The problem with money in most video games is this: You always have too little or too much. You're either at low levels scraping by just to purchase a decent weapon... or you're at high levels where the loot is so good you don't really need to buy stuff anymore and you have so much money you don't know what to do with it. Sure, you can buy houses... er... So you can store stuff and sleep in them (YAWN). Why not make money fun? After all, Skyrim is supposed to be a realistic world with Radiant AI characters buying, selling, trading goods, and performing their job duties day in and day out right? Well, shouldn't there be a functional economy? And if there is a functional economy shouldn't you be able to fully participate in it?

Anyway, so here is my idea. I think you should have a wide variety of options to engage in entrepreneurship. And to help you do this there would be a Traders' Guild... You see, the scourge of dragons and the brewing civil conflict in Skyrim has pushed the region's economy to the brink of collapse! The Trader's guild needs a cut throat negotiator that's savvy with gold in order to secure Skyrim's prosperity - and you're just the one for the job!

Here are a few things you could be able to do...

- Loan money to earn interest. For example, a weapon-smith might mention that his forge is old and in disrepair. If only he had $2,000 gold to fix it, he could craft better weapons and make more money. You would then have the option to loan the money to him, and even set the interest rate! Of course, the interest rate would be balanced between yours and the debtors mercantile skill. Be careful though! You don't want to loan money to the local moonsugar junkie! Trust me, he'll ask you.

- Purchase a business. Anything is up for grabs, provided that the owner is willing to sell - inns, pubs, shops, farms, mills, stables, ships, and more! Of course there are always risks! Your shop could be robbed blind, your mill could go up in flames, your trade ship could sink... so don't forget to buy insurance!

- Buy and sell stock. Bigger business, like a shipping company, bank, school, or manufacturer could offer public stock options. You could buy and sell shares to earn money! You could even complete quests to increase the profitability of a business you invest in. For example, lets say you buy 500 shares of "Nordic Shipping & Trade" for $20 gold each... But later you find out that the company is loosing lots of money due to pirate raids. You could then go find the pirate base and eliminate them! Once the news gets out, your shares skyrocket to $50 gold each and you sell them for the profit!


ADDED:
I've been thinking about the idea of owning businesses, and here's some ideas...

Employees. For each business you own, you'd have to hire employees to run it. For example, if you own a weapons forge you must hire at least a blacksmith to make the product. A blacksmith with a very high skill rating requires more pay, which eats into your profit a little. However, he'll make much better items and increase your profit in the long run. In addition to the blacksmith you could also hire someone with high mercantile to run the storefront. You could pay to have your employees trained to higher skill levels.

Upgrades. Businesses could also be upgraded. Let's say you own an inn. Some of the upgrades might include quality furniture for the rooms, a winery for the cellar, and a fancy sign to attract customers. The aforementioned weapons forge might get an improved furnace to work with higher quality metals, and an alter of enchanting.

Risks. Any business could be robbed. Ships and buildings could be damaged by storms and fires. Lot's of possibilities here! Imagine, the health inspector shutting down your inn for a whole month because of a Bedbug infestation, or the receiving heavy fines for price gouging.

Micromanagement. You'd be able to adjust your business hours, pay rate of employees, price of services and merchandise, insurance coverage, and more! You could even choose whether to accept stolen goods or not!

Resource gathering. Lets say one of the businesses you own (or deal with) is a Mining Company that supplies metals to your weapon smiths and armorers. You could explore mines and caves and mark the locations of good ore deposits on a map, and then give (or sell) the information to the miners. There would then be an effect on the inventory and profitability of your shops! This could also work well with alchemy shops... you could find the location of fresh ingredients and one of your employees could harvest them.



NOTE: On the technical side of things, the economy doesn't have to be simulated 100%... It just has to be able to respond in a visible way to the player's actions. For example, lets say you complete the Traders' Guild quest line, soon you might start to see people wearing nicer clothes, and there would be fewer beggars on the streets. It just has to be enough so the player feels like their actions were important.

As long as its not SUPER SUPER easy to get money in this guild...why not. I'd like to see a Merchant guild.

It would be cool to see trade caravans going from city to city. You could start your own and have to hire guards to protect it. The more guards you hire the greater the chance it reaches its destination unmolested. At the beginning of the game when at a low level, you could hire on as a guard yourself and help to fight off bandits. Maybe you could buy a warehouse to store your stock and become a merchant prince.

Doesn't matter i will join all of the Guilds, mayby not at once but sometime...

Imagine being able to create a monopoly! Lets say you eventually buy out every single Armor Shop in Skyrim, and then jack up the prices at every single one of them!

Who buys armor besides us anyways?

Tis not like freshly-escaped prisoners go adventuring...

You could arm both sides of the civil war and make a tidy profit. :deal:

You're a genius.

What would even be the point of going through dungions and finding Gold if you just get rich by doing an 8 hour playthrough of a guild mission?

Why not? Another guild choice. I just hope I don't end up being the grandmaster of 8 different guilds...

You probably will...

but I do hope that you will be more recognized, radiant ai and such seems to take care of it though...

No. I'm sick of guilds and I'd rather have some different types of factions. Give me a knightly order or two to serve regional lords or perhaps whatever ruling family Skyrim may currently have. Give me a religious option or two. Give me a guard faction. Maybe I want a couple political factions, but please, enough with the guilds, already... and I'm not a fan of a whole faction being dedicated to traders. It sounds like a waste of time, in my opinion.

A traders guild could be fun. I expect most of the missions to be based on diplomacy, espionage, sabotage, market manipulation, persuasion, etc. If the missions are warriorish like "escort my caravan to town X" it's not worth it, we have enough guilds for that.

Traders guild is nice, but I would like it to be more then just a way to make a lot of money. It should have new items and game play based around trading. There was another thread like this and I did a little ruff ruff draft of how a traders guild could work.

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Starting out.

When the player want’s to join the guild, they just need to visit the guild recruiter (1). The player is given the guilds introduction quest. The first task, is paying the guild fee (2). The next task, is to go around to each of the guild offices and have your guild card(3) stamped by each guild officer. Getting there stamp can be done in a few different ways. You can bribe them(2), do a small task for the, or steal the stamp. After you gather all the stamps, you are given the rank of traveling sales man and a pair of magic boots(4).

Getting a shop

Some time after joining the guild, The player is given chance to manage there own shop. They are sent on a quest to buy a empty shop. The owner is willing to see it cheap, or for free if the player takes the time to learn the problem with the store. The problem is that shop, is that it’s haunted(5).

The player has to remove the ghost before they can open the shop. They can do this any number of ways: Pay a gypsy to banish the spirit(2). Banish it themselves using soul trap and a large soul gem. Find the diary of the ghost and put there soul at rest. Find there remains and sneak them into another building inside town. All of these options remove the ghost and allow the player to open the shop(8).

Running the item shop

The player now gets to run the item shop. Running the shop is divided into two parts, decorating stocking and haggling.

When decorating, the player changes the furniture inside the store. Each item changes the ambiance of the store and the ambiance(7) picks what kind of customers come to the store.

The next step is stocking(9). On top of the counters and shelves, there will be small place cards. The player clicks on these cards to place a item for sale in that spot.

The final step is haggling. At this step the player will activate the ledger in the shop. This will spawn 1-4 customers depending on your shops ambience(7). If they find a item they like, then the customer will approach the player with the item. The customer has a maximum over charge(10) they are willing to pay and it is the players job to name a price as high as they can with out going over. If the player quotes a price under the max, they sell the item and receive the gold. They also receive a number of guild tokens.(11)


Other quest ideas

Your shop is attacked, so the player has to track down who did it and keep them from doing it again. This quest rewards you with a guard companion you can summon with your guild card(3).

Your shop has another shop open up right next store and they are selling for a lot cheaper then you. You have to drive them out of business. This quest lets you expand your shop to the building next door letting you increase it’s size.


(1)The guild recruiter will be a weasel-like person who always seems to be your boss. The idea is to give the feeling that you are working for a giant pyramid scam.

(2)Money and paying money is a big part of the guild. A lot of the time the player will be able to buy there way threw quests.

(3)Your guild card will act as a minor magic item that you upgrade as you advance in the guild.

(4)Boots of the traveling sales man. +10 to speed +10 to carry weight.

(5)Oblivion had a quest like this, so yes I know.

(7)A stores ambiance is a set of sliders: Magic. Thief. Warrior. Rich. Poor. Good. Evil. Different classes are attracted to different ambiance. The player should use this system to tailor there clients to fit there abilities. For example: if the player has a high enchanting skill, they may want to attract mages to there shop.

(8) The shop is an inside cell with several shelves and counters. In the back, there is a forge used for crafting and over the shop, there is a small space the player can use as a house. All parts of the shop can be upgraded and customized.

(9)The player should stock items that there customers want to buy. They will pay more for them then other items.

(10)The maximum over charge is calculated from a formula. Base(The base over charge based on the customers class)+ item-like (+ or - based on how well the item fits what kind of person they are.) + players merchant skill (A high skill level lets you sell for a high price) + Fiend index (A + or - based on how much the customer likes the player.)

(11) guild tokens are used to buy new guild rank. The player will have to advance in rank before they are given a new guild quest.
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It's just a fun little idea I thought of and then wrote down.

This sounds cool, but I can see a problem developing. If you bought out a business, whenever you buy something from the shop you own, the money would go right back to you, correct? So, essentially, that would make everything free after buying the shop.

You stock it yourself. It dosen't come with stock or restock it's self. :ph34r: Ninja!

maybe you could put your own stuff up for sale rather than selling it to other shops to make more money. That way your not buying stuff for free cause its stuff you already have or want to get rid of

this idea sounds awsome tho

ninja'd

it would also be cool if you could hire people to run your store and keeping your employees happy determines how much money you make. one of the quests could be you find out one of your employees is stealing and you hav to investigate who is doing it

Makes me think of this line from one of my favourite Western movies:

Man With No Name : "Baxters over there. Rojo's there. Me right in the middle."
Man : "Where you do what?"
Man With No Name : "Crazy bellringer was right. There's money to be made in a place like this."

in oblivion they originally were going to make it so NPCs bought armor and weapons from shops. it got to the point where the NPCs bought every piece of armor from the shop, and the player couldnt buy anything, so they scrapped that idea. maybe they have a bettter system to do this so the NPCs dont buy everything....

i feel like the guild would be a good thing too because with the fighters, thieves, and mages guilds, you generally used skills appropriate to that guild. the only skills i never really worked on were speech and mercantile. i felt like they were sort of a waste because there wasnt enough in-game usage of them. with the traders guild, you would use speechcraft and mercantile much more and it would be fun.

I would love a traders guild, but I wouldn't want it to just to about money, I'd want teh guild to be about making sure the marked it stable ect

Nah, sounds boring. I absolutely loved House Hlaalu, but that had more to it than just the "get rich" aspect.

Maybe you could supply traders with excess gear you have acquired plus some money.These caravans would travel to the other provinces and return after a suitable time(not so quick as to make it gamebreaking but not so long as to make it a huge pain)The gear they bring back should be fairly mundane but every now and again they will bring back something noteworthy.News about the other provinces could be interesting.

There could be bandits attacking your caravan who you could deal with by killling them,paying them to leave you alone,paying them to attack your competitors,etc

To begin you would need to hire a caravanner to actually move the goods.As you improve your skills better options become available(faster,able to carry more gear,etc)you then select what province they head to.

storyline could be ethical vs unethical or local Nord traders vs East Empire Traders.

If done well it would be IMO an excellent addition to the game.I have seen a lot of good ideas so if not in the game I hope there will be a good mod.

Yes!