I was reading a comparison of daedric armor in morrowind vs. Oblivion, and read that in oblivion, a specific thing sells for 1200, yet in morrowind, this same piece of armor sold for 24000.

Which made me think "what the heck was mercantile useful for?". Once you were a high level, everything you looted sold for the shopowner's max price, and bartering became redundant. At that point, having money was also useless, as there was VERY LITTLE to spend it on.

How do you think this should be fixed?

I believe there should be more unique items for each merchant, that cost a significant amount of gold. There should also be some very rich merchants who will buy, for instance, a piece of daedric armor for full price.

Mercantile as a skill was absolutely terrible in Oblivion, the only easy way to get it up was by training it, otherwise you had to sit there for hours selling items one at a time. They need to seriously rework it or take it out completely, because what we got in Oblivion was balls.

I think you're assuming daedric armor is used in the same way in Morrowind that it is in Oblivion.

In Morrowind, there are literally only 2 full sets of Daedric armor in the entire game (as far as I know). Not every bandit spawns with it at a high level like in Oblivion.

when you got mercantile to 100 in Oblivion you could invest in shops so you could sell higher priced items

That still doesn't fix how broken that skill was.

In Morrowind it was more broken. I am still looking for a place to sell my ebony helmet. I have given up of the ebony cuirass...

After the Oblivion incident, the invasion of daedra has devastated some scattered parts of the land and they have scorched the landscape to make it like home and attacked towns and razed some of them, but were finally pushed back to the unreachable high lands.

The entire empire has collapsed into part anarchy and part feudalism. Some parts are at total mayhem, and other parts have retained a bit of order.

The remaining feudal, and more orderly parts might be ally, neutral or at war with other orderly governments, and there is a constant tension and under-current weaving underneath the surface of the land.

The economy at the still orderly parts of the land is at the pit bottom, and rust and dust is covering anything, and good loot is scarce, but if one finds some, then it is like treasure, and economy at the parts of the land that are going through anarchy is practically non-existent, and people have to fight over scraps, and some people gather around a leader to get some power over the surrounding area, and fights over loot or land are regular events.

Merchants haggle hard and buy cheap and sell dear, and the regular loot found on regular foes are mostly used and ragged, and only bosses and ring leaders have some flashy and valuable items and gear, that would fetch some decent money.

You can improve your skill in carving fallen monsters for valuable parts and using them as ingredients or sell them to merchants.

In the regions that have higher level foes, the chance to find better loot is a bit higher, but not much, and your only sure bets are boss loot and their personal stashes.

Teachers teach you the skills at high price and teach skill perks at even higher prices, and the higher level perks are even more dear, so even in later stages of the game when better loot is more common, you have to save money to be able to learn the high level tricks that the teachers know.

So in this environment, you are always selling loot or stolen goodies, and saving your money in order to be able to buy better item, learn a new trick/perk from a teacher, or learn new spells from your master wizard.

Even higher level player have to save money for higher spells or higher level tricks of the skill teachers.

personally I would prefer to have the option to make mercantile more automated like it was in Daggerfall.

I actually love the way it was done in morrowind. Some things vere really rare. It makes sense that they are almost invaluable. Those are not the kind of things to be sold.

You've given up on the ebony cuirass... ever tried selling Vivec's soul?

Fixing Mercantile? I guess these are the start:

*Bartering item within the system. Namely, using item to trade rather than money. Work fines in Morrowind and the Fallout Series, if remember correct. Should help level up the skill
*One level up with Mercantile not by selling one by one, but how much quality the item has. Meaning, ya get more experience selling Glass Armor than an Iron Arrow.
*As for quantity, ya get more experience per bundle compare to selling the item one by one.
*Taking a note from Fallout, we can use Mercantile as a way to unlock dialogue to squeeze out more reward from quest giver or barter one way out.
*Bribing should have some influence from this skill

We can do some fixing for the merchant as well:
*Combination of finite money the merchants has and their money reset after a certain amount of day (3-10 days), one has to visit a different merchant if they has to for selling loot
*Money ya give in the transition with a merchant get the amount ya give, like I buy a potion for 500 gp and now eh merchant who sold it got 500 gp
*Monopoly should not simply exist. Have more than one kind of shop per area. Like having 2 weapon shop but one can specialize axe and another by leather armor and etc
*Some shop are better than other and will give more or less. High exquisite shop has a better chance of selling better stuff, but at a higher cost while the pawn shop buys anything ya have but are VERY cheap in quality. Idea from Daggerfall, no less.

We could incorporate a banking system and weighted gold like Daggerfall, but I think I am getting a bit off the line of this topic.

I like the idea of a banking system like there was in Daggerfall. I also think it would be nice if stuff was more pricy in general. I always hated how you would start out with a rusty iron sword and a worn piece of leather armour, but within hours you would be able to have a fine steel sword and for instance in Morrowind a full set of bonemold armour, and still being lvl 1... I'd like to see a bigger economic spectrum, making some merchants really wealthy, some not, some merchants have very fine materials and skill at their craft, some less. But in general stuff ought to cost more in my opinion...

Basically this. I would like to see exotic or rare items be expensive, and some merchants should have massive amounts of gold. These rich merchants would also be the hardest to haggle with, making sure characters with 15 mercantile don't get too rich too easily.

what qawsed asap said. Can't think of anything better. Maybe have an additional % of how how much more you sold over (more exp), breaking even (normal exp), and going under (less exp). If one is good at bartering, they should be able to bring a price down, and be able to sell high.

Agree with much of what qawsed asap said.

The only addition I'd make to that is that I liked the idea of investing in stores and think it should stay but I also wished it were a more useful thing to be able to do - perhaps investing should also allow you tell the storekeeper what items you might be especially interested in him stocking - not in too much detail and within limits (including type of store and relative wealth of the area), but suppose you're a longblade user you could ask the armorer to look out for enchanted longblades and there'd be a small % chance when he restocked that he'd have an interesting item to show you. I've not put a lot of thought into it but that's just something off the top of my head.

that is what it sounds like when I sell stuff.

:D That cracked me up, but it's so true. When I'm selling my loot my husband will eventually look up with an annoyed frown and ask "what the .... are you doing? And can you make it stop?"

I know what you mean. I find it stupid however, that there was so much daedric in oblivion. I want my awesome armor to be valuable, not something that every [censored] on the street is wearing.