Investing in stores in Oblivion

[Irwanday01]

Quote:
2) All Main cities should have a toll to pass through the gate.


An interesting idea, but not one I'd particularly like implemented honestly. It would make sense for routes throughout the world, but not access to cities. Pay 100 Toll to cross the bridge, or fight your way through the wilderness filled

My thoughts were something like this< A toll for crossing the road could be paid also, but since we already have to go through a gate on all the main cities( so we can load the city) why not make it cost something. Also if you have to pay at a hotel it will cost you to sleep, if you decide " hey im just going to sleep in the wilderness" it will cost you to use the gates.

Irwanday01 wrote:
6) maybe montly membership fees for guilds.
Perhaps. What happens if you don't pay though? Perhaps contributions could go towards various bonuses that are taken as normal - e.g. good trading prices, free low value guild items (supply chests), etc. -, and these things could be denied for non-payment of fees.
[free guild items should have little to no re-sale value though, since they've got guild markings on them]

I was thinking if you didn't pay you membership to the guild, the members dispostion would drop towards you so you couldn't buy and potions, spells, ingredients, get training, or MAYBE even do missions. Also every time you advance in the guild you should have a higher fee to pay, because you are now able to get more services.

Irwanday01 wrote:
1) loot should only be as valueble as can be afforded to pay. for example if the richest merchant in the province has 10000 septims than the most valueble items should cost around that.
Or perhaps higher valued items should sell for quite a bit, but for a lower proportion of their value. If the richest merchant can only afford 10000, he's unlikely to pay 10000 for an item worth 10000. There's no point having items worth 10 times what anyone will pay, but twice what anyone can pay isn't necessarily a problem.

I was thinking this as well.

Irwanday01 wrote:
2) items should be more valueable in certain locations. If a fish cost 10 dollars in Anvil (on the seacoast) than the same item should cost 25 in the middle of the province where there are no fish. or maybe fruits and plants should cost more in bruma where it is always snowing, where crops cant grow.
Nice thought, but I'm not sure it'll be worth doing. If the items are low value, it won't have much effect over-all, and might still be a lot of trouble to get working. It would add a bit of colour, but I don't see it being easy enough to be worth your while doing - perhaps it'll be easier than I imagine though.

well with this one I thought it would be of some benefit, it may not make a difference if you only selling one item. But lets say fish are worth 10 septims in Anvil and 25 in Skingrad. if you sell 20 fish it will make a big difference.

Irwanday01 wrote:
3) for every 24 hours that passes a merchant should respawn 20% of his loot. that way if you have all the merchants money through a transaction, it will take him five days to be back to his original amount of money.
I'm not sure about this. I think a bank + letter of credit system would work better. A merchant would still have an upper limit for the value of letter of credit he could give out, but that would be much higher than his available gold. This way, any reasonable amount of items can be sold to a merchant with a fairly large shop, since he'll write you a letter of credit to cash at a bank. It's credible, but without all the waiting around for money to respawn.

yeah im not set on my idea either, but i know the sleep sell method is a huge exploit, and it needs to be fixed. For me anyway.

 

[Relien]

Anyway, there's a whole long list of things that haven't met expectations.

• NPC interaction still involves Wiki topic selection, and now there's even less to talk about!

Wiki is quite necessary for that amount of NPCs. But I don't think there's less dialogue than in MW. Sure, there's less dialogue per NPC, but that's because they don't share all the topics like they did in MW. There's much more NPC specific dialogue this time. I don't know how long would it take to read all the dialogue texts in MW, but I'd say it would be far less than 50 hours.

• There's less quest content

I don't know about that. I heard there will be fewer quests, but that doesn't mean less quest content.

Well, I could more or less agree with the rest though.

EDIT: Oh, and Havok - there will be traps, at least.

 

[Micmu]

I don't know how long would it take to read all the dialogue texts in MW, but I'd say it would be far less than 50 hours.

Most people read much, much faster than average person can speak, no?
Edit: Lot of those 50 hours is also duplicatied (actually, 20x) speech, since there are 10 races comming in two sexes, so... The comparison isn't so simple as it seems.

 

[galsiah]

Yes it can happen. No it doesn't make sense. But still, had I not read about this on the forums I would have never noticed it. Why would I buy back what I just sold? Sure you are right, things like that should be fixed once they are known. I support it. But please excuse me for not working up any adrenaline over issues like this. So what if its an exploit, I can stand there and sell and buy weapons for a day and become the richest man in Tamriel. But for what? And if I don't abuse it, how much should such glitches bother me? Am I a fanboy just for saying they don't?

First, I'm not calling you a fanboy for your attitude. I'm just saying that you are happy to ignore these kind of flaws - which is probably a good thing for you, since you have more fun that way. However, they are still flaws. It is bad design. It's just bad design that you - and many others - can happily ignore.

I'm not saying that these things are the most important in TES games. What does annoy me though, is that they would be easy to fix / do better. Both in the case of the character stat progression system, and the economy, they are isolated systems that can be changed without any graphics / sound requirements. There are many ways to achieve reasonable balance (which Morrowind doesn't), and to have a system which makes sense.

Doing these things well might take a few weeks (for all of them), where doing them badly might take a few days. The time difference is hardly significant. In fact coming up with stable, sensible, balanced systems early might actually save time down the road, since they wouldn't need so much tweaking to get to a passable state of balance.

One point I'd like to pick up on is:

how much should such glitches bother me?

Most of these things are not "glitches". They are predictable outcomes of the system.

The soultrap bug is a glitch - and one I'm fine with ignoring, since my character would never naturally come across it.
The fact that training gold only adds to barter gold if you click the barter menu before training, is a glitch. Annoying, but a clear error, and forgivable.

Designing a trading system which allows items to be sold for 100 gold, then bought back for 90, is not a glitch. Neither is designing a skill system where training before sleeping can lead to significantly different attribute bonuses than training after sleeping.

Unpredictable bugs are one thing. Knowingly designing a broken system - or at least not thinking enough to realise that it's broken - is another.


The reason I dislike these economy bugs is that my favourite characters are unscrupulous thieves. When I'm playing such a character, I'd take delight in swindling a merchant by tricking him into buying back items he'd just sold me for a higher price. It is very in character. To avoid staying there all day, laughing at their stupidity and taking their money I am forced out of character. I am forced to think "This is a game bug, and exploiting it won't be much fun". I am forced out of character, and my immersion in the game world goes out the window.

Perhaps if I played a virtuous paladin, I'd be less bothered, but I rather like playing thieves.

 

[spacemoose]

Wiki is quite necessary for that amount of NPCs.

Bullshit. Hire more writers, they're quite plentiful.

 

[Relien]

I don't know how long would it take to read all the dialogue texts in MW, but I'd say it would be far less than 50 hours.

Most people read much, much faster than listen to speech, no?

Of course, but OB has 50 hours of spoken dialogue, so I'm curious how long would it take to read (in a voice acting speed) the dialogue from MW, just to compare. I'd say it'll be far less.

EDIT:

Edit: Lot of those 50 hours is also duplicatied (actually, 20x) speech, since there are 10 races comming in two sexes, so... The comparison isn't so simple as it seems.

Ok, that's true. But still, MW had very little NPC specific dialogue, most of the text was shared, so it looks like there was less text than it will/could be in OB.

 

[Relien]

Wiki is quite necessary for that amount of NPCs.

Bullshit. Hire more writers, they're quite plentiful.

Like I said, it seems to me that they've made a step forward regarding dialogues and NPC uniqueness. But wiki is still useful, because there are some things you should be able to ask anyone. For example most people in a town should be able to tell you something about that town, or about Cyrodiil in general. I have a feeling that maybe they cut the wiki more than they should, IIRC there was a woman in some video with the only topic - rumors.

 

[galsiah]

I just did a 10 minute voice acting stint with the first dialogue topic entries in the Morrowind CS. I got 9 entries down in that time, trying to skip any repeated dialogue (though sometimes this is dodgy, since one entry will be part of another, or two will share parts).

There are about dialogue 1700 topics (not including greetings, bribe / persuasion responses...) in Morrowind.

If the first 9 are typical, that would put Morrowind's dialogue at ( 1700 * 10 / 9 ) minutes. That's about 19000 minutes, or about 31 hours (without repeats).
It's a stupidly rough estimate, of course. I'd probably guess from that, that Morrowind has more unique dialogue than Oblivion. It's no final verdict though.

Of course Morrowind dialogues include many directions, which Oblivion won't be encumbered by.

 

[Section8]

Wiki is quite necessary for that amount of NPCs. But I don't think there's less dialogue than in MW. Sure, there's less dialogue per NPC, but that's because they don't share all the topics like they did in MW. There's much more NPC specific dialogue this time. I don't know how long would it take to read all the dialogue texts in MW, but I'd say it would be far less than 50 hours.

I'm not convinced. 1500+ "Unique" NPCs is a selling point, nothing more. Realistically, it just means they've got a unique name, RAI params and topic lists. Aside from the exception of important characters, most "unique" NPCs are likely to be almost indistinguishable.

So, really, why bother? What does the player gain from talking to any of these drones? I'd prefer to see them genericised completely, if that means more time and effort can be put into fleshing out the characters the player is likely to interact with, and therefore we see dialogue trees and such.

Or alternately, unless you're constrained by a decision to voice act all NPC speech, you can get a lot of mileage out of a few writers.

Both are viable solutions in the here and now, but ultimately, I'd like to see work put into procedurally generated conversation, but that's a huge undertaking.

Another idea that appeals to me is starting all NPCs as drones devoid of personality, but able to answer simple questions (such as asking for directions), and assigning them dialogue and personality according to the player's willingness to converse with them.

That way, you're not wasting any effort on assigning personalities to everyone on the off chance that the player will strike up a conversation with a random stranger as they pass on the street.

The biggest issue with that sort of system, is that you still have a finite pool of personality to be assigned to NPCs dynamically, and so you need a plausible way to limit the number of NPCs the player can form "friendships" with.

I don't know about that. I heard there will be fewer quests, but that doesn't mean less quest content.

Okay, change that to less quest options, and therefore a limit on the ways a player can effectively project their chosen role into the world.

EDIT: Oh, and Havok - there will be traps, at least.

Which seem like mostly gimmickry. You don't need advanced physics simulation to create a typical pressure plate trap. The log rolling stuff is pretty nifty, but it seems to be exceptional in terms of rules. A heavy object rolling at someone will hurt them, but tossing spiky things, heavy boxes, and whatever at NPCs, even from a great height, doesn't even ellicit a reaction, let alone work in a consistent manner to a player familiar with the destructive power of rolling logs.

 

[Lumpy]

I just did a 10 minute voice acting stint with the first dialogue topic entries in the Morrowind CS. I got 9 entries down in that time, trying to skip any repeated dialogue (though sometimes this is dodgy, since one entry will be part of another, or two will share parts).

There are about dialogue 1700 topics (not including greetings, bribe / persuasion responses...) in Morrowind.

If the first 9 are typical, that would put Morrowind's dialogue at ( 1700 * 10 / 9 ) minutes. That's about 19000 minutes, or about 31 hours (without repeats).
It's a stupidly rough estimate, of course. I'd probably guess from that, that Morrowind has more unique dialogue than Oblivion. It's no final verdict though.

Of course Morrowind dialogues include many directions, which Oblivion won't be encumbered by.

Oblivion will have 50 hours of dialogue AFAIK.

 

[kingcomrade]

The biggest issue with that sort of system, is that you still have a finite pool of personality to be assigned to NPCs dynamically, and so you need a plausible way to limit the number of NPCs the player can form "friendships" with.

"I've got nothing to say to you!"
"I'm busy"
"Go away, stranger"

 

[Claw]

Wiki is quite necessary for that amount of NPCs. But I don't think there's less dialogue than in MW.

Uhh... we'll see about this when Gothic 3 is released, supposedly featuring an amount of NPCs of similar magnitude as Oblivion.

 

[dongle]

OK, so they fixed the 100,000g swords anyway, but that didn't take a genius to figure out I suppose?

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Oblibion Spoilerz (obviously)

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http://photobucket.com/albums/y2/wepeel26/?action=view&current=weapns1.jpg
http://photobucket.com/albums/y2/wepeel26/?action=view&current=weapons2.jpg

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Oblibion Spoilerz (as if you couldn't guess)

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Daedric Claymore == 4000g
Daedric Warhammer == 5000g
Daedric Bow == 3200g

Are the most expensive weapons in the three classes in the game. That doesn't include unique artifacts, which really -should- be hela expensive.

 

[VenomByte]

I see the 'available at player level' and alarm bells start going off.

Does this mean you can't physicall use a Silver weapon until level 4, or simply that they will not exist at all, anywhere in the game world, until you reach level 4?

Either seems pretty damn stupid to me.

 

[galsiah]

Oblivion will have 50 hours of dialogue AFAIK.

Yes, I know.
However, as stated above, the fact that it's voice acted means that any shared dialogue would need to be recorded multiple times. Anything said by each race and each gender needs recording 20 times. This might take up quite a bit of that 50 hours.

Perhaps they'll use slightly different phrases for each voice, so that no dialogue is truly shared, but that's not really going to add much depth if they're just rephrasing things but with equivalent meaning.


VenomByte: I'd guess it's almost certainly that they don't exist. However this might well mean only that they don't exist on levelled lists, and perhaps in shops. Presumably some items are hand placed, and would exist regardless of player level.

 

[VenomByte]

I would hope there are some hand placed.

Likely the merchants will be using levelled lists, so they won't appear in shops. A little irritating, but they did the same (occasionally) in Morrowind.


I think I see where this is going now. Since the economy is going to be broken again, and the prices of high level items are much more reasonable now, the only way to 'balance' it and prevent low level players getting hold ofhigh level items is to make sure those items don't exist in the game and aren't available for sale...

 

[Nog Robbin]

Hmm they seem to have balanced the weapons a bit - but a deadric dagger does 4 times the damage of an iron equivalent, and a daedric claymore does double the damage of an iron equivalant. Still seem to be rather diverse in the amount of damage for essentially the same weapon.

[EDIT]Yeah - available at does look a bit naff. Another thing to remind you that you are in a game, when things suddenly appear as you hit a new level boundary.

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

Hmm they seem to have balanced the weapons a bit - but a deadric dagger does 4 times the damage of an iron equivalent, and a daedric claymore does double the damage of an iron equivalant. Still seem to be rather diverse in the amount of damage for essentially the same weapon.

[EDIT]Yeah - available at does look a bit naff. Another thing to remind you that you are in a game, when things suddenly appear as you hit a new level boundary.

Hasn't changed much from Daggerfall, if anything it's been toned down:
http://www.jceason.dircon.co.uk/dagger/dfweaparm.htm

Dagger: 1-6 damage, -2 for iron, + 12 for daedric
Claymore: 2-18, -2 for iron, +12 for Daedric

With the amount of materials available, such a range makes sense.

And I am pretty sure the availability of good materials increased strongly with level in DF as well, although I am not sure about a hard limit. It's not realistic, but it helps to keep things balanced. Anyway this will only apply to random loot, as to the NPC you fight it will still be WYSIWYG, at least I never heard different.

 

[Lumpy]

WTF??? You get double the money you've paid if you win your bet in the arena. How stupid is that?
On the other hand, it's nice to see that arena fights are actually affected by your luck.

 

[Nog Robbin]

Hmm they seem to have balanced the weapons a bit - but a deadric dagger does 4 times the damage of an iron equivalent, and a daedric claymore does double the damage of an iron equivalant. Still seem to be rather diverse in the amount of damage for essentially the same weapon.

[EDIT]Yeah - available at does look a bit naff. Another thing to remind you that you are in a game, when things suddenly appear as you hit a new level boundary.

Hasn't changed much from Daggerfall, if anything it's been toned down:
http://www.jceason.dircon.co.uk/dagger/dfweaparm.htm

Dagger: 1-6 damage, -2 for iron, + 12 for daedric
Claymore: 2-18, -2 for iron, +12 for Daedric

With the amount of materials available, such a range makes sense.

And I am pretty sure the availability of good materials increased strongly with level in DF as well, although I am not sure about a hard limit. It's not realistic, but it helps to keep things balanced. Anyway this will only apply to random loot, as to the NPC you fight it will still be WYSIWYG, at least I never heard different.

I'm not suggesting it's worse or better - just that I would have preferred the damage ratios to have been closer. The material used could increase price, durability, amount of enchantments etc. - but increases in damage should really be pretty minimal. This is something that effects many RPG's, so it's not a dig at Oblivion alone.

 

[elander_]

I see the 'available at player level' and alarm bells start going off.

Does this mean you can't physicall use a Silver weapon until level 4, or simply that they will not exist at all, anywhere in the game world, until you reach level 4?

Either seems pretty damn stupid to me.

They are using something similar to Daggerfall combat system which ensures that enemies attributes and weapon quality will allways be leveled towards the player. I don't think this is very realistic either but it keeps combat in this hack and slash game chalenging no mater what places you visit first.

 

[Lumpy]

It also seems that each guild, besides the Dark Brotherhood, has an enemy guild:
The Mages Guild - the Necromancers.
The Fighters Guild - the Mercenaries.
The Thieves Guild - the Imperial Legion.

Sadly, all guilds on the right are unjoinable.

 

[galsiah]

I'm not too bothered by the range of damages, though I'd probably prefer 1 point steps rather than 2 point steps. I can live with Daedric stuff as a special case, but a glass longsword doing twice the damage of an iron longsword seems a bit much.

Personally I'd prefer it if they'd hide the damage stats and let the player see (viscerally ) what the difference was through using different weapons, or through descriptions / prices / preferences of NPCs etc.
That way designers would have the freedom to have steel longswords do e.g. 11.384 damage, without it looking odd to the player. At the moment, the choice is between 1 point steps and 2 point steps, simply because the system has to look simple to the player. It'd be very surprising if either of these were the ideal solution. Once you hide the stats, you can use 11.384s to your heart's content.

Also, they seem to have used a rather simplistic More damage == Heavier model.
Now I know this isn't generic fantasy land, but Bosmer / Altmer are still known as archers / mages, not for their brute strength. Does the following make sense?

Iron longsword: Weight 20, damage 10
Silver longsword: Weight 28, damage 14
Dwarven longsword: Weight 32, damage 16
Elven longsword: Weight 36, damage 18

That's not exactly interesting. Clearly Longsword means: Weight = 2*damage, regardless of the type or origin of the sword. I'd prefer to see a little more imagination, and a little less obvious formulae. Could an elven longsword not have been e.g. faster, lighter, but not do quite so much damage?

The "fine" weapons give a bit of variety, of course. What does "fine" mean?
newWeight = weight * 0.9
newValue = value * 2
newHealth = health * 1.1
newDamage = damage + 1

"But", I hear you cry, "a fine steel longsword only weighs 12.6, when a steel longsword weighs 24. That's not *0.9. This must be some special type of weapon. There's your variety and imagination!"

Hurrah for the misprint! (12.6 should be 21.6.)

I'm all for a bit of consistency, but wouldn't it have been nice if a little more personality and care had gone into the stats? The only deviations I can see from these formulae are rounding, a misprint, and occasional changes to make sure each item is at least one point different from another (e.g. the daggers).

The "fine" quality is still nice to see, even if it is just a simple formula, since it makes for a more interesting decision. It's a bit disappointing that every weapon of the same type has the same speed and reach though. I'd have thought at least one of these could have been used to add a little colour. Elven things being some of the heaviest also makes little sense to me.

Clearly this is a minor issue, but it would have been nice to see that at least some of the weapons had been considered individually.

 

[Blahblah Talks]

WTF??? You get double the money you've paid if you win your bet in the arena. How stupid is that?
On the other hand, it's nice to see that arena fights are actually affected by your luck.

You pay the guy 100. If you win, you get 200 back from him. Your 100, plus his 100. IOW, he holds your money when you place the bet, and gives it back to you if win.

 

[Lumpy]

WTF??? You get double the money you've paid if you win your bet in the arena. How stupid is that?
On the other hand, it's nice to see that arena fights are actually affected by your luck.

You pay the guy 100. If you win, you get 200 back from him. Your 100, plus his 100. IOW, he holds your money when you place the bet, and gives it back to you if win.

Yes. I got that. But isn't it reasonable that you'd get less than 200%? What does the arena gain from this?