(Reuploaded because it got deleted for not including the name of the game)
Disclaimer: while I played Skyrim a lot I haven't touched it in ages, so I may have misremembered something. Feel free to point it out.
If you're here, I assume you know about The Elder Scrolls, and mainly Skyrim. And in case you don't, there are a bunch of factions you can join, each one with a bunch of NPCs, sidequests, and a big main quest that usually ends up with you becoming the leader of said faction. I'll focus on the College of Winterhold, a magic-focused institution where you'll start as an apprentice and will end up becoming the archmage.
It's no secret that Skyrim's writing is improvable, especially when compared with past entries (I will not focus on them for this rant, though). But I think think that, at least roleplaying-wise, the College of Winterhold is one of, if not the weakest faction out of the big ones (because I refuse to acknowledge the Bards College). It has plenty of issues, but the one I'll focus on is the way you become the leader of the faction: by completing the main storyline. Which wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't for the fact that they barely ask you to do the thing the College supposedly teaches you: magic.
Other factions are not fully exempt, but at least I can buy them to a bigger or lesser degree. The Thieve's Guild is easily the best out of them all: you have to complete the main quest (during which Nocturnal will name you a Nightingale), but also a bunch of sidequests that require different activities that you would expect from the guild (stealing stuff, planting fake evidence, manipulating documents, etcetera), ending with a bigger quest that will improve the Guild's power in said region. It makes sense that a guy who singlehandedly brought the Thieves' Guild back to its glory would be made the Grandmaster.
The Dark Brotherhood is mainly carried by you being named Listener by the Night Mother, which means you're their leader because of divine providence, but as lazy as that is during the questline you end up fulfilling a bunch of assassinating contracts that end up in the death of the Emperor, so there's merit to that.
As for the Companions it's more of the same thing, since iirc you're named the Harbinger by Kodlak (the former one) after he dies and you save his souls from Hircine. Not to mention you had to fight a lot through the entire questline and defeated the Silver Hand.
But the College of Winterhold? All you have to do is beating the main questline, which barely requires you to use magic. Seriously, while requiring a few workarounds and detours you can beat the entire questline without casting a single spell, but even without that I don't think you have to cast more than 10 spells. And the only reason you're promoted to archmage is because you got a neat staff, saved the College from a bad guy, and that's it. A superwizard comes up, says "well done kiddo, you're the archmage now", and that's it.
And you know why I find this so frustrating? Because there is an easy, and I mean really easy way to fix this. And that's because 90% of the required work to implement it is already in the game, all they needed were a bunch of extra scripts and dialogues.
For starters, I would leave the entire questline as it is (it has its issues, but none of them are related to what I'm talking about today, so I'll act as if they didn't exist), but make your promotion to archmage optional, and dependant on certain requisites. Once the bad guy has been defeated and the superwizard appears, rather than saying "you're now the archmage" the game will check out if you meet the prerrequisites (which I'll talk about later). If you don't meet them you will be hit with the Revenge of the Sith Special: "we recognize you as the savior of the college, but we do not grant you the rank of archmage". And instead they will choose another NPC as an acting archmage. In-universe, the responsible of performing the duties of an archmage while they look for a fitting candidate.
Let's say the acting archmage is Toldfir (because I like him), and after the superwizard leaves Toldfir will tell you "hey, I think you have a lot of potential, maybe even to be an archmage. Once you perfect your magical skills go talk with your teachers and we'll arrange something for you". You see, the College of Winterhold has a bunch of sidequests that let you unlock the master level spells. But in order to unlock these, you need to level up the respective magic skill to level 90 (with 100 being the maximum). Once you unlock them you talk with the respective teacher, they give you a quest, and once you complete it you unlock the spells.
My idea is that once you have completed these 5 quests, you can return to Toldfir, tell him about your advances, and then either receive one final test to prove your worth as a wizard, or directly give you the rank of archmage, with the few benefits you get with it (I think it was a special home in the College and not much else).
Is this perfect? Maybe not, but I think it's way better than how it's currently implemented, because it makes sense (a master on all magical schools makes more sense as an archmage than a meathead who just killed a bunch of draugr and saved the college), it doesn't get in the way of completing the questline (since becoming an archmage is optional, and you can conclude the questline after beating the bad guy if you were only interested in the story), and 90% of the job is already done (since the master school quests are already in the game, it's just a matter of adding a bunch of dialogues and scripts that check if you've completed them before giving you the archmage title). And besides, it's a nice, satisfying reward for those who wanted to go the full distance with their mage roleplay, since a mage will want to do those quests anyways.