Oh yes I remember those days they were fun but frusterating and yes I agree with that n why they are unkillable now but it just seems they could keep the unkillable NPCs or make them killable and another random NPC that they have in coding like take its place or something (long lost brother perhaps?) and even than they could have done it better so much better with several things imho.

And the proper response to that is, "Stop killing every random stranger you stumble across." Not, "Oh yeah, you make totally reasonable points. Let's make 90 percent of the population immortal."

Or something along those lines I mean I for one like killing anyone I see and think I can handle, and if they made NPCs killable like quest givers except a few to beat the game than they could have done that and just had unlimited amount of back ups like I said before, who is to say the King doesn't have a son who hides in his basemant till he dies and everyone goes around praising him instead?Easy hell they don't even have to have people say his name incase you kill him you know?

This.

I'm currently running two characters, and I RP very heavily with every character I start.

My first is a Dunmer Vampire Assassin. I've just completed the DB quests, and am in the process of eliminating my 'predatory competition' from the game (i.e., I'm a Vampire eliminating other Vampires). This character has zero interest in the College of Winterhold, the Companions, and only partial interest in the Thieves Guild just to use their network of Fences.

This character is all about the Dark Brotherhood, and has the secret goal of turning the city of Markarth into his own personal Necropolis.

My second character is a Dunmer Vampire Mage who is an Assassin, but this character is only interested in the Dark Brotherhood and the College of Winterhold. He ignores all other Factions, and explores dungeons and crypts only as a means of funding.

Bethesda keeps including all of the different variations of content to give you as much to do as possible. this way you actually have the choice to live another life, in another world, exactly as you want to live it.

You don't have to do anything if you don't want to. That's one of the beauties of this game series.

The worst part is I think it's cod economics. Casual gamers will always be casual gamers and they'll casually game. So some people will race through the game and try to 'beat it' as fast as they can. As long as they can run through the game and have fun, they're happy. What sets TES apart and what gives it its edge in terms of the competition is it has a history of very large scale immersive open world gaming. Replayability is a key marketing theme here because it's something the punters genuinely like and the more hardcoe fanbase producing endless mods and making videos they stick on youtube provides the kind of viral marketing and brand awareness you simply cannot buy. Hell, Todd was bragging about the average hours played clocked by Steam in the gamejam video, so they obviously ascribe importance to the amount of playtime people put in - that makes sense because if you put 500 hours into Oblivion, it's very, very likely you were interested in buying Skyrim. And if you've already put 80 hours+ into Skyrim, iyou're going to be wanting to purchase the DLC. Much as I gripe about Skrim it's hooked me enough to put a lot of hours into it, so i will therefore certainly purchase the DLC in the expectation it'll be good value for money in the expenditure/gametime equation. It's just common sense - the more time the punters are playing for, the more likely they'll come back for more. Then the more buzz your game generates and the more it stands above the competition as a game that's worth buying. No matter how slick your marketing, gamers are ultimately going to listen to each other as much as anything else.
Gamers are quite consistent in saying they appreciate open worlds reacting to them - i've never seen anybody saying they don't want that and a common gripe is it doesn't do it enough. Replayability is enhanced by 'right last time I did it this way, next time I'll do it that way' rather than outside the open world structure the game is basically running on rails with the only choice ever being kill this guy/don't kill this guy. Because once you've seen all the content, you're probably going to start getting bored because you're seeing the same stuff you saw before - the trick is to make it so that content changes in simple ways that can have a dramatic effect on gameplay so it stays fresh. The problem is I think there's an assumption gamers are stupid and, like with so other things, the lowest common denominator is given priority in the assumption the dumbest buy the mostest. But people aren't stupid. If you walk down the street and punch someone in the face for no reason, you will likely face consequences for doing so - I think people can cope with games behaving the same way. I'd suggest they actually like it when games do that.
Hell, mods invariably try to add more stuff to present greater layers of realism and complexity within the available constraints, not 'streamline' everything - you'd think Bethesda would notice this.

If somebody vanishes, I assume that's a bug and that's something to be fixed.

If you go round killing non hostile NPCs, that's your problem. Like if you're following a guild questline, what sort of idiot goes round killing its members and not expecting issues? I think the problem is, Bethesda end up offending more people by pandering to a minority who can't grasp the concept that giving you the freedom to kill people doesn't mean it's necessarily a good idea. If you break a quest by arbitrarily killing a friendly NPC, I'd call that a learning experience.

I agree that if you go around just indiscriminately whacking NPC's, then any inability to complete a quest line directly falls on the player. But if you were paying attention, not even three months ago you hade people just crying because they sold off their Thieves Guild armor, not realizing they'd need at least one piece of it later, and then they couldn't finish the quest line. Or people wailed like banshee's about how they killed someone and couldn't finish a quest.

Apparently these same people couldn't believe that Bethesda would ever put actual, real consequences into the game. These are also some of the people that you could tell that they had never really played Morrowind. They'd have known that this was even more of a danger back then.

People want all of the freedom the game can possibly deliver, but they don't want to have to face any of the consequences for those actions. You can't have it both ways.

The armour thing is kind of a fair point because it's reasonable for the player to not expect a major consequence for selling something given to them - even though you can easily get more just by looking around a bit, it's ironic one of the few consequences is a badly thought out one. I guess they assumed people want to collect everything.

If you kill someone, then you made the decision to kill them. Unless the game leads you to kill them in some way, I have no sympathy whatsoever as I think people complaining loudly when they can't deal with an open world having any consequences and being listened to is a big problem in terms of the direction of the franchise. When they start having essential NPCs all obver the place it breaks the game in other ways - you simply cannot go on the rampage in Skyrim because half the NPCs simply will not die and keep getting up to attack you again.

The nore Bethesda listen to these people, the more they'll 'streamline' until by the next game the only choice you'll have is what order you do things in - which they're very, very close to now.

Well, the problem was that, with Morrowind, you didn't know who was going to be important and who wasn't. So, as you know, many times you could do something to someone that would cause them to attack you... and, naturally, you aren't thinking, "I'd better run from this guy because I might need him for a quest later", when you don't see a difference between him and Adam. So, naturally, you're going to kill him. That was a common complaint with Morrowind, so it's not like people were just playing the game stupidly. In other words, they didn't "dumb it down" like you're implying, they took away the opposite possibility that actually pissed people off a lot more (because there was no return from that point).

You may think it's "impossible" to be stupid enough to accidentally kill an important NPC, but, believe me, it wasn't.

You're assuming that those who complained about losing or killing important NPCs did it because they were running around killing people indiscriminately. If they were, then your beef would be appropriate... but most of them weren't.

Not necessarily. They could have been attacked and killed by wildlife while you weren't looking.

If it was a main quest NPC you got a warning. It sounds like there other important NPC's you can accidently kill and not get a warning? I only have a few hundred hours into Morrowind (split between three characters) so I have just scratched the surface of that game.

Yeah, if they aren't MQ NPCs but are important for other quests, sometimes you don't get the warning.

Edit: Actually, I even recall once where I had accidentally gotten into a fight with a MQ NPC and wasn't given the warning until after I killed him. It svcked because my previous save had been like an hour and half after bartering, riding a silt strider, and doing a bunch of other tedious but necessary things. I was yelling deep inside "NOOOOOOoooooo!!!". I'm sure that's happened to a lot of people.

Beware of the bunnys... They are the true threat.

You're given a choice to pursue a character that does everything.

I don't think Morrowind even had any bunnies.

I'm not assuming anything. I'm just regurgitating what I've read in other people's posts...

Ok... my bad.

This might not technically be a bug, but it's clearly not the intention. Morrowind's characters are very static. It is only through some rare accident that a creature gets close enough to attack.

Requiring a player keep specific armor to complete a quest only makes sense if the armor itself is a requirement for completion. Thieves guild armor was never a necessary component for quest completion except when Bethesda arbitrarily demanded it. That's poor consequence.

But it happened from time to time.

Don't worry about it, bro. We're cool.

I've never played Morrowind, but if it's that easy to get into a fight with an important quest related NPC, surely that's a writing issue? In Skyrim, there's no real reason to get into a fight with quest related NPCs unless you start attacking them, but half of them are still essential anyway.

They have the problem of dragon attacks, but to my mind it would have been a lot more realistic if non guard NPCs were scripted to retreat indoors if a dragon appears. I find it kind of ironic Beth's (rather well done) live action trailer showed the opposite of what happens in the game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiWX8X9sFy0
It should have shown blacksmiths and old ladies queuing up to take on the dragon

Right. My point, though, is NPCs were made immortal to prevent players from killing essential NPCs, not to protect them from the wildlife. The latter can be accomplished just as easily without removing the player's ability to kill whoever they wish.

It's not so much a writing issue as much as the Dunmer in Morrowind are arrogant D-bags. they talk down to you the whole game, assume that you're the lowest common denominator in whichever city you happen to be in, and even if you out-rank them they talk to you like you're inbred. So it's easy to get annoyed enough to just start randomly attacking the populace.

*sigh*

I love the Dunmer. My absolute favorite character race.

It might've been a bug, a malarial mosquito for example