Ok, Tamriel is in a universe where 750 gold per killing is a suitable paycheck for an assassination, and that's at maximum level, which means that the BEST assassins that money can buy... only charge 750 gold per killing, and if I have an extra 20,000 gold burning a hole in my pocket, I can get the assassination of the friggin' EMPEROR!

Now, the biggest plothole, here, is that... that measely 750 gold can easily be accumulated in just a single day of wood-chopping! A measely 25 sessions at the wood-cutting block - which, even under Tamriel's expedited passage-of-time system where a day passes by in less than 30 minutes, can still be accumulated within a single sitting - can earn enough to have someone murdered.

Food is so cheap that you can feed yourself for an entire day with just 60 seconds of wood-cutting. Clothes are so cheap that you can save up enough for a "fine" set of clothes can be purchased with just two sessions at the wood-chopping block (40 gold for the clothes, 20 gold for the shoes).

And yet, we have beggars. We have "poor" people who aren't necessarily beggars, yet still can't really afford to go after some bandits for their family heirloom sword without making their wives think that they'll starve. Instead of giving them some gold, perhaps I should give them a wood-cutter's axe. Since that seems to be the biggest barrier for them having nice, comfy lifestyles, then it seems that all they really need is that.

Wood-chopping isn't even the only way you can get rich in a short period of time in this universe, either. That guy in Rorikstead can't be an adventurer because... his family can't "afford" armor or a weapon for him? Hey buddy... go take some of your neighbor's crops! They'll buy them right back from you, even though the crops belong to them to begin with, and they have literally INFINITE gold to give!

What... you want that shiny new ebony battleaxe that the smith is selling? All you need to do is go ot Narzulbur; in just ten short minutes, you can get nearly THREE THOUSAND GOLD with which to buy all the battleaxes and armor you could ever want!

So... it seems that the only reason people should ever starve in this universe... is if they literally go out of their way to refuse to do any work at all. Money is as abundant a resource as air... it literally flows into the world like an everlasting stream with no source and no end. I wish jobs were this easy in the real world.

So, I take no pitty on beggars; it's clearly THEIR fault that they've fallen on "hard times," because there are no hard times for them to fall onto.

This was quite the rant. I don't really have too much to say other than that. Only because I was too busy laughing. I'm guessing they didn't really want the NPC's to take into account how easy it is to get gold.

Actually, what they're paying you for is the work you did harvesting the crops. The labor, not the crops themselves. That's why you can only sell them what they grow. It's the same at every mine - they buy only the ores they can harvest. You're paid for the labor of getting each chunk of ore, not the ore itself.

Gameplay =/= lore. Money was made easy to make for our players to make the game more enjoyable. The same thing can be said about the Fallout games. Do you really think there would just be thousands and thousands of bottle caps lying around after a nuclear holocaust?

Well, they only have to take a walk along the roads...there's a small fortune to be made from the weapons and bodies lying about.

Gameplay

Though this did make me think of that begger in Windhelm.

The one you can pay for pickpocketing or something training. You can pour lots of gold into her, yet she's still a begger.

She probably spends her gold on drugs or mead. Homeless people seldom become homeless for no reason.

It's skyrim,People Drink a lot and Fight a lot..Which leads to gambling and they get poorer as a result of a match of fisticuffs or Drinking game also having to pay for the mead.

Because carrying 500 Septims would be really f**king heavy. I'm guessing they weigh anywhere from 0.25 to 0.5 pounds, which means they'd have to carry anywhere from 125 pounds to 250 pounds of money around.

In Skyrim, everybody is so busy discussing that they're having hard times, that they actually forgot about the work. Its not about living a rough life and complaining about in their free time: they become full-time sufferers.

Of course, that's nothing they might be proud of, so this a topic that they avoid at all cost. In a world where everybody is a hard-worker in theory, but nobody practising it manpower could be really valuable.

That's why Ulfric's effort is (more or less) literally a velvet revolution, just in a Nord way: most folks are sitting at home while a half-dozen leaders slowly replacing each other after some friendly battling.

Because there is a civil war going on, they even have a reason plus an opportunity to complain. And don't work. You figured out their secret and now getting mad amount of gold from that, enjoy it!

(Honestly, what did you except as an answer to such question? Just like almost every video game universe, this is PC centered. Have you seen any NPC harvesting cabbage? No, because they're just part of the setting, misc quest like these are designed for you. That's it.)

I'm not sure you understand how much that wood chopping that actually is, realistically speaking.

Exactly, that would be like saying why do people walk so slow? One second actually equals one minute, so they are actually doing everything incredibly slow. Speeding up time makes it more convenient to the player, just like making money is easier because it is more convenient to the player, and just makes sense gameplay wise.

Why don't the NPCs know they're in a video game?

Because the game that would produce would svck.

This reply was originally posted in response to another question, but I think it applies here as well:


10 Drakes is 10 Drakes.

I can't speak for anyone else, but running Realism mods in Skyrim like "More Complex Needs" with the Spoilage System turned on, a lot of my earnings go towards just buying a decent meal at the Inn. Which, since "More Complex Needs" requires more then just one kind of food to get the full benefit - runs me about 30-50 septims a meal.

Throw in the cost of a room and then another meal in the morning...and I've just spent 70-110 gold just for a decent stay at the inn...for a single day. That's around a thousand drakes a week for the traveling mercenary. To say nothing of addition costs in potions and the like (Man, imagine my bill if armor and weapons still had durability...).

10 Drakes is nothing to sneeze at when backpack space is at a premium due to all the supplies needed just to survive.



So yeah, why are there beggars? Because the essentials actually are rather pricey when you've got to shell out money on a daily basis. Add in the Skyrim Redone Combat Module mixing up combat to the point it actually is deadly and it's easy to see why some people prefer just to rely on the charity of others.

In Tamriel, a day passes in 72 minutes

Also, there is something called 'gameplay and story segregation'

Yes, that is correct. I also use a mod that increase the cost of the inns, the cheapest cost 50 drakes the night. So a lot of expenses in one day. Hard to save drakes.

I had that mod for awhile too, but there was a conflict with a NPC addition mod, because a lot of times the Inns were filled to capacity and I couldn't rent a room. I'm all for realism, but that was too much for me. (Not the least of which because sleeping just outside of town is a great way to end up spawning Master Vampires atop the hapless NPCs that live around the towns and cities)

I have npc addition mods and I dont had that problem, strange. But yes, at the beginning is hard to get used to eat balanced. And eat.

Therefore, don't give the beggars coins. Kill em all for refusing to work!

*slash* *rip* *tear*

Tee-hee! OP, I think you might like http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1449260-imperial-report-public-health-in-skyrim/.
Pimping myself aside, yeah, the leveling system svcks combined with the game's economy (or lack there-of).

It's like one of the things I always found silly about D&D. Once you get past level five (assuming you're a spellcaster), you become powerful enough to topple any government. That, or the governments in question are run by people as high leveled as you are. If that's the case, then they wouldn't need much in the way of armies. But there still are armies. And despite the armies and the abundance of high-level characters, the lands are still teeming with dangerous monsters and dotted with unexplored loot-filled dungeons. Once you come out of the dungeon, you sell whatever loot you don't want, and get thousands upon thousands of gold. You can then use the gold to buy magical weapons, which are apparently common enough in the D&D world that any idiot vendor will sell them, even though they cost exorbitant amounts of gold (enough coins to crush a person to death- not exactly walking around money) and only adventurers would be able to get them.

And I'm out of steam. Whatever point I was trying to make with the above wall of text, I forgot. I'm leaving it up because it'd be a shame to delete after all that writing (it feels like) I did.

Why do I see so many of these Nit Picky everything has to be logical or make sense threads these days. There is a very simple explanation for all these matters in TES...... It is a FANTASY GAME, not reality. It is no wonder half the games today end up with forums full of complainers....lol It is Sci - Fi, Fantasy, Role Play and nothing more.

Indeed it is, but a lot of people, myself included, enjoy their fantasy roleplay experience a whole lot more when more attention is paid to such details.

Like I said in my post, it's done for player convenience. And yes, these nit-picky threads are getting out of hand. Although the worst was the guy who claimed the game was unplayable and ruined because not every building exterior matched the interior perfectly.

It's a good thing that they didn't have internet access in the 4th era. Otherwise, someone may read this, see how lucrative wood chopping is, and the forests of Skyrim would be clear cut. The massive increase in everyone having fires going all of the time would increase carbon emissions, and they would have global warming. The air pollution would not be good for dragons, who would get placed and the endangered species list. Dragon borns would have to get permits to kill them.