Am I the only Archmage who was a little offended that when I returned to the Arcane University and spoke with virtually any of the mages, the re-acted to their Archmage as though he were some special needs village idiot charitably hired to wipe the bums and clean the chamber pots of the resident mages? Even Apprentices talked about how they had to study and had no time to talk. . . an Apprentice telling The Archmage of Cyrodil, "no time for your foolishness buddy?" WTF. Who else was annoyed that people like Carahil kept talking about what a great archmage Hannibal Travern was. . . despite his being already long dead and superceded as Archmage by YOU?!

I sincerely hope Skyrim does a much better job of making The Archmage, and all the guild masters, feel a little more consequential than nominal figureheads. Generally, even the least powerful figurehead is at least treated with general respect, not essentially told to bugger off by low ranking members of their own organization.

It would be cool to be able to change rules and actually do something after becoming a guild master. Hopefully Bethesda implements something like that.

Yes and yes.

I felt the same as you the first time I played through Oblivion, but just passed it off as something the developers didn't have the time to invest into. It's not a deal breaker for me by any means, but I really hope that's not the case this time around.

I would like it if some faction members had physical reactions when they see you as the guildmaster. Like if the Imperial Legion or the Rebels would straighten their posture and salute you whenever you walked by.

Yes and no.
1. It was pretty annoying when I spoke to someone and they just blew me off like a younger sibling, but I just got over it. It wasn't a big deal.
If they had the chance to fix it in Skyrim I would like it, but probably wouldn't notice.
2. I put no because I would rather have more data for other important things than regulations for the mages guild.
It's a nice idea, but still, no.

Definitely something I agree with. I was playing Oblivion just yesterday and it made me laugh how people in the University were still so disrespectful to you after you become Arch Mage. Really does need sorting out.

I think the mage's guild was still a little iffy, some apprentices were like "Oh my! it's the arch mage, do you want me to follow you!" but on the whole, yeah, you'd think they would have shown more respect for a Master Wizard, let alone an arch mage.... this said, there was an earlier topic already about it, the position of arch-mage/guild master/etc in Oblivion made no sense for any of the guilds... since you never had the duties that such a position should entail nor the real privellages. "Hey Oreyn, I am guild master... so I am just gunna relax, do nothing and tell you what to sort out. Oh and I'll take reward gold for doing nothing or special recruitment items"...



Hey, my favorite one was before Arch-Mage Traven died, you could talk to him about rumors and he'd talk about himself in the 3rd person, it was something like, "the mages guild has always seemed troublesome but the changes made by arch-mage Traven look promising"... nice way to prop yourself up Traven.

With all due respect Archmage, I've been in this guild since I was eleven, yet you come along and achieve our most coveted position in mere days. Heres the deal, I'll acknowledge your position, but would you kindly [censored] off; I've got research to do.

It damaged the immersion for me. It seemed very unrealistic that members of a guild would be that rude, especially in the case of The Mages Guild, where the guild master is essentially the chief mage in the entire nation. I could understand and even appreciate some disrespect IF your Archmage was still a novice in all the schools of magic and had just sneaked and battled his or her way into the position, if the game was observant enough to note this. . . but when your character has Mastered three or more of the schools of magic and is a bona fide master wizard of great power and knowledge. . . to be treated with less respect than the doorman deserves seems highly improper. In essence, aside from unscripted side comments, NO one in The Mages guild seemed to know you had become archmage other than Romus Polanius, the High Elf with the Mowhawk, and whichever Apprentice you dragged along with you. I hope they fix this.

it takes mere days just to complete the quest to met Duke Hassildor, it takes more then a few days to travel around doing all the recommendation quests... so make it a bit more honest... it's at least a few weeks... maybe a month. You also do have enough magical power to probably kill just about everybody in the mage's guild by yourself in a one vs all fight.... you would think that level of power would garner more respect then you get.

Eh? Are you really serious? I can complete the whole mages guild in 2 days, and have done... o.O

But yes, on topic, I would like to see more respect given to guildmasters. Though I think DB did it very well. "Dear Listener you honor us with your presence..." blah blah...

Resentment is fine. The world is full of people in organizations who resent being passed over by hot shot, golden boy junior members,
:banghead: :tops: :angel: :disguise: :flame:

But to actually come out and treat your leader like something stuck to the bottom of your shoe? :swear: :meh: > :grad: That seems a little beyond the pail.

Yes, and Yes. Of course; Oblivion's handling of that was terrible lame and immersion-breaking.

By the way, there isn't an Archmage in Skyrim. The Mage's Guild has been disbanded for a long time at this point.

The "mage" faction with either be the Synod or the College of Whispers, I guess. (maybe both! That'd be great.)
I'm sure there's information and speculation on that I've missed, but yeah. No Archmage per se.

That is a good one. And there are others. . . too many others. At times I just wanted to slap the person in front of me and hiss, " I AM the Archmage you idiot, Traven died about a million years ago, and I have been in this post ever since. Don't you read that blackhorse gazette thats always being circulated?"

Depends if you mean real life days or ingame days. In game on the quest to retrieve the book, you go to the guy on the first day and he says "come back tomorrow". Then the next day he says "you can meet the count at 2AM just outside of skingrad", tho being an ambush the necromancers appear at like midnight... so I was talking about it from the perspective of in game time, it would be at least a couple of weeks to do the entire quest line.

I don't think you should be able to rise to the rank of head of the guild. A respected member of the guild? Sure. A top ranking member? Absolutely. But I don't think you should be able to go into an established guild and become its leader in a matter of months.

I've always kinda got this feeling that the writers and developers don't get along very much. Writers come up with an intersting story, developers look at it and wonder how in blue blazes they're suppose to pull it off. So the developers do their best with what they've been given and how much time they've gotten, and the writers wonder where they're story went off to.

Is it really like that? Who knows...but this is kinda one of those instances.

The story to becoming archmage is a cool one...and it would have been just as interesting as the theives guild and dark brotherhood quests if...well...the final big boss had been more than just a dark elf...and if there would be a few more puzzles like that piller one...and if we could actually use our power now that we're an archmage.

But well...its not an easy thing to develop. The fighters guild took a crack at the leader choosing what the guild should be doing...but it was still kinda lacking. Beth's been keeping their factions this time under wraps only telling us that they're very excited about it. I'd say we have a good chance of actually being able to lead this time around. We'll see though, I hope so.

According to many/most developers, yes, it's been that way for as long as computer games have had writters... writters never limit themselves to technology because simply(/stereotypically) put, writters don't understand technology and don't understand why what they write is simply unfeasible... it's an old story that almost every storyline ever in a game has been hit by.

Aye, when I hit the top ranks, I received a few shinies, and that was it. The Grey Cowl is great! But not even getting tremendous deals or access to more funds from your fences was ... rediculous. Trying to manage a guild would be a great bonus, add some mental complexity, and even open possibilities for speechcraft and mercantile, and be affected by personality and fame. Great possibilites.....

I'd rather be Master of The Mages Guild than Dovakhim, so I certainly hope they don't go robbing us of this OPTION. If you don't wish to master a guild, don't do so, but many of us enjoy it rather well. When you save a guild from destruction, and become powerful enough to overwhelm half its members in a single night. . . I think that gives you a certain amount of leverage.

I'd like to see some separation of the functional and managerial aspects of factions. Being good at fighting has nothing to do with the bureaucratic elements of running a Fighter's Guild, jobs accepted and denied, funds allocated, newcomers recruited and trained, city officials argued with, and so on. It was always obnoxious to be casually handed the leadership reigns of these organizations after displaying some irrelevant skills, especially to lead ALL of them. Morrowind did the same thing. You mean the leader of virtually every single factions just happens to be on their way out, and I, the promising newcomer, get to replace them? How convenient.

There's no reason to respect a position if promotions are handed out like candy, either. Heck, I've had harder times getting candy. I don't get a job at McDonald's, serve one customer, and get promoted to manager. What's that? I fired one employee? Great, I am now the CEO. I've heard Skyrim will involve random quests. Hopefully they apply this to factions, and make you work for those promotions. Do enough work and maybe you can choose to receive a special missions or task for promotion. Maybe I don't want to be the top dog of the Fighter's Guild, maybe I just want to go there to do work I can get paid for, like everyone recommends it for. I'm sure some people would like to be able to stay at a certain rank and do quests as they please, instead of either tearing through the linear storyline or having no FG experience at all.

That way you could also choose to be the FG "Champion" or other top mercenary rank and stay there, doing the toughest jobs, OR opt to have an involved role in the guild's function. They also claim to be improving the NPC dynamic functions, and this would fit in great here. If there are already random quests flying about, it wouldn't be hard to let some AI fighters go after those AI monsters. Have members get paid, and jobs bring in money. Look at the performance of members and decide who is assigned what contracts. Decide to spend guild funds on equipment, but then get in trouble because you have to pay restitution to a dead member's family. Your actions would have an actual impact. There's lots of room for high-ranking members to have duties, and they don't even have to be guildmaster to have those responsibilities.

If you do a faction storyline, great, but there's no need for the faction to "end" with that. It's not like the whole thing shuts down, nobody ever needs the mages or fighter's guilds again, job well done everybody. Especially not in a sandbox game that doesn't end when you beat it. Just as promotion is optional, if I tire of the duties of my rank, I can retire, or otherwise take a less active role. Go back to an NPC running the show. I'd like to receive AND earn respect.

The game has obvious limitations. And some of them are only reasonable. Do you really think you could finish up some of these main quests in the matter of days to weeks in which we so often do? If any of the quests really took months to years to accomplish, very few people would actually appreciate it. It would detract far too much from their actuall lives, place too great a demand upon them, etc. The notion that guild mastery should be as involved and elongated as such a thing might be in one's actual life is like suggesting that a film actually last the length of time it would take for the events in it to unfold.

Also, the Mcdonalds anology is not apt, and the accomplishments listed therein too commonplace. A junior executive managing to become CEO in a short span after landing a series of major deals and related corporate victories is more anologous, but still not entirely on keel. In ancient times, especially if you go back to times of tribal war etc. a series of major battle victories could propel one very high very quickly were they significant and sweeping enough. Rising to the head of the guilds in ES usually involves accomplishing a series of feats that no other in the organization has managed to do. Consider, by the time you near the end of the guild sidequest, you are privvy to sensitve information that few others have, you know secrets, often about the guild members, that few others know. . . there is a good chance that you are both too damned powerful and too dangerous for the compromised members to attempt to kill ( these people know you have likely already triumphed against circumstances and adversaries they likely would not have been able to even survive against). . . Coups do happen. Upstarts sometimes overthrow entire governments. . . You are a hero and a legend in the guild by the time the quests are over, your deeds legendary, your talents, powers, and even your strange good fortune, are also legendary. . . would the beuracrats really want to stand against you and deny you the position that you are vyying for, if you desire it? Who among them will be so bold as to spit into the face of the hurricaine, to stand against the Guild's new champion, before whom all other enemies have fallen or fled?

It might be a little like what Aragorn once said to Frodo, " If I wanted The Ring for myself, I could have it. Now."

Yes, and yes but....

However they'd have to be careful with this. It isn't realistic for the head of a major guild to be treated like everybody else, and have no actual authority. Although it's a slippery slope, is it really realistic to have 1 man/woman controlling every guild in Skyrim? Is it realistic to hold 50 bajillion different major titles? If they do change this (which I hope they do), I also hope they make guild advancement waaay harder.

Agreed to an extent. But I must say. . . as with money, so too often with positions of power. The more you have, the easier it is to expand further. Just as it is generally easier to make the second million than it is the first, due to a larger foundation of assets to work with etc., so too once you have an extremely powerful position, it is sometimes easier to put your foot into other doors. You might be shocked to know how many wealthy individuals sit on the executive boards of multiple corporations and organizations for example. The difficult thing would be managing all those organizations at once. . . something that is sometimes solved by delegation of authority.

It would be better if the quest line then gave the appearence of time passing, with a story that allows you to take it at your own pace. As it was in the Mages Guild, no one ever got promoted except for you, and nothing ever happened that wasn't quest-related. Ramunus was a Master Wizard before I joined the Guild. He's a Master Wizard when I get accepted into the University. He's a Master Wizard while I kept getting promoted. He's a Master Wizard when I became Arch-Mage. I was still the "newest addition" when I was sent off to kill Mannimarco. It does tend to give the impression that you just rocket through the ranks when you're the only one progressing in rank. Have other people move around in rank and station, maybe even have some say in who moves where when you get high enough. Make it look like the Guild is actually a functioning entity outside of you, like it's supposed to be.

Also, it didn't help that the skills relevant to the Guild played absolutely no role in your placement within the Guild.