I agree with the OP

Hi there melquiad. How's it going?

Though you did not quote it, I'm assuming the above is your reply to my post. I'll do my best to address your points. So, a giant glowing useless functionless globe is the single unique architectural element in the entire dungeon and that appears to satisfy you. Yes, as I've said, there are giant glowing mushrooms which also happen to be useless, unharvestable, unclimbable, and do no impact gameplay in any shape or form. So we have a crimson as ooposed to regular nirnroot and there's a fetch quest involved. That appears to satisfy you. Let me re-assert my opinion: Black Reach sets up a wonderful premise. At first, the music is simply wonderful, fuzzy, warm and enigmatic. The atmosphere is also tremedously appealing because there's an implicit promise something unique, mysterious, is about to happen. Instead, what do we get? Same architecture, same creatures, same kind of gameplay, and not much of it by the way, and a crimson plant. As for Black Reach not being an ecosphere thus having unique fauna/flora, I'd say everything is in place and the evidence is that we do have those mushrroms which are nowhere else to be found. I'm sure no one would ever shudder at the sight of unique creatures in Black Reach. All in all, Black Reach epitomizes the whole SKyrim experince: allurig yet unsatisfying, promising but dissapointng. As a final thought take voice acting in Oblivion, I'm sure there were people quite satisfied and they were certainly entitled to such an opiion. Black Reach seems to be your cup of tea. It's not mine, though I dearly wished so. But I do agree with you on that we need more variety when it comes to dungeons. More variety, and more depth.

I would say "this", "I agree with OP", but it would feel hypocritical...

But yeah, many of these problems are a bit too overblown if not misunderstood.

The repetition is not any more different than the ones we had before. "Cloud District" does not appear more often than "outlander", "you and and I are about to be very close" or "mudcrabs" and that only appears in one area anyway.

Oh, I forgot the 'easy' part. I just met an Ancient Dragon and he killed me in one bite...
Not even the evil level scaling ruins this at all, there are still areas you should keep away until later, like Giant camps and even Dwarven ruins, especially the end parts and Falmer.

most of the quests are called short because now they are done differently. Instead of having one linear storyline, now we have one main questline and several side quests. Even if you become the leader, there still going to be a number of quests remaining if you haven't took them... or infinite if it is a Radiant Quest. It is ironically more similar to Morrowind's quest system.

bugs are hardly bigger problem than before, in fact they seem to focus on patching a lot more than in any other beth game before.

Most of the complaints about dungeons seem to be coming from lack of trying. Nearly every dungeon I've visited had their own unique appeal, there was always in there that made it worth it. A shortcut trough the mountains, a word wall, just loot, some journals that tell a story.. Etc

You haveto be kidding.. I mean really? The FG in Oblivion? The questline that has you delivering weapons to a couple of fighters that went ahead and assaulted a goblin infested mine unarmed, beacuse... i guess they forgott to bring them? I don't know, it dosen't make any sense.
And then when you get there, they start dropping hints on what weapon they prefer with the subtly of a bulldozer, where choising the wrong option means you are roleplaying someone with braindamage or you just want to see the dissapointment on their faces as the 300pound armorclad killing machine infront of you is too gosh darn shy to acually speak up. And as a nice cherry on top, if or rather when one of them runs into a trap and dies, it's obviosly your fault you need to recieve half of the reward.

anyhoo....nerdrage aside...
I agree with the OP for the most part and had a simmilar experiance.
While the lenght of the guild questlines didn't really bother me much since i never activly persued them, they are very short and i can imagine someone who wants to complete the entire thing before moving on to other things isn't going to be very entertained.
Maby if they made the radiant quests mandatory between diffirent story segments it would artifically lengthen it for the people who can't help themselves, but then the boards would like be flooded of complaints of beeing forced to do them... awell.
For the next game i'd prefer to see the story not only longer, but partially seperate from guild ranks, where promotion is achived from doing radiant story quests and fuffilling stat/skill requirements aswell as certain milestones in the story.

And as for difficulty, the game can be fairly challangeing aslong as you leave the crafting skills alone, seriously, the person responsible for balancing them needs to be sent to bed without supper..

Out of everything that is wrong with guild questlines, you are complaining about loading screens?

HI there Bukee! How's life?

In my case, no ammount of loot, backstory or the ocassional word wall could ever wash away the dejá vu aftertaste I got. I'm not saying it's not worth the trouble going through dungeon after dungeon. From a gamer's perspective one does profit from it. But in several cases it's a bland experience. The unrealized potential of which Black Reach is the epitome has a twin brother called Too Much of a Good thing. It boils down to the Law of Diminuishing Returns: the more you have of something the less you appreciate it. Like, the discovery of the claw mechanism at Bleak Falls was wonderful, the subsequent dungeon which used a similar device was less enticing, the next one rather predictable, the next, dismissable.

Compared to Oblivion? I mean, it's Oblivion, the worst TES game ever made.

Destruction is under powered for PC, over powered for NPC

Not only are the companions and mages quest lines short, but there is no sense of progression, especially mages guild. There are no requirements for advancement. You become head of these guilds without feeling like you really earned it. Compared to fighters guild and mages guild in Oblivion, these Skyrim questliens were dissappointing.


You are lucky. Some of us have experienced worse bugs than you. I experienced a quest line breaking bug within my first 100 hours that left Jorrvaskr in shambles and broke the companions questline entirely. I was fortunate enough to have a prior save, so I only lost an hour of play time and was able to figure out the solution by consulting the UESP. I had to reload the prior save, stop what I was doing and go to another dungeon, make a mad dash run through the dengeon to get a certain item without killing anyone in said dungeon, and then go back and replay the last hour or so of the companions questline. It was a very annoying experience, but at least I saved the questline.

If you go read the UESP quest descriptions, you will see that there are plenty of these types of bugs out there. I am not doing several of the Marketh/Foresworn quests because there is a bug there that can make you a permanent outlaw in Marketh.

There are also a bunch of broken perks. Tower of Strength does nothing, elemental potency breaks summoning staves, Atronach breaks conjuring spells, etc. You may not have experienced problems, but there are problems aplenty. Behtesda has fixed a bunch of them, but there are many more yet to fix.

At least Oblivion sent you on a bunch of grunt quests before letting you advance to more meaningful quests and ultimately become head of the guild. With companions, I went from grunt to head of the guild in a weekend. Took way longer in Oblivion, so you felt the progression, rather than instant gratification.

Also note that the thieves guild main quest is 1 night of grinding. And while there is some cool backstory, the actual gameplay of that quest is pretty standard dungeon crawling, very little thieving.

Then you get hit with a truly obnoxious set of requirements to complete the finale by having to grind out random radiant quests. Total padding/filler with no story at all attached to it.

At least the grind from Morrowind was tied to story. Skyrim literally has a few good story quests for thieves, then if you didn't grind, you are required to do mindless tasks just to open up the story quest.

Except it's full of plot holes and continuity errors.

And bad writing.

I don't mind having to "grind" a few grunt level quests because it gives you a sense of progression. If companions and mages guild had some radient requirements like thieves guild for advancing in the quest line it would have been an improvement IMO. Without some grunt quests, you advance to guildmaster too quickly and easily and do not feel like you have earned it.

Of course, I don't "grind" any quests. I roleplay all of them, so a simple "pickpocket X from NPC Y" took me a couple of hours to complete, as I pickpocketed my way through Markath one evening looking for NPC Y with my HUD turned off.

And a noticeable lack of actually stealing things.


You're totally right, but I think the distinction he's making (and that I would also make) is that purely radiant quests svck. They're a FedEx run in every sense of the term, you fast travel to the city, follow the marker, pick up the item, fast travel back over and over again. There's no backstory or plot to it, and often little or no challenge either. It would be better if Bethesda just wrote in 10-20 'filler' quests with some work put into their writing and implementation. In my opinion all of the time, resources, and energy they've invested in Radiant quests, Radiant 'story' and for the most part Radiant AI in general have been a big bust. Morrowind did almost everything better and it's 10 years old.

I have read an Elder Scroll viewing an alternate past and present which shalt no longer occur, where such warning signs are not posted outside the dungeons...

And I see people complaining that they got waylaid by surprise difficulty inside, not knowing what they'd face until it was too late.


I guess all those jobs that Vex and Delvin send you on don't involve stealing things? Coulda fooled me.

If memory serves all Thieves Guild quests in Oblivion had you stealing things, preferrably without being seen and killing anyone. In Skyrim mostly the filler quest have you stealing things without being seen or killing, while majority of the main quests are just more dungeon crawling.

Refer to the second part of my above post, and/or TojKa's post as well.

But that still leaves the problem that in the current past and present which do exist is marred with these warnings.


Then I guess those people are inattentive. The game blatantly spells out for you what you can expect 90% of the time you come across a dungeon.

Oh, you mean those horrid radiant quests? Yeah, it was so fun stealing things from the same house 10 times......

the only buildup to skyrim i listened to was the handcrafted dungeons.

was this radiant quest, fetch, "fed x" stuff one of them, as well?

Yes it was. They stated that the world would act differently around you based on what type of class you played and you would have endless quests. Yeah endless quests that have no meaning and repeat themselves. They're just as bad as MMORPG dailies, if you have ever played WoW or such.

The thing is, I didn't realize they were requirements, so I became the "Guild Master" but wasn't able to actually get my reward until I could complete the finale quest.

I get told I'm going to be guildmaster, then I get back and everyone acts like I'm not, I hit the Wiki, and realize I didn't do the grind-sides, so I can't officially become GM until I do. It's very jarring and deflating and MMO-esque.

Those are the random radiant, not the story quests.

At least the MMO dailies have story and meat to them. While repeated, and eventually they grow very stale. The Radiant quests are boring before you even do them

and atleast in an MMO, when you complete dailies you usually have some type of goal in mind. Whether to get rep for a faction or such. In Skyrim, they are just pointless.

Yes. Risk vs. Reward is what RPGs live and die by. Radiant quests have no reward, and little risk. Total filler.