[Nana Samboy]

The moment you step in rifton You are bombarded by unwanted quests.
The actual quests you want to do, you have to find.

I agree about the stupid Thieves Guild quests.

There is no way in hell I am setting up two of the nice people in rifton, Madesi and Brand-Shei to do that. Zero interest in pissing about with the thieves guild.
It's like they assumed you wanted to side with a bunch of disorganised thieves and scumbags. I don't, at all.
You have no option to clean up rifton. I want to. Why the hell is'nt there a logical quest for Mjoll to ask you to wipe the TG and the Black-Briers out?
It screams annilation quest. And theres nothing. There should be a quest for Mjoll. There is a gaping hole were it should be. Someone seriously screwed up a blatantly obvious opertunity there.
Instead they force join the TG [censored] on you.
I picked up a unsual gem. Led to the bl**dy TG. Go through the door. Leads to damn TG. Talk to Madesi and Brand-Shei and everyone else. Brynloff appears.
Go in the Bee and Barb for the quests you want to do. Bl**dy Bryloff appears.
I am not joining the f**king TG! I want to obliterate them all and the Black-Briers. Can you do that? No. Some cretin put completely unnessery and completely unwanted essential' marker on Maven Black-Brier. And others I think.
F**king moron.
You should be allowed to fail quests by killing people if you want! Instead the damn things sit there, not being completed.
Did they not think you might not want to do these quests?! Just kill everyone, you know, a proper option? Was someone so in love with the idea of the damn TG and scumbags they thought everyone would want to do them and forced them on you?

This from the same company who made Fallout 3, a game were you can literally kill anyone you want that is advlt and does'nt treat you like some idiot who can't play rpgs. That lets you fail any quest you want and kill anyone you want.

I like the Deadric quests. Working for deadric princes is fun. And you can do the good thing if you want.

[maria Dwyer]

Well, you can get around it. When Brynjolf asks you to set up Brand Shei and Madesi, tab out of the conversation and walk off. He says something about getting the message and you don't need to talk to him again if you don't want to. You can still go to the Ragged Flagon and ask the barkeep about Esbern once that part of the main quest turns up.

Alternatively, you can steal Madesi's ring, then replace it in his lockbox and tell Brynjolf that you lost it. That way you can still access the Thieves Guild quest if you so wish (however, the next quest is not really nice - but at least Brand Shei stays out of jail).

And yes, I agree - there should be a clean up Riften quest with Mjoll. It's odd - many games have more options for people RPing a good character, but Skyrim is the opposite. In Oblivion, the TG questline was a lot more karma neutral - no thuggery, just a bit of stealing here and there and you could restrict your freelance stealing to less pleasant NPCs if you wanted to be more Robin Hood about it. Ultimately, the questline lead to a pretty cool heist which resulted in something good. The DB questline was still pretty evil but if you didn't want to do that, there was the Knights of the Nine DLC quests for more virtuous folk. In Skyrim, no such luck.

[Alex Vincent]

The moment you step in rifton You are bombarded by unwanted quests.
The actual quests you want to do, you have to find.

I agree about the stupid Thieves Guild quests.

There is no way in hell I am setting up two of the nice people in rifton, Madesi and Brand-Shei to do that. Zero interest in pissing about with the thieves guild.
It's like they assumed you wanted to side with a bunch of disorganised thieves and scumbags. I don't, at all.
You have no option to clean up rifton. I want to. Why the hell is'nt there a logical quest for Mjoll to ask you to wipe the TG and the Black-Briers out?
It screams annilation quest. And theres nothing. There should be a quest for Mjoll. There is a gaping hole were it should be. Someone seriously screwed up a blatantly obvious opertunity there.
Instead they force join the TG [censored] on you.
I picked up a unsual gem. Led to the bl**dy TG. Go through the door. Leads to damn TG. Talk to Madesi and Brand-Shei and everyone else. Brynloff appears.
Go in the Bee and Barb for the quests you want to do. Bl**dy Bryloff appears.
I am not joining the f**king TG! I want to obliterate them all and the Black-Briers. Can you do that? No. Some cretin put completely unnessery and completely unwanted essential' marker on Maven Black-Brier. And others I think.
F**king moron.
You should be allowed to fail quests by killing people if you want! Instead the damn things sit there, not being completed.
Did they not think you might not want to do these quests?! Just kill everyone, you know, a proper option? Was someone so in love with the idea of the damn TG and scumbags they thought everyone would want to do them and forced them on you?

This from the same company who made Fallout 3, a game were you can literally kill anyone you want that is advlt and does'nt treat you like some idiot who can't play rpgs. That lets you fail any quest you want and kill anyone you want.

I like the Deadric quests. Working for deadric princes is fun. And you can do the good thing if you want.

Wow...

It's been a while since I've seen a rage like this. I'm kind of impressed.

Though I do agree with you. At the start, the Thieves Guild is more disorganized and just as weak as the Dark Brotherhood starts out. I don't see why they'd give you an option to eliminate the Dark Brotherhood, but not the Thieves Guild. After doing the Riften Thane Quests, it would even seem that the Jarl would be very much behind such an action.

Maybe in DLC? Who knows...

I like to think that Bethesda has their reasons for writing it this way, but for the life of me I can't see it. Not that I didn't enjoy the Thieves Guild quests, I did. but I think it'd be just as common sense to give you an option to cripple/wipe them out just like they did with the DB.

Oh well.

[meg knight]

Probably stated, but I'm not a fan of the fact that to get the one unusual gem I'm missing, I have to start the main quest.

Haven't found a way into the Thalmor Embassy without using Whirlwind Sprint, which requires the MQ. Not happy at all.

[emily grieve]

The moment you step in rifton You are bombarded by unwanted quests.
The actual quests you want to do, you have to find.

I agree about the stupid Thieves Guild quests.

There is no way in hell I am setting up two of the nice people in rifton, Madesi and Brand-Shei to do that. Zero interest in pissing about with the thieves guild.
It's like they assumed you wanted to side with a bunch of disorganised thieves and scumbags. I don't, at all.
You have no option to clean up rifton. I want to. Why the hell is'nt there a logical quest for Mjoll to ask you to wipe the TG and the Black-Briers out?
It screams annilation quest. And theres nothing. There should be a quest for Mjoll. There is a gaping hole were it should be. Someone seriously screwed up a blatantly obvious opertunity there.
Instead they force join the TG [censored] on you.
I picked up a unsual gem. Led to the bl**dy TG. Go through the door. Leads to damn TG. Talk to Madesi and Brand-Shei and everyone else. Brynloff appears.
Go in the Bee and Barb for the quests you want to do. Bl**dy Bryloff appears.
I am not joining the f**king TG! I want to obliterate them all and the Black-Briers. Can you do that? No. Some cretin put completely unnessery and completely unwanted essential' marker on Maven Black-Brier. And others I think.
F**king moron.
You should be allowed to fail quests by killing people if you want! Instead the damn things sit there, not being completed.
Did they not think you might not want to do these quests?! Just kill everyone, you know, a proper option? Was someone so in love with the idea of the damn TG and scumbags they thought everyone would want to do them and forced them on you?

This from the same company who made Fallout 3, a game were you can literally kill anyone you want that is advlt and does'nt treat you like some idiot who can't play rpgs. That lets you fail any quest you want and kill anyone you want.

I like the Deadric quests. Working for deadric princes is fun. And you can do the good thing if you want.

You know if you purposely fail to set up Madesi and Brand-Shei, Brynjolf will accept it as bad luck and be perfectly content to let things progress.

The Unusual Gem is part of a Thieves Guild quest and a big part of it goes towards the restoration of the Thieves Guild. Ignore it if you're not interested in the TG.

Maven is marked as essential because she is a potential Jarl. Should the Imperials win, Maven becomes Jarl.

Unlike you, the TG is against murder (bad for business). Even when it comes to traitors, the decision to kill is not one taken lightly and Brynjolf himself has seen to it that a former member who killed his marks is rotting in Riften jail. As such, if there was an option to take down the Thieves Guild, I would like to see it be a more political compaign than anything to do with assassination. As much as I enjoyed the TG questline, I do think that all the Guilds should be fallable but I'd like it more if the quests to do so weren't all murder quests.

[rheanna bruining]

Well, they are demons after all so they manipulate you; they tricked you in order to obtain what they want.

You can just ignore em but they are there...knowing you will come back...to serve.

Except they're not demons

[Aliish Sheldonn]

the quests in new vegas were pretty basic and simple not very complicated and you really didn't have a lot of choices other than who's side you were gonna be on and the game played out the same way no matter who's side you were on, nothing changed on the strip or anywhere else...actually in skyrim the quest system overall is much more dynamic and complex than in new vegas. everything about the quest system is way more complex than in new vegas.

Dude, you are in a dreamworld. There is nothing dynamic about Skyrim quests and they certainly are no where close to the complexity and length of NV quests. They all railroad you to the end. And nothing changed on the strip? Try going against the casinos and see how that works for you. Or pissing off the kings. You can also wipe of the Van Graffs or aid them. You can completely pork the Followers of the Apocalypse as well. And the game played out the same? There's over 60 outcomes in that game given how you've dealt with different towns, NPCs, companions and factions. All of which you can effectively destroy. Did you ever side with the Legion? You've clearly never touched on all you can do in NV. And we won't even talk about companions.

[Maria Garcia]

Just don't do the quests. "Ohh, but it are sitting in my logbook uncompleted!" Boo. Hoo. And, sometimes, you have to do things you don't want to. Just svck it up. That, or you die. And you want an option to kill Daedric Princes? Really?

Oh, stop making excuses for bad game design that doesn't allow you to role play. Every quest should have multiple outcomes and multiple ways to finish it. Hell, you should also be able to fail every quest, kill whoever you want, and decline quests. If you're roleplaying a good character you should be able to foil the Princes plans or at least have a semi-neutral outcome.

[Lillian Cawfield]

Skyrim is an open-world game where you can access the very linear content in a non-linear fashion.

[Noely Ulloa]

Skyrim is an open-world game where you can access the very linear content in a non-linear fashion.

HAHA! Well said.

[Laura Cartwright]

I think with Delphine it's a matter of superiority and faith in the myths of the Dragonborn. She believes what she tells you to do is what you should want to do and is older than most players picture their characters so I do see her as perfectly in character. That doesn't make her likeable, but her knowledge of the Blades makes her valuable, at least up until the point you reach Sky Haven. Without Delphine, Estbern wouldn't help you and Alduin's Wall would remain locked away.

And yes, the Daedra have achieved CHIM. Or more correctly, they're in a state which does not require them to have ever been anything other than CHIM. The Dragonborn does not have CHIM, s/he is not omnipotent. The only time you can really 'harm' a Daedric Prince is when you have been given the powers of a god yourself (Martin vs. Dagon, New Sheo vs. Jyggalag).

Delphine is stupid because she's *begging* to be killed by a dragonborn who doesn't care what she thinks. Contrast her attitude with the greybeards; how many players want to
kill them? Delphine acts out of character, because if she really was as stupid as she comes across, she'd be dead long before your character ever met her.

Last I saw, the Daedra aren't able to load/save games. They don't have CHIM, the player does.

Do you actually understand the metagame aspect of CHIM?

[Alan Cutler]

The sad thing is that I honestly don't think there is lack of different outcomes for quests due to laziness, lack of time to make content, or even lack of creativity. Rather, it has become the design principle at Bethesda to not have consequences - which is frustrating, since choices & consequences is an important part of a good rpg.

But in Bethesda's defense, how much of it is due to the expectations of their player base? For instance, what if one could refuse to kill the follower at the start of the Mal Balog quest, and was instead given an option to walk away, or even find a way to cleanse the altar and remove the presence of the daedric prince from the house? I personally think that would have been awesome, but many players - as soon as they found out they had missed out on one of the more powerful weapons in the game - would have been crying and cursing Bethesda for ruining their game.

[STEVI INQUE]

No, I know, I just mean from what I've heard, I would be doing a disservice to myself by doing what I'd prefer to do (kill Astrid I guess), because the DB questline I'm reading is one of the best ones in the game. I can't decide if I want to do it just to experience it and kind of pretend it didnt happen to my character, or hold off until when/ and a seious if, I play through the game again with a different person.


Not railroaded in that example, just given 2 unequal options and the one you don't want seems to have the "better" experience.

Well, all I can suggest, unless you are one fo those who only does one playthru, Do it both ways on two different playthrus if you feel like you'e missing something. that's what I'm doing, on one character I destroyed thew DB, and on this current one, I'm going to play it thru just to experience it. Either way, the game isn't really forcing you to do it one way or the other, the only one in charge of that is you.

[Emma-Jane Merrin]

Delphine is stupid because she's *begging* to be killed by a dragonborn who doesn't care what she thinks. Contrast her attitude with the greybeards; how many players want to
kill them? Delphine acts out of character, because if she really was as stupid as she comes across, she'd be dead long before your character ever met her.

Last I saw, the Daedra aren't able to load/save games. They don't have CHIM, the player does.

Do you actually understand the metagame aspect of CHIM?

Delphine doesn't act out of character. How many dragonborns has she met before? For much of her life she's been in hiding as a regular innkeeper and had the dragonborn not shown up, she'd still be handing out rooms in the Sleeping Giant.

From my perspective, only developers have CHIM in the metagame sense. And maybe some clever modders. Lore-wise, your character isn't all powerful and therefore, no CHIM. Daedric Princes > Dragonborn... until you become one of them at any rate -waves to Sheo-

[Anthony Rand]

quote
The sad thing is that I honestly don't think there is lack of different outcomes for quests due to laziness, lack of time to make content, or even lack of creativity. Rather, it has become the design principle at Bethesda to not have consequences - which is frustrating, since choices & consequences is an important part of a good rpg. quote


they did have consequences in fallout 3. that game had a karma bar. what you did mattered
not in this game.. who knows maybe they were focused on the dungeons and forgot the rest
in oblivion if you went around killing people the townfolks and guards would make negative comments to you
that game also had a morality bar.. not in Skyrim

[Silvia Gil]

The sad thing is that I honestly don't think there is lack of different outcomes for quests due to laziness, lack of time to make content, or even lack of creativity. Rather, it has become the design principle at Bethesda to not have consequences - which is frustrating, since choices & consequences is an important part of a good rpg.

But in Bethesda's defense, how much of it is due to the expectations of their player base? For instance, what if one could refuse to kill the follower at the start of the Mal Balog quest, and was instead given an option to walk away, or even find a way to cleanse the altar and remove the presence of the daedric prince from the house? I personally think that would have been awesome, but many players - as soon as they found out they had missed out on one of the more powerful weapons in the game - would have been crying and cursing Bethesda for ruining their game.

It certainly seems like they intentionally took consequence out of the game. Maybe they were spending to much time on the radiant fetch quest system. The fact that they originally intended to have the faction quests be only radiant quests speaks to how much faith they had in the system. Then at some point they seemed to realize that endless fetch quests makes their game a single player MMO rather than a RPG.

As to their reasoning if it were intentional? I don't know. Would players really be upset if they were allowed to role play their character? Real consequences is what makes multiple play throughs worthwhile in my opinion.

[Facebook me]

quote
they did have consequences in fallout 3. that game had a karma bar. what you did mattered
not in this game.. who knows maybe they were focused on the dungeons and forgot the rest
in oblivion if you went around killing people the townfolks and guards would make negative comments to you
that game also had a morality bar.. not in Skyrim

Not 100% true as every NPC has a disposition bar relating to their relationship with you and other factions, real life deosn't have a karma/morality bar as everyones thoughts and ideals aren't set in stone and change around over the course of years through life experience.
Because you hate someone deosn't mean I do or vice versa. We reserve our own judgement, or at least should and not be sheep led along by peer pressure.
Moralty bar is pointless, it is in fact nothing moe than a peer pressure bar.

As for some here, I have seen them mention their character has restraint but they show none themselves. Is that then trully role playing?

Above all, throughout this forum I see a lot of complaints just caused by complete lack of common sense or knowledge of how the current Beth sandbox games work.
Manually save before going in a dungeon/building and out of one for starters, would save a lot of folk grief.
You can exit a conversation at any time if you have the sense to realise where it is heading.

It would be nice to have the option to say "I'd rather not" when given a quest, but it isn't in there so you have to deal with it.
I personally would rather not have to go anywhere near the Colledge of Winterhold just to progress the MQ.
I personally would like to maybe Join the Blades, but not for the current price of admission.

But here is the biggie, real life is full of quests that for which there is sometimes only the one proper outcome and sometimes you can say no to this but it will hang over your head like an unfinished quest on your journal. Like it or not.

[sarah taylor]

Delphine doesn't act out of character. How many dragonborns has she met before? For much of her life she's been in hiding as a regular innkeeper and had the dragonborn not shown up, she'd still be handing out rooms in the Sleeping Giant.

From my perspective, only developers have CHIM in the metagame sense. And maybe some clever modders. Lore-wise, your character isn't all powerful and therefore, no CHIM. Daedric Princes > Dragonborn... until you become one of them at any rate -waves to Sheo-

Don't want to derail the thread here, but what is this CHIM I keep seeing mentioned?

[Louise Lowe]

now seriously, how is this game railroaded?
if you don't wanna do something just don't do it, cmon. I think theres not many other games where you have the same freedom as TES games.

[Maria Garcia]

Not 100% true as every NPC has a disposition bar relating to their relationship with you and other factions, real life deosn't have a karma/morality bar as everyones thoughts and ideals aren't set in stone and change around over the course of years through life experience.
Because you hate someone deosn't mean I do or vice versa. We reserve our own judgement, or at least should and not be sheep led along by peer pressure.
Moralty bar is pointless, it is in fact nothing moe than a peer pressure bar.

There's no disposition bar. There are 4 values. That's it. Do a sidequest for somebody and they love you. And there is no relation to factions. Factions in Skyrim exist only to define who is hostile to who in the code.

And please, making comparisons to "real life" is ridiculous and no excuse for a game to not allow for realistic NPC reactions and branching quests with actual consequences.

[Emmie Cate]

The way games work, the reason we enjoy them and bother doing them at all, is that they tweak the brain's reward centers. You think you're getting rewarded for accomplishing a task, and that lights up pleasure centers in your brain.

On the other hand, being forced to leave a task incomplete lights up NOT pleasure centers in your brain.

Some people are less responsive to these drives. Those people may not mind leaving a quest in their log and they probably don't get all agitated when their bank balance shows a charge hasn't gone through either. But for many, if not most, human beings, the same mechanism that makes finishing a quest pleasant makes leaving a quest unfinished unpleasant. Saying "just ignore it" is a little like saying "I know your coffee tastes like pee but if you ignore the pee it's fine." You can't choose to not taste the pee. Pretending it's good coffee is an error.

[JeSsy ArEllano]

The moment you step in rifton You are bombarded by unwanted quests.
The actual quests you want to do, you have to find.

I agree about the stupid Thieves Guild quests.

There is no way in hell I am setting up two of the nice people in rifton, Madesi and Brand-Shei to do that. Zero interest in pissing about with the thieves guild.
It's like they assumed you wanted to side with a bunch of disorganised thieves and scumbags. I don't, at all.
You have no option to clean up rifton. I want to. Why the hell is'nt there a logical quest for Mjoll to ask you to wipe the TG and the Black-Briers out?
It screams annilation quest. And theres nothing. There should be a quest for Mjoll. There is a gaping hole were it should be. Someone seriously screwed up a blatantly obvious opertunity there.
Instead they force join the TG [censored] on you.
I picked up a unsual gem. Led to the bl**dy TG. Go through the door. Leads to damn TG. Talk to Madesi and Brand-Shei and everyone else. Brynloff appears.
Go in the Bee and Barb for the quests you want to do. Bl**dy Bryloff appears.
I am not joining the f**king TG! I want to obliterate them all and the Black-Briers. Can you do that? No. Some cretin put completely unnessery and completely unwanted essential' marker on Maven Black-Brier. And others I think.
F**king moron.
You should be allowed to fail quests by killing people if you want! Instead the damn things sit there, not being completed.
Did they not think you might not want to do these quests?! Just kill everyone, you know, a proper option? Was someone so in love with the idea of the damn TG and scumbags they thought everyone would want to do them and forced them on you?

This from the same company who made Fallout 3, a game were you can literally kill anyone you want that is advlt and does'nt treat you like some idiot who can't play rpgs. That lets you fail any quest you want and kill anyone you want.

I like the Deadric quests. Working for deadric princes is fun. And you can do the good thing if you want.

Although you don't have to do it, your quest markers will also try to force you to join the TG if you play through the Main Quest and try to find Esbern. They really, really want you to join the thieves' guild.

Having been the victim of actual thieves, I'm not so cool with that. It's not a fantasy element to me. Never met anyone swinging a daedric warhammer or shooting a spell, but I've had my car stolen and broken into, my mother's jewelry inherited from her dead mother and my father's collection it took him a lifetime to build stolen, and plenty of friends traumatized by being robbed. Real thieves have nothing good about them. I would rather play no game than play a thief.

[NeverStopThe]

IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT DON'T PLAY IT.

[Chris Ellis]

IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT DON'T PLAY IT.

Quoted for maturity

/sarcasm

[Kelly John]

Although you don't have to do it, your quest markers will also try to force you to join the TG if you play through the Main Quest and try to find Esbern. They really, really want you to join the thieves' guild.

Having been the victim of actual thieves, I'm not so cool with that. It's not a fantasy element to me. Never met anyone swinging a daedric warhammer or shooting a spell, but I've had my car stolen and broken into, my mother's jewelry inherited from her dead mother and my father's collection it took him a lifetime to build stolen, and plenty of friends traumatized by being robbed. Real thieves have nothing good about them. I would rather play no game than play a thief.

Some thieves do it because they have no other choice. Steal or starve.

For the most part though, I agree, but this is a fantasy game and quite a lot of characters would join the TG. Interestingly enough, there are various ways around having to join them in order to get through the Main Quest. The alternatives aren't highlighted in neon, so to speak, but they are there.