I loved going into the Imperial City attacking a guard so that he attacks me, then running around town letting him hit me in front of other witnesses who then start attacking the guards and all hell breaks loose! :toughninja:

Are there going to be moments like that in Skyrim?

Hopefully we'll only have riots where it makes combative sense for there to be riots, and not the chaosfests that were Oblivion's random bloodbaths.

In other words, combat participants who can categorize other combatants based on faction/authority, surrender based on parameters, and otherwise extricate themselves from combat in other ways than dying.

Well, I personally (on the PC) will spawn a few dragons outside of some cities and let them have at it. Better than a riot

Note: This suggestion was garnered from Todd Howard's interview on the GI Podcast.
God Bless you and your awesomeness Todd ^_^

Agreed, with all of the improvements in A.I. that we are supposedly getting NPC's should readily recognize the parameters of a situation and act appropriately. Regarding the original scenario, if a guard starts beating you down in the Imperial City then a lot of people should gawk and start talking amongst themselves, rather than join the fray.

The same cannot be said if the same scenario happened in a Waterfront type are....

What? Riots by their very nature have a tendency to defy common sense and become chaosfests. Once the "Mob Mentality" sets in, everything goes loco.

Not when you can mechanically begin them in such a rote manner as "1) Start fight with guard... 2) Position person between you and guard... 3) ???.... 4) Profit!"

I'm all for chaos, but chaos that has such rudimentary basicness to it is not the chaos I'm looking for.

I loved doing this. I once accidently got the entire city after one guard captian, the guard captian fought well, killed about half of em'.