Becoming the head of every org in Skyrim is stupid.

[Fat Hippo]

A mod which enforces skill requirements for guilds would be cool. Something along the lines of the guys from the guild saying "We don't fell comfortable giving a rookie like you such a dangerous job. Come back when you're more experienced" until you reach a certain level with the appropriate skills would pretty much alleviate the problem.
It would also force you to space out your guild quests more, making it fell less like the new guy becoming leader within a few days, kind of like in *ahem* Morrowind.

 

[DanielBrown]

Yeah, I think it's silly. If I recall correctly it made more sense in Oblivion and Morrowind. In Skyrim it felt like you stumbled upon the guild, did a few quests and for no apparent reason other than helping out with a task you're suddenly better suited to lead than those that have been members for years.

 

[Zaik]

Yeah, and it was also really stupid in Morrow...wait, oh yeah this didn't happen in Morrowind.

Uh, I specifically remember being the head of every guild, and two of the three houses.

If you do the fighters guild before the thieves' guild, you get boned, yes, but not the other way around.

If you get yourself kicked out of a house, you caan join another, then rejoin the first.


Amazing.

 

[Thyunda]

I dunno, I never really felt like leader. I felt kind of like a puppet king, since I didn't actually have any power. I just got a bed and a nice title, and then everybody else just did all the decision making.
I think they just wanted to be able to say 'The Dragonborn is our leader'.

 

[alandavidson]

It would be a lot better if you were only allowed to become the leader of the guild after you've reached a certain skill level, and you could only be in certain guilds at certain times, or there could be repercussions if you are found out by one of the guild members that you belong to a rival guild.

But... that might be too much to ask for.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I like to think it's pretty funny I mean can you imagine if you pissed off a mage during a companion assignment and he was like 'I'm going to tell the archmage about this!'

O RLY

On a more serious note you can't even get into the mages guild unless you have so much magicka/ are able to do a ward spell. You also have to learned 2 spells for a later quest. My friend couldn't get into Winterhold when he first went there and had to go and get big plus magicka pots

You also have to do a skill related test to get into the thieves guild if I recall. With lots of sneaking and stealing

 

[Sentox6]

I think you have to - to a certain degree - force yourself to suspend your own disbelief.

As with any game, time is massively compacted. You spend a couple of hours becoming the leader of a guild. When mirrored into any sort of sensible reality in the game world, it probably took months, if not more, to carry all those assignments out. You would spend far greater amounts of time interacting with fellow members, forming relationships, doing miscellaneous work, and developing your own skills. In that context, and given the key achievements that the ingame missions focus on, it might not be so unlikely.

Notwithstanding that in the absence of a reload function you'd probably just fail and die, of course.

Personally, I spend a lot of time alternating between guilds and following up miscellaneous quests to arbitrarily delay the missions. When my current character eventually becomes archmage, it won't be so strange. She has zero magicka costs for destruction and illusion, so she has become death, the destroyer of worlds.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Uh, I specifically remember being the head of every guild, and two of the three houses.

If you do the fighters guild before the thieves' guild, you get boned, yes, but not the other way around.

If you get yourself kicked out of a house, you caan join another, then rejoin the first.


Amazing.

I was referring mainly to the requirements.

The houses are separate and joining two fo them is a glitch.

In the Bloodmoon expansion although the EEC is one faction you can decide between two paths.

Morrowind wasn't perfect (not at all) but it was better than Oblivion and Skyrim in this regard.

 

[littlealicewhite]

I agree completely... for the Companions and the Collage of Winterhold. Now, the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood? I feel like I honestly earned those.

*Spoilers*I single-handedly returned the Thieves Guild to it's former glory, revealed a traitor and restored the Nightingales. I killed a half-dozen high-level targets, including the Emperor himself, found the Brotherhood a home after the first one was destroyed and was chosen by the Night Mother.*Spoilers*

(I don't know how to do the spoiler thing. If someone could tell me how, I would give them web cookies.)

 

[Sentox6]

(I don't know how to do the spoiler thing. If someone could tell me how, I would give them web cookies.)

[ spoiler ]Your spoiler here.[ /spoiler ]

No spaces inside the brackets, obviously.

Notwithstanding my earlier comments, I would agree with your point. When the organisation plotline is written such that you effectively take it from rags to riches on your own back, it's much more convincing.

 

[pumuckl]

It matters in context really.

Quality over Quantity. Take the thieves guild for example

Yes you only pulled off two "Legit" heists... But you were then betrayed, found the real murderer of the old guild leader, killed him (despite him being more skilled then any other member in the guild), returned honor to the guild, reestablished the nightingales, and ended a terrible curse that could've destroyed the entire guild.

Honestly, sure you may not have as many days of experience as them, but at that point, you've done more then enough to make up for it.

Each guild has you do something incredibly, incredibly, difficult, which thus qualifies you to be the leader, despite not having as much 'experience' as it's other members.


At least Skyrim handles it a lot better then Oblivion, where I became Archmage despite only knowing the "Fireball" spell. (Oblivion handled the Magic system really poorly)

you couldnt have done that since one of the first missions once you were in the guild was too use different spells to unlock a door.

OT: They can keep them short and sweet if they'd like, but just like everything else in the game the lack of impact is jarring. Warring factions would make sense depending on the locale of the next game.

 

[LorienvArden]

but one of my biggest pet peeves with the game is the fact that you become the head of every organisation.

I don't feel that at all... unless you have to get back to the thieves after you met the old guy in their cellar, I didn't even join their guild. I told them quiet sternly that I dislke their ways, roflstomped my way past them and wiped my enchanted dragonbone boots on the remains of their robes after I was done down there.

Because I'm lawfull good and they mocked me for it. But then again, they live in the sewers and I own proudspire manor, so their opinion obviously didn't matter.

Whats even more fascinating for me is the fact that my unrelenting force shout also seems to wipe memories - how else would that Thalmor/Gestapo bloke in Winterhold not run screaming to his Justicar boyfriends when I gently wisper Fus Ro Dah into his ear while wearing full Blades armor ?

 

[JoesshittyOs]

In all fairness, you are pretty much performing genocide on anyone who remotely looks at the institutions weirdly while everyone else in the guilds seems to just sit around and eat whole chunks of cheese without utensils, While every once in a while walking outside to shoot arrows at a stack of hay less than 10 feet away, so it's not all together that strange.

Judging by all the shit you do, you could pretty much replace Talos as a God.

 

[Jandau]

Aside from the Winterhold College, it doesn't really bother me that much. Dark Brotherhood makes sense as the Night Mother chose you. Thieves' guild is similar, you are one of the three Nightingales. Of the other two, one has had her fill of crap, the other just flat out doesn't want to be the top guy because he preffers running his moneymaking operations. Companions also make a modicum of sense, since you do break their long running curse and have the support of the previous Harbinger. College is wierd and I agree, makes little sense.

What DOES bother me is that apparently being the leader of a major faction brings with it zero responsibilities. Nobody seems to care that the Archmage only shows up once a week to train his Alteration skill and unload his loot on the guild members. Nobody seems to care that the Harbinger hasn't been to Jorvanskrr since he gained his position.

EDIT: Also, it bothers me that I can't do the Thieves' Guild quest chain without consigning my soul to Nocturnal. I don't want to do that. Pick someone else, I'm just here to murder the shit out of the old guildmaster for stabbing me in the back. One crappy suit of armor and a useless Power aren't worth my eternal soul. Likewise, I don't want to be a warewolf. So when the nice hunter lady goes all wolfey and asks me to drink her blood, I'd like to be able to say "No thank you, I'll just go do stuff NORMAL people do, like hunting Draugr or something. Let me know if anything sane comes up..."

 

[AdeptaSororitas]

Honestly the only faction it doesn't make sense for is the Collage of Winterhold. I mean:

Spoiler

Thieves guild: You literally expose the traitor, return the guild from rags to riches are chosen by Nocturne AND have to complete a lot of side missions.

Companions: There is no official leader. The original Harbinger literally says so when you go to sign up. Plus it appears to be a meritocracy, and you happen to be the biggest bad ass around.

Dark Brotherhood: Chosen by The Night Mother. Yeah... No getting around that.

 

[Stealth Prawn]

HEADS UP: The following post may contain very mild spoilers.

I feel like they really missed a good opportunity with the generic quests. I felt like in Oblivion, since they had to voice every quest and make each one unique, they were limited in a big way with how long they could make the quest lines. With Skyrim, they have an awesome tool, with the generic quests. I really think they should have done more to force you to do a guild's side quests to continue with the main quest of it. I mean, I found out that Keening was in this game online, and so I went and did a short series of quests for a guy at the College, and I feel like it could have been used to pad out my time in the main quest. Like, the Archmage would say something like "I know that the Psijics want you to do this, but I really feel like you don't have enough experience as a mage yet. Take care of some College business and I'll allow you to pursue this." Then you have to actually go ask somebody for their mini quest line. With the Dark Brotherhood, I feel that there weren't enough actual assassinations. I get that the main story is rebuilding the Brotherhood, but aside from the boring contracts and the contract leading up to the final mission, you kill like 3 people. I think it would have been way better to build it up a little more before naming you Listener. The Companions could have you being forced to clear out a few dungeons or something like that. The Thieves Guild did pretty well with the amount of missions you get, but I feel like in between big missions you should have been forced to do a few generic ones. I mean, I ended up doing some 40 generic missions in a row after completing the quest line just to become Guild Master. Not a very climactic ending.

Obviously on top of this you could have skill requirements, so I have to actually know how to cast magic to be Archmage.