First my opinion. I have been playing TES since Morrowind and the guild questlines have gotten significantly shorter throughout the series. While it sometimes does make me not feel attached to the guild, or that I did not perhaps earn my position, I do think it is better than say morrowinds 28 missions with 24 of them being pointless 'retrieve this item' task. They need to find a better balance between the two though.

Anyways to make the guilds stretch I normally do a mission then go about exploring, sidequesting for awhile then come back. Rinse and repeat. After all there wouldn't really be that many things to do in one day. An of course no travel makes it more immersive.

While doing the DB i always did a contract or two between each main mission. It worked wonders! Everything felt so much better paced I did not fast-travel either.

When my character is doing a questline, she doesn't follow that line exclusively. She does other things in between quests like exploring and hunting or gathering Alchemy ingredients, or smithing, or bartering with merchants, etc. My girl does not feel the urgency to complete questlines. She likes to stop and smell the mountain flowers. I don't understand why some players feel the need to just hammer through quests. Is this a MALE THING? If it is, then I just have to admit that I don't understand it.

Not at all. I follow up certain questlines immediately after they've been assigned, for example
But a lot of quests I do as I please. I take my sweet time between the first actual TG mission and the next, because I feel it would take you some time to be asked for personally by that character. You have to make a name for yourself after all.

I tend to do quests back to back more as the questline comes to a close, because the level of urgency is increased the closer you are to finishing, and it doesn't make sense to sit around doing nothing at that point in the questline. Early on, you can take things as slow as you want, but afterwards they should be sped up a bit more.

I think this is the single biggest flaw with the game. I think the guild questlines in Oblivion were excellent. You start out at the bottom and work your way up, and the main quest is slowly revealed to you. In Skyrim not only are they much shorter but you're thrown into the main quest almost right from the getgo. It's a significant step backwards from the previous game. Maybe they thought the random quest generator would make up for it. It didn't.

What i usually try to do is reach a certian level before proceding through the questline. like i would have to reach level 5 before going to the college, then i would have to reach level 10 before going to the ruins

I agree completely. The companions is a perfect example. You would never been exposed as quickly to 'the wild side' in morrowind or oblivion.

Every "guild" questline has radient quests that you're free to do as many of as you wish. Anyone who chooses to do none and then complains that the quest line was too short simply gives me a headache. You can make them as long as you wish. Read that. What you want is for the developers to make it so that everyone has to make it as long as YOU wish.

I felt much more attached and connected to the Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion then in Skyrim.

I agree.

But some of the "guild main quests" should have been locked at least until you've reached a certain number of radiant quests -in my opinion - somehow to avoid the Oblivion/Morrowind "nostalgia"

In theory yes but 'radient' is not the main story line of the guild so it is not the same. I just want more story.

The last part is true though. It's hard to make something that everyone will enjoy and purchase

Yeah, the Companions progresses WAY to quickly. It's like you do 1 Radiant then a big quest then 1 radiant.. I feel like it should be 2-3 more radients and then a period of time when there is no work available, but then a Courier comes to you like "Oh hey, the Companions wanted you" or something.

I thought the Dark Brotherhood quest was taking forever at first.

Personally, when people say to just do other things in between the quests, I find it to be little more than a lame excuse for the short quests. Let's face it, when all is said and done, no matter how often you've stopped to smell the flowers or dilly-dallied along the way, it has absolutely zero impact on what you've accomplished. So when I reach the end of the questline and I look back to see what I have done, even if I did lots of quests in between the guild quests and walked everywhere, I still feel like I did very little and that I don't deserve the title of Guild Master.

I'm sorry, but it's just no substitute for actual substance. Which is something the guild quests lack.

Most people still don′t know it? Oh well, I will enlighten you all.

The "excuse" for the short guildquests is that they were added at the last moment. In the beginning, Todd and his team decided to stick with radiant quests only. Because they thought it wasn't fun enough in the end, they added a last moment questline to it. I prefer ANY kind of questline in the place of boring fetch quests or "go to that cave. Kill stuff. Report when finished" any day, so I'm just grateful they added the questlines.

As for the questlines, I don't like the epic scale of some questlines (looking at you, winterhold and mages guild). I don't want to save the world every guddamn guild I join. Fighters guild in Morrowind, Oblivion and the Imperial legion were pretty much the sweet spot for me. You start out as some rookie, and when you progress you'll get in touch with internal struggles or with other groups. I haven't done the thieves guild and dark brotherhood for Skyrim yet, so I can't say anything about them, although the dark brotherhood recruitment was rather interesting.

Maybe you mistook what I was trying to say. Im not making excuses but I have to Work with what I was given so best believe I'm going to get try to make it stretch. Though I agree I should not have to.

I've only done a couple of companion and TG quests. When I do them, I walk to wherever I'm going, often getting sidetracked by other small misc quests or forts/ruins/etc. Not fast traveling everywhere makes a huge difference.

Definitely does. I feel like I have more fun and have more stories exploring than doing questlines. While exploring is great and ultimately is why I love TES games I feel if they could do that good on random things they could do much better on questlines. After all to me questlines are made to A. Give you something to accomplishthe with direction
And B. To give you lore/immerse you in the game

Your logic is quite odd.

Doing the same radiant quests over, and over, and over, and over, and over again does not make the main guild quest line longer. Me doing the same small DB contracts here and there does not further the story between myself and my favorite Jester, me doing the same radiant quests over, and over, and over, and over, and over again simply has him standing in the same spot as I left him staring at his watch wondering where the eff I am.

Skyrim guilds definitely svck compared to Morrowind or even Oblivion factions. Nevermind that there are less things to join than in Morrowind, but each 'faction' is really just a glorified quest-line with some perks associated with it. There are no sub-plots, side-stories, or different branches/aspects to guilds, they just seem like a single, well-written 'quest line'. I felt that the Thieves Guild was okay because of its very cool/compelling story, but a lot of the missions ended up being dungeon-crawls, with little actual thievery involved. That's not appropriate - I should be able to do most of a 'Thieves Guild' quests with little to no combat, not devolve to the usual Draugr/Falmer bash-a-thon.

In Morrowind I can go sign up for the Imperial Legion, and before I know it I've solved a murder mystery and brought peace to the widow of the murdered, I've rescued a traveler from bandits, I've saved the livelihood of the town, and I've thwarted a conspiracy to assassinate the Emperor. Wow! Way to go Bethesda, I can't wait to drag myself from the tiny little Fort Darius and see what else is waiting for me.

If it had been a regular Skyrim guild I'd have been promoted to at least Commander of all the Vvardenfell Legions with a crappy leveled sword to show for it by that time. But wait! We couldn't stop there! Instead, we have the 'Skyrim Imperial Legion', or what I like to call the 'Single most disappointing major quest-line in TES history'. With generic rewards, few if any compelling characters, long, repetitive, poorly scripted quests killing enemies with as much skill and individuality the Stormtrooper corps. Only to have a crappy, somewhat illogical climix where I get told 'Thanks for all your help, Legate, now go leave us alone. Oh by the way, here is my 'personal' sword for your troubles. Yeah I know it's generic, randomly spawned, and I didn't even use it in the battle we just participated in but that's okay, Bethesda didn't care enough to make their 2nd biggest plot in the game worthwhile. Yeah, the one EVERY SINGLE NPC talks about all the time."

No, no, I understand that. My point is that they really don't "stretch," as you call it. I could do a dozen other quests in between each guild quest, walking the entire way (not running) and it won't make me feel as if I accomplished anything more. Because I haven't. I've just taken more time. Nothing more.

Which is exactly true. Walking from A to B instead of riding a horse, or fast traveling, doesn't mean I get to spend more time in conversation with my favorite Jester or learning about the history of the DB.

Agreed

Ravenius, I couldn't of said it any better

I know I'm free to make my own choices, but I wish there wasn't so much emphasis on the need to immediately do the next quest in the guild questline. When someone tells you to go do something and be quick about it because it's urgent, I feel unnatural just wandering off and exploring.

Aside from the PS3 coding, the quality of the writing and questline implementation for Skyrim was the single biggest disappointment for me. I shudder to think how poor this game might have been, had they just stuck with Random Quest Generation. Having finished all the mains, save DB, ( haven't played evil yet) I will say that Bethesda still has the team to make decent quests, as I thought the Main, Mages and Thieves, had their quality moments. But the late in the game flip by Bethesda to written out quests, totally highlights just how "rushed" the overall feel of this game is.

Was just visiting Solitude and had a WTF moment when a guard told me something like "There's a change in the air, a fresh breeze off the sea, the Thieve's Guild is Back!" I dunno, these accolades would work better for me, if its the return of a Strong fighters guild from the ashes or something. Thieves as heros just seem like an ill fit, and certainly guards, ie the law, wouldn't usually sing them praises. It made me think back, OK what have I just been doing, and I realized the thieving seemed almost retro-fitted onto what would have been a pretty decent Fighters quild series. It really seems like some quest episodes got drug out of mothballs and refitted to different purposes than might originally had been intended. As for the Companions, agree 100% the Wild side shows up way too early, and in my opinion would have played out much better as a splinter quest series from the main Fighters type one. KInda think Bethesda got swayed by the "we want wherewolves!" youngsters, and made them more mainstream. Again, fine idea to do so, but pretty shallow implementation.

There were lots of opportunities and situations that practically screamed for more story. Bloated Man's Grotto, and finding Bolar's Blade, why wouldn't that link back to Delphine and Esbern somehow? Really liked the four episodes of the Gaulder - Forbidden Legend, it starts for many with the Mages guild, but somehow never re-connects. I could name several others, but my point is things are just plain disjointed. Usually this is a sign of rushed production, and/or an internal lack of ability to achieve a sense of continuity.