I love Riften... it's seedy, dangerous, and old, and besides Honeyside is my favorite player home. That being said, with every new character I hate the first visit to Riften intensely. Here's the thing.

You're forced to enter at a specific place, and then every quest on the face of the earth is laying in wait to ambush you as you walk in...

Mjoll the cougar and her young boyfriend, then Maul, then Sapphire and Shadr, and you're still barely in the gate. Before you recover from that it's Brynjolf whether you go to the market or the Bee and Barb, the message for Sibbi, more fun with sapphire, the market guild thing, and STILL you really haven't been anyplace at all hardly.

It takes a lifetime seemingly to get from the front gate to a rented bed where you can use a pillow to hide from the barrage of quests that have come your way in the fifteen or twenty minutes you've actually been in town. Perhaps the final insult occurs as you enter the marketplace hearing "Sure, I'm a dirty beggar. Why would you want to talk to me?"

One of these days I'm going to wait to go to Riften, then walk into town with a fairly high mage, and cast fury (or frenzy) on everybody I see...

I wish riften was a lot bigger I love that its on the water similar to bravil in oblivion.

Yeah, Bravil's my favorite town in Oblivion...

I love Riften Personally, for a Similar reason as pepe said, it reminds me of Bravil in a way... alot of people seem to like the rich Cities with big houses, to me though, something about the poorer Cities with run-down houses feels more... real i guess?

I definitely agree with what you say about Maul and Brynjolf. But the others don't bother me. Most of my characters just walk past Mjoll and Saphire without stopping to listen. I treat them as background conversations, similar to what we hear in the Market District in the Imperial City.

Mjoll...the cougar. Ha ha! Well I guess she could be, but she seems to not notice that Aerin is dripping besotted with her. The guy practically follows her everywhere with his tongue hanging out. She treats him as just a kind friend...but not her type for anything else!

Can you imagine if she did find a charismatic warrior guy to hook up with.....Aerin still hanging around offering to do her washing and sleeping by her door every night. Then the creepy phone calls in the middle of the night and the mysterious unsigned letters. Aerin waiting in his car across the road right through the night armed with binoculars and camera.

Kinda annoys me a bit that I have to bump into her several times before Her Grimsever quest becomes available.