Markarth is pretty desolate after I busted out of jail and obliterated up a cannibal cult. It's pretty eerie, actually, and It feels like the Forsworn should come back in at any moment. I hope they realize that Calcemo and I aren't Nords, we bear them no malice, and are here for the Dwemer stuff. Their king could at least do that - I'd like it if I could side with the Forsworn in-game and reclaim Markarth.

That was only if you killed Vivec, not any other characters. Otherwise the main quest just got broken, though they warned you.

In Skyrim, being a part of any quest makes the NPC immortal. Yes, this is just a "stop noobs whining about broken quests" thing. In the end that is a design decision by the devs which you can love or hate.

You could even kill Vivec and do the main quest.
The only truly essential NPC in Morrowind is Yagrum.
You could still kill him if you wished, and if you had killed Vivec and Yagrum before a certain point in the main quest, you were unable to complete it.

As I said...

I especially hate Maven's inability to lie down and effing die. Her son too. In fact, out of the ENTIRE Black-Briar family, the only one you can kill is the only good one... Poor Ingun :'(

That's no excuse at all.
Un-killable NPCs are a stupid idea, and what's more there are *way* too many of them.

Only thing that bugs me are invincible leaders in Stormcloak camps.

I want to wipe the Stormcloak filth off the face of Nirn, but those damned immortal captains prevent me from doing so.

I'm sure this has been mentioned, but this is easily rectified by console commands, and there is a mod that automatically enters in the commands for every NPC except a very small handful.
This is a non-problem. End of thread.

No, New Vegas did it right. If I want to kill every damn person in the game and that leaves my game barren then thats my problem isn't it? Wheres the freedom in this so called open world rpg? In New Vegas I could go right into Caesar's camp and take him out...making it out alive is a different story. My good aligned character in Skyrim cant even take out half the a holes in the game because it might break a quest...so what, isn't that what multiple playthroughs are for?

False.

Those who are not on a PC cannot use console commands or mods, so this does not apply to them. For it to be a non-problem would require the existence of a universal solution, and the only way to get one is for Bethesda to implement it.

Since they will not do this, as it would be in direct opposition to their design decision to have essential NPCs in the first place, those not on a PC are stuck with having hundreds of unnecessarily essential people in their games, which, IMO, is pretty poor form on Bethesda's part.

People on consoles don't count in any discussion.

Immortal NPC's are only a problem when they start attacking you. I had that happen last night and thankfully by dumb luck I was able to get around it. I still argue that Immortal NPC's are needed but once you are done with them then they should lose their immortality.

New Vegas wouldn't be a good example of no immortal NPC's because none of the important NPC's are near enemies. I think Morrowind was also the same too, although that game was designed to take advantage of killing important NPC's by allowing you to continue to still do stuff.

Or you could actually write a thought-out sentence in which you explain your point of view, instead of printing such gibberty gabber.
What does it even mean, all it does is look like a soundbite and all it will do is engender angry responses.
Please.

Or I won't, because I don't care about converting people to a righteous point of view about video games.

It was sheer lazy / bad game design to include the sheer number of unkillable NPCs. I'm sure in Oblivion the number was much lower, I don't remember coming across all that many in Oblivion. Here every other named NPC is unkillable.

Again, thank god for mods and what the hell was Bethesda thinking? Noobs are easily placated with a warning, and people that are so noobish AND stupid are usually violent killers in games like this anyway. Those kind of people want to be able to kill whoever.

The unkillable opposing faction camp leaders MUST be a bug, because there is no way anyone on earth is stupid enough to think they should have been unkillable. They serve no purpose and you are told to go kill them when you win the civil war.

Same thing happened to me in riverwood. At the beginning of the game I tried to fight that bard you find on the road but he was way too strong for my level. After I realized that I ran to river wood and everyone attacked him. It turns out that he couldn't be killed at the point for some reason so the towns people wouldn't talk or trade with me because they kept fighting that bard. I eventually had to reload.

Same. I hate not being able to kill certain essential characters. All in the name of making Skyrim (in particular Riften) a better place, of course. But at least unlike Oblivion, they gave us the chance to wipe out the Dark Brotherhood.

the npcs i want killable are the stormcloak and imperial camp leaders, soooo annoying.

No you don't, and Fallout New Vegas, as others have pointed out, is proof of this. If you were to kill a vital quest-related character in FNV, you would receive a very prominent quest auto-fail message. Then it was a matter of deciding whether or not you cared (i.e. reload from the auto-save or any previous save, or just continue playing). It didn't wreck anything.

What an ass. Nobody in the world of common sense gives a damn that you play GAMES on a computer. When I see cats make comments like yours it makes me think that the computer is all you have going for you. S..ts funny.

At the very least they could lose their essential status after you have done their quest, but the game doesn't even do that.

You don't need to kill them i.e. smite them with a blade or burn them with some necromancy. Just get them to follow you to certain mountain tops where you can shout them into an area with no escape...lock them in a dungeon or jail. Be creative. If you can't get them to chase you then just shout them where you want them to go. Can you eventually clear the entire world of people? I've never tried. I suppose there will always be some chance encounters on the road or couriers running up to you, but I'm guessing that you can remove all the people and just have critters & monsters in Skyrim...just like at home when you were growing up.

It might be fun to get Maven somehow locked out of Riften. Thanks Rockn-Roll, I may try that. I have this eerie suspicion though that she will auto warp back to her old place even if I lead her into some unescapable prison after a few days time.

This is an incredibly stupid oversight on Bethesda's part. I mean, truly moronic. You're actually told to wipe out camps you come across but you can't. It's utterly ridiculous. The number of unkillable NPCs is ridiculous to begin with but having someone in the game ask you to do something you can't even do takes the cake. Just dev laziness all around.

First off, key NPCs will warp back to where they are supposed to be no matter what you do. They are not truly persistent in the game world. Secondly you can't force people through doors. Lastly, I should be able to kill whoever the hell I want and take the repercussions for my decision because it's supposed to be an open world RPG.