Kill cams but no economy : V - Skyrim

» Fri Jun 22, 2012 2:12 am

I demand an option to get paid in iron ore instead of coins!

» Thu Jun 21, 2012 8:27 pm

Maybe removing the 5 training sessions per level limit? I mean, that is a HUGE gold sink when skills get to be level 50+

What is truly crazy is trying to figure out what these trainers did with their 20K gold.

» Fri Jun 22, 2012 7:23 am

I believe that's where Bethesda is heading with their "radiant" thing, they're just not there yet.

This.

» Fri Jun 22, 2012 2:19 am

Bethesda should make a better economy for their next game, for example be able to affect a town's economy by killing their workers, or robbing their transport ships/carriages...but for that to happen all the resources should actually be in the game world from the beginning, not created on the go... or at least they could come as "imports" but once they appear on the map, they should always be visible (full carriages and boats on the roads/rivers) and completely manipulable by the player.

I think part of the issue is that, the way the games run right now, nothing is "happening" in the world cells that aren't loaded. Sure, it makes something up once you enter a cell, based on the normal patterns for the place (the people inside a city, for instance), but they aren't actually wandering around and doing stuff until you're there. So, a dragon isn't attacking Solitude and killing shopkeepers while you're in Riften. The traveling caravans in Fallout 3 can be killed by wandering monsters.... but only if you (and the "active zone" of cells around you) happen to be near their route when the timetable says they'd be on that part of their route.

Could take a bit of work to make a "live" activity layer for the entire world. Either that, or come up with a random calculation table that would be run every day, or every time you traveled to a city. Still, I can see it being pretty buggy.

» Fri Jun 22, 2012 1:58 am

Not easy maybe but ones things for sure if we dont ask for it will never get it.

But you associated it with kill cams, implying that Bethesda could have ditched kill cams for a better economy. The replies correctly state "not so".

A proper economy would require a pretty extensive simulation running in the background, with thousands of variables impacted by your decisions as you proceed through the game. Each quest, especially the civil war quests, could have major economic impacts that will vary depending on which side you choose,etc. And as others have pointed out, most players would barely notice. That's great deal of effort for relatively little return.

» Fri Jun 22, 2012 2:49 am

Are kill cams this weeks hot topic?

» Fri Jun 22, 2012 8:12 am

well since they still cant seem to just [censored] the community for bug fixes but instead decide to push new and buggy animations down our throats it would seem so.

» Fri Jun 22, 2012 6:33 am

Are any of these instances of economy manipulation available outside taking perks in the speech tree?

I have never met a successful business person who did not know how to talk to people to motivate them, understand them, persuade them, and convince them to do business. So, Speechcraft makes sense.

» Thu Jun 21, 2012 8:34 pm

What is truly crazy is trying to figure out what these trainers did with their 20K gold.

Skooma and mead. :celebration:

» Thu Jun 21, 2012 8:01 pm

But you associated it with kill cams, implying that Bethesda could have ditched kill cams for a better economy. The replies correctly state "not so".

Not really it just points out that we get fluff when we need substance not that I dont like fluff I do.

» Fri Jun 22, 2012 11:52 am

Ive also found that if you save/reload at the wrong time, the vendors can drop to zero gold.

» Fri Jun 22, 2012 1:26 am

What is truly crazy is trying to figure out what these trainers did with their 20K gold.

Hard to say since i stole it back from them. Dovahkiin knows all!

» Fri Jun 22, 2012 7:03 am

I love how the Bethesda apologists always say something "would be very difficult" when modders do these "very difficult" things with apparent ease. And in a timely fashion despite having lives.

» Fri Jun 22, 2012 4:31 am

I love how the Bethesda apologists always say something "would be very difficult" when modders do these "very difficult" things with apparent ease. And in a timely fashion despite having lives.

There are mods that simulate a real world ecomomy in Skyrim? I'm impressed if there are. Could you provide a link? I would like to see that.

» Fri Jun 22, 2012 8:43 am

There are mods that simulate a real world ecomomy in Skyrim? I'm impressed if there are. Could you provide a link? I would like to see that.

They had them in Oblivion. http://www.oblivionmodwiki.com/index.php/Living_Economy

» Thu Jun 21, 2012 10:13 pm

I love how the Bethesda apologists always say something "would be very difficult" when modders do these "very difficult" things with apparent ease. And in a timely fashion despite having lives.

I don't think it's fair to rub the good modders' work in Bethesda's face, because without the work of Bethesda the mods wouldn't be that good in the first place. Unlike Bethesda, a modder has all the time in the world to tweak a specific component until it works, and no quality or deadline pressure, no market risks, etc. They can release update after update until it works. It's way easier to improve on somebody else's work than make something from scraps, with all the limitations and the requirements of a AAA big budget product made by a big studio, there's a whole other level of responsibility, there are some marketing directives as well and not every feature that's wanted by the devs makes it into the game in due time. Maybe you're right and for the modders it's not "very difficult" to polish a game mechanic until it shines, but I'm sure the people of Bethesda could do the same quality mods (or even better) if the roles were reversed and all they had to do was improve in their spare time a game made by the modders :wink:

» Thu Jun 21, 2012 11:03 pm

I don't think it's fair to rub the good modders' work in Bethesda's face, because without the work of Bethesda the mods wouldn't be that good in the first place. Unlike Bethesda, a modder has all the time in the world to tweak a specific component until it works, and no quality or deadline pressure, no market risks, etc. They can release update after update until it works. It's way easier to improve on somebody else's work than make something from scraps, with all the limitations and the requirements of a AAA big budget product made by a big studio, there's a whole other level of responsibility, there are some marketing directives as well and not every feature that's wanted by the devs makes it into the game in due time. Maybe you're right and for the modders it's not "very difficult" to polish a game mechanic until it shines, but I'm sure the people of Bethesda could do the same quality mods (or even better) if the roles were reversed and all they had to do was improve in their spare time a game made by the modders :wink:

I don't, and never would, blame the actual devs who code and do graphic work at Beth. The creative side is amazing and they have all my love and support. It's the executives—the suits—that impose impossible deadlines on them that result in incomplete games like this.

» Fri Jun 22, 2012 8:43 am

Let's have a living economy in the next TES!!! And maybe a merchant career for the player with long questline, ranks, bribe/influence/corruption difficulties, and a lot of options of what kind of trader you want to become and how you will visibly influence the life of a town of your choice and ruin others :devil:

» Thu Jun 21, 2012 10:47 pm

Regional vendor lists - merchants in Riften sell other goods than merchants in Whiterun and goods that are found in the vicinity of the city would have a lower price than goods commonly found in other areas - this should be the easiest fix as the mod Economics of Skyrim already adds this in a way and you only need to add vendor and pricing lists for every region instead of the whole of Skyrim

This is what I'd like to see implemented, and frankly I'm suprised it wasn't. I'm suprised hardly any RPG's do this. I played a pirate game that did this once and it was pretty awesome, you feel like a genuine type merchant buying low and selling high. I suppose it would be painfully easy to abuse with Fast Travel, though.

» Fri Jun 22, 2012 5:50 am

They had them in Oblivion. http://www.oblivionmodwiki.com/index.php/Living_Economy

I see. Some of these elements are in skyrim but there are a few things in there that would be nice to add. The OP was talking about individual NPCs which I don't think this mod touches. It's fine, I would settle with an improved trading system witch merchants only, but I guess you could add farmers, wood cutters, miners into the mix. There's definitely room for improvement, but this mod in particular is focused on trading, not economy per say. It's a step in the right direction though.

» Thu Jun 21, 2012 8:12 pm

They had them in Oblivion. http://www.oblivionmodwiki.com/index.php/Living_Economy

And that still doesn't have the more complex things mentioned in this thread (like the items merchants and crafters have being effected by the supplies being produced and transported from mines/fields/etc, something that would require all the map cells to be at least somewhat "active" to keep track of the activities going on in them / random events like attacks happening in them / locations and actions of material transport caravans / etc.) Living Economy just makes the vendors more detailed.

» Fri Jun 22, 2012 12:24 am

Next, I suppose, the OP will want flush toilets.

» Thu Jun 21, 2012 8:01 pm

We manipulate the economy in this game. We manipulate the end results, not the process.

In a game there are two main ways to manipulate the economy. Either increase the amount of resources and the means of production along with job growth to support the increased activity. In other words, Sim City or one of the RTS types of games. However, even then, the net effect of improving the economy is people have more money to spend or resources to use. The problem with manipulating the resources and conditions is that is quite complicated and is a game in and of itself. Some RTS games have moved from this aspect just because it can get so tedious and complex.

In this game, we get a better economy by just investing in the shops. This gets us around the mechanics of riding herd on the factors that go into an economic system. Which can be fun, but is not a core part of the TES experience. Shops have more money to spend, which is what you would expect in an area with an improved economy. So, we can manipulate the economy in this game. We can also get the shop keepers to do different types of business than they would normally do, another sign of a better economy. Businesses expand when economic conditions improve or are expected to improve, again, we manipulate the economy.

This is not quite accurate. For one thing, we don't have the ability to manipulate the economy so that it is anywhere near workable short of massive modding efforts such as Living Economy in Oblivion or the many, many mods that fix the completely broken pricing system for resources.

Perhaps more importantly, there are already many games for business and economic training. They are not mass market games, but they certainly can and do exist, and mass market games could certainly offer such features (just as America's Army games are based on more complex combat simulations used for US military training).

There's also the simple fact that EVE Online hired a professor of economics to supervise and maintain the game's economy so that it works in a realistic fashion. Obviously, a company that cares about offering a realistic or semi-realistic socioeconomic system does proper research and hires proper people to be part of the creative effort. The same thing is true for including various social issues (Bioware is quite explicit in their content, and Beth chooses to be more implicit, but both could use input from scholars in certain fields of academic study).

» Fri Jun 22, 2012 5:50 am

And that still doesn't have the more complex things mentioned in this thread (like the items merchants and crafters have being effected by the supplies being produced and transported from mines/fields/etc, something that would require all the map cells to be at least somewhat "active" to keep track of the activities going on in them / random events like attacks happening in them / locations and actions of material transport caravans / etc.) Living Economy just makes the vendors more detailed.

Sorry for the double post, but I missed this comment and I wanted to reply to it.

No, it isn't necessary for cells to be active all the time in any way. For supply interruptions, you simply have it happen as a random event anolgous to the bounty quests already in place. The supply location doesn't need to be active until the player goes there (if they go there at all). The event just gets flagged as active and the associated parameters set wherever the player is.

The real point is that Beth's games do not have a working economy in even a rudimentary form and thus any sort of immersion is completely broken if the player has even a passing thought or question about the pricing, supply, demand, etc of the systems. Each game seems to be getting worse rather than better and it's completely inexcusable when all they have to do is hire people from the social sciences to work with the development team. This type of thing is also less system intensive because it's mostly text and numbers (i.e., it's not very graphics-intensive or even sound-intensive).

» Fri Jun 22, 2012 3:33 am

Personally I am glad they scraqed the economy idea. I just can't image how it could have worked correctly, especially since the player will have 10K+ gold by the time they are 5th level anyway.

I certainly don't need more ways to make money. I also don't want my favorite merchants to get all screwed up because I sold too much of my most common loot items to them.

I'm sure after thinking of this they tried it and just realized it really didn't work and it would be more of an aggravation to the player than anything else.