Personally, I think that the immortal essentials was the biggest step back from MW to OB. I'm wondering what the general opinion regarding essentials.

Same way as in Fallout 3, so not every second person.

I want them gone.

If I want to slay a king or a god....... or a god king I damn well should be able to! lol

Do it like in Morrowind, except make a cutscene with Sheogorath laughing at your ass.

Toggle it? I imagine people who mess up and don't have a good save to reload might be slightly miffed, but at the same time, many people will be annoyed at immortality.

From what it seems, only main quest givers will probably be the only immortals, that and children.



The problem with Morrowind's way on the main quest is that people can ruin their entire game save by accidentally getting to an auto save point right after they killed an essential NPC. Also, the last save could also have been in awhile ago and then you kill an essential NPC you didn't know so you have to redo everything you already had to do, so you just threw away 10 minutes for nothing. That is really annoying and having a handful of NPCs that can't be killed until after they are of no more use to the main quest isn't too much to be asked.

This.

Think about the CHILDREN!

Fixed it for you.

They should avoid it as much as they can, but it would be annoying to accidentally kill a quest giver or have then killed by some random NPC. Maybe they could have something where essential characters can't be killed by accident. The player would have to perform some kind of action to confirm they want the NPC dead (Only on people marked essential).

As a previous thread stated, killing someone accidentally can be disastrous. And don't say "Well you should have saved..." we all have lapses in thought sometimes. Personally, it never happened to me, but I still hold that it is important to have essential NPCs.

Of course, you kind of need to have essential characters in Skyrim, because it was always better than that "ZOMG! You killed a guy that you need to beat the game! You better reload the game nao! LOL!" message that you would get in Morrowind.

Besides, Children are confirmed, so Essential Characters are all but in.

A special finisher move used on unconscious NPCs. I can understand the need for some NPC-saving feature with the Radiant AI and all. Something like a finisher would confirm your intent.

No Caustic, immortals were not better than consequence. You never had to do the main quest in Morrowind, you didn't need those NPCs. The way AI worked in Morrowind, you were really the only one who would kill them, intentionally or not. You should be saving before a killing spree anyway.

From what I understood, one of the main reason for the inclusion of "essential" tag for some quest-related NPCs in Oblivion seems to having more to do with the fact that most NPCs were assigned to a unique schedule, where some of them regularly travel from one city to another all on their own. One example is this incident related to "A Rat Problem" quest line in Anvil. There's a certain essential NPC involved who sometimes making a trip to Chorrol and back on her own once in a month. Had the essential tag absent, she might end up killed by the hands of trolls or other hostiles when you were NOT EVEN PRESENT at the crime scene, so to speak, as it all processed in the background. This is actually occurred to my play through, as my PC casually walking through the forest was greeted by her limping corpse just nearby Greenmead Cave. But since the quest itself was already finished by that time, there's no worries. Now imagine if the essential status weren't there, and I haven't even started the quest line; it's not my fault that she ends up dead and the whole quest line failed to launch!

It all depends on to what extend the Radiant AI can help to alleviate this issue, methinks.

Should there be invulnerable NPCs? Hell no.

Will there be? Of course...actually solving the problems instead of just slapping an "essential" tag on would be too much like work.

I never had a problem with this in NV.

With NPCs killing other NPCs

or me killing an NPC because I accept the consequence that they might be a quest giver.

The NPC's should be immortal amongst themselves, but the PC should be able to bring them down, and once they [the NPC] are uncounsious there should be a coup de grace move you do to make it permanent.

Or just have special quest givers marked obviously and give them alot of health for the first few hours of the game, then if you start attacking one a message will pop stating " this is a essential character killing him/her will cause issues with a quest" but only for the main quest and/or a king or faction leader.

Sounds good to me.

the game is bound to glitch at some point if that glitch kills an important person I dont want to start over the whole game just becuase someone died

There really shouldn't be any hate on the immortal NPCs if they are no longer essential after their usefulness has run it's course. Surely it's okay if you can't kill main quest NPCs until after you've finished the quest they are involved in.

It's better than nothing, but I'd still rather kill them at any time. Many a time I wanted to throw a fireball in Martin's face.

To be fair, you set him on fire at the end of Oblivion :tongue:

get rid of them.

if your to stupid to use more than one save, then you deserve to have to start over if you seriously mess something up. morrowinds system was perfect. if someone died you got a message and a choice to continue or reload. developers need to stop designing games around idiots.

the only way i would allow it is the "invulnerable to other npcs/monsters but vulnerable to player" suggestions ive seen but should only be applied to a quest giver who was travelling from town to town or something.

Didn't one of the previews say that if the quest giver for the 'find the claw' mission died that his sister would take over the quest? So I suppose the issue is being rethought for Skyrim. I'd rather not see immortals though.