Relationships with guilds and factions

TheDjango

One thing I noticed when playing Skyrim was how little impact the player actually has on the world. For example, you could join the dark brotherhood, kill the Emperor, and then sign up for the imperial legion the very next day. (sorry if I spoiled that)

This! So much this! I hated how I could just become the leader of every guild if I wanted to without any of their quests or personal ideals of the factions conflicting with one another.

I actually found it a bit disappointing back in the days that I could not complete every story. I do think that being arch mage or night eye should have consequences for other guild tasks or that one may have to cover himself in secrets and lies to get on top, but I think I would like to play them all. I fall deeply for a character and play one for very long before starting another.

I'd be fine if you could complete all of their quests as long as it wasn't nonsensical like the example with the DB and the Imperial legion above and possibly more difficult and had some sort of effect if you start one before another.

I made a new character for every guild, just about.  And for the expansions.  I just made lots of characters all over the place.

This is an RPG, not Pokemon. You don't have to catch them all, and Morrowind had SO MUCH content even without the possibility of completing it all it would take you YEARS to do all there was to do.

I don't like the idea of being both a priest of Dragon Cult and Temple (which was unfortunately possible in Morrowind), and other excluding factions. Such unnatural things can be immersion breaking and instantly kill the fun from playing the game. Choices, man, choices! If you want to be Imperialistic and cosmopolitan, don't expect nationalistic and xenophobic Dunmer to like you. Just like in real life.

Some convertion should be possible via simple quests at low ranks though. It should never be like you join a faction, and not having any way out. You should be able to leave the Imperial Cult and join the Temple, and vice versa, but not both at the same time.


Just imagine that. You're the Knight of the Imperial Dragon, and want to join House Redoran. Would it make any sense?

This could be resolved with small lines, for example: "I'm sorry, I don't think I can promote you any further. Your connections with Imperials are just too obvious, you thought I didn't see that?", or "How can you serve the Three if you're already worshipping the Nine?"

That wouldn't only make the game much, much deeper, it would also give us some recognition of our deeds.

Smitehammer

I made a new character for every guild, just about.  And for the expansions.  I just made lots of characters all over the place.

Exactly what I did, different Mer for each play through too.

What about after becoming hortator? Perhaps limits until then, at least with the Great Houses, while still restricting imperial factions depending on what other factions you are alligned with.

Many faction storylines in Morrowind are inherently contradictory.

I would love to see a reputation system with guilds and factions similar to what the most recent fallout games did- where killing members, siding with certain other factions, or even committing petty crimes on their turf would destroy their reputation of you, whereas doing quests for them, killing their enemies, or helping out in small ways increased it.

This also helps bring in the idea of disguises- If for example you want to pass through some territory owned by a faction that despises you, you can wear the faction armor and just avoid talking to people to pass through unnoticed

Well ,it did come to play in Morrowind. Being in certain factions took away reputation from other factions. Like when you are in the Mages Guild, its slightly harder to advance in House Telvanni and visa versa.  Though if one REALLY does some important things for the Mages Guild, will they really reject your promotion despite what an asset you are just because you are one of the Telvanni?

I'm with Dragomir on this one.  There are times when you have to stand for something, make a choice, and deal with that choice.

How do they know you're the head of a faction?  How do you know the president of the USA?  Did you Barack Obama come tell you to your face?  Even in a world without twitterscopes and telenets word would carry about the hero And potential Nerevarine outlander that became the head of your opposing faction.  The NPCs should be expected to speak with each other, live, love, scheme and plot with or without you.  You are not the center of the universe, Nerevarine or not.  

If you could join all three houses, or become the head of Telvanni and the Mages Guild with no one batting an eye, that only serves to undermine the setting.  It breaks down the carefully constructed illusion of this being a living, breathing world, and extinguishes suspension of disbelief.  

Could it be fun?  Sure, I guess.  So would putting rocket launchers in the game and letting you shape shift into macho-man Randy Savage, and summoning a host of steam locomotives to crash down on Balmora.  These things all have their place - in mods.  If a mod was made to let you join all the houses simultaneously, that'd be fine.  But for Skywind the focus should be on making the most immersive world possible, and that means the player has to make some choices.  You can't have your enriched yellow cake uranium and use it to produce a dystopian wasteland, too.

Even if the developers wanted to allow a player to play through every faction with one character (which many don't), it can't be done. The quests in Morrowind were designed assuming that this would not be the case, and often involve conflicting with other factions. There are quests in every single faction that require the player steal from or murder a member of another faction that the player can join. Doing so will be breaking said factions rules, immediately ejecting the player from the faction. Many of the quest lines (especially the Fighter's Guild) would have to be completely rewritten in order to fit the "everyone joins everything" mentality.

EDIT: Also: Why do you keep bringing up the Comanna Tong? They have never been available to join and, more than likely, shouldn't be.

As for my opinion on the matter, there is a difference between "you can be anyone" and "you can be everyone". Being able to complete the questlines of all the factions always seemed a bit silly and contrived. It's the same issue I have with Skyrim's system, to be honest. If you want to reach max level, you are forced to change your playstyle into something you might not want to do, and you end up being a homogonized, Mary-Sue master of everything. That's just my opinion, though.

Oh man, I would LOVE a mod that added the ability to join the Cammona Tong!

On the Comonna Tong... after you take control of it how about an assassin follower? Or should this go in the followers thread?

Alright, I'm a busy man, so I just skimmed through the posts here. They seem more of a nitpicking fest than an actually constructive discussion (a constructive discussion needs to focus on how to solve the problem, not on "my opinion on that detail is as follows and I'll write 10 paragraphs to prove that), but I digress.

My solution to that is simple. As I mentioned in the beginning, we could solve that via additional quests or dialogues. We need to think of a system for that. Possibly a script, but in general just a pattern that could be followed with every faction.


First of all, the triggered effect would be an uneasiness of one of our faction members, most likely one that is currently our main source of quests and advancements (in cases of multiple task givers it could be the first we talk to).

If we happen to get quests and advancements in two opposing factions we may get confronted about it. There will be three outcomes.

We say we're with the opposing faction - we get expelled.
We say we're with the current faction - we don't get any quests or advancements until we leave the other one, in extreme cases we need to prove our loyalty.
We say we want to serve both. Now, that may be the hardest, but pretty interesting path (depending on the factions themselves). If we have speech skill high enough we may convince the person we're speaking with to allow us to keep working for both factions. We probably also start a quest to convince other members of said faction. If we manage to do that and our faction is okay with us being on the both sides, it will now depend on what the other faction does (we have to be incognito and avoid quests that contradict - if any such quest happens we'll be most likely forced into a choice).

The higher in ranks of the opposing faction we are, the bigger the chances we're gonna get recognized. So if we're a newbie we can do both simultaneously until we reach about halfway in the ranks. If we're a master of one and we want to join the other one we might get recognized and confronted instantly, right at moment we say we want to join.

If we manage to convince both factions to have us, we might run into quests that interfere. Those need some special resolutions that will either result in us having to choose a side, being expelled from one (or even both), or we may somehow stay incognito (extremely hard).

Whether we get recognized or not would also depend on our overall reputation too.

I think if we do it smart it wouldn't be THAT hard to write those lines.

Okay, not saying "in my opinion" here again, but there should definitely be a way to get as far as possible with one character. If you're the arch mage e. g. you should have some influence on the people in your guild. Especially at this point of progress it should be possible for a character to work with another guild or faction.

From my point of view a possible line could be: Become the head of a faction/guild, convince your faction/guild to work with others, try to convince the other guild/fraction, have to solve problems for the other guild like "Well, if you really want to get along with us, prove yourself at first".

This way one would at least be able to do some minor quests that don't interfere too much. And one would not have to think about alternative quest lines. Interfering must be noticed by the "quest engine" of course, everything else wouldn't make sense. This should not work with extreme hostile factions, ofc.

Sure, this is no way to do all quests in all guilds/factions but at least you can experiment in how far you can go.

Another point: Just leaving a faction isn't a way to go either, faction hopping is just stupid. Do every quest of a faction, try to join another and just leave the first one shouldn't be that easy. This would be bad for gameplay as well as for story plausibility.

A way to solve it: Write down a matrix with every faction/guild horizontally and vertically. Then rate every interference with -1 = hostile, 0 = neutral, 1 = friendly. "Friendly" wouldn't mean it literally, just like "could work together". (Edit: I think one should rather rate with -1 = not even close of being working together, 0 = could be, 1 = is likely to be.)
Then do some simple calculations and find possible "overall quest lines".
Also: Working for a friendly guild can increase your chances on convincing a third (which could be a maximum I think).

How to convince your people to follow you must be discussed otherwise. Having solved the main quest should reward you in any faction/guild. Like "Yeah, he's the one who killed Dagoth Ur...".

I'm not sure about how to deal with the thieves guild here. Remembering Oblivion, the Gray Fox was anonymous to even its highest ranked members. Why should the player as head of the thieves guild be revealed as such.
The other way around it could hinder you to join the thieves guild (the fighters guild e. g. will likely rather spy the guild out) or be useful to it (you're persuading/lying well enough).

In a nutshell: There should be ways to at least do three/four guilds and houses, since there are a lot players out there, that stick to a character (just asked some friends, but most of them agreed). I'm not saying it should be easy, you will have to think about your actions, but it's making it more interesting in my eyes.

That is likely due to limitations of the game's engine. Scripting is rather tough to do in Morrowind.

And I am fine with Dragomir's idea if nobody else has issues with it. My main issue with "completing every faction" is that it cheapens being the head of a faction to just another thing to cross off the checklist, but Dragomir's plan could possibly make it interesting.

Also: End: It's funny, I got the exact opposite reaction from pretty much all of my friends. They said it was a flaw in Skyrim's design that you could, say, be Archmage of Winterhold having only casted a couple of spells and having almost no skill in magic. We must hang out with very different people. xD

Speaking of murdering the Telvanni, can someone make sure that Neloth is essential? Obviously he lived

Twisted Logic

Also: End: It's funny, I got the exact opposite reaction from pretty much all of my friends. They said it was a flaw in Skyrim's design that you could, say, be Archmage of Winterhold having only casted a couple of spells and having almost no skill in magic. We must hang out with very different people. xD

Yeah, I agree, the way to achieve your goals was too easy and too straight forward. Skyrim was too easy anyway. Being a total "I always start with a mage" I did the mages guild and ruled the hack out of everything. I felt like it should have been level restricted, but that's another story I really don't want to open for discussion here ;)

Edit: Nice point there Denevir, skill restrictions are even better than level restrictions obviously.

@Denevir: I am well aware of this, it is exactly my point, Neloth shoulf be essential so as to keep consistency :)

Please post stuff like this on the game mechanics thread, So we don't get congestion on the forum.

TheDjango

I suppose I could live with Dragomirs plan, but I don't think it really makes much sense to belong with two great houses. If you can call that an issue, then so be it.

Oh, I definitely agree with you. Dragomir's plan just seems like the best compromise.

TheDjango

Yours Truly

Speaking of murdering the Telvanni, can someone make sure that Neloth is essential? Obviously he lived

I liked how you could kill almost anyone in Morrowind. It gave you the option, and didn't hold your hand. The game was very strict, but it knew when to give you total freedom. It did tell you that you had killed someone important though, and that you had broken the questline. This is how I think Skywind should handle it, not just make the whole province invincible.

I agree with Django. Just because Neloth was alive in Skyrim doesn't mean he has to be invincible in Skywind. TES is about self expression in the game world; you should be able to alter continuity as you pleasewithin your own version of the world. Plus, there are several quests where you're supposed to kill him.

Good points, I take back my comment :)

TheDjangoSorry you feel that way Dragomir, but this isnt a simple problem. When discussing how the great houses would handle this, you have to be a little nitpicky. This is a major element of gameplay, that would effect anyone playing. Everyone has their opinions, so we are merely discussing them. Its not 100% efficient, but it gets across what people want, and how the game works with the lore.

I just want to make sure that Skywind doesn't compromise that sense of belonging Morrowind had, rather than just being "Generic fantasy hero number 1 who gets everything perfect" like we were in Skyrim.

I just feel like the idea makes no sense. I hate to be a buzzkill and all, but think here. You swore an oath to serve your house. Do you think they can even stomach the thought of you working with the others? no.

To join these houses is a tremendous honor. You chose to follow in the footsteps of the ancient Dunmer, and to breach their oaths would be to dishonor their traditions. You would be ejected immediately from both houses, no matter how cunning your speech.

You chose to work with that house, so either read up more on what your getting into before you do something that serious, or simply live with the decision you make. Morrowind did not hold your hand, and neither should Skywind.

You have to immerse yourself in Morrowind, not think "I have to tick their quests off my list" but think "I would suit house X better, and honor their way of living more" This is the way an RPG is meant to be played. If you dont like it, then play something more linear, where you dont have to make decisions that matter.

I dislike how RPG's have to pander to indecisive people now, and dumb down their features so they literally cant lose. so when I heard that Morrowind, which coined its atmosphere perfectly for its time, would be getting an upgrade to match the sheer beauty of Skyrim, I jumped for joy!

I understand you have the right to tweak its gameplay a little, I welcome you, I really do. But you need to respect how some things cannot be resolved by the player. They are not unstoppable. They have to pick A or B, not both. Morrowind was not always tailored to the players favor, and it coined that aspect perfectly. That is how an RPG works.

This is, of course, just my opinion though.

Did you even read my post? I presented a viable idea on how the problem could be solved, without breaking immersion or a sense of complicated politics. And that didn't even concern the Great Houses really - mostly other opposing factions, like Imperial vs. Native and so on.

About Great Houses themselves though, I think as it was done in Morrowind it was pretty shallow too, not taking your function of the Hortator into the account at all. My guess is it wouldn't be that weird to see Houses more united, perhaps allowing you to do quests for them and offering services in return, without being an official member. Other than that - double agents may happen in even the most orthodox factions, and your feeling of duty doesn't change that. Even more - if we make it so that NPC's instantly, magically know we've joined Redoran and killed a few mudcrabs for them - now THAT's immersion breaking. Of course working for another House would most likely cause exile from one of them, and that fits within the system I described in my post above.