Gromnir

learn by doing has always been subject to balance problems... but oblivion is worse than most such attempts we has seen. you can seemingly level by advancing enough in 1 or 2 skills... but encounter toughness increases across the board. see the problem? 'specially for the folks who levels too quickly in non-combat skills? *shrug* scaling is fine... is the leveling that is screwed. HA! Good Fun!

as far as we can tell, there ain't no way to makes a blanced character w/o doing some crazy gymnastics to do so. if one skill starts getting high, you better spend the next few hours using your weak skills exclusively to brings 'em up... which is difficult 'cause then you levels and the critters gets even tougher... making it more difficult for you to win battles with your weaker combat skills. is nutty. oh, and again, if you spend time in city with lots of speech & security encounters you is gonna be screwed even worse... 'cause once you walk out of city and get attacked by 12th level timber wolfs you is likewise screwed. HA! Good Fun!

again, it depends on which skill you rely on initially, 'cause you will be ever increasingly stuck relying on it. if you play sword wielder from start w/o relying on magic then of course you is gonna get better at sword... and the better you get at sword, the more you level, and the more your opponents level... and the less likely you will be to be able to use other skills effectively. HA! Good Fun!

again, it ain't that you is stronger, is that you is much more balanced. skills increase at oddly unbalanced rates. so even if you use sword often and conjure whenever in battle, your conjure goes up faster and so you level faster, and you become more reliant on conjure 'cause your blade skill lags ever further behind. w/o doing some crazy gameplay gymnastics there just not seem to be a way to keeps all your most useful skills to be increasing at a similar rate. at 1st level the gap 'tween your best and non-used skills will be slight. a first level goblin is not that much better of a combatant than your spell casting character... but at 10+ levels, a goblin is a pretty nasty combat critter, and your magic wielder is probably pretty hopeless by this point. *shrug* it ain't the scale system that bothers us so much as is the leveling of your own character. HA! Good Fun!

A level 1 character with a rusty dagger has more chances of than a level 20 character. Go figure. Levels, being an expression of character power, seem to be almost contradicting in the game. Funny that the same level 1 character can also finish the central story arc but <{POST_SNAPBACK}> the level/scale system is... odd. the more we get into the game, the more we is wondering what bethesda were thinking. Gromnir went through the starting tutorial with a couple different characters... just to see how/if they had actual gameplay differences. quickly we abandonded the marksman+light armour+magic build. marksman sans sneak were a waste... and with sneak we were giving up too many of the magic schools we wanted. next we went with a bruiser character. blunt+heavy armour+armourer+restoration & the death sentence that is athletics+speechcraft.+security. walked 'round the imperial city for an hour or two and then decided to head out into the woods. *groan* too much levels w/too weak combat skills. finally we goes with blade+light armour+magic. is a workable build but we notices that conjuration, in particular, is advancing far faster than is our other skills... and our strategies seems limited to summoning some powerful critter and then running away from the baddies who is trying to chop us into little bits. at lower levels we were able to join in combats with our little iron sword, but now we simply gets mutilated... so we summons and heals and cast some sorta alteration school protection spell... then run 'round in circles. every once in a while we is able to get off a firebolt or similar destruction school magic spell, but not 'nuff to gets much better with destruction skill. now admittedly Gromnir incompetence is part of the problem. the interface is far too demanding for us. am a 1 or 2 button mouse guy, but this game requires us to move with wasd and at same time we gotta cast spells with "c"... but we change spells with number keys 1-8. maybe if we were more accostomed to fps games we would not mind this interface, but we feels too clumsy to accomplish the simultaneous tasks of moving properly while changing and casting spells at the same time... add in sword swinging and we is doomed. so... we runs in circles and summons and heals and maybe gets off a firebolt once in a while. is getting very tedious and we notice that our reliance on such a pathetic tactic is not decreasing as we advance in levels and grow more comfortable with the interface. in point of fact, 'cause of way critters scale, we is increasingly reliant on summons & run tactics. oh, and the dialogues is bad. am not needing shakespeare or even chekhov... heck, even star trek's chekov (walter koeing?) would be an improvement. is just kinda... lame. actually felt pitty for patrick stewart. HA! Good Fun!

some of you jokers needs to learn how to tell time. HA! Good Fun!

the folks at bethesda simply got lazy. you coulda' easily capped some of the randomn encounters at 10th level or so and most of the siliness woulda' been less obvious. cap the randomn bandit encounters and wilderness critters 'n such, but allows the vampire den type stuff scale normal. do the same, but reversed, for things like the arena. has the arena scale, but start the scale at maybe 10th level. just seemed lazy not to do things as Gromnir suggests... that or the bethesda guys honestly thought that their way is better... which is kinda scary. regardless, we honestly not mind that the way oblivion scales. yeah, it has some wacky in-game results, but we not see it as a huge reason to complain. the bethesda folks did scale so that game would be challenging all the way through... which they coulda' done if they were a little more discriminating 'bout how and where they scaled encounters, but ultimately their solution acheived their aim. 'course we thinks that the way the character levels does result in some issues. acrobatics and athletics may have combat applications, but if your character is leveling up at light speeds 'cause he gots acrobatics and athletics and speechcraft and security as major skills, the poor dumb bastard is gonna be in for a world of hurt when he encounters that 12th level imp or timber wolf when all he gots is lame blade or conjuring skills. tell us that athletics and acrobatics is combat skills is ignoring the reality that they has but very minor combat applications compared to the more obvious combat focused skills. scale encounters is fine... bethesda were just kinda ham-fisted about application of it... sorta likes their dialogues. HA! Good Fun!

if Gromnir was sure that space rangers 2 copy protection would not kill our dvd drive we would probably have already stopped playing oblivion. morrowind 1.2 is ok, just nothing special... surely not greatest-game-in-5-years special. as to the influence minigame... am playing a character with an okie dokie personality and we ain't not yet noticed any difference 'tween dialogues received with or w/o doing the persuade game. we typically save 'fore convos with key personages. *shrug* black & white got some of the wtf kinda reviews... but am trying to think of another game where the weight of critical support is so heavily and inexplicably (as far as Gromnir is concerned) in favors of a game. is just wacky. btw, do they even give half stars at gamespy? if not then we ain't impressed with their restraint... and their review had some odd criticisms. not mind seeing a game marked down for flaws, but some of their "immersion" complaints bugged the heck out of Gromnir. ask 5 different people what is important for "immersion" and you will get 5 different answers. reviewers should never EVER complain 'bout immersion. complain 'bout specific instances of stoopid ai or counter intuitive physics or such, but "immersion" is an absolutely meaningless term. any reviewer who uses such a term looses 10 cred points with Gromnir. bah. HA! Good Fun!

unfortunately it doesn't matter, as starforce is the worst copy protection device we has ever had the displeasure of encountering. space rangers 2 is kinda a genre blending sci-fi trade and combat model with rpg elements and lots o' player freedom. but, as it will never be loaded on Gromnir's rig... *sigh* were really looking forward to this one too. HA! Good Fun!

"took me a while to get it but I can eek out about a 10 point improvement each "round." " to what end? is not like you get more dialogue options or quest choices. am understanding that you can make everybody love you, but why should Gromnir care? HA! Good Fun!

... gotta say that we do not understand the reviews. we can see how people could like oblivion, but the lovefest is kinda... strange. is just too many busted things in oblivion to be giving it a score o' 9+ on a 10 scale... not that we likes numeric scores in reviews anyways. what is Gromnir talking 'bout? example 1: generally we not mind the oblivion scaling scheme, but you can unwittingly really screw yourself with a gimped character. marksmanship w/o sneak seems to be worthless... 'specially once you level up a ways. level up too fast in the diplomatic & thieving skills can also gimp you as you end up confronting super buffed imps and other such nonsense when you not gots requisite combat skills. (side note: at least the FO fans should be happy. seeing such an unbalanced skills offering should be reminding folks of FO in a big way... no doubt bodes well for FO3, eh?) combat sophistication is pretty limited. chances are you is gonna find one scheme and you is gonna use that for almost every encounter in game... gets kinda dull. does the persuasion minigame actually do anything... other than level up your speech skill real fast? the dialogues is really terrible for the most part. started off bad with patrick stewart and has not improved since. the plotting isn't as bad as morrowind, but the writing as just terrible. etc. now don't get Gromnir wrong. is not that this game is complete crap by any means. quests seem much more involved than the fedex overkill of morrowind... bethesda has made great strides in this aspect of game development, and if we were seeing reviews o' oblivion based solely on how much better it is than were morrowind the 9+ scores would be deserved. ... am simply wondering what in the heck we is missing? does other folks playing honestly see this as a game that is head and shoulders better than any crpg released in the last five years... 'cause many of the reviews is giving this game better numbers ratings than any other crpg we has seen in a long time. will do a complete review in a couple of days, but am just trying to understand if we is missing something... something that so many others see in oblivion that Gromnir does not. HA! Good Fun!

"Any of these can change." maybe. we ain't never hade a true global language. latin weren't. english during pax britania weren't. none of the various defacto trade languages during height of mercantilism and empire building came close to being genuinely global. merchants and bureaucrats 'cross the globe not makes a language global, does it? most peoples actually continued to speak their mother tongue, and were unable to speak with the folks in the next valley beyond the hills to the west... or east... whatever. the internet and airplane travel and all sorts o' other devices is making the world smaller, and english is the language that is being utilized as the language of choice during this process. listen to air traffic controllers in lisbon or shanghai. go to a large bank in bogota. correspond on the internet. there is gonna be some kinda critical mass point reached beyond which it is gonna simply become too much trouble for folks 'round the globe to choose another language as the global one. HA! Good Fun!

if you pm Gromnir and we doesn't respond, do not take personal... 'cause we typically ignore/delete all pms we receive unread. we react to pms with as much relish as we does to the flaming paper bag left upon our doorstep. HA! Good Fun!

hey now, maybe some of you should try to be nicer... after all, scientologists is all that stands between you and the dark overlord Xenu. ... over the years we has chosen to defend the rights of some pretty wacky religions. the iskocn and pentecostal snake handling sects and moonies and bhagwan shree rajneesh followers is just a few of the peoples who has gotten help from Gromnir. will defend your rights even if we thinks your religion is kooky. truthfully, we thinks that scientology is a hoot. anybody here feels bad that john travolta and tom cruise got taken by some yutz who , while he may have been a "virtually a pathological liar" 'bout his military record and his education, were no doubt completely honest 'bout his new religion. HA! http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/la90/la90-1a1.html is a fun read. HA! Good Fun!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}> What is wrong with turned based combat? It worked wonderfully in the Fallout games. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> did it? from a publisher pov we ain't sure you could say that tb worked in fo. sales for fo was nice, but not great. publishers needs to ask why fo weren't a great seller. fergie was with interplay and bis during the development and publishing of the fo games, and when asked why he weren't developing tb games post fo2 fergie admitted that it were not a popular feature. hypothesizing on reason for lack of tb approval fergie admitted that even the best tb combat could become "soul numbing." toee, as 'posed to fo, were probably the game that coulda' changed the minds of crpg fans. admittedly, even in toee, which did a much better job with large scale tb combats than did fo, tb could become tedious... but taken as a whole we thinks combat were a positive in toee... one of the few positives of toee. initial sales of toee were very strong... but they trailed off fast. we suspect that word off mouth helped kill toee.... bad rpg elements, terrible writing and bugginess were just tip of the dirty diaper pile that were toee, and the internet were full of people complaining 'bout toee shortcomings. but What If remains to haunt us. what if toee had been developed by non arse-clowns? what if toee had become the start of an ongoing series as it were originally envisioned. what if millions of people had been exposed to pretty good tb combat, as 'posed to a few hundred angry fans who were unable to recall toee w/o either cursing atari or troika (though few people cursed both troika and atari... go figure.) did tb work wonderfully in fo? we don

the thing is that the humor we has seen in the dialogues does not appear to be intended. llyranor's pov may be different, but most of the writing encountered so far has a groan factor that makes it difficult for us to stomach. again, we may be jumping to judgment too fast and will give some more time, before we decides. HA! Good Fun!

oh and to add to list of peeves... am not a fan of having to talk to an answering machine rather than a person, but we understands the near necessity in this day and age for there to be answering machines and voicemail and such. however, is a completely different thing when an answering machine calls Gromnir. there should be a special place in hell for the guy who invented the damned auto-dialer machines that call us at 7:00 am informing us that our new platinum credit card from Schlock Bank Inc is only a phone call away from being processed. HA! Good Fun!

the eagles had gotten to the nfc championship game w/o to a number of times previous to his signing with philly. to was injured during the entire eagles playoff run... including the championship game. to did not get the eagles to the superbowl. he also did not win the eagles a superbowl. however, a team with much the same personel as the squads that had reached the nfc title game numerous times fell completely apart when to went insane... and we does mean "insane." http://www.thelaw.com/index2.php?option=co...&do_pdf=1&id=27 am knowing that the linked stuff is long, but it shows you just how cnutters to was/is. this clown refused to speak to coaches and fellow players. a football player who refuses to speak with coaches and players thinks he is living up to the terms of his contract? and to's crack 'bout mcnabb being tired in the superbowl came to light for only one reason, and it weren't 'cause to is some super honest person. to were still steamed at coments mcnabb made to the media when to were injured. mcnabb claimed that philly could still win without to... as if any qb in the league would say anything else. to's comments were his way of getting back at mcnabb. to is just that petty. btw, is some confidences we cannot break, but we had some connections with the sf football team back when to were part of that squad... and some of the stories they still tell 'bout to is hard to believe. we doubt there is one guy who played with to in sf that were surprised 'bout what happened in philly. maybe to has learned his lesson, but it seems like he gots all the emotional maturity of a 5 year old with 0 impulse control. to is a cancer. the only way to get rid of him is to cut him out, and even then you is gonna need a long time to recover from him. HA! Good Fun!

Ok, let us bring focus back... "The material above deals with the primary dictionary meaning of the word irony. (there is a great deal of info in the wiki entry that illustrates the traditional uses and origins of irony, but Gromnir need not repeat 'em all at present.) There is no controversy that the usage above is a correct usage; the controversy is over whether it is the only correct usage. Authority, in the form of dictionaries and usage guides, can be cited on both sides. Descriptivists generally discount such self-proclaimed language authorities in favor of studying how individuals currently use the word. It is currently quite common to hear the word ironic used as a synonym for incongruous in situations where there is no

to is a cancer. HA! Good Fun!

No offence to SS, but this recurrent theme in Bethesda's games lead me to believe that all their own faces are butt-ugly; they model the game-faces after themselves. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> have said this before, but much like morrowind, the faces in oblivion looks as if somebody attempted to paint a realistic face upon a balloon. there is an inhuman and unpleasant distortion 'bout all bethesda game faces. but the trees look nice. HA! Good Fun!

irregardless and irony. both of these words show up in dictionaries and everyday use and they is both making Gromnir

we got it a couple days early and have been playing it... though not necessarily enjoying it... but not hating either. ... half-arsed feedback is worse than no feedback at all. shout "it sucks," w/o any explanation is as worthless as is describing kewlness w/o giving a why. unfortunately, we not have huge time at the moment, and we wanna get a little further into game before we start throwing 'round final judgments 'n such. quick observations: 1) if you didn't like combat or story elements in morrowind, we would not think that your appreciation for oblivion will be much different. 2) the game is a resource hog. got a athlon 64x2 3800+ cpu, an msi neo4 sli mb, 1 gig of crucial's ballistix ram, and a single evga geforce 6800gs pcie, etc. not a Big Dog, but no chihuahua neither. 3) the trees look nice. *shrug* more later. HA! Good Fun!