I don't want to do every faction or questline with 1 character so I'm ok with certain decisions/actions being necessary to progress questlines, but I would like to see a return to approaches other than combat (be it magical, sneaky or brute force) being viable more often. To take the example of FO4 MQ I can't see how a diplomatic conclusion to the MQ could've worked. BoS and the RR were fanatics who couldn't coexist with each other or the Institute.

I am in the same way.

I would like it that you can not be the head of each faction/guild or maybe not even becoming the head of it. If you can it should take hundreds of hours if not thousands of hours to complete and can only be for one guild/faction.

It actually does, though it seems to have been either incomplete, or partially deactivated. You CAN actually get the Minute Men, Railroad and Brotherhood to work together, and evacuate the Institute before destroying it, and this course of action actually has unique dialogue which you don't get from any faction-specific resolution, but achieving it is rather convoluted and difficult to do. It literally requires starting all the questlines, and stopping at specific points with no indication of what you're doing, and it will cause some implementation problems (one member of the Railroad seems to just drop into a dialogue loop for instance). But there is a diplomatic resolution.

Anyway, this is a discussion we've recently had in Beyond Skyrim, and for the most part i think there are 2 conflicting situations. One, is telling a story, and the other, is offering freedom. The stronger you make one, the weaker the other becomes. Becoming a Werewolf with the Companions, for instance, is crucial to the story that is being told, and is unavoidable. You can work around these story elements a bit by manually adding different solutions to different issues, but you can't achieve the same kind of freedom you had with Daggerfall if you're trying to tell a story.

At the same time, trying to define how you interact and engage with the world in such a way that you have no room to explore or try new solutions isn't a good option either. The more rigid the stories you tell, the less the replayability, or the less engaging and interactive they become. Morrowind-era Skill-Requirements for factions were a good example of this, as they forced you to behave in a particular way if you wanted to move forward. Had they been applied to the more story-driven questlines of Oblivion and Skyrim, i can only imagine what an absolute disaster they would have been.

Regardless of what you do, however, trying to come up with viable solutions for every alignment, for every problem, is just an unreasonable goal. There shouldn't BE good solutions to Dark Brotherhood quests. There shouldn't necessarily BE a 'happiest possible' ending. It's not up to Bethesda to ensure that every moral alignment has options at any given time. It's up to you, the player, to decide if and why your character engages in particular stories, not for Bethesda to make it so every character can feel at home in every story.

From a functional sense, i take the opposite approach, however. Functionally, you shouldn't be forcibly railroaded to solving problems a particular way, so long as you meet the criteria for completion. You shouldn't have Skill-Blocks that prevent continuation, or overly-specific objectives which have to be solved in a single way (like requiring a specific key for a specific door). While story elements should be more or less concrete, actual mission-objectives should be more open ended. Give players tools to interact with the world (Skills, Spells, Equipment) and create problems to be solved. Let the players decide how they want to approach those problems.

This creates a problem, though. If you have a story that requires certain things out of the player or requires the player to not do certain things (be stealthy, don't draw attention or leave evidence), you have to either restrict how the player can complete objectives, or take more development resources to account for the player doing things differently and have the story react to it. Otherwise, you run into a problem like with Morrowind's Thieves Guild, where they say they're the less ruthless and less bloody group to draw in more clients while not being as big of a target for the law, but they still let you in and rise through the ranks while doing just that. It creates cognitive dissonance, where they hold a given set of standards but will still reward you when not following them.

I'm aboard this bandwagon! (For what it's worth...)

That's the trade-off. And the major difference. One tells a story, the other creates a story. I like creating them, but a well written story can be fun, too

Im all for there being more than one route through a quest line however I do feel that to get though a quest line it should be necessary to have high skills that relate to the guild. What I'm getting at is that In skyrim its possible to go through the thief's guild wearing heavy armour and swinging a battle axe. I found that a little disappointing and would much prefer them to have designed the quests to require skills necessary for being a great thief in order to progress through that particular quest line. Obviously I would like this to apply to all quest lines in future games so if joining a guild like the companions you would need great warrior skills to get through it, or if joining a mage guild you would need high magic skills to complete it.

I agree on some fronts and disagree on others.

What I agree with: you shouldn't necessarily have every single moral alignment be satisfied in a storyline, and in some cases it wouldn't make any sense at all (like the Dark Brotherhood). I would also agree that most objectives should be able to be solved into multiple ways.

What I disagree with: I don't believe telling a story and offering freedom aren't always at odds. The way the Companions went about it, this may seem to be the case. However, the story could've been written so that there was some internal struggle over whether the top dogs of the Companions (no pun intended) had to be werewolves. Later on after the questline, Farkas and Vilkas even confess they want their lycanthropy cured. Hell, during the questline you had to cleanse Kodlak of his wolf spirit. Bethesda could've made the story both far more compelling and offered more freedom with how to progress the story in that way. And it's not like if you cleanse yourself that suddenly you are no longer the Harbinger.

When it comes to Daggerfall-esque/Morrowind-esque skill blocks to advancement in a guild, I am a bit on the fence. You have to show some level of proficiency in the appropriate discipline to advance in a guild, but it shouldn't be too heavily restrictive especially if the emphasis on the story calls for being more lax on advancement. Perhaps there is a way to keep skill-level requirements around but make them less stringent, and/or give some other means for advancement. For example, if you helped out on enough errands and got in the good graces of the higher-ups, they could be convinced to give you advancement in some cases and for some ranks.

I can see allowing one to "complete" a thieving quest by charging in with a battleaxe and massacring almost everyone present (but leaving at least one witness alive). I can also see them having serious "misgivings" about allowing a "brute" to jeapordize the guild by bringing down law enforcement over the deaths. In short, you get credit for completion, but it damages your standing or reputation with the organization, because what you did is bad for business. If you had accomplished it in some other manner (either through stealth, magic, or by a more "thorough" job with the axe to leave no witnesses), you would be fine.

Multiple solutions (not in EVERY case, but most), and some consequences for doing things which create other problems, go a long way toward making the quests believable and enjoyable for people playing characters that don't quite fit the developers' expectations of the "typical" character. The ONLY reason why I continued replaying Morrowind and several other games I still play regularly, is that there are several very different approaches to them, and you can play them with a wide range of characters or forces.

Morrowind - multiple races, multiple classes, and a massive amount of purely "optional" content. Truly a case of "play it your way". Modded to increase that even further.

Mount & Blade - several different factions with very different approaches to combat, or the ability to trade for a living, and no "main quest".

X3:Terran Conflict - several space-faring races with very different approaches to ship design, and/or play a neutral trader or a pacifistic religious zealot. MQ optional.

Hearts of Iron 3 - lead virtually ANY country through WWII, with some (limited) ability to go outside the normal course of history. Playing mostly minor countries.

Your nick name reminds me of a guild on the Cimmeria server in AoC. But with the EU quote it doesn't seem like to be a connection.

Glad that you agree with me to some extent. Concerning the BoS, RR and Institute, I would certainly take huge diplomacy skills to solve that one, but in Far Harbor there actually are some solutions for everyone to be happy, som maybe something similar could have worked? Or like in locked down conflict in the real world land would have to be divided, citizen moved against their will etc. , or by giving them carrots etc. In many ways a lot of inspiration can be found in Game of Thrones and Lannisters for fun diplomacy gameplay. With an advanced dialogsystem you could be a Tyrion Lannister type of character that talks your way out of trouble or use your knowhow to get the right people what they want.

Yes that was another great thing in Daggerfall. It took a lot more quests to reach the top in your guild than in later games. I really liked that as it was another realism thing. To reach that kind of position you would have to earn your trust and show your value and dedication over time.

Or shell out a boat load of cash and buy the support of local chapters. You know, like a real Guild works.


In general though, there are lots of problems with the way leadership works in general with factions. It's too based on paradigm-driven identity and not necessarily reflective of the skills required to lead a particular body (a good general is often not the best fighter, and the best CEOs often have no clue how to work any of the equipment the lowest underlings use) and ultimately offers nothing of use. If there's no point to being the leader of a faction, don't bother giving it as a reward. Daggerfall did this (you couldn't actually rise to lead any of its factions) but since then the ability to become 'Guild Master' has basically just been as superifcial a title as the old Class names (though lacking the restrictive progression).


Still, I think Skyrim did the best with the actual climb to Leadership, at least in one case. The Thieves Guild. You had to not only complete the story, and in the process free up the leadership spot, but you also had to then prove your worth to the guild by robbing Skyrim blind. It's only problem was the fact that the Crime Spree part of the experience came after the story was completed, rather than being an entirely distinct experience.




Oh, I agree, and I didn't mean to indicate that they were mutually exclusive. But they do have a sort of proportional relationship, when you factor in the work and effort that goes into them. You CAN write and design a quesline with lots of choices and options functionally implemented, but it takes more effort to do so. When you are presented with limited time and resources, the tradeoff between Story and Freedom/choice becomes more apparent, and creates sort of a sliding scale. I do believe there is a happy medium between them, but achieving that requires a significant focus on some more baseline mechanics to create a solid foundation for easy implementation of story-elements. Something that, frankly, I don't think any game I've ever seen has.




Oh, yeah, I fully agree, it's just an issue of balancing the story and it's impact, and the mechanical process which allow you to interact with the world. Absolute interactivity and choice makes telling a story difficult, while reigning them in can allow for really tight and we'll told stories, but limits what players can do an experience. I'm more in favour if the freedom model, but finding a balance between the two should be the ultimate goal.

I'm not sure there is a balance. Same as the story-missions vs radiant-missions, you won't find a mix that will please everyone. While I do think a series like TES would benefit more from a freedom based model (i.e. job-centric guilds like Daggerfall, vs story-centric ones like Oblivion), I don't think they could get away with that anymore. The major guilds are expected to have a story as a reason for going through them... even Morrowind guilds had stories with events that would happen at certain points through the questline (though pretty minimal by later games' standards).

Oh, i don't mean a functional balance between them, i mean a balance of emphasis that is tolerable for a majority of people.

Feeling cantankerous, I say NO! TES should always railroad players along their storylines with only the minimal amount of psuedo-choice

/sarcasm

First of all thank you for your post and taking my concerns seriously!

I am glad that there is a way that you might get all to work together, but also in that paragraph you prove my point as you can not finish the MQ that way. I let the Institue HQ be evacuated, and I am glad that this option is in there. I stopped playing Fallout 4 because I didnt want innocent people to get hurt, and I googled ways to avoid the nuclear solution. So credit to BGS for actually having that evacuation option in. I still think a more long run solution to MQ should be available, and I would be fine with radiant quests as payment for choosing a long rune.

Well yea, I see the dilemma with telling a tight story and keeping the world open. But as Baldurs Gate strong side is the storytelling, the strong siden in TES is how open and player oriented it is. So if I would have to choose I would choose to keep the world open and my imagination running.

But still you could leave the werewolf thing in the Companions questline, for the player it is obvious that you are supposed to do that, but then leave a way for the player to get a lesser experience, but still be able to continue. Maybe even at the same time be seen of many in the Companions as a worthy leader.

Yea like I stated in my OP post. Not every quest or quest line should be open to other solutions. Like you point out Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood needs a certain way to carry out the quests or they make no sense. In my imaginary open world it would be cool if the authority in the province issued a quest line in order to neutralize Dark Brotherhood for instance, and by that introducing open solutions. (Dawguard btw have mirrored ways to proceed.)

But if that is asking to much I am coming back to keeping the biggest quest lines open. In Skyrim that would mean MQ, Civil War and Companions.

I totally agree that that would be plain wrong. And those type of quest lines should not be messed with.

Yes it was pretty good, the college on the other hand, note that in the thief guild it works best if you restore the guild with radiant quests while doing the guild quest line, the radiant works well as an padding here.

In Oblivion mage guild it was even joked with some guild leaders was purely political heads.

And that's why I tend to be a little more forgiving about not having that strong a 'Skill' driven progression... Because, frankly, it rarely makes any sense. The organisations we end up in 'charge' of would collapse if someone absolutely embodying the Skills they emphasise, because in almost no situations are they skills that allow you to manage groups of people, finances, diplomatic relations, politics etc. Even then, in the majority of cases, the positions are titular rather than functional, with the Guildmaster of the Fighters Guild in Oblivion being the only position we see really having any sort of administrative authority over the guild. For the most part, 'Guildmaster' is like 'Prime Minister'. You're a figurehead that represents the organisation, either by your skills or by your past deeds (making both Skill-Determined and Story-Determined leadership equally viable) but you don't actually DO anything. The Harbinger doesn't issue orders to the Companions, the Archmage can't order around the Mages Guild, and no Theives Guildmaster has ever had any real control over their Guild.

That's not to say that is what i'd LIKE out of the Guilds, but it's why i, personally, tend to be more forgiving in how they've been handled. In broad strokes, anyway, i'm less forgiving about story issues (such as Oblivion's generally crappy stories, and Skyrim's atrocious pacing problems).

OP: If you want to reply to multiple comments all at once, please use the MultiQuote tool near the bottom right of each comment you want to respond to. Double and triple posting is against the rules and looked down upon in most forums, including this one.


On topic: Of course they should allow diversity. Like others have already said, there are certain situations where the plot must develop in a specific way to fit the story the developers want to tell. However, there should definitely be more branching plot-lines that allow for different approaches and more varied solutions. Not only would that make the game more interesting, it would add a lot of replay value.

Deus Ex did this well. You could actually fail a mission and still progress through the story. There was a downside of course like less pay, less free gear and also you got scolded by both your collegues and boss.

Or you could of course succeed. But either way took you through the game so it′s not something that′s difficult to do. However Deus Ex did not have a world where you could run around doing whatever you want and it didn′t have tons of side missions (although it did have some). Designing that and at least two ways to solve every quest, or at least every task along the MQ, that just sounds like ten more years of development

Interesting approach with how they solved that then. Thanks for bringing that to the discussion!

Like i typed earlier in the thread I would not mind if the Companions/werewolf example. Lets say you had an option to run away from the ceremony and then let the guild raise eyebrows and you gaining a bit of trust back to finish the q line p? doing a lot of radiant quests, then reach the top but be frowned upon by half the Companions guild. This way you would be able to enjoy the content

Or in case of the FO4 MQ Nuclear option; you do decline the option and do a lot of radiant quests to take down the Institute bit for bit. While Minutemen frown upon you for taking to much time.

Again I do not need every quest to have options of peaceful solutions. In some dungeon etc. quest needs to be unique and not not written t cater to every playstyle and conscience. So I do not think the development time should be that much longer.

All in all it is about letting the player solve shaping the world by his actions and playstyle. In case of the companions again remember that you become a product of the previous leaders doing exactly what they want and following their every footstep. What if you want to become a different leader than them?

A leader of a faction doesn't need to fit the formal specifications for the job exactly, but having the "right" qualifications should make it a lot easier than if you're coming in without the obvious "needed" skills. That potentially means more "grunt work" at the lower ranks before a promotion, and less trust from specific individuals who expect you to have the skills and knowledge favored by the organization and may be concerned about an "outsider" gaining too much control.

It shouldn't absolutely stop you from advancing, at least in most cases, but a few specific instances and questlines could (and probably SHOULD) only be solvable with the "right" skills, unless you heavily abuse alchemy, enchanting, and other game mechanics to "get by" without the expected skill and training for the task. Obviously, the MQ should be completable by virtually any character, ideally via several alternate approaches and ways of solving quests, or altogether different "bypass" paths for entire sections of the MQ. Those alternate paths would also provide some variation for replayability, so you could tackle it more than once with different characters and get to see some fresh content along the way.

Note that in Morrowind, House Telvanni had its entry-level quests obtainable from any of half a dozen quest-givers (referred to as "Mouths" for their respective Lords), and you only needed less than half of the available missions to advance beyond that stage. That provided an entirely unique set of quests for other characters to do the same House, without simply rehashing the same old content over and over. Unfortunately, that was not the case throughout the game, and a lot of stuff was only available from one specific individual for major segments of most of the faction questlines. I'd love to see more of those kinds of options and alternatives, not less, with each game.