One suggestion that may seem too harsh
Make Skyrim with limited gold ammount
For example 5Bil gold coins
The more gold you collect the poorer people become
The less money people have the less things start to cost (at least for everyone besides you)
When you collect 10% of gold you start to pay tax
The more gold you have the more each month you pay
So in the end you can collect most gold in the game
And by that triggering events when angry mobs raids your houses and hunts you to rob you

I personally enjoy earlier levels of these types of games when I'm poor and skrimping and saving to buy supplies and that nice weapon I've seen in the shop. But then a few levels later I've got more gold than god and suddenly the game seems much less fun. So I would personally love it if gold and loot was much harder to come by. I think Oblivion was a perfect example of what not to do. There was nothing in the stores worth buying and stores had an unlimited supply of gold. And there was nothing else to spend your money on.

So what I'd like to see is for quest rewards and loot to be quite low, for stores to have limited gold but have higher end items to give you something to save up for and look forward to buying. And crucailly I'd like to have something to spend my gold on throughout the game, like having to pay or bribe NPCs for things in quests, and having to pay for supplies, arrows, healing items ect.

This is a funny way to start (harder gold earning, I mean):

When we divorced from your wife, she takes half the money we collect in the game until then ...

i kind of liked how they did it in Dead Money DLC for Fallout NV. they had individual Sierra Madre chips lying all over and you had to collect them. one of the problems with putting gold into chests (which they shouldnt) is that you inevitably end up with tons of it. add to that the selling of gear and it adds up very quickly. all gold should be stacked in piles and if its in chests it should be in quanties no greater than 1 or 2. the vast majority of items in game should only be worth a couple of gold at most. high end weapons and armor could be worth more but i would stop it at 10 gold or so.

playing in oblivion is kind of like playing in the 70s during the Carter administration. the money was pretty much worthless and you ended up with hundreds of thousands if not millions without much effort. its like inflation gone amuck. even with mods that tightened up the economy i still had plenty of gold.

they need to go back to what games did in the past with rare hand placed gold coins and severely restricting how much you can sell stuff for. of course prices should reflect that. a good sword should only cost a couple hundred instead of thousands.

this will have a very big impact on the game. first off it makes searching every container more important since normally you arent going miss ignoring containers since gold is everywhere and secondly it makes finding a gold coin or two very satisfying as opposed to the normal......meh couple extra pieces to add to my 46,000 i already have.

It would've been fine in Oblivion if every bandit wasn't equipped with top tier weapons and armor for you to sell in every dungeon/cave.

Jesus, no. I'm sorry, I have problems making money in real life, I don't want problems making money in videogames, too. This is a FANTASY game. Part of the fantasy is being able to acquire massive amounts of wealth on little effort.

That being said, if these were actual negotiations for the game, I would concede to two points: making items being sold of higher quality, at least two high-quality items per shop. And yes, each of these items be at least moderately expensive. And the option that either a separate 'Hard' or 'hardcoe' mode or just simply higher difficulties increase the buying prices while decreasing selling prices [you pay more, they pay less].

All that needs to be done is:

• High prices for items in store.
  
• Barter needs to mean more.
  
• Jobs (already confirmed).

I still think supply & demand needs to be more prevalent in this game. if I go sell 3 suits of the same armor to the same merchant, I should get significantly less from the second and third suits I sell. but I'm all for making it difficult to become wealthy, I think it would make the game a lot more fun. I liked how in DA:O you could go through the whole game and only be able to afford one or two rare magic items.

I agree sure you be able to sell a sword or two but after you sell a few you should have to wait till they sell them to sell more.Crazy how the vendors keep buying things that they have a ton of and havent sold .Where as meat food should always be in demand .Now if you find a new type sword or find a vendor that is out of a certain type sell away.This would make gold more valueable and keep people from raiding the same spot over and over to amass wealth.

Well, in Oblivion, I never really bought anything anyway. Which is potentially a bad form.
Even the "Super" items each store had, I preferred to just enchant things myself, and they were often sub-par in damage compared to the level 22+ drops.

Again, this is all probably bad design. We'll see what Skyrim has to offer us

I don't have enough time as I have to get off to read all the posts and put in my real opinions but I do know that if you sneak as best as possible from the beginning of oblivion and then immediately go into the thieves guild/imperial city, you can rob the stores at night and make 5k gold in one night.. so freakin easy.

"Four gold! That's more than I make in a YEAR!"

Really? *snicker* Really? I stole one of your plates and sold it for more than that!

I like the idea of some nice uber weapons/armor for sale. Gives the player motivation to grind.

I don't like the scaling where bandits are all wearing glass armor so one haul brings you 50k. This is crazy. I guess it's been addressed in SKyrim.

I think owning a bunch of houses should come with some fixed expenses. Taxes, upkeep (or mini quests to fix these things on your own). Owning a huge manor with servants should have a cost and you can set it up to auto pay for it out of your gold or you get a letter delivered to you once in a while with a tax man collecting.

There should be some thieves which rob your stuff or gold once in a while. So you have to hire guards in your absence. What fun it would be to track them down and exact vengeance! I mean here we have the most filthy rich character in existence (most players end up rich) and nobody tries to rob his stuff? I know some players would scream and be angry, but as long as the game provided a quest to track them down and get your stuff back in a certain time frame I think it would rock. Imagine the look on people's faces to see catch some thieves in their house when they come home, or to see it pillaged. To catch up with said thief and you see them wearing your armor and wielding YOUR sword.

There are a million ways to make gold harder to get, but I think it should be easier to spend. I rarely bought anything from anyone in Oblivion except the houses. Potions were too expensive so I'd make my own. Most magic armor in stores had some kind of stupid drawback, like a bonus to strength but a minus to intelligence. Screw that. THere's better stuff to be had in the dungeons. I'd buy food and turn it into potions for a quick profit. But really I don't remember buying anything from any vendor except repair hammers. Everything else is abundant if you know where to look. So they should make more useful things to buy so the player is always spending.