Investing in stores in Oblivion

[Lumpy]

There's the ability to invest in stores in Oblivion, gained as a high-level Mercantile perk. Sounds cool, huh?
Well, what it actually means is that you give some shopkeepers money, and then they have more money to buy your phat lewt. It's sort of weird that Tamriel's economy has been broken all this time, and it's up to the player to fix it. Wouldn't it be reasonable that, if an item is evaluated at 100k septims, there would be someone willing to buy it?
What do you think about this?

 

[Section8]

It's absolute rubbish. I actually hoped they'd make some kind of worthwhile change, although I didn't believe they actually would, and I've been proven right.

I fail to see how this is in any way an improvement over say, selling Creeper something worth 5000 septims, and then coming back with something worth 10,000 to trade for his purse and the original item. It just makes the process slightly less tedious, at the cost of a slightly lesser return for the player.

It sounds to me as though the economy is once again, utterly broken.

 

[SanguinePenguin]

I don't have anything witty to say, as usual...but it sounds like it could be interesting. How deep does it go? Can you effect the economy of the whole game world and drive NPCs out of business?

 

[Lumpy]

No. You give guys money and they give it back to you when you sell them stuff.
So a NPC has 5000 gold. You want to sell two 10000 items. You "invest" (i.e. give) him 5000 gold, and then he respawns 10000 gold. So you can sell those two items back to him. But you never see your money back, as it would be logical.
It's like Bethesda refuses to add a logical method of selling expensive stuff, and puts crap like Creeper or Investing instead.

 

[Excrément]

this system is obviously better than morrowind system but it is not very complex and so quite disapointing... at least, we won't have to deal anymore with creeper and the mercantile skill is more interesting, but I was expecting someting more dynamic.

 

[Lumpy]

A good Mercantile perk would be the ability to actually invest in stores. You would own part of the store, gain part of the profit. But as far as selling items goes, there should be exquisite merchants with 200.000 gold or more.

 

[El Dee]

A perk of being in the Thieves’ Guild is access to fences to sell one's stolen goods; There may be a possibility that these fences will have large amounts of gold.

 

[dongle]

But as far as selling items goes, there should be exquisite merchants with 200.000 gold or more.

Lord no! Last thing we need is an easier way to make money.

 

[Lumpy]

This restriction from selling stuff to fences is good, in my opinion. Sure, it's a bit exaggerated, but you might be caught if you sold items to a regular merchant, something that would be very hard to implement. Plus, it makes working with the underground market more important, rather than just dropping off at the local tradehouse after your last burglary and selling all the goods.

 

[Lumpy]

But as far as selling items goes, there should be exquisite merchants with 200.000 gold or more.

Lord no! Last thing we need is an easier way to make money.

So in order to prevent the player from getting huge sums of money, you don't give him less phat lewt, you give him plenty of it and make it impossible for him to sell it. Genius...

 

[dongle]

Under your system every player would be a millionaire, and quickly. In a balanced system money should have some value to the player. If every character is swimming in it buying decisions have no consequence, you can buy anything anywhere anytime. Money becomes worthless.

Sure, balancing it more is good too. Make Daedric not worth so much - and very, very, rare. Not have 100,000+ septum weapons dropped by every Tom Dick and Goldie. Lots to be done. First step is -not- giving merchants great gobs of gold tho.

 

[kris]

Things for this billions of gold should either be auctioned off to the richest in the country (read: the emperor and none else) or having to be sold at a much lower price than they are worth. It is pretty retarded that any merchant should have the money to buy high end items, it is retarded enough that someone should sell "sword of ages" to a merchant. Items like this should also not be bought from normal merchants. (goes for most RPGs of course)

 

[Lumpy]

Things for this billions of gold should either be auctioned off to the richest in the country (read: the emperor and none else) or having to be sold at a much lower price than they are worth. It is pretty retarded that any merchant should have the money to buy high end items, it is retarded enough that someone should sell "sword of ages" to a merchant. Items like this should also not be bought from normal merchants. (goes for most RPGs of course)

No, but somebody ought to buy those items. Maybe a collector, or a rich adventurer.

 

[NoisyKillerHPB]

Lumpy I'm just wondering where you saw the description of this system?

 

[Lumpy]

Lumpy I'm just wondering where you saw the description of this system?

It's been known for some time, and there's some new info here: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/inde ... 263268&hl=

 

[Twinfalls]

Every new 'feature' about Obligon that leaks out, without exception, points to one overwhelmingly tragic end-result:

Just how wasted an opportunity the TES games have become. Where more game depth and interest could have been added, it's not. Think of the opportunities to add fun stuff presented by the issue 'we need to fix the economy'. Investing in stores is just one of a ton of possibilities (like auctions for rare stuff mentioned above). Yet they fuck this up too, and turn it into stupid nonsense. Consider what the original team might have chosen to do, given that they had functioning banks in Daggerfall, and plenty of ambition to actually expand the game mechanics.

Unless the quests and dialogue turn out to be magically super-interesting and deep (very unlikely from what we've seen), than it's clear - Beth is run by some real dumbassed dumbfucks.

Oh, one other tidbit I noticed today. Remember that dumbassed difficulty slider they added to Morrowind? The one which just altered damage values, without any balance or testing or meaningful values?

Well, that's what you're getting again with the new one. No pre-balanced, meaningful difficulty options, just a freaking great big slider which alters only how much damage you dole out and take yourself, but tells you nothing. Whose effects you cannot gauge, leaving you to work out for yourself by playing through the game and adjusting it until it's totally redundant.

All that progress on graphics.....

 

[Drain]

Things for this billions of gold should either be auctioned off to the richest in the country (read: the emperor and none else) or having to be sold at a much lower price than they are worth. It is pretty retarded that any merchant should have the money to buy high end items, it is retarded enough that someone should sell "sword of ages" to a merchant. Items like this should also not be bought from normal merchants. (goes for most RPGs of course)

No, but somebody ought to buy those items. Maybe a collector, or a rich adventurer.

The museum in Tribunal handled it pretty well.

 

[Lumpy]

Things for this billions of gold should either be auctioned off to the richest in the country (read: the emperor and none else) or having to be sold at a much lower price than they are worth. It is pretty retarded that any merchant should have the money to buy high end items, it is retarded enough that someone should sell "sword of ages" to a merchant. Items like this should also not be bought from normal merchants. (goes for most RPGs of course)

No, but somebody ought to buy those items. Maybe a collector, or a rich adventurer.

The museum in Tribunal handled it pretty well.

Indeed, that was a great solution.

 

[VenomByte]

A good Mercantile perk would be the ability to actually invest in stores. You would own part of the store, gain part of the profit. But as far as selling items goes, there should be exquisite merchants with 200.000 gold or more.

Although even if said merchants existed, being rich and successful, they would realise that since there is virtually no other outlet for you to use, they don't need to offer you more than 20% of the value of the item. Your only alternative would be to scout out a rich noble who might be interested...

I'm fairly certain the economy will again be broken, in much the same way as Morrowind. I do wonder if levelled loot will be scaled past level 20 this time though...

 

[dongle]

Your only alternative would be to scout out a rich noble who might be interested...

Really. If your mercantile gets high enough you can become a door-to-door salesman.

Regular starting character can sell to normal stores only. A step up and you can sell to specialty collector shops. Another level and you can sell to the agents for nobles. Top-level mercantile and you can sell to anyone, high nobles included. Wouldn't be hard at all to implement. Every NPC becomes a merchant, with a simple player mercantile skill filter.

Just thinkin' out loud.

 

[Section8]

If we're thinking out loud:

I'd love to see opposed merchant guilds, that have "FedEx" quests constituting about half of their bulk, but due to the generic nature of "merchants" as opposed to mages, thieves, fighters, assassins, there are a variety of ways to go about getting the items they request, which may or may not be unique.

However, acquiring is only half the story. The rest of the main bulk of quests should be salesmanship. Maybe you're asked to visit all the noble houses of a few towns and sell to the highest bidder, etc.

Plus there's a lot of potential for interfaction rivalry between multiple merchant guilds, and also scope for each one to offer varied benefits to those who aid them, though they wouldn't ever entirely exclude the player, it should be nearly impossible to keep all three happy.

That would actual make mercantile and social skills a whole lot more interesting than "you can permanently increase the available purse".

 

[LlamaGod]

shhh, that could be non-combat gameplay. That isn't heroic enough for the world of Elder Scrolls!

 

[Nog Robbin]

Sounds like another half-assed implementation and another seriously missed opportunity. Just a way to be able to sell your higher valued items once you've given money to a merchant in the first place.

Typical really. If it's not action, it's not important. So much for RPG. Well, unless you only cater to action roles - and then with no real side specialities. Sucks.

 

[Excrément]

each time Bethesda improve some features from Morrowind, people here are saying : one more missed opportunity!!

combat system = missed opporunity
RAI = missed opportunity
Skill Perks = Missed Opportunity
Investing in stores = missed ...opportunity

if you want a perfect economy system, a perfect RAI, get a life man.

obviously if you analyze the game feature by feature you will always find a better game for this feature :

yeah fallout has a better dialogue system, far cry has a better combat system, capitalism 2 has a better economy system, WoW has a better skill perks system....

Just analyze the game as a whole and admit when they are some improvements compared to the previous titles (from arena to morrowind)

 

[Thrawn05]

Just analyze the game as a whole and admit when they are some improvements compared to the previous titles (from arena to morrowind)

There are none.