Did you catch any of my earlier ideas?

I was implementing bandit gangs as joinable factions. That's totally OT, though.

Custom-built gear would be great. It might be a little clunky to implement, though, owing to the potential number of options. Being able to invest in other businesses would be cool. I'd also love to be able to do charity work for the poor, beyond measly 1 gold to beggars, 5 gold to temples. I'd like to see a peasant community actually become more prosperous through my donations the same way you can buy things for your house. For that matter, your furnishings should have levels of quality: poor furnishings for a couple hundred gold, princely furnishings for a few thousands and a couple levels in between. What about commissioning artists to create paintings and sculptures of your character to display in your home. Vanity is usually a great source of expenditure.

I imagine for the commission work they could scale the pricing based on what you wish to purchase like they did in Oblivion for Enchanting.

The additional stuff you mentioned I would love.

Rather than abandon the idea altogether, why not a compromise solution. The first Daedric artifact you get, the Daedra Prince tells you this artifact is now yours and yours alone, so it's pretty clear that no one else can possess artifacts except you. Should a thief take it, it will disappear from his possession and reappear back where he found it. Alternatively, the thief can't steal it at all because he can't see it. If it's on your person, it can't be taken. These are artifacts, they clearly don't change ownership like any normal object, they have a mind of their own or their daedric master does the minding for them.
Ideally, if the game had locking like the earlier games did, you'd protect your house and containers with locks. Perhaps being in the Thieves Guild would prevent most thefts.
On a somewhat related topic, when I earned Volendrung, I didn't have the capacity to carry it. I had to leave it where it spawned, sell my loot in the nearest city, then come back. I assumed since the orcs heard Malacath give me Volendrung, I could rely on them to safeguard the artifact on the shrine for my return. Well, I come back, it got safeguarded alright, in some orc's pocket. Thankfully my character used a different type of weapon, so I didn't miss it.

I think Fallout New Vegas introduced a very potent feature: the player's choice to use advanced game mechanics or not. All the ideas given in this thread for more in-depth roleplay and gameplay really should be packaged with an On-Off switch. Turn them off, and players who like an easy-to-access game with mild learning curve can indeed play an arcade experience. Turn them on, and players who crave more immersion in their game will find the ambition Daggerfall aspired to be. Many ideas are made here and in other places, and I think Bethesda does give them thought and attempts one or two of them. Eventually Bethesda will have laid groundwork throughout games that a future title will be able to execute them all fluidly.

Skyrim isnt an MMO, so it doesnt need a moneysink to keep down inflation. Only very few players keep playing the game with the same character after they finished the main quest and most smaller ones.
So the current cost of new armors, skills and houses are just fine.

Maybe a fort/castle that the player can rebuild? Like you would need to pay workers for X days/weeks to rebuild the area and then pay carpenters to furnish the place and such? Their wages are on a daily basis and such. Later on you can hire guards/maids etc. to help run the place. IMO that would be pretty cool.

I would like a fortress like in Morrowind that you would have to quest to earn then pay (a lot) to have built then pay more on a monthy basis to keep it supplied and the guards, ect paid. It would make a great mod or DLC. Something for a high level character to work for. And I still think horses and companions should need upkeep money.

Maybe some don't know how a challenging game had to be, but then some also don't know how a game with freedom had to be. If the TS ideas would be implemented in TES I would never play it again. To have to grind crafting to get the possiblilty to play the game would be so terrible... I cannot imagine. Other, optional, ideas for money sinks would be fine. But till now (Lvl 36/46) I never had enough money to even buy furniture for my house in Whiterun. I buy crafting materials and filled soulstones (my char is lazy) and that's enough moneysink for me. And when he thinks about the costs of teachers, he gets headache.

I use Training to get my skills I don't normally use to go up, that's a pretty good moneysink right there.

Just a few small ideas off the top of my head that could be implented with mods:

1. Gambling. Some venues could be corrupt with little to no chance of winning while others are more reasonable. Of course the player has to discover this for themselves.

2. Followers require contracts, i.e. they will come with you to clear the fort of bandits for a fee and once that is done their contract is finished and will leave the player.

3. The player can be robbed. I know this happens already (kind of) but the only reason you'd pay the bandits is for RPing purposes. The strengh and threat level of thieves, robbers, etc. should be higher. Also maybe have the valuables (except rare items) from your house stolen if you have taken your housecarl out adventuring with you.

4. Higher property prices and taxes. Though this may be too close to real life for some

well they could also make it so you spend a crap load of money putting in master locks with traps and enchantments. All theives breaking into your house have 10-15 lock picks, better the locks the less of a chance of things being stolen. Add on a personal gaurd at the house boom house safe.
I'd also like to see taxes added to the game. This as a part of a hardcoe mode would be pretty good (though extend days to be 48-90 in game minutes to make things a little easier for people than in New Vegas)

You want a mid to late game money sink?

Do a "purchase the ruins and finance the rebuild of Helgen" mod.

A good money sink would be the creativity, something like Minecraft. The posibility to let us build stuff that require a lot of time and money. Starting from building a lonely house out in nowhere into developing a village/city where caravans/npc's would stop by to trade or even settle if there is enough room. And the building process should be hard, like in minecraft where you actually build your house brick by brick with your own hand, you need to gather or buy the materials, hire npc's workers, train soldiers etc. You are the only human player in a huge virtual world, so there is enough room to be creative and build stuff not just be a lonely hero/thief/ganker etc.

Great post OP, wish more people could come up with contructive threads like this rather than whinging.

Anyway I think most of your ideas have real merit, but I do agree they should somehow be optional for players of a more casual nature.

I'd definately support this.

Plenty of good suggestions in this topic but none that gamesas would dream of implementing. Their target segment is casual gamers who play the game for 30-40 hours, maybe remain interested long enough to finish the MQ, and that's it. That's the segment that will buy ten million copies. Fanatic types who actually take their characters to level 81, visit every ruin, fort, cave, and hideout at least twice, and finish every quest are a much smaller segment.

They're hugely loyal fans, of course, but spending development time on them is economically a complete waste, even if it's a nice move and a good way of saying "thank you for loving our game".

Anyway, I do like the idea of hiring smiths and enchanters and alchemists so you could get things done without having to grind those skills yourself. It would be complimentary, of course, so raising the skills on your own and doing things yourself would still be an option. Lazy people (or characters to whom learning such crafts makes no sense) would simply have a way of avoiding the skill grind, at the expense of septims.

Having your own castle or fortress built would also be cool as heck. Buying the land Helgen is located on and having it rebuilt under your lordship would be awesome. Having proper charity and furnishing options would rock.

The old "merchant chest" concept with a merchant slowly converting the contents into septims (as an abstraction of searching for a buyer of rare items willing to pay big bucks for your items) would also be a nice touch to avoid the normal merchant septim restrictions, though of course that's on the other side of the money sink issue.

You just lost me right there. Despite most games' attempts to drown players in a sea of potions, I subscribe to the school of thought which holds that potions are for severe emergencies, not something to be chugged like cheap beer at a frat party.

For reference, I've just retired a level 68 stealth archer with 200+ hours of play time; I don't think he's used more than about a dozen healing potions total in his lifetime, plus maybe four or five Fortify Smithing/Enchanting potions and that's it. Neither he, nor my mage character (about 40 hours in), nor my axe-and-shield melee fighter (at 10 hours) have ever used a magicka or stamina potion. If you give me a boss that "requires potions to defeat", I'll most likely first try a few different tactics to see whether I can find a way to beat him without taking up potionaholism, then call in a companion to see if that helps, then finally either run off to come back and roflstomp him in a few levels (if the situation allows it) or open the console, turn on immortal mode, and wear him down that way (if the fight is rigged to prevent retreat). I absolutely reject the notion that, if you're not downing 47 potions to get through every fight, then you're not trying hard enough.


Seriously, this is one of the major things hindering any attempts to balance the economy in TES games. I choose to level my skills solely by using them, to the point that I often forget that buying training is even in the game. Other players use trainers constantly to boost their skills. Anything that prevents me from amassing huge piles of gold will pretty thoroughly screw over a player who invests in training. (Somewhat ironically, a big part of the reason I first decided against training back in the Daggerfall days was that the ready availability of cash made it feel too easy to just buy a high skill level.)


Count me among those who think the best solution is to provide more options for spending large piles of gold on building or improving things. Building a fortress in the wilderness, rebuilding Helgen, or fortifying Winterhold are all excellent ideas from earlier posts and they also all happen to be things which would logically lead to upkeep costs for maintenance.

Smaller things like equipment maintenance or forcing players to buy potions, well... that retiring level 68 has over a million gold on him. Even buying a hundred Ultimate Health Potions and being forced to re-upgrade his gear every day of game-time would still barely be pocket change compared to that.