Skyrim has a skill called speech. However, it should really be called mercantile. 90% of the usefulness is involved in buying and selling. While Skyrim does have persuasion checks, this is not enough to make the skill fun or particularly useful.


Some ways to improve this skill include:

- Bring back NPC Disposition. The Oblivion mini-game was dumb, but that doesn't mean disposition should be thrown out. A speech based mechanism of some kind should exist for affecting an NPC's attitude towards you. I loved making an entire town in Oblivion be my friend and defend me from guards. It was also nice to make a town hate me and see the citizens join the guards. This was great from a role playing, gameplay, and immersion perspective. Skyrim's population is indifferent to you unless you complete specific quests for them. This kills replayability and the player's ability in shaping the world.

- Bring back a slider for haggling prices. This would make buying and selling more immersive and deeper, as well as a useful way to make a little extra money.

- Have a visible percentage displayed showing your odds of passing persuasion checks. Currently, I have no clue if I have even a tiny chance of successfully persuading someone.

- Have persuasion checks that significantly change the course and/or rewards of quests. They don't really help you with anything quest related, currently.

- Make some special speech options hidden unless your speech skill is high enough to use them.

- Introduce perks that will give unique dialogue options available (like the lady killer perk in NV).


What do you guys think? Discuss!

Speech wasn't really expanded on much, but I just invest 2 perks into the first one and be done with it. I would like it to become better, maybe more like Fallout New Vegas with speech? Where it could be used lin like 80% of the quests.

yep it does indeed blow felt pointless i guess the way they merged mercentile and speech was ok but other than tht........derp

I would go with something more like New Vegas to Oblivion - Oblivion's speech and mercantile skills were never used by me, mainly because you never need money in these games. I would prefer to have a reputation that factored into everything. People in Skyrim kind of remember who you are if you've done a good deed for them, but if I kill and eat someone, no one else seems to care. In Fallout, eating someone was like a crime and everyone around you got mad at you for doing it. This should apply to your sidekicks as well. Poor Iona has seen me eat several people and never bats an eye. Guards comment that I'm a thief based on my clothing, but don't actually do anything about it. I can walk around in my nightengale armour in broad daylight and it doesn't make a difference. As for Skyrim's speech skill, I basically maxed it out by selling things without realizing it. I can persuade most people to do whatever I want.

I would love to see a New Vegas system. It is far superior to our current way.

this if my character had crappy speech skill in new vegas it was a completely different game because of how many of NV quests had an option to bypass a fetch quest or get a really nifty item if you passed a speech check. skyrim just svcks in this aspect.

Keep in mind that New Vegas was made by Obsidian, by a team largely staffed by the developers of the first two Fallout games.

Bethesda does not have that degree of expertise in that field.

fallout 3 had these as well though although not to the extent of NV. im convinced skyrim fired all their writers because fallout 3 had some excellent writing some of it on par with NV. their flagship game skyrim just svcks compared to fallout 3 or NV

Dear Lord would I love it if I had a Speech skill high enough that I could walk into a Bandit fort and intimidate the Leader, as well as everyone else, into giving me a portion of their current loot.

Lets do without the Sliders and go for a more....realistic approach? if you've done well for the town or helped out the merchant, they'll give you reduced prices -for a time- not forever, just for a time, unless they are your spouse. if you want to lower prices or raise item worth you could "claim foul" "boast" or "devalue" an Item you're looking for, this would tie in speech and Mercantile no? I think its far more intuitive than a slider.

give more options to speech outside peddling, what about shouting down or scaring opponents? yeah I know their are Shouts, but with the amount of times I've seen peeps ignoring the MQ and beat the RP drum I say yeah its feasible. like getting defeated opponents to yield to you permemnantly and fighting for you at the hope of their lives? and maybe running away if they get the chance, these little things do not detract from the game, can be added alright in the games current state without messing much of anything up if I've geared the thought correctly.

but yeah Speech is useless from a gameplay standpoint, and RP? other than mental processes it really doesn't add anything. in NV the level of your speech and aspects of your character ADDED dialog options, and if you're speech svcked, so would your options. saddening.

While I thought the haggling system was cool, it was annoying trying to figure out where my best prices were at. For a "master" of mercantile, I couldn't be more stupid to figure out what to ask for. It made looking it up almost essential. That, or save/reload.

I never had a problem with it, but I see your point.

My problem was that if I guessed wrong and they rejected my offer, their disposition would lower, which means I have to re-persuade them again. That was mighty frustrating :S

What I wouldn't mind seeing is merchants monitoring you if things start to go missing.

Maybe go as far as have hired security check your inventory at the door...

That is needed too. I wish merchants had a reputation system, and monitored you accordingly.

So do I, but sadly the game hasn't evolved much over time.

Actually, it's more a case of the Elder Scrolls putting more emphasis on the world than dialogue.

There are no fail skills or perks or whatever in TES games..

There should have been persaude options in nearly every quest. New Vegas implemented this skill very well, allowing the player to use it as one of their main skills.

Yea I couldn't agree more with some of the ways the NPCs don't care about your attire. You can walk right up to Ulfiric Stormcloak in a full set of imperial armor and not have to explain yourself, the only times I think the NPCs notice your attire is if you are naked. I agree with your point on the followers too... it seems they keep quiet on alot of stuff that they shouldn't, if you are going to be a theif and take Lydia along to rob everyone in Whiterun, you think she would tell the guards rather than go along with the idea, the whole blindless loyalty goes a little too far for me I guess.

Also OP... I agree with what you are saying, though I like that the Mercantile/ Speech skills from Oblivion were combined, however you are correct they could have done more with it, and I like the idea of keeping the NPCs disposition. Maybe when talking to folks and answering questions, they should add different response types, like sarcastic, respectul, or whatever and different people prefer different response types, and maybe at the top of the chat dialog, show the NPCs disposition towards you in a numeric or verbal form of some kind.

Seriously?

you do know that NV was 100x smaller than skyrim? having unique dialog options for every npc in skyrim takes up alot of space, why do you think MW suffered from bad combat graphics? or graphics in general. if they had enough space to include everything thhey would have done it,

Yes seriously.. I can not think of one "fail" skill.. It all comes down to preferance..

I like speech, i like to bribe my guards to shut up and leave me alone.. To get better sell prices and stuff

it all comes down to what you like, am no min max player with 1000 smithing, legendary [censored] and dual enchanting on every piece of gear i have.. So to me, there are no fail skills/perks..

Agreed, the skill is completely useless. All it is currently good for is making/saving gold which is already too easy and there's nothing to buy.

Call me crazy, but I believe that gameplay is more important than graphics.