of course. you should be able to lie to the family (that you didn't kill her), or tell the family the truth.

you should be able to sell the amulet too if you so choose. if the gold you can get from the amulet is better than the gold you get from the dagger/ or the same/ or just because your lazy, selling the amulet should end the quest IMO. you still get a small reward.

Weren't the daedric quests only ones you could fail? I mean, no time limits, NPCs you need to protect are immortal, all that?

Yes, in Oblivion, not necessarily skyrim.

This topic assumes otherwise. Less hand holding in Skyrim i hope.

also, i failed a couple quests in Oblivion, but i just couldn't get it off my quest log, i forget what they were. I killed an argonian in the DB before i finished his quest, that was one.

And with the new (Radiant Story >_>.... Unless it somehow wont work or something [referring to oxm uk article, bah pay no attention...]...) They might be able to do something like that...

I don't think they ever said that Radiant Story was used for this type of thing exactly. I can see how Radiant Story might help, but we don't have enough info, so don't make any assumptions.

The funniest thing about this post is how the OP says this is easy to implement lol Oh yeah, every quest has multiple branches...oh yeah, this is easily done, and quite fast too >_>

and you know exactly how hard it is to implement?

and who said anything about EVERY quest?

obviously no part of making a game is super easy, but this kind of thing seems relatively easy.
btw you kinda sound like a pompous ass in all your posts.

Its not making a completely new bloody system or anything, its just adding in a few new quests to follow up failed quests making them feel less failed if you fail them at some point.

Honestly, it feels like a thinly-disguised version of the hand-holding I hated in Oblivion. A way to satisfy that faction of players that thinks any consequence is a no-no, as it "interferes with the consequence-free choices that RPGs are [supposed to be] all about."

"A system like this," which I'm presuming means most if not all quests have such a series of fail-safe booby hatches, I'm against. I've said it before: The consequence of failure should be actually failing. Now, a quest or two set up like the example, as easter-egg homages to Hollywood melodrama/cliffhanger serials, sure. But every quest being like this so we get that Special Olympics "You didn't lose, you just won differently" thing- uh-uh.

As said before, great idea BUT. Reloading past save games completely and uttery destroys this. It should be in, of course. But this is another of those points hwere I'm going to have to say that saving whenever we want is not an all that good thing.

This is an excellent idea. I would love it if they did that, though it would mean more work for them. But, it's not like they don't get paid to do it, and I would imagine most of them enjoy their job. I want evolving quests!

...which resulted in a new quest :facepalm:

NONONONONO, FREAKING NO!!!
Thats the description of a freaking utter failure, Narcopleptic Mr. Bean would have done better.
First time you fail to your duty from forgetting, the family should kick you in the groin and send you to save her for free with a rope around the neck and a locate spell to be sure you won t flee as the coward you seem to be.

The only thing you should earn in the end of you re epic tale of failure is dog food and be gratefull that they doesn t wash the farm pigs with your reputation and don t pay a bard to ridicularize your name all around skyrim, making you become a national joke, the skyrim Groo!!!

Should be gratefull to not have the Monty Piton bard crawling on your back and singing:
And he fled, he fled,
And did not battle the ennemy,
He turned his back,
And fled and fled,
Forgetting his courages, balls and duty,
He fled, he fled, he fled,
So bravely coward he fled!

Now if you had :
Tryed to protect and failed fighting,
Voluntered yourself to rescue and failed
And brought back her body, belongings and the head of each and every bandit that had not fled, yes, it would be another matter.

People have to stop finding excuses for theyr failures, assume you did [censored] and move on, learn with your mistakes. There s more than one dam quest in the game anyway. Want to be the hero ? There s no free meal, work hard.
Don t want to work hard ? Open a shop and sell natural fertilizer of bovine origin, canned or not.
The branching idea is a good, but becomes bad as long its done to save your ass from being/acting as an idiot ingame.

but failure shouldn't always the end of it IMO. You should sometimes be able to make up for your failure without reloading. like i said, the quest rewards should be different. The last reward (the dagger), the one I used in my example, should be a lower level award (although not necessarily worse for your character), but I don't think you should always be able to get that even.

IMO something like this should happen:

you bring Jenna's amulet to her family. you have the option to:
-Tell them you were protecting her, but you failed (they may or may not reward you... just for trying)
-Tell them you killed her (just to be mean, or to be truthful. lowers disposition significantly)
-Tell them a lie of Jenna's heroic death (depends on Speechcraft or something. Success gives you the reward)
-Bring the amulet and say nothing (just finishes the quest. No reward.)
-Or you can just sell the amulet. <-Edit

This!!!
Or
Get the hell out and never come back.
Kill the family so they won tspread your a miserable failure
Or comit Sepuku realizing your not worthy to live anymore

I really don't think it's hand holding. It's more realistic IMO. Most people just reload when they fail a quest, why not have some more other options?

There IS a consequence for failure, but not the traditional way, where you just end it.

EDIT: cool, it looks like you changed your mind and edited your post. now your post looks like it agrees with me

I'm going to dare put words in your mouth .. I think what you are trying to say is that you'd like to see quests with multiple possibilities at each quest stage depending on the actions you take or what happens around you, which would be coded within the same quest, not necessarily different quests.
As in ( quest pseudo-code here)

Get quest save Jena's farm. if Jena's farm saved; then    get reward    end questelse     if you didn't show up to save farm; then        Jena now wants to kill you               if Jena confronts you; then                  fight Jena                          if kill Jenna; then                             end quest                          if  convince Jena to give you another chance; then                              offer to go after raiders yourself                              ask Jena to join  you                             ... and so forth     if you show up but fail to save farn; then        ... and so on           ... and so on   

Am I close?

that's another good way to look at it. It's the same idea. the only difference that i see in my version is that jenna gets abducted, and i guess in my version she doesn't mind that I didn't show up to help her that night.

it's the same idea though. we're definitely on the same page.

I like the idea of quests unfolding based upon your actions, this is the heart of the system of Choice and Consequences (C&C) which many RPG players crave.

Take the OP's example. You could, optionally, remove the time limit, make it a 'quest starts now' type of thing. Defending the farm sounds like a lot of fighting and is probably more suited to a warrior class. Let's say a successful defence involves killing 5 bandits before they can run off with Jenna - in other words within time x, or maybe killing all the bandits before your character looses 75% health and is knocked unconscious or locked in a cupboard or otherwise incapacitated.

Great for warriors.

A thief may lose the battle only to be informed by a surviving NPC that Jenna has been taken to cave/camp x, "the bandits are probably already celebrating the future ransom so the location should be lightly guarded tonight" (or any night or day, the talk is just to set the scene). Infiltrating the camp and helping Jenna escape could be an ideal quest for a stealth based character.

Great for thieves.

Other quests could initially favour the thieves just to mix things up a bit. It is a lot of work to design every quest such that it may be completed by every conceivable character build. Oft-times beth. don't even bother, choosing to rely on level scaling and combat as the only solution. Allowing a quest to branch to scenarios that favour different character builds may reduce the overall work required by the devs, adding content and credibility to the world and provide meaning to different character builds. I'd certainly like to see some quests worked this way.

I voted "other," but it's more like "yes with reservations."

I would oppose the idea of doing something like this across the board. I don't get the impression that that's what OP was necessarily suggesting, but I know how humans tend toward absolutism, so I want to clarify that. When it's appropriate, I think this is a great idea - just as in the OP's example. It's not a big deal of a quest in the first place, and failing the initial one just opens up another path. I think that's great - actions should have consequences. But, along those lines, there are bound to be other quests that are so important that failing them just means an enormous and well-deserved kick in the teeth - no option to continue it in any way or make up for it or work around it - just an enormous, heaping serving of "you failed."

Thats a great point. I wasn't even thinking about these kind of implications. the quest rewards could relate to this too (doing a quest the thief way would get you an item that would help a thief.) <--- i think that actually is a function of Radiant Story already.


yeah, i don't think ALL quests should have this kind of system shoehorned in, but i think that quest-writters for bethesda should keep these things in mind when writing their quests.

what do you think this is? heavy rain?
if I fail my chance to get the dagger, I want to reload.
I don't want your ultra-realism. :brokencomputer:

sounds cool and all but I voted no because I don't want there to be quests that can only be done if you've failed other quests. maybe if those quests were harder to get but possible to activiate even if you succedded at the trigger quest. but ohter wise no.

I dont mind others quests surging when failure occur. It would be like a war FLOT, failing missions and losing ground issue diferent missions than if you win.
But this tool should be used scarcely and sensibly, the mission being succefull or not. Missions chains shouldn t be common or they will loose charm.

I would not want such becoming a tool to support loosers and "i win button" tool for cryers that can t stand failure or play on a RPG setting where reward come, but can be slow.

Oblivion have dozen of such like, mission hand holders, minigames, continuous full run etc.

What i m fundamentally agaisnt, its such tool not being OPTIONAL.

Its really game breaker to realize that your being stuffed with [censored] because loosers cry louders and dev. create any [censored] just to shut them up and forget about the rest of the playerbase because they ve been lead to believe we are all a bunch of 5 year old spoiled kids that throw themselves shouting and crying on the supermarket floor because mommy don t want to buy a lollipop (= because we can t complete a freaking random quest, or unlock an empty chest)
The only thing that should happen is mommy slaping them in their face and telling them to shut up or behave or they won t have TV for a month. Would that have been done, we wouldn t have so many people claiming for "i win buttons".
And probably programers would be used to more interesting features and polishing features so they end up as intended (Radiant AI) and not as it has been done due to ressources constraint, because we had to catter for people not able to deal with failure.

Since RK posted the first thread about this I have always thought it was a good idea. A game world that moves forward even without your input into it helps you get immersed further into it IMO.

:)