Oblivion barely had replayable quests and missions at all, unless you count self made missions like becoming a vampire and getting the cure over and over again, or clearing out Necromancers den as part of your own mandate as Archmage. . . not that the necromancers ever would have attacked anyway.

The Shivering Isles expansion tried to address it, but was a little heavy handed in the approach (i.e. attacks on villages by leveled creatures who took so long to kill there was a good chance of the town being wiped out before the monsters were, and no real sense of thanks or appreciative acknowlegdgement for the PC once the deed was done).

My hope is that Skyrim, with its Radiant A.I. et al, will do a better job of presenting and representing missions and minor quests to the players that will have actual, if limited consequence. It will hopefully use its engine improvemnts to vary the details of the quests ( a village may suffer from goblins one month, another from wriaths the next, the wraiths may be coming from the graveyard in some instances, or under the control of an evil, neighbouring witch in another etc.). The enemies respawn all through the games, but in an aimless way that is meaningless beyond combat and make believe missions that players make for themselves. Hopefully some of the respawned foes in Skyrim will have methods and motivation.

I can't answer the second question if I answer "No" to the first, unless I'm supposed to just say No again.

Replayable quests are pretty much always going to be of poor quality. Exploration is enough of a quest for me. Besides, there's always 9 other races and dozens more builds to try out.

But by that logic the hostile NPCs shouldn't respawn, chests should not be refilled by new inhabitants. . . essentially, a completed game world should become a dead world. I think it is better and more immersive if the gameworld continues as a vibrant, living thing. No, a replay quest won't ever match up to the very first sidequest, but with altered details it can at least still be entertaining and provide a sense that the world is still a place of active dangers that has need of you.

That is not what I implied at all.

Isn't it? Logically, just as enemies respawn, so to would certain types of quests (unless every enemy in the world has become so terrified of you that they stop coming out of their lairs). Goblins will eventually threaten villages again. . . because that is what Goblins do. Necromancers will start looting graveyards, or killing beggars to turn into zombies. . . because that is what Necromancers do. Bandits will rough up small settlements and waylay merchants, because that is what Bandits do. Vapires will slip into villages to drink from the inhabitants, werewolves will threaten villages and make the inhabitants hold up in terror in their huts. . . because that is what vampires and werewolves do. And villagers will seek aid from a hero when they cannot master their monsters themselves. . . because that is what threatened village people do.

Voting no to either of those is just saying you want a boring game..

I don't even consider enemy raids a "quest". Those should be in the game.

And no, I did not imply by saying that there should be no replayable quests that all enemies should croak permanently. In fact, by emphasizing the value I place on exploration I implied the exact opposite.

If villagers are having problems with raids and seek you out for aid, its a mini quest. I am not saying that all the work you have done on major sidequests should fall apart just to make you play them again. I am only suggesting that certain, logically recurring themes and problems should. . . recurr. The details can be mixed and matched for variety, but things shouldn't just stop happening the second you finish all of the initial quests.

I said no to infinite missions as they will get to be old and repetitive. However, I said yes to the consequences.

Now, seeking me out I'm not interested in. If they get raided and I'm around, cool. I don't want Adoring Fans following me everywhere, or a farmer showing up in the middle of a dragon battle asking for help with goblins.

I voted yes for the first and no on the second.

Are people honestly voting on yes for the second? Do you people know what that means? That means that not only will new quests always be available, but declining them would result in a very small population for the whole of Skyrim after a short while... forcing you to do what you don't want to prevent a massacre. Did no one else take it as that? Why would so many of you support that?

I would like unlimited random quests, random quests are cool as long as there are plenty of handcrafted quests too. The standard mad lip type ones, go kill x at x place and get x reward, or so steal x from x for x reward. The game just fills in the x's SR already has system in place to be able to do this, so I think mods will take care of it, even if SR vanilla does not.

Even though its not really a "quest" I would consider dragons attacking towns to be a quest of a sort because I feel obligated to help defend the town

Something like a bulletin board in town or something in that regard that allows you to play random quests if you so choose. At any rate I am all for random quests. I don't know why someone wouldn't want more even if it's not as good as the main course.

In reality the best you will get for this are quests where the person asks you to turn in a certain item or items and they will give you a small reward for them (think Nirnroot from Oblivion or technology for outcasts from Fallout 3). It's then up to the player to go searching for them, although you will pretty quickly give up actively searching and just start incidentally picking them up when you come across them and if you even remember about the quest in the first place.

The other type you may get it repeatable fights such as in the arena in Oblivion or the ghoul safari in point lookout since those can reuse the same dialogue, scripts and actors over and over.

Infintely repeatable missions does not add replay value to the game, because that kind of mission inevitably becomes boring, and replay value needs more than just having content to come back for, that content needs to be good enough that you have a REASON to come back for it. I play games to be entertained, not to keep doing repetitive chores, I'm not even sure if I like the idea of Radiant Story quests, I mean, I like the idea of the game having a system to alter the game experience based on your choices, but I'm not sure if I'll enjoy the non-hand-crafted side quests. Though I've heard it claimed that Radiant Story quests will feel like they're hand crafted rather than generated by a computer based on a formula, well I'll judge that for myself once I've tried them, until then, I'm going to remain skeptical on that.

Although I don't mind repeatable tasks if they're something like finding technology for the Outcasts or Sugar Bombs for that ghoul in Fallout 3, but I really don't consider that sort of thing quests. Quests usually have to have some sort of definite goal, and fulfilling it completes the quest, or at least advances it if it's a multi-stage quests where you don't know from the start what your ultimate goal will be. Seeking Your Roots was a quest because you always had a specific goal, after your first Nirnroot, you had to ask an alchemist about it, then you were directed to that Altmer in Skingrad. After that, you had to find progressively larger amounts of Nirnroots and return them to the alchemist to get stronger versions of the potion. That's a defined goal, on the other hand, with collecting scrap metal for that person in Megaton, there was no definite goal, you were never told how much scrap metal you needed, you just knew you needed scrap metal, also, the game didn't seem to recognize it as a quest as there was no journal entry for it, but Fallout 3 had some tasks which could qualify as quests in practice but still don't get journal entries, probably because they were too minor to really warrant it, but that aside, I don't mind this sort of task not because they're more interesting than your typical randomly generated quest, but because they're really not tasks you go out of your way to do. If a character tells me to bring him any instance of a specific type of item I find, that's something I can just collect while exploring or doing quests, and take them back to the character whenever it's convenient to do so, so while it's not an interesting task in itself, it doesn't come off as tedious unless I keep going out of my way to search for the items in question. Now if I'm told to go to a dungeon and retrieve this item or kill that enemy, on the other hand, that's something I have to go out of my way to do, and if the task stops being fun, it also becomes boring. I mean, hand-crafted quests can also often degenerate into the same formula as randomly generated quests, but at least with those, you can make each quest feel a little more distinct by having a different story behind them, and when your quests are hand crafted, it leaves room for creativity that just can't be had in randomly generated quests.

And if there are infinitely repeatable missions, there should NOT be concequences for not doing them, because if there is, then you're forced to do them, and when I'm forced to do something boring, then that is not a good thing. Quests are something I shouldn't need to be forced to do, they should be something I WANT to do and do willingly whether I have to or not. If you need to try to force a quest on players to make them do it, then you're doing it wrong. I certainly shouldn't have to do boring, repetitive tasks to prevent the game from being broken by things that are not the result of my choices to begin with.

Millions of bland quests. No thank you.

Selbeth sees it. Now why don't other people? :stare:

Then again, Selbeth is a bit more anolytical than pretty much everyone else I've ever seen on a forum, but that's great.

I find it to be the opposite. Infinite quests gets old real quick especially when they end up being all the same generic quest over and over again. The second one throws in interesting events like goblins attacking cities and so on. It doesn't end up with a smaller population. So, the goblins attack a city, your there to help, or you can ignore it and let the guards deal with it. So some people were killed by the goblins, new ones could take their place and so on. I really feel the second option spices up the game without forcing you to do want you don't want, while the first option just stagnates the game.

The problem with any kind of quest generation system is unless they constantly think up new templates and patch them in it will eventually get stale. Like how they said there is a template for a kidnapped child in their Radiant Story system. It will choose a living family member (quest giver), a kid (target), and a location. Chances are eventually you will run into the same quest again, just with new people and a new location. Eventually you will think to yourself "Man, this is like the 8th time I've rescued a kid from bandits."

Each template makes the game take longer to get stale. But it WILL get stale eventually.

People for some reason always seem to think somehow having random quests is going to detract from the main game, I could see the point if they were constantly getting thrown in your face (Infinite does not mean they are coming at you a mile a minute)
It always seems to be worst case scenario with naysayers (which sometimes is justifiable but quite frankly in Bethesda's hands you should have a little more faith).

-edit spelling-

Exactly this

If you want more quests then make your own it aint hard..

fighters quest? go hunt goblin caves.

thieves? go steal stuff

DB? go kill an NPC

mage? go pick herbs and sell them to a mage.

No... I dun' want mmo type daily quests, where you can go defend against the goblin attack every so often, sorta annoying. Now if it wasn't a quest, but simply something that happens in the world sure, attacks like that are cool..b ut I prefer each quest to be unique thank you

Yes to both.

Technologies, computer capabilities, and algorithms are always getting better, so we can have repeating, procedurally generated quests that are genuinely interesting and unique in their own way, if the algorithm is right and alterable parameters are so many that the quests do not feel repeating.

I's all for procedurally generated, infinite land mass, with infinite detail, both inward, and outward, and procedurally generated, infinite quests and procedurally generated infinite anything of the future games.

Whole new worlds, full of meaningful activities and related events and population, that could be mostly different in every play through.