Oblivion

[Walsingham]

I just completed the OC in Oblivion. Thought I'd reprise some points and moments:

 

BAD

 

1. Levelling everything around you as you level

This not only made increasing your level dangerous and pointless, but ruined immersion. how it managed to get trhough testing is completely beyond me. In fact, how it got beyond being suggested is beyond me.

 

I installed Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, and that fixed it.

 

2. Shopping

I don't mind shops having fixed cash to start with, but if they keep buying armour worth 30k off me for 800 gp then surely they should get more. Either that or I should be allowed to slaughter the shopkeep.

 

3. Stupid learning by doing.

I loved learning by doing. But was furious when I worked out the mechanics. For example, I assumed that your block experience increased by how much damage you avoided, rather than simply how many times you'ev been hit. Transition me prowling the hills looking for ogres to spar with, to standing in a shallow pond getting nibbled by mudcrabs.* Similarly, trading is by how many things you sell, not how good a deal you get for them, or anything else. So If I give away a hundred penny sweets I'm a better merchant than that guy who bought Manhattan off the Indians.

 

4. Shiny happy people

I only found one slightly irate person in the whole game. Even the dark and sinister society of assassins was like a church social. Is this some sort of fantasy thing? It had better not be in FO3!

 

GOOD

 

1. Meta-gaming as ever I set about stealing something with the express intention of simply running into the restricted area as fast as possible (pretty damn fast if you were on as many drugs potions as I was), then hoofing it to my nearest theives guild representative. This plan failed becaue, hero that I was, as soon as a guard hit me in public, every local stopped what he was doing and rushed to my aid, precipitating a revolution and subsequent mass slaughter. I laughed.

 

2. Learning by doing

Best idea ever, in my opinion. But see above.

 

3. Becoming a vampire

 

4. Running away.

The best thing about Oscuro's Overhaul is that it replaced the 'every bad guys is identical, but wearing different trousers' element to areas of varying danger. Therefoer at level one I spent a great deal of my time running away terribly fast (well, not that fast because I was level one) from bad guys. Until, I worked out that if you ran far enough you could lead them to an Imperial Patrol, who would kill them for you and you could loot the corpses.

 

 

*A common cry is "I've fought mudcrabs better than you!" By level 17, and togged out with a sword which could inconvenience God I really wanted to see the mudcrab in question. In fact I think someone should add in a giant mudcrab somewhere out at sea.

[Darque]

Area-effect Lightning spells in Oblivion: Best Thing Ever.

[Slowtrain]

Hello, Can I play? lol.

 

Your bad:

 

1) level scaling (as implemented by Bethesda in Oblivion): ludicrous. Removes one of the core aspects of a crpg. Turns the whole game into an fps. Will be a part of Fallout 3 but in a changed form. We'll see.

 

2) OOO a good mod for what it does and its general ease of use is nice.

 

3) Shops and shopping are completely messed up in almost every way possible

 

4) Learn by doing doesn't work in crpgs. Balance is impossible. (cf Oblivion, Morrowind)

 

5) Betheda is all about shiny happy people, even if they don't look remotely human. I especially love the ones who have their eyes somewhere in the forehead. lol

 

Your good:

 

1) If you are into Metagaming, Oblivion is tailor-made for that. Oblivion is metagaming really.

 

2) Learn by doing: Good idea in concept, never really seen it work in a crpg. It was okay in WIzrdary which was a combo of XP and learn by doing.

 

3) Vampires: Never bothered. It doesn't seem to add much change to the gameplay.

 

4) The only way to survive the early levels of OOO is indeed with a fleet set of feet. A little too much so if you ask me, but there you go... Plenty of times I've run the bad guys into an imperial patrol only to get the imperial patrol killed lol.

 

 

my good:

 

1) Open world and exploration: I love that sort of thing

 

2) charcter development: I love building my player characters

 

3) Construction kit: At least people could fix problems. I'm really concerned FO3 will not have one because the devs were embarrassed by the efforts of the fan community and don't want to look bad.

 

 

my bad:

 

1) Quests are meaningless

 

2) Exploring wil find you nothing other than a few high resolution views.

 

3) The level scaling makes so much of the game, rewards, monsters, items, utterly generic.

 

4) The skills are poorly implemented

 

5) Dialogue is pretty much meaningless

 

6) Lockpicking lol

[Enoch]

You guys are missing the most important "bad"-- the writing sucked. There wasn't a single interesting, believable character in gameworld, and the main plot was Captain Predictable's Adventures in Generic Land. As for sidequests, there were a few highlights (the magic painting, the bizarre dreamworld, and a couple of the Dark Brotherhood targets), but for every interesting task, there were about 23 deathly boring "kill all the fozzles in cave #452" missions.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

In fact I think someone should add in a giant mudcrab somewhere out at sea.

 

 

Have you found the one in the cave yet?

[Xard]

uggh, mudcrabs became permajoke after games release

 

HORRIBLE CREATURES I AVOID THEM WHENEVER I CAN

[Slowtrain]

There wasn't a single interesting, believable character in gameworld, and the main plot was Captain Predictable's Adventures in Generic Land.

 

 

Yeah, but come on, Bethesda spent the big money for Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean! I mean if that is commitment to creating a brilliant and engrossing story I don't know what is. Right?

 

Right?

 

 

Hello?

 

bleah...

 

I always wonder if Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean felt stupid about being in something so dumb. Or was it just thanks for the check see you later?

[Gorgon]

Well at least they didn't sound stupid. A lot of actors deliver crappy voice acting, but they are both theater background people, that showed. I mean christ, some actors even think they have to make voices because it's like 'fantasy', man thats painful.

Edited June 26, 2008 by Gorgon

[Slowtrain]

Well at least they didn't sound stupid. A lot of actors deliver crappy voice acting, but they are both theater background people, that showed. I mean christ, some actors even think they have to make voices because it's like 'fantasy', man thats painful.

 

 

They both sounded great!

 

Whenever I play through the into I always am thinking about how in the world Patrick Stewart could have possibly kept a straight face while saying all those silly z-grade fantasy epic lines of dialogue. Then I think of Sir ALec Guiness and how much he hated his role as Ben Kenobi.

 

Well at least they got Liam Neeson for FO3. We can rest easy knowong that Bethesda's dedication to pushing the limits of the narrative form remains intact.

[Musopticon?]

Heck, I forgot about Neeson. I hope their vo budget is far larger this time, so despite the astronomical sum of hiring a popular actor, they might have enough money left to hire more than the 3 dudes and two women that was the Oblivion vo group. I mean, even Gothic 2 did better.

 

Then again, Shivering Isles had some very decent vo with new people in tow. Perhaps there's hope.

[Meshugger]

You guys are missing the most important "bad"-- the writing sucked. There wasn't a single interesting, believable character in gameworld, and the main plot was Captain Predictable's Adventures in Generic Land. As for sidequests, there were a few highlights (the magic painting, the bizarre dreamworld, and a couple of the Dark Brotherhood targets), but for every interesting task, there were about 23 deathly boring "kill all the fozzles in cave #452" missions.

 

I think it such a concensus at this forum that the story was so atrocious that one doesn't even have to bother to mention it.

[Shryke]

Area-effect Lightning spells in Oblivion: Best Thing Ever.

 

haha yes!

 

chasing deer and shooting an area effect spell at their feet just as they jump

[Azure79]

Actually there is a giant mudcrab

[Tale]

4) Learn by doing doesn't work in crpgs. Balance is impossible. (cf Oblivion, Morrowind)

They'll balance themselves if they're created with any serious consideration. Morrowind really didn't have much of a problem with it, aside from like what Wals is mentioning with Oblivion, but that's a fault of lackluster design. Oblivion's main problem around it is the hybridization with a normal level-up system and the creatures levelling around you.

Edited June 26, 2008 by Tale

[mkreku]

Learning by doing worked well in Wasteland.

[Slowtrain]

4) Learn by doing doesn't work in crpgs. Balance is impossible. (cf Oblivion, Morrowind)

They'll balance themselves if they're created with any serious consideration. Morrowind really didn't have much of a problem with it, aside from like what Wals is mentioning with Oblivion, but that's a fault of lackluster design. Oblivion's main problem around it is the hybridization with a normal level-up system and the creatures levelling around you.

 

 

I seem to recall though that one of the chief complaints of MW was the lack of individuality to the player characters since they all leveled up all their skills pretty much the same. Same as Oblivion. In a classless, learn-by doing system it is very diffcult to create player characters that aren't extremely generic unless you implement some user imposed limitations.

[Tale]

I seem to recall though that one of the chief complaints of MW was the lack of individuality to the player characters since they all leveled up all their skills pretty much the same.

I don't recall ever hearing such a complaint. A player who levels up stealth, light armor, and longsword isn't going to level up the same as heavy armor, athletics, and axes. There's enough skills that you're not going to be levelling them all up the same.

Edited June 27, 2008 by Tale

[Tigranes]

In Morrowind, as Tale says, you could hardly specialise in everything. It was actually quite similar to Fallout in terms of how far you can spread yourself I think. By the end you were great in quite a few things (maybe a bit too many, sort of like Arcanum if you grind), but most of the time you didn't feel you could do anything.

 

Really the only ridiculous thing about Morrowind was how everybody skipped to everywhere to increase their Acrobatics.

 

With Oblivion you have it a little different, there's the unintuitive things Wals talked about, and there's also the fact that with things like Stealth and Bows you level up pretty darn quick. Together with "all-factions" approach, it really fits together quite weirdly - I mean of course you can be the stud of the assassins guild and the mages guild, look at yours stats! You *are* a master assassin and a master mage!

 

To this date I've only played Oblivion once: I put 60 hours into that first playthrough. That was actually very enjoyable. I really liked trekking the forests, I liked sneaking around and using the bow system and the Brotherhood quests and stuff. I just turned off completely about caring about the story or any characters and godmode-cheated through the horrible Oblivion gates. It was a great romp that way. But when I tried to play it again (several times, all failures), I realised that I had really achieved everything I could, sucked that game dry, in that one go: all the factions, most of the skills, etc.

[Slowtrain]

I seem to recall though that one of the chief complaints of MW was the lack of individuality to the player characters since they all leveled up all their skills pretty much the same.

I don't recall ever hearing such a complaint. A player who levels up stealth, light armor, and longsword isn't going to level up the same as heavy armor, athletics, and axes. There's enough skills that you're not going to be levelling them all up the same.

 

 

WHy not? Plenty of people would put heavy armor as a minor skill and then use it to incrase their endurance stat.

 

It is not as bad as in Oblivion, true, since the level scaling wasn't quite as obnoxious.

[Slowtrain]

I went lookign for a faq from Oblivion's development deays that discussed this exact issue, but I couldn't find it anymore. oh well,.

 

Anyway, the larger point here is that it is difficult to balance a game where you can increase any/all of your skills infinitely and recieve all positive benefits of increasing those skills while not increasing your level.

 

Is it impossible to balance this? No. But I've never really seen it work.

 

Much easier to simply go with an XP/skillpoint allocation system such as SPECIAL or just a straight level based system like D&D.

[SteveThaiBinh]

I've installed Oblivion and am playing with OOO this time, so here's question for someone who's done this before. How exactly does leveling up work in OOO? The readme says it slows it to a fraction of vanilla Oblivion (1/3, or 1/6) but doesn't mention any other changes. The reason I ask is because I know the original levelling system was seriously screwed up and required total micromanagement, in that you had to choose all the skills you planned to use as minor skills not major, then only use one or two time and again in order to get stat multipliers, and if you didn't do this you could easily find your character getting weaker and weaker relative to your opponents. In my previous games, I installed an alternative levelling mod called AFLevelMod, which solved the problem. How does OOO overcome this problem?

[Moatilliatta]

It does so by removing enemies levelling up with you and as such you can't attain high level by useless skills and suck at combat. I think that is the problem you refer to.

 

You still have to level skills to gain ekstra ability levelup (+1, +2, +3, +4 and +5) but that is mostly there so powergamers can wet themselves when they get a 3*5 levelup. Just play the game and be carefull not to run into powerfull monsters as they will now actually kick your behind.

 

Edit: Does this answer your problem or did I misunderstand?

Edited June 28, 2008 by Moatilliatta

[SteveThaiBinh]

I think it does. Enemies don't level up, so eventually my combat skill will overtake theirs, even if I'm not particularly combat-focused.

 

Cheers.

[Moatilliatta]

Your combat skill will overtake some enemies and even then there will be enemies hiding somewhere that will kick you straight over white gold tower.

 

Really, just go into the mountains and wrestle a bear, that is what the TES games are for.

[Slowtrain]

I think it does. Enemies don't level up, so eventually my combat skill will overtake theirs, even if I'm not particularly combat-focused.

 

Cheers.

 

 

That's totally correct. Your leveling up doesn't change per se, but you don't need to micromanage anymore since getting better actually does mean that you are getting better relative to your enemies, which if course was not the case in vanilla OB. If you can't beat someone know, come back in a few levels and try again; they'll still ne what they were and you will be better! Revolutionary gameplay for a crpg, wot? lol

 

On a side note, OOO can be pretty difficult at low levels. I would recommend staying out of all dungeons until you are at least level 5 and have some resources.