Solik:
Seeing "Barter Gold: 1000", and knowing that this means I can sell axes worth 1000 all day, but not swords worth 3000 is enough to break my immersion. If I weren't shown that, and I found that a merchant would happily buy 10 axes at 1000, but never a sword for 1500 (even if it were worth 10000) would break my immersion.
Utter nonsense just breaks my immersion. If I'm trading, I try to work out how to get the best value for my money. That means thinking about why the merchants offer the prices they do. As soon as I do that I'm exposed to the idiocy.
Most RPGs might not have great economic systems, but perhaps they don't go for such clear nonsense, then advertise it with neon signs.
It makes me wonder how you've gotten on with no location damage
It's an abstraction for combat that importantly:
makes sense at its level of abstraction. I can rationalise it by thinking e.g. that was a weak hit / glancing blow, or that hit home / took him off balance etc.
I don't get on with that. I modded it out of Morrowind because it sucked.
no penalties for less-than-max HP
This depends on your view of HP. You can think of each hit before you die as having only a very small effect in itself, so weakening you only slightly. The final blow can be thought of as having "run you through" or similar.
Even if this isn't the case, penalties for low HP can (and have) been modded into Morrowind. I'm not honestly sure whether I'd used them, since I rarely get around to playing. I do plan to start a game and actually use my mod at some point though.
At least there is an excuse for not having HP penalties, if they aren't present: they might harm the gameplay. Realism / cohesion might get in the way of it being an interesting game (though perhaps not - it depends on the player).
There is no similar argument for a stupid merchantile system. It is just bad, plain and simple.
I'm not forced to use a badly implemented physics system. It just isn't there. I don't really care.
A correct parallel would be a physics system that's implemented quickly and simply, so that players (and developers?) can understand it. All objects move in straight lines, never spinning, and bounce around like they're in a bad pinball machine.
The great thing about this is that it's simple for players to understand (straight lines, and no complex equations involved). Clearly a fully featured physics system would be really complicated to implement - this game isn't a physics simulation, so what do you expect?
I put up with no physics (since it doesn't add much to a game), and I'd put up with having no merchants (if that didn't take away much of the gameplay), but I can't easily put up with either nonsense physics, or nonsense merchants.
Again: Missing is fine. Implemented backwards / upsidedown / with no object making them is not.
and repeated stock dialogue if something like this is an immersion-breaker for you.
Repeated stock dialogue probably is immersion breaking, but I'll put up with it and get used to it, since there's no clear better alternative.
For merchants / economy there is a better solution: Something that's not utter nonsense.
EDIT:
Adding a couple hundred to that number for highly expensive items is just too trivial to care about.
First it is not trivial, since it is:
(1) Easy.
(2) Adds to the coherence of the game world.
Second it is sometimes important, since an item might cost 20000. You should be able to sell that for at least perhaps 5000 - to an NPC with infinite gold for 1000 items. The difference between 1000 and 5000 is not trivial.
