My solution would be a "protector" system. If an NPC is protected by another NPC, then s/he can't be killed before the protector is killed. Or the NPC can take care of oneself pretty much against anything. A synergy system could work too. When an essential is on the party, the party gets more power.

Essentially NPCs should be able to calculate their chance of death and avoid it, they can flee or persuade or attract help. Death should be used sparingly, incapacitating, taking prisoner instead of killing should be a higher priority by hostile NPCs. Not everyone is an outright murderer, most will mercy. Radiant story can create a rescue mission then. So many possibilities...

And I would never go on a killing spree. I play good guys. But in 1000 hours, if I ever decide to kill one person, first and last, then I want to be able.

it actually happens.

Hasn't happened for me...

I got iverstead smith dead, replaced by his wife and markarth shop lady replaced by some dude (husband?)

no one replaced madesi in riften...lonely sob

also, the smith's wife has a line concerning his husband's death nad how she had to take over the shop

I can confirm that this is indeed implemented. In my game, the Fletcher was killed by a Dragon in Solitude and was replaced within a week by another npc. I don't think this is tied to every shop in the game though, for instance the Blacksmith in Riverwood never got replaced when he died.

By tis logic, if you kill Delphine, you fail the main quest completely, yeah, thatd be -great-. There would have to be replacements.

Al that's required is a bit of pre-planning and creativity in the script to make the story progress regardless of who lives or dies. If an 'essential' NPC becomes dragon food - their ghost appears to impart the necessary information, or an associate tells you of a journal they kept that may be helpful. There could be a protected 'oracle' character in cave to give you helpful hints. There are any number of ways to keep the story progressing. It would make things more interesting too because the action would branch instead of being entirely linear: good for replay value.

Fallout: NV did the job fine. All the main characters could die, but if they did that avenue closed and you went another path. It just requires a bit of thought at the design stage.

It's not about "killing everyone".

It's more about immersion and role playing for me -if an essential Npc die -accidentally or not- there must be some "substitute" to him with the same dialogues,or at least a logical alternative way to do the quest. I can understand MQ boundaries, but for the rest ? there are plenty of other characters in the guilds for that purpose i think.

Take the followers for instance: i've recently lost Jenassa -my favourite - on my main 360 playtrough -but i refuse to load an old file to resurrect her.i prefer instead a much realistic approach and recruit someone else- even if i miss her so much

freedom of choice and "to do what you do" must be applied to the whole game in my opinion. And with more concrete "moral choices"

Well yes and no bc there are some npcs that drop unusable weapons wich stay in your inventory and weigh alot, i know this from personal experience :'(

They arent gonna change it, neither this topic will force them to make everyone essential In next TES game
Dont you know how this community is treated?

That would be the best solution, since it would leave the game the same for people like me (who've never had a problem with essentials, because we've never felt the need to go on NPC killing sprees), while allowing the people who want to play psycho killers to do so.

For immersion. TES games are supposed to be "do what you want" games. If I cannot kill someone, it really breaks immersion and TES's trademark freeplay roleplay suffers. I will give you an example. I tried playing Dragon Age Origins while waiting for Skyrim. Started as a mage. Really did not like the attitude of some of the mages in the guild and I wanted to do blood magic and run off with the bloodmage. So, I crept up behind the archmage dude and blasted him with my best spell. Guess what? He did not even notice I was blasting him with fire and he turned to me and asked if I needed anything. Totally broke immersion. I put the game away and have not touched it since.

Granted Skyrim's essential tag is not as bad as that because the essential NPC will notice the attack and respond, but the fact that I cannot do more than knock an essential down does break immersion.

The solution that Woden mentioned of having semi-essential status where only the PC could kill an "essential" character coupled with a Morrowind style message upon such killing so the player would be notified of the consequences of his or her actions and could reload a prior save should make everyone happy. Or, make the semi-essential status something that can be toggled in an options menu.

I couldn't agree more. How could people not want this?!

It really does destroy the immersion when an NPC who takes a fatal amount of damage just goes to their knees and gets back up. You have little freedom in that regard. Too many deities walking around in skyrim apparently.

This. As far as im concerned only NPC's tied to the MAIN quest should be essential up to the part where they've fulfilled their role.
Sidequest NPC's and what have you can be killed if you ask me.
And as far as the dragon threat is concerned, they could always AI-path them to more or less avoid places that have many npcs that give the more worked out quest lines.

They should put an option in setting menu to turn essential on and off so people who don't want NPCs to die can turn it on and anyone else can kill anyone they want. I wouldn't mind people being essential if it wasn't for pretty much every named NPC being essential. If anything it should only be jarls.

There's a mod available that removes all the essential NPCs from the the NonKillableFaction, install it and wreak terror!

The least they could do is make it so once you've finished an essential NPC's quests you can kill them

This is really only something that bothers people who go on killing rampages. I don't go on killing rampages nor do I inanely murder NPCs just because they said something dikeish. I don't really care either way.

Stop existing... please.

In past game, not games.
They were introduced in Oblivion when TES started to rot.

OT:
As long as I do hate essentials, I think that there should be an option for that.

I don't want to murder innocents, I simply want to wipe out the Imperial camps if I do a Stormcloak play through, something that makes perfect sense, yet something I cannot do due to the Legates being essential.

Toggle essential on and off...Bam.

For those of you who "don't like to go on killing rampages" or "inanely kill NPCs for saying something dikeish" do you like your puppet strings?

I don't. I like FREEDOM.

A good solution would be to rebalance quests to allow for more failure, more actor replacement, all Essential NPCs shall be Protected instead (maybe not Helgen NPCs and such though) so only die by your attacks and make normal citizens more cowardly, either by giving dragons dismay, lowering the NPC confidence, scripting or all of the above.

Dammit didn't mean to do that, sorry

Honestly, it's never mattered to me. Because, in all the years I've played Beth games (MW, OB, FO3, SK), I think I've tried to fight an essential NPC once. And that was only because a quest mod I tried bugged out and sent one in the IC hostile against me.

But that's just me.