The question is why do I want to kill them all in the first place.

I like this idea, the AI should be smart enough to determine if it's a win or lose scenario and take appropriate actions, fight or flight. The idea about PCs killing the NPC after they fall to recover is a good suggestion - it means you are able to accidently "kill" them but the kill won't be confirmed until you hit them again when they've fallen.

No, no it's not
I answered that for you with the "for whatever reason" part of that scenario.

Now again; If you had done the Companion questline and then decided to kill them, for whatever reason, would you not be pissed that they remain essential even after they have served their main questline?

Roleplaying a murderer (in a game with one of the four main factions dedicated to this very pursuit), or an alcoholic or skooma fiend, because you just want the incessant 'do you get to cloud district...' to stop, because they are a witness to a DB sanctioned murder, because you're a witch hunter/Maruhkati and they are a mage, because you want to rid the streets of crime, the guards aren't doing their job, and a more permanent solution is required......and loads more that don't fall under 'murder is fun'.

What ever happened to that whole if you kill a quest giver or they are killed and a friend or member of that family inherits the quest and continues it thing. Pretty damn sure Todd promised us that. Have we seen it? Or is it only in specific and isolated instances?

Really there could be so many easy solutions to the essential character thing. Morrowind did it well imo. Even if you could continue the game in a doomed world.

How would that work though if you/I decided to kill the person continuing the quest as well. Would they just keep appearing as different people?

The replacements are very limited, and the 'npcs take you to the edge of town and point you the way'. All seems a bit 'those of you who are new, here's some things for the start of the main quest, the rest of you don't worry, you know what you are doing'.

As for followers can be killed, protected would perhaps mean a shopkeeper on the other side of the map isn't killed by a random troll or bandit, bit different from taking a companion up against a Falmer boss and two chaurus reavers.

then they shouldnt murder people.

Why in the world would anyone ask a murderer who killed one of their family members to then do them a favour?

See for the "OH but x died when I was at the otherside of the map!" arguement, how would you know x died when you where miles away?
X could have died when you were nearby but you just never got to him on time

There would ofcourse have to be a limitation on the number of times one could kill the giver of a certain quest, but it would at least give the player a chance to complete or begin the quest if he/her killed the quest giver accidentaly. And if you were a friend of the desieased, you get some heritage

True though i was under the impression that Cells only loaded active content when you get within a certain radius of them? for example when you go back the markarth say there was bandits attacking the city that wouldnt of been happening while you was in riften that would only of started when you enter the Cell. ?

The dark brotherhood are contract killers, not murderers, that's the difference.

It should have been like Morrowind, you have the choice to kill a essential NPC, and are warned when doing so. It should be up to the player who he attacks or not.

Also, there is a box in the CK called "protected" right next to Essential, i believe what it does is allow the player to kill any NPC whilst at the same time those NPC's cannot be killed by any in game creatures or random attacks. So there is no excuse what so ever as to why all are Essential when Bethesda had the option of checking the protected box instead.

Yeah waaay too many of them... Spoiler maybe, but after you complete the Civil war questline you are told there are still camps of whoever you didn't side with and they say to go kill them if you find any of the camps and if you do so there is always a high ranking officer of sorts that is essential and you can't wipe out the people you didn't side with... Annoying and extremely stupid... Oh yeah and Jaree-Ra shouldn't be essential, his useless quest wasn't even fun...

Prrreetttttyyyy much.Yes it's a shame that so many NPC's are unkillable, but it is what it is, they made the game to appeal to both hard core RPGers and newbies and in order to get and keep the newbies some changes had to be made.Wasn't the list of unkillables about the same size in Oblivion?Any way the game has been geared to pick up new players and to try and keep the old players, this is life get over it, there are bigger issues that the Dev. team have been preoccipied with.


No you would not have killed the witness, you would have ran for your life. Laws back in medievil times were enforced with an iron fist, not the hand holding of today.You would have lost your hands for theft, and death was handed out on a routine baseis for even (what we see as minor) minor offenses.Or you would end up locked up in the towns tower for god knows how long, you would have been tortured etc....The only way this argument makes sense is if your travelling the road and even thenafter so many killed witnesses your name would start to spread as a blood thirsty killer and then you would be hunted down like a dog.

Face facts, your argueing a topic that will never be addressed, and I agree with an earlier post, that you should play some GTA if you want to go on a killing spree, other wise do some research into the judicial system and punisment of the medievil times and rethink weather or not you would kill a person with in a town.

NPCs are not essential because the player might kill them. NPCs are essential because the game might kill them.

This should have been what was in place.If you end up hitting an important NPC then you are given the chance to undo what you have done or live with the consequences, this would have made every one happy.

Thats how I believe it works, because having the whole game world running simultaneously would be a great stressor on the game and load times would be a painstakingly long.

There is no difference
Thats like saying paying a hitman to kill someone means he isn't a murderer and cannot be charged
Now that is nonsense

Okay someone explain why Zaria is Essential? She has no use, I want to kill her... So why can't I kill this useless NPC???

two conditions.

one, you let us edit our quest log.

two, make it a toggle-able option, because some people, contrary to popular belief, would like to always be able to experience things, regardless of how bloodthirsty they get.

(also, by just saying "deal with it" when someone kills an essential NPC and only finds out later you are thinking like an idiot, you need to think like a dev/player, it's no fun to find out that the quest you really wanted to do required a particular NPC that you thought was just common riff-raff, or that you killed because they seemed like an un-important character, that just frustrates most players and makes them want to stop playing.

The Dark Brotherhood aren't murderers? What has an illegal contract got to do with it, how does that make a difference? Murder for hire is still murder.

[@ norincomak, the only thing Zaria is involved with is she is one of several npcs that could give you an alchemy tutorial. Once she or one of the others has done this, no reason for an essential tag whatsoever.

maybe it should have been handled like this: All NPC's are essential untill you start the quest or complete a task that is connected to said NPC.This way you cannot kill them and loose the quest/task and then you have the option of killing after it's all said and done.For example: NPC "can you go get this for me?, You "sure", you return, NPC " thanks for getting it for me here is 25 gold for your trouble" , You " what I had to kill a smalle Falmer army to get that for you!!!" and you kill the NPC for being a tightwad.

A hitman does get charged differently to murderers actually. I'ts besides the point anyway. Killing everything in this game is not needed, it will only create more problems than it solves and wastes the dev's time as they could be spending it doing something not useless.

So you cater for the bloodthirsty idiot rather than the systematically bloodthirsty?
The amount of hand holding for the little kids its is too much, that much it's getting in the way of everyone. It's like an oversized Little Lamplight