru, okay, it's not half a fix. I don't like changing default behaviour that much either, but the mercantile fix caused an obvious exploitable situation early on in the game, which is significantly worse than without the fix. I'm not going to ship any options that create exploits like that.

That's it for this thread. Please reply in the http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1009430.

Hey, there are still 5 posts left. :nono:
But seriously, I completely understand why you're doing it the way you are.

Hrnchamd:

In the long post you made on http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=978076&view=findpost&p=14533866
You neglected to mention your opinion on my ideas as shown in the first post:



I understand that you are busy. But a simple: I'll consider it/ It cannot be done/ I don't want to do that would mean a lot to me.
P.S Thanks for the work you have been doing on the merchantile fix. I fully support your endeavors to balance bartering as best you can, it is a worthy goal.