Are you talking specifically on the TG quest line, or are you also talking about the radiant quests that you get from two specific people within the guild?

It didn't take me too long to go through it, and I did not fast travel (though I used the carriages to go between cities). Overall, I enjoyed the TG questline, but I dislike that there is forced combat in it. If I wanted combat, I'd join the Companions. I am a thief, in the thieves guild, I want to steal things. The radiant quests are great, though I wish you could pick which city to hit (that got ridiculously annoying), but the story just didn't settle well with me. I liked the outcome, I enjoyed the last mission, and I had fun most of the time, but it just didn't seem very TG to me.

I will say that, to me, it was the longest of the 3 factions that I have played (I have not yet dome DB).

The only one I've done is the Mages College, and I must say it is rather short and unsatisfying. I think there were like...4 or 5 quests?

As others have said.... it's not the length of time we're talking about when we say they seem short. It's the fact that they're only like 5 quests long. (At least, that's how the Companions seemed to me.)



There must have been a bug or something when I did the Companions (early patch, 1.0 or 1.1), because I only got one Radiant quest. Every other one was one of the main quests. Try to talk to any of the "leaders" to get a random quest, and they'd say "Go to ______, they have a task for you."


I agree that if there had been several random quests in between the steps (at least the earlier ones, before the plot swings into full gear), it wouldn't have seemed quite so "Congrats on just joining us, rookie. We now invite you to the Circle."

lol do the mages college bro i feel like its the epitome of this thread

lol I actually was thinking the same thing too, OP, while playing the mages college. the thing is, when I was almost done what I thought was the quest to make me go from an apprentice mage to adept mage, I became the archmage. And there is no ending. Literally. Its just. Oh. Ok. What now? The quest guy literally tells you, "uh...I don't know.."

Yes, that would be great. That would definitely be an improvement, I agree.

However, I think I'd still feel something was not right with the story. Some of these people have been in this organization for years. They know the leader, they're trusted. I waltz in from nowhere, do five favors (two of which they help me with) and - bam! - they decide to elect me the new leader?

Eorlund, I'm guessing, is the senior member in the organization now. Why isn't everyone looking to him to take over the reins? Aela has clear leadership qualities: strong, forceful, dynamic - I can't believe she'd just meekly step aside.

It seems to me that these cantankerous, brawling, mead-drinking warriors ought to be challenging each over the top position. That they do not seems odd to me. That they accept me as their boss goes beyond odd. That seems wrong.

Mage line is the worst TES quest line ever.

There was nothing between apprentice and arch mage. Really needed a better, longer, more thought out quest line than the Deus Ex Machina Psijic thing we got and yes, rankings with required levels of magic to advance in the rankings.

It was terribly done. Companions not much better, though I do hear the Thieves Guild and DB quests are better.

I agree... stupid "cool" dates... :glare:

I'd have to agree. I played The Companions questline through first, around level 25. And it seemed to end after only really having done five quests. I thought that was a bit odd, so I looked up the questline in the official strategy guide? Wow. Dozens of radiant quests from different guild members designed to break you in, in between the main quests for the questline.

I got none of these.

Not a single one.

Each time I spoke to a questgiver asking for work I was always told, 'Not now, character x wants to speak with you'. So I went and spoke to them, and this resulted in the next main quest section of the Companions questline starting.

It's clearly designed to be broken up, and to feel like a longer story you have to work at. But something is going wrong, because all those radiant quests just don't get offered until you've completed the questline, as a whole.

Not rushing is not the same thing as the quest lines being long and the journey is not a part of the quest just like how I do not get paid for the car journey to work or back home every shift that I do. I am not interested in walking to work either as that is a 50 minute journey by foot yet by car it is only 5 minutes, in reality I am going to use the fastest method available to me and so why should I be forced to use the slow manual walk method in a computer game which has a fast travel option? don't get me wrong, I think more could be done with fast travel to stop it being an instant and perfect method of transportation (like random encounters that interrupt it for example) but the whole idea of you have to walk to every goal post is a bit ludicrous. Oblivion and Fallout 3 also both had fast travel and yet nobody is complaining about those having short quest lines.

The quest lines are short, the speed you do the quests in is up to you, but I think the achievement of having to work towards your goal is much more of a rewarding experience then having to go out of your own way to make things more difficult.

Skyrims is not a short game but it's quest lines are short, the difference between the game and the quest lines is something you're not making and it's this lack of differentiation that your entire argument is based on, but with that differentiation your argument in my opinion has no basis what-so-ever and the quest lines remain short.

Well said man
Younger kids nowaday rush through games just so they are completed. They don't get the exploration aspect.
It is like with those shooters they all play, kids will get a game at midnight, sign on and play through it on Normal in one sitting. Kind of silly

What ranks??? You go from the bottem to the top with no middle ground.

^ This ^

Actually in the Companions you go Initiate -> Member -> Leader... same in the thieves guild... it's just so rushed you don't really see it.

Point taken, but there were many other ranks in past games, it's kinda of a bummer

This is one of my only issues. I went to Winterhold and immediately was given a quest to complete. The completion of this quest (which does have several steps) made me the archmage. I was like...what? Ha.

They should NOT give you the quest to become archmage first. It should be only after you've done a bunch of stuff for them.

So head's up...if you want to do the mage quests, do the sidequests offered to you by the other teachers first!

They're much shorter than Oblivions

I can't speak to all of them since I have only taken the MQ through Act 1, and completed 116 misc quests mostly found through exploration on my own. But, my character is arch mage, and I did take plenty of time with this. Walked though it slowly, got married, bought 3 homes, smithed, enchanted and just goofed off with side quests. I personally felt I put more effort into the guild quests to go from apprentice to associate in the Cyrodil mages guild, then the entire quest line to become arch mage. The story was decent enough, but the amount of content was just silly. Should have been sufficient to grow from evoker to magician in Oblivion. I guess with civil war content, and all of the radiant quests, they felt the guilds didn't require the same level of detail. A mistake as far as the mages guild is concerned, but am hoping for a different experience with the DB, TG etc. Problem is, usually I like to devote a different character to each guild quest line when I play. Doesn't seem justified in Skyrim.

Yeh the questlines are long enough for me.

how long is the main quest? like say thats all you do from lvl 1, bout what lvl would you be finished? Since the mages guild im kind of scared to continue LOL

Sorry but if you think this game's guild questlines are lengthy, or anything approaching the definition of that word, you've never played a previous Elder Scrolls game. Skyrim's DB was a joke.

* Do one quest for the leader.
* Then a dozen lame quests for another member. No quirky parameters to make the hits fun or challenging. NONE AT ALL.
* Check in with leader, get another official DB quest.
* Do one last lame quest for another member.
* LAME TWIST
* Do last official (and anticlimactic) DB quest.
* Done.

....really?

Mages better get some love in the DLC.

There are no real ranks to the Guilds in Skyrim, either.

In Oblivion each Guild had ranks, which on Xbox unlock specific achievements for each rank. And the conditions of progressing through each rank were pretty epic at times.

Take the Mages Guild for example. You couldn't even get access to the Arcane University until you'd done a quest (Sometimes with multiple outcomes) for the head of each guild branch in every city. There were then aa good few quests to progress through for each rank up to arch mage.

The Guild Questlines in Skyrim just don't have that level of complexity to them. It's why they're not quite so fulfilling to many players. Each guild questline in Skyrim is designed to be broken up by Radiant Quests to prolong the experience - but often those Radiant Quests become locked off by questgivers who seem determined to force you to the next main phase of the questline. This is especially annoying in the Companions questline, where radiant questgivers won't even speak to you about radiant quests, and just instruct you to talk to the giver for the next phase of the questline.

I really think thats why they seemingly "got the shaft"
I would expect a magic oriented first DLC, possibly having to do with the sygic order or whatever

The only Guild I've completed is Thieves and I didn't find it to be short at all. I thought it was quite enjoyable actually. I find it a bit broken that everyone still treats the main character like a scrub wants it is done. Especially considering how the quest ends.