Daggerfall had more playable factions than I could count (if you include all the knightly orders and temples). Morrowind had at least ten full playable factions, all related to each other in some way, and several faction stubs. Oblivion had but four fully playable factions with completely separate stories (six if you include the expansions), with a few faction stubs. Personally, as much fun as Oblivion is, I found this highly disappointing. And while I am somewhat excited about Skyrim, if Skyrim's faction system is a repeat of Oblivion's... I'm not as excited. I am more excited about a few other impending purchases.

In other words, the absence of a robust faction system is, for me, a deal breaker. Is it for you?

I think you're forgetting one. Fighters, Mages, Thieves, DB, Arena, KotN, SI. Probably the Arena, since everyone seems to forget that one.

I didn't mind the lack of factions honestly. I felt the quality of each individual faction was higher than Daggerfall or Morrowind's factions. It was a case of quality over quantity for me. Not a lot of Morrowind's faction quests were all that memorable, and Daggerfall's quests all just meld together for me.

Factions were a lot better in Morrowind than Oblivion in my opinion... but it's hard to judge Skyrim yet since they've told us very little about factions in that game yet. From what I gather though, they're putting a lot more emphasis on factions in Skyrim than they did in Oblivion.

For me it was the fact that no factions were at war with each other. At least ones I could join. I dont like the fact I could join all the factions with no issues. It would have been cool to either join the mages or the necromancers. There needs to be more politics involved in Skyrim that I can get involved in and make decisions based on.

Yeah, being able to join the Dark Brotherhood and Knights of the Nine seemed a bit, ridiculous to me. Then again, I just joined KoTn, modded the game, and slaughtered the Dark Brotherhood anyway. Faction War complete!

There were some issues... you had to go past a Mages Guild member in the last Thieves Guild quest and got booted if you killed her...

But yeah I agree with you. I really liked the politics that was involved with Morrowind and I am sure that they will have some system similar to that with the different holds in Skyrim and the civil war etc.. It would be cool to join the necromancers, that was something I did quite a lot in Oblivion, used the altar to create black soul gems and then go around murdering people... but with the two different branches of the Mages Guild now that might not happen unless Bethesda is doing a big focus on the numbers of guilds... who knows, maybe one of the branches has endorsed necromancy?

Can the OP add the option 'it would be nice but not really'?

Unfortunately, I fully expect insufficient factions. At this point, it would be a pleasant surprise if the number of factions and their complexity even rose to Morrowind's level. I expect that there will be at least a few more factions than there were in Oblivion, and the interrelationships between them and the process of advancing through them might be a little more complex, just because Beth was rightly criticized for skimping on all of that in Oblivion, but the simple fact is that there are too many players who not only aren't interested in such complexities but would actually be put off by them, and Beth has to try to please those players as well. So I really see no way that factions are going to be anything other than just a bit more complex than they were in Oblivion, and no chance that they'll be even as complex as they were in Morrowind, much less Daggerfall. That's just one of the things to which I've resigned myself. I hope to be pleasantly surprised, but I don't expect it.

What made Morrowind so diverse was that it doubled down on guilds. Mages had The Mages Guild/House Telvanni, fighters had Redoran/Fighters/Legion, Thieves had Thieves/Morag Tong. On top of these 7, there were the Temple/Imperial Cult and the three vampire clans. Oblivion left it with just Fighters/Mages/Thieves/Assassins, cutting the Legion and religious factions out.

Factions in Daggerfall were nearly the same. Yes, there were many different temples, knight orders and vampire clans, but none of them were any different from each other, other than some bonuses.

Well, Skyrim has already split the Mages Guild into two factions...so I'm optimistic about it

I'd like a return of the Imperial Legion, though, although with the fall of the Empire, I'm not completely sure how they would fit in.

the way factions were handled in Morrowind seemed better executed to me, in that almost all of your beginning quests were pretty much just gruntwork for everyone higher up than you and the later quests were a lot more involved and political, and also in how each guild played off of each other. advancement felt rewarding, the later quests were fun, and the characters and politics generally interesting.

that said, the questlines as a whole in Oblivion's guilds were much more memorable. the Thieves' Guild and the Dark Brotherhood in particular i felt were amazingly well-executed. the only guild i ever had a problem with was the Mages' Guild, but that lied solely in how much i hated Traven - the questline itself was fine, i just didn't like how i couldn't reverse his decisions. i'm not big on the I'M REALLY IN THIS WORLD thing but i like to think my being archmage contributed in some meaningful way to the dissolution of the guild as a single structure.

the lower number of guilds in Oblivion lies mostly with the fact that they were severely limited by disc space for dialogue and had to cut a bunch of quests (Emil Pagliarulo said on one of the Bethesda podcasts that the Arena had originally been in every city in Cyrodiil before they had to hack it all out, and there's other trace data like the missing city of Sutch and the questline to become Count of Kvatch), but with the new compression techniques, the way NPCs are being handled in Skyrim and the whole Radiant Story system, i'm fairly confident that guilds in Skyrim will be a good balance between the quantity of Morrowind's and the overall quality of Oblivion's.

This is true
If multiple factions are put in which I hope they should follow the MW example where the 3 Great Houses were very different and the Temple was very different from the Imperial Cult rather than the bland DF model where the name was almost the only difference all too often

The only thing that's a "deal breaker" for me on Skyrim is whether or not I can run it on my system.

Anything beyond that is minor details.

I've got to say, at this point it would seem that there are six that are at least close to being confirmed and playable. (At least from what I've gathered.)

- The Sons of Skyrim, those that want to cede from the empire. (A side of the civil war.)

- The Imperialists, those that want to remain in the empire. (Another side ^)

- Fighters Guild (Likely there will be a remake of this, unconfirmed as of yet I believe.)

- Mages Guild (^)

- Dark Brotherhood (Confirmed I think, whether the name changes or not, I don't know.)

- Thieves' Guild ( I'm unsure as to what this one's status is, but I believe some ancestor of this may have made it to the current game.

That's what I believe will be in the game so far. But, if what's been said on the forums about Lycanthropes and Vampirism, if those two factions make it into the game it might be possible that they could be warring factions that can be played, depending on who bit you first. But for me, those two latter ones are just wishful thinking.

Add to this list: the fact the mage's guild split into two factions, there better be some religious factions (I can see enough "room" for at least three or four), some typical Nordic factions we couldn't predict and that's the minimum I hope and expect of factions (to simply be around or playable) in Skyrim.

Necromancers' Guild? You know that'd be epic!

And the Archaeology Guild!!




I'm not too worried about factions. As long as we get the Dark Brotherhood, I'm fine. :tops:

This is entirely true. Much of what people were disappointed with in Oblivion was due to issues like this. Im sure we will see more factions. I have the feeling that there will be many factions such as Fighters Guild and the College of Whisperers but then there will be two main factions, the separatists and the imperialists. Those two factions will likely be huge, assuming they don't fall into the main quest very often.

More factions than OB I hope.

Overall, I think I enjoyed the way Morrowind handled it better, but there was one thing that really got on my nerves: simple fetch quests that would send you clear across the map to a location much closer to a different headquarters of the same guild. Seems like the different branches could be talking to each other to hand over missions that might be more convenient to other locations.

Agree. The Morrowind faction quests were almost exclusively of the "kill that guy" or "get that item" variety, with no two quests having anything to do with each other (there were rare exceptions to this, but even those were unfulfilling in a narrative sense). In Oblivion the questlines seemed to be more cohesive, and later quests would often connect back to and explain earlier quests. I found the TG and DB quests to be vastly superior to any questline in Morrowind, save the main quest.

Whilst I was a fan of Oblivion's more developed faction plots, there definitely should have been a lot more minutiae going on in between assignments. Why is it, exactly, that all the Mages' Guild seems to do all day is talk about mudcrabs and fight Necromancers? It sounds like a middle school club, not a "guild" in the traditional historic sense - an association of people, united by trade and common goals.

I would hope there to at least be some mundane tasks for you to do now and then in the guild instead of having to progress through all of the quests in a linear fashion - ideally, complemented by the Radiant Story system. I'd love for there to be a billboard or something of the sort in the guild hall, with various assignments on it. They wouldn't even have to be voiced or fully written out in your journal - they could simply be "invisible" quests like gathering ## alchemical ingredients in the wild and receiving pay for them. Shouldn't detract heavily from Bethesda's time or resources. :shrug:

EDIT: Or at the very least, do you think we could actually have some optional guild quests this time? I liked how all of the halls in Morrowind had some assignments for you, whereas in Oblivion you had to jump between Anvil, Chorrol and Cheydinhal for no apparent reason. How do you manage to have operations in every city of Cyrodiil, yet you never have any work for me unless it's conveniently set up to advance the storyline? :stare:

to be fair they did talk about a lot more than mudcrabs. all the guilds generally had unique dialogue between them - the mages' guild in particular had dudes walking around talking about experiments, and those daily lectures about the runestones and stuff. i'll agree they felt less like guilds and more like clubs, though again a lot of that boils down to storage limitations - it's a lot easier to do linear progression than it is to take "what ifs" into account when you've only got so many gigs to fit dialogue into.

i'm afraid of getting too hyped about Radiant Story only to be really disappointed with it in the end, but the fact that it CAN do procedural quests on its own makes me hopeful that they'll be able to adapt it to enough generic filler guild work to keep things interesting and non-linear.

Well I come from Fallout so more factions with a lot of meat is definitely a major plus in my book.
But if there only are 5 factions then I guess it'll have to do, not gonna throw a tantrum over it since I'm not a longterm ES fan.
But it might reflect how they will do factions in Fallout 4 so I'm definitely going to anolyze the design and amount of the factions and see if I can predict how good or horribly awful they'll be in Fallout 4.

and the Hlaalu I want at least a few more factions in skyrim