I believe some prices in Skyrim are no correct compared to others. For instant. For the price of 500 gold a follower will follow you for an indefinite period. While some small sidequests pay 1500 gold. I think the correct price for a follower should be 5000 gold. Any thoughts on the matter?

I'd prefer to pay them 10-50 a day. depends on who the follower is and how helpful they are.

That would also be a good alternative.

You get 1500 gold in sidequest because of you level, you earn more if you have a higher level.

Paying 500 for a folower for an unlimited time is wrong, I agree. And I like Garrus_Vakarian ideia

Followers are really more important in the early parts of the game when my characters are weak. That's when I need them. By the time I could afford 5000 to spend on a follower, I would not need the follower.

In several of my games I've raised the fees on services (including followers). And this is exactly what happens. When I need them I can't afford them; when I can afford them I don't need them. Nowadays I keep high fees on services like carriage travel, but have lowered the fee back to 500 for followers.

Some? Skyrim's complete economy is totally messed up.

So you never take a follower just to have someone on your side? Even you do not need one.

This.

Yeah I agree. It's really under priced. You give them 500 gold and then they are your slave forever

Not from the RPing perspective, which basically holds true for 90% of the game's content.

Or perhaps just complete their favor then theres no need to pay them. IMO some of the better followers have a quest attached to them.

Gold should be harder to obtain.

Indeed.

No meat shield is worth 5000 gold to begin with. And honestly, they're a waste of gold in the first place when you can just go out and find a follower anywhere else through a fetch quest.

No.

Except not everyone RP's, and for that matter, most players do not RP.

Thing is, there is basically no RPG where the economy makes sense anyway.

The game's economy in general makes no sense, but I think 500 gold for, let's say the merc might assume a couple of weeks' work is actually one of the more reasonable prices (although the fact that you can get them to work for you forever for that 500 is a bit daft). I'd love a mod that let me either pay my followers a salary *or* give them gifts (either money, valuables or equipment) which would go into their personal inventory (allowing equipment to be, er, equipped) which I couldn't access (i.e. where the game keeps the follower's default gear that, unmodded, you can't take from them). I'd really like to be able to give my follower(s) a couple of hundred gold and leave them in an inn for the night, and not be able to take the money back later.

As it is, I tend to give them nice gear that I won't be using myself, and given I rarely loot everything I can possibly carry after the first couple of weeks, I work on the assumption that they're also sifting through the chests and so on, and taking whatever they think looks good.

I think 500 septims for a sacrificial merc in Boethiahs calling is very reasonable.