Then what happens when the redundant NPCs get killed? Especially when you have a game world where not only can the player kill them, but other NPCs can, too? It's like what I asked the other guy about Vignar; sure, Vignar can replace Balgruuf as Jarl of Whiterun, but what happens when a vampire or a dragon kills him before he can take the job?
It's dumb game design to set up a system where your NPCs randomly die without player input, unless you're
explicitly going for a whole-world simulation and not a story game at all, or unless protecting the NPCs is the intended result.
To use BG3 for an example for a moment, because I've been playing it a lot recently and the examples are fresh to mind: There is an attack on your "hub" area during the second act. Important NPCs with future dialog and quest content can die here, if you don't protect them. However, none of them break the game if they die, and
the attack doesn't happen randomly. It's not going to happen when you're off killing monsters in another part of the world, or something and a monster is never going to just wander through the hub world and randomly kill an NPC while you're selling loot to the blacksmith, either. It's a specific event where important NPCs are put at risk, and how the player responds is part of the point.
That's solid game design.
And what happens if Vignar dies, too? Well, then you have to make some choices. One option would be to close off that branch of the storyline and force the player down a different track. Another would be to have failsafe options - either as lazy as Vilgruf's brother returns from Highrock to take over, or as indirect as making sure anything important that Vilgruf did could be achieved another way, while adjusting the city to account for being left in a leaderless lurch, or whatever.
And, again. Because I know you're going to miss it: I'm not saying you have to do any of this. I don't have a fundamental problem with essential NPCs, usually.
KOTOR is better than Morrowind because while both games follow the DnD mechanics of RPGs, KOTOR actually UNDERSTANDS the fundamentals of such mechanics. I've already said this before. DnD isn't some loner roleplaying game where one player can pretend that they're a thief, paladin, or wizard. It's a cooperative board game where different players specialize in skills like melee, magic, and stealth and cooperate with each other in order to achieve an objective.
Okay, look, I know this might seem obvious to point out, but Elder Scrolls isn't D&D. It's D&D inspired, perhaps, but it's not D&D. The series has always been about solo characters since Arena... Although originally Arena was conceived as a party game, that was scrapped early on in development, and it's never returned save for companion NPCs in later games.
For example, from the very earliest days, character concepts like Nightblades, Spellswords, and Battlemages has been core character concepts in the game - literally saying "Yes, you can build a character to do a bit of everything". It's always been possible, from the earliest games, it just requires a bit more work. And if you didn't want to do that, the game supported that, too.
The game is "D&D-like" in that it has (or, had, anyway) dice rolls as a determinant explicitly rather than just RNG, but it's not "D&D", and if you approach it like it is, yes, you're going to have a bad time.
Even if you hit an enemy dead-center and your weapon's condition deteriorates as you hit the enemy, the game still registers that as a miss. KOTOR doesn't have that; instead, if you want your attacks to hit, just put enough points in dexterity.
And if you want to hit better in Morrowind, you put points in Agility + weapon skill + luck. The to-hit formula is a little more complicated if you look behind the scenes (It also takes into account how fatigued you are, for example), but fundamentally the only difference is that KOTOR is turn based and Morrowind is quasi-real time.
That, and you don't get annoying enemies in the early game
I mean, I'd counter Rakghouls, but no creature is as annoying as cliff racers, no.
That, my friend, is why Morrowind lags behind Skyrim and KOTOR as a game. KOTOR is a better DnD game than Morrowind, while Skyrim is a better power fantasy.
Morrowind isn't trying to be either of those things, though. I mean, a power fantasy to some extent, sure, pretty much any RPG is to some extent, but not in the same was as Skyrim, or hell even Oblivion.
That, and dragons are a better foe than cliff racers. They're leveled to your character, meaning that you won't get a situation where you get swamped and you can't handle it. But the fight still looks epic and is fun to play. So basically, they traded an annoying thing that you have to avoid with something that's cool, nice to look at, and the dragon bones and scales can be sold at a high value, so it's rewarding.
Dragons are not comparable to Cliff Racers, except that they fly and you never get rid of them. Cliff racers are deliberately designed to be a nuisance, not a profitable mini boss encounter. They're more akin to bandits or something in Skyrim.
Exactly. PC players can just download mods that remove essential status and let you kill questgivers or kids.
Except that breaks the game. You can't just remove essential status in a game not designed for it, then it turns into option 4 on my list - let players do it, but it breaks the game. which is the worst of all four options.
