Less annoying selling experience

[Ferryt]

Understood, and thanks for the explanation. This means that one gold under your system is actually work 1/50th of what one gold is under the vanilla system, though -- on a single-item one Gold value transaction. Especially at lower levels this is going to severely bog down a player's advancement in Mercantile, because a great deal of what a beginning character can find to sell is only worth one to five Gold, thanks to the leveled item lists. I don't see this as even close to the vanilla rate of experience gain in Mercantile, although I suppose it would be possible to fiddle with the numbers and see what can be done. Most of the cash I've acquired with my newest character has been from selling items worth five Gold or less, and in a great many cases I'd only have one or two of them. Your default settings would result in almost no experience compared to an unmodded game.

 

I think I can at least partially solve my issue by running Togglable Quantity Prompt alongside Enhanced Economy -- it's not a perfect solution, though, and I'm still looking for something that does precisely what I want it to do. I suspect this won't be an issue once a character gets up to around level 10, but for a character right out of the sewers it's definitely an issue. Still, I like your mod and I think it's a keeper.

[vvk78]

You want less annoying bartering and better Mercantile training ? Take your pick.

• Living Economy
• Smarter Mercantile
• (to use both, put Smarter Mercantile Leveling AFTER Living Economy in the load order)
• Barter Gold
• Improved Barter Gold
• Enhanced Mercantile Progress
• Faster Mercantile Leveling
• More Merchant Money balanced
• DBs Take All
• Menu Escape
• QZ Easy Menus Update
• Display Stats

Remember:

Jewellery, gemstones, and books give more-value-for-less-weight, compared to armor or weapons.

 

Of course, you could probably just try cheating with the GetAV and SetAV console commands on the Mercantile skill, e.g., player.setav mercantile 255

 

Or, if you prefer not to cheat (and pretend not to consider mods as cheats), then you can find and equip some Unique Items to boost your Mercantile skills, such as Boots of the Swift Merchant and Imperial Breeches.

[Ferryt]

Mostly good suggestions, vvk78 -- if you want to fiddle with game balance, which I don't want to do. Also, we've already discussed "Living Economy". It's buggy and is no longer supported. "Enhanced Economy" does just about everything "Living Economy" does, is much more configurable, and is being actively supported by its author.

 

I, personally, am not looking for cheats or anything that alters vanilla game balance, which virtually all the economy-based mods you mention wind up doing. I'm just looking for a more convenient way of selling items than spending hours of my game-time repetitively clicking the mouse and moving sliders. There appears to be nothing which will do that, although "Togglable Quantity Prompt" is a reasonable stop-gap measure until I can figure out a way to script bulk sales so that I don't take a hit on Mercantile experience.

 

Sure, you can pick and choose the items you sell, to get more value for less weight, but you have to find that stuff in-game. How often do you find gems, as opposed to, say, leather armor? Yes, I suppose I could go raid the jewelry store in the Market District if I'm playing a thief-type of character, but then I'd need to fence this stuff and will lose money relative to the fair market value of the item if it wasn't stolen.

 

There are lots and lots of ways to enhance the game, and I'm sure various players are going to find value in all of them. My problem is that in the game I'm playing right now, with the character I'm playing right now, most of those enhancements are not viable options. I'm trying to use as few mods as I can which alter the vanilla game, mostly just opting for those which increase immersion. It's a decision I made with this particular playthrough -- no cheating and minimal fiddling with under-the-hood game mechanics and game balance.

[vvk78]

Did you even take a look at Smarter Mercantile? It can work WITHOUT Living Economy.

 

I hope you realize that every mod you use is actually affecting the "game balance",

in some way or another. For me, easier and better selling through any one or more

of the above mods is actually setting the "vanilla, clunky selling experience" into a

better "rhythm" (if you don't want to call it "unbalancing").

 

Mercantile skills sucks in the vanilla game.

You can do tons of quest, but not a single one as a proper merchant, AFAIK.

The game is geared towards combat and magic, not really towards selling goods.

Even the whole user interface is not friendly for bartering/sharing/training, etc.

 

Personally I never bother about mercantile.

I just use the console to get lots of gold to buy all the fabulous stuff from all the new mods.

And I dump my junk to whoever I can sell it to or give away to companions/NPCs.

 

"Realism" might work for any other skill. Not mercantile. Just deal with it or fix it with mods.

[Ferryt]

No, all mods don't affect game balance. In fact, most of the mods I use don't. Game balance is related to things like weapon damage and rate of skill advancement. There are a LOT of mods, most of them in fact, which affect only the aesthetic components of the game. Anyway, there's nothing that "Smarter Mercantile" can do that "Enhanced Economy" doesn't do, and EE does it better because it's more configurable so you have more control over just how it's affecting game balance.

 

Oblivion falls way short on player options with regard to the the type of character you'd like to play. I'd love to play a traveling merchant. There's actually a mod that lets you do so. I just don't particularly like how it works. The little fix I've been talking about though ... I'm resigned to the fact that it doesn't exist, but I think I know how it can be done and I'll just have to do it, myself.

 

Yes, all the mods we've talked about in this thread improve the experience of selling things. What none of them do is address my issue, which is that each and every item you sell should be worth exactly 0.4 experience points toward your Mercantile skill, regardless of whether you sell stuff as individual pieces or in bulk. What all of them also do is to re-balance the advancement of Mercantile skill by making experience dependent upon the value of each transaction, resulting in an unpredictable accumulation of experience points, perhaps rewarding players for selling arrows in-bulk, but definitely penalizing players for selling expensive items, even individually. I was looking for something that stayed within the spirit of vanilla Oblivion, while circumventing the clunky procedure we have to suffer through to sell stuff. No current mod seems to do that.

[vvk78]

IMHO, any mod for any game is a change from the default game balance, as envisioned by the game devs. Exceptional cases are when the devs realize they goofed up somewhere, and use a mod's idea/implementation to be included in an official patch, that they release after the game was launched. Even modded armor/weapons would affect the game balance, unless the enemy creatures/NPC also get to use the same armor/weapons, with the same percentage chance of acquiring it and learn the skills to wield it. But we are diverging from the topic of the thread.

 

Maybe you can take the Enhanced Economy (or any of the other Mercantile mods you find suitable), and get the authorization from the mod author(s) to fix/update the selling experience or other mod behavior, the way you envision it. It is a lot better than starting your own mod from scratch (for a cause that not many people are clamoring for, unfortunately, though I see your point of view), and it will be a win-win situation for everyone, especially players who will get a better gaming experience, thanks to your efforts.

[vvk78]

Enhanced Economy 5.2.2 boasts of:

* Dynamic Barter Gold: Merchants don't have infinite gold, but receive/lose gold when you buy/sell items.

* Merchant Quests: Merchants will ask you for help to find items in caves/ruins that otherwise see little action.

* Haggle Overhaul: Disable Haggle menu and get automatically correct prices - or keep it, but with restriction on the number of haggle attempts.

* Real Values: Bartering are done at real values, and not rounded up. So an arrow worth 1 gold, sold at 30% will net you 0.3 gold, not 1.

* Local Economy: Item prices varies depending on the city and the merchant. A Smith will pay well for swords, but not for clothes. Also let you easily change the base price of variuous item types.

* Item repricing: Lets you easily reprice individual items by editing/importing text files with price data. A number of such files included.

* Global Economy: The merchants' prices and willingness to trade is affected by the Oblivion crisis.

* Gold Adjustment: Adjust how much gold you get from quest or any other source.

* Item Removal: Reduce the number of enchanted items found in the game.

* Repricing: Reprices the buyable houses, Reduces the high values of enchanted loot. Reprices all services.

* House Taxes: Makes you have to pay tax for your houses.

* Illegal looting: It is illegal to loot dead guards or other friendly NPCs, containers in cities, or plants belonging to farms.

* Value-based Mercantile Leveling: Gain more experience when selling expensive items (or group of items).

 

Sounds to me like a lot of good features to improve the game. I don't see how you can say this is "penalizing players for selling expensive items" or how it doesn't satisfy your expectations. Please elaborate.

 

I would also suggest asking theNiceOne to join in this thread. I know he is very friendly and supportive, and his ideas will be helpful to clinch the discussion, one way or the other.

[Ferryt]

Actually, vvk78, I've been talking with TheNiceOne with regard to two of his mods in private, including Enhanced Economy, which is on my list of mods to try because I can configure it pretty much to my liking, and he did pop in on this thread awhile back.

 

Your comment that any mod alters game balance doesn't take into consideration the simple fact that most mods only alter the game in cosmetic ways. How a mod that alters the appearance of an NPC, or that adds a new piece of sexy clothing, or that changes a particular shader to a different color affects "game balance" is something I need to have explained, because we may be talking about apples and oranges, here. OK, some shader replacements might affect game balance. I can think of one, for instance -- if you replace the default horrible blue one for Night Vision with something that makes the environment look more natural then you're giving yourself an advantage (assuming you aren't 100% color blind) in dark locations that you wouldn't have, otherwise, but I think you can understand my point, here.

 

In short, there are mods which alter game play and there mods which only alter the way the game looks. The latter do not, in any way affect game "balance", which I'm defining as the way in which a player advances in experience and his success/failure rate in dealing with various in-game challenges. Using a mod which gives my Khajiit slitted pupils and makes her look more like a cat than a person on drugs who hasn't slept in six days (the standard Khajiit eyes give me that impression) doesn't imbalance the game in any way. It just makes me feel better about my character.

[theNiceOne]

Yes, all the mods we've talked about in this thread improve the experience of selling things. What none of them do is address my issue, which is that each and every item you sell should be worth exactly 0.4 experience points toward your Mercantile skill, regardless of whether you sell stuff as individual pieces or in bulk. What all of them also do is to re-balance the advancement of Mercantile skill by making experience dependent upon the value of each transaction, resulting in an unpredictable accumulation of experience points, perhaps rewarding players for selling arrows in-bulk, but definitely penalizing players for selling expensive items, even individually. I was looking for something that stayed within the spirit of vanilla Oblivion, while circumventing the clunky procedure we have to suffer through to sell stuff. No current mod seems to do that.

Just wanted to pop in with a couple of comments about your issue:

1. When I think about it, I think it would be easy to add it as a third option for EE's mercantile leveling feature, after some new OBSE commands added in OBSE 19 (on my request, but for different purposes). So if it is as easy as I hope, I will add it for next version of EE.

2. I would argue that even this feature alter game balance, because selling 100 iron arrows one by one is so tedious that hardly no player will do it every time. Thus adding a feature that gives you the same experience for selling 100 arrows at once, will make you level Mercantile slightly faster. This is of course not meant as an argument against wishing for, or adding this feature (and you can balance it by reducing the amount of experience gained from a sale with Progress or other level rate mods), so I will add it unless it is harder than I think.

[MarkInMKUK]

theNiceOne - maybe a configurable "patience" modifier that drops the total experience gained for selling 100 as a batch by an amount based on the quantity - if set to zero then you get the full experience gain, otherwise a percentage is knocked off (0.1% x number of identical items = 10% reduction in skill gain or something like that - giving you 40 points for selling them one-by-one and 36 for selling a batch of 100). That way Ferryt could have her full experience gain, while others could have a "reduction for being impatient" factor. Edited February 18, 2011 by MarkInMKUK