Was it just me, or did the guilds seem a little... lacking? You found some way into the guild, you did a bunch of stuff, you rose through the ranks at warp speed, and it ends with you ruling the whole guild. The only guild that broke away from the mold seemed to be the mages guild (more on that later). The guilds seemed to be dead the while time while you did things where nobody was there to do much in the terms of teamwork (the whole idea of a guild really). Some quests actually made you feel like you WERE the guild. I was posting on another thread and this whole topic got spurred up. http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1169435-economic-responsibilities/page__gopid__17354409#entry17354409

So this is what I thought would make the guilds feel more lifelike:

1. TEAMWORK. This has been posted before on multiple occations, but I'm going to revisit it. My idea of teamwork is NOT being the guildmaster and telling some random idiot in the guild "Come with me, bow-fodder, you shall assist me on a vital task!" Then have him go and play bodyguard while I try to shoot arrows with him in the way. I want to have other members of my guild on the quest with me, doing vital things (like picking locks and safes that are otherwise un-pickable, cast a spell that will kill some super boss, sabatoge a vital alchemical experiment, or something completely awesome like punch a big rock blocking the path until it crumbles away) This is what I want to see in this game.

2. GUILD PRESENCE DEPENDING ON THE AREA YOU'RE IN. If you have a bunch of really angry guards that are tough on crime, you don't want to see the Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood in that town, if it's full of brutes that think magic is for wimps, there shouldn't be a Mages Guild hall in that town, or if there is, they are always at odds with each other. The guilds' headquarters should always be in a town that tolorates them the most and should be extremely distinct from the other guild halls. When you look at the guilds in Oblivion, it kind of disapoints in this area. The Mages Guild did it right, with differient halls in each town and it's headquarters was the Arcane Universtiy in the Imperial City, you can excuse the Dark Brotherhood because you're not supposed to know where anything other than the Cheydenhall Sanctuary was, but it felt like the Fighters Guild were just carbon copies of each other and what distinction between each other was underdone (the Leyawiin basemanst should have had something awesome in it), and with the Theves Guild, it was like me saying "Where's the Cornerclub?" and they would respond: "Hurr, wutz that?"

It would be awesome if the guild halls adopt thier own look and feel to them, like this:

Mages Guild: The guild halls are brick buildings filled with books, scrolls, potions, alchemical apperatui, and various runes and markings that cause funky things when used. The headquarters should be another University dedicated to magic.

Fighters Guild: These guild halls should have thier buit in smithys hammering away at a sword or piece of armor during the business day, the training halls should be in full swing like in the last game, the senior members should be hiding away in thier offices, scurrying through paperwork and constantly having a Fighters Guild member asking about a contract. Their headquarters should be a small fortress, where the guild plans military campigns with their favored faction in Skyrim and then launches them from this location.

Thieves Guild: The Thieves Guild should own a cornerclub or bar in the shadiest part of town where you can order drinks and chat up the patrons, but the theves go into the "Members Only" part in the basemant, where some guild members are hudeled around a bought map of a place they plan to pick clean, a raspy old guy is waiting for someone to make a purchase of some lockpicks or smoke bombs or something else, and the real person running the local show will tell you what you need to do. The Theves Guild should base thier headquarters out of an old, "abandonded" werehouse or somewhere else in the lowest part of the most corrupt town, an area that is completely devoid of guards.

Dark Brotherhood: The Sanctuary from Oblivion was great, and another one should find it's way into Skyrim, but there should be other locations the guild is seen at, like at a safehouse for the assassin running from the law, or other Sancturies could make thier way into the game as well, and you can find them. The home of the Black Hand should be a secretive location in an area that guards stay away from, and should be cluttered with members of the Black Hand with their assistants and silencers busily working through where to send speakers to arrange assassinations and figuring out who is to do the contract. A picture or statue of Sithis is expected to be on every table and wall, if your not being Sithis-y enough for the Black Hand, you'll be executed.

3. DYNAMIC GUILD HALLS. This was based on the post I made in the last thread, but I'm putting a bit more detail into it now. Your guild's presence is quite lacking in Skyrim, where some towns don't even have a guild hall or base of operations in them. You can pitch in and vote towards what happens with the money donated (essentally ending with what happens to it). You can pay for the permits/bribing guards to not snoop to allow operations to happen in the town, use the money to get a new base of operations up and running, or upgrade an existing guild hall/cornerclub/sancutary. This will earn you a LOT of good standing with the guild and everyone will like you more, bonus quests open up, new options on guild questlines become abailable, you earn perks, random items are given to you for free, ect. The more you give, the more you get.

4. RECURRING QUESTS. This is something I said earlier, where a random quest would be generated in which you have to assassinate or protect an unnamed person, or steal a valuable item from a big house or guard impound, or retireve a magical artifact from demons, evil mages or something else. These quests can be repaeated every 3 or so days and the objective, setting and reward are all completely random.

5. GUILD/TOWN REPS. Since it seems like that, despite your best efforts, people will know if you are in the Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood, and will hate you. The Fighters Guild or Mages Guild was made really famous because of thier exploits. That was a great touch, but with the Reputation system introdeuced in New Vegas, I think Bethesda has a real oppertunity to one up it. As you progress through the guild's story or do random jobs for the guild, you should see your reputation with your guild, as well as other guilds, change. For example, becoming a more accomplished guild thief will give you reputation with the Thieves Guild, which will cause the lower class, the beggers, the corrupt guards, and your fellow thieves like you more, while the Mages Guild and Fighters Guild, the honest town guards, and honest shopowners hate you because of your exploits. Towns that are good friends/run by the Thieves Guild would like you much more and some of the people will do things for you that they wouldn't do otherwise.

If you guys like these, thats cool. If you hate them, then give constructive critisism. If you have new ideas, post below.

I love most of this, especially the idea of helping to upgrade Guild Halls and getting random assignments. This is one of the main things that would make Guilds better than in Oblivion or Morrowind. I also wish there were more quests where you worked with other members.

It is clear that you have put a lot of thought into this and I find myself agreeing with you. Bethesda needs to se this thread in my opinion.

It would be nice to have help instead of being sent on uber important life threatening missions all alone with nothing more than a slap on the back.

I LOVE the whole guild halls idea and a HQ in one spot and halls in others - bring it back around to MW style. Sure OB did that but idk .. it was a lot of the sameness. I want to have to go to different places to get quests at different levels. ANd the whole leveling up/upgrading the guild hall idea is good too.

Really well thought out man.

Here:http://images.uesp.net//c/c4/Fishystick.jpg

I know this won't make it in, but there should come a point when you've gained so much reputation with one guild that it prevents you from advancing in (or gets you expelled from) another. I always thought it was kind of silly that as the Arch-Mage from the Mages Guild, I was still able to start out as a lowly thief and they'd give me stupid jobs like snatching a pair of pants.

Once you become a Mage of significant rank, the Thieves Guild should consider you too much of a risk to deal with. Same goes for other unrelated and/or opposed factions. Nothing should stop you from joining all the guilds as a new recruit though.

I dunno, although it makes perfect sense it would svck to not be able to, say, be both the gray fox and arch-mage if you we're a nightblade:ish class. And seing as there arent any classes any longer in Skyrim, it would greatly reduce the fun of exploring playstyles etc IMO.

I see your point but GreyWyvern also has a point. No one wants to work to get to the position of Archmage of Skyrim to be talked down to by some lower management thieves guild member. A solution would be for the PC to go through the trouble of hiding their identity somehow. Magic, concealing apparel, something like that. Or maybe the opposing guild will see you as an asset and go to the lengths to hide your involvement from others.

Great ideas! I love everything except for #4. These 'recurring' quests seem... repetitive. For me they'd get boring and be a little immersion breaking. I believe this is exactly what Bethesda was trying to avoid when they re-implemented the Radiant Story system. Thoughts?

These quests play more the roll of odd jobs to earn some coin and props from the guild. They'd be purely optional and would would only be directed to the person who can give them out from a conversation from the storyline quest giver.

To everyone that responded: Thanks for giving some insite to all this, if Bethesda can't do this for the release of the game, I'll try to build a mod for it (might have to blackmail some firends into helping, but that would be the easy part). I was honestly expecting to see "tl;dr" in one of the posts.

I agree 100%. A guild overhaul would really be the cherry on top of this delicious game-cake, and those suggestions rock.
Here's a couple other things to consider, if you'll allow me to piggy-back your awesome thread a little:

Another feature I think would be cool is to add some sort of task board that generates radiant quests to each of the guild headquarters. In Oblivion, after you became head of the guild, that was it -- there was nothing else to do except come back in and redirect money from time to time. Which didn't really do anything anyways.
With the addition of a task board, a guild initiate could earn a little bit of extra guild rep and gold without necessarily advancing. There wouldn't be much variation between quests (acquire this rare item, clean out so-and-so cave, kill x of y - type of tasks), but they would be entirely optional, and maybe a unique one could pop up from time to time with a special reward (kill the minotaur terrorizing this village, root out the necromancer in that guild branch). The tasks could get more difficult the higher you increased in rank with the guild, so that they would be a pretty solid source of money when you're the head of the guild. That way there would be a tangible benefit to being a guild leader that wasn't just a title or a one-time reward.
That's sort of what radiant quests are for, right? I think it would be a great use for them that wouldn't feel too unrealistic.

Also, I've posted this before I think, but I'd like guilds to be more localised. I mean, when I find a new settlement or city, I want to be able to stay there a while, you know? Plus, why would a guild send me halfway across the province when there's already a guild branch over there? I'd like the quests offered by a guild branch to remain pretty local to that town or area.
If they wanted to really take that to a new level, they could even have each guild branch be essentially independent of the others and it's your total number of completed quests between them that contributes to your advancements. There could still be a central story arc tying all of them together, but if you wanted to do all the optional guild quests town-by-town, it would be an option. Or you could run all around the map doing quests as you pick them up if thet's your play style.

Basically, just more play style options with guilds

The first part pretty much took my 4th part and hit the nail on the head. I really can't think of a better way to explain it. http://images.uesp.net//c/c4/Fishystick.jpg

Secondly, I like that, but I also like the way the origional guild questlines would force you travel out to other areas. In terms of this, I think that if the Mages Guild (in Oblivon) made you go and help out the guild halls with more than one task for your reccomendations, that would have done this up right perfect. The Fighters Guild and Thieves Guild were done slopily in this area, moreso the former. Trying to make you go to certain areas and do stuph there to help out the local community should be explored more, and bonus rep with the town for doing it (the responsible ppls for helping Mages/Fighters guild and the irresponsible ppls for helping the Thieves Guild) The DB should be excluded from this because, well, if they make you murder the whole damn cell to cull a leak, then do you really want a whole town knowing about your antics?

The Mages' Guild arc was certainly the exception to the "running around the map is annoying" rule. Gathering the recommendations from each of the guild branches was one of the cooler questlines, IMO. But, in the Fighters' Guild especially, I just kept asking myself, "Why would the Chorrol branch send me all the way down to Leyawiin just so I could get a sword out of a cave?" If I'd been in Leyawiin, the quest wouldn't have bothered me.
I guess what I'm really trying to say is that quests from guilds should be placed in logical areas as dictated by the location of the branch you got the quest from. Does that make any sense? :homestar:

I know this was mentioned in another thread (and to some extent here), but I'd like to add that I want some real power with my position! If I'm the head of a major guild, I want to be able to do stuff others can't dream of. I want political powers, the ability to change the guild charter, plan campaigns in the name of the guild, assign cool and varied quests to lesser NPC's in the guild (c'mon, this is a given, the former head always had quests for you!), I waana be able to promote people in the guild, and maybe even declare a new head.

Lol, this thread is seriously getting my hopes waaaay too high for Skyrim's guilds. Before I would've been content with old guilds, but now I'll be pissed off if all this stuff isn't implemented.

I really like mos the ideas you have put forward to further improve how the guild's would work and affect the game world.

The only one I disagree with would be the recurring quests.. eventually you would have completed them all and just doing them over and over after that point would be rather repetitive, as long as there is no form of obligation or force making you take these quests I would be all for it. Otherwise it would be like daily's in MMO's and that is something I never wish to return to.

It could be done in such a way that you could be leader of both the Mages Guild and Thieves Guild (or any two guilds that aren't in competition with each other, really) if you do both quest lines at the same time. Work extra hard to do both lines in tandem, without getting too far ahead in one quest line over the other (so your position in the Mages Guild could keep back the rumors of your thieving ways, and your position in the Thieves Guild makes you more of an asset than a liability from your Mages Guild position), then you earn being head of both. You could even extend that to three or four guilds -- make it so becoming head of multiple guilds was achieved through dedication and hard work. Combine that with skill requirements, and becoming head of multiple guilds will actually say something about your character, other than that you just played through two compeltely independent quest lines.

I agree with all of this but I am also really interested in seeing more guild opposition. In fact, I think every guild should have at least one counter-guild that you have to make a choice between. Wouldn't it have been great in Oblivion to join the Necromancer's and fight the Mage's guild? Or join the Imperial Watch and bring the Gray Fox to justice? There have been a lot of mods that have attempted to create this kind of thing but it would be great if this returned and was improved from Morrowind.

Also, unless you go around with the Black hand emblazoned on your forehead, or wearing the Gray Fox's cowl, how do people know you're in these secret organizations automatically?

They don't have to automatically. But as you progress through these secret orginizations, the rumors could start. And after progressing enough, the rumors become too much and other guilds won't touch you even if there's no proof (or you'll be prevented from going farther in them if you're already joined; maybe even demoted/kicked out).