Oblivion

[-Snakebite-]

No threads yet? Pff....

[DEFkon]

cause we're too busy playing / modding it

[Hadmar]

Still have to order it, play through Morrowind and upgrade my PC.

[cracwhore]

Because 'Ghost Recon: AW' is much more fun.

[TheShiningWizard]

Because Guitar Hero.

[Turin_Turambar]

[Rostam]

Well since it is out I bought a 360, I think Oblivion is amazing. Much better than I hoped for, strangly enough. I do miss the 'throw you in an ocean and see which way you end up' like morrowind had, but this way I guess it is easier to get in to. It is also much deeper and more difficult to get better than morrowind, overal excellent game.

I also got GRAW and DOA4. DOA 4 sucks as I expected and I'm trading it in. GRAW is pretty good but the controls are kind of strange, but I think it is for gameplay reasons making it all good. I do miss having an accurate crosshair or iron sights though (without having to resort to using a scope I mean).

Anyway I guess I'm a nerd once again. I sold my DS to pay for all this (shock) but hopefully in a few months I'll be able to get a DS lite. Haven't played many games until recently, almost forgot how much fun it can be. Heh.

[Harrm]

Satan Sam.

--Harrm

[Domino]

Oblivion is so dumbed down it's not even funny. The game holds your hand through the entire thing, and that sense of "you can do anything you want" that Morrowind had is really gone. I think they sold out to the Xbox kiddies and destroyed one of the last decent RPG series.

[-Snakebite-]

I loved morrowind, it was a fantastic game, but once you leveled everything was too easy. Obliviion removes the ability to hit the higher level enemies early - which is a shame, but the trade off is that once you level there is still cool stuff for you to do. I think its fantastic, luckily I've managed to drag myself out to a nightclub in Tokyo and see my girlfriend so my social life is not completely destroyed (yet).
Damn, I wanna play now but I gotta work soon
Oh - and screenshots?

[cracwhore]

Originally Posted by Harrm

Satan Sam.

--Harrm

Jim's control scheme is atrocious.

Otherwise, I'd play it more.

[DEFkon]

I must be the only person who actually enjoys the fact that they scaled the enemies acording to your level. I think it reduces the number of times you get picked off by uber enemies while traveling the massive land, while at the same time keeps things challenging. That way they don't have to put more dangerous creatures in certain areas, which is a type of level design that lends itself to linear gameplay. You can load up oblivion and pretty much travel the entire landscape (with some difficulty) pretty much right from the begining. *shrugs* i guess the great thing about oblivion is that if something is bugging you can change it pretty easily with the construction set. I think there's a number of mods out already for removing the scaling. At the moment i'm playing useing a 2x time mod so that the days and nights are longer, and an arrow velocity mod that i tweeked for realism-ish settings. (by default all the arrows move at the same velocity, the mod changed it so that the more powerfull ones went faster, but i tweeked it so that the weight determined it's muzzle velocity)

[Fuzzle]

Originally Posted by DEFkon

I must be the only person who actually enjoys the fact that they scaled the enemies acording to your level. I think it reduces the number of times you get picked off by uber enemies while traveling the massive land, while at the same time keeps things challenging. That way they don't have to put more dangerous creatures in certain areas, which is a type of level design that lends itself to linear gameplay. You can load up oblivion and pretty much travel the entire landscape (with some difficulty) pretty much right from the begining. *shrugs* i guess the great thing about oblivion is that if something is bugging you can change it pretty easily with the construction set. I think there's a number of mods out already for removing the scaling. At the moment i'm playing useing a 2x time mod so that the days and nights are longer, and an arrow velocity mod that i tweeked for realism-ish settings. (by default all the arrows move at the same velocity, the mod changed it so that the more powerfull ones went faster, but i tweeked it so that the weight determined it's muzzle velocity)

I dunno. What I dislike about this system is how choosing major skills is a bad thing.
On my first character I had major skills like acrobatics, lockpick, etc. I had spent most of my time exploring before doing the main quest, so by the time I got to the kvatch siege I was level 17, mostly because of skill increases in said major skills.

The kvatch npc's got absolutely and instantly mauled by frost atronarches and minotaurs, the legion reinforcements got killed in 2 or 3 hits. I had to kill them all by myself with my puny marksmanship skill that was way behind because again - I had gotten the majority of my levels from skills that don't help me in combat. I spent literally over 600 arrows during that siege, making several trips back to town just to restock. The invulnerable npc's that wore armor ended up naked because their armor got destroyed.

This just seemed kinda silly to me. It caught me completely off guard and I ended up restarting because of it. I'm not too keen on the idea that if you choose - for example - acrobatics and athletics as your major skills, jumping and running will make monsters stronger. I think I preferred morrowind's world where some places would be suicide to go, where other areas had puny critters you didn't have to worry about. It felt more convincing.

[Rostam]

I was even worse, Fuzzle. I made a thief, but I find it morally wrong to steal
Basically my guy sucks and I have to resort to insane tactics to win. But then, it is a lot of fun when you move from shadow to shadow, or from roof top to roof top, attacking your enemies with a stealth bonus. The Kvatch thing was very difficult for me too, espescially clearing out the town afterwards since there was less room for me to use stealth tactics.

I think I use a few hundred arrows too, I'm not too good with a sword but I can't complain about my marksmanship. Though I must admit, it is my sneak skills that makes the difference between winning and losing every time. At first it would take me 3 to 5 arrows to kill a goblin. Now if I manage to put my surroundings to good use it takes just one. I love it when I fire 3 arrows from 3 different places, then move in to find 3 different goblins with a simple Iron or Steel arrow in their face

[Harrm]

Originally Posted by cracwhore

Jim's control scheme is atrocious.

Otherwise, I'd play it more.

Yeah, not to mention the game is ****ing hard. I all but gave up on the normal difficulty. I think this is one of those games which is either going to let me beat it, or give me neurosis and a premature death by annuerysm.

--Harrm

[chuckus]

Well I"m going to wait for the mods to come out.

The enemy skill scaling sounds bad and chances are someones going to make a mod that brings the old style of enemy levels back. Not to mention swords armor and realism mods.

[Rostam]

The mods are probably going to be good, but you can also use the difficulty rating, Chuckus. I've made it just a bit more difficult making the overal experience really good (nothing like scouting a location first with a horse so you can make a quick exit before handling the actual attack).

But Fuzzle for example might do good in lowering the difficulty a bit.

When it comes to this Oblivion is the same as Morrowind: it is as much fun as you make it.

[TheShiningWizard]

This snippet from the Gamespy review bugs me.

Originally Posted by Gamespy

The truth is, however, that this expansive, beautiful world often implies an experience that isn't fully there. Even if you hold up your end of the bargain by playing the hero, the supporting cast often fails to live up to the game's ambition of a realistic and believable world. When you jump up onto a rock, and an enemy is unable to reach you but continues to attack that rock no matter how many arrows you stick in, you'll recognize them for what they are: crazy killer robots without thoughts or feelings.

Along the same lines, sometimes the equations and effects that manipulate the game behind the scenes (which you can view in the form of stats, skill levels, and armor values) leap into the foreground to create strange logic. Oblivion constantly tailors the world to your progress, so you'll never run up against something you can't accomplish by putting in some effort, which means you'll never run into an area where you're "not supposed to go yet." On the other hand, you tend to miss out on the joys of preying upon the weak. Characters are incredibly resistant to cold-blooded murder, even when stabbed in the back with a poisoned blade, and you might find yourself wondering how many blows to the head with a claymore one imp could possibly take.

Adding to the list of things that just don't feel right: the failure of glass windows or baubles to shatter under any circumstances; the failure of weapons to do visible damage to any part of the environment; and the failure of arrows to stick into juicy watermelons or ripe apples is annoying as well. These might not sound like overwhelming issues, but the closer graphics and physics come to reality, the more out of place small inconsistencies become.

[Fuzzle]

Yea, perching being possible was a big disappointment, but not really a surprise. I havent seen any rpg's that have solved this without either making monsters warp where they can't go, or only allowing players to go where monsters can by disallowing jumping.

I think you should have bolded out this part as well, as I feel it's more true than anything else; "but the closer graphics and physics come to reality, the more out of place small inconsistencies become."

It really is a great game alltogether, and that's why the little frustrations stick out so much.

[MP_Lord_Kee]

I love Oblivion. It is a great game. Looks good and plays well. But there are several design blunders that just are hard to ignore. I hate the level scaling on monsters and items. Seems pretty stupid to me that the shops won't stock on good or great items before you reach a sertain level. Also the fact bandits and other low level monsies start to get full sets of armour and great items takes away from the experience itself...
Weight/bulk is a bit off on items. Weapons and armor gets too fast damaged. Spells fly way too slow. A gold nugget ain't worth ****, gems ain't worth ****...a locked chest can contain a freaking spoon and 2 gold coins...
The stolen tag doesn't work too well in my opinion, all guards gain knowledge of an stolen apple you took by mistake and don't forget about it either...
The list could go on. But on the whole, it is a great game and thank god for the mods. I think I'll spend a lot of time on this game (close to 40h game time as it is)

//K