Investing in stores in Oblivion

[Nog Robbin]

A living, working economy - now that would be a thing. But it's, I fear, beyond the scope of game programmers (and the benefit for a player would be small).

[...]

While such a system sounds fascinating, I doubt it can be done nowadays.

Really, there should not be anything that is considered "beyond the scope of game programmers," and I certainly don't think a decent economic model can't be done.

In fact, the Elder Scrolls games should be focused upon exactly that sort of thing. Surely a big freeform sandbox should be pushing for balanced dynamic systems in as many areas as possible. A robust economic model should be a cornerstone.

This really sounds like an excellent development - one I have thought about in the past but never put into words.
Surely in true sandbox environment the key is to have most of the workings simulated. With a living world, as Section 8 says, many things would be continually happening to occupy the player. It would not necessarily mean you can't still have a main story line and side plots to follow - but it would allow for each game to be genuinely different. It would mean to a certain degree (maybe quite a degree) that the game becomes a fantasy sim - but then surely there is a place for that in the market? A genuine fantasy world to occupy and interact with?

There would be some issues, and some complexities. For example, while it may be easy for a town to die (everyone killed off or moved away), there would be issues with towns expanding (how do you deal with the requirement for new buildings, where they can be built, how they can be built etc). Naturally if high poly/high detail characters were deemed essential then having large cities with a large population would also prove a drain on performance. You wouldn't be able to have each character having unique dialog - unless you limit the total number of NPC's ever in the game (I think it would be better to allow people to move in to the area from outside the game, though this could be awkward to handle). I certainly don't think it could be handled on a console running without a harddrive - the amount of data you would want to cache could become quite large to say the least. In fact, each character "save" would probably be more like a database - with queries being used to retrieve the relevant data. There would be a "clean" database used for starting new games.
It would need some kind of background process running for when a character is away from an area - possibly similar to OB. There should be a feeling that things are not exactly the same when a player returns to an area.
All characters should be killable. However, that in itself needn't kill quest lines (assuming you have it that a character has to give quest information). If you have it that specific characters *must* be able to give certain information, then you need a way to get that information even if they are dead. Best way... some kind of seance spell (commune or talk to dead etc.). This would also get around a lot of the problems of the player being found out telepathically if he commits a crime - instead of that, if a body is discovered and people are interested enough, a commune could be cast to gain details as to the murderer. When you consider the amount of crimes committed by people that are known to the victim, this could cover those instances where you are known to be the culprit without being seen (wouldn't apply to unseen theft obviously). However, there should be a way for a person to conceal their identity otherwise essentially any murder could be uncovered this way. Just a thought...
Quest relevant items... you see, here is where something *like* a quest compass could be useful. I don't mean a magical instant and free GPS system. Oh no. Just more use of the magic system. If you are after a specific item, then that item must be known. If it's known then in theory there's no reason why some kind of locate spell couldn't be cast. That would highlight an area on a map. When you get to the area you can cast again to get more specific details. Yes - it would mean actively searching for an object, but could be interesting in itself. Note - it doesn't show a compass on screen, just highlights on the map, so you have to go back to the map to see where it was when the spell was cast (if the object is moving obviously it may not be there when you get there!). The map could be zoomable on screen (so you can get an overview of the whole area map, and be able to zoom in to reasonable detail - e.g. see individual buildings. If you are close enough, a locate spell could highlight the building on the map. Again... just a thought...
The locate spell wouldn't be useful for non specific items or general items (such as common items, or things you can purchase or find in the wilds). It would really be used for unique or very rare items.
In theory, locate could be used to find specific people as well - in the same way, highlight an area, and the closer you are the more specific it is.
I think in both cases for it to be useable you would want to cast it with the person asking you to find the person/object present - as they know the item/person and that knowledge would be necessary. Once you've case it with them you should be able to cast it again for the same item (a revisionary spell).


Hmmm. I seem to have gone off at a bit of a tangent. The point being I believe it would be possible to have a genuinely altering world and with the proper IN GAME methods at your disposal quests would still be possible, even with important items or people disappearing.

 

[Oarfish]

There's some interesting stuff here, on the simulation of mesopotanian societies.

This paper looks potentialy applicable to gaming.

Studies will encompass spatial scales and granularities that will range from single households and their individual members and resources, to individual hamlets, villages, towns with supporting satellite villages, regional constellations of such towns, and, finally, to the entire Fertile Crescent, with rain-fed northern and irrigated southern Mesopotamian settlements linked via hydrological, meteorological, and social process interactions. The spectrum of temporal scales addressed will be similarly broad, ranging from resource utilization and task prioritization on daily household activities up through decades-long variations in regional climate. The requirement for fine temporal resolution and fine granularity in resolving the objects and agents in the simulation domain is essential

Facinating stuff, would be marvelous fun to see what the addition of actual gods and heroes would do in such a system. Its a shame I am so damn lazy

 

[Lumpy]

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/inde ... &p=4720023
MSFD explains how the system works. Weird...

 

[Oarfish]

It's a little bit abstract, but it ends up working out well.

Well, thats one word for it. Fuckwitted would be another.

 

[Solik]

Well, it eliminates entirely the need to rest to sell again, so that's good.

I think the mistake Twinfalls and some others are making when evaluating the system is which angle you're viewing the word "investing" from. When people make investments, they usually do so in order to make money on the increase in value -- that is, they want to be paid back with interest. The other part of investing is that it makes a commercial entity more valuable by allowing it to expand its operations, thus (hopefully) increasing its revenue and profit margins. It is the latter purpose that this system is intended to solve. Your investments are used by the merchants to expand their operations so they can afford to trade more expensive items.

Is it extremely simple given the mechanism it's abstracting? Of course. You know what else is extremely simple given the mechanism it's abstracting? Hitting someone with a weapon and docking some numbers from an HP value. But we don't complain so much about that, because we're used to it.

Would it have been better if Beth had made the benefit a bit randomized? Maybe, maybe not. I can't see any particularly strong gameplay benefit from doing that. What if they'd implemented returns on your investments? That would have made the feature overpowered. They could have made it possible to lose money on investments, but that would be frustrating because you'd have no way to evaluate the likelihood of success on the investment (Mercantile skill would be a bad thing to use here -- isn't it supposed to be a high-level perk of the skill in the first place?).

Also, the dynamic economies being put forward here are all gross overkill. I can't think of a single gameplay element I'd be willing to have less time devoted to in order to implement such a thing. It's simply not necessary in a single-player game where the game world resets to a starting position every time you roll up a new character. Online games, maybe. All you need in a single-player questing game for the economy is an effective way to buy stuff you want and sell stuff you don't need, with somewhat interesting choices in what you choose to buy and who you choose to sell to.

 

[bryce777]

What the fuck?

Excrement, get the fuck out here with the finance theory WOAH YOU'VE TOTALLY BLINDED US WITH SCIENCE MAN bullshit.

The shareholder comparison is totally spurious. This is not investing. You are giving a sum of money to a merchant. That money becomes MAGICALLY PERMANENTLY AVAILABLE to him, after he dishes it out once - he can keep dishing it out. It's the freaking magic pudding of Septims.

Did that actually happen in MW? Even when manipulating the system, I got bored long before I got a third stat to 100.

Ah yes, Morrowind's inbuilt system to protect against broken/dumbassed systems in the game - play for a little while and you get so bored you switch it off. SEE NO EVIL!

it's not because you don't understand the post (finance, and english typo) you have to be rude.
You mean by "magically" that there is no dynamic economy system, that's what I am saying in my post.
I think it is very hard to implement a dynamic economy system especially when it is not the main purpose of the game.

You give to the merchant 200 more golds, he has previously 200, and then he buy your item for 200 he has now 0 but he has an inventory valued at 200. So, (and that's what you call magic), the game supposed he reselled this inventory without profit (for 200). so the value never changed (it is 200) but instead of being inventory it's always cash.

To have a perfect dynamic economy system you need :
- a supply/demand dynamic system
- a salary system
- dynamic inventory, cash for all NPCs...
I think it is very hard to develop.
maybe in TES 5, but I doubt it because Oblivion is not an economy simulation.

Saying you don't understand to someone and then turning around and saying gives 200 more golds. Jesus Christ. You need a brain transplant, fool.

The whole economy is ludicrous; one of these swords costs more than an entire city would cost. ALl they had to do was tone down some of the phat loot thrown at you in every single encounter. Obviously, daedric di katanas are incredibly common so a high price tag makes zero sense.

Since there is nothing to buy, who cares, anyhow?

 

[VenomByte]

Well, it eliminates entirely the need to rest to sell again, so that's good.

How the fuck is that good?

It makes an exploit already existing in Morrowind even worse. Now shopkeepers have infinite gold and you can't even delude yourself that it's being replenished daily by other sales. It's a step backwards towards invulnerable merchants with unstealable goods and a bottomless pot of gold.

A better solution would be that a merchant gains or recovers X gold per day, with X depending on how skilled he/she is. If you invest in the shop, that rate of recovery could be higher, or maybe you could take a cut. There would be some sort of cap to this rate, tied to the skill level of the merchant or the size of the town, with your ROI diminishing as more is invested.

You then have at least a semi-believeable faked economy that doesn't allow the player to sell/resell items 5000 times and encourage them carrying items woth 1k, 2k, 4k, 8k, 16k...

There are dozens of simple solutions with more roleplay value than Beth's 'tard-pleasing' approach.

 

[bryce777]

Oh, and you can have a real economy without going to the level of the individual farmer and without making real factories - it's called abstraction. A lot of gaes do it well, such as space rangers 2 - actually, I think they do go down to the level of individual traders, so never mind.

 

[Section8]

I think at this point, it's best to not even consider Oblivion's model as "an economy." Merchants are simply alchemists that can magically turn ordinary metals into gold.

All you need in a single-player questing game for the economy is an effective way to buy stuff you want and sell stuff you don't need, with somewhat interesting choices in what you choose to buy and who you choose to sell to.

Go easy on the ambition there, tiger.

Since there is nothing to buy, who cares, anyhow?

You know, that's what I'd hoped "mercantile investment" would blossom into. Invest in a smith, and he can afford the materials and tools to actually make some quality gear. Since the Elder Scrolls already has a pretty broad curve of items for each store category, that kind of makes sense.

But no, instead you can only invest your money into getting more money that you can't spend on anything useful, except for perhaps enchanting.

 

[Zomg]

I like how verisimilitude, maybe mislabeled as immersion, is sacrosanct when we're talking about eyebrow animations and light bloom, but an economy is a bridge too far.

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

Re: VenomByte
Except for the fact that I can't name a single roleplaying game right now that did not have unlimited funds for merchants. Maybe they exist, but it certainly isn't anything that has ever struck me as a cool feature. Plus it certianly wasn't realistic in MW, Merchants are supposed to be rich people with access to credit, if necessary. So bah, the money system has little impact, it's the prices on the itmes and the barter system that should be improved.

Oh, and Solik is right, you guys are going completely overboard on this. If I want an economy simulation, I go and buy one, not an RPG. I haven't heard anyone complain about the lack of guano-on-a-stick trading opportunities in Fallout... Be a little realistic, even if its Oblvion we are talking about

 

[Excrément]

Well, it eliminates entirely the need to rest to sell again, so that's good.

I think the mistake Twinfalls and some others are making when evaluating the system is which angle you're viewing the word "investing" from. When people make investments, they usually do so in order to make money on the increase in value -- that is, they want to be paid back with interest. The other part of investing is that it makes a commercial entity more valuable by allowing it to expand its operations, thus (hopefully) increasing its revenue and profit margins. It is the latter purpose that this system is intended to solve. Your investments are used by the merchants to expand their operations so they can afford to trade more expensive items.

What people don't understand it's that I am talking about "value" and Twinfalls is talking about "cash".

and to Bryce777, did you know an Aston Martin Vanquish S costs around 300,000$ (3 cheap houses), a Breguet watch with complications can cost 250,000$ and a Van Gogh masterpiece costs around 20,000,0000$.
so why not a daedric daï katana costs 5 houses in Oblivion?

 

[galsiah]

Excrément:
You can model a coherent economy through abstraction. It isn't that hard. It also provides a reasonable balance automatically, since there isn't an infinite amount of gold / items in the world. Complex supply and demand mechanisms could be included, but aren't necessary for the simplest model.

Solik:
The system they've got is in no sense an abstraction of an economy. It is not a simple economic model.

It is an abstraction of "the mechanism by which a player gets gold from merchants". It doesn't function in any way as a simple, abstract economic model, since it is utter nonsense. All it does is control the amount of money the player receives.

Perhaps it'll be better than Morrowind, in terms of not being exploitable [presuming they've eliminated the 1,2,4,8,16... bartering exploit], being quicker and blending into the background.
As an economy it's still laughable though. The idea that it's really difficult to do better is unfounded. The simplest of abstract economic models would be a huge improvement over this.

 

[VenomByte]

Re: VenomByte
Except for the fact that I can't name a single roleplaying game right now that did not have unlimited funds for merchants. Maybe they exist, but it certainly isn't anything that has ever struck me as a cool feature. Plus it certianly wasn't realistic in MW, Merchants are supposed to be rich people with access to credit, if necessary. So bah, the money system has little impact, it's the prices on the itmes and the barter system that should be improved.

I do agree that item prices, availability of loot, and the barter system are the main cause of problems here - but that doesn't mean this isn't an area which should be improved.

I think it's a step in the wrong direction. Yes, most RPG's in the past have had merchants with infinite funds. They've also had invulnerable merchants whom you couldn't steal anything from. It's something which has always really bugged me and breaks my immersion.

I saw Morrowind as taking a step in the right direction here. Merchants had limited cash, and could be killed and stolen from. For me, that option adds immersion. It's an important freedom. The next logical step is to make the cash flow of these merchants a little more believable, if not simulating an economy.

Jumping back to infinite cash supplies is a step in the wrong direction, as with so many of the changes present in Oblivion.

 

[Blahblah Talks]

To my understanding, the investment thing in Oblivion works like this:

A shopkeeper has 100 gold in cash every day.
If your mercantile skill is high enough, you can give him 100 gold - from that day on, he will have 200 gold in cash every day, allowing him to buy more from you.

A one time investment for a continous benefit.

Exactly. In other words, a piece of shit.

In your words. Which are your opinion and nothing else.

Not really his opinion. What is the difference between "investing" in a merchant and going into the CS and editing the amount of gold he spawns with? Nothing, as far as I can tell. Increasing the rate of expansion of the Money Supply only makes a broken system more broken. How is having 100 merchants with 10k gold better than having 99 with 500-1000 gold and 1 with 10k?

All this will do is make selling phat lewt less of a hassle. It does nothing to solve the problem of having 500k gold in your wallet after 10 hours of gameplay. In fact it makes it worse, since you don't have to go all the way back to Creeper to sell.

As I said before, if you want to have an economy that is at all realistic, you have to constrict the money supply, either by not letting high level mobs always drop big ticket items (I like the idea of an abstract store, where if it doesn't have any DDKs, nobody can spawn with one/drop one) or by making items wear out quickly and require them to be (expensively) repaired or replaced.

 

[Nog Robbin]

Well, it eliminates entirely the need to rest to sell again, so that's good.

I think the mistake Twinfalls and some others are making when evaluating the system is which angle you're viewing the word "investing" from. When people make investments, they usually do so in order to make money on the increase in value -- that is, they want to be paid back with interest. The other part of investing is that it makes a commercial entity more valuable by allowing it to expand its operations, thus (hopefully) increasing its revenue and profit margins. It is the latter purpose that this system is intended to solve. Your investments are used by the merchants to expand their operations so they can afford to trade more expensive items.

What people don't understand it's that I am talking about "value" and Twinfalls is talking about "cash".

and to Bryce777, did you know an Aston Martin Vanquish S costs around 300,000$ (3 cheap houses), a Breguet watch with complications can cost 250,000$ and a Van Gogh masterpiece costs around 20,000,0000$.
so why not a daedric daï katana costs 5 houses in Oblivion?

Well, in Oblivion Daedric Dai Katanas didn't appear to be that rare? I'm sure value is in someway connected to how common an item is in our world. Hence a Van Gogh (of which there are a seriously limited number, and each unique) can attain such a value. Swords that by the end of the game were pretty common shouldn't hold that value.

 

[Nog Robbin]

Seems like money will mean nothing in the game again. Let's hope at least there are no massively expensive but ultimately powerful items available for purchases - seems they'd be achievable in next to no time. Thanks heavens for the limited enchanting - even though I can think of numerous other ways it could have been improved than just limiting it to high up mage guild members

 

[bryce777]

Well, it eliminates entirely the need to rest to sell again, so that's good.

I think the mistake Twinfalls and some others are making when evaluating the system is which angle you're viewing the word "investing" from. When people make investments, they usually do so in order to make money on the increase in value -- that is, they want to be paid back with interest. The other part of investing is that it makes a commercial entity more valuable by allowing it to expand its operations, thus (hopefully) increasing its revenue and profit margins. It is the latter purpose that this system is intended to solve. Your investments are used by the merchants to expand their operations so they can afford to trade more expensive items.

What people don't understand it's that I am talking about "value" and Twinfalls is talking about "cash".

and to Bryce777, did you know an Aston Martin Vanquish S costs around 300,000$ (3 cheap houses), a Breguet watch with complications can cost 250,000$ and a Van Gogh masterpiece costs around 20,000,0000$.
so why not a daedric daï katana costs 5 houses in Oblivion?

There are 6 billion people in the real world, and the items you mention are excessively rare. If you wanted to sell off 100 astin martins, you would have a very difficult time of it.

200000 ounces of gold would be worth what? A billion dollars?

I basically agree with ghan in that whatever your prices, you merchants should be able to buy them at least a reasonable amount of the time

 

[galsiah]

...Be a little realistic...

That's all I'm asking:
Is a merchant paying 50000 for 50 items worth 1000, but 1000 for one item worth 50000 remotely realistic?

Sure, he'd find the 50000 item harder to sell, but if he has the funds available to buy 50 items worth 1000, he could at least offer e.g. 10000 for the 50000 item. Diminishing returns for highly priced objects would make some sense. A cutoff at any one point makes no sense - if the merchant has unlimited funds available for smaller items.

First and foremost I want a system where I can trade with merchants without being painfully aware of arbitrary game mechanics restrictions. A real economy would be nice, but not absolutely necessary. Once again, Bethesda have gone for a simple, nonsense solution, rather than a slightly more complex coherent one.

The only reasoning I can think of to "justify" this is the idea that the rules need to be simple, so that the player can easily understand what's going on. That's stupid though. The rules need either to be simple, or preferably to make sense. Many real world situations are easily understood not because they are simple, but because they make sense on an intuitive level. [or in Bethesda speak, they are "Visceral"]

Bethesda seem to pick the simple, nonsense solution over the more complex, good sense solution every time. If their motivation is for clarity of the system to the player, they're making a stupid choice. In most cases the implementation of a more complex system would not be impossible, or even terribly difficult.

I don't need perfection, but I do want things to make sense - even if on a simplified level.

 

[bryce777]

It's thing like this that shake my faith in these guys. Simple and seemless to the user is good - there can be complexity behind the scenes without the user seeing it or worrying. Instead, they go for braindead behind the scenes, and complicated and ridiculously goofy for the user. Not just here, either. The way horses work is another example.

These guys just don't know what the fuck they are doing, plain and simple.

 

[Proweler]

These guys just don't know what the fuck they are doing, plain and simple.

Gee, that must be why they are selling so good.

 

[Elwro]

That's all I'm asking:
Is a merchant paying 50000 for 50 items worth 1000, but 1000 for one item worth 50000 remotely realistic?

That's what I wanted to ask, too :D I really wonder how a reasonable guy like MFSD could write what he wrote with a straight face.

 

[bryce777]

These guys just don't know what the fuck they are doing, plain and simple.

Gee, that must be why they are selling so good.

the reason they sold was because they had the daggerfall name to sucker a lot of people like myself on the pc side and on the xbox side they had no competition.

 

[WouldBeCreator]

they had the daggerfall name

Yeah, because Daggerfall was a market giant. . . .

[EDIT: My attempt to find sales figures was fruitless, however I did discover that Daggerfall did win some PC RPG of the Year awards. I'm still skeptical that Daggerfall's name brought anything like mass market appeal, given that there was a six year gap between the games.]

 

[Twinfalls]

This is all silly, and Bethesda are proving themselves the masters of doublespeak.

Daggerfall had investment. You put money into a bank account. You received interest on it.

Investment has been taken away from TES, not introduced. The fudge for a creeper-substitute they are calling 'investment' is not such a thing.

MSFD in that thread makes the comment 'the econonomy is not broken', casually ignoring what is meant by the poster's comment - the implicit questions.

These are:

- Why is there still going to be an abundance of stuff worth much, much more than anyone can pay (or is willing to pay, as per MSFD's strange explanation) for them?

- Why has there been such a simple, illogical solution to the problem, instead of one of the myriad sensible solutions, which would lead to far more gameplay depth and FUN?