So I recently finished the main quest for the first time this week, and I have one major complaint about it that still stands.
One of the major reasons I never did the main quest was because I never liked the idea of being forced to join the blades to do it. It breaks my roleplay on most of my characters which is one of the reasons I never did it until now.
So I propose an alternate way of starting it.
If the character talks to Caius, and refuses to join the blades, or just doesn't talk to Caius within a certain timeframe, things will start happening around Vvardenfell that will prompt the player to investigate, and ultimately start the main quest from a different point.
It will take a while for anything to happen, your character will take note of people's mention of the Sixth House and it's goings on, and eventually, like you did before, you will have strange dreams. People will have the usual response to these dreams, but there will be some who will take particular interest, and direct you to the Ashlanders.
The Ashlanders will then tell you these dreams are the doing of Dagoth Ur, and that you need resist his temptation. However, once you have the dream where Dagoth addresses you as Nerevar, they will take particular interest. This will then start you on a slightly different version of the main quest starting from the point with the Urshlaku Ashlanders. They will deny that you are the Nerevarine at first as usual, but you will progress through the main quest regularly with the exception of reporting directly to the Urshlaku instead of Caius. Everything past this point will be mostly the same, except since you never joined the blades, it will be slightly different. You won't be proclaimed an Imperial Spy by the Ordinators, so people will treat you slightly differently when you are becoming Hortator, but they will still treat you the same for the most part-since you're an outlander.
I realize this is a lot of work but it's something I have always wished was an option and since most of the content is already here, I imagine a great deal of it would just be modifying dialog.
What do you think?