I'm on my third playthrough, and trying to play a good mage... kinda Gandalf-esque. I just got through a side quest that left me pissed off once again. This one was where Cicerro has broken down and the farmer didn't want to help him. At this point in the story I don't know who Cicerro is... he's just a nut-job jester to me and he wants help. The problem I have is that now I have yet another quest with no "good" outcome. Too many of the quests in this game leave a bad taste in my mouth every time I try to be good. Try to do good and the game makes you do lie cheat or steal just to get the "good deed" done. It's quite unstatisfying.

Here we go again..../sigh. I am so happy we get "evil" quests, but I wish there were "good" quests for the folks who wish to do what they believe is
good."

If you want to complain go to general

You could, you know just talk to the farmer like I did. no harm, no foul

I think it's very possible to play a "good" character but you need to think outside of the box. For one, you have to actually NOT accept quests from obviously evil psychopaths or deranged demon lords.

I appreciate it's not like Bioware in which every single outcome has a "good" outcome because, in real life, good people are those who try and make the best decision between a number of bad outcomes.

If it helps, this just means the Dragonborn is usually doing good if he's not assisting the Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild, or "evil" Daedric Princes. You may lose a little content but that's how roleplaying works sometimes.

Skyrim's a savage world, yo.
Hard to prance around in a set of lightly-armored goody two-shoes while everyone else is smashing in skulls and devouring brains.

Helping Cicero isn't a bad thing, considering your character doesn't know who he is. Nor should your character ever find out. His real identity should never bother your character at all, because they will never know.

Here's my character. He's an Imperial Sorcerer/Warrior who is the nicest guy anyone will meet. He delivers letters for sick children, recovers stolen property, and only occasionally engages in a bit of petty theft for drunks who need some good whiskey.

Oh and if you're a bandit or evil wizard - HE WILL END YOU.

Heh. My girls LIKE you.

I play a good high elf mage but from time to time I will use random farmers as bait for dragons so I can kill the dragon while they are distracted on a farmer/noble/random person. i also CANNOT stand Forsworn or the evil daedra. and that is not for RP purposes I really dont like them.
also since i am starting to test out conjuration so whenever the random traveler gets killed by the dragon I raise them up as zombies so far im stil using destruction because conjuration is boring to me

Heh, I keep a no-RP character (who also used all the smithing/enchanting/alchemy tricks, so she's ridiculously OP as well) for the purpose of doing all the quests. I usually do new quests I find on that one first to see which of my RP characters will be doing those quests.

This may be a silly way of playing the game, but it helps me avoid nasty surprises.

Not silly at all. I do similar, though I know there are some questlines NONE of my toons will do.

Hmm, funny.

This was the same discussion in Oblivion... only that there were complaints about there being too much "good" and not enough "evil".

Most people don't like to be railroaded one way or another, and would like the option to be "good" or the option to be "evil" in whatever situation they find themselves in. I think this is a reasonable request.

Yeah, take the infamous "House of Horrors" quest. There should have been an option to **** them both over somehow.

A good, evil, and neutral quest option.

Of course, balance in choices or playstyle is essential in an RPG, I personally think Skyrim's is a pretty realistic (in fantasy, I know, absurd) world where not everything is "good", and I like it. But at the same time I agree its somewhat hard to RP a purely good character, with th length of the "good" factions not helping at all.

But I was, of course only pointing out the irony in the discussions from then and now, never meant to insult or flame anyone.

Think of Skyrim as "morally dark grey".

Eh, it's better than real life by a fair margin. Still, a lot of times there's no good options because the only thing there is to make a choice. Imperial or Stormcloak, as one bard at the college says - no one will give a damn in a century - the Dragons are what matter.

Maybe a request to sticky this subject is in order , but I'm not sure they'd really be inspired to sticky a thread expressing people's disappointment in the game. So these threads keep being made and lost in the shuffle is all. And yeah , I start games like these with a character I consider the "trailblazer" does everything possible in the game so my other ventures can be planned out way better. I think it's more of a common practice than most will come here and say anything about.

There's a complete mixed-up message in the game , you have to help people to become Thane of X city , but you can butcher your follower for a piece of armor with questionable benefits etc. Guess that's kinda like real america where there's beer billboards everywhere with half-naked women on them and then we're supposed to tell our kids all that is bad for them. Skyrim is emulating reality a little too well possibly.

It's just how gamers are conditioned - they assume they have to do every quest and feel cheated when they can't. At the very least, I wanted options to tell off people.

Some of us are just borderline OCD and like our quest list to only contain things we have some intention of doing (in the old journal format--like in Morrowind--I didn't have this issue. Go figure.) or just forgetful, which isn't helped by the relative lack of info you're given about a quest in the entry itself (so you might forget that this is one you decided not to do). Somebody in another thread about this issue said they can't let us delete quests because then the forums would be full of "help i acidently dleted main quest!" (spelling intentional) but MMOs manage to allow the canceling of only the non-essential quests and won't let you delete "Main Story" type quests, so I don't see how a feature like this (or at least an option to hide them) couldn't be implemented.

What bothers me is that it's too easy to initiate certain quests without realizing they're going to lead to an evil outcome. How was I supposed to know that agreeing to help a Vigilant of Stendarr investigate a haunted house would lead to murdering someone? In Oblivion, daedric quests were obtained by visiting the daedric shrines, so if you didn't want to do a quest for Boethiah or Molag Bal, you would simply stay away from their shrine. You don't have to finish the quests, of course, but I hate having my journal cluttered by entries for quests I know I'm not going to complete.

Yeah.

Honestly, it's kind of fun to "fail" the quests here by murdering the Priest of Boethiah or decapitating the scholar who had you fill the Lexicon after he claims credit for murders and plagues.

in oblivion you also had deadra to kill besides the bandits etc
so saying skyrim is harder is not true at all
and in oblivion is meant something to play the good person
in every town you went to you knew if you were good or bad as the npc's would comment about you
they did not like you if you played an evil character.
in skyrim it has no meaning at all