Time is often overlooked by most developers. Some have day and night cycles but barely incorporate that into the actual gameplay. Stuff like NPC's acknowledging the time of day and actually do certain according to that time. Or creatures that are nocturnal and can only be seen at night, maybe even make it that those nocturnal creatures sleep during the day. Or what this thread is really about, Timed Quest.

A timed quest could be used in a lot of ways. Maybe a person is pinned down by rocks in a cave and needs you to go get help in a nearby town. Well if you dont get help soon enough the person may die, or probably even get eaten by creature. Or maybe quest as subtle as go and kill a clan of vampires that sleeps during the day.

So timed quest could be go and accomplish this task and you have a set amount of time or literally has to die with the time of day itself. We have seen stuff like that lightly in Oblivion where people would want you to meet them at a certain time or certain things will reveal itself at a certain time of day. But I think its time to take it to the next level.

Ugh, I hate timed quests...Almost about as much as I hate QTE's and Escort missions...

Maven blackbriar must not be kept waiting. Unless you want to keep her waiting.

Anyway I agree. I think the only thing that is time dependant is some vampire related quests- like Alva in morthall. Maybe the dg random vampire attacks. Anyway, it would make the game a lot more realistic because you wouldn't have fifty uncompleted quests on the go at once

They should be included where appropriate. Daggerfall had them. Oblivion sort of did this with the Thieves Guild initiation quest. You were competing against other thieves, so you were effectively on a timer. I'd greatly prefer this to a world that sits around forever waiting for the player to tire of picking flowers.

Interesting so many Action games possess Timed missions, and then there's Skyrim waiting on your very presence

Right there with you.


And from comments I've read before, a lot of people hate those too.
(The "go deliver mail / pick up packages" quests in Borderlands 2, for instance)

----

Now, having different things available to happen based on time of day is a different thing. That can be interesting. Of course, Oblivion & Skyrim have that to a minor extent with the stores having open & closed hours. And the butterflies vs. fireflies alchemy reagents in Skyrim. But there's certainly more things that could be done.

After playing a bit of assassins creed today my opinion of "Disagree" has moved to "Strongly Disagree" in regards to timed quests. I know what the OP is proposing is different then the timed quests in AC but the reason I truly enjoy Skyrim is that I can do what I want when I want at my own pace.

I try to self-impose time limits on some quests, just because they seem critical that way. I can convince myself that my character doesn't give a crap about the dragon menace, and have them avoid Riverwood and/or meeting Jarl Balgruuf forever, but I have a hard time putting off a quest like The Man Who Cried Wolf, for instance. The downside about self-regulating is that you're not going to see any realistic consequences for dragging your feet.

If the quest givers wanted something done by a certain time, then would not have waited around for me to do it for them.

I hate timed quests. Hate them. Don't mind a scheduled quest, (where the events only happen at a certain time of day or follow another event) but to have to be somewhere and do something before a certain amount of time has passed? No way. I play this game so I can give my ADHD free reign and if I want to jump into that dungeon on the way to save the farmer's cow, then I will do so. And, if that dungeon leads to several other more interesting quests than saving that cow, then I want to do those quests first before I cure the cow's colic. I will schedule and prioritze my quests according to the needs of my character, not some NPC that can't.

timed quests are garbage. keep them out of elder scrolls

I would love timed quests. Not all of them, not the majority, but a select few that make sense story wise. If the guy tells you his wife is dying and needs a herb from the swamp asap, you can't just go questing for another in-game month and come back when you remember like nothing has happened. These quests that freeze the micro-world of a house, a family, a village, a hold until you decide it's time to do something make the world feel dead and artificial. I wouldn't mind seeing some side quests become timed, and I wouldn't mind competition in solving quests either, especially the radiant ones. I'd love to sometimes see other adventurers or guild members do the same quests I do. In a world that big it's natural, unless we want to be reminded every hour or so that the world is actually dead, waiting for you to do everything.

No just no. Timed quests are just annoying.

I don't understand why there is so much opposition to this. If you don't want to complete a quest within a realistic time frame, then don't take it. It's not like the clock starts clicking the second you boot up the game. The clock starts when you begin a quest, and you are still perfectly free to ignore it and fail the quest. Acceptable failure is something that really needs to be introduced into more games.

Yeah thats pretty much what I was alluding too for Timed missions, don't want them don't take them. and yeah I don't exactly adore Timed Missions, but it would have been far more interesting that if I'm in what's considered the middle of the MQ in Skyrim...you know Dragons rising and apparently terrorizing the land, my lollygagging would be met with an increasing deteriorating situation, not be met with another Static instance of the Game world as if there isn't enough of that already ;p.

and when I say Timed missions I don't mean a counter ticking away in the corner of the screen, but in the sense of Daggerfall or more recent Oblivion's thieves guild Mission were your actively being worked against. not where you can come back a week later and complete a "dire" quest ;p

Timed quests = complaints on forums.

Quests that rely on the time of day, sure.

Go kill this dude, got week before I hand it to someone else. Failing gives the chance to meet the guy who takes over, possibly make him fail too. I wouldn't mind something like this.

Quests similar to bl2 time trail, no thank you.

exactly

Bingo

Like everything, it needs to be done in moderation. I'm not saying every quest needs to be timed because it just doesnt make sense. But in situations that seem dire is good. Red dead redemption had something like this where you had to save a woman hanging by a noose on a tree or she would die.

Maybe with the NExt Gen bethesda game we will finally have destructible environments so maybe we could have a quest to save a person from a burning building. That would be cool.

Wow I never thought of that. now that you mention it you can play skyrim without even touching the main quest and still have a really solid game. Interesting.

skyrim doesnt give you a choice to take or not take a quest. and multiple playthroughs to figure out what npc's give what quests is not the same is not taking a quest.

You must of not read my post when I mentioned that the quest giver was pinned down by rocks and needs you to get some help by othere to move the rocks, or the burning building example. I'm speaking more of Dire Encounters. A new breed of quest in a video game that roots from bethesda traditional random encounters but is much more dire in the situation than just discovering somebody or something new.

I like this example because its very personal and makes sense. The guy really doesnt want to leave his wifes side for fear of her dying while she is gone. He is paralyzed by his love for his wife therefore it only makes sense to send or hire someone to complete this Dire task.

I loathe timed quests. No thank you.

I liked timed quests as long as they are not stupid with what you have to do in the time frame but with skyrim i dont know

I think there should be some logical timed quests. Like if you find someone wounded in the forest, and you don't have the skills in Restoration necessary to heal them or a health potion you can spare. You have three days to go out and grab the things needed to heal him or bring him help, or something along those lines. If you forget and come back after 4 years, you'll find him dead. If you get him back to town safely, he'll be in bed for a week, but after that he'll be up and about again. Things like that would be welcome in my opinion. Just not "You have 10:00 minutes to do this. Starting... NOW!"

Time should be a bit more important in these games in my opinion, not necessarily having a countdown for every quest, but more things dependent on time and things like that, as others have described.