I like the option of being a hero, but perhaps not the hero.

Well, my experience is limited to Oblivion, but yes, I like my character to be the hero. I had one Imperial that did all the guilds and the Dark Brotherhood actually disturbed me a bit to play. Usually such things don't matter (I loved my evil guy in Fallout 3 - very fun), but for some reason the structure of ES IV made being evil so distasteful. At least I was able to wipe the slate clean with Knights of the Nine at the end of that character's play time.

But it doesn't force you to. . . at any time you can stop.
You can be content on being an aprentice in the Mages guild and just never do any jobs to work your way up, you can decide you're not the world's savior and abandon the main quest at any time (though you'll have to learn to deal with the fact that no one else is gonna do it).

Of course, if you do that you often "run out of things to do" because you've got no one telling you to "go here, grab X and take it to Y." Really, a simple random quest generator and the option to advance or not would be enough to solve the guild issue and at least keep you occupied if you can't entertain yourself.

I don't mind being a super-powerful hero, just as long as there are other super-powerful people in the world as well. I never got that sense from Ob; you never saw characters such as Vilena Donton and Traven doing anything, and I always felt that main bosses such as the king of worms were only powerful and hard to defeat because of the buffs (resist magic, weapons etc.) and extra health added by the devs rather than because they themselves were strong.

oblivion was the first tes game ive played and i loved it but the MQ screwed with me so much i thought because of my inexperiance that if i avoided the MQ i would fail the game and have to restart so i went along happily did the missions confident that after i get martin to cloud ruler that i can get a holiday and do the guilds but no after i get him there oblivion gates pop up and again i think i will fail if i dont get rid of them so i finish the MQ happy with the ending and go to the mages guild and ask to join where im told i need to prove my abilties (so saving the world closing dozens of ob gates and killing one of the most powerful mages cameron in a magic duel isnt enough)

i also feel the story is fakeish in how jaufre sends you a ex con with no combat skills to save the emperors heir and the worlds only hope equipt with rusty armour and a dagger)

they should have made it tht u start at the docks and after u get so high in any guild you get a quest that starts the MQ like a DB 1 where you need to kill the emperor taking his amulet then descovering the concequences of what youve done a FG/MG quest where u need to help the blades gaurd him or a theives guild one where tou need to steal the amulet letting the MQ start but with u chooseing to do it rather than destiny

I love being ultra powerful. I also love killing even more powerful enemies. Wether I become well known hero or nobody isn't exactly my concern. However, after doing all these adventuring and quests, it would be highly unrealistic that people don't hear about you. I think how far your fame/skill goes in Oblivion is pretty well balanced for mass audience.

main thing i want in the new elder scrolls is to be treated diffrently depending on what race you are and for the desisions to make the storylines change kinda like in dragon age orgins.

decisions*

Well, I was a little pissed how after all I went through (it story-line was pretty easy though), Martin destroyed Dagon

Likewise, kinda. I like to be the hero, but I felt after Morrowind's epic tale, the champion of Cyrodiil kinda fell short in comparison to the nerevarine...that is until he/she became the mad god.

It's like saying "you don't have to go to work" or "nobody forces you to eat" With that attitude why buy the game at all? We're here to discuss what kind of gamplay we prefer and some of us need to have a real choice, not between playing and not playing, but between two (or more) ways of playing.

The problem with Oblivion is there was no significant drawback for being evil. Like you want to steal something? Go steal something. It won't affect anything if no one sees you.

But surely whenever anyone steals anything they should feel bad about it? I mean stealing is wrong after all. *Moral of the day*

But see that joke just emphasizes my point even more. The NPCs didn't ever care if you took something. They wouldn't "feel" bad or upset. You didn't acquire any sort of bad reputation. Speaking of, bad reputation, infamy also did nothing. If you were infamous, you didn't have any problems except with disposition and prayer, the latter being fixed with Deepscorn Hollow. And disposition being low has no effect. Not only that, if you were infamous, people didn't react to you like you were some notoriously evil person. The only thing that happened was people would treat you like dirt, and that's just from the low disposition alone. I mean if you have low disposition, and high infamy, you should have been feared.

I wish you could be more heroic/villainous during the Fighter's Guild and Dark Brotherhood quests, especially for DB. I wish you had to assassinate someone important like a count, or council member.

I don't like being the one hero that the whole world revolves around. I don't like it at all.

No it's not.

And you have that choice.
What you're (actually) discussing is how you think you should have the choice of advancing the story in more than one way (heroic or villainous); that is the choice the games don't give you. You can play however you want, but the story only advances in one direction.

Realisticly, though, the devil is in the details. You can be a villain and advance the story, you can kill or steal to achieve your goals rather than doing it the diplomatic way; but the goals themselves will eventually all lead to the same heroic end, even if you leave a trail of bodies in your wake. I agree with you that there should be more ways to complete the MQ, but the issue of playstyle is not your gripe, but rather the rigid story format.

Agreed. I'd just like to live another life in another world... in peace. Do what I feel like. Not getting levels each time I go to bed, becoming a superhero all suddenly. Then be asked to save the world one pretty day I go shopping for a new loincloth.

Infamy in Ob was broken. Having a high infamy had no real drawbacks, and your infamy went up for doing evil even when no one sees you. Doing the DB questline raises infamy, so even though (ideally) no-one saw you do it, everyone knows you did it. You get +10 infamy for completing the final DB quest, so even though no-one saw you become listener, everyone knows you are. And they still do nothing.

You mean the quest which takes place underground in a secret room no one knows about?
The one that makes you more infamous because you rid the world of a psychopath?
The same quest which is end of a series of quests in which you systematically pick off some of the most dangerous/violent individuals in the country?
The one that affords you a title and duties which no longer involve any killing at all but rather those of a glorified mailman?

Yeah, I can see why that would negatively effect your reputation.

How about, you stole a pot and every merchant in the world knows it, and so do all the guards if you get caught for another crime!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_2Jduxc2P8

Well, of course, it's got that little red hand painted on it. . .

That's why you shouldn't go around stealing things when your hands are still soaked in blood.

I don't get too hepped up on it either way - it seems pretty standard for a lot of games to basically make it so the Player Character is "doomed to save the world", in one way or another.

Games thave give me some nuance, or provide some conflicts for the character along the way, so that you feel like you are making decisions as you go down the rails of "your Destiny" make it much more interesting. Or games where your character's actions are telling a particular story, stopping a threat of some sort, but not necessarily some world-changing Dark Overlord coming to destroy all mankind kind of threat., A game like The Witcher, for example - the character of Geralt does get more powerful and strong as the story progresses, but ultimately the story being told is specific to him - he's after a specific person for mostly vengeance, but also there are some politics involved - people he deals with who have an interest in seeing the villain either removed or not... He puts down a threat, but it was not some world-shaking uber-villain type of threat. And at the end of the story, he earns some gold for helping to resolve some knotty political issues that were woven into his efforts and... that's that. He has no title, doesn't marry a princess, is not honored particularly or anything.

I like the Witcher because of the fact that it told it's story and it was not of "Epic Scale" so to speak. However, I also don't mind rolling through a game where your character is the be all and end all, all hopes pinned on him as he faces down the Eeeevil. :shrug: Games need to be fun and interesting and well-written, regardless of whether they are some Heroic Saga, or simply a good story about "some dude".

Being a hero doesn't have to mean world shattering, basically? I mean, in the Odyssey all that happens to Odysseus is that he's just trying to get back to his family, he isn't saving the world from some crazy rogue titan or something. and just look at him now, second in notoriety only to Hercules. Why not do something like that? Still have us fill the "heroic cycle" of getting something good, killing some monsters and having there be some kind of reward after the hero has been wronged (because really that's all it boils down to) but it doesn't need earth-shattering implications. I mean, I sometimes like to have those but I'm just mentioning the possibility of a less-Hercules-more-Odysseus type hero.