College Of Winterhold - How to fail miserably at making a "guild"

[Sick Pegasi]

Anyone else agree that the college of Winterhold is just a complete failure?

Like I can deal with becoming the leader of the Dark Brotherhood after a short amount of quests I can deal with becoming the leader of the Thieves guild after a short amount of quests becuase both of these have REASONS:

Dark brotherhood:
The previous leader has died and you have been crowned the "listener" a position that was granted to you by the "nightmother" who is already the most powerful person in this group. You are in one of the most important positions already so it just makes sense that someone who plays such a crucial role in this group is given the title of leader. This makes sense despite the "small" quest line.

TG:
Granted position of leader after you help the guild out of a troubled time, become a nightingale - bring down the previous corrupt leader and bring back an old face all the while making the guild some serious gold and picking them up off their feet. Above all this, the only other person who would fit well in this role does not wish to have it (Bryn) And gives it to you personally. This makes sense.

But then we get to the College Of Winterhold

Granted owner after a very short amount of quests just because.

I've only done this quest line once because it's just sooooo bad. First off we have the short quests which are so few in numbers I barely level up at all during the time these quests take place.

Furthermore, the first time I played this game it was with a friend, I told him I wanted to be a mage and he said "Venture to winterhold then!" (RP style) And I did. We trecked across skyrim from riverwood to winterhold and got past the front gate after she gave us a super cheap spell (Yeaaaaa) and we began the quests.

It began exactly how I wanted it to go, a tour then a lesson. We were in the main hall learning ward spells PERFECT. THIS IS EXACTLY HOW I WANTED THIS QUEST TO GO. Fantastic you're learning spells learning how to use them and others around you are interacting with you. Let me start off by saying this is a SCHOOL learning in this fashion is not out of character for such a place.

Okay but now we're going to some ruin? okay??? Maybe I'll get some good loot? But no instead I get seperated from the only character I know well enough to talk about and to. And now I'm being thrust around the world gathering strange objects and things I don't really care about. I'm no longer learning spells I'm no longer getting items that can help me on my quest and I'm basically just a little ♥♥♥♥♥ running around doing fetch quests.

I finished all the quests in hours and now I'm the leader of the college- wait what? Leader of the finest collection of mages in the entirety of Skyrim? I - the person who hours ago was being taught how to cast a ward spell. I who does not have a single Master level spell in my inventory I who do not have any knowledge of half the spells in this game I who barely has over 190magicka I can barely fight people properly using magic and I'm the leader of a college that teaches magic? It's pathetic!

I know aboslutely nothing about magic my skills in it are barely developed at all and I've barely touched 20 spells let alone the huge amount of magic this game has to offer. Hundreds and hundreds of spells exist and I'm taught TWO in my entire time in the college what the hell?

It's pathetic, I've made several characters since I startred playing this game some of which I made as mage characters but not once did I ever return to the college until two days ago when I ventured back in and found the exact same thing I remembered the first time. A pathetic line of terrible quests where I learn nothing and characters who aren't worth the code they're written on.

Does anyone know of a mod for better Winterhold quests cause I'd love that to death. And furthermore, does anyone else wish they had built winterhold as the city it was before this strange "collapse" everyones talking about? The city itself is pathetic there is barely 10 buildings in the entire city I went there expecting a snowy fortress and got 5 wrecked buildings a shop and an inn like wtf?

[Spirit]

Not much there in the college of winterhold if you don't care about quests. There is much stronger mages in Skyrim than in the college, and I specially like strong magic users in this game.

Well my character is also a mage.

[wowszer]

Ok, in the others you used your sword or bow, perhaps in the TG you did push up your sneak, pickpocketing, and lockpicking, which may have been pushed up the highest before you started.
Did you push the magic field any while there, or did you bash everything you could see, not advance at all in magic? Have you even advanced beyond level 20 in any magic tree before starting this quest? If you are just playing a Conan brute type, then I can understand. But you have to push yourself in this game.

[Uncle64]

Ehh, in my current game i did start at Collegie of Winterhold. Or more correct i was on some bout that did run on ground, So I play as one aspering mage now. Ahh refreshing.

[Sick Pegasi]

Originally posted by wowszer:

Ok, in the others you used your sword or bow, perhaps in the TG you did push up your sneak, pickpocketing, and lockpicking, which may have been pushed up the highest before you started.
Did you push the magic field any while there, or did you bash everything you could see, not advance at all in magic? Have you even advanced beyond level 20 in any magic tree before starting this quest? If you are just playing a Conan brute type, then I can understand. But you have to push yourself in this game.

For my main character (before my newest one) the one I have the most game hours locked in as. I played as an archer, I used my bow for the dark brotherhood and for TG. I was satisfied wtih the leveling system of both quest lines I am not complaining about the leveling of those quest lines. Sneak and weapon skills shot through the roof on those quest lines and so did lockpicking. (Pickpocketing tho, not so much. Not that I ever looked at it) I'm satisfied to a certain point with those quest lines, the main complaint here is Winterhold.

The problem is this:

TG is useful for sneaking/lockpicking/pickpocketing
BH is useful for killing/sneaking/lockpicking/alchemy
CG is useful for killing/brute strength/strong characters (Companions guild)
LHC is useful for vampire/sneaking/mages

And winterhold?
Is useful for getting through the front gate learning the ward spell getting the amulet then forgetting about it completely.

Basically your goal is to get through the front gate, get that amulet then go back to the college buy the good spells once you're done selling your kidney to do so cause they're expensive (a good kinda expensive tho don't get me wrong) Buy some equipment to make your magicka not drain out so fast and that's it. Then go do the DB quest to level your magic up properly and have some fun with LHC (Lord harkons court) in dawnguard questline and there you go!

[Boss]

This problem is caused by Bethesda trying to cater to all audiences. Many of their fans want to be able to do everything with one character while many other fans want to roleplay. Oblivion also had this problem where you could easily become the guild master of every guild, no matter what your class is. Morrowind was more daring and actually gave you skill requirements before you could even think of joining the Mages Guild.

Oblivion also found a pretty decent solution though with the required recommendation quests for the Mages Guild, requiring you to go to every city in Cyrodiil before you could enter the MG area in the Imperial City. Sure, you could just fast travel from city to city and become Arch-Mage as a low-level fighter character, but it was heavily discouraged.

Skyrim should have just done something similar. Have a gatekeeper at the College of Winterhold who only allows you access to the magic school if you can cast a certain X level spell in front of him (let's say an Adept level spell of one of the magic schools of your choice). The guild itself probably just sucks because of budget issues but I agree that a few more lessons and more meaningful main quests would have been welcome.

[Bomb Bloke]

Originally posted by Bas:

Oblivion also found a pretty decent solution though with the required recommendation quests for the Mages Guild, requiring you to go to every city in Cyrodiil before you could enter the MG area in the Imperial City. Sure, you could just fast travel from city to city and become Arch-Mage as a low-level fighter character, but it was heavily discouraged.

And on top of that, once you'd done that load of quests and entered the guild (something which had a sizeable reward of its own, access to spellcrafting! Something Skyrim just forgot about!), you had to do a whole bunch more before you were worthy of the archmage's attention... let alone his position. Morrowind had the same sort of deal - you do quests, your standing increases, you get access to more demanding quests, etc. You wanted to rank up? There were skill requirements alongside the quests, and if you didn't meet them you'd be quite justifiably told to go off and train.

In Skyrim you walk into the college and Nirya wanders right up to you and points out that they could use a new leader. Then the next thing you know the archmage gets blown up and for some reason, you, the newbie, gets his job. Huh. Because you found a giant bowling ball...? In the far off lands of... no, wait, it was right next to the college...

I suppose this is what comes of scrapping the ranking completely. You're either not in the guild, you're in the guild, or you're the leader of the guild. That's about as complex as Skyrim gets. Not that anyone cares if you hit leader rank. No respect from the NPCs for being a leader, or even saving the world. They're just like "whatever".

For example, most players probably don't realise that simply completing the main thieves guild questline doesn't make you the guild leader. For that, you've additionally got to complete a certain number of radiant quests in each area of the land, at which point you finally get the ceremony. You've got to work for acceptance there. TG is the only questline in the whole game which feels fleshed out in this sort of manner, though even then they apparently had to resort to randomly generated quests to do it.