So why does Riften have a harbor? Why are there ships in Riften harbor? They can'y go anywhere, becasue the river drops off from a high elevation in the rift, there is no river trade root between Windhelm and riften, there cant even be a trade rout between Ivarsted and Riften becaeu there are ar lest 2 low foot bridiges going over the river between the two. So why did the developers put a harbor with big ships in it? A dock to fish off is one thing but big vessels for no reason??

Big fishing vessels....that's why. I forget the guys name but hes a big fisher. Big fisher I guess needs a big fishing boat.

Khajiit feels it cheaper to use more fishing sticks instead of more fishing boats.

Swim in the Lake. You will see the reason for the Fishing Boats.

when you think about it it is a bit senseless

Who cares, it looks good. I'd rather have a Venice-like Riften then a dried up craphole where criminals roam about.

Detroit?))

The lake next to Riften is pretty big bro.

Same reason Imperial city in Oblivion has a port despite there being no route past Leyawiin.

One thing to remember, they've taken license with scale in this game. If you count steps, the cities in this game are less than a mile apart. If they made distances realistic, the game wouldn't be fun. So you have to pretend... hard for some of today's youth to do. That lake can actually be thought of as being much much larger, but just made small by our warped sense of scale. Most of us wouldn't imagine running around a lake for 6-7 hours. It would kill us. So the scale of the lake can't be measured in literal game terms.

Maybe for the same reason you had the ports in Bravil and the Imperial City in Oblivion...both of which would have required sailing down the Niben...down to Leyawiin, which has no harbor/port and inadvertently landlocks both of the above mentioned ports. Poor developer planning.

It';s called a fantasy world for a reason people... or how bout literary license....