One of the things I will say I hated most about Oblivion was the stupid busy work you had to do in order to rise to do the next quest of the Guilds you join.
Except the busy work actually fleshed out the guilds. For the Mages Guild, the quest for recommendations to enter the Arcane University was quite good as it establishes how difficult it is to get into the University (in theory, the quests were too simple tbh), fleshed out how the various guild branches operate, fleshing out the characters of some guilds (though only Bruma's the only relevant for the story) and etc.
In fact, the guild quests of Oblivion are actually quite decent. Their conclusions are nothing special (looking at you, Mages Guild, with your discount Mannimarco) but there is a degree of effort in them when compared to Skyrim's cliched borefest. The Whodunit quest for the DB is probably my favorite quest of that game if played as the game intended due to how many ways you could do that quest while keeping to the parameters of the mission(though getting the Deceiver's Finery makes it cakewalk).
Plus Skyrim's DB had the same busywork as Oblivion's so Skyrim should not be misrepresented here. Skyrim simply copied Oblivion like that.
The Radiant Quest system of Skyrim effectively neutered the guilds of said game. Suddenly the 'busy work' quests were either fetch quests or extermination quests with mediocre questlines in between.
Just wondering how to test that because, again, they actually have a test to make sure you're a mid-level magic user.
And you've forgotten what
@Risewild has said about that test.
There is NO way to fail that test;
Speech, Shout or bribery all but guarantees entry for a non-magical warrior/thief to enter the College. In fact, the spells you cast for said test are rather low level at best rather than mid-tier so no, the test is not a proper barrier. In fact, it's more like an flimsy excuse.
EDIT:
It's still a shitty climax.
It is but what the game gave is a lot better than what it could have been. It would be shittier if the player suddenly became a Super Saiyan and beats up Dagon. You don't have any Septim blood nor do you have any connections to the Aedra like Martin does with the Amulet.
At least it made sense lore-wise with Martin becoming an avatar of Akatosh.
