Forsworn Conspiracy: A prime example of bad game design. [SPOILERS]

[N-Trippy]

Hello game dev students and enthusiasts! I want to briefly touch on one of the most poorly executed parts of Skyrim, with the fault being on the engineers (and henceforth the QA team), the content designers, and possibly the system designers (not sure how Bethesda divvies up the work). The part in question is none other than the infamous Forsworn Conspiracy quest. This will be brief, as it's not very complex (all the more reason that is disappointing).

First off, the technical issues. As anyone who has played through the quest will likely know, it's very buggy. Especially at the end. When returning to Eltrys, there is a chance that the guards will not spawn, your folllower will go whacky, or the guards will not do as intended, as well as several other possibilities. Now, as we know, nobody can make a bug-free game. Even if the bugs never surface, they're likely there somewhere. But with so many blocker bugs in this, it makes one wonder how this was allowed to be released, or at the very least wasn't patched later. To be honest, I don't think there is any more to be said here as it's simply shoddy work. The blame might fall on the producer too, if the engineering and QA teams were shunted on time during the final scramble. Lesson: test, iterate, test iterate! Or, from a producer's view, prioritize and make sure your teams have what they need! This type of mess up is a huge deal, as it is so noticable.

Next, the guards that kill Eltrys. Have you ever tried to fight them? Well, from what I've read when researching this, you should be able to do just that without incurring penalties. Makes sense, right? You've palyed the game thusfar knowing the rule to be "as long as they attack you first." In fact, I recall that being the rule at least as far back as Morrowind, maybe Daggerfall. But when I've played this quest, I've always incurred a bounty. This is the result of one of three possible mistakes made by the developers:
1. It's a bug. Tie that in with the first paragraph.
2. It's an oversight. Oops! Systems, did you do your job? Content designers, did you make sure systems knew to make that exception?
3. It was known and left.

Since we already talked about bugs, and the second possibility is as simple as poor communication or, like the bugs, the shortcomings of a department, lets elaborate on the third idea. This is, in my professional opinion, the biggest no-no. Why? Because the player has clearly been given a choice to submit or fight, and no matter which they choose they should not be given a penalty. Now, I don't count going to the prison a penaly, as that's a new story arc, unless it gave you the standard prison sentence. But even worse than that is the fact that an assumed constant has just changed! Like I said, the "self-defense" clause isn't just part of Skyrim, it's part of the franchise. For almost a decade, this has been a rule that players have come to expect and rely on. But here, the player is attacked by the guards, and incurs a penalty. Yes they are guards, but here they are aggressors, and therefore there is no reason not to have them be subject to that rule. This is a horrible practice because it leaves your player feeling cheated and confused. Lesson: Make sure your rules are consistent!

Let's wrap this up with the final issue: Companions rescue quests. As many of you know, Eltrys is one of the potential NPC's used in these quests. But if you've already done the Forsworn conspiracy quest, you know that he is murdered by the guards. So how can you rescue him? Well this results in one of two things: he's still dead, or he's magically alive again! Either way, this is sloppy. But who can be blamed for this? Well, there are actually two teams that are equally at fault: systems and content. Systems could possibly hold the blame for not including a check for "is the NPC dead?" in the criteria for the Companions quest. If this had been done, then Eltrys would not be a valid selection after the quest in Markarth was completed. But we can also point the finger at the content designers. Why would you decide to write a quest including an NPC who will, without a doubt, be dead if a certain quest is done before it? Surely they don't expect their players to know this on the first run through. If there was a way to save Eltrys from being murdered, well okay. Then we get into some acceptable consequences. But in a way, they have left it possible for the player to be punshed for playing the game as it was intended. They easily could have selected an NPC who is not destined to be killed during a quest. Lesson: Keep it kosher! Or, make sure your work is comprehensive.

I hope some of you found this elaboration educational, or, at the very least, entertaining. And remember, your work reflects on you and your team, so hold yourself to high standards and be your biggest critic.

[Bomb Bloke]

Originally posted by Apsyc:

Next, the guards that kill Eltrys. Have you ever tried to fight them? Well, from what I've read when researching this, you should be able to do just that without incurring penalties. Makes sense, right? You've palyed the game thusfar knowing the rule to be "as long as they attack you first." In fact, I recall that being the rule at least as far back as Morrowind, maybe Daggerfall. But when I've played this quest, I've always incurred a bounty.

Erm, why would you expect the "who strikes first" rule to apply when fighting guards, the guys who enforce the so-called rules? Guards who already want to arrest you, at that? What, do you expect them to stop fighting and go turn themselves in, too? ;)

[N-Trippy]

Originally posted by Bomb Bloke:

Originally posted by Apsyc:

Next, the guards that kill Eltrys. Have you ever tried to fight them? Well, from what I've read when researching this, you should be able to do just that without incurring penalties. Makes sense, right? You've palyed the game thusfar knowing the rule to be "as long as they attack you first." In fact, I recall that being the rule at least as far back as Morrowind, maybe Daggerfall. But when I've played this quest, I've always incurred a bounty.

Erm, why would you expect the "who strikes first" rule to apply when fighting guards, the guys who enforce the so-called rules? Guards who already want to arrest you, at that? What, do you expect them to stop fighting and go turn themselves in, too? ;)

The rule is universal to the game, not the game's universe. The guards don't enforce these ruels, the systems and mechanics do. From a lore perspective, you are 100% correct, but from a design perspective, its a very bad practice. Your game should never break it's own rules. This is introductory game design stuff. :)

[TheMagicHobo76]

Originally posted by Apsyc:

Originally posted by Bomb Bloke:

Erm, why would you expect the "who strikes first" rule to apply when fighting guards, the guys who enforce the so-called rules? Guards who already want to arrest you, at that? What, do you expect them to stop fighting and go turn themselves in, too? ;)

The rule is universal to the game, not the game's universe. The guards don't enforce these ruels, the systems and mechanics do. From a lore perspective, you are 100% correct, but from a design perspective, its a very bad practice. Your game should never break it's own rules. This is introductory game design stuff. :)

...Maybe bethesda purposely made you incur a bounty in that case, so it makes more sense lore-wise? That's what I'm thinking.

Other than that, I pretty much agree that that quest was annoying. it was slightly interesting the first go-round, but it's still annoying what with the bugs, and my least favorite aspect: the fact your items are taken, and then returned to you later, making you have to check none of them disappeared and re-hotkey and such. Well, I always make sure nothing disappeared because I don't trust the game with my items, heh.

-EDIT-

Or maybe there's a system in place so you incur a bounty from attacking city guards, no matter what? I seem to remember that was a thing in the dark brotherhood questline, in a mission towards the end when some guards may end up chasing you. *no spoilers*

[The Festive Potato]

Originally posted by Apsyc:

Originally posted by Bomb Bloke:

Erm, why would you expect the "who strikes first" rule to apply when fighting guards, the guys who enforce the so-called rules? Guards who already want to arrest you, at that? What, do you expect them to stop fighting and go turn themselves in, too? ;)

The rule is universal to the game, not the game's universe. The guards don't enforce these ruels, the systems and mechanics do. From a lore perspective, you are 100% correct, but from a design perspective, its a very bad practice. Your game should never break it's own rules. This is introductory game design stuff. :)

I disagree, guards enforce the rules, and the guards can break the rules, anyone using common sense will realise this.

Also if you think about it enough, its not breaking the rules at all. Outside of the quest, guards who want to arrest you WILL attack you if you do not comply, killing these guards give you a bounty, despite them being the agressor, the guards in this quest, want to arrest you. You do not comply, so, despite them being the agressors, you still gain bounty.

[TheMagicHobo76]

Originally posted by The Festive Potato:

I disagree, guards enforce the rules, and the guards can break the rules, anyone using common sense will realise this.

Also if you think about it enough, its not breaking the rules at all. Outside of the quest, guards who want to arrest you WILL attack you if you do not comply, killing these guards give you a bounty, despite them being the agressor, the guards in this quest, want to arrest you. You do not comply, so, despite them being the agressors, you still gain bounty.

That also makes sense from a mechanics standpoint, from my experience.

[Bomb Bloke]

It's not a case of "breaking the rules" at all; it's a case of having two rules which conflict.

One is that the attacker gets the bounty; the other, which overrides the former, is that "guards are always in the right". The second rule is in place specifically so that you don't get illogical scenarios where they're getting bounties themselves.

It doesn't only make sense in the context of this one quest, either - without the override, you'd have all sorts of problems any time a group of guards tries to arrest you and start hitting each other with friendly fire.

[kdodds]

Originally posted by Bomb Bloke:

It's not a case of "breaking the rules" at all; it's a case of having two rules which conflict.

One is that the attacker gets the bounty; the other, which overrides the former, is that "guards are always in the right". The second rule is in place specifically so that you don't get illogical scenarios where they're getting bounties themselves.

It doesn't only make sense in the context of this one quest, either - without the override, you'd have all sorts of problems any time a group of guards tries to arrest you and start hitting each other with friendly fire.

Agreed. OP, you're looking at it from a perspective of what you would like to have done with the game with this specific quest in mind and not with the foresight required to develop (a game or any other programmed systems) as a whole.

The scenario makes perfect sense. You are a collaborator and they've come to arrest you ANYWAY. This ENFORCES the concept you say it breaks, that being, you submit when you're asked to submit, or you die, or you kill a lot of guards and, eventually, flee. You've already committed the crime.

The remaining bugs have nothing to do with the quest or radiant quests specifically, but rather with the way in which quests are handled in general. Most quests, in fact, have a potential to "hang" and radiant quests are random rolled. I've never gotten a radiant quest to rescue a previously dead NPC, but I suppose it is possible, especially if protected (or modifiably essential) NPCs are not checked for alive/dead status and simply assumed to be alive and added to the random slection list without checking.

Speaking as a developer of software, it's very easy for students, interns, and new hires to be overly critical and expect too much of existing teams. Mostly because they are still thinkign and working primarily in the realm of theory as opposed to reality. That's not a knock or insult, we were all there once.

In this case, I don't think you're looking at the vastness of Skyrim as a project, at all that it does, includes, encompasses. It's undoubtedly one of the largest gaming projects ever undertaken by any development house, made all the more difficult by allowing the end user the freedom to do pretty much anything at pretty much any time. If, in reality, you wanted to make a product like this bug-free, it would never be released, no matter the size of the development team.

[Eternie]

Well said kdodds,
Especially then add in that the game can be modded adding vast changes to all or any of it's parts and it's surprising that any of it works at all.

It has become so much more than just a game. But just like in RL if you use charm and connections then those bounties can be gotten rid of easily ... you just need the right perks to avoid most guard fines. (with very high Speechcraft and perks from that tree)

Obviously that one particular quest is scripted for you to get arrested or have to kill all the guards. I really enjoyed doing the Escape Cidna Mine quest and escaping with the forsworn. Followed by living with them for quite a while. That in my mind could have been developed further, making the forsworn a joinable group

There is so much in this game it just depends on how you want to approach it.

[76561198034396398]

one of many terribly thought out quests in a buggy game,i never do it as the death toll usually ends up being too high,don't get me wrong i love this game, but really hope Beth gets it act together for the next one or i walk

[N-Trippy]

Originally posted by kdodds:

Originally posted by Bomb Bloke:

It's not a case of "breaking the rules" at all; it's a case of having two rules which conflict.

One is that the attacker gets the bounty; the other, which overrides the former, is that "guards are always in the right". The second rule is in place specifically so that you don't get illogical scenarios where they're getting bounties themselves.

It doesn't only make sense in the context of this one quest, either - without the override, you'd have all sorts of problems any time a group of guards tries to arrest you and start hitting each other with friendly fire.

Agreed. OP, you're looking at it from a perspective of what you would like to have done with the game with this specific quest in mind and not with the foresight required to develop (a game or any other programmed systems) as a whole.

The scenario makes perfect sense. You are a collaborator and they've come to arrest you ANYWAY. This ENFORCES the concept you say it breaks, that being, you submit when you're asked to submit, or you die, or you kill a lot of guards and, eventually, flee. You've already committed the crime.

The remaining bugs have nothing to do with the quest or radiant quests specifically, but rather with the way in which quests are handled in general. Most quests, in fact, have a potential to "hang" and radiant quests are random rolled. I've never gotten a radiant quest to rescue a previously dead NPC, but I suppose it is possible, especially if protected (or modifiably essential) NPCs are not checked for alive/dead status and simply assumed to be alive and added to the random slection list without checking.

Speaking as a developer of software, it's very easy for students, interns, and new hires to be overly critical and expect too much of existing teams. Mostly because they are still thinkign and working primarily in the realm of theory as opposed to reality. That's not a knock or insult, we were all there once.

In this case, I don't think you're looking at the vastness of Skyrim as a project, at all that it does, includes, encompasses. It's undoubtedly one of the largest gaming projects ever undertaken by any development house, made all the more difficult by allowing the end user the freedom to do pretty much anything at pretty much any time. If, in reality, you wanted to make a product like this bug-free, it would never be released, no matter the size of the development team.

I admit that without actually seeing the workflow and scheduling they used, this is almost completely speculation. Still, I find it shocking that these aspects were left in the state that they were. The bounty issue is shocking because, as far as I know, this situation does not come up in any of the previous games in the series. By this I mean that I know of no examples where a TES quest made it seem like you had a choice directed by the questline when you really had only one option and the other was a penalizing dead end.

I did mention that you cannot expect anything to be bug free, but blocker level bugs like those that are often reported for this quest are pretty high-priority in my book.

Additionally, a large part of my surprise is that these big issues came up when they've been doing this since the days of DOS gaming. Granted, Skyrim is on another engine, one that seems prone to some strange bugs, but it seems to me that Skyrim has broken a trand of consistency with the franchise. Now, I'm not trying to criticize Bethesda in a negative way. It seemed like an interesting topic, and judging from the replies so far, that seems to hold true.

You say that the size of the project is the cause of these issues, but do you really feel Skyrim was a larger endeavor than any of the other titles? While the art has heavily improved, modern versions of 3Ds and Maya have made creating this level of detail almost as easy as creating the assets for the previous games at the time of their creation. On top of that, Skyrim is a much smaller world, and seems to have less content overall. Again, not knowing the workflow used, I'm speculating. But with the established knowledge of both scripting and design, as well as technological improvements, I would think that Arena and Morrowind would have been far more challenging to develop. And yet these two titles seem far more... stable? Not to say that they didn't have issues. But they were far more solid. Why a lapse here and now with Skyrim? As far as I know, Zenimax has been pressuring Bethesda for output less, not more, due to their good track record. Please correct me if I was misinformed.

[Nazenn]

I think the only thing I want to address here is your claim that part of the fault lies on the QA team. The QA is not at fault for bugs not being fixed. If you have seen anything about the state of texting in the industry you will know that QA personal are often way over worked and under paid and they find thousands and thousands more bugs per game then get fixed.

There is no way in hell that Bethesda was not informed of even half of the gamebreaking bugs that are left in the vanilla game, they simply chose not to fix them and to focus their time else where. I'm sure a QA tester did find these issues, but whether or not they were listened to is an entirely different matter

And you know what, even if they don't find them, thats fine too (although super implausable given Bethesda's track record, I mean its very clear Bethesda just doesn't care about fixing bugs rather then not finding them). You can't have hundreds of QA people all playing a quest for days and days with every iteration of character timing, quest progression and other info happening in the background, especially not on a game like this that has so much to be tested. There will always be weird emergent behavior and bugs that can only be picked up under very specific circumstances.

[kdodds]

You're missing the point within the questline (Cidhna Mines is a continuation of this quest, same story arc, not a different one, BTW). I directly stated it above. You have already committed a crime and the guards are there to arrest you. Do this anywhere in Skyrim and you'll get the same results, accept the consequences or fight. There is no inconsistency, and there's nothing "shocking" about it.

I also stated that the quest bug sometimes experienced here is not a bug in the quest specific but potential for bugs in the way the game handles quests in general. For the most part, quest hadnling is pretty solid, not 100% solid, no, but as solid as it was ever going to be and get out the door. Note that a whole community of dedicated modders working for five years, post-release, on patches haven't been able to fix it either. Your high-priority book, in other words, needs a little more practical experience and a little less theory. That's not to say that bugs are acceptable. You always want to roll out a bug free product. But, again, in a project of this size, that's just not possible and you will have to say, probably many times, "this is as good as it's going to get". Frankly, I've rarely encounter quest bugs. Blood on Ice I encountered on XBox. But across three machines now, I don't think I've encountered a quest bug once on PC, If I did, it certainly wasn't memorable.

Skyrim is not Oblivion and Oblivion isn't Morrowind isn't Daggerfall isn't Arena. Each game broke the "consistency" of the series over the last game. Morrowind, most of all.

Prior to Morrowing, world size was pretty irrelevant. With Morrowind, you have many, many issues and inconsistencies that people just... well I guess they can't see the problems through their rose-colored glasses. One of the biggest and worst inconsistencies in any TES release exists, to this day, in Morrowind. Combat. Action title controls on a dice-roll mechanic. That's the king-daddy, the epitome of inconsistency. Skyrim was absolutely a larger endeavor than prior releases. Go talk to an NPC in any town in Morrowind. Now go talk to someone else in the same town. CnP dialogue, no unique NPCs, scarce unique dialogue. Just get off the boat in Seyda Neen. Pay attention to the individual statics and dynamics as you leave the boat, enter the offices, exit to the town and explore the area, buildings, and people. Morrowind (unmodded) doesn't come anywhere near the level of individual detail in any aspect of the game that Skyrim does. Compare Seyda Neen to Riverwood and you'll easily see the difference. At the time, Morrowind was a marvel. The only other FP RPGs were pretty much step-wise dungeon crawls, iirc. But, when you're looking at Skyrim, a platter, with a basket on it, full of cabbages and potatoes, all of which are individual assets? A single table in Skyrim may have more assets than an entire building, or even a town, in Morrowind. And that's just the statics and semi-statics.

The challenge in development for Morrowind and prior was more fitting into an average PC footprint than in the game itself. That footprint got MUCH bigger over time. There are just so many things going on in Skyrim, because they can, that there's fairly no way to compare those interactions with a Morrowind thanks to modern hardware's comparatively more powerful average baseline.

[N-Trippy]

Originally posted by Nazenn:

I think the only thing I want to address here is your claim that part of the fault lies on the QA team. The QA is not at fault for bugs not being fixed. If you have seen anything about the state of texting in the industry you will know that QA personal are often way over worked and under paid and they find thousands and thousands more bugs per game then get fixed.

There is no way in hell that Bethesda was not informed of even half of the gamebreaking bugs that are left in the vanilla game, they simply chose not to fix them and to focus their time else where. I'm sure a QA tester did find these issues, but whether or not they were listened to is an entirely different matter

And you know what, even if they don't find them, thats fine too (although super implausable given Bethesda's track record, I mean its very clear Bethesda just doesn't care about fixing bugs rather then not finding them). You can't have hundreds of QA people all playing a quest for days and days with every iteration of character timing, quest progression and other info happening in the background, especially not on a game like this that has so much to be tested. There will always be weird emergent behavior and bugs that can only be picked up under very specific circumstances.

I only said that it's possible that QA could be to blame. It's doubtful since these bugs are so easy to trigger.

Originally posted by kdodds:

You're missing the point within the questline (Cidhna Mines is a continuation of this quest, same story arc, not a different one, BTW). I directly stated it above. You have already committed a crime and the guards are there to arrest you. Do this anywhere in Skyrim and you'll get the same results, accept the consequences or fight. There is no inconsistency, and there's nothing "shocking" about it.

I also stated that the quest bug sometimes experienced here is not a bug in the quest specific but potential for bugs in the way the game handles quests in general. For the most part, quest hadnling is pretty solid, not 100% solid, no, but as solid as it was ever going to be and get out the door. Note that a whole community of dedicated modders working for five years, post-release, on patches haven't been able to fix it either. Your high-priority book, in other words, needs a little more practical experience and a little less theory. That's not to say that bugs are acceptable. You always want to roll out a bug free product. But, again, in a project of this size, that's just not possible and you will have to say, probably many times, "this is as good as it's going to get". Frankly, I've rarely encounter quest bugs. Blood on Ice I encountered on XBox. But across three machines now, I don't think I've encountered a quest bug once on PC, If I did, it certainly wasn't memorable.

Skyrim is not Oblivion and Oblivion isn't Morrowind isn't Daggerfall isn't Arena. Each game broke the "consistency" of the series over the last game. Morrowind, most of all.

Prior to Morrowing, world size was pretty irrelevant. With Morrowind, you have many, many issues and inconsistencies that people just... well I guess they can't see the problems through their rose-colored glasses. One of the biggest and worst inconsistencies in any TES release exists, to this day, in Morrowind. Combat. Action title controls on a dice-roll mechanic. That's the king-daddy, the epitome of inconsistency. Skyrim was absolutely a larger endeavor than prior releases. Go talk to an NPC in any town in Morrowind. Now go talk to someone else in the same town. CnP dialogue, no unique NPCs, scarce unique dialogue. Just get off the boat in Seyda Neen. Pay attention to the individual statics and dynamics as you leave the boat, enter the offices, exit to the town and explore the area, buildings, and people. Morrowind (unmodded) doesn't come anywhere near the level of individual detail in any aspect of the game that Skyrim does. Compare Seyda Neen to Riverwood and you'll easily see the difference. At the time, Morrowind was a marvel. The only other FP RPGs were pretty much step-wise dungeon crawls, iirc. But, when you're looking at Skyrim, a platter, with a basket on it, full of cabbages and potatoes, all of which are individual assets? A single table in Skyrim may have more assets than an entire building, or even a town, in Morrowind. And that's just the statics and semi-statics.

The challenge in development for Morrowind and prior was more fitting into an average PC footprint than in the game itself. That footprint got MUCH bigger over time. There are just so many things going on in Skyrim, because they can, that there's fairly no way to compare those interactions with a Morrowind thanks to modern hardware's comparatively more powerful average baseline.

I was in the middle of typing my counter argument, but I decided it was a waste of time. We aren't going to agree, and, more importantly, this conversation isn't going to develop any further. I see your point, and you see mine, so there really isn't any more to do here. I suppose we ought to agree to disagree and move on with out lives. I'm glad you shared your opinion though. At the very least it was interesting to read. Cheers.