One of the things that irks me about TES is the lack of stuff in the game worth buying. There's TONS of loot to sell, and high level characters usually don't have any problem gathering up a few hundred thousand gold. But, what can you do with it all?

In morrowind I always just buy training or spend it on some major enchantment. That was cool in one sense because it made money seem to matter, but in another sense I was just buying my way to becoming the Nerevarine.

In oblivion they took that out somewhat, but I was left with the distinct feeling that there just wasn't much to do with all my money.
The best houses in the game were free (the DLC residences) and some of them even generated revenue for you.

Also, the houses that you could buy weren't all that expensive, even with all the upgrades. So my question, how can we fix this?

I would like something incredible to be spending huge sums of cash on and making me feel like money actually can get you something, but at the same time I don't want to buy my way to victory. Thoughts?

(I always particularly hated that Battlehorn Castle was essentially free. Lame. Make castles expensive!)

EDIT:
A cash flow would be cool too. It would be nice if there were a few things that I had to make regular payments on.

Yeah, I feel the same way. I never sold anything I found in my adventures, because there would be nothing to buy with the gold anyway.

I was thinking maybe you could add extremely expensive items to the game that have little to no real usage value, like rare jewels or becoming an Ayleid statue collector yourself and saying "that statue I set down on the table in my house? Cost me 1 million gold." Or an expensive gamble that can't be quicksave/loaded, like imagine funding expensive expeditions for others to find valuable items in some far off land that you can't journey to yourself, and having to wait a month or more before you find out if they succeeded in bringing something back for you or not. Being able to invest in random people's shops or donate gold to a town in general and watching other people's lives improve would be fun, too.

Being able to buy big strongholds would be awesome. Maybe have some upkeep for all the NPC's guarding and using it. Another thing is making investments in towns, and maybe even needing to invest big chunks of gold to advance in guilds or storylines. Chunks of gold that you wouldn't get back later.

Also, in oblivion the shops were done in a strange way. Basically once you had steel/leather equipment you never needed to go to a smith again. The new stuff would become widely available from common enemies before you could buy it. It should be the other way round. Part of the problem is also how easy it was to find expensive loot. At higher levels there was enchanted equipment everywhere and the most common bandit dropped elven/glass armour. If that isn't the case anymore, then becoming rich won't be quite as easy at higher levels.

i stopped looting midpoint through oblivion because of this

I agree, they need an economy in this game that actually works. Its to easy to come across money even without buying and selling, and selling wasn't the problem, it was buying. Who actually buys things in Oblivion? No one. It can all be found/made and looted. I think the most people ever bought was arrows to be honest.

Books. I wish they had ultra rare books that cost thousands, I would buy the lot, and be even happier than with my OB collection.

Instead of creating huge money sinks maybe they should make it harder to get rich in the first place.

I never spent any money in oblivion or fallout 3/NV despite having copious amounts of it. There's plenty of things they could put in to balance that.

1. Buying/repairing a stronghold.

2. Sending parties out on treasure hunting expeditions in different continents due to them receiving information of an artifact and needing funding. This was one of the petitions you can respond to in Summoner 2 and I always thought it was a great idea.

3. Having to buy maps instead of seeing upcoming caves etc on the map automatically.

4. Hiring staff and funding apprentice training once your a high ranking guild member.

I really really want to be able to buy stores and hire NPCs to take care of it while im away. Now sure how that fixes this problem but i think it would be awesome.

BOOKS!
I LOVED READING IN OBLIVION

I hope they include reading books in Skyrim

I didn't think of that. I like it.

I buy houses.. and then never use them.

I want to run an estate and/or fortress. Hire workers, guards, men-at-arms. Send them on expeditions. Then take over a rival's holdings as well via combat and/or politics, and enlist some more folks to tend to that for me.

Sponsoring public works that made visible improvements in towns, or building monuments to yourself could be pretty cool too.

Rare items for collectors such as rare books, rare jewelry, rare artifacts, etc. that we could buy from npcs for a large sum of gold

I always felt that mw's items were more expensive too. In ob items like silver spoon was only worth like 2 gold, but in mw a silver spoon was like 13 gold :confused: ?

^ this.... and arrows, but I use those.

Yeah seriously I always wondered about that. I was never sure if I was the only person thinking "Wow..how come just because I get stronger, the common bandit gets stronger?" I wanted to get big and beefy and pimp slap some fur-armored, iron-axe-using bandits to the ground. But of course it wasn't that simple >.<

Agreed. They shouldn't have people giving you piles of 2000 gold for a magic ring.

I think I have heard something about an economy though. Google it or something.

How about make money become harder to come by, things more expensivea dn things sell for less, a real hardcoe mode of eating adn drinking and sleeping might make this harder, taxes on all your lovely houses.

Money harder to coem by adn all things more expensive, seriously does he really have 2000 gold to buy all these dead goblin teeth, and why doe she want them anyways?

Looting is too easy and gives you too much money, especially when you have a higher level and all the items are levelled. The system in Oblivion was way off balance I thought.

I think this post is pretty much the best assessment of the problems.

Agreed!

I personally venture to many different merchants and but their stock and archive all the armors and weapons in the fighters stronghold DLC :cheat:

I too hope the economy is more robust in Skyrim than Oblivion. It should be harder to make money, and it should cost a lot to buy useful items. I'm also not opposed to money sinks.

But the idea of collecting things, like Ayleid statues and the like? I love it! And funding far-off expeditions or digs? Pure genius!

personally i would like the money system to become a mini game.(fable anyone?)
buy a house rent it out while your not using it.
buy taverns, shops, slaves(if in game), ect,
investments in a bussiness... creating future towns/ factions
SUPER GOD, JESUS, TITAN weapons and armor and amulets
SOMETHING ANYTHING to make money fun. cause it was really boring in oblivion.