How many would like to be able to start their, own business or businesses as a way to get rid of the excess gear that you don’t have time to sell, and have no use for.

I have all five houses with all the upgrades, not counting the Arch Mages Quarters, The Harbingers Quarters, The Listeners Quarters, and The Abandoned House. I’ve invested in just about every business I can find to invest in, other than training I really don’t have any use for the gold I have. My enchanting, smithing, and soon alchemy are at 100, all of my House Carls are fully geared in Dragon Bone Armor, Amulets, Rings and Dadric Weapons all enchanted. So I don’t have to store materials anymore except when I try and improve what I already have. And once my speech gets to 100 (I’m currently at 89) I really won’t need to sell anything again.

I go to all the vendors and sell what I have but they run out of money faster than I run out of stuff to sell so I end up storing it in several places, and I just spent three hours this weekend organizing, so I thought what I would really like is a shop where I could dump this stuff in and based on the what it is gets changed into gold.

You could go to the Steward of a Hold and pay x-gold to start a business, you could have two options, option one is one of the booths you see in the market place and option two is an actual shop.

The way it would work is, you talk to the Steward and at that time you can decide on the size and type of business you want to start (i.e. General Goods, Arms and Armor, or Alchemy). Then you get a key to the shop once you go there an NPC is standing by and they give a dialogue where they heard you were opening the shop and were looking for work, and you hire them to run the shop. Inside is a chest where you can dump the gear you want to sell (which you can do day or night) and once a day you can talk to the clerk and get x-gold from them for the goods sold (similar to your wife/husband).

You can have one business in each hold, tie into being a Thane and have the cost at a level that you couldn’t do it at lower levels.

I just don’t want to store all the weapons/gear I have, and it takes too long to sell everything, I would still like to earn something for the stuff, you could think of this as a banking system that earns interest.

Maybe it’s just me but part of what I’ve been doing with this character is gaining more and more prestige in every hold, I want to have this character to be able to become a Jarl and even High King, most of the power brokers are also business owners as well.

As a role play aspect it only seems logical, I am a Thane in every Hold, the Dragonborn, Harbinger of the Companions, Arch Mage of the Collage of Winterhold, Master of the Thieves Guild, Listener of Dark Brotherhood, Graduate of the Bards Collage, I have invested in many business, throughout the holds. I have killed Alduin, and helped the Stormcloaks come to power. I am a property owner in five of the holds, currently the only thing that keeps me from having more power than Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak is I am not a Jarl of any hold, and the only thing preventing me from becoming that is I dont have long family ties to the holds the only thing that overcomes the family ties is to have commercial interest in the holds. Money talks BS walks.

I've posted about why they don't do this before.

Yes, this is a sandbox game- the world is created open and we are intentionally given the option to avoid or even never do the main quest, as the devs feel the player should have as much choice as possible. However, this is a game. There is a main quest. There are several hints and nudges to put the character's feet on the path of doing the main quest. They wrote it with the intent that it would be appealing to the player, because they want us to eventually 'finish' the game.

We have crafting and 'jobs' in game now. These things were added to offer people an alternative way to make money without having to dungeon dive or resort to bounty killing, if that is the playstyle the character wants. However, we are not offered the opportunity to own a business. We cannot farm. These are 'static' playstyles- they would require the player to do something other than quest in a repetitive manner. It would stagnate forward progression.

As much freedom as we are given in the game world, the intent is still to experience all the content, which means eventually finishing with a character and moving on. Businesses would prevent that, so they are never included.

I think a shop would be great. I have so much gear that I can't sell because the value is higher than what funds even the richest shopkeeps have.

I disagree with some aspects of your argument, because the game offers several methods to farm materials, including picking alchemy ingredients or mining ores, which allows for the concept of owning your own business, also as I have said there is nothing left for me to do but simply explore and adventure from place to place, for me the only forward progression left is seeing how high a level I can get my character (currently 64) and how many of skills I can get to 100 (currently 7), I don’t want to start another character just to do the same ole things. I also don’t see it being a static thing because you could say buying a house or getting married could be considered static, and these are components of the game. I have more than 150,000 gold, and who knows how much I would have if I sold all the stuff I store in my houses. I just dont want to spend valuable game time slowly walking from vendor to vendor and fast traveling from city to city, i all ready do enough of that just coming back from some adventure.

Also on the purly RP aspect once you've made your fortune and and have achieved a certain amount of fame/infamey it makes since that you would open businesses to further your prosperity.

Only if I get to condescend at the rest of humanity like a wannabe rich snob, and gargle greed like mouthwash whilst doing away with essential programs for the "useless breeders" like welfare and social security. Oh, and I wanna be able to kick stew bums!

All kidding aside, it might be nice. My current thinking, and something I am working on, is adding more back-story and possibly a faction quest line for the Khajiit caravans, such that you could eventually join them, and have them hawk your stuff.

I also agree this could add even more dimension to the game. My character is a mage, and does not use archery but I cannot help but be amazed at all of the wildlife in the game. I would think a dedicated archer might enjoy selling game, pelts, etc as a dimension of this activity. I also think it could help add realism to the spousal shop mechanic. Why not allow the spouse to get out of the house and operate the shop in town supplied by inventory that your character returns with?

I like this

The issue I see with this is I would have to run the shop and be there all the time or I would lose sales.

I could hire an employee, but they could rob me blind, then I would have to deal with that. Things like this sound good at first, but then the reality is, it does not fit in with the game. I say this because I have tried most of the mods that offer a business. Either they are a magic box where you dump inventory and then in a few game days, take some cash out. Or, you have to be there all the time to manage the place, upgrade it, stock inventory, manage resources etc etc. It almost turns into an RTS within the RPG.

Sure, this is fun, but not the kind of fun I want to have playing this game. I will save these endeavors for the Sims or similar.

Always did like the idea of having your own farm/meadary. >.> There was a mod in Oblivion that had that. I like playing characters that are more than they seem. As a thief/assassin type, I also find it fun to roleplay as having a wholesome 'front' to the general populace.

The fun of an RPG such as this is if you dont want to you dont have to, I just feel that if you want to continue playing beyond the Main (and even Misc) Quest chains, to grow the character you've built to this point than being a merchant in the community, tavern owner, trader/shipper, or farmer makes perfect since

Sounds like a good idea. Maybe you could choose where to set up your business and you have to pay upkeep to keep your stall/shop in that area. For example, you could set up a stall/shop in a major city (Whiterun, Solitude etc.) and it would be expensive to maintain but would attract more customers and therefore more sales. Alterantively, set up somewhere quiter and pay less upkeep but attract less cutomers and therefore less sales.

Another idea, 10-15% of your money you make could be lost through tax, VAT etc. (or some medieval equilvalent ). Then you wouldn't make ridiculous amounts of money. Just an idea...

There would be so much Bethesda could do with this idea and I would love to see what they could come up with (sure would be better than my ideas).

i often wish this too. i suppose u could have select opening days etc.

I believe that as part of starting a business there would be expenses involved in the process, for instance a shop would cost more to run than a stall. So a percentage of every sell would go to the business/pay the help/taxes etc... The whole idea is not to make huge amounts of gold it's more to add another layer of role play while giving you a easier place to unload your extra stuff. If you want more for the gear you would still have to go to the other vendors.

Marry ysolda, she starts up a store out of the house.

I think that would depend on how involved you want to be with the business, what I'm envsioning is you can either a booth or a shop (depending on the amount you want to spend) that has an NPC, that runs the business for you, all you do is basicly click on the area under the booth or a chest in the business and dump stuff you want to sell, and every so often you go to the help and collect rhe proceeds.

Did that and even invested in her business but she still only carries around 1200 gold which one ebony warhammer will take most that sepecial if its enchanted

Good idea. Very creative.

Problem is, there is so much more that would be needed to make it interesting. Without competition, raiders, greedy bureaucrats and other obstacles to make running the business interesting it just ends up being another gimmick, like marriage. I would prefer if the designers focused on improving the adventuring aspects than the civil ones.

On a similar vein, I've often contemplated a character that focused on hunting wildlife (archery, sneak), who would either craft armor (smithing) or sell the pelts (speech) in town. I figure you could marry them off (pending gender and orientation) to one of the available Wood Mill owners (Mixwater Mill, Anga's Mill, Ivarstead), Wheat Mill owners (Sarethi's Farm), Smith (Balimund - Riften), Mine owner (Ainethach - Karthwasten), Inn owner (Wilhelm - Ivarstead, or shop ownder (Taarie - Solitude). Seems like there are a handful of options for people who want to live outside the box.

They would have to make an economic simulation, rather than an RPG for any of this to have value. I'd love it if they did. They'd have to make the items in the game come from resources that were found by you, or NPCs, in the game. They'd have to stop "popping" items into the economy every game day without any idea as to where they came from and with no effort. In short, they'd make a different game that on the surface looked like Skyrim.

The reason they wont do this is that our machines aren't up to the task. It would be great to leap 20 years into the future and have machines that could. It might take 40 years... hard to say.

The question I have of the players is "how much would you be willing to give up?"

Yeah, that's the point I'm trying to make. I would see it as more of a new role-play element that adds more value to the game than a way to make easy money.

I think you are over thinking this, it really isn't much different from selling to the vendors now, the difference is that instead of you going from vendor to vendor you go to your own shop the NPC you hired basicly runs the thing all you do is stock it, which really only means clicking on a chest or the back of a booth and dumping what you want sold in the shop. If you follow the role play path the quests take you down you are becoming a person of wealth and power it only makes since you would also dabble in the business world as well.

As much fun as it sounds, it wouldn't work in a single-player game. Try second life if you want to start a business, lol.

Niether would getting married (oh they did that)