One of the things I like most about Skyrim is that you can fail a quest. At this point, this doesn't seem to be too fleshed out yet (correct me if I'm wrong, I have failed tasks which range from cutting off an entire storyline (DB) to small, non-consequencial things such as failing to defend the drawbridge in Whiterun during the CW). But I think there is great potential there for making TES games harder and more involved, if Bethesda continues on this path. TES VI meets Heavy Rain.

A lot of people seem to think that Skyrim was too easy and that cranking up the combat is the answer to this, and I agree to a certain extent. I certainly wouldn't have minded if Alduin had required a bit more effort. On the other hand, there is nothing I hate more then dying and having to trot the same path again to get back to where I was. I got killed by the Snow Troll on the path to High Hrothgar when I went to meet the Greybeards for the first time, and having to start all the way back from Whiterun greatly diminished the whole experience.
I tend to agree with games developers like Peter Molyneux who think that there has to be a better way in video games to make a player's death a punishment (though I didn't like his solution that much either).

So I'm wondering if games such as Skyrim would benefit from, not tougher combat, but more consequences to failing tasks. What if you could loose one of those fist fights the Companions send you on, and as a result you got demoted in your ranking with them, requiring more quests to get you back to the same rank, and the argument your target was involved in swings the other way? What if you could fail to protect someone, and his or her family then badmouths you throughout the hold so that you're no longer given assignments like that? What if you could fail to contain the magic anomalies from the Eye of Magnus in the College's storyline and the people of Winterhold attack the College in revenge?

If there is one criticism I have about all TES (and many other open-world) games, it's the feeling that nothing can go wrong in your game because you're the protagonist and this world was created for you. I wouldn't mind loosing that feeling and having to play more on edge.

The possibilities are endless and it would make for a much more interesting second play through as well. And a much greater headache for the Bethesda team, too, but I'm sure they can handle it. You're master of your trade for a reason.
There are a lot of video games out there already who are pursuing this game style and in my opinion, an open and involved game series like TES would greatly benefit from this. So I think they have really taken a step in a wonderful direction, with the simple option of failing at quests.

They could handle it in the previous games. Then they heard about people who never managed to find Caius Cosades and gave up playing altogether. That was the day when Bethesda realized their primary target audience were illiterate 12-year-olds with attention deficit and the only way to cater to their needs was to throw all consequences out of the window.

But yes, of course I agree with your ideas and I'd love to see them in the next game.

That's what saves & reloads are for; personally, I wouldn't like to blow over $60 on a game that lets me fail its content. If I screw up a mission, guess what? Reload. My character can't improve with failure, I won't be better off without the quest rewards. To get my money's worth, and to maximize my character's potential, I'd have to pass all the quests... I don't see any other way around it.

True, but if you cannot possibly fail, then success doesn't actually mean anything since it's inevitable. If you can fail, on the other hand, then there is an actual sense of accomplishment after successfully completing a task, as well as actual weight to your decisions since making the wrong ones will cost (or even kill) you.

If it were up to me reloading wouldn't help, since the ability to do so removes all consequences of failure, however that's never going to happen as most people would, justifiably, hate the idea. Which is unfortunate, as failure can be a great learning aid.

It's just a game.

No... TES is a lifestyle to me.

QFT.

In Morrowind, you could certainly fail quests. Hell, you could break the entire Main quest, if you wanted to. There are far too many essential NPC's in Skyrim and most dialog interactions have no branches and no consequences.

My guess is that Isch (the OP) hasn't played other TES games. So s/he doesn't have that as referent.

I don't consider "so-and-so died, so we'll remove every trace of this quest existing" meaningful failure. And for the record, the all-exalted Morrowind's dialogue branches consisted of "continue" most of the time. Bear in mind that most dialogue options have a narrative, rather than a gameplay, function; it's to put a break in the dialogue, not offer an alternative solution. Otherwise you end up with Morrowind's "512 characters and it's still bursting at the seams" walls of text.

Morrowind-style "failure" is a cop-out that simply encourages you to reload instead of taking any sort of responsiblity. It didn't help that all the "oops I killed someone" ends to guild quests were always automatic faction kickout.

^^^
Totally disagree. Did you actually play Morrowind?

No matter what I do to cause a failed quest, unless it's unavoidable like The Horn of Jurgen Windcaller or joining both sides of the Civil War, I'll either reload a save or re-roll. If I can't complete everything in a game I get close to having a panic attack because OCD, so it's a non-issue for me.

I like the idea of having to make up for failure by being run through the ringer with quests to redeem yourself. But how many people are disciplined enough to follow through with it? I'd do it at this point because I've been through the game almost 4 times now (counting bugs that fail the MQ) and doing something new would be great. But most people would think "Screw this. I've spent 100 hours getting to this point; I'm not starting over".

I would too, if for no other reason than that it would mean that screwing up actually meant something. They tried a version of this in Oblivion with the guild reentry quests, but they forgot to scale the punishment to the offense; as a result, doing anything harmful to the guild meant automatic expulsion.

Yep..I like to think of Skyrim as my second home.. at least in that world, I don't have to deal with idiots, and if someone pisses me off, I can kill them outright.

The fact is that it doesn't matter really what checks and balances are put in place to prevent you from, or allow you to, fail(ing) a quest - you can always just reload and carry on regardless anyway. So it's specious to include the whole reload thing in an argument either for or against.
In Morrowind it was entirely possible, and actually very easy, to break the entire main quest and because the reference to having broken it was only a relatively brief notification at the bottom of the screen, if you did not notice this you might never realise until you got much further through the game, but, you could still reload should you wished to.
I completely agree with the idea of failing quests or "breaking" them - of course you should be able to, as has been pointed out you can only succeed if there was a possibility for you to have failed in the first place.
What you do about failing a quest is up to you and your play-style. Niamh has probably broken loads but neither of us give a [censored] because it's not her intention to "do Skyrim", certainly not in the sense of do this quest, do that quest...
If a quest is failed, the game for us is never reloaded - the dice is not re-rolled as it were, it works for us but it might not work for others.

Thank you for your opinions. Very interesting - I didn't know that Bethesda had already tried this previously in Morrowind and the negative reactions caused them to abandon the idea. (Serethil; I played Oblivion to death but although I'd love to play Morrowind, I can't due to a Mac without Windows installed. And it's 'she' ).

I was indeed talking about 'controlled failure', not you killed so-and-so, thus you are unable to finish this quest. I meant failing to complete a task so your quest gets taken in a new direction. As people have said, if this wasn't the outcome you were looking for then you can always reload, or make sure it doesn't happen in your next play through. In the style of games such as Heavy Rain and Alpha Protocol, it would introduce a real sense of achievement, rather then an inevitable one (as General Masters put it so well).

As far as loosing patience with the game goes... I don't know. Surely most players want to see the length and breadth of this game, so if failure opens up paths and quests that aren't available when you succeed, it would actually be a good thing. Think of the cure vampirism quest - most people just gulp down a potion and never even know it's there.
But then play styles are a personal thing, and I suppose the job of a games developer is to balance it so that a game becomes interesting for millions of different play styles. I wouldn't want to attempt it!

This is the opinion of someone who was happy to get kicked out of the Oblivion Mage Guilt so she could go traipsing about the countryside collecting Dragon's Tongue from all over Cyrodiil.

I'm surprised it's not possible to reset and redistribute your perk/stat points in Skyrim!