It is like this for a reason, The short main quest lines in the guilds are set there for the people who want to speed through quest lines and the light game player. They packed the guilds with infinite other tasks for those who want to extend their playtime by making it more immersive, if you're aiming for immersion then take your time, Do a main quest then do some tasks for the other members of the guild to make it feel like you earned your way to the top.

Bethesda deserves shame on a lot of different things. Im so damn tired of having things cheapened, shortened, streamlined or whatever so they can get a product out faster and get more kiddies involved.

So tired of it.

Companion questline was short, yes. So is the Mages Guild. Didnt bother to finish Dark Brotherhood, but its essentially the same. Thieves guild, so far, is the longest, but perhaps thats because I decided to do the repeatable quests in order to buff HQ before going on to the main questline.

Seriously, for some of this crap, the community modders could have done a better job.

I almost miss it when the first quest of the fighters guild was to kill rats. I lol'd in Oblivion when that was the first fighters quest.

Why is the game so shallow compared to what it could be? The consoles, that's why. They are the weak link because they can't handle the memory or the processing power for a deeper, more complex game.

The six-year old used computer parts that make up XBox and PS3 are what's keeping Skyrim dumbed and numbed. Don't blame Bethesda, blame advlts who game on consoles.

Content in general is less but there are Dragons and many mountains.

My only real gripe with the game is the lack of any depth to the guilds. Very shallow quests and very short quest lines make for a poor experience. This is something Oblivion did well compared to Skyrim.

Perhaps their plan is to flesh them out with DLC? The Nines I hope not...

You hit it spot on. All these radiant quests are totally unmotivating and I just have a backlog of crap I don't want to do. Even real quests, handmade ones, seem uninspired in comparison to some of Oblivion's.

I don't know, guys. I'm getting the feeling that we might have traded in Oblivion's bland world with interesting quests for an interesting world with bland quests :shrug:

(That said, I'm quite liking the main quest and the political intrigue of the civil war)

Bard's College ... 1 quest ... i was shocked .

Since Bethesda have no "real" competitor , they could afford to streamline , "consolize" the game without any negative consequence on the sales figures , since from an action-adventure point of view, Skyrim is still awesome as is and no other fantasy game comes close currently .

Why work more and delay the release of the game (which costs money ) in order to put more roleplaying content to please the hardcoe gamers , when you are guaranteed to sell millions copies in a week with the game as is . Had they polished more the non eye-candy aspects of the game , like game mechanics , more unique quests , the interface , more objects , larger cities etc ... , the sales figures would not have changed much ..

For them the game was good enough to be released , for us we can only hope that Bethesda and other developpers will raise the standard in the next years ... don't get me wrong , i still love Skyrim for what it is , but i also feel it could have been so much better had they spent far more work in it on the RPG aspect .

But the industry is what it is , look at Modern Warfare Call of duty series , a game every year , release on all platforms , extremely short ( 5-6 hours single play er.. ) , base everything on visuals/graphics and action fast arcade gameplay so that trailers look awesome and people get good at it within a few hours , a few multi maps , and let's roll ... they made millions of dollars with it , currently that's the succesful model ... if you transpose it to the RPG market , that means you cut the RPG content to a "just good enough" level , you put most of your efforts on graphics and action , you make the game mechanics less complex , fatster leveling and easier gameplay , a few towns , and let's roll ... i am exagerating on purpose but there is a bit of truth in all that .... It's just the way the industry is , maybe when some Chinese devs or small ambitious teams from eastern Europe will come up with a game that will set a new standard in term of content , both quality and quantity wise , then the other devs in the market will surely be forced to raise the bar on that aspect if they want to stay on top .

The thread title is excessive though , because even though the game has big shortcomings on the rpg , it is still obvious that it is an excellent adventure game (i already spent more than a 100 hours on it ) with RPG elemets , that has had a lot of efforts put into it by the devs