one day i hope we will get the option to destroy the world or at least a big chunk of it, being evil can be fun

Well, you are the Archmage, but Tolfdir is the Master Wizard. So essentially it's the same relationship between Mirabelle Ervine and Savos Aren. Savos IS the archmage, but he is too busy with his own matters to look after the college; that is Mirabelle's job. So you ARE the Archmage, but you're too busy saving the world for other people to have enough spare time to look after the college. Same with the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood, you have Delvin Mallory and Nazir to look after the place when you're gone .It would be nice if with a new and improved Radiant AI and Radiant story we could have more NPC interactability once you are the leader of a guild.

For example, when you are leader of the Dark Brotherhood, you get a special letter from someone, kind of like a bonus sidequest after completing the faction questline. ETC

Yeah I only wanted to become janitor of winterhold but those darn respawning items and npcs reporting me for picking up thier items spoils that.

This is more or less the same as the complaints about a decade ago regarding boss fights in platformers, it's a nessarcery "evil" without conflict, danger and you being a part of that there is simply no game. You don't want to be head of the thieves guild then don't, the controller is in your hands not the games but if you want to take that a step further and say remove Alduin, the Eye of Magnus, Thalmor and Nocturnal from the game you're only removing what choice and impact you can actually have within the game, which already isn't great. Would you really like to play TES:VI Morrowind, you can wander a wrecked place doing nothing, there is no danger, nothing to save and no plot.

Sure there are ways round it, Fallout you don't really "Save the world", in new vegas you barely have an impact period, much to my dissappointment finding my choice was railroaded into the same wall as the other. But there is a threat and something to deal with. Bastion took it another way, you're lied to thoughout the game saying your doing what is needed to "save the world" but you cannot, still the threat and objective exists and it needs to.

I'd suggest if you are that sick of being needed in a world that you avoid mainstream RPG's for at least another decade, even then it'll be a common theme. I don't see how tripping over the "save the world" switch as your mopping up sick would make for a better option, or how being no different from belethor at the store would either. Might be cliche but whether your unique, have a higher calling or just fall into these things all amount the the same thing. Although being given an honourary position of the guilds would make more sense, you helped them out so much but you need to be elsewhere being the most useful person around surely they don't want you to stand round doing paperwork and flinging spells at a wooden board.

actually... yes i am tired of saving the world. Mass Effect, Oblivion, Fable, Fable II, Skyrim, Jade Empire(kind of), Dragon Age Origins and II. Can i please just get dropped in a game as me so i can play however i feel without having to become a cliche?

yeah this was the case in oblivion also I personally like the idea of using radiant AI when your the leader ironically I was thinking about it right before I read your post

ex: you know when you see the companions fighting beasts or the theifs getting attacked how about before you go Into a cave you see a group from that faction and there like we were sent to attack so and so, will you assist us? or we want to study these ruins could you clear them out? or you find an assassin running from guards and you can save him. things like these would be really cool

if your referring to the gameworld,in FNV i had FAR more impact on the game world than any other game ive played with the exceptioin of RTS games or minecraft. while you werent stopping the world from being destroyed by dragons (real original idea there bethesda) you were stopping the advancement of the legion from taking over one of the last remaining cities of the old world......or helping the legion, or helping house or even helping yourself. thats a hell of a lot more impact than skyrim or any TES game offered. if you referring to the world as in the immediate area of vegas versus the entire earth well then yes.


for skyrim specifically the navy seals that hunted down and kill terrorists like bin laden and others do extremely important work (quests) for the navy (guild) and yet they arent automatically made admirals or the president or even senators or some other political leaders. they might promoted up in rank and given some extra leave time and a bonus or something. even though they might have very well had more of an impact on the world stage than an admiral. they are not automatcially made leaders just because they did what they did. people that assume that you are made the head of some organization automatically just because you do something important or even awesome clearly havent been out in the real world that much. thats not even close to how it really works. the fallout games were much better in this regard and gave you the appropriate reward and rank but did not hand over control of their entire organization to a complete stranger. that is just silly.

people also forget that without Tulfdor you would not have been able to complete the quest at all so he was just as important if not more so than your character. i forgot who helped in the fight with a certain asshat of a high elf later on (might have beenTulfdor or archmage cant remember) but they also were just as indespensible and you would not have succeeded without them.

for the college you should get a nicer room, access to the archmage quarters so you can gather the ingredients (although if you go at night he should be cranky and kick you out) and maybe some nice gear, but thats it.

maybe after you do all if not most of the sidequests and a bunch of miniquests AND you were actually a mage character that mastered in at least one school and was expert in several others THEN i could see being an archmage. but not till after you have done buttloads of work for them and spent alot of time with them and actually had magic skills.

the suggestion that you avoid having to save the world by not doing quests is just dumb. i dont have an issue avoiding the main quest but if i dont want lead a guild i have to avoid doing around 20+ quests and not being able to get those rewards or dealings with certain NPCs.

I completely agree with you. And in most cases you cant avoid/choose to be the leader or not if you havnt done the quests for the guild before.

SPOILER ALERT



Such as the mages guild everyone has been using as an example. Nobody besides the developers know on your first playthrough how many quests you have to go through to become leader. I didnt know when we attacked the Eye of Magnus Savos Aren and Marebelle would get killed making me the only person qualified. I always join the mages guild when I rp a mage because it seems the obvious decision if I want to learn spells. Brynolf got to not become leader by his choice and Im sure they went to the mage teacher before me and he refused but I dont get a choice. Id rather go out and keep doing quest and lvling up until I feel I earned the position (from an RP standpoint). Just saying "if you didnt want to be such and such just avoid it" is a halfassed answer to a real problem in these games that wont solve anything IMHO. Might as well not say anything.

See my post above: NWN2: MOTB, NWN2: SoZ, NWN2: MoW, DA:2. You don't save the world in any of these, but you do in NWN2 w/o expansions. Then you can start talking about the GTA series which are arguably ARPGs (or rather story driven over-the-shoulder shooters). GTA:IV wasn't bad at all if you're into that sort of thing.

Honestly? No, not really. Been doing it for 30 years now, having a blast.


(Now, on the topic of guilds, yes - it's way too easy to become guild master in Skyrim, and even having the option to become guild master seems irrational.... that's a position that requires both lots of political maneuvering, and decades of practice in actually "mastering" the skills the guild is focused on. Some random wandering adventurer, even if she helps solve some major problems for you, has no business being the guildmaster.)



This part confuses me. You don't? How odd. I certainly did.



That's one that I'm not really on board with. I get enough "just an cog" in real life. When I play games, I play them for Adventure!? and escapism. I've never really seem the attraction of playing Joe Nobody the Unimportant.

I think someone on the first page said it best when they commented on how Daggerfall and MW did it better than Oblivion and Skyrim. The quest starts off small as a minor little disturbance that half of the people (who don't know it's the main quest) will pass right on by. Like you, I have no problem being the great hero. My only problem with it is in the last two TES games, is that pretty much right away you are pointed towards the Main Quest and told how urgent it is. Sure you don't have to listen but it will always be in the back of your mind. "I'm avoiding saving the world. I'm the chosen one and I am supposed to save the world because I was told so."

Heck, even FO:3 did it quite a bit better as far as it starting off small and building into something larger. At the beginning of the game you aren't aware of the Enclave, the BoS, or what your dad was doing. You just wanted to find your father.

The next TES sequel should allow the player to play as an evil character or an heroic champion!

Personally for the main quest I like the idea of saving or (maybe giving you the dialogue to go evil and enslave it) I think for the main quest of most RPGs you almost have to make it something epic, but maybe a better reason to get it all started. Fable II for lack of a better example has you going out for revenge, but then before you get to exact that, you end up destroying the spire and saving the world, then you get your revenge (not really a great game, but had a good plot line to it). However, I 100% agree that either the guild quests either need to take a lot longer or not end with you becomming the leader. Heck the companions Quest line is completely screwed up if you think about it... 1 radient quest and then Farkas and you go on the initiation test, then 1 more radient quest and they want to induct you into the circle (really... I have just become an official member... now you want to bring me into the most trusted part of your organization???) Then from there a few more radient and a few more named quests and BAM you the harbinger.... I think it should have ended with getting inducted into the circle, that would have made sense (also it would give you the choice as to accept the gift or not). From there if they wanted to make you the leader, it could have been added on in a DLC. Now with you being the leader of the guild it makes it harder (and therefore less likely) that they will expand on these questlines.

Perhaps the OP would rather play The Sims

--Randall

I've always thought that too (although continuity becomes a big issue there). What if instead of fighting with the Blades against the Mythic Dawn in the sewers, I backstabbed the Emperor and took the Amulet for myself, lusting after the power I would receive from serving Mehrunes Dagon? It would be such an interesting alternative.

A cliche is something that is overdone and tripe. The main conflict of almost all games is saving the world. That doesn't mean it's overdone, that should illustrate to you that is an essential part of the experience.

I really don't want to type up a wall of text to explain this, but essentially all games follow this formula because it's what's needed to even have a game. There must be accomplishment. There must be progression. And ultimately, there must be a climix- a point wherein you BEAT the game.

Have you ever tabletop gamed? Have you ever played an RPG wherein you were not the hero? Or if the villain, you strove to take over a land, crush your enemies, etc? The entire game is built around you finding adventure, seeking lost objects, gathering your strength and increasing your stats so you can take on bigger challenges and ultimately WIN.

Yes, in the TES games, they leave the world open so you can continue to play in the sandbox. But they didn't spend 5 years creating this game with no ultimate endpoint in mind. They gently nudge you in the direction of the main quest all the time.

If you don't want to 'end' the game, that's your decision. But to complain that there's an endgame, and it's 'saving the world again' makes no sense.

The reason they don't offer that choice now is game lore. All of these games are in the same world, separated by time. Your exploits in Morrowind are recorded, as were your achievements in Oblivion. Multiple outcomes would not make it easy to create another TES game. How would the game know which path you chose? It would make hardcoe RP'ers really upset if they chose the evil path, only to play the next TES game and the history wrote it up as the good outcome instead, or vice versa.

True, but they can just as easily say that the lore is based around path X of each game. That's what Mortal Kombat has done since the 90s and I know they don't have nearly as deep of lore but they still have it and it is still intact and people know what happened because they specifically tell us what actually happens. For example:

Liu Kang's Ending of MK1 states that he defeats Shao Khan and saves the world
Raiden's ending says he turns the tournament into a battle of the gods and the earth is destroyed.

Only one of those makes sense as there was a sequel so the developers just decided "Hey, let's pick the parts of the story that make sense and have continuity and build from there."

And the entire thing works flawlessly. I know it still isn't the best answer but it's a good example. All they have to do is put info in the next game that says or hints at the actual true story.

That works because the fans of that series don't use the backstory or lore as incentive or tools of immersion in the play experience. It's a fighting game. It only has a plot to give the player the vaguest notion of being a 'good guy' or 'bad guy'. And I'm not mocking their fanbase by saying this ( at least I hope not).

I'm sure you have seen on this very forum how the fans nitpick every small detail of the game world, and make declarations daily on how "The way forks look is RUINING THE GAME, FIX IT!!!!one". That's an exaggeration of course, but you get the idea

KotOR2 did a pretty good job finessing this, I thought. In the beginning you are given an opportunity through dialog to specify whether your character from game 1 was male or female. I suppose a similar approach could be taken with "good" and "evil."

Yes. I am sick of being the "chosen one" and "saving the world". Take the hint Beth.

Well, there could be NO main quest, and it could be a pure level,n,loot CRPG.

Man, wouldn't these forums just light up then....

Bang on. The "end of the world" crisis is shoved right down your gob at the very beginning of both Oblivion and Skyrim, making it difficult to not play the MQ. Again, take the hint Beth.

trust me they won't.

One of the biggest complaints with Morrowind was that many people didn't play the MQ becasue they simply didn't realise it was the MQ....that and the first quest involves finding a certain puzzle box that is really hard to find in a gaint ruin.

Bethesda have since taken that to heart and made the MQ super important from the beginning.


Actually, Skyrim does have a 'drop out point' when you exit the cave after Helgen, the NPC you are with will say "We should split up for now" and at the point the MQ hasn't been started, and you can make your own way throguh the world.

I enjoyed it so much! I really wanted it to be a much more 'in-depth' way of military ranking. It seemed more like the cliche "special forces" deals once you got toward the end of the quest line of either side. Not too mention--I really would've enjoyed slaying either Ulfric Storm-[censored] or the General myself (if playing from the other lines)--or even an (in the mix of it all) double agent type of deal too. That would've made me happier in that quest line. It was great... to a certain point. From there, it just went downhill o.<

No.

And the assumption seems to be that defeating Alduin is a heroic thing to do, but the mq itself refutes that, and there are still dragons attacking everywhere. All you do is kick the can down the road. It's not very heroic, no matter what people say about it.