Why? So they could sell this product also to people who don't have the patience or willingness to try and try again different routes.

I don't like this approach but I can tolerate it. If any of you doesn't, well... there's a dearth of games with a meaningful and sometimes harsh implementation of choice and consequences. You should play Gothic and Risen for example although the last one (Risen 2, just released) is far from the pinnacle of pure rpgness that Gothic 1/2 were.

No. People were saying ever since that such a thing was first mentioned that it would only be specific shop keepers, because it would be impractical to set up contingencies for everyone and anyone.

The only way to obtain access to the College is by joining them. There is no possible way to enter the College without joining them. Even claiming that you're a Dragonborn does not make a nick of difference, as you've never been asked about it as the gatekeeper promises

I like to do everything with one character, but I agree that there should be choices and consequences, and that joining a guild should be opt-in, not forced to.

For example, in Oblivion you need to actively search for Thieves Guild. In Oblivion entering a Mages Guild hall does not require membership. In Skyrim either you join now , join later, or be haunted forever in the form of journal entry. I don't like it. Especially because the journal is worth crap less than crap now.

I don't understand how it would be hard to do or impractical...I mean all they would have to do is say you do in a few shop keepers and have a random NPC that says they are that shop keepers family member and presto, doesn't seem very hard to me I mean its not like TES games are very deep or anything :/

Idk there should be consequences to what you do instead of just jail time like maybe someone like a shop keeper raises their prices cuz you killer his brother or father or whatever

Most developers will tell you that all the "little easy things" fans want added into games are never as simple to actually develop and make work as it seems from the outside.

I'm not saying its impossible to do, but developers have limited time and resources to put into a game, and there are literally hundreds of different changes and additions that they could make to a game. They have to pick and choose what to focus on and what ideas to let go of.

Bethesda wanted to make a game that everyone could play and enjoy, not just their old fan base. This is the way the gaming industry has evolved. It's now a mainstream, mass market entity. The hobbyist gamer is no longer a priority, and gaming is no longer a fringe pass time populated by a minority of teenage boys. I don't think that Bethesda really expect the majority of their customers to play Skyrim more than once or in any great depth. It will be played and discarded, just like every other game. It's the age we live in. Nothing is made to last anymore.

That's exactly it.

I think as well as the 'we assume you want to do everything so we'll make it difficult not to' attitude, the general shoddiness of the writing doesn't help either.

Like when the opening task for the TG is presented the dialogue option to decline appears before you know exactly what you're being asked to do. Once you've heard Brynjolf out on what the task is, you aren't given any option of deciding "actually that's really snide and I kinda like that guy and I've just accepted his side quest anyway, so no" - the approach seems to be 'you want quest now? Yes/no?' as opposed to giving the player a chance to consider if that's the sort of task they wish to perform. Of course the game can't make you complete the task, but once triggered it's stuck in limbo forever until you do. It's like they think a quest is a quest, it's something to do and so whatever it is will keep the player occupied. I think the crux of the matter is bad writing that goes on to impact the game design because the writers don't seem to understand the concept of roleplaying or that giving you the option of doing everything with one character doesn't mean every single player is going to want to be forced to play that way. They seem to think if they tell a particular story you're automatically going to want to be part of it with each character you play (which is fine if that's what you choose) - though to me this kind of defeats the object of creating a vast game that's part of a franchise where a lot of people are still playing old titles exactly because they're so flexible - that's what made TES so popular in the first place, so you'd kind of think they'd want to build on that.
i find this frustrating as the world design is top notch and the passive story telling (places where you find notes, visual set-ups that tell you what happened somewhere) is really good, but it falls apart with the quest design and lack of player choice in how to approach the content - with the lack of choice of how to complete quests and lack of choices with consequences for your character also being significant issues.

Bethesda - give the world design people a pay rise and sack the writers. It's that simple.

So it's unreasonable to think that a character who was motivated enough to want the amulet that badly wouldn't scratch the backs of those who could help them find it?

Also, RE NPC dialogue pointing the player in the direction of quests - this is often due to the fact that the story around these quests is big news in the province, of course people will be talking about them. At no point is ANYTHING forced down anyones throat, it's more a case of hey, you could go here and do this, or ignore it. So what if it's in the journal? So what if you have to blag some goodwill from some mages or thieves?

At the end of the day skyrim has attracted a lot of new players, to suddenly roll back the amount of assistance in finding stuff would be counterproductive, and at least it's implemented in a way that at worst could be seen as hand holding, but in all honesty is no worse than what's gone before.

You have to perform magic for the doors to be opened to you to start with. For a non-magic using character, that's against their principles.

The really depressing thing is that if you open up the Creation Kit you can discover that there was at one time going to be an option to get into the College as part of the MQ without actually joining... but they disabled it.

They're not scratching anyone's backs - you're not scratching anyone's back by signing up for college, something you have to pass a test (you can't fail) to do. Essentially, you're asking them a favour by asking them if you can join their college. Which you might not want to do, but have to just to get inside a dungeon in order to compete a quest that has nothing to do with being a mage to get one of the more useful unique items. you make it sound like they're the moonies and you're doing them a favour by signing up to their cult.

I don't get why people are determined to try to rationalise away the game blatantly forcing stuff on the player

IMHO that is actually a good thing, because It means that they wanted to do it properly, only run out of time/budget.

I tried that, but the eacher followed me everywhere to ask me my opinion on wards.

There is another way that involves sneaking into the college via a natural, hard to reach tunnel. It works and it doesn't break any other quest. Of course, it's nearly impossible to discover where this tunnel is located unless, in a previous game, you discovered that and took note.

Yeah... I was thinking of the magicka shard. But, I suppose, in hindsight my fighter (who leaned in the paladin direction) could have used that for healing spells. with my mage it just seems to make more sense... a buff for magicka (obviously useful), a buff for health (useful because I don't increase it at level up), and a buff for stamina (useful for the same reason the health buff is). If you're a fighter, your health and stamina are already peaking, or should be, and magicka isn't always used. So, it would seem a bit redundant and irrelevant at the same time.


I'm not sure if I totally agree with your breakdown... and choosing to become a vampire, a cannibal, a blood-thirsty assassin, a helper of some of the more vicious Daedra gods and performing their objectively evil quests, being given plenty of "opportunity" to make evil (or simply immoral) decisions through random encounters, and choosing to be a total jerk to people asking for your help certainly should bump up your 10% evil quotation. I'm able to play my evil mage fine... he's a piece of work, he even disgusts me.

See now, the last mage I played was practically made out of paper. A whopping +30 to HP really didn't do much for her survival. And Stamina? Sure it was useful when sprinting, but that was really the only time she used it. So the +30 magicka was the only one I found useful.

You mean you didn't find yourself sprinting as a mage? I'm always sprinting when I get into trouble... I'll summon something then sprint to get away from whatever is attacking me and get behind some cover while I pick a strategy. 30 HP is a lot when you don't pump anything into health as well. If my health is at 120, that extra 30 HP is a 25% bonus! That can be the 30 HP that sets the balance between life and death when you take a surprise arrow to the head from a Falmer or bandit... or a bite from a Saber Cat.

Sure, I sprinted from time to time. But I could also find amulets that were more useful more often. So I didn't wear it very long.

Because if the college of winterhold were happy to let anyone waltz into their off limits research site, that would be an inconsistency no? If you had to complete entire questlines to complete the MQ, that would be an example of being forced to do something. This is an overlap of questlines, hardly a new facet in games like this, and handled in a believable fashion.

If anything, maybe they should allow one to break/sneak in? Yeah, that's an oversight there I spose. I'll give you that. Don't get me wrong, I know I sound a little heated at times but it is an interesting point you've made and I'm trying to think of things from beths point of view. I like game design debates lol

You mean The Midden, which I have mentioned before in this thread and people still argued that it wasn't valid

I sadly totally agree This really is main streamed I just put on my Twitter that this is one step forward but five steps back, I am not expecting much from these games, I know not to in terms of story but IDK just everything to me seems to be going down hill, I kinda hate living in a fantasy world for a few hours or less (now) at a time when the world isn't even very realalistic *everyone knowing who you are even if you have a helmet covering your whole face, good things mattering and making a impact than "immoral", everything outside of story mode or main guilds quests really matterin)

What do you mean> Maybe I worded it wrong with the word evil but imho its true the DB quests are small and feel more like a work type thing instead of really going out and assassinating people, or being a vampire and so on and so on it just seems like there are more good choices with Consequenses...


As in when I do something good , whatever it is I feel a impact in the world because people noticed yet when I kill thousands of people even if I pay off my bounty I don't see anything change in the game at all!

Does that make sense? I can go become a serial killer and no one would know or they wouldn't care anymore as soon as I paid off my bounty :/

The problem is, the game forces you to initiate the mage's questline in order to complete the MQ and forces you to begin the mage's questline in order to complete a totally separate quest which chances are you're already halfway through. The simple answer would be to access the college and speak to people about stuff to do with quests and enquire about actually joining if that's what you want to do. Which would be a helluva lot more realistic. But this does not fit 'it's there so we assume you wish to do it' philosophy.

Another quest that irks me is blood on the ice. One time I was playing a self-interested assassin/thief whose game was built around being a bit of a psycho. They enter Windhelm to perform an assassination and BOTI triggers. When it triggers, it gives you no option to say 'sorry - not interested' - the choice you have is either start the quest or click out of dialogue whereupon a set of NPCs will stay rooted to the same spot forever waiting for you to start the quest - come back in a game year's time and they'll still be there, with no option to reject the quest. Why did I want to solve a murder when I was in town to perform one? From my character's perspective, somebody else going round killing people was both an ideal distraction from their own deeds and something they weren't bothered about, being a mass murderer themselves. But once the quest triggers, the game simply assumes you will do that quest and will wait until you do.
Of course you can imagine reasons why your character might choose to do it, but in that case you're simply creating rationalisations for being railroaded into doing something you don't want to - or else have a crowd of NPCs who desperately try to get you to play along each and every time you get close to them. It's shoddy writing.

I think the problem there is they're frightened people will throw their toys out their pram if they have to face real consequences. i mean, if you murder someone, you should at the very least get banned from shopping in the shop their spouse has taken over even after you've paid your bounty, right? But Bethesda seem driven to not allow the player to cut themselves of from anything however much their behaviour may deserve it. Yet they published New Vegas in which players were free to break quests willy nilly by being able to kill nearly everyone in the game and render large parts of the gameworld hostile by upsetting the NCR and people seemed to manage.
I once did a psycho playthrough of New Vegas that became practically impossible to continue because I'd killed all the vendors except the unkillable gun runners robot and nearly everyone hated me. It was great - i broke the game and it punished me for making that choice. Skyrim babysits you and won't let you mess up your game because they're frightened it will upset players. And that's why nothing you do matters. It doesn't matter if everyone hates you - they'll still let you shop in their stores and still let you do their quests. You can still become thane of a hold after blatantly murdering half of its population in cold blood, as long as you've got the cash to pay the bounty.

Couldn't have said it better and really this svcks, I really hate there are no real effects to being bad-evil-immoral (whatever you want to call it) in the game,they need to stop all this handholding just for the sake of the game getting more sales..I say this cuz it seems like such a streamlined move on Beth's part and when streamlining is involved it normally allows people not used to the game to play it, thus more people playing = more sales :/ I really hate this whole "MONEY MONEY MONEY!!! Lets ditch awesome sounding game design choices for money, lets ditch long time fans for money!!yeeppiieeeee!!"

Someone made the point in an earlier thread that, back in the days of Morrowind, before Oblivion was released, people were complaining that there were too many of those consequences. Kill a major quest provider? No more quests. Kill an important person in a guild questline that you need to complete a quest? Sorry, bub, it's over. One of the "necessary" NPCs just randomly disappears (happened all of the time, I remember), game over... and you don't know how far back you lost him. There are two sides of that blade and I presume Bethesda chose the side that offended the least amount of people.