Skyrim needs to adopt a fallout system where everyone is killable...if you kill them you fail the quests they offer. Simple as that

Nah. I love the essential NPCs.

I agree. (but this was in past TES games just for the record)

I think there should be no essential NPCs.

However there should be multiple ways you can perform or continue a quest in case someone dies.

However, I feel that if you kill enough people related to the quest who are supposed to give it to you or help you through it, then the quest should fail.

Should be an option, seeming that it's a popular enough suggestion. I'd leave it the way it is, but others play the game differently.

I doubt Beth will do it. You can use mods, but if you're on the Box/PS3 then you're screwed.

Anyways, I like this idea.

Yep I'm aware..been playing since morrowind..but I love having the power to kill who I want too like In fallout

The game is too linear to allow this. It would need a full rewrite. (Which actually would solve a lot of issues.)

I agree, if you kill an NPC and mess up a quest, that's your fault. The game shouldn't have to tell you who you can and can't kill.

The reason that there are more essential NPCs and why Dragons are so weak is linked in some way. Dragons can go anywhere, and can inevitably attack any town, if Dragons were very powerful and there were no essential NPCs then the chance that an essential character dies would be incredibly high.

Yeah realism is cool, but I enjoy the realism that is real life and I'd rather not waste the most essential commodity allowed to me, that being time, all because my NPC died who was essential to the main story.

dragon attacks+no essential NPCs = BIG problems

You can easily solve this by having semi-essential NPCs. Make it so they can't be killed by another NPC or monster, yet still be able to be killed by the PC if he so chooses. This would prevent quests failing through no fault of the player while retaining the freedom to be able kill anyone you want.

Couldn't say it better.

That is definitely a viable solution.

There was no problem with the Morrowind system where you would get a warning message. So long as characters were essential against NPCs' attacks it would work.

But with a quest system as interwoven as Skyrim's, half the NPCs in the games would need to get slapped with warning messages.

There should be some essential NPC's, but 99.5% should be killable, regardless if they are a quest giver.

I think this would be the perfect solution. I (strangely) liked getting a message in Morrowind telling me I broke the main quest by killing an npc. I had the option then to either reload, or keep playing and forget the main quest. It didn't give you a message for killing other faction NPCs, but that's a reasonable price for wantonly killing people in your game. You get the freedom to be a stone-cold killer, but it comes with consequences (other than a fairly low bounty).

That said, I (personally) hate when dragons torch a bunch of townsfolk. Especially when they blatantly ignore me to do it. I don't particularly like being excluded from quests through no fault of my own. Changing all the essential NPCs to a semi-essential state that allows me to kill them, and no one else, would be awesome. I generally don't play a hair-trigger killer, but trying to clear an army camp with unkillable officers is rather silly.

You can actually still beat the Morrowind Mainquest even if you killed a MQ-NPC... Just go get Keening and Sunder then kill the Heart, ignoring the damage you are getting. After you did that, everything else will automaticly triggered (Example: You can then go straight to Vivec and get Wraithguard from him, even if you never knew he had it)

~Edit~

Btw, the best Solution would be to remove the Essential from the NPCs after you did ALL Non-Random Quests for them. (Like you can kill Delphine and Esbern after the Mainquest since they are no longer needed for any real quests) - This is because you can accidentally kill people specially with magic; my Wall of Storm spell killed that Meeko Dog follower on accident =(

Also, they should keep some followers, like Derkeethus, Essential because I don't want my follower to die because of me moving far ahead of them =(

That's true, there is a workaround. I just never used it, so I tend to forget.

And I would be amenable to changing their essential status after their quests are complete; it's better than the current system.

My Stray Dog got killed before I got to keep him. I was wandering in the area and he got axed by Stormcloaks. Not happy, was I.

Edit: Ignore me; it's late.

Agreed. If i kill off an important NPC and cannot proceed further with a quest, so be it. That's a consequence for my actions. On a second playthrough, I might then receive quests from NPCs who died in the first.

To me, essential NPCs (like essential quest items) are just another form of hand-holding to make the game fail-proof for the player.

there's always console commands (Although I'm not the type to go on a mad killing-spree so I'm not overly concerned by this. The only problem is it makes the game feel fake.).

amen, now when i listen to my companion there is a 1 to 3 chance* i will just make some immortal god mad at me for stabbing a dagger through their heart and getting a bounty because that damned god decided to report me for assault instead of just attempting to kill me back, this should be fixed (and i can deal with ay and all consequences so why prevent me from doing what i want)

*the chance of attempting to kill a random stranger that happend to be a god is not accurate, i dont feel like looking up the god to mortal ratio in skyrim

Bioware initially made it possible to kill off companions for Star Wars: The Old Republic. But the huge outcry from beta players convinced them to change it.

So although making every npc kill-able may be realistic, it may have the consequence of angering many people who have invested a lot of time in the game, only to ruin it because they didn't know that npc was an important quest giver. The anger is closely associated with people who have invested a lot of time in the game, only to have a bug prevent you from completing a quest.

So it's probably for the best that important npcs are not kill-able.

I don't agree. The player must adapt to the game. Anyway, there are ways to bypass the system; free to you to risk breaking your game.

Agreed, I hate essential NPCs...