I was recently watching a Lets Play of Oblivion by Nagidal (That guy is awesome by the way!), and there is one thing that I really miss from Skyrim that was in Oblivion: Haggling. It may not seem like much to you guys but, I love being able to haggle with someone over prices, it definitely adds to the immersion of the game. I hate how in Skyrim, you automatically get better prices when your Speech skill goes up. It's not that it is a necessarily bad thing, but it takes away from the feeling of actually bartering with somebody.

Those are just my thoughts on the subject, what are some of your guy's opinions on the removal of the Mercantile skill and Haggling?

/discuss

Haggling in Oblivion was not as much fun as it was in Morrowind, but I do miss being able to barter for prices. Then again, for this to work, player character skills would have to make a difference in our actions in the game.

This true also, but I rather have it there, than not.

I must admit that I always considered haggling a chore rather than something fun, so I'm quite happy that they removed it.

I never really haggled, but my brother was always trying to get half off. I'm relatively indifferent to it, but I wouldn't say no to having it back.

It was chore? Really? Ok then.....

You know, after dealing with Skyrim's awful rendition of the Speech skill, I miss even the persuasion minigame from Oblivon... I want Speech to do something, anything. Merging speechcraft and mercantile was a good idea, but the execution is sorely lacking - and yes, I miss haggling too. It was one of my favourite features, I haggled whenever I had a chance and sometimes just for the sake of it. It made the world feel more alive, more real.

You know the old adages "death by a thousand cuts" and "the last straw that broke the camel's back"? It's somewhat applies here. It's the little things working in conjunction that makes a TES game greater than the sum of it's parts. In the long run, if you take too much of the little things away TES loses a chunk of it's greatness.

This I agree with you too. The Speech skill in Skyrim is absolutely useless. It's sad.

I think it was utterly annoying. I would always forget to set that damn slider, and in general I don't understand why my character just can't do the haggling by himself. I am very much content with the way it is now. I'm all in for most minigames and that, but the haggling was just unnecessary.

I preferred the Morrowind version, to be honest (since you could actually buy items for cheaper prices and sell items for more gold than their worth, the way that Mercantile should work once you're skilled enough). But yeah, I miss it.

Why?

It contributes nothing to the game. It's a small and pointless yet time consuming element that simply should be done automatically, as is in Skyrim's speech perk tree if you ever find yourself investing to it.

I actually liked the haggling in Morrowind and Oblivion. It actually felt like you were bartering with somebody instead of automatically getting 30% off, off of all items in the store. Haggling made you work for that deal.

I'm guessing it's because the whole bartering system for Oblivion in general was quite a mess, from my experience. You couldn't really effectively haggle. Even if you had 100 Mercantile, merchants would still decline prices, even if they were the exact item worth. You were still buying items for more gold than they were actually worth and selling them for less. Aside from investing, Mercantile felt to me like a rather unrewarding skill in Oblivion.

Still, I think Bethesda should have fixed it rather than removed it entirely. It wouldn't have been that hard to do, they could have just used the Morrowind one, which worked fine for me (after the patch).

Yeah I actually like Morrowind's haggling system better too.

Yes I get that. I don't see the purpose behind haggling, but I do understand why you liked it. A matter of opinion, is all.

i loved it, maybe we could you know... negotiate with bethesda to bring it back next time?

We can try.