Kasoroth

I agree with this. Overpowered crafting takes away one of the fun aspects of the game (finding cool new loot). Underpowered crafting is disappointing, and really annoying if you have to invest skill points/feats/etc into it, only to discover that the found items are better than what you can craft. I would much rather have it involve remixing found items rather than making things from scratch (I posted some more detailed ideas a few pages back on this thread). The biggest problem I had with Skyrim's crafting was that all the raw materials (with only a few exceptions) were fairly common throughout the game, so it was never exciting to find them. A system based on remixing abilities from found items would mean that finding a weapon with an ability you like could be really cool even it the weapon isn't your preferred type. Instead of being a Skyrim situation where artifacts are just unique decorations for the mannequins in your houses because crafted stuff is better, or other games where you find a battle axe with a really cool power you like, but sell it because you prefer to dual wield short swords, a good crafting system can make found items even more interesting than they would be otherwise. It also means that they don't have to dump tons of items on you to make sure you get one of the desired type. I generally don't like the idea of stores that just sell tons of fancy expensive magic items like they were common trinkets. That's fine for a hack and slash Diabloish game like Torchlight, but I wouldn't want it in a real RPG. The problem with dropping tons of items to make sure everyone can get what they want is that the rest get sold off, the PC gets really rich, and you then need to find something for them to spend that money on. If the cool abilities need to be salvaged from found items, and it costs money to do this unless you learn to do it yourself, that transforms one of the major sources of excess PC wealth into a cost. Most games, by about halfway through, I have way more gold than I know what to do with, and even looting things to sell becomes quite pointless. I also like the idea of having NPCs in towns who can do crafting for you for a price if you don't want to spend the skills/feats/etc. PC (or party NPC) crafting should be a bit of a convenience and cost saver, and at high levels get you a little bonus beyond the best town crafters, but not be absolutely necessary to take advantage of the crafting system. -Kasoroth

I like the idea of crafting, but it is a bit tricky to get right. If it's too weak, nobody will waste time/skill points/etc on it. If it's too powerful, it is a huge penalty to anyone who doesn't take it, and it takes a lot of the fun out of finding loot. For example: Skyrim with maxed out Alchemy (for making smithing/enchanting potions), smithing, and enchanting (for enchanting items, and making smithing/alchemy boosting gear), and the feats to go with these skills will let you make items far better than anything you can find. Looting becomes essentially pointless, and even most of the legendary artifacts aren't worth using. I tend to like socketed gem/rune based systems for several reasons: 1) Crafting an item from scratch should be a very time consuming task. While a single player game could easily just say "3 days have passed, your crafting is finished", it doesn't really make sense to do that if there's any sense of urgency in the story, and it would be impractical if there were any actual time limits or time triggered events to worry about. Swapping gems or runestones in a socket seems more realistic for an adventuring craftsman. 2) It allows players to customize items without necessarily making the items more powerful than found items, and found items are a good source of gems/runes. I just recently started playing Torchlight (Linux version from Humble Bundle) and I like the idea of being able to remove gems from an item, but being able to salvage one or the other, but not both. My preferred system would be along the lines of: 1) Most magic items are actually ordinary socketed items with one or more gems pre-installed. 2) Each item/gem combination will have a salvage difficulty. Skill too low can't salvage it at all, a bit higher can salvage one or the other, higher can salvage both. 3) Smiths in town can perform the salvage for a price, and some smiths are more skilled than others, and more powerful/difficult items cost more to salvage. Some items might be too difficult for any of the NPC smiths to salvage both parts, but the best should always be able to salvage one or the other. 4) Characters with crafting skills/feats can perform similar salvage for free at a workbench. 5) Characters can get a portable toolkit to perform salvage in the field, but at a penalty. Masterwork toolkit is more expensive, but gets rid of the penalty. 6) Some legendary items have unique powers imbued directly into the item, so they can't be removed. These items could potentially also have sockets for customization. 7) The base items will also have a variety of special materials, quality levels, and number of sockets, so that when you find a high quality rare material weapon with 3 gems in it, it's a tough decision whether to save the gems or the item (if you're not good enough to do both) Installing a gem in an empty socket is easier than removing it without damage, but still requires tools and a bit of skill. The advantage of a system like this is that there are some things that only a really skilled PC crafter can do, and a moderately skilled PC crafter gains a significant convenience and cost benefit, but there's no particular item or magical property that's strictly off limits to non-crafters. Crafting custom base items from special materials could be interesting too, but it makes more sense to have the PC bring the rare materials to an NPC crafter and special-order the item, and come back a few days later, rather than having crafting be instantaneous. This solves the problem of PCs suddenly (over the course of weeks or a few months) becoming better crafters than someone who's been doing it for 30 years. A PC becoming more skilled at a very specialized task (removing a magical gem from its socket without damaging either of them) makes some sense, because it's probably something that most smiths rarely do, because they're typically making the items, not disassembling them. An adventurer might pry more magic gems out of junk weapons in one day of mega-dungeon delving than an average smith does in a year. -Kasoroth

I think that in general harder difficulty levels should give less XP. In fact, since I tend to prefer slower advancement, my preference would be that the only thing changed by the base difficulty rating is XP: 75% for hard mode, 50% for really hard mode The game world remains the same, but you don't reach demi-god power levels so quickly, thus the game is harder. I also really like the idea of various modes that alter meta-game aspects rather than directly changing the difficulty of combats. Things like autosaving over a single save slot and erasing your saved game when you die (this one I'd probably wait until my second play through to try, I'm not totally insane) or more realistic inventory limits (weighty gold, please ), or starvation, or actual time limits with consequences for exceeding them (though not necessarily an instant game over) rather than having a storyline that pretends there's urgency while actually letting you take as long as you want. I know many of these "realism" features annoy some players who are just playing for the story and/or hack and slash, but having the option to have these features would make me really happy. For me, a lot of the fun of an RPG is getting into the mind of the character, and trying to imagine what they would be thinking about and worrying about. While food supplies might seem mundane and boring compared to battling an evil warlord, failure to consider them could be just as deadly, so to me it makes sense that the character would worry about that. I like the idea of finding a huge treasure hoard, but not being able to take it because I need to travel light and fast right now. These sorts of details make the world seem much more real to me, and help me think from the character's point of view rather than as simply a game player, with all the simplifying gameplay conveniences that have become conventional for the genre. I'm generally not a big fan of short term "you have 30 seconds until the bomb explodes" time limits (they're okay occasionally, but not too frequently), but I love longer term strategic time limits, like: You're injured and fatigued and could really use a good night's rest, but you only have two days before the enemy army seizes a strategic pass, so if you don't make a forced march to get through it now, you'll have to either fight or sneak your way through (a near impossibility), or find an alternate route, or accept being blocked from all the stuff on the other side for a while. I like when you can make decisions that effect the story directly through game mechanics, not just in a conversation tree. I like the idea of significant plot-related NPCs being able to be killed outside of scripted death scenes, and having that death impact the story in some way. I don't want story and gameplay to be two separate entities that take turns with my attention, I want them to be merged as much as possible -Kasoroth

I don't necessarily want a direct sequel, I would like to see a game that incorporates some elements of Planescape: Torment, and some elements of the original Fallout games. Specifically, I liked the character development and the style of the setting in PS:T Both were good about allowing you to make choices that actually effect the outcome of the game I liked the ending sequence of the Fallout games, describing what happened afterward in each area as a result of your actions I also liked the way the Fallout games were structured with a relatively open world to explore, and the main quest could actually be accomplished very quickly if you knew exactly where to go, but there were optional quests that were indirectly related, and sometimes provided clues for the main quest. I also like games where a variety of solutions emerge from the basic gameplay rather than being specifically scripted. As a simple example, having a plot critical item be potentially pickpocketable (or otherwise stealable) is very nice. I get a bit annoyed when a game forces you to kill the "boss" enemy to get an item, just because the designers want every player to fight that fight. I liked the way Fallout had many "enemies" who were not immediately hostile, but only became hostile when the player initiated conflict (either just for the hell of it, or because there was a plot related reason to do so), and that there were often alternative ways of dealing with the situation (stealth, persuasion, or simply paying them off for whatever you wanted) Also, DRM-free, please, and make a Linux version (or at least Wine compatible). I would definintely contribute to such a game (as I did for Double Fine) on Kickstarter. -Kasoroth

My biggest complaint about Oblivion is that all the monsters level up with you, and were pretty much uniform across the whole game world. There was no real excitement to exploring new areas because you would meet the same few types of monster populations. I like the fear of possibly stumbling into an area too difficult for my level, and the amusement of reaching high levels and demolishing the common bandits that I once feared. I like some unpredictability in my exploration of a sandbox type game world. Oblivion failed pretty miserably in this regard, but fortunately there were some mods that helped things. The levelling system was also flawed, but I'm not opposed to a "learn-by-doing" system in principle. I think the biggest flaw in Oblivion's specific implementation of "learn-by-doing" was the vast disparity in stats that you could have by level 15-20 if you didn't deliberately plan and train your skills. I found that just playing naturally (as a learn-by-doing system is supposed to encourage) would usually get me a bunch of x2 stat increase options, and one or two x3 options. This would average half the total stat increase value as someone who deliberately chose what skills to practice to make sure they always had three x5 stats. A simple fix would be to just give everyone 5 points to distribute each level, and use the exact same formula that was used for multipliers in Oblivion, but use it as a cap rather than a multiplier. If you want to raise one stat a lot in a single level, you need to focus on relevant skills, but playing naturally will not give you a net loss in total stat gains. Five points per level would probably be a bit less than most people averaged in Oblivion as well, so it would make it harder to make a master-of-everything character, and make character build choices a bit more meaningful. I'd also like to see the Fallout style conversation system added to the Elder Scrolls series. It really is better. -Kasoroth

So many different boards over the years it's hard to keep track of them... One of the first things I remember was the uproar that occurred when the GURPS license was dropped from Fallout during development because of a dispute with Steve Jackson Games. The gaming world might have been quite different if SPECIAL had never been developed. -Kasoroth

Though I usually wait for some reviews, I'll probably get NWN2 as soon as it comes out. I might even pre-order it, though I probably won't get around to that and just hope they have some copies left at my local Gamestop when I stop in to buy it. -Kasoroth

Does it include the DOS version of Fallout 1. I already have all those games, but I'm just curious because I've been considering trying to run it onder DOSBox for Linux. The later Windows only games I might try with WINE, because even though I have a dual boot system with WinXP 64-bit edition, I sometimes find myself not playing games because I don't feel like rebooting into Windows to play. Older games like the Fallouts and IE games might play fine, and then I'd have something to play in Linux other than Vega Strike and NWN. -Kasoroth P.S. - Obsidian, please make a Linux client for NWN2, even if it's not released at the same time as the Windows client. If necessary, please let Atari know that Linux users want games too (I've posted on Atari's forums expressing this opinion, but I don't know whether they listen or not) Rebooting is a pain in the @ss, and I don't play Obilvion as much as I would if it ran in Linux. I can deal with rebooting to Windows for the short term, but eventually I'll probably ditch windows completely, as I dont anticipate ever getting Vista. To get all the features I'd want, I'd need the ultra expensive Ultimate edition, and I'm not willing to pay that much, and I don't like the idea of pirating it, so I think Win XP 64-bit will be the last Windows operating system I'll use, at least on my home computer.

Harry the Bunny Master!!!! -Kasoroth

That game rocked.. Somewhere (I think in the bottom drawer of my desk at work) I still have some old commodore 64 5.25 floppies with tracks I made for that game. I loved the ability to set the gravity to super low values. Lunar racing rocked. As for the commments about Fallout, the fallout games are way too recent to need remakes. I'm tempted to say Ultima 7, because despite its low resolution it had a 2D engine that was extremely advanced and could support seemless multi-level worlds in a way that the Infinity Engine just couldn't match. Sometime I've been meaning to get ambitious and put together an open source tile library for Exult (an open source recreation of U7's engine) to replace the standard tiles with high res versions. The only difficulty I see (other than the amount of work it would entail) is that the engine divides things into specific sized chunks, so I don't know how hard it would be to make it deal with bigger tiles. My problem is that I tend to be more ambitious when I'm drunk, and then I sober up and realize the extent of what I want to do and just give up. -Kasoroth

This looked like a cool game from what I've seen of it, but then again I'm a bit of a sucker for games based on historical settings and games about assassins. Still not enough to make me buy a console (you'd have to get me a lot drunker than I am right now, which is quite a feat, to make me buy any console), but if it's truly coming out for PC I'll probably give it a try. -Kasoroth

I also hope it ends up being a good game. It seems to me that the Fallout series has always had a pretty good mixture of story and free exploration. It seems like Bioware's recent games have good story aspects and character interaction, but at the expense of freedom and exploration, while Bethesda usually tends to go more in the opposite direction. Hopefully Bethesda will improve the conversations (and get rid of the stupid persuasion minigame), cut back the level based difficulty scaling and add in region/area, or plot point based difficulty scaling instead, They need to make a game that has the good balance of story and freedom that Fallout had. I wouldn't even mind too much if the combat was like Oblivion (but with guns and dynamite added) as long as ammo is scarce enough that you can't just hose everything down with a machinegun like in some FPS games. Sneaking up and planting a stick of dynamite near someone in an oblivion-style combat & stealth system might actually be pretty fun, now that I think about it. -Kasoroth

These are pretty entertaining. I guess it shouldn't surprise me that I end up completely opposite from George W Bush. The Political Compass Economic Left/Right: -5.13 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.54 OKCupid Social Liberal: (83% permissive) Economic Liberal: (30% permissive) You are best described as a: Strong Democrat You exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness. (Graph has been rotated so the economic axis is left-right to match the other graph) -Kasoroth

Compuserve had a Pool of Radiance MMO? Did it use a variant of the "Gold Box" engine used in the stand-alone Pool of Radiance like the original AOL Neverwinter Nights did? NWN on AOL was charged against AOL time which, back then, was like 5 or 10 hours a month, and then 3 or 4 dollars an hour after that. -Kasoroth

I disagree with you here. Personally I think that piracy is much less of a problem for music than it is for movies and games. While it is certainly a big problem for the record industry, that does not traslate directly into a problem for musicians. The budget needed to record high quality music is much lower than for a high quality game or movie (while it's possible to make a fun game or entertaining movie on a limited budget, it does limit the creators options because certain types of games and movies just cost a lot to make.) In comparison to major games and movies, the cost of setting up a decent recording studio is pretty damned cheap. Also, I'm pretty sure that musicians make far more money from concerts than they do from CD sales, because most of the CD money goes to the record company. When you think about it, it would be quite feasible for musicians to make good music without any copyright laws at all, in fact they've been doing it for thousands of years. In the days when vinyl was the primary medium for recording and distributing audio, it wasn't feasible for musicians to do this themselves, but distribution is no longer a problem, there are plenty of pirates (ARRR!!!) willing to distribute that music for free. If musicians stopped looking at record royalties as a revenue source, and instead treated recordings as a form of free advertisement for their concerts, I think they could still make lots of money. They might even have more happy fans, and more concert (and merchandise, t-shirts, etc) revenue than they do now. The big loser here is not the musicians, it's the record companies, because their primary function is to manufacture and distribute the media to consumers, and this function is not really necessary anymore. I suppose to be fair to the record companies, they do handle advertising and promotion of the records, which is useful to those musicians who get a lot of attention from the marketing department. Even this function is not really a good thing for the general quality of music though. It helps a lot to promote "mainstream" music, and this tends to have a homogenizing effect on the whole music industry, with the majority of radio stations playing the same music, and any musician who doesn't manage to get a contract from the record company (or gets a contract, but doesn't get much marketing attention) is left behind. Eliminating the record companies would effectively eliminate their filtering effect on music, meaning that listeners (and radio stations) would probably need to sort through more junk to find the good stuff, but in the process they would be likely to find even more good music that they would have missed out on if they had relied on the record companies to to their filtering for them. -Kasoroth

So I can just burn a copy of the DVD? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I keep my original disc safe in the nice collectors edition case where it won't get scratched and play off a copy. No cracks from pirate (ARRR!!!) websites needed, it just copied and worked. Actually I installed off the original disc before I made the copy, so I'm not 100% sure there isn't some copy protection in the installer, but I don't think there was any. It makes me very happy that Bethesda trusted their paying customers enough to allow this because I'm always a bit nervous to be constantly using original discs. Hopefully the piracy levels of Oblivion will not be higher than other similarly popular games, because I'd like to see more publishers start extending this level of courtesy to their customers. -Kasoroth

P1 266 MHz for Ultima 2 would be way overkill to the point of being unplayable Even a 286 at 12 MHz would be overkill, though probably playable (probably better to turn off "Turbo Mode" so it runs underclocked). DOSBox is very useful for getting those old games to run slowly enough that you can actually play them without going directly from start of game to dead before the monitor can even refresh. -Kasoroth

I don't really have a problem with the ESRB rating games so parents can more easily inform themselves, but if helping parents protect their children from violent or sexual content was really the purpose of ESRB ratings, then content that required mods to unlock should not be included in the rating. If the kid is able to download the mod to unlock the objectionable content, he could just as easily download real porn. The truth is that it's easier to find pornographic pictures than it is to find the nude mod for Oblivion, so whether or not the files existed on the disc makes no measurable difference in a child's ability to view digital images of breasts. The "protecting the children" argument for including unused disc contents in the rating just doesn't hold up. Likewise, any argument that the rating's purpose is also to inform adults of any contents that might offend their own sensibilities also fails for the same reason. Enabling the content requires an intentional effort by the player. Players who are offended by this type of content can simply not download and install such mods. So if the purposes of the ratings are to help parents protect their children from objectionable content and to protect adult players from accidentally viewing objectionable content, these purposes could be served just as well by considering only the content that is acessible in the game as it was released. Rating the game based on unused contents on the disc serves no useful purpose and actually would make the rating less accurately reflect the contents of the game as it was released. If someone can propose some reason why rating the unused material on the disc is actually beneficial to society in some way, I'll listen, but I have never seen any value to that policy of the ESRB. - Kasoroth

Based on the precident and statements by the ESRB, yes. For what it's worth I don't agree with it. By that logic, Baldur's Gate 2 should have probably had an Adults Only rating for the hardcore porn video encrypted in the CREAnim1.bif file on CD3 with the Vernam Cipher. With the right Vernam Cipher key, you can "decrypt" any file into any other file (which is the reason that the cipher can't be broken by "brute force" techniques; any attempt to do so just creates every possible file of the same size as the encrypted file with no way to tell which, if any, is the "right" one). I could choose any file of 63,927,017 bytes or less and calculate a key that would "decrypt" CREAnim1.bif into my chosen file. If I create a decryption key that unlocks a hardcore porn video from CREAnim1.bif, and make that key available on the internet, should the ESRB change the rating of BG2 to Adults Only? If you rule that even content encrypted with the Vernam Cipher counts toward your rating, you're effectively ruling that any content that could possibly fit on the disc counts toward the rating. This is obviously an absurd ruling because every game would have to be rated Adults Only and the ratings would be completely meaningless. As I said in my previous post, a line has to be drawn somewhere between what is considered the developer/publisher's responsibility and what is considered user created content out of the publisher's control. The "If it's on the disc it's the publisher's responsibility, even if it's encrypted" standard of judgement clearly can't work, as I just showed. The "you can turn the gore/violence/language/nudity slider down in the options menu if you don't like that stuff" standard of judgement would make the ratings meaningless in the other direction because publishers could get a "Teen" or "Everyone" rating by just having options to disable all the objectionable material. The line needs to be somewhere between these extremes, and it needs to be clearly defined. -Kasoroth

So you're saying that even if the content is encrypted with the Vernam Cipher so that no one could access it without the key, they are responsible for disclosing its presence to the ESRB? -Kasoroth

Hmm, it seems I may have been a bit unclear in my previous post. I have no problem at all with having to choose skills that lend themselves to the survival of your character, that is not meta-gaming at all, just the opposite in fact. My problem is that the choices that are optimal within the Oblivion ruleset are almost completely the opposite of the choices that would be optimal based on common sense. If the ruleset matched up with common sense, there would be no problem because you could consider your options "in-character" and make a logical decision, and get a reasonably good outcome. As it is now, you have to pretty much disregard common sense and think strictly in terms of the game system to get good results. For example, it's much better to use your seconary skills whenever possible even though you're not as good at them, because you gain levels slower (so monsters progress slower) and you get bigger stat bonuses when you do gain a level, even though it seems more sensible to me to get better at what I'm good at and use it as much as possible. -Kasoroth

The ESRB should really give a more clear idea about what they mean by "locked-out content". If the content in question is contained in an archive file of a proprietary format that modders must build an extractor program to extract the content before being able to enable it, would that be considered "locked-out content" that the publisher is required to disclose, even though it's a lot harder to access than just "flipping a switch"? What if the archive in question was encrypted so that modders would need to actually break an encryption key (and probably be in violation of the DMCA in doing so) to access it? What's actually on the disc in this case would be random-looking encrypted bits, not content in a usable form, so would the publisher still be liable for the content in this case? What if it was encrypted with the "unbreakable" Vernam Cipher, would they still need to disclose it then? Personally I think that the rating should not include any content that requires third-party tools or modification/addition of files to the game's directory to access. If you try to include things in the rating that are not normally accessible, you need to clearly define the line between "locked-out" and "user-created" because it's not as clear as some people seem to think it is. I don't know the details of how 3d meshes and textures in Oblivion work, or the details of the particular mesh and/or texture in question here, but let's imagine a situation where the designers save polygons by making the underwear simply part of the texture on a rather undetailed mesh. Now let's imagine a modder copies and pastes sections of "bare skin" from the part of the texture not covered by the underwear. The result is a very poor quality nude mod for the game built completely from numodified meshes and slightly rearranged textures, but every pixel in the mod texture is an exact copy of some pixel in the original texture. The modder didn't create, he just rearranged. How do you define the point at which such rearrangement is legally declared to be creation and no longer the responsibility of the publisher? The only reasonably objective measure I can see for making this determination is whether or not third-party tools were necessary to make the content accessible, but even this is potentially a problematic standard though. Imagine that you drop a bunch of potions on the ground in Baldur's Gate, so that they spell out the words [censored] [censored] [censored]. You could spell out words that would earn the game an M rating for language, and you could do it completely from within the game, so does this mean that Baldur's Gate should be rated M? My opinion is that content should only be included in the rating if it can be accessed without the player taking intentional action to make it accessible. If you go to a mod site and download a mod that unlocks nude textures, you're intentionally changing the nature of the game. As far as I'm concerned it doesn't matter whether the mod makes use of files that came on the disc or not, you still have to make an intentional change to the game to access it. If you manually place potions on the ground in BG to spell "offensive" words, you're taking intentional action to put those words in the game, even if they're made entirely of Bioware's potion icons. Someone who is capable of finding or creating and then installing a mod to "unlock" the topless Oblivion meshes is almost definitly capable of downloading and viewing pornography anyway, so if they're intentionally looking for that sort of content, they're going to find it anyway, and if they're trying to avoid that sort of content, it's sufficiently "locked up" that they don't need to worry about finding it in the game by accident. I really don't see why this should warrant any change in Oblivion's rating. -Kasoroth

Once I had some decent equipment and my power got ahead of the monsters, it was easy to ignore the lost potential resulting from lower stat multipliers. However, around 14th level when I was still wearing Kvatch guardsman armor and suddenly getting annihilated by spriggans, minotaurs and will-o-wisps, and burning through all my magical weapons and potions and poisons just to survive and pick up a few items in chests (since those monsters don't drop much on their own), I was feeling the need for any advantage I could get, thus the encouragement to meta-game. The meta-gaming is really just a symptom, not the cause of the problem, but it's hard not to think about maximizing your level benefits when it seems that the levels are boosting the enemies more than they're boosting you. The mod I made that just sets all the stat multipliers to x3 (unless you don't use any related skill, in which case they're still x1) was very helpful for allowing me to focus on the game rather than the rule system even though it probably resulted in my character being a bit weaker, because it allowed me to just play without any motivation to think about maximizing skill multipliers. I agree with you when you say, "the game is still awesome if you just let yourself have fun instead of worry about the next level or bonus to attributes", but the way the level progression works it's very hard to not worry about the next level or bonus to attributes when you're struggling, and you know you can get about twice the attribute points per level by meta-gaming. I like challenging games, but I like the methods of overcoming those challenges most effectively to be determined by making decisions that make sense from an in-character perspective. If the optimal path based on game mechanics (meta-game thinking) differs significantly from the optimal path based on game world consistency (in-character thinking) then the more challenging the game gets, the more it encourages and rewards meta-game thinking, and this is a serious problem in my opinion. Some games have poorly designed systems and cover them up by being relatively easy, so even if your character is non-optimal because you're playing in character, it doesn't really matter because the game is easy. Once I got good equipment in Oblivion, this is basically what happened. It's far less challenging now that it was whan I had bad equipment, but it's still a lot of fun just exploring and doing quests even if I can beat or avoid most monsters very easily. There is also a lot of potential for good in-character strategy in Oblivion's game engine, and when I was stuck with poor equipment, I actually survived due to creative use of alchemy to make poisons specifically to counter the monsters I was having trouble with rather than meta-gaming my levels (since my own mod prevented that anyway), but for a while I was thinking about disabling my mod so I could gain a few maxed out x5 x5 x5 levels because it seemed like I was steadily falling behind the monsters as I levelled. The problem is that when the meta-game solution is extremely obvious, and the mosters level with you, the first thought that I had was that the devs expected everyone to meta-game and they balanced the monsters accordingly, so my "half-strength" character was doomed to get effectively weaker with each level he gained. Fortunately I found glass armor and a 30% chameleon ring, and realized that it was just a messed up equipment balance that was causing my problems and my character wasn't doomed, but I was definitely worried for a while. Partly I think it's just that the levelled monsters annoy me because I miss the older games where you could accidentally go somewhere way above your level early in the game and get your @$$ kicked, and then come back to the same place at higher level for some payback. -Kasoroth

As you say, you can adjust the difficulty setting if things get too hard, but poor game design should not be ignored just because it's not so horrible that it renders the game unplayable. Whenever I play a game, I look for aspects that could be improved. No game is perfect, and this is one particular aspect of Oblivion that I think could have been done significantly better with a minimal amount of effort. Some things, such as mounted combat, get left out simply because it's a lot of effort to implement well and there aren't enough time and resources to implement them. I tend not to complain about that sort of feature because I can fully understand the logic behind the decision. On the other hand, giving a meta-gaming player 15 attribute points per level while an average player who doesn't meta-game gets about 6 to 9 seems like a poor design decision to me, and one that would be very easy to fix. Personally I think that the bigger problem was the huge variance in levelling rate and equipment distribution. Early in the game I seemed to gain levels so quickly that the enemies' strength out-paced me before I had good enough equipment to deal with them. At 19th level I did the second half of the Kvatch battle (I did the first part at level 4) but I still had only a chain helm, a bunch of mithril armor, and one piece (boots I think) of elvish armor. During the quest, which involved me struggling to fight spider daedra and storm atronachs with non-magical weapons as much as possible because I couldn't afford to keep the magical ones charged, I gained to level 21, but still had the same armor. After that I stopped resting and just wandered around doing quests, and in the process I ran into plenty of bandits with glass armor, then I went through a few oblivion gates and decked out my glass armor with fire shield 25, shock shield 25, chameleon 30, Feather, and Life detection. Now the game is very easy. I've spent a lot of time playing the game and enjoyed it quite a bit, but it definitely has a lot of room for improvement. Personally I think that scaling the monsters to the PC's level was a poor choice because in Oblivion, level is a poor indicator of your ability to deal with more powerful monsters. The things that really matter more are: 1) your equipment 2) your skills 3) your stats I think it would have been much better to scale the encounters based on location, plot progression, or even game days passed (although they should probably bump the timescale down from 30x to about 3x or 4x if they're going to use game days as a scaling mechanism) This would be better for several reasons: 1) It allows players to have a degree of control over the monster progression. If you're not good enough at combat to handle minotaurs, avoid dungeons with minotaurs. If you stumble into one by accident, run away and come back when you're tougher. Some characters might be able to handle it at 6th level, some not until 18th level, but that would be fine because it would be the player's choice to go to that dungeon or not. A really sneaky character might be able to go through a dungeon with tough but unobservant monsters at lower level than a brute fighter, but the fighter might have a much easier time with more observant creatures because he just hacks through them. That's fine because it gives the player control of the situation. The level-based scaling, on the other hand, makes no logical sense from a "world consistency" perspective, and it's bad for game balance. A character who gains a lot of levels in non-combat skills, or who levels more quickly than his equipment can keep up is suddenly put in the position of facing much tougher enemies for no logical reason. There is no safer area to retreat to when the monsters scale over your ability (except for meta-game options, such as adjusting the difficulty slider). It puts the player in the position of wondering whether levelling up will actually be an increase in ability, or an effective decrease in ability compared to the enemies. It also encourages the player to try to make the most of every level in order to stay ahead of the enemies' power, resulting the encouragement to meta-game the stat multipliers. Without level based scaling, the vast difference in multipliers would be less significant because you could just gain more levels to make up for getting lower multipliers. You might need to be level 25 to face opponents that a meta-gamer could deal with at 15, but that would be fine. The level based scaling ruins this though, because when you boost your level to 25 to make up for lower multipliers, the enemies are boosted too. 2) Area based scaling gives a much better sense of your character's progression because you can survive in areas that would previously have slaughtered you. It also allows the areas to be more unique and distinct from each other. With level based scaling, one necromancers' lair is pretty much like another, you'll always face opponents of about your level no matter which one you go to. With area based scaling, some might be the lairs of weak necromancers who fear the retribution of the Mage's Guild while others house powerful necromancers creating vast undead armies to wipe out the Mage's Guild. If the mighty necromancers are scaled down to be an appropriate challenge for a 4th level PC, it just doesn't make any sense that they could threaten the Mage's Guild. I'm not saying that Oblivion is a bad game, because I actually enjoy it quite a bit. I'm just saying that there are a lot of things that they could have done much better in my opinion. Judging by the number of mods that reduce/limit the creature scaling and level multipliers, it seems that I'm not alone in this belief. -Kasoroth

Trying to take the best of both worlds often seems to fail though. The interface for Oblivion is a glaring example of thinking that a game can work well on both platforms. Fortunately it's possible (and relatively easy in the case of Oblivion) to modify the interface to be more suitable for a PC monitor a couple feet from your face rather than a standard (non-HD) TV across the room. Just about every game that is released for both console and PC has significant aspects that could have been relatively easily improved if the developers didn't have to worry about whether it would work well on the other platforms. Consoles and PCs differ not just in hardware, but also in their audience, so compromises tend to be necessary. -Kasoroth