It's well known that TES games eventually get a broken economy. Eventually, the high value infinite loot and low equipment maintenance costs means your gold reaches a point where you could buy out the world, burn it all down, and personally finance its reconstruction. Twice. Skyrim has done a good job in staving this problem off with vendors who have finite cash. However, this system always feels a bit strained, as it resolves the problem not by giving the player more they need to spend their cash on, but rather limiting the rate at which they can sell off loot, and thus acquire more gold. It's not uncommon to rapidly accumulate stacks of high-value gems and jewelry that you simply can't find a vendor for. In a series that is renowned for always telling the player "yes", being told "no" when trying to sell loot comes off oddly. Moreover, it ultimately only slows the problem, not eliminate it.

So, what's to be done? The fun in TES games (or any game really) comes from giving the player interesting choices and making them feel rewarded for making the right one. When the choice of what to spend your gold on is no longer relevant, a piece of the fun is removed from the game. If the issue is to be resolved, there needs to be some expenditure which a player would regularly undertake that scales in cost to the player's level.

I think the best option is to take a page from WoW's playbook. In WoW, a good player needs items from the professions Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Enchanting, Inscription, and potentially Leatherworking/Tailoring. Each of those also require supplies from the Herbalism, Skinning, and Mining professions. Even assuming Leathworking/Tailoring/Blacksmithing are all part of the same skill like they are in Skyrim and the three gathering professions don't exist (I can't see flower-picking requiring a skill in TES!), that's still a lot of skills that are needed to be effective.

You'll notice that three of those skills are already in Skyrim, but here's the kicker: they're optional. Completely optional. A player can be fully viable on the hardest difficulty in a variety of builds while only buying occasional potions and an odd enchanted item to replace their existing equipment (e.g. a glass shield of health to replace a plain glass shield). Why not make these skills required? Up the difficulty to the point that a player needs honed and enchanted equipment with alchemic buffs to survive and everyone will be looking for thicker armor and magical resistances.

Now, the player doesn't need to be the one who's good at them. In an MMO, other players provide the professions the PC lacks. In Skyrim, this service would be merchants. Merchants who would charge you through the nose to craft you an Dwemer Mace on call (more still if you've failed to supply the ingots), charge you another pile of gold to enhance it, another merchant would make you poor to add fire damage, and the local alchemist would take whatever you've got left for some powerful but otherwise-rare health and defensive potions.

End result:

1) Speech/Bartering skill becomes VERY important. It's current use is really only for roleplay purposes, but if gold is more valuable, investing in bartering skills/perks becomes more valuable as well.

2) Merchants can offer leveled equipment without having a full suit of Ebony and Glass equipment on display at all times. They always have access to basic Steel, maybe Elven and Dwemer as well, but after that the equipment must be commissioned at great personal expense.

3) Alchemy and enchanting would need to avoid duplication of effects. We see this already with magic, where enchanting reduces cost and alchemy enhances power, and if nothing else it's just more fun in general when these two skills don't overlap like they have historically done.

4) Bosses and other big baddies would need to require potions to defeat. Master vampires, dragons, dremora, bandit chiefs, etc should have you reaching for the drinks like a gamer pulling a caffeine-powered all nighter. If alchemy is going to be a required skill, then potions need to be required.

5) More opportunities for player decisions with their gold means more opportunities to reward the player for making good decisions. When you give the player the option to decide to invest their gold in powerful new equipment instead of luxuriously outfitting their bedroom in their house, the player then gets to enjoy beating stuff down with their new equipment, and they're getting to enjoy a more personally-crafted character.

Remember, although this may sound like a difficulty rant, I don't want to see the difficulty go up if the player is employing all of their skill and the merchant options. This would likely require a bit of player training since TES hasn't previously required any player awareness of merchants beyond "I need some health/magicka potions" and "who will buy my loot?" Skyrim does this for the new smithing skill with a quest in Riverwood, so it's certainly doable.

tl;dr Read it anyway you lazy git

nah.

It would be great if Bethesda made a game where you actually had to think about how you spent money. That would be revolutionary for them. Overabundant money supply goes all the way back to Daggerfall.

For the record, the way I play Oblivion has only two changes to make this work - one by OOO and one by me. They are:

1. Significantly increased costs for training - it costs 30 x (skill level) so training a skill from 49 to 50 costs 1,500 septums!

2. If an object you sell is more valuable than (your Mercantile x 10), its effective value is (your Mercantile x 10). So if you have a crazy Ayleid weapon that's worth 490,032 septims but a Mercantile of 20, then the value when you sell it is 200. BUYING a crazy Ayleid weapon still costs 490,032.

Seriously, it is super, super easy to make good money sinks and to reasonably control the money supply. The fact that Bethesda never has can only mean that they don't care

I love everything you have suggested. Except one thing.

The overlapping options the player can choose to exclude other than that I love everything you have suggested.

I do like the idea od adding more skills, (professions) to add roleplaying value. The flower picking is a part of alchemy and its one of the funnest in the game for me collecting ingredients is one of the funnest things in the game for me and it has been since Morrowind.

Great post and ideas.

These are good ideas as well.

land,title,holdings,small army,that is a money sink that is worth while.

I like the idea of paying NPCs to enchant stuff

I like the idea of commissioning Armor and Weapon Builds along with then commisioning the court wizard to enchant it. Then basing the cost of whether or not you can supply the raw materials. You could then actually get a full set of dragon armor without raising the smithing skill to 100. This makes for better role playing accross the board, I would think most warriors are not going to understand the Arcane Enchanter, to enchant their sword with fire damage and there are Wizards that are not going to smith their own mace. So it is a very good idea, I do this to some point as I often purchase the soul gems I need to perform an enchantment, but I play a warriror type character and for role-playing purposes would rather not level encahnting up. They could take this a step furhter and bring classes back, with 5 primary skills and 2 secondary skills, but then not let you even develop the skills outside of this class, or make them develop so slow that it would not be worth the effort.

Paying monthly/weekly fees for mercs and maintenance fees for your gigantic [censored] castle. But that would be too cool to put in, so wait for a mod.

Using gold to rebuild Helgen and make yourself jarl would be pretty cool. Or rebuild some of the old ruined forts that dot the landscape.

Followers need to be paid wages or they leave. Houses need taxes paid or the door is locked. Improved weapons deteriorate over time and need to be reimproved with new ingots/leather. Eating/sleeping in beds are required and need to be paid for. Horses need upkeep money (if true to real life LOTS of money).

Head into wilderness. Kill random creature. Place unwanted gold/items on creature. Walk away.

Congratulations, you're now poor.

Most of the issues could be massively helped by having the designers place loot more intelligently and with greater care, ditto for the number of iron ore points.
Ie. Far less loot in every dungeon, less junk but far less chest, one at the end and one or two hidden ones. Mzuflt is the worst example of this, a dungeon that has been there for hundreds of years of a race that has vanished, leaving plenty of intrigue and useful items. Add to that when you do go there it's occupied by people who've been there a while, sending people back to the Imperial city, yet in total theres easily near 4000 units of weight collectable in here, the resulting drawven ingots is 400, thats several sets of gears to be made. Obviously thats 10x your carrying capacity and you could choose to leave it but then it doesn't feel like your completing the place by making the same mistake every treasure hunter in Nirns existance does and picks up nothing but leaves stuff behind. If they reduce it though, when you do find that one ebony piece or leave with only enough items to turn into 2 drawven armor at most it'd make it far more special, more valuable is appreciation and it wouldn't be so easy to get rich quick. They could still place enough where you'd have to choose between stuff to not be overloaded but allow those that have the stamina, potions and enchantments take it all rather then making all 3 seem relatively worthless when to not end up overencumbered it means ignoring 75% of the rooms. It's just screams the dungeon designs lack imagination and just tossed anything anywhere.

As for selling a 500k item for 200...just no, the 200% buy price and 50% sell price at 100 without perks feels bad enough at times but at least feels acceptable and "realistic".

I have an idea for a money sink ... arenas! where the player can wager on NPCs and patronise contenders. Obviously, the player should be able to participate in these, as well, but the gold rewards should be negligible (not more than 1000 for first prize) so that this isn't exploited.

But yeah, letting players hire the services of alchemists/blacksmiths/carpenters/enchanters/plumbers/decorators/chefs is a good idea. I can't imagine why they haven't included it in the game, other than that they ran out of time.

I like the idea, but maybe not all followers. After all the house Carls are living in your house and have the honor of being with you, but you should have to feed them and when in an inn you should have to pay for their bed as well. I would like to see weapon grades diminish over time as well, maybe not going back to the repair hammer days of Oblivion, but yea after some heated battled in a dungeon the armor and weapons might need some repairs. I have a whole thread dedicated to eating and sleeping being required, so I agree with that as well. Taxes on the houses is also a good idea along with horse upkeep you should have to pay for a stall or something at the stables at the minimum, when entering the town. I still think they just need to add roleplaying modes to the game, because I know not everyone would like this level of depth.

I don't think you should force people to spend money. Besides, what use is there for skills like Smithing, Enchanting and Alchemy when you can just buy everything from NPCs? Optaining overpowered weapons and equipment is easy enough as it is, don't make it easier by having NPCs sell them at high prices. Making money is easy enough, so this would only lead to more overpowered characters and more complaints about that.

People want less money. Results. 5 minutes tops.

You can start collecting something to sink money. Like if you see any vendors with a magical ebony item in stock buy it, and collect the full set of magical ebony equipment. That will burn a lot of it.

Great post OP,

IMHO this is why I mentioned in another thread that I do not like the respawning loot in containers in Oblivion and Skyrim. In Morrowind I could get rich without respawning loot and items. So why do we need it now for the people who QQ'ed about having it because they would get bored searching for stuff. I also think it would do a the game economy better without respawns. Then players would have to go and finally find the items they wanted. Instead of just looting containers through the cities every time they respawned.

I just think they should make a REALLY expensive house/fortress that'll costs maybe 300000 or something (plus upgrades). That way you always have something to save up for.

You don't even know what playing a challenging game feels like or why anyone would want to, do you?

Take a page from Morrowind where you could get a stronghold(s) built...only charge alot of money for it.

I agree.

As for what's already in Skyrim, there are money sinks, it's called high level training. Training any skill past 70 requires quite a bit of gold.

Personally I'd love it if NPCs could pickpocket you, break into your house, steal your horse, etc. Realistically, most players' characters would be target #1 for any sensible theives' guild.