The contrived shit is more to do with the fact that they don't want/care to hire decent writers than the way they design their quests. Even if you were to go back and redesign Morrowind with Skyrim-style quest design, it'd still feel about the same... Try redesigning Skyrim's mage guild and it will still look like a lame Harry Potter ripoff.
Actually, College of Winterhold is arguably the strongest guild in terms of overall quest structure. It has a lot quests of all kinds outside its main questline.
The problem is that this main questline is short and derpy as fuck, but even a guild without such derp can easily illustrate that the existence of such questline is a problem in itself - take Companions.
The mages guild fetch quests stick out in my mind fsr. Fetching plates, bowls, and books feels more like a guild?
It definitely felt like you were squeezed just below the so far lowest rung in the guild hierarchy, while the later quests are more interesting, freeform, may come with interesting and pretty good at establishing different characters' agendas and priorities.
hoping to exchange quantity for quality.
The thing is that in a wide open sandbox like TES quantity is a quality of its own - you can't just make a narrow cool looking corridor (in before Skyrim's dungeons) - either literal or metaphorical one as a rigid questline.
Not to mention that getting a traditional climactic questline for every guild you join is just wrong - not only you'll likely get to more or less save the world in the MQ, but you will also save each and every guild you join from horrible fate by performing feats of epic heroism.
Morrowind isn't the example that Bethesda needs to be looking at imho. Wikipedia dialog and fetch quests do not an interesting RPG make.
You miss the point again. Of course they don't make an interesting RPG. Neither does derpy worldbuilding in Wizardry 8 or shitty combat in PS:T or FO.
The thing is that you don't play a TES style RPG for quests. Quests are there to frame and guide your otherwise aimless adventuring and give it context, they are also a form of fleshing out the gameworld.
Same with NPCs - if you have around bazillion of NPCs you want to be able to talk with, you won't really make them interesting and colorful personalities. Some NPCs do have individual dialogue and overall dialogue is filtered by faction/race/class/region so a savant will talk differently about the same things than a commoner, while a Dunmer will say different things about the races of Tamriel than an Argonian.
Skyrim uses alternative approach with most NPCs being non-talkable, but I still preferred it when I could ask random passerby what the fuck was a foyada.
The main failing of Morrowind's quests and guilds was that most factions and a lot of quests failed to provide worthwhile rewards.
Skyrim is better in this particular regards - want to be a werewolf? Do Companions questline. Want master tier spells? Join College and do mastery quests. Etc.
Other than that Morrowind did decent enough job letting you do quests and progress in your own way, decent enough job asking you whether you actually mean to murder someone just because mr S. Inister asked you toand stellar job running quests into one another and interconnecting them.
OTOH Skyrim's quests are also interdependent, but in a bad way. Whereas in Morrowind you could, for example get a quest from Telvanni to get some enchanted ring from some Morag Tong guy and, if you just happened to be in MT and outrank him, solve it by telling him to give the fuck up the trinket, in Skyrim you can find out, for example, that one of the pieces of Gauldur is in a ruin you'll need to access in College of Winterhold questline, and fuck your barbarian ass if you don't want to join CoW, because no amount of lockpicking, brute strength, bribing, hired help, digging or lateral thinking will let you in because scripted rollercoaster of awesome is scripted.
Bethesda's real problem is that they don't seem to know what plot and NPC dialog writing looks like.
No, Beths biggest problem is that half of the time they are completely oblivious to the fact that they are trying to make an open world RPG, so they try to stick in shit that just doesn't fit.
Really, the last thing I'm looking for when I just want to roam a fantasy world with a character built from scratch with whatever backstory I imagine for them, while adventuring, looking for stuff and immersing myself in the setting are emoshunally engaging/epic story rollercoasters, or assumptions made about my character.
I want freedom to do whatever I want however I want as long as I can manage it mechanically and in terms of my own skill.
If improved questlines are getting in the way of that, then they aren't an improvement.
Managed to turn on FC by picking doors to Assasin room and getting message from N; but Eltris stays glued to the tavern doorway; not sure is this bug or feature; as to shrines Commissar likes challenge but Akatosh/Talos refusing to grant Dragonborn his blessing over a few assaulted guards and stolen items? What about Pelinal or Talos himself? They were not saints in life; I hate when modders brake the lore to include some puritan BS like this; Tamariel is ruled by Pagan Deities not Medieval Jewrope. (and even there you were clear after giving donation to Pope/Patriarch and/or slaughtering some Heathens
) Given the ammount the of Bandits I gave Emperor mercy Stendhar should make my Draco Codexius a living saint.
I complained about it being shit and the author will apparently overhaul it in a more deity specific fashion at some point.
A system where, for example, Arkay would get pissed and butthurt if you ran around raising corpses, and refused to give you a blessing would be cool.
One where you can go to Talos' shrine and be refused blessing because you stabbed a passing Thalmor piss-elf in the face for no reason (as if a reason was needed to stab Thalmor piss-elves) is not.
Speaking about Bugs Requiem disabled ALL the shrines for me and made Forsworn Conspiracy to not start at all even if you managed to killl the Forsworn Assassin; Is there any workaround for the former?
