I was wondering what the economy of Oblivion will be this time round.

Are the typical complains from Morrowind addressed? in particular-

- exploits from MudCrab and Creeper?
- low npc max septim counts?
- highly valued endgame gear that has modest drop rates from medium level monsters?
- low expenditure from training?

As I understand it, Alchemy fortify potions to boost stats are capped, so I *think* the rate of making and selling potions to make a fast buck will be somewhat gimped.

In my opinion the mudcrab merhcant and creeper were easter eggs so it is the players choice weither they did or not. TES is about doing whatever you like so I don't think they perfer the player to take personally responciablity of abuse not force them into a box.

NPCs were supposed to have low max septim counts, A) because it was logically that the local fishing town weaponsmith doesn't have enough money to feed the whole of Vvardenfall. To counterbalance having uber items around, if the player finds something really expensive and wants another really expensive item then they will either have to barter directly, sell many of them to buy it or find another one. Remember the winged twilight soul you can get at level 1, it would ruin gameplay if that single item suddenly granted you access to any item in the game, but if you are clever then you can use your mercentile skill to try to get as much as possible from selling it to one person.

Daedra are high level, daedra don't have expensive gear to high level, level 20 is supposed to be high level. The fact that people get to level 50 onwards is because they kept playing past the point of high level.

Training is quite expensive unless your high level and/or used an exploit.

So I'd be expecting 1. will be harder to find or not there. 2. Stay the same, perhaps a bit higher because as you've seen in TB they did realise people wanted high money traders and were exploiting the mudcrab anyway, but they did the right thing in making half of them have high mercentile skill (they would do if they earnt all that money) though I felt let down by the other half. In BM they toned it down again but still had high money traders, most likely because they were already in TB. 3. I'd say the high level point will be at a higher level. 4. Probably abit higher, I don't know, I never considered it too low.

Well fair enough that mudcrab and creeper are easter eggs.

I can agree fishing villages having a lower cash flow due to low economic activity

However, this does not explain the forced barter trading to take place with high end gear, if even rich merchants in Caldera, Ebonheart, Sadrith Mora and Vivec itself have no npcs capable of buying it from the PC at one shot, requiring instead the tedious attempts to first load up npcs with cheap gear, so as to garner septims for expenditures.

I hold a vastly different view on training being cheap only through exploits though, as anyone capable of killing a golden saint/dremora (about level 9~12) will soon find themselves the owner of 5.6k~120k item.

What some mods did was increase the cost of training, fast travel and spells, adjusting merchants mercantile and persuassion skills, as well as nerf drop rates from golden saints/dremora. All these policies are rationale I concur with. The lack of viable trading partners still bug me though.

The only information I managed to find was investment in npcs that allows them to have a higer septim count for trading in Oblivion, and horses/houses are not supposed to come at bargain prices too... wonder how that will actually work out.

Training it gone. No more money for skills. Boom. Balanced.

Hopefully they will break the market down into select merchants.

You'll have the bog standard merchant who will buy basic items off you (or non-magical non-unique non-artifact items) for a low cost (lets be honest, they wont sell the hordes of swords you stumble across, so why should they buy them at a high rate?)

The really expensive items that you find at later levels could be sold to an exotic merchant (who you may have to unlock with a quest or two to gain his/her favour) who has considerably larger funds accessible to them. That said, the more items they buy off you of a similar type, the less they will give you money wise - supply and demand etc.

I'm hoping this kind of system is in play. That way the player still has a way to get cash, but they have to work for it, and have to explore different regions to get different high-level items from mobs, rather than camp a spawn spot and fast-travel to the nearest merchant to sell a multitude of the same items for a massive profit.

my $0.02

That seems a bit n00b unfriendly though, I've played characters which were not combat orientated and I didn't go to all the places I knew I could get money and I had to steal to afford silt stider fare back to Khuul after getting a better spell for fishing, and my first character thought 6000 was a huge amount. The biggest unbalancer I feel is those damned supply chests, and the complete inexpense of armourers gear; paying for repair isn't worth it even if you next to nil armourer's skill. Paying for repair isn't a big expense for low level characters but it becomes one for higher level characters but because of the cheapness of armourer hammers and the fact they are in supply chests means you'll never have to spend a septim on repair.