I realise its a big ask, but its not entirely a problem to do.

Basically this all centres around the problem that once you've finished the quests in the game, you're basically finished it...personally i dislike that, so I wonder if other people are the same way.
Well what im talking about is quests like assassination, burglary (not simply stealing the amount to rise the ranks of the thieves guild and then stop because you're the big guy), destroying a bandit/monster cave
Gathering up items/food or mage specific things, enchanting things for money/experience for NPCs and so on. ( depending on what skills are available and what not)

Some of this ofcourse requires things re-spawn including NPCs...but I doubt we would want to see a nord we killed a few hours before walking around, so I propose a totally new NPC that takes his house/place or whatever (instead of the usual system that we kill someone we own everything of theirs), basically once you kill him/her, an imperial/whomever is the authority will come and close the property down and put a note up (possibly) to buy it from them...unless the person had family, which then you'd have to kill them all for the respawn to occur some days/weeks after.

This solves going on a bloody genocide that left Cyrodil without a population at all...which i found boring as hell.

For guilds there could be a Quest board (going up in difficulty as you rise the ranks obviously), from which you can see the quests of the day, week or month even.
I also have a thought on the main quest or possibly to do with warring/opposite factions in which nothing is simply Black and white, in which a person can go to a mediary/bribe the other faction to join them instead, it would go along way to making Skyrim truly open-ended.

So what are peoples thoughts? is it good or not?

Always wanted more mods that did this for Oblivion (wasn't entirely possible). Hope we see it in Skyrim in some form or another.

Yeah, respawning quests would be great.

Stalker had some elements of that, with areas that would respawn enemies and you had to help some guys out or hold back a wave of enemies etc.

Eventually though, that too would get boring in the end, but it would be better than just normal quests all the time.

I always wanted to join the Imperial Legion and have respawning missions of clearing out Ruins etc.

There could be respawning Bandits or groups of Bandits who are different to the normal ones and they have a price on their head and the player has to go kill them and retrieve an item or whatever.

Same thing could apply to creatures, like having waves of creatures attacking cities or farms and you have to help stop them.

This is only a problem if they decide to go for the oblivion style in wich every item is random and NPC's respawn.

Thats what made oblivion feel smaller than Morrowind, once you had done all the quests (of wich it had about half Morrowind had) there was no reason at all to continue playing.

On Morrowind once you had done most or all of the quests you could still make Vvardenfell safer by clearing out caves and daedric shrines etc. And search every nook and cranny of the map for something elusive like the ring of Phynaster.

I do hope Skyrim will feature oodles of non random loot and non respawning NPC's. On oblivion, every dungeon seemed generic. On Morrowind I really got a sense of accomplishment by freeing slaves in bandit caves and bringing rogue wizards to justice.

I do not like respawning characters. Once dead, dead.

I thought most of Oblivions were like this, I think I was wrong!

There needs to be a balance.

The idea that a cave/ruin or whatever remains empty forever is not any more realistic than respawning enemies.

There is a mod for Oblivion that randomises the world, it might be an idea to have areas respawn with either Bandits or wildlife or some other kind of inhabitants instead of just exactlty the same thing over and over.

I'd also like to see individual respawn times, so some caves reapawn 3 days later and another one might respawn 1 week later.

If there are days and months in the game like in Morrowind and Oblivion then it would be neat, along with seasonal changes, if as the months went by or the years went by new tings were scripted to happen.

Like so and so many months or years after this quest or that something else happens. Like you save the kingdom or some such thing and then 2 years later a new threat emerges. It would give people a reaso to stick in there and keep playing and it would be cool to see all the surprises that came of it.

i like your idea, and it'd be great to see a never-ending population and line of "generic" quests to give us something to do afterwards, but unless bethesda already thought of this, theres not much hope of them considering it this late, we have less than a year, chances are they're already done mostly, just finishing up and fixing glitches, touching up on things, etc.

also, the part of your message i quoted... i'll get to that now.

it was impossible to leave cyrodiil without a population, atleast on the consoles, because half of the population was unkillable, even after all quests were done!

also, there were always more bandits, marauders, necromancers, etc... respawning every few days.

Sure, I would like that.

For the thieves guild they could plant random valuable items at various places to steal.
Fighters guild can have the old: bear/goblins on the farm, robbers in the cave, vampire in this town...

Those quests wouldn't be as engaging as real quests, but they can coexist nicely.
It gives your advancement in the guild more a sense of accomplishment and it makes your career in a guild also a bit more realistic.

Obviously real quests should stay and not be random, but hopefully the engine will allow for much more complex coding now without breaking it.


I do realise its already basically finished, simply speculation and possible mod idea to get going.

I agree there should be more to do. In Morrowind, regardless of your character, you pretty much always had something to do. In the end, you could do more miscellaneous quests (Morrowind has almost twice as Oblivion if you don't count the master trainers ones) or go explore the wilderness to find artifacts. Or just go explore cities to find people who hold the good stuff. Oblivion's lack of towns and such also made it more apparent, as the lack of factions.

Agreed.