The
issue is already in the bugtracker, but we can discuss it here. Let me take a look at the solution in Morrowind Code Patch.
UPDATE: Someone on bugtracker says MCP hasn't solved it but I'm reading
here that it has, so which is true?
UPDATE 2: I can't find the source code for MCP. Is the author trying to fix the closed-source problems with another closed-source?
UPDATE 3: OK, I digged something up:
"Merchants should no longer pay less for an item with increasing mercantile skill. The issue was that prices merchants pay, were capped by the price the merchant sells the same item at. The sell price was dipping too low, causing the buy price to go down too. It is now uncapped.It does show the underlying barter mechanics aren't balanced well. To avoid exploitable situations with the barter system all price modifiers (differences from base price) are reduced by 50%. Zero value items are no longer buyable or sellable for 1 septim."
So could we adopt this? Seems like a logical solution.
UPDATE 4:
here:
Code: Select all
if selling: x = min(buyTerm, sellTerm)
This seems like the clamping, i.e. the NPC won't buy at higher price than at which it sells?
It's
here in the code.
UPDATE 5: I just tried modifying it and it works but actually the solution is stupid as you can make money just by selling and buying back. So if you want the MCP solution mentioned above, replace the line in the code I linked to with
But it's actually not good.
So what would a good solution be? It's hard to come up with any. For realistic behavior the mentioned solution could be implemented but the NPC would only either buy or sell to you. If you tried to buy for low and then immediately sell for high, they should get angry at you for obviously wanting to f*ck with them. They could even attack you, which would be ridiculous and fun solution, but probably beyond the scope of the current OpenMW philosophy.