I suddenly imagined that scene from the Legend of Dragoon where you're in the market of Lohan and the sales guy is trying to sell you a clay pot for $1 million. Then later you get to buy a dragoon spirit from him for almost nothing. Heheh, having a marketplace like that would be fun, but tough to make.

Edit: For anyone that doesn't know what Legend of Dragoon is, go retro game for a few weeks. Those were the days of REAL rpgs.

hahaha that's a clever idea! i wouldn't be against it. how bout the vendors buy stolen goods as well? so you can sell expensive stolen stuff to a fence, but stolen crap to a random guy in a flea market hahaha

Well, you are also missing the obvious, something Varus pointed out quite nicely:



EDIT: Oh, and how do you know that sanitizing is a very simple process in Nirn? Do you know how the bacterias there works? No, so, my point here is, pretty much anything is a justifiable reason, because Bethesda are the ones making the rules, not nature.

Third, it doesn't matter. Clean or not, it's still used. See http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1183340-worthless-items/page__view__findpost__p__17562092

Some things are worthless, but not all used items are worthless. People buy Used things all the time, and that includes dishes and clothes. Go to the Salvation Army warehouse, you'll see your argument doesn't hold any ground at all.

You're drawing an illogical conclusion based on something that isn't true. The game doesn't mark a "Paintbrush" as a "Paintbrush that was found at the bottom of a river". as far as the game knows, it's just a "Paintbrush" the very same one the vendor may or may not sell.

Well of course. You're absolutely right on two counts. First, not all used things are worthless. I have been advocating for the occasional useless item, not that all clutter be worthless. I hate to make you back up even further, but my original post or two in this thread were all about how some things of value should be scattered in with the clutter, more like hammers or the cloth bolts. Of course we agree then, that some used things have value and that the player should be able to pick through. We also need to go ahead and agree that some things are NOT valuable, and that it's a nice feature of the game to be able to recognize that and throw a few clutterjunk things in the mix.

You also point out that it's possible to be selling something that's new. Yes and no. If you buy a brush from a vendor and turn around to try and sell it again, sorry, but you're going to lose money on that. It really isn't new, unless you happen to be in the paintbrush business and you bought it from a supplier. Problem is, game economies are not complex enough to introduce supply, demand, vendors, retail, and wholesale. That's a little too ambitious for now.

So as a compromise, we just assume that you are not a merchant. Thus anything you own, whether you just bought it or not, is used. If you buy a brand new paintbrush for 1 gold and try to sell it, you will get less than 1 gold because you are selling it second-hand. The only thing less than 1 is 0.
So some items, even if they ARE considered new, are just plain worthless in your hands.

Be mindful what you think my conclusion is, because I don't think you had the whole picture of my argument in mind.

That game was so much fun... I may get myself a ps1 emulator now Hahaha

The difference is that you are an adventurer, going from dungeon to dungeon collecting stuff, not someone who stands in a store, selling things.
Yes, a lot of the used things are worth something, but far from everything.

Yes, I would probably buy something used from a shop if I liked it, but I would not buy something used from a total stranger I just met.

See, that's not entirely true though. Fallout 3 and New Vegas demonstrate this very well. Something so valued as a resource, as bullets, are very often worth less than 1 monetary unit each. So what happens when you sell one? You get offered 0 Caps, because, as amazing as one bullet is, there's no profit in reselling one bullet, and no fraction of a cap. So what happens? Each bullet actually does have a value, usually between 0.1 and 0.5 for some of the lower calibers. So, you sell ten bullets (One Magazine) for one cap, up until that point, it's still 0.


I'm not saying make every stupid cup worth 0, but if you bring 100 cups to a vendor, and offer to sell them for 1 gold, when he can turn around and make 100gold off it, he's a poor businessman for not jumping on that, no matter what copy-pasted sewer they were in. (Remember, there's no Lawsuits in Tamriel either!)

Yeah, that is a system that works very well, and I agree that it would be the best!
And most likely, they are doing that for Skyrim as well, since they did it for Fallout 3!

So, 1 cup = 0 Septims.
Say, 10 cups = 1 Septim.
Absolutely the best.

Weeeelll... ok.
I'll give you the point on this, but I still don't think it's worth it. In fallout it would make sense because you regularly buy, sell, and find bullets in large quantities. You need to be able to price them for bulk, the game wouldn't be functional otherwise.

But in TES it's such a trivial matter that it's just not worth it in my opinion. I'm not going to be running around Tamriel stealing worthless paintbrushes and cups in such quantity that I can sell them for bulk. I don't think anyone does that, even if they COULD make 1 gold off it, nobody would bother.

So while you are right, in a sense, I just don't see the need for it. Which isn't to say it shouldn't be there, mind you, I'm just saying it's not worth spending any time or money on including. If they do that it would be great. If they don't, I won't shed a tear.

I can definitely live with that

Yep, that way they will have some worth, like they should and still be junk.
I mean, who steals clay cups for profit anyway?

That's fair, and honestly, this whole Cup babble is also kind of Arbitrary. My whole point is, that the vast, vast majority of Oblivion was devoid of opportunity for a thief, and just the omnipresent red cup worth 0 gold is an obvious example

But go into Morrowind, they have the same kind of low-quality stuff, but you know what they also have? Things like Limeware Platters (650Gold), spinkled around. This is a "Junk" item of considerable value. Find me one player in Morrowind that doesn't steal the Limeware Platter from the Census and Excise offices at the start of the game. I doubt it was intentional, but that moment in the game, not 3minutes from the word "Start", where you define a playstyle. "I can be a thief, and It'll be awesome". Where is that in Oblivion?

I'd like to see a new, complex merchant system in Skyrim, which would make items that there are a lot of less valuable and things there are a few of more valuable. These worthless items would be so common shopkeepers wouldn't want to buy them from you, while other shops might want because they might have none of them at that moment. So basically what I'm saying is, if a merchant has 0 bear pelts and you try to sell him 100, he won't pay nearly as much for the pelts after the twenthieth than he did for the first one. He doesn't want to buy more than 40 to his shop, and gives you an offer for 40 of them which would be 20% less than if you sold them separately to many shopkeepers. Then you can either get rid of the 40 or sell only 10 to get more profit and move on. So basically a bear pelt would be a worthless item to the shopkeeper (when he buyes it from you) if he has 100 of them.

Am I wrong now, or did a gamesas Forum discussion end up in an agreement?? :blink:

:hugs: yay! :dance: :dance: :twirl:

Okay, let's ignore that there were some "worthless" items in Oblivion which obviously should have some real worth, like calipers.

Let's focus on the stuff like clay cups and jugs. Peasant stuff. It is worth money, even the tiniest amount, which in game is 1 gold. While a fractional system (either of coin pieces, smaller value coins, etc) would be nice, we've never seen that so let's not count on it.

The point is, even if cups and jugs and plates were worth 1 gold....NOBODY would or could steal 300, and thus make 300 gold. If you were starving, you might be able to steal 1 or 2 to pay for some bread. But you aren't going to finance a steel briastplate by lifting clay jugs. Silverware, maybe.

What would be preferable would be a volumetric inventory, more realistic weight, and the chance that fragile items break (especially with an inventory at capacity). But somehow I doubt they will invest time in this, even though it has relevance to the whole game and important gameplay aspects. So instead, the items are worthless. It's not realistic, but neither is nabbing an aisles worth of utensils, carting it off, and selling it around the corner to someone who should be dealing in stolen jewels, weapons, narcotics, etc...

They were bad, but ubiquitous examples. I think the problem is more a world-design issue than the individual value of each item. It was just really sad, Oblivion arguably made the most improvement in the stealth gametype, but it failed to compel the player to properly explore it as a real option.

Personally I feel that...

Ya, the 0 gold silverware might have been a mistake, considering thieves today target silverware when they ransack a place... But some of the stuff being worth 0 gold was to me like the shopkeeper being like, "I don't really want to buy those items but I will take them if you give them to me for free and then I'll put them in my bargain bin or throw them in the trash"

You can't just sell anything to anyone cause a merchant who deals in fine jewels and elegant embroidered clothing doesn't want to take a bunch of clay goblets. In this same way I realize that as a thief you must be discerning, maybe when you are new to the "game" and don't know the worth of things you'll grab anything you can find... but for me at a point these near worthless items I would just avoid and only grab them as padding on my way out of a job. Sort of like a novice thief might start with home invasions and ran sacking, then get better and start researching his targets before hand so he can just go for the jewelery. The cheapo items are there for the novice to be able to thieve... the castles are there for the experts to thieve.

Yes, I agree some of the items were a bit on the cheap side and not exactly worth the risks I took... but that is also part of life as a thief, taking risks for a pay-off that might not be so great.

I for one wonder if I'll be able to rob a shop at sword point, that seems like it would be interesting.

Well, the very (extensive) habit of fantasy game of using "gold coin" is in itself ridiculous when you think about it.
The regular coin should be copper, not even silver and certainly not gold

NO

I want ma lil broken wooden spoon to be worth one gold pizes ...derp

just kidding I agree we need a better economy in skyrim.

Silverware was worth more than 0 gold per piece and for ratio weight/sell value were one of the best items to steal. In bulk That or rare wines and books. I could make the whole amount of fencing required for thief guild questline in more or less two three runs to the local town fort ransacking the dining rooms of all silverware.

I agree. Did you try to sell a used fork (and not a silver or antique fork, just a regular everyday fork) on ebay? There are objects that lose any value once they've been used. Just look around in your room and I'm sure you will find a lot of stuff that wouldn't sell for a dollar on ebay. Yet it's there and you don't want to throw it away because it's useful for you.

and you need perseverance to get that damn platter!