So Skyrim has save the world quests, and it has help the individual quests, but my one real disappointment with the game is that it seems to be missing everything in the middle.

In particular, most of the cities have large-scale problems that affect lots of people, that you can't do anything about, as far as I can tell from reading wiki pages and so on. Kick the thieves' guild out of Riften? Nope. Deal with the super-corrupt family of Markarth? Nope. Help the Dark Elves in Windhelm get better treatment? Nope.

Am I missing something? Are there any problems of that scale (effects a decent number of people, but not like the whole country or anything) that you can do anything about?

Thanks.

-Robin

can't even clean up the rubble after the civil war, it seems. At least Helgen stopped burning

But you have good points that may make fairly interesting expansions, should Beth explore them

When you are in Dawnstar people can't sleep because of nightmares, You can do a quest for them and help them sleep better etc. Thats about the only one I've seen.

Markarth you can do something about to an extent. Not sure about the rest.

I like going around everywhere and making the world a better place by solving everyone's little problems.

Its kind of annoying that you all these places where you are not allowed to do anything about the problems -- ugh, Riften! Need I say any more?

There is this:

Agree with OP. I really only noticed those things when I started playing as a dunmer. Nothing really bothered me as a nord.

Save Windhelm - Support the Empire.

Dawnstar and Morthal can be "cleaned up".

Markarth - kill both sides in that battle.

Yeah, That is annoying, It may be either patched or released as DLC, if anything, it will be a mod for PC.

I improved Whiterun by killing Nazeem when he had the brilliant idea of follow me inside my own house to brag about the Clouds District :3

I went back to Helgen about 3-4 weeks after character start, and discovered that a group of bandits had moved in Helgen. And it was still burning - which is ok since there are candles/torches in dungeons that have been burning for ages lol.

Do you get to the cloud district often? Oh what am i saying? Of course you dont

Yeah, I fixed that too. Let's just say that ol' Nazeem's not getting up there anymore either.

Instead of NPCs giving us random quests to unexplored areas, give us a hammer and nails. Isn't that what the Dovahkiin is good for anyways?

Yea, wasn't there supposed to be a feature that would allow you to mess with the economies all around skyrim? I could have sworn I saw Todd talking about that in a pre-release interview.
Little things like that seem to have been forgotten, which makes me mad because IMO it's the "little things" that add up to make a great game.
Being able to kick out the thievs guild would have made ALOT of sense aswell as dealing with vagrants and jet junkies. Oh, right, jet junkies are in Fallout... Meh, their the same game anyways(which is a BAD thing)

After I made my thieves guild toon, I made an actual "heroic" toon and decided to clean out the thieves guild with that tough looking chick in Riften. Turns out she's all talk...

If they let you kick out the the thieves guild you'd lose the only guild questline with any substance, access to fences, a chunk of the DB questline, NPC's in Riften would have sweet fa to talk about, Mjoll would have even less reason to live, one of the few interesting random events (thieves showing up here and there) gone, access to a decent amount of trainers gone, a good chunk of semi-interesting radiant quests gone, as well as the locations that would become pointless, Maven and her family would be even more pointless.

I guess you could go fetch books for the Orc at the college or kill pointless NPC # for Sally Field.

With Mjoll and the send a squad into the sewers lines as buildup I was expecting it to be a real option.

And yet, nothing of value would be lost -
The game's not about the factions - it's about the world and OTHER things you can do.
The NPCs don't really need to talk about anything anyway - I haven't heard if ALL the guards were knee-arrowed adventurers yet.
Mjoll will always have a reason to live, even if that reason is to make me sammiches.
The trainers of the Thieve's Guild are redundant with the Khajiit Caravans.
That "Interesting" random event wasn't really interesting.
Those with interest in taking out the Guild don't have interest in doing any of those radiant quests anyway
All locations have a point, even if said point is just being there... like the shaking, rumbling ground in the rift indicating Tamriel's imminent destruction
Maven doesn't even deserve to live, nor does half her family (Half seems somewhat oblivious to the family business)
Loss of the DB doesn't mean anything when that's usually taken out as well.

In fact, being able to take out the thieves' guild would only make sense, considering that it relies on the easily-destroyable Dark Brotherhood for protection.

Maven Blackbriar: "I have a contact with the Dark Brotherhood!"
Dhovakiin: "Can you show me which one?" *Lays out all DB-members' heads in a row*

Haha, this needs to be a part of a new questline. Seriously, having a questline for each side of the coin would be a lot of fun and gives the game replay value.

Those are some things that I didn't notice (and I noticed some pretty obscure things that most people thought I was crazy to point out with criticism), and yeah OP I think you're right.

One of the points I made was about how I didn't CARE about the people of Skyrim because everything seemed so hopelessly beyond repair from the start. But if Bethesda gives me a means of taking care of those issues to solve every minor thing and make it look like a place worth protecting in the end, I'm so in.

What would be really great is if they gave us DLC that continues the results of the civil war based on what we chose to do. For example, if you sided with the Stormcloaks (which is a movement for going against the impossible odds of the Thalmor), quests where you raise gold to pay for the repairs of damages the war caused, clearing out ALL of the remaining Imperial camps, and also raising gold to create a HUGE continental wall and maybe a far superior army (calling out for aid from other regions not under Thalmor control) and that go side-by-side with the possible 'stop the Thalmor' DLC that some believe will happen.

Bethesda, do it. Help me give a damn about this world you've set up to pretty much be destroyed.

Or fetch mead!

For the story (yes it's important to some of us) the Thieves guild is important to the game, the only real faction one that's interwoven into pretty much everything in the game. Remove them and that world is a hell of a lot less interesting, unless aimlessly wondering around looking at the scenery is your thing.

Remove them and Beth would have to have pretty much have made a different game to make it worth while.

We're not talking about removing them from the game - We're talking about butchering the bastards and hanging their corpses high to hang as a warning to other criminal scum and worthless thugs.

In all my gameplay of Skyrim, I have yet to see any indication of the Thieves' Guild adding anything to the world other than frustration at the invicibility of Maven Blackbriar and the guild members.Bah... "Raising Gold" is the worst type of quest, as Fable III so eloquently proved. Repair Damage, sure. But not by racking up the Drakes.

When you look at it that way, it sounds bad, yes. But the difference here is that in Fable III the task was menial and kind of a non-challenge because you could just buy every property in the world and tax the hell out of it until you had what you needed.

If you make so fixing Skyrim was a hefty price (and really, how else is it going to get any better without putting jobs in action?), that translates to a LOT of reason to go out exploring, questing, and making use of absolutely everything you can; back to the good old days of 'carrying as much as I possibley can without being overencumbered' and making bank off of it.

That's kind of my issue with Skyrim right now. I've DONE everything. I need a big motivator to push me into getting back out there again.

You can fix most of Markarth's and Windhelm's problems. Riften, not so much.