In a sand box game, I'm not a huge fan of a main quest line that will make you think: "OK, we are finished then, I've done the job, good bye.".

But a main event that has a potential to drive the events indefinitely and has the potential for an endless stream of quests, is a great think, like the never ending struggle for power between different tribes of a whole continent that could never be wholly united into a single nation, or the endless needs of supporting the life of a family, in the real world, or the endless need to support the life of a group of people under your command, in a fantasy world.

In "Mount and Blade", we do not have a main quest, but we have both the endless struggle for power, and the endless needs of the people under our command to attend to, and both have the potential to keep a person busy and interested for a long time.

Although the quests are random and very repetitive, but those endless drives, and the great combat mechanism, and the involved political struggles, and the strategic element of our actions, and the tactics of our fights, make those repetitive quests bearable, and the whole game enjoyable.

OK enough of "the other game", and lets think about an alternate "Elder scrolls version" an endless drive for events in our alternate world.

If we do not have a main quest, but several big main events or facts going on that drive the forces and tides of actions, on the big scale, although they would not change the course of the game very much for the day to day needs of people in general, so this would be like this:

There are big events and tides happening on the whole continent of Tamriel, but they do not involve nameless nobodies, like newbie players, so newbie players are not directly affected by those big tides, and like a speck of dust in the jungle of hairs on the back of raging bull, they do not get involved on those big events, and even to not feel them at the start of the game.

So the game pits the players on this eventful land to get on with life and become bigger in any way that they like, and make some semi-random, and general quests available for the nameless nobodies, like those newbie players; variable enough to let them choose any life that they like more.

They can become a champion for the needy, or a thief in the city nights; a discoverer of mysteries around, or a bright apprentice of a well known master wizard, and so on...

But as the players get bigger and bigger and get recognized by the bigger pawns in the game of life on the Tamriel, they could get more and more involved in those bigger events and facts, but it would wholly depend on the direction of life that they have chosen, so a thief would get recognized by bigger hands of that trade, and a bigger champion would get involved in another form.

But at this stage, the players would only feel that bigger events are going on, but only feel them and still they are not big enough to get involved directly, just like the game of Spore, as you start as a tiny cell, and get bigger and bigger, but in each stage you could see that there are bigger things and events around you but could not touch them.

So depending on your direction of growth, you might get involved on a branch of those big events that might vary vastly from the experience of another character, so in the course of the game, you might think: "Wow, this is incredible! I should become a monk for my next character and follow those struggles of the west end monasteries, they sound very interesting. Now I have my plate full with these waves of daedra attacks in the border lands, and the race for leadership between those tribes".

And those big events should be just big drives, and should be able to produce endless events and quests for players, and those events and quests should evolve to encompass the ever growing player in them, so when you are finally able to reach the current biggest goal, or when you are nearing the goal, you should start to sense the footstep of the bigger brother coming to the scene, as a bigger challenge, and so on...

So you should be able to remain on the cutting edge of the events and tides, but should not be able to reach a place that you sense, that you have conquered it all.

And with some clever design the game makers should be able to make semi-random events and quest-lines varied enough to keep the interest of players almost forever.

It is like a bush, with a root in the nobody-land, where the newbie players start, and branches in all direction where they can start to grow, and as they chose their path, those branches around the player would start to grow, and get even more details and branches, to let the players chose their course of their game even further.

But the players could reach the end of the furthest branches of that starting newbie bush, in the direction of their choices and see the nearby bigger plants in their current direction of growth, so they can jump into those new trees, and start their carrier at the button, and try to reach these bigger heights, and so on.

But if they had chosen another direction, they would find other bigger plants nearby the tips of the branches on the other direction on that newbie bush of events, and so on...

So you start as a total nobody and can chose what you want to become, and should have a seemingly endless potential for growth in a any direction that you chose, but this growth should be very gradual for the game to be able to produce new goals with sufficient regularity and variable enough to keep the game interesting.

But every time the players leave the current event tree and let it go on autopilot, and try a new event tree at it's root, the previous tree should be able to continue on its own and maybe change the course of its events into a more passive passage to be able to continue without the player's actions, and guidance, but someday the player might hear that the previous event tree had reaches a catastrophic ending and is collapsing down.

And by those event trees I mean other available quest lines in the direction that the player's growth, but even small and seemingly random misc quests that might start in the far away lands, might trigger new and bigger branches for the players to explore.

So it all needs an engine that would produce procedurally generated events and quests, to be able to supply seemingly never ending course of events and quests.

OK, so I reached to this conclusion again, and I shall start to write about a solid solution for exactly such an engine, if this continuous events in the real life permit me.

I've said this before, the main quest is the most fun I've ever had in the game, but it is not very fun when you play it more than twice.

Wow. That was an amazing idea. I had never really thought about that before. It would actually make the game really fun. For instance, if you were a master assasin/thief, you would hear rumors about an assasin/thief (you) and possibly a name would be made for you. That would be awesome, and the playing time for the game would at least be doubled.