Barter in various Fallout Games
In FO1 and FO2, I never thought barter was useful. In FO1 I generally made it a point to come back and massacre the Raiders after peacefully freeing Tandi, which pretty much set me up for the duration of the game economically. Sure, with a high barter I could've gotten certain key gizmos slightly sooner, but not appreciably so.
In FO2 there's a similar situation in The Den, since Tubby and the other merchant (the one with the kids) are both scum and nobody minds if you blast them and steal their stuff. With their SMGs and Revolvers and such, it's not a big deal to blast all the slavers for even more loot. A high barter just doesn't improve this situation much either.
Fallout Tactics was a whole different can of beans, however. Barter and Gamble were THE two skills to tag with your character (let the other 5 guys handle combat, I'll keep us awash in geegaws and other assorted implements of destruction.)
I'm not sure whether the best solution would be making more of the merchants such total skinflints (a la Fallout Tactics, where the Brotherhood was so violently averted to giving its soldiers proper equipment that they only promote men to quatermaster if they have 150%+ barter) or whether a better solution would be removing such early monty haul opportunities as FO1's Raiders and FO2's Tubby/Slavers. The suggestions regarding barter-based dialogue options are good though; Having 6 skills related to killing and only 1 related to talking makes this a lot more like an FPS than an RPG, another skill with direct impact on talking certainly wouldn't hurt matters, particularly in the case of Barter, which already has its own niche and wouldn't feel tacked-on.
I'm not too big on the merchant only offering certain things to people with a high barter, however. What merchant is going to turn down the opportunity to offload some tremendously expensive thing in exchange for either cash or many things of lesser value (and thus more useful in trade) merely because said person isn't a shrewd haggler? Seriously, one of the things I generally did in early towns in both Fallout RPGs was exchange my heavy things (leather armors, spears, etc) for lighter things of comparable value (the early towns couldn't afford to give me cash for all of it) and I imagine merchants think along the same lines. Likewise, a highly valuable thing, even if it weighs little, is often undesirable because you can't exchange it with most vendors; the vendors simply can't pay you a fair price for it. Most of the time I talk to a vendor I merely want to trade in things for cash and ammunition, 10mm pistols are a better medium of exchange than say, G11E rifles. Note that I'm talking about early-on. Obviously once I'm doing most of my trading with the rather ludicrously well-equipped fellows (which is an entirely different rant...) in San Fran, G11E's are fine...
While we're on the subject of Fallout Merchants, I would like to see a much different reason why I can't merely kill the merchant and take his things. FO1 and FO2 both really bothered me in that respect. How the merchants suddenly had nothing if you killed them. I should be able to kill merchants and take their things. However, the merchants, who presumably cart valuable things across desolate wastelands full of dangers, should probably have guards. Even the stationary merchants (Hub, Reno, etc) probably do 99% of their business with unsavory types. It just makes no sense for these guys to have no protection. Even in places like the Hub, sure the cops would try to stop me, AFTER I'd already killed the merchant. Fat lot of good that does the merchant, neh? Fallout 2 came close to doing this well, since at least the wandering merchants (who generally had nothing of value, hilariously) had a half-dozen or so guards in metal armor with heavy weapons, but too many of the stationary merchants remained poorly protected (or totally unprotected!), particularly in rough-and-tumble places like Reno and The Den.
Anyway, thus concludes my longwinded silly rant on merchants and bartering.
oS was announced). However, the Mohammad/mountain analogy simply doesn't work.