I agree, however it would be easy to add more random radiant quest in the middle, just to fill out and grind reputation, also an small ceremony at the end where you was declared an new leader and given some stupid reward.

I call it short questlines. Walking everywhere and doing unrelated quests inbetween does not make these guild quests less plainly abrupt. None of this "Oh if you play it like this", no, they're short. These aren't random quests, you join the college and expect some epic yarn about your rise from apprentice to archmage, what do you get?

If you have played Oblivion then you'll probably think otherwise. bliviongate:

Companions quest truly is short, rest feels way longer cause there are related things to do, the boathouse thing is just so boring too

They are short if you constantly run, fast travel, run, fast travel, run everywhere, have great power to defeat anything, spam the console, run, fast travel, drink coffee, constantly at home to play at all hours, and so on

QFT. That shouldn`t be a requirement to make the main quests feel stretched out. The Oblivion guild quests actually seem much superior in comparison to be honest and no amount of delaying or walking about can really hide that.

You know, we had all that in Oblivion too.

And Oblivion had almost three times the amount of quests the College has.

When people say the guild quests are too short, they are usually comparing it to Oblivion's.

Oblivion's guild quests are still considerably long even if you constantly run, fast travel, run, fast travel, run everywhere, have great power to defeat anything, spam the console, run, fast travel and so on.

If players have to always walk, never fast travel and intentionally lose some fights so to make the guild quests feel longer and more in-depth(which probably still cannot be achieved), then I can only say these quests(or those players?) are really sad.

Not at all, I agree that it would be sad to have to do that in order to "make it feel longer"

I also understand that people are comparing, I am not of the past games just this one, so I can only compare to other games not related and "time" and for me they are all long in terms of that comparison.

I only posted that to people who may not have a comparison and play like that and then complain about things being short

Its a tricky one seeing as the history this game has and people who have an expectation of the last, then again to pick up these points and yet you compare to most games out for what you get, it then adds more perspective to it.

This.




This.




Not this. This is BS, and almost insulting. I go on foot everywhere in the game, I never use fast travel or carriages. I'm definitely not a WoW-type player. The College of Winterhold mainquest just IS very short, only the dungeons themselves take a long time to get through, but there is very little content story-wise. And like said before, there is a sense of urgency to the quests right from the start, the story never gives you a good excuse to take a break if you take the events seriously. That's the opposite of a WoW-type player. If anyone is suffering from a WoW syndrome, it's Bethesda, not us players.

I guess the main issue is not that the College and Companion questlines are short, more like I didn't feel like I did enough to earn the respect of the people I suddenly became the leader of. I never met all the mages or all the companions before becoming the leader of those guilds. The quests themselves were too much "go there, kill that" or "go there, fetch that" (just like miscellaneous quests) - I could have been working for the old lady at the mill and never known the difference. Only one of the College's and one of the Companions' 'main' quests felt related to the guild I was working with. Everything else just seemed generically copy/pasted from other quests.

Definitely this. Can't believe some people are suggesting that other people 'slow down' or comparing them to WoW players. There's bad pacing and writing, and not fast travelling/waiting and doing some other quests on the side isn't going to fix that and make the quests magically longer or have more depth.

Meh I never really played Oblivion that much.. it didn't compare to Morrowind, and now Oblivion players are complaining that Skyrim doesn't compare to Oblivion... Oh how the mighty RPG's have fallen.

If I remember correctly, Oblivion had several stopping points before you could progress further on "guild quests". For example, you had to fulfill a certain "level" in fulfilling minor side quests, raising your rank, before you could complete the next step. You *could* still do this in Skyrim, but it's left up to you. Was it a good decision? I don't know. Playing normally, not rushing, but not "taking my sweet time" either, it took me three weeks of play, ~150 hours, to finish both main quests, DB, TG, and Companions. That's NOT an insubstantial amount of time at all. AND I was using fast travel sometimes. Yes, I completed many miscellaneous quests in between tackling the "named" quests. I guess that's probably why it didn't feel like I jumped from initiate to master, like Oblivion. If your gameplay style leads you rushing through all "main" quests before going back to miscellaneous ones, then, yeah, probably a bad gameplay decision. I think, though, that most RPers (hardcoe anyway) play more along the lines of how I play (could be wrong). Zipping through and cleaning up the dregs is more of a completionists gameplay style. And this game is NOT for completionists. Some encounters/quests will never be available to you (i.e. meeting Cicero on the road) unless you stumble into them. Good luck traversing the entire landscape inch by inch. Don't forget to climb every peak. Oh yes, there are tons of little things lying around that you'll miss otherwise.

The faction quest themselves have been generally good, but the overall feeling is one of being rushed. Not rushed as in sense of urgency, although there is a bit of that but more a matter of pacing when you get chunks of a faction's quest line.

On my current character is aside from picking locks on chests, and one use of a bow on her first mammoth, is as pure a mage as I can make... I went to Winterhold at like level 2 or 3, joined the college, did the main quest as prompted, which was very interesting at low level with no companion.. and was archmage by like level 8. There is something wrong about that. Sure I can do a few odd side quests at the college still, and I get the odd remark about how I saved the college, but essentially all it amounts to is a decent robe and some nice quarters.

Rather than feeling like I saved much of anything and deserve to run the place, I feel like a college freshman that got pulled from class, sent on a couple of errands by the administration and now I'm suddenly the dean.. but I'm still basically a freshman who doesn't have the ability to do much of anything to show I deserve my place.

My personal feeling is that things should be doled out to your character as they develop. 1st rank.. give you a taste of the main story for the faction, then send you off to grow up a but via scripted quests or radiant quests, with dialog indications that there are more important things that await when you are more powerful. Once you make a certain level or faction rank, you wander in to grab some other quest, and get something along the likes of "Oh thank the gods you are here. We need your help!" or something to that effect. Finish that stage and move on until the next crisis.. finally putting you to the point of being in charge at a minimum of level 20 or so perhaps.

After you take over a faction, there should be some things that require you to make leadership decisions.. assign some important task, or take more assignments on yourself.. triggered by you showing up at the faction HQ, or by courier, like the Letter From A Friend you get every so often now..

Another thing is recognition.. how is it that I've been the archmage for almost 10 levels now and that schmuck mage in Winterhold still tells me I should join the college of I have the aptitude? If anything having the high muckity muck position should trigger some more difficult fights.. OMG.. You're the new archmage, aren't you? We are getting slaughtered by X and only someone of your stature has a chance of helping..

Hmm if i remember correctly, i did oblivion mage questline in about 1 day if not less. It took me about half a week to do skyrim's college questline, simply because there is so much else to do than there was in oblivion.

They should've gone the Daggerfall route and make them dependent on radiant story.

TG and DB were decently long, but the big problem is the Companions. Warriors really got the short end of the stick this time around. Not only is it less of a Warriors' Guild than it is a Team Jacob fanclub, but it's 90% fetch quests and generic dungeon dives, and the story revolves entirely around the beliefs of the Nord culture, rather than the more consequential stories of previous WG questlines.

I think the College of Winterhold could've been better. For one, I would've liked more options. I knew Ancano was a piece of crap from the very moment I met him. I wanted to kill him before he could do anything, but nope. Invincible NPC. Even if you're forced to go the way of not killing him, I felt the PC should've been given an objective to seek out the Psijic Order and learn from them after the whole Eye of Magnus fiasco. That could've served as the midpoint of the questline. As it is, I felt like it ended in the middle of the story, without giving nearly enough information on the Psijics (not even a mention of the Psijic Endeavor), and no insight whatsoever on the function and origin of the Eye of Magnus.
Also, the questline rewards were awful.

I finished the Companions, Thieves Guild, and Dark Brotherhood questlines. My mage hasn't completed the College quests so I can't comment on that.

Maybe it's just me, but the Companions quests were actually not that bad, and had a fairly memorable ending. In terms of stories, I think the Companions was my favorite.

The TG and DB quests were also pretty interesting. I found the TG to be another one of my favorites, again due to the story behind the quests. The DB was cool, and a bit spooky at times but the story wasn't as appealing to me.

For the record, I did play Oblivion. The guild quests in Skyrim are different, but I didn't find them to be disappointing. Maybe if I skipped the whole story and just ran toward quest markers it would be dull. But I play this game for the story as much as for the battle, and in Skyrim, the people have some great stories to tell.

No. It doesn't matter how long you decide to stare at a wall in a dungeon. The quests are short. The longest is the Thieves Guild, by far, followed by the Dark Brotherhood. The College and the Companions are a complete JOKE.

It's very clear that Bethesda put EVERYTHING into the Thieves guild, then ran out of time on the other three. Why? Well, the Thieves Guild is vast, it ties into nearly every other questline as well, you wouldn't know this unless you had actually played every other faction. The game practically forces you into the Thieves Guild. During the main quest you have to flirt with the Thieves Guild. During the Dark Brotherhood you have to use the Thieves Guild as well. You need someone from the College during the Thieves Guild quests, too.

It basically ties into everything, bar the utter pap that is the Companions. It's fleshed out, unlike every other questline with the exception of the Dark Brotherhood which had some decent moments in it. But really, it just seems they ran out of time and quickly slapped on the Companions and the Mages guild, a ten year old could come create stories with more depth.

The structure of Skyrim is probably closer to Fallout 3 than Oblivion. The trade off is that the questlines of factions that you can join have become much shorter in return of having a larger number of unique places to explore.

Given the fact the Companions is more of a social club, and the College of Winterhold is, you know, a place of education....why did they need a central story arc in the first place? :huh:

Forcing them to last longer artificially inflates the time, yes. Doing the quests straight through makes them ridiculously short. Also, some of them end abruptly, and feel like there should be more.



Has nothing to do with age. Thieves' guild feels a little longer. Companions and Winterhold feel stupid short. Yeah, I can artificially drag it out and inflate the amount of time it takes, but why bother?




I wasn't rushing. I simply played through the quests at an average pace. The only ones that felt like they lasted a decent amount of time were thieves' guild and dark brotherhood. And the DB only lasted as long as it did because I took the time to kill my targets strategically. I could've just killed them straight up, but killing them in interesting ways was more fun.



They're factions in the game, so yeah. They needed a story arc. They are both very short and very shallow. People can make all the excuses they like, but those two factions were pitiful.

You hardly had time to get to know anyone, TG the exception, before being thrown in the deep end.

Mages college - ridiculously short before being thrown in the deep end, no time at all to feel like one of the students.

Companions - Not enough time to get to know everyone before it all hits the fan. You are told in no uncertain terms to see the MQ member before you do anything else. Of course you can ignore that but it still means you cannot interact beyond the initial new recruit greeting with these important members of your guild. I felt like I hardly new them at all.

Thieves guild you were given plenty to do but once again given the MQ too soon. After what happened with the mages college I gave the mq a miss till I was ready. DB was so so, not quite as rushed as the mages college.

Things could have been handled much better by giving the player time to feel like they were part of it all. All that was needed was x amount of work done for the guilds before anything big came up.

Guild involvement is getting shorter and shorter in tes games. Next game will probably advertise in the black horse courier for an arch mage.

Yeah come on, after a couple of quests with the companion you are invited in the Circle