Hello everyone, I am new here.

I sent an email to Bethesda requesting what I'm about to say, and they recommended that I come here.

Unlike Morrowind and Oblivion, I dont have this game on the PC (it wont run it...i need a new one) So I have it on the xbox, which means I can not make mods. but hear me out, this is something I am sure everyone will agree with.

Anyhow, please, Bethesda, could you adjust NPC's dialouges to change depending on your status? Many people have commented on how Guards still think you're new to the Companions and that you must fetch the mead, despite the fact you are the Harbinger and leader of the inner circle....what utter cheek!

Dirge in the thieves guild also keeps refering to you as the guildmasters buddy, and that he'll 'smash you skull in if you step out of line' despite the fact you ARE the guildmaster and that every one else knows that you're their boss...You'd think his attitude would get him fired...or much, much worse.

Also, people are complaining about the number of NPC's who are marked as 'essential' and thus, can't be killed. They say the game is meant to be about 'complete freedom to do what you want', yet you cant even kill a rude person; for example, the rude man who works at the treasury house in Malakath (who i found isn't part of any quest at all, but is still unkillable)

I also found that with the Civil war quests, once you win the war, you're asked to eliminate the remaining reminants (camps) where you find them;however, I found that the captains of the camps can't be killed.

I also found that the exiled people from the civil war can't be killed, as I found their nasty, borderline death-threat remarks very annoying.

Please may I suggest that you remove all NPC's 'Essential' label, and if you do kill someone who is needed, a message comes up stating that the quest they are tied to is now failed, unless you allready completed the quest and could not stand their rude behaviour anymore, in which case....it's "open season!", and if you kill a NPC who IS needed for the main quest, the message "the prophecy is severed, reload your game ot continue in a doomed world".

People have said that some characters are "essential" because if a dragon attacks, they could die...but this could be easilly fixed by having all the townspeople run indoors when a dragon does attack. What is more logical? (a) a dragon attacks and the guards yell for everyone to get inside while they and the dragonborn deal with it, or ( b ) have the townspeople have a FIST FIGHT with an ancient dragon?!?! who promptly incinerates or freezes them instantly?

Also, you wont believe just how many gamers in the world utterly refuse to kill Paarthunax (look it up, web forums are filled with pro-Paarthunax people), stating, that not only do they like dragons (I have a great love for them) and that not only does he admit that he was wrong in the past and now seeks redemption, forgiveness and penance from the gods for his past sins but he also meditates . he also won many people over with his line "What is better? to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature with great effort?" indicating that nobody's perfect and that overcomming your past wrongs is far more good than assuming that you're perfect from the very begining.

The Blades have absolutely no logic to their reasons, and their petty, childish, hate harbouring 'kill him or we wont help you...I dont care that he saved the world ...kill him" makes you want to kill THEM for their genocidal ways, but they are essential.

If I could request, could you make it so you can kill the Blades, but if you do, Paarthunax tells you although he is humbled that you protected him, he is saddened that you used violence to do so. And Arngeir could say a variation of the same thing.

I also wish you could destroy the Thieves guild, jus tlike you did with the Dark Brotherhood; I am a man who HATES thieves, and I felt insulted that I couldnt kill the ones in the ratway. Yes, I know Vekel was needed to locate Esbern, but I had allready found him even before starting the main quest, and as for Delvin...well, lets say I play as a Dark Brotherhood character, who happens to hate thieves...I know Delvin is needed to upgrade the new hideout, but lets say, I have allready killed ALL of the thieves...in this case Nazir directs you to a random Darkbrotherhood associate who appears in one of the towns.

Also, should you wipe out both the Darkbrotherhood AND the thieves guild, the guards and people have different things to say....those who get work from the guild will now shy away, as they wont dare mess with you; Maven Black-briar, having lost both contacts will now pretend she never worked with them in the first place. Making harassing her so much damn fun, now that she has no protection any more.

Please Bethesda, fix the game and allow us to have complete freedom! I for one want to destroy the Thieves guild, Blades, those civil war camp captains who are currently unkillable, and the exiled people who do nothing but abuse you (why me? why not all other soldiers too?)

Other than this....exellent game!

agreed, 100%

essential characters are annoying, and more than half of the NPCs in skyrim are essential, makes me want to live out my life as a hermit faaaaaar away from anyone that i cannot utterly destory

While I want the essential status off as well it serves its purpose. It's there because of the dragons can swoop down upon them and kill the NPCs at anytime. However what I do object to is which of the NPCs are essential. For an example why is a drunk marked as essential when all he serves is just brawl after that he is useless. Also the NPCs that never leave outside of their house such as the Jarls and their servants and many more as well.

There are some that should be essential(Ulfric,Tullius,etc) but I agree that there is wayyyyyy to many essential NPC's in this game many who serve little purpose.

+1 to the OP.

I agree that some your points have validity.

Well, a adjustment of the characters 'script' can make it so if a dragon DOES attack, they will run indoors while the guards deal with the dragon.

I may love dragons, but if they were real, and a HOSTILE one attacked (who had no intention of reasoning), I wont run up to it and punch it, I'd get the smeg out of there and hide indoors!

The problem with non-essential NPCs is the world can kill them before you even know they exist. This is game breaking because the important quests were not designed to be completable without certain NPCs. In many cases this is sloppy quest design. For example, the start of the cvil war quests is a joke. You simply shouldn't be able to approach the leaders of either faction like you do. Assuming you make it to them, killing them should short-circuit the war in some way.

A possible compromise would be to have certain NPCs unkillable by the world, but killable by the player with the condition that it wrecks related quests. This is how Morrowind treated the essentials; if you killed them you got a message saying you doomed the world. In reality, this wasn't always true; as various YouTube vids show, you can beat the game in a matter of minutes with exploits in under 30 min and only meet about two NPCs along the way.

I edited the OP, and removed some posts that violate our forum rules. We have some topics we are just not going to discuss - even if "other games do it." Other than that, carry on your conversation - but please avoid implying- pretty overtly - that many gamers are idiots because the developer has decided some NPCs need to be essential. That's just rude.

I kinda wonder if they were doing you any favours as these posts tend to just get lost and you`ll be lucky if any Dev sees this or even pays attention.

Anyway, i think I get the gist of your post and also wish that everyone was not essential. If Bethesda did their job right, EVERY npc should be killable even if it screwed up the quest. It would be the Player`s responsibility to avoid doing something stupid by being sensible (killing the old man who said he knows how you can kill the Arch dragon is your own fault when you find you really did need the old man`s advice!) and if enough warning was given to the Player then it shouldn`t be too much of a problem.

Smart Devs would make really important NPCs VERY hard to kill, ie , heavy, heavy guard escort or make the entire town turn against the player or have the NPC somehow heavily protected or have some trick to `force` the Player not to kill him.

I agree, the system should go back to the way it was in Morrowind. Nobody was immortal and a warning message popped up when you killed someone essential.

Oh and give me the ability to drop quest items again too. Being stuck with items for quests I don't want to do (or have already finished) is extremely annoying.

Agreed. I'm not a programmer...but I'm pretty sure they can make it so that NPCs aren't killable by the world.

i soooooo agree........then i remembered all the people moaning and [censored]ing on the forums that because they killed someone for an early start of armor or just for the hell of it they wasnt able to do certain quests and finish guild quest because that person was no longer alive. To me, i have no problme whatsoever with that..yes ill have to restart but thats the really devoted fan who loves these games to death and plays them over and over...BUT alot of people are not like me they wanna play the game once and go thru it and experience everything or hardly anythign just to beat it and move on. And its to them as well of the "cant say what type of people" that do not want the consequences to be that severe to force them to replay or start over. And also the dragons as well

I am happy that a lot of you feel the same way as I do about this issue. The amount of unkillable NPC's who serve no purpose other than to just be there is silly.

Do the developers read the forums at all? I do hope they do this, as we can all agree that far too many non-essential NPC's are marked as essential when they shouldn't.

Take care everyone.

Instead of making it so npcs run into houses, just make it so that most formerly "essential" characters can only be killed by the player. I really don't see the point of so many essentials, especially since New Vegas got throughthe game with barely any, AND you could kill faction leaders before completing the quests and the world would respond to it. The leader of one of the two armies could be killed very early on in the game in New Vegas. Imagine going to whiterun and killing Ulfric on his throne. It would be EXTREMELY difficult, so that most people woild find it easier to do the questline normally, but still possible. That's similar to how it was done in Morrowond and New Vegas. Was it perfect? Heck no. Is it a much better system than Skyrim's? Definitely.

i also find this rather frustrating. i liked it how it was in morrowind where i was completely free and slayed every single person in the game on my nord....

One solution would be to spawn a relative of the dead NPC into the game whenever someone is killed. That relative could give or accept any necessary quests or keep the stores open.

I see what you did there.

Regarding essentials, as of 1.3.10 the setessential command does not seem to work, anyone can confirm this?

I think this would be better phrased as suggestions for the next game. You're not going to get new dialogue options - they're done with their recording sessions.

Which is a nice way of saying "We don't care, and won't be taking your suggestions, but you can [censored] about it on our forums if you'd like."

Pretty much, but isn't that what the fourms are for [censored]ing and moaning?

Ah fallout new vegas... You had so many elements that other games should use. but alas... they don't

I seem to be the only one who doesn't mind essential actors. Perhaps it's because I don't go around wantonly murdering people.

Essential actors make complete sense to me as a stroy-telling tool. For story's sake, there have to be limits on what the player can do, and limiting who they can murder is one of them. It would make no sense if you can duck behind a Jarl's throne and off them with a sneak attack.

There are a few "extraneous" essentials, true, but for the most part, those who are are suitably important: important political figures, important guild figures, and important quest-givers.

Face it: Morrwoind's method was really a cop-out; the death message, by prompting a reload, allowed Bethesda to avoid adding a reasonable reaction to the character's death. For example, have you killed the Archcanon, the head of the incredibly important Dunmer church, beloved by the people, well-known to the Temple hierarchy?

Doesn't matter. No one misses him.

Commit a rash and bloody deed by killing a king? No one in Mournhold cares if Helseth dies.

Further, Morrowind's method wasn't completely enclosed. If an actor died, it wouldn't properly terminate quests involving them, and people who really ought to know that so-and-so is six feet under still direct you to them as if they were still alive. It also still produced the message when an NPC's usefulness had finished.

But if you absolutely MUST kill people who mildly displease you, then by all means, feel free to input this into the developer console:

setINI "bEssentialTakeNoDamage:Gameplay" 0

And see how you like it when important people die without warning.


...And the SetEssential commands still works. Are you attempting to use it on actors aliased as essential, like Derkeethus, Calixto Corrium, or Eorlund Gray-Mane? These NPCs aren't essential by default, but the variables for the quests that they're involved in make them so. You'll have to stop the quest to change their status.