I've been thinking about the effect of radiant story on the Wiki. For just about any other game, you are dealing in absolutes. Get this
quest here, go there, do this, kill this guy, get reward. But with the radiant features, it's going to be a whole new ball game.

Stuck on an Oblivion DB quest, can't find the target because they travel around, look on Wiki, find out they are here on Morndas, problem solved, but for Skyrim, it will be a case of get what may probably be this quest, from one of these people, go to one of these places, do something that depends on your highest skills, return to one of these people. How the hell are the poor sods who post in it going to make any sense of it?

The bad : get stuck, have to trawl through a load of quests that might turn out not to be the one you are doing, stay stuck.

The good : you may have to the whole game without any outside help, good for those who make 'the temptation is too much' posts in this forum.
Your game experience will be your own, no one else will do the same quests in the same place, and by extension, multiple playthroughs will be unique.

The ugly : could end up like Sacred, internet full of 'what is the best build for this type of play' questions.

Maybe no-one else is concerned, but it seems to me like we will be on our own, I am fine with this, but many people rely on gaming Wikis when they are stuck, or simply do not have the time to ask every npc in every town for every quest.

Just wondering if anyone else had something to say on the subject.

I'm all for a more complex game, even if it means people can't write FAQ's and Wiki's with ease.

"People rely on gaming wiki's" is a big LOL to me. It's nice that they are there, but what is the fun in playing a game if you're going to rely on an internet strategy guide?

Just like any other TES game as before. On day one we will have "what is the best build for Skyrim" as well. Nothing will change in that way. Instead of picking skills, it will be "what perks should I pick and choose and when?" posts we will be having.

I am afraid that Skyrim will just be like Oblivion, there will be lots of handholding so no real worries about being lost in the game. Bethesda will not do anything to make the game too hard for the "casual gamer" so they will end up quitting and not playing it again.

Before Oblvion came out, Todd and Bethesda bascially claimed that Oblvion would be Morrowind 2.0, so that is why alot of us have disapointed with Oblivion at first. Now they are not claiming Skyrim is going to be like Oblvion 2.0, so I am a bit worried that it will be.

It would be nice to fail for once. Pretty sad that you can't fail in Oblivion much, you are always successful when casting magic. It's like our feelings can't be hurt, and we will go running and crying because we fail if we do fail at something.

I'm wondering how RS will effect the strategy guide as well. Going to be hard to complete the guide with all of the possibilities. Oblivions guide is pretty big, so Skyrim's should be massive.

I am anol and want to complete, see, loot everything. I will use the Wiki but I generally don't go there first.

What I hate is doing a quest, then going to the wiki and finding out that if I had pulled some chain in the room some hidden room with loot would have appeared. I hate missing stuff.

So I generally play through with one PC, making mistakes along the way, but then I read about how each quests should have been done. Then my next character runs through perfectly. Though I will admit I generally have more fun with the first PC that goes through making mistakes.

I find it hilarious that you worry about this aspect of a seamingly great system. I'm just curios about the thing and excited if same quest will differ on my different characters.

From what I understand most of the details of a quest are hand written witth radiant story only changing a few aspects. The example Todd frequently uses is that 'child kidnapped by bandits' quest, which probably takes places in a specific town but with the details of the child's identity, and the dungeon where the bandits are holding him, being slightly altered.

I really do not think that radiant story is going to produce such vastly different quests that documenting them in a wiki/strategy guide will be too difficult.

Personally, I am not worried at all. Would only check a wiki myself after playing a game to death. But my kids thrive on them ( cue rant about useless younger generation ), I was looking at it from their point of view almost. If they want to play half a game then look everything up, that's up to them.
And as Dragonborn said, this applies to the srategy guide as well, writing that is one job I certainly wouldn't want, and before any says you shouldn't need one, no you probably shouldn't, but they wouldn't print them if they didn't sell, so someone needs them.

Yea, it sets/changes the parameters of a quest pretty much.

I only cheched out out of a wiki

So it will be easy to say that 'Quest A is obtainable in Riverwood' after hearing a rumour about a missing child. Upon arrival in Riverwood, the game decides which child has been kidnapped, and what is the closest dungeon that you have not visited yet, or not been to in a while.

Does not sound too difficult to me. I think people are expecting something revolutionary/ground breaking from this radiant story mechanic. Don't get me wrong, in some ways it is, but the quests it produce will be no more complicated than they were in Morrowind or Oblivion. In fact, they will probably be less complicated and more generic, which is why Todd said they had to tone down how much they were using radiant story in the first place.

Personly not worried with "radiant story" side quest. How complex could it be? The only real issue would be finding the location of the place, which is why I used wiki or a my map 99% of the time in morrowind. Quest markers in Oblivion kinda of killed the whole using wiki/map thing for me.... and I'm not expecting them to take quest markers out for Skyrim anytime soon.

I expected after the first couple "types" of radiant story quest you do, you'll be able to figure them all out on your own.

I agree with the majority of these postings, at some point you have to learn to just play the game.

The fact that it will be harder to look things up and find out where to go or what to do, is great for me.

I like games that challenge you, because if they don't, they aren't really that fun in my opinion. Some people are different though. I know some who love to run around in oblivion, wearing the chameleon suit, and just take people out without them ever knowing. To me, this is not fun. It's more like "I've logged 150 hours and i want to try this out". But some people dive in and just look for the easiest way to beat the game.

I think radiant story will be good for everyone who will be playing the game, so that those who rely so heavily on the wiki's will learn to be more resourceful. And those who don't, will welcome the challenge.

I've never bought any of these "official" guides before.

If they are anything like the wiki or walkthrough guides, then they are also totally fracked by Radiant Story. I believe it will not be possible to craft a walkthrough for Skyrim, other than perhaps some of the steps of the Main Quest, but even the MQ will involve some Radiant Story features.

I will laugh in the general direction of all those guides.

Since, in your eyes being half your age, i would prolly belong to the younger generation i will pass on the ranting and instead comment on the strategy guide writing. I actually don't have any info on the making of these but i guess they would be granted acces to information regarding the game from bethesda. Also about the quests being generic, well some of them none the least, Todd mentioned templates. So if a guide writer had access to these i can't see the difficulty in writing guides to said quests. I could be assuming to much but the quest names i guess would be the same together with the core goal of the quest. And with a guiding arrow or quest marker it wouldnt be to hard for the player. Side note regarding caves/dungeons etc. A overall guide to all of them could be made since they are mostly handcrafted this time around...

Anyway that was all for this post

The only problem I see coming up with the Radiant quests is glitches. I dont usually seek help from a wiki or walkthrough unless I've encountered something that seems wrong.
Now, if I encounter a quest destroying glitch, I may not be able to confirm that a mistake has been made, because there will probably not be a wiki entry for my problem.
That could get really frustrating if I spend hours trying to complete something only to later realize that the game glitched, and whatever i was looking for is now gone.