I believe this topic has been discussed before. It just strikes me as odd that a mage type who rose to the ranks of archmage for instance, lacks recognition at the other guild halls and has to start from being a rank and file foot soldier. Yet if the devs forces players to go through a character creation screen that limits fighter classes to Fighter's Guild and so on, thus giving the player a more streamlined fantasy experience, I can only imagine the backlash at Bethesda for dumping Elderscrolls' primary selling point of being an open ended world.

Now obviously in the spirit of keeping roleplaying alive, the player has the choice to practice abstinence from other factions. I'm just wondering from a design perspective, where should that balance lie between freedom and immersion?

Actually people that dont want to join more then one guild dont have to you aint forced to. So it doesn't matter much, as some people would like to be [censored] OP and [censored]

In my opinion, freedom wins. I play characters, not builds or alignments. The devs can’t anticipate every way a character can develop. I’ve had more than one character take an unexpectedly dark path that eventually led to redemption. I can’t see why the game should place limits on how a character can grow and change.

Also I think that a player who is old enough to play these games should be able to take responsibility for their own limits, if they choose to make them. There’s something I don’t understand. How does flexibility threaten immersion? I’m honestly asking the question here.



EDIT: Oops, I missed your edit. I’m afraid my answer doesn’t make much sense now.

Well I guess what I'm suggesting takes a lot more effort to pull off. Say an adventurer gets to join a faction, in lieu of starting all over as bottom feeder where no one there has heard of your exploits, even though you just saved Cyrodill from a powerful necromaner? There could a joint operations between the DB and Thieves' Guild to root out a conspiracy that goes against both their interests, maybe intertwined in a tale of revenge and spite. Similarly, the Fighter's and Mages Guild could deliver a combined effort to guard against rising threats such as an overly ambitious general. Give the player choices here, combat should not be the only way to resolve the conflict, there could aways be diplomacy and use of guile as dispute resolution methods. Court politics can be more involving than the usual save the world routine that I'm sure as seasoned veterans of fantasy games, we should be tired of settling for violence as the only answer to problems.

The direction that I desire to experience in future open world RPGs is such that after obtaining guild head in one group, the player continues to make decisions and get involved with the world in accordance to his elevated status.

I like the idea of redemption, and conversely corruption is also a welcome theme while crafting a progressive story line that gives synergy to the goal of melding roleplay with freedom objectives. If a player starts out with a generally "good" guild, the storyline could go along the path of the player losing his moral compass due to a slew of betrayals from almost everyone, ala Hamlet.

Freedom wins. I would much rather determine my own limits than have a bunch of devs dictate them. As Grits said, the devs cannot possibly imagine the odd ways in which we might want to roleplay the game - so they allow tons of freedom. With freedom comes responsibility of course. For a heavy metal warrior, 100% chameleon might be obscenely unbalanced, but for a nature lover or complete pacifist, it just may make someone's desired roleplay very doable. Thankfully, gamesas understands this. That is why they provided so much freedom within the game and even offer both their construction set and command console to PC players.

As far as guilds go, one bit of tweaking I would do is allow those who decline to sign up with the guild of mages is to access merchants who could enchant or create custom spells for those not so magically inclined. Modders have provided that ability of course, but it would be nice in the vanilla game as well.

Edit: Heh, I was crafting this post as you were posting again. I only addressed the freedom aspects. Your ideas about having the world interact in a way more cognizant of who you are is good. Although I do puke when my character gets fawned over as the Hero of this or Champion of that or Divine whatever. . . . I would love the ability to go incognito or disguised. Again, mods can do this.

IMO, the way it should be handled is with a far more dynamic reputation system than Beth has done before in a game (and absolutely guaranteed more dynamic than they ever will do - the steady progression of TES games is toward less, rather than more, choice).

But making believe that Beth is even vaguely interested in making the next game more complex than the last - every NPC should have a set of personality scores (I like mercy, integrity and courage) that act in concert with player character actions to determine each NPC's attitude toward the PC. So, for instance, an NPC with a high courage score would be impressed by a PC who's got a high rank in the fighters' guild, while an NPC with a high mercy score would be unimpressed and potentially even repulsed. Along with all the other NPCs, the members and current heads of the guilds would have such scores, and thus would have a particular reaction to a particular PC. And that would, among other things, provide the basis for any natural limitations, if there would be any, on the PC joining multiple guilds. Rather than an arbitrary coded limit (or the lack of any restraint at all), the "limits" would be exactly those one would expect in the real world. For instance, a PC who's been in the Fighters' Guild and progressed well - doing lots of dangerous missions and showing bravery and integrity - would probably be viewed with immediate suspicion, and potentially overt hostility, by the head of the Thieves Guild. He might well be able to "redeem" himself somehow - commit some act that improves the TG head's opinion of him - but barring that, he simply wouldn't be able to join the TG, not because the game has some sort of arbitrary limit in place, but because he's the sort of person that the head of the TG wouldn't trust. By the same token, the PC's stature in the Fighters Guild would be an asset in dealing with any NPCs who are supportive of the Fighters Guild.

Beyond the multiple guild thing, that sort of system should be implemented anyway, simply because a dynamic reputation system under which an action taken by the PC has different effects on different NPCs based on their own personalities would provide FAR more variety to the game.

However, again, it's guaranteed that nothing even vaguely resembling that will actually be done in any TES game. TES is moving in the opposite direction.