I wish that economy were a more important aspect of The Elder Scrolls games.

[Blk_Mage_Ctype]

I've been replaying Oblivion lately with plans to subsequently replay Skyrim and something has come to my mind which I really wish would be addressed in future games.

Gold feels like a resource of only minor importance. You can essentially go through the entire game with very little Gold because practically everything you need can easily be looted or crafted. Armor, Weapons, Potions, Ingredients, etc can just be looted off of enemy corpses, taken from chests, or constructed from ingredients which can be easily foraged, and typically that which can be looted is better than that which is sold in stores.

The more I think about it, the less immersed I become due to just how impractical it seems and I feel like it should perhaps be the polar opposite. What if all the best equipment needed to be bought in stores because enemies didn't carry the best stuff, but rather the bare minimum like real criminals? What if instead of finding mostly assorted equipment inside of chests, you found riches? What if the cost of sleeping at inns was so high that it made more sense in the short term to purchase camping equipment and in the long run to purchase property in each town because camping outdoors is dangerous? What if having higher Personality/Speechcraft and Mercantile/Bartering stats were more vital because you needed to be able to sell your looted valuables and old equipment for maximum profit in order to afford the latest equipment? What if crafting wasn't so cheap because there was a charge for using crafting stations?

I feel like the game would be a lot more exciting and immersive if treasure hunting was a bigger, more important part of the game. It would provide players with greater incentive to explore each and every location they discover on their path. If you find a cave or abandoned mine, you typically just pass it by, but if Gold were of greater importance and plunder were more abundant, then players would have more of an incentive to explore such locations in search of the vital resource.
Furthermore, finding chests would be more exciting because instead of finding random equipment which may not even be useful inside, you are far more likely to find valuables like Gold, Gemstones, or Jewelry which can be sold to buy better equipment they actually need.

Heck, what if looting certain chests was risky because they might be booby-trapped or its owner — say a thief or a ghost — might come after you?

[[TG] zac]

I can kind of see that, but only because I played a lot of elder scrolls daggerfall (unity remake on GOG) and morrowind.

In both there was a lot more verticality in the maps (Climbing was a skill in daggerfall and both had levitation spells) and the devs had hand placed stuff hidden in areas that were hard to get to or in areas you did not obviously have a reason to check.

That being said from morrowind on crafting has been an important part of the game and can be used to make a lot of stuff stronger then what you would normally find, especially if you were abusing magic & one type of crafting skills to boost others (via boosting stats/skills)

As for trapped chests, that also makes a lot of sense, surprised I have not seen many mods try it over the years.

[ZemX]

I wouldn't agree with ALL the best stuff being store bought, but I do like the idea that certain things should need to be crafted. Armor is obvious. The idea you can just loot a magic cuirass off a bandit and it will fit you has always been one of those "look the other way" kind of things about most loot-haul RPGs like this one. It would be nice if, instead, you had to take that magic cuirass to a magic craftsman who could forge it into a new custom piece of armor fitted to you.

To go with that, you need to make good weapons/armor, especially the enchanted stuff, a LOT less common. For Oblivion, the "Ascension" mod is an example of a mod that does that, among other things. Even so, playing with that mod, I found myself still just accumulating gold. Granted, I was not going around buying player houses or anything super expensive, but that's kind of your point, I guess: I didn't need to. Nobody could SELL me the full suit of glass armor that Ascension made super difficult to find by adventuring.

But I also do like the idea of making most of the stuff you run across commonly... err... common. Like Ascension does, most bandits wear hides or iron and have similarly simple weapons. Or in Skyrim, Draugr crypts where they are attacking you with ancient rusted weapons that aren't worth crap (mostly). It makes the one good item you might find at the end of that crypt... an actual FIND.

But yeah, the world could use more money sinks like the need to get magical gear crafted or customized using rare components you find in the world, etc. etc. That'd be interesting.

[Capn_Tucker]

It would also be nice if shopkeepers could actually afford to buy the super valuable loot items you find, like for example the goblin totem staffs, which are worth over 7000 gold, but a shopkeep won't give you more than 2000-2500 for the item. Yes you can invest in shops, but it doesn't help all that much..

[Blk_Mage_Ctype]

Indeed. It's especially odd that shopkeepers in the more wealthy cities wouldn't have more money.

[ZemX]

Originally posted by Blk_Mage_Ctype:

Indeed. It's especially odd that shopkeepers in the more wealthy cities wouldn't have more money.

Well the weird thing is that they do apparently have unlimited gold. They just have an upper limit what they'll pay for any one item. Which makes little sense. Probably why they ditched it right away. People still complain about merchants running out of gold quickly in Skyrim though too.

But it's better to have an amount of gold. I would actually use them to barter that way in Skyrim. Like buying up all an alchemists stock of ingredients and then, now the merchant had a lot more gold on them, selling potions I'd made to get my gold back.