Having poured almost 400 hours into Skyrim its safe to say I LOVE the game. Possibly my favourite game ever. I know its far from perfect but I have been able to overlook a lot of the flaws simply because it is such a fantstic game. But there is one thing that really, REALLY ticks me off. I absolutely despise the way the game hands you almost everything on a platter, particularly the Daedric quests. I remember them in Morrowind and Oblivion and how difficult some of them were to find! It took me months to find Boethiahs shrine in them damn mountains in Obivion. And I loved it. You really feel as though you earned the reward. Now its a simple matter of reaching level whatever and along comes a courier to prod you in the right direction. It takes a lot of the challenge, and lets face it fun out of the quests. (The exception is Mephala's quest. That was relatively difficult to find.) That is my primary gripe. Another is the guilds. You are literally thrown into the direct path of 3 of the guilds during the main questline. I accept that the companions or college is never going to be difficult to find. (Even though you are forced to join the college whether you want to or not simply to advance the main story.) But the Thieves Guild!? You arrive in Riften and are immediately trusted by a stranger (Brynjolf) who gets you to perform a task he easily could have got ANY other member of the thieves guild to do it. And you have to do this if it is you're first time playing and you don't know where to find Esbern. And voila. You are now in the "reclusive" Thieves guild. It just does not seem like something that would really happen. The Dark Brotherhood is also astonishingly easy to find. Especially considering it's the last [censored] sanctuary in Tamriel. You would have to be a moron to not put the Aretino mission and the Dark Brotherhood together. That quest itself would not be a problem except you can hear about the dumb kid from anyone in Skyrim.
To sum upthe Daedric quests and "hidden guilds" are too easy to find.

Well rant over. Sorry for the length, I just really had to get it off my chest and see if anyone else felt the same.

PS: Apologies if this topic has already been covered. I have not been on these forums in quite a while.

i wouldnt say its annoying per se but pretty boring for sure

Agree. It is very boring.

Bethesda thinks the Players are getting dumber, so they throw everything in your face.
But there's no sense of discovery when everything is just given to you.

I loved how the Thieves and DB in Oblivion were truly secretive.
And Morrowind had so many Factions/Guilds that you had to find or learn about on your own. And the vampire Factions were very hidden, which added a real sense of exploration and reward when you discovered them.

I fully agree with you, even though Skyrim is my first Elder Scrolls game, so I'm not comparing it to any of the previous titles.

Another thing that always annoyed me about the Companions was how quickly you could progress through their side quest. If you're on PC there's a mod by a guy called Jimmy on the Steam Worksjop that does address this to some degree (Brynjolf won't approach you unless you've already stolen x number of items, the Companions questline will only advance a step after you've completed x number of missions for them etc). If you're a PC user I strongly recommend you consider giving Jimmy's mods a go.

I agree completely. Bethesda is trying to cater to the casual players, which I think is stupid because it takes away from the fun. RPGs should invoke challenge and thought, not just here you go, go here then there, it svcks away from the fun. I remember back in previous elder scrolls it was difficult to find guilds and join them. Back in Daggerfall, I think you had to show thief skills like pickpocketing to be contacted by the thieves guild, and in oblivion you had to kill an innocent civilian to be contacted by the dark brotherhood. Now its really tedious and boring. With daedric artifacts, that got really stupid. Some of the most RARE and VALUABLE items in existence and they sell for a few thousand gold. In morrowind, the saviors hide was, I believe, around 150,000 gold, but in Skyrim its about 6000 gold. That's really bad. I think Bethesda should just stop catering to the casual players and stop dumbing down the elder scrolls and bring back what an elder scrolls rpg was, back in the times of Daggerfall, and Morrowind.

Bad quest design and "dumbed down" are two different things, but people on this forum will just mindlessly parrot the latter over and over again. Except I hate using the word "parrot" because those are intelligent.

Except in this case both of those things are omnipresent to the point of being cartoonishly bad.

God how i hate that Brynjolf. Just as i started to talk to the guy at the forge ( i forgot his name now) Brynjolf comes up behind you and as soon as i finish with the guy at the forge he starts talking to you before you even have chance to turn around. And that AYE LASS...i wish i coukd throttle him right there and then.

I also agree with everyone in this thread. .