One of the reasons I got bored of playing Fallout 3 and New Vegas was that by mid-game I had so many bottlecaps with me that I could buy whatever I desired, even if I already had the best gear and all the implants I could, and I hadn't gone on a stealing or killing/looting spree anytime while playing. I only looted the corpses of raiders I killed, and looted abandoned places, and gained money from side-quests. I love sneaking and stealing in video games but then there was no point to that because I was already so rich. And there were no places I could actually spend my money thus raising the need of obtaining more.

I never had that problem in Oblivion, because we could spend money on training, buying horses, or buying houses and upgrading them in all of the major settlements.

I think this is a serious topic. Getting very rich in the beginning of the game shouldn't be easy. That makes dungeon-diving and the whole thief archetype pointless.

They should reasonably adjust the amount of money we can find in the world or obtain via quests, OR they should invent new ways rich characters can spend their money. I'm sure we'll be able to buy houses and horses, but we should also be able to customize our houses, by paying gold. And there should be expensive clothing and jewelry that are actually expensive, not 15 gold, more like 200 gold or 1000 gold, so our rich characters can dress up like they are actually rich. Maybe there could be charities, or orphanages where we can make donations, or street pickpockets who could rob some of our gold and run away. Maybe we could help improve some of the local buildings (upgrade them) like in AC2 Monteriggioni, helping the town economy or the residents in some way. Anything to prevent our character from getting too rich too soon.

I'll like having a lot of gold, if you want to role play a thief you could always just get rid of the gold...

I want to "get rid of it" realistically. Have places where I can spend gold.

Hopefully (unlike fallout 3) the best items will be weighted towards crafting and looting, rather than in the local shop. This would then create more of a challenge aquiring these items (the crafting system would have to be complex...requiring mutiple rare core items etc.....)

I never managed to get rich in any Beth game ive played. mostly because I hoarded cool stuff. However, I never had trouble affording things I really needed.

So yeah I wouldnt mind a "harder trip to the top" and more and more ways to drain me of my wealth both legally and illegally.

For example, each settlement has a thief who will at some stage try to steal your money or a bunch of high-level highway men who most players would seriously consider not fighting.

I doubt the new crafting systems will cost money directly, but suppose you'd like to upgrade your tier 5 iron armour to tier 6. Sure, you could go out and explore for hours and find the necessary (and hopefully rare) ingredients, which some people will do. Alternatively, you could probably hit up some shop-keepers and purchase the materials, at pretty high prices. I foresee crafting being a pretty big income-sink.

I'm sure some house customization will also come into effect, which would hopefully cost a bit.

I've run into this problem too though, so much gold, and almost nothing to do with it. I mean, its cool being super-wealthy, I just wish that my character had something to show for it. Noble's clothing that costs 10,000 gold. A pure-bred mountain Clydesdale with gold-inlaid armour for 30,000. Something.

Oblvion had some damn expensive houses. Like 20K for the house, and a lot more gold for the decorations. Just waste your money on that and start fresh again.

I would like to see a return to investing in businesses so that they get better stock. I'm a big game economics nerd though. To make it better, your investment might pay off, and it might not. Maybe a shop owner spent your investment money on something personal, thus telling you he no longer desires the use of his legs.

brothel?

"I dont actually want to sleep with you. Im just looking for a place to lose some cash, shall we cuddle?"

hehe

Have they been confirmed in Skyrim?

Throwing away your money will not make it challenging to get it back. It's like that saying: "Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day; teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime," only backwards; "Throw away some gold, you're poor for a day; make it challenging to get gold, you'll be poor for a lifetime.

Maybe owning a house you have monthly rent?

Either way, the more gold sinks the better.

And thus less reason to spend your money instead of finding things for crafting?

The inability to find a damn thing worth buying in stores is the reason for "Money for Nothing"

In Diablo II, you can spend your gold Gambling in hopes of getting better gear. In Two Worlds, the biggest money-sink is buying weapons you already have, to make them even better. In Torchlight, the biggest money-sink is destroying all your magic items in the hopes of the next enchantment being totally awesome.

What you're asking for is money sinks, and I agree those are necessary in many cases in order to keep the acquisition of gold a priority throughout a gameplay experience. However, "too early" is a very subjective description when considering when it becomes okay to be rich. Regardless there are going to be some people who put in tons of time at the beginning of the game working odd jobs (like running the lumber mill) just to roll up a huge amount of cash, or steal from absolutely everyone they see to accomplish the same goal. In a game where gold supply is effectively infinite, and is only a function of how much time you want to put into acquiring it, the people who want to be rich will accomplish that feat no matter how many sinks you put in.

That said, the growth can be curtailed through the use of houses, upgrades, expensive clothes, and other things you've mentioned. I also think there should be a gold cost to forging, smithing, and enchanting, but that may or may not have already been confirmed. I believe it has been confirmed though that fast travel will cost money, which could equate to a rather significant sink, depending on how much is charged and how frequently it is used.

In any event, people are going to get rich if they want to, unless the devs make all of the things that cost money cost so much of it that it becomes nigh impossible to attain true wealth. But then again, that would be too much of a swing in the other direction. :-/

I just hope the crafting system isn't like star ocean. Since this type of crafting is relatively new to elder scrolls, they shouldn't go overboard with the materials required.

The problem with money in these games is it can be easy to get rich if you really want to be. In OB the amount of money higher quality equipment is worth was crazy. Once you got to level 20, deadric equipment was worth an ungodly amount. Go into a marauder dungeon and the deadric cuirass they all were wearing would be worth 4800 each. Now because of merchants you could only sell these for up to 3000, but that's still a lot. They just have to make things not worth so much in skyrim. Higher quality should be worth more, but not by the thousands.

This is part of the reason I'd like a hardcoe/survival mode where I actually had incentive to buy food and drink or rent a room.

You can just sell all of your health potions too since you just auto heal.

Probably going to be really easy to get rich

Nehrim handled this pretty well by:

1. Making spells expensive
2. Having an uber-gear merchant.
3. Making the sell/buy ratio terrible (Like, items cost 600% of their value and sell for 15% of it)
4. Making items not worth that much (So a sword off a high level dude with be worth 200gold instead of the 2000 gold in Oblivion...)

I usually get rich extremely quickly in RPGs, but I didn't start accruing wealth in Nehrim until I stopped buying spells.

The thing about Beth's games is that you cannot help but have alot of money. If you go to half the dungeons and grab most of the loot you are going to sell off alot of items. Now with the destruction aspect of the crafting system I am sure we will be destroying more loot than usual. What helps in the TES universe is that most vendors have a very limited amount of cash and you do not find "bottlecaps/gold" everywhere. Looking forward to sinking my cash into shop investments, houses\farms, wife, and crafting materials.

dont like making money then dont sell stuff.

adventurers risk they life for loot ,they should get lots of money for it.

you had to work hard to be rich in OB. I'd go out spelunking for hours at level 32 and only make 60ish gold per chest. Granted, there were high selling weapons, but I had low weight limit, because of my build.

Make a gold mod? I'm sure people will have that set soon after release.

I just learned a new term. :happy:

Jimmy's idea about the buy/sell ratio was very good too. (Sorry I don't know how to multi-quote) Unless you have very high speechcraft, you'll sell your loot less than half the price of their original value, so you won't suddenly get rich after selling a sole dungeon's treasure.

Another idea just crossed my mind. In Oblivion, since the enemies were level-scaled, their armor and weapons were level-scaled too. When you'd rarely come across good stuff on bandits and highwaymen when you were low level, every single bandit would be wearing Daedric armor (like someone else said) when you were high level. If they stop with the level scaled loot, the loot we'd find in average would be far less valuable, and we'd have to explore more and more to actually encounter unique weapons and armor.

maybe alongside marriage we could have divorces, there is half you money gone there - and you have to buy a new house. But seriously In OB, fallout 3 and NV I was so proposterously rich, it got to the point where i didn't bother looking for loot and only taking the unique items.

Also we should have to buy more rings not 1 on each hand I have 8 fingers and 2 thumbs - make use of them.

I just hope it won't be as bad as the last beth games, where you could just snip the money out of everyone right off the bat and be trillionaire before even one third of the game was done rendering all prices and currencies quite superfluous.

Good post. You make a lot of good points, but I just wanted to comment on the last sentence. "Too much of a swing in the other direction", sure...

But there should be a happy medium. You didn't seem to acknowledge a happy medium could exist. I think it's just a matter of tinkering with prices, and creating more things to pour money into. It seems they have spent a lot of time with the economy, so I expect it won't be easy to become rich. It might take 100 hours to be able to reasonably label yourself "wealthy". And, at that point, most of your extra wealth can be poured into other things. Always having things you need to buy, and things you want to buy, is important, at each status level (poor, middleclass, wealthy).