This thread is about that great idea that Beth scrapped from Skyrim: The Economy and the player's impact on it. So i want to hear all the details of how the player would affect the economy IF it had been implemented.

My ideas: If i make 200 Flawless Dwarven Armors and sell them to various vendors across skyrim, i expect to see random adventurers and mercenaries wearing them in the wilds. If i enchant 50 Silver Rings with Waterbreathing, i want to see explorers out in the water looking for treasure and fighting slaughterfish. If i empty a mine of all it's Iron ore then i expect the value of Iron in that hold to go up due to lack of Iron AND the mine to be expanded so that new ore can be found.

Let me hear your ideas

Interesting. It always struck me as confusing how merchants could throw thousands of coins at me to take my random rubbish and then for it to despawn out of the world forever.

I agree that the changing economy idea was one of the ones I was most sorry wasn't included in the final cut.

I seem to remember there being a discussion before about how, if you sell stuff to a vendor, another NPC could buy it. I think the objection there was that players could spend ages trying to find the object that they thought they'd sold to X, only for it to now being owned by another NPC. Could this be solved by making quest items unsellable?

I'm not sure about your other ideas. It would seem to be a lot to ask to have a whole load of game cells of mines sitting in the game that can only be opened if you empty the mine.

I wonder if economy could more be attached to the radiant system - vendors set to randomly tell you something like "Did you hear? A whole load of iron ore just came in through Windhelm. It's going for a song!" Then, the price of iron goes down, to buy and sell. You go back a few days later, and "Since the bandit activity around here, I can't get hold of any silver..." and then the price of silver goes up. I'm not sure how much scripting that would involve, but it would probably be easier than changing other NPCs and the gameworld.

New one to add, If i sell a TON of novice spell tomes i think i should find more apprentice mages joining the college or travelling the roads

They're all burying it in their cellars, waiting for the apocalpse.

What like a fantasy version of Vault-Tec?

Another New one: As opposed to the price increasing when you clear a mine, if you sell the ore to the owners (which yu can do) then the mine becomes better funded and receives more guards, workers, and deeper veins

Could see that happening with farms too. New farm equipment, horses, cattle and stuff like that.

More ideas: Put in a lot of work at a mill and more wood is produced, resulting in more housing and defenses in the smaller settlements

It's a shame that this part of the game was cut but hardly surprising. It would be a nightmare to implement. You think the game is buggy now? Imagine what it would have been like with our merchant transactions affecting everything in the hold.

Still, there are some cool ideas being thrown about particularly the one about the mines. Perhaps some kind of random mine floor generator could be used? After all it is just a mine for the purpose of mining ore so it doesn't need to be complex. A simple elevator/winch switch that could be used to travel deeper into the mine i.e. teleport to a new randomly generated floor.

Ideas aplenty: Taking on Bounty jobs and clearing out Bandits would mean less attacks on citizens and therefore safer travel resulting in more goods and currency available per merchant

Basic attention to supply and demand would solve a lot of the imbalance. For example, in the frozen white northern holds, furs should be plentiful and therefore less expensive. In the Reach, silver and gold are plentiful, and so forth, it's already built into the game (white-furred animals in the snowfields, etc,) so why not use it?

Say you kill a few snow bears and a couple of snow saber cats near Winterhold. You could sell them locally, for a low price, or you could haul them off to Falkreath for more coin. This sort of thing would lend at least a suggestion of an economy.

On a slightly different note, Whiterun is billed as a trade center owing to its geographic location, and the roads linking it to the rest of Skyrim. If that's true, then how come there's only one store for general goods? Why not an open-air market buying and selling everything available throughout the province? Hucksters, barkers, peddlars, shifty underworld types, smugglers and caravans should abound. And speaking of smugglers, if nothing is taxed, what's the point of smuggling, and how can a Jarl gather enough revenues to fund guards, walls, a huge keep, keep a mage employed, and have the finest food and drink available? He got a gold mine under that keep or what?

Dawnstar and Solitude are obvious choices for imported goods from all over Tamriel, and they would be the only places such things were available at a reasonable price. If things were taxed, and it was illegal to trade in certain goods without a license from the Jarl (which would cost a pretty septim,) then smuggling would make sense, the thieves guild would be more active, and the player could decide whether or not to get involved in illegal trade.

I dunno, none of this seems impossible or even difficult to implement.


EDIT: Heh, just noticed the ironic juxtaposition of my sig line in relation to this post. It may be ironic, but I still hold that any government interference in our lives is tyrannical. I'm not an anarchist, we need a bit of government involvement, but the world tax machine is badly broken and running amok, and there is no accountability for wild spending sprees on essentially useless and pointless ideas, and we seem happy to live with the situation.

Cool. Cleaning up Skyrim one hold at a time

My caffeine addled mind can actually see this idea working. At the start traveling merchants and their types of goods are limited but by slowly cleaning up the trade routes you can increase the types of goods available and change their prices. Perhaps that can even open further quests.

Or you could help the bandits and completely cripple the local holds resulting in the hold guards placing a bounty on your head which leads to 'heroes' coming for you.

New: When the Hold has a better economy the guards get better equipment (not daedric or anything) like their armor gets upgraded to Fine, Superiro, Flawless, etc while some of their weapons may get enchanted or they get better training and become overall more effective. Bandit raids, Forsworn attacks, opposing faction battles can alter the economy through damage of settlements or eviction of mines, causing a hit to the supplies of the hold

That is really great, we need more ideas like these

I'd love that idea, but I can't imagine it would be easy to implicate.

We can change the economy in this game. By investing in shops, the Merchants have more money. Merchants only have more money if the Economy is better. We can improve the economy in this game.

Now, we can't damage the economy, but I also don't see any game related reason as to why we would want to do that. It serves no quest purpose or other game purpose for Skyrim. Sure, manipulating an economy is key in an RTS or Simcity type of game, but this game does not lend itself to that.

The question to ask, is what would the benefit be of an improved economy or damaged economy in this game? Other than Merchant's having more gold so that we have even more gold that we can't spend.

I have yet to see an economy mod in any TES game that improves the economy. I have seen mods that allow someone to create and run a business. But those tend to devolve into resource gathering to feed the factory to make money. In other words, playing a Simulation, not an RPG. Fun if your into that kind of thing, I play other games when I want to run simulations. Mods that tweak the barter mechanics don't count, as all they do is change the rules about buying and selling.

Awesome idea. I'm guessing that stupid 11/11/11 release date was the deciding factor in the end. Perhaps in the upcoming DLC we'll see things polished up a bit.

True they would maybe have to spend a few years developing it but when it finally released can you imagine what it would do for Beth and the Games Industry in general? Fable, Dragon Age, and every other RPG out there would be dropped immediately

Well this could even improve the Level-scaling vendor items. So then instead of when yu reach level [_] Orcish Armor is now sold by every smith, those armors are rarer and can be more easily obtained by vendors through clearing of the roads so that Orc holds can trade with the towns and more of there stuff becomes available

New: What can cause more damage than a bandit raid? Dragons... Dragon attacks can damage the economy by harming production facilities (Farm, mill, etc) and therefore improving the guards and defenses is a good way to protect against this....it seems all this is building up to "Be the Jarl" kind of thing is it not?

Also think of how the Civil War or the Thieve's Guild would affect the economy. Soldiers need food, weapons, and training and thieve's dont pay taxes or contribute to the hold's economy at all. So maybe selling stolen goods to fences is damaging to the economy

Once can argue that as Thane, it's your job to protect the Hold. Still, I don't play this game to run a government, only topple them.

Well we cant topple them now...why would implementing an economy be any different?

To be honest I think it would be too difficulty to implement in that way.