Limited gold for merchants

[Cultist]

Please, don't do it. I'm almost assured the trade will be like BG2, NWN and others, BUT just in case, don't do it like tThe Elder Scrolls did. When every merchant had fixed amount of gold. All it done is to force players to sell a few, wait 24 hours and then repeat the routine until selling all they wanted.

[Ffordesoon]

I firmly agree, especially if the in- game economy isn't going to matter, as it didn't in Skyrim.

[Cain42]

For me , It would be cool if eweryone want to your gold. Oh you are new in town ? That armor cost triple that normal

[JOG]

Mind-twisting idea: craftsmen want to sell their own goods, and have no use for the stinky rags you pulled of that dead bandit, even a pawnshop may only promise you a 2% discount for your next purchase in exchange for that crap. Don't base player income on selling loot, and we need no street peddlers with a bottomless purse, and we also don't need to go back to the dungeon to fetch the rest of the junk that was to heavy to carry. Two problems solved with one simple solution.

[maggotheart]

Annoying merchant mechanics, IMO:

• Limited gold pools on merchants
• Multiple merchants who each deals with specific inventory items and will only buy and sell those items
• Merchants who only come out at night or during the day, or walk around the map or are otherwise hard to find

Its especially annoying if you have all 3 together. I just want to know where the merchant is, dump my sellables and get the heck back out adventuring.

[Alexjh]

JOG - I don't really get *why* player income shouldn't be based on selling loot?  A lot of people seem to be grumbling about it around, but being realistic here, this is a game about being an adventurer, not, a mine-worker, metalsmith, potato farmer, cabbage merchant, fisherman etc.  I'm not saying that those shouldn't be optional possibilities, but making them mandatory for the player when they don't want to do those things (and honestly, I've yet to see them implemented in a game in a way that isn't tedious) is just going to be essentially a frustration mechanic.

[Sacred_Path]

JOG - I don't really get *why* player income shouldn't be based on selling loot?  A lot of people seem to be grumbling about it around, but being realistic here, this is a game about being an adventurer, not, a mine-worker, metalsmith, potato farmer, cabbage merchant, fisherman etc.

Or you can rely on - gold, do jobs for gold, kill people who have gold, break into mansions and steal gold. I think that's the best alternative.

[TrashMan]

Annoying merchant mechanics, IMO:

• Limited gold pools on merchants
• Multiple merchants who each deals with specific inventory items and will only buy and sell those items
• Merchants who only come out at night or during the day, or walk around the map or are otherwise hard to find

Its especially annoying if you have all 3 together. I just want to know where the merchant is, dump my sellables and get the heck back out adventuring.

 

 

I want the opposite.

I want exactly those 3 things you don't.

[Amentep]

I like day/night cycles for merchants.  Some shady fellow probably isn't going to fence stolen goods in the daytime; some merchant might want to take a nap.

 

In a big city I could see merchants actually having evening staff that keeps the shop open, but some little small town shop?  Nah (although extra points if they allow us to wake the merchant up and sell stuff - possibly including a penalty for waking the guy/gal up to do business!).

[rjshae]

Why can't the setting assume the presence of money lenders? If you go over the limit for the merchant, then there is a percentage overhead cost to pay for the loan required to move the good (plus the additional security required). This additional fee can be listed in the transaction dialogue, so you know what is happening.

[LadyCrimson]

I like day/night cycles for merchants.  Some shady fellow probably isn't going to fence stolen goods in the daytime; some merchant might want to take a nap.

I like this too. Not just for the merchant aspect but also because it's one of those little things that makes night/day cycles actually mean something besides pretty graphic/lighting. There's stealth, if a game utilizes the dark for better chances or whatever, but I like more cyclic differences than that.

 

Limited or unlimited merchant gold - depends how it's done. I do tend to like to be able to just go to a merchant, sell everything I want to sell and go back out again, but limited gold is ok if the game isn't based on finding 1000000000 items every 10 feet, or if most things don't sell for a lot to begin with so you probably aren't going to pick up a lot of items etc. Just depends. It does feel annoying, however, if item values are shown to be high but no one anywhere has enough currency to actually buy it from you...simply because it's not logical. If something is cash-valued so highly, in my mind it means someone would want to buy it. Otherwise it would have no monetary value.

[TRX850]

What if there's a faction that's well funded and well organised that always buys weapons/armour/gear from merchants, to supply their own armies/workers/magical needs etc?

 

So if you returned to a merchant hoping to buy back something you sold earlier, there's a chance it's already been sold on.  It would solve the problem of cash flow and supply and demand.  Plus it would provide an opportunity to design a credible faction to which the party must keep an eye on, i.e. if that faction becomes too powerful, it could be of political/military concern, and provide all kinds of quests and intrigue.

[Jarmo]

Mind-twisting idea: craftsmen want to sell their own goods, and have no use for the stinky rags you pulled of that dead bandit, 

 

Maybe for a smith that'd be a working attitude, but any merchant not liking to starve would know better.

 

Very basic economy says if a new item is worth a lot, then secondhand items have value as well.

 

Though maybe, if a new sword is worth $100 in a shop, then a used orc sword could go for $10 (and you'd only get like $2 for it, even if only for the metal). Then maybe a masterwork sword could go for as high as $1000. So it'd be pretty pointless lugging crappy items back and forth, but if you kill a knight or a nobleman, his stuff could be worth a small fortune and well worth hauling.

 

Then again. Grave robbing and looting the corpses used to be considered undignified, ungentlemanly.

Maybe there could be a reputation loss, or you'd get a certain kind of reputation, if you continuously make a lot of money hauling bloody equipment into town market?

[maggotheart]

 

I like day/night cycles for merchants.  Some shady fellow probably isn't going to fence stolen goods in the daytime; some merchant might want to take a nap.

I like this too. Not just for the merchant aspect but also because it's one of those little things that makes night/day cycles actually mean something besides pretty graphic/lighting. There's stealth, if a game utilizes the dark for better chances or whatever, but I like more cyclic differences than that.

 

 

I like the idea of having secret merchants that you can discover through exploration, but not having my staple merchants randomly becoming unavailable to me when I need them. Skyrim had this, and I just pushed the wait button if I got to a merchant at the 'wrong' time. There was also limited gold pools, and I would just fast travel around the towns until I had all my stuff cashed in. IT was kind of pointless to have those mechanics in the game.

[Lephys]

Two ideas:

 

1) What if merchants simply had fluctuating amounts of gold? For example, one day when you happen to get to town, the blacksmith's business hasn't been to awesome lately, so he's a little low on what he can give you for metal things. BUT, the Alchemist on the other side of town has seen booming business, so they've got plenty. They'd probably pay less for things (and maybe the Alchemist was a bad example of a different shop), but they'd have plenty of gold. OR, if it would be better/easier, maybe the prices for things simply fluctuate (while the merchants still have "infinite gold."). AND, maybe there should be 3 or 4 merchants of the same type in the cities and larger towns, rather than the one... MAYYYYYBE two you generally see in a lot of games, and maybe they have competing prices. *shrug*

 

2) What if things (such as used equipment) that weren't obviously highly valuable or useful were only useful to get you some other form of credit, or goods, or reputation gain, etc., in lieu of money? That way, you're out adventuring, and you think "Hmm... do I need money right now? Yes? Okay, I'll take only the most valuable stuff I can find, and leave all this riff-raff." OR, alternatively, you think "Hmm... I'm not really that worried about money right now, so maybe I'll grab all the used equipment I can, so I can turn it into the smiths' guild for salvage, and they'll give me a free re-forging or something." In a world where there aren't mass-manufacturing factories for things and products are relatively scarce, maybe you take any decent clothing you find (monetarily worthless) and donate it to a charity organization when you get back to town, and this affects your reputation to a great degree and provides non-monetary benefits of sorts? Etc.

 

I had also suggested the idea, in another thread, that skill-dependent components and things (like Alchemy ingredients/herbs, or trap-creation components, etc.) would not even show up in chests or other lootable containers (or on bodies) in the "loot list" unless one of your present characters possessed enough skill/lore/knowledge in that area to know what those things even were, much less how much money they were worth.

 

Why does my Barbarian go "Oooh, a Corranthium Blossom! This can be used in making powerful potions, and is worth like 50 gold! I have no idea how I know this, but let's take it anyway!"

 

I mean, there are probably cobwebs and broken trinkets and such in barrels, or on bodies, that your party just goes "Meh... that's not even worth considering taking," and therefore the game simply omits it from the loot list.

 

Just some thoughts. I apologize for their fragmentation. *points to head*... Defective brain. It's hard to find parts. *shrug*

[Somna]

 

Having merchants follow day/night cycles make sense in an RPG, especially if the day version of a location has totally different needs than the night version of the location.  What doesn't make sense is if no night merchants are provided at all, at least in locations that should be able to support them--it would be like being in denial of black markets.   

 

I'm a proponent of limited money at locations, but in a different way -- locations should have a limit on what they can buy.  In other words, it doesn't matter what the merchant's gold supply is -- the merchant isn't going to buy the item if it's above a particular value. So even if you manipulated a peddler to have 1000 gp available when he normally only has 50 gp, if you're dropping something worth 1000 gp on him, he's simply not going to buy it. However, if implemented, it does need to be tiered somewhat.  For example, merchants at a tiny village may have a limit of 50 gp, while that big city over there may have a limit of 5000 gp items instead. 

 

In addition, something that is so expensive that it is clearly out of your normal price range should be for barter IMO, not coin.  They could either be specific, unique items or items the seller would find actually useful. Using Baldur's Gate as an example, the Horn and Claw of Kazgoroth at High Hedge could have been priced with an item or items that the wizard was looking for.  The mage could have accepted scrolls and wands of wizard spells he doesn't normally stock, diamond dust, diamonds, rogue stones, black pearls, beljurils, topazs, rubies, carnelians and pearls at what they were actually worth (i.e. not the ridiculously low vendor standand buyback rate).  (The gems are also spell components of popular, useful or valuable spells or components for magical items.) 

 

Money doesn't mean anything if you can't get what you want with it, which really feels like a concept people can't relate to in this age when a lot of wants are just a google search and a few mouse clicks away.

[Sacred_Path]

I'd definitely welcome limited gold on merchants (that isn't reset daily). If that forces you to sell powerful magic items for far less than they're worth, all the better.

[Jarmo]

I would like though, to be less dependent on looting for cash.

 

Maybe if you took every item for a band of brigands, you'd get 1000 bucks for the stuff, but full 10 grand as reward money.

Normal RPG practice is the other way around, 1000 reward and 10K in loot, trivializing the original incentive to do stuff.

 

Maybe then you'd still find it worthwhile to grab the brigand leaders masterwork sword and magic ring, but not the normal stuff.

[JFSOCC]

 

 

Annoying merchant mechanics, IMO:

• Limited gold pools on merchants
• Multiple merchants who each deals with specific inventory items and will only buy and sell those items
• Merchants who only come out at night or during the day, or walk around the map or are otherwise hard to find

Its especially annoying if you have all 3 together. I just want to know where the merchant is, dump my sellables and get the heck back out adventuring.

 

 

 

 

I want the opposite.

I want exactly those 3 things you don't.

 

 

well, I do want merchants to be wealthy enough to buy a significant amount of what I have to sell them. Perhaps a barter system where if you sell it to him for a too high price he won't be able to resell it, and won't have enough money next time. So you'd have to use your appraise skill to sell it low enough that he can make a profit on it and can stay in business.

 

That way, you'd have the tactical decision of asking for a lot of cash now, with the risk of not being able to sell something later, or a more modest amount, knowing this increases the wealth the merchant will have the next time.

 

The appraise skill would finally be worth a damn. And the mechanic would finally be more than "the better you are at appraising, the more you can ask for it"

[Somna]

I would like though, to be less dependent on looting for cash.

 

Maybe if you took every item for a band of brigands, you'd get 1000 bucks for the stuff, but full 10 grand as reward money.

Normal RPG practice is the other way around, 1000 reward and 10K in loot, trivializing the original incentive to do stuff.

 

Maybe then you'd still find it worthwhile to grab the brigand leaders masterwork sword and magic ring, but not the normal stuff.

Actually, another thought is that you could be requested to collect all the brigands' swords for a full reward, with a bonus for the leader's full set of equipment. Edited February 27, 2013 by Somna

[EHCB]

Aw man, I'm in the camp that likes merchants having limited money. A lot, actually. I don't really think it's a good mechanic to be able to spam yourself rich by selling all your junk items to a homeless gypsy woman.

[general_azure]

Not that much of a fan on gold limits, usually they are either set so low they make no sense or you can pretty much ignore them. Logically you can assume every vendor to at least be able to buy any goods equivalent in price to those he is selling himself. If he can't afford to buy a few well crafted longwords, there is just no way he can run a weapon shop. Especially since my stuff is second hand and probably cheaper than his regular supply. 

If you want to sell/buy something so rare it is not usually traded in gold bartering is fine, but everything I can buy in some sort of regular shop I should be able to sell for coin somewhere. Regardless of how much it is worth. Otherwise you end up with those shifty Morrowind traders, selling multiple items in the 10k+ range but only having 200 septims available to restock. Where did they get this stuff from then? Probably stole it all....

[Cultist]

Limited gold inevitably leads to workarounds - sell a bit, wait till restock, sell another bit ad infinitum. It's not adding immersion, it's adding boredom, useles rouitine and annoying mechanics.

Edited February 28, 2013 by Cultist

[Sabotin]

Yeah, I don't really like limited gold or limited buy lists (dealing with it in Arcanum right now, the armors are friggin HUGE).

 

How about instead of these hard limits the merchants just use very different pricing? For example you could sell your sword to a herbalist, but only get a fraction of the money you would from a blacksmith. I think it'd be a good deterrent to shop dumps (so limited/unlimited money would be less apparent), but in a pinch you could still get rid of stuff (in need of quick money or inventory slots).

 

Though now that I think about it not being able to sell stuff will just mean you have less money in this game since you have the stash. Well, I still wouldn't want to visit 20 merchants to sell all the stuff I've gathered.

[TrashMan]

Then don't gather and lug around all the crap.

 

It's funny how people go around trying to heal the symptoms, while avoiding the actual cause.