Well, at least it's not as bad as Oblivion where some dungeons were exact copies in every way. I think they've done a good job with the dungeons, although they might just be randomly generated? What do I know..

Try fast traveling less. It will enhance your experience a lot.

Have fun not having cookies or cake this Christmas. :disguise:

Can someone honestly give an example of a quest that is NOT a Fetch, Kill, Collect, or Escort quest? In any game?

The nature of games pretty much forces all quests to fall in to those categories.

1) Go here.
2) Kill/pick-up/return thing
3) Get reward.

Escort quests are really just 1-3 with an annoying NPC tagging along that likes to do dumb things to piss you off every so often.

I'm so sick of seeing this "Boo-hoo all the quests are Fetch/Kill/Collect/Escort." What else is there? Honestly, please describe how you design a quest that doesn't fall in to one of those categories?

I bet part of the problem here is using fast travel too much.

But that's exactly how they feel. They're fetch quests. "Go to this cave, kill Bandit chief, come back." That's it. That's exactly what you can expect from an MMORPG.

What people want is choice and dynamic quests. For example, following in line with OP's example of New Vegas, if I save the town of Primm in New Vegas, I have the choice of giving it three seperate sheriffs. One may properly defend the town but raise taxes quite high, another may lower crime to the point where the town has a healthier economy and can give you cheaper prices, but the sheriff himself is corrupt and often shoots first and asks questions later, whereas the third is a compromise who doesn't really affect the economy or have any corruption/lack thereof. In another quest, if someone asks me to deliver a drug package, I can either deliver it for pay or I can turn it into the authorities and report them.

In Skyrim? If I do a certain quest where someone suggests turning me into a werewolf to make me stronger and I say "thanks but no thanks," what's their response. "Ok that's fine. COME BACK WHEN YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND." I'm then forced to accept his offer to continue on with his quest. If I do the main quest and get to the "optional" parts where I can ask the Greybeards or the Blades for advice, I can choose the Greybeards, reload the game and ask the Blades and then realize it doesn't make ANY difference at all who I choose. They react exactly the same and send me on the same task. EVENTUALLY they give me a true choice where they disagree, but again, the path I choose has no real effect on the game.

Or if I'm stuck in a room and told to figure out which of these three people need to die, it doesn't matter which one I end up killing. I'm rewarded all the same.


The game has no choice, no rewards and consequences and thus no replay value.

Well played sir but even out of the only two quests there that I've done myself, quests number 1 and 4, I know for a fact that quest number 4 does not have different options to it.

You do realize you couldve killed Astrid and started a new questline to eliminate the brotherhood do you not? There are choices, but not for every quest, I admit I was quite unhappy with being made Boethias main follower after killing all her followers. Perhaps the game does need a tad more dynamic, but for options they do give them.

ES choices have always been about, throw as many quests at you as we can, and let you choose what or what not to do based on build type, or "class" in the older games. This allowed for lots of replay value, but made you the responsible party on what to do, or not to do.

You do realize you couldve killed Astrid and started a new questline to eliminate the brotherhood do you not? There are choices, but not for every quest, I admit I was quite unhappy with being made Boethias main follower after killing all her followers. Perhaps the game does need a tad more dynamic, but for options they do give them.

Name five and I will not eat a single baked good during the week that X-mas falls into.

But that's exactly how they feel. They're fetch quests. "Go to this cave, kill Bandit chief, come back." That's it. That's exactly what you can expect from an MMORPG.

What people want is choice and dynamic quests. For example, following in line with OP's example of New Vegas, if I save the town of Primm in New Vegas, I have the choice of giving it three seperate sheriffs. One may properly defend the town but raise taxes quite high, another may lower crime to the point where the town has a healthier economy and can give you cheaper prices, but the sheriff himself is corrupt and often shoots first and asks questions later, whereas the third is a compromise who doesn't really affect the economy or have any corruption/lack thereof. In another quest, if someone asks me to deliver a drug package, I can either deliver it for pay or I can turn it into the authorities and report them.

In Skyrim? If I do a certain quest where someone suggests turning me into a werewolf to make me stronger and I say "thanks but no thanks," what's their response. "Ok that's fine. COME BACK WHEN YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND." I'm then forced to accept his offer to continue on with his quest. If I do the main quest and get to the "optional" parts where I can ask the Greybeards or the Blades for advice, I can choose the Greybeards, reload the game and ask the Blades and then realize it doesn't make ANY difference at all who I choose. They react exactly the same and send me on the same task. EVENTUALLY they give me a true choice where they disagree, but again, the path I choose has no real effect on the game.

Or if I'm stuck in a room and told to figure out which of these three people need to die, it doesn't matter which one I end up killing. I'm rewarded all the same.


The game has no choice, no rewards and consequences and thus no replay value.

Yeah, but I hope that'd be a given. If the game forced you to be a freaking assassin, I'm sure there'd be lots of complaints.

I bet part of the problem here is using fast travel too much.

Challenge: accepted.

No one forces your character to Smith or enchant =o you can get some decent gear if you don't craft at all especially from Daedric quests and becoming a Thane, and no one is rushing you to do the MQ you can take all the time in the world before starting the actual MQ... My mage character(4th) is level 25 and still hasn't delivered the dragon stone, and Daedric quests don't kick in until level 10, And there is tons of reason to go exploring! There are certain quests you can pick up while exploring that give you permanent Active effects.

I have played Skyrim for nearly 70 hours now, and while it's the best Elder Scrolls to date, Bethesda's incredibly formulaic approach to the design of Skyrim keeps it from being the best open-world RPG ever.

For example, 70% of the quests are fetch/kill quests. For the remaining 30% of the quests, linearity is the order of the day. There are few choices to make, nor is there much of a way for the player to take alternate paths to solving a problem or reaching the objective. The result is often a reward, and the player has a very small impact on how the gameworld changes depending on his or her actions. The repetition of quest structure also saps Skyrim of the replay value that games like Fallout New Vegas had.

While the game gives you a ton of leeway in how you play the game (by brute force, magic, stealth, etc.), it lacks the freedom of choice that Fallout New Vegas and many other RPGs have. To Bethesda, there are only two choices: Do the quest, or refuse the quest. While this might have been fine back during the 1990s, I would have liked to see a more freeform quest structure that takes into account a number of choices that a player can make.

That title goes to Fallout: New Vegas.