The Elder Scrolls 5: Shadow Realm

[CrazedBanana]

Hey guys, posting this thread down because I am a hardcore Oblivion fan, and I can't wait for the next installment. I heard that it is coming out in 2010, is that true? ?Any wishes for the new game, possible theme? Anything?

[factotum]

Wishes for the next Elder Scrolls game? To not be like Oblivion, mainly! To clarify:

a) No level scaling of enemies. None. Not even a little, teensy bit. If I have to grind levels to make it easier to defeat a big boss then let me do that, don't make the boss just as difficult whatever level I face him at!

b) Scenery that doesn't look like somebody cut and pasted the same bland forest 300,000 times.

c) Quests where I can actually choose what to do rather than being railroaded down a particular route.

d) Genuine intelligence in the AI, so that if I talk to a woman after finishing a quest for her I don't get "Who are you? What are you doing in my house?".

I'm sure I could think of others, but that will do to be going along with...

[MCerberus]

How about face models that don't look like the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark?

[Dogmantra]

The names Shadow Realm and Skyrim are just rumours.

Personally, I hope that it's set in Summurset Isle.

[daggaz]

A skills system that actually makes sense and works, rather than being the exact of opposite of what you want and expect. To optimise a character in IV, you have to pick skills you will never or rarely use, as main skills are directly tied into both the difficulty of opponents you face, as well as how many attribute bonuses you earned, and this is done the WRONG WAY.

NO scaling of enemies, EVER.

Randomness in the world. I can take the same two or three types of forest, but did they really have to make every single cave look exactly the same? Also, where is the desert, the ice and snow, the swamps that have actual quicksand, the ever-freaking HOT LAVA???

Randomness in the enemies. Wow.. Oblivion has like 10 different monsters, not counting humans and the demons (which were lame and monotonous considering they suffer the same problem). And they all fight exactly the same. Like retards.

Combat AI that works. I can freaking kill a guy in armor using an axe, and people in the cave are still shouting the same idiotic catch phrases "where are you? Come out you coward" Oh my god... Also, its a shame they put so much into the goblin combat engine, and then didnt bother to adapt that to all the other mobs that wield weapons, in the least.

More than three AI catch phrases. EVERYBODY SAYS THE SAME DAMN THING!!!! :smallfurious:

A quest system that A) doesnt assume I am a 9 year old kid with ADAP and half a brain, as in, it lets me figure out my quests the hard, old fashioned way rather than spoon feeding everything to me, and which B) allows me to actually make my OWN choices which will have some real and lasting effects in the game. Ala Black Isle.

A far less linear central plot line. That story got SO monotonous, I dropped it completely after I think three or four daedrun portals. I never did finish the damn game..

Well.. thats about it that I can remember off hand. Oblivion IV was so cool until I had had it for about three days, and then I was thoroughly dissapointed. They fracking ruined Fall Out 3 in much the same way. I swear, the idiots at Bethesda have never even thought to play-test their own games as actual gamers.. .they just plug it in and see if it "works" according to their own, insipidly boring specifications.

[toasty]

Thanks to this thread i discovered no good information on youtube about Elder Scrolls V.

I was, however, rick rolled twice and discovered a cool looking game called Project Origin. :smallbiggrin:

Edit: I would like to point out that I really liked Elder Scrolls IV. It had lots of problems, but I think it was still a very good, open ended game. I really, really like open ended games and Elder Scrolls IV was the first game that I felt was truly open ended that I played (I never played Morrowind). It wasn't boring walking around the forest and finding a cave, killing all the monsters in the cave and stealing their stuff, that was fun, and random. Oh, sure, this could get repeative, but it was still good stuff.

I liked all the Guild Quests, they were entertaining. Especially the Dark Brotherhood. :smallcool: I enjoyed the Arena.

Yes, for many people the problems out did the benefits, but I think that Elder Scrolls IV was a surprisingly good game that did its best given today's gaming world. I do admit the autoleveling system probably did break the game at higher levels (I never got beyond like level 20), and the skill system was really messed up, but these can always be fixed in the next game. What I'm hoping for in the next Elder Scrolls Game is a better open ended world with more quest and better quests, slightly better graphics (not necessary, but nice) and a better leveling system. No autoleveling either, please.

[Oslecamo]

Randomness in the world. I can take the same two or three types of forest, but did they really have to make every single cave look exactly the same? Also, where is the desert, the ice and snow, the swamps that have actual quicksand, the ever-freaking HOT LAVA???


I kinda agree with your other points, but last time I checked there were several plenty of snowy areas in oblivion, and there was all the lava you could want in hell.

[Comet]

I think they should take notes from Risen. Now there's a sandbox fantasy game that has both pretty graphics and substance.
In Oblivion, the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood quests were interesting enough but the rest was just horribly dull. Zero immersion, despite all the shining graphics.

[Dogmantra]

Stuff

So basically, you want Morrowind II?
I applaud this opinion.

[Emperor Tippy]

So basically, you want Morrowind II?
I applaud this opinion.

Yeah.

Morrowind 2 with updated graphics and none of those stupid f*cking flying bastards.

Oblivion had it's good points but they were much outweighed by the bad.

Hell, I would pay for a bug fixed and graphics updated Morrowind GotY edition. If they just went back and fixed all of the various bugs and put in oblivion level graphics I would shell out another 30-40 bucks for the Morrowind v2.

[Emperor Ing]

As much as I loved Oblivion, I know pretty much what needs to be fixed.

1) Open-endedness. Let's face it, Oblivion main story was anything but open-ended. If I were to side with the mythic dawn or something, that'd be cool.
2) Weapon variety. Basically your weapons include melee weapon(s), and the bow&arrow. Why not disarming weapons like Shurikens, Reach Melee/throwing weapons like Spears or Throwing daggers? Crossbows?

3) Epic Quests. I would like to see more simple quests segue into bigger more complex issues, similar to the...err...quest where you can get the best shield in the game.
4) Scaled enemies. I know this has been said before but I am in concurrence; I WANT MORE UMBRAS!!!
4.5) Umbra's Ebony Armor = Orcish Armor
5) Guild Quests. Chains a railroad of plots that let you advance to the top in little over a week from the direct bottom. Seriously, I think they might want to reconsider increasing their standards ("Why is the Guildmaster of the fighters guild also the archmage for the arcane univerity?") and give us more than one way to progress through it. Honestly, the Fighters Guild questline Railroad was...brutal to play through.
6) Spell variety. It can be done. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yymBkioFY3A)
7) MUSIC!!! I WANT REAL MUSIC!!!

[Triaxx]

Less level Scaling. Don't eliminate it entirely, but limit it to ten levels from the origin. So that the monsters gain one level for every two I gain. Keeps challenge, but they don't suddenly rip my face off if I poke my head out of a city.

Fix STEALTH. I don't want to stab someone in the back and then have them rip my face off.

Personally? I love the VATS system of Fallout 3 and having something similar in TES:5 would be utterly awesome. The ability to do critical hits on parts of my enemies.

[Kris Strife]

How about having melee weapon attacks that don't use the same five animations on a cycle? How about bastard swords and other hand and a half type weapons? Dual Wielding? Spells that don't look the same except for color? Armor and weapons with customizable appearances? Being able to put more than one enchatment on any piece of equipment?

And once more: Better looking faces.

[EleventhHour]

How about having melee weapon attacks that don't use the same five animations on a cycle? How about bastard swords and other hand and a half type weapons? Dual Wielding? Spells that don't look the same except for color? Armor and weapons with customizable appearances? Being able to put more than one enchatment on any piece of equipment?

And once more: Better looking faces.

No. Just no. The rest of it I can agree with. (Though customizable armour would probably be a massive block of mesh/texture data.)

Morrowind II : +1. (They should add the combat engine from Oblivion, but not the physics engine. >.> )

[Arachu]

Crossbows. Throwing weapons. Possibly even the ability to throw other weapons.

More than 4 guilds. I've done most of the guild quests, but there's only 4. Did anyone here count Morrowind's? Because, I forgot how many were listed in the guide...

Bigger map, though admittedly IV's was sufficient (no idea how the island of Vvardenfell took longer to traverse). Also, the return of fast travel. It feels more... Realistic that way, and if they have to keep the teleport-walk they might just want fast travel to make less time pass like Fable 2 (even if I never actually used the carriages in that, they'd be handy in TES).

LYCANTHROPY! Any kind of Lycanthropy. Werewolves, Wereboars, even the fabled Wereshark. (No, really, it's mentioned if you look hard enough)

Faces that don't look like they belong on cliffs.
Faces that actually look like an adult's face.
Voices with less bass than an oboe.

More weapons. MORE. WEAPONS. There's literally just blades and blunt weapons/axes. They couldn't even make spears? And how does stabbing something in the face with a dagger teach you how to swing a greatsword? :smallconfused:

A world that makes more sense. Granted, the advent of (living) trees, road patrols and a complete ecology helped, but there are no travelers, too few wanderers, and no tangible means of travel beyond horses. Frankly, I'd like to be able to see caravans (and on that tangent, rob them).

Just to make any sense, children. They don't necessarily have to be killable, maybe they can just have an orphanage for parent death, and when that's destroyed they are taken in a caravan (that you never see) to another town's. Now as long as they don't go Lamplight on our asses, most everyone would be fairly happy.

No repeats of Little Lamplight. I know, it's Fallout, but it's the same people. And I never want my psychotic, drug-addled sociopath to help innocents again. Even if he has to. Never again...
Read: Quests that are actually open-ended.

And then there's more... Later...

[Somebloke]

Hmmmmmm......

a) Character choices having effects on the world.

b) Less generic fantasy and more interesting ideas (a la Morrowind).

c) Character choices and dialogue options actually having influence on the outcome of a particular quest- look at Fallout 3 for an example.

d) The return of more interesting spells beyond attack types 1-12.

e) Better looking characters.

That being said, I was still a huge fan of Oblivion, so I suspect that I am hooked either way.

[warty goblin]

Never have understood the Oblivion hate. Oblivion is probably the most raw fun I've ever had in an RPG, and Shivering Isles is one of the most fantastic places a game has ever sent me.

That said, there is room for improvement.

1) The leveling system is borked. My thinking? Get rid of discrete 'levels' altogether, they really don't fit with what the system feels like it is trying to do. Instead give me an Attribute point when I level up an associated skill five times. That way I have a contigenous experience, the skills I use go up, the one's I don't, don't, and I don't need to take notes to keep myself up to power.

2) Keep the autoleveling of enemies, and tie their progress to player increases in combat oriented stats/skills. Making a bunch of potions shouldn't make the wildlife harder to kill, that just screws over the player. On the other hand I like combat to be a challenge, and if autoleveling wasn't done it would be a complete snoozefest in short order.


3) More skill perks please, and make them more interesting than bonus damage. The melee ones are awesome, the ranged ones, not so much, and the magical ones down right boring.

[Morty]

I'd like the lore from the previous games to be less horribly maimed. Tamriel is a really good setting, an original take on classical fantasy fairytale. But we all know what Oblivion did to it.
I'll save some space and repeat after the others that I'd like to see Morrowind in which the designers could do all they wanted to do.

[Optimystik]

Why is enemy scaling so bad? It can be done right (e.g. Mass Effect, Dragon Age). Oblivion simply went too far with it.

EDIT: I agree completely with warty though, "levels" have no bloody place in Elder Scrolls and just make the whole system godawfully complicated.

[Name_Here]

As much as I loved Oblivion, I know pretty much what needs to be fixed.

5) Guild Quests. Chains a railroad of plots that let you advance to the top in little over a week from the direct bottom. Seriously, I think they might want to reconsider increasing their standards ("Why is the Guildmaster of the fighters guild also the archmage for the arcane univerity?") and give us more than one way to progress through it. Honestly, the Fighters Guild questline Railroad was...brutal to play through.

No the ability to be the head of numerous groups has always been my favorite part of the Elder scroll formula. You take that out and you lose all incentive to play the game. Who the hell wants to do the main story quest? Nobody you ask anybody who has played the game what was their Story quest to guild quest ratio and they'll tell you that they are X hours in and haven't even looked at the main quest. Happened in Morrowind and Oblivion.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

I haven't heard that they are making Elder Scrolls 5. All I have heard is an elder scrolls game. That could be just a spinoff like Redguard.

[Tengu_temp]

Shadow Realm? Will it have card games?

[Oslecamo]

Shadow Realm? Will it have card games?

No, but when you're walking in a dungeon and you step on the wrong floor tile you'll sudenly hear YOU JUST ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD TRIGGER!

[nooblade]

Sorry, but I've never heard of a "Shadow Realm". The lore for Elder Scrolls is a huge thing, but I think I would've at least heard about it. Perhaps it could just be a nickname for one of the continents or daedra denizens that I haven't heard of.

"Summerset Isles" sounds more like something that could happen, but I'm not much interested with the panzy elves or the rumors that everyone's Aldmeris name is actually just a number or whatever. Having it as a magical place just makes me think that there would be less to do.

Come to think of it, playing as some kind of daedra would be pretty cool. Suddenly, pop a new kind of game out of Bethesda. It could also put some of the funny quirks of videogames into a new light: the guards really keep saying the same things over and over again and they all look the same because that is just what an daedra would think about mortals.


Morrowind had 16 factions joinable by the PC (I'm pretty sure). This includes the Blades and Ashlanders (which are only advanced in the main quest) the three great houses, and the three vampire clans. IMHO, it's really not much in Morrowind, they're straightforward, but I didn't play Oblivion so I dunno.

[Dogmantra]

Yeah.

Morrowind 2 with updated graphics and none of those stupid f*cking flying bastards.

Oblivion had it's good points but they were much outweighed by the bad.

Hell, I would pay for a bug fixed and graphics updated Morrowind GotY edition. If they just went back and fixed all of the various bugs and put in oblivion level graphics I would shell out another 30-40 bucks for the Morrowind v2.

I love you.

Except I never got what people's problem was with Cliff Racers...

[Terraoblivion]

That they quickly grew to be utterly trivial as threats but there were so many of them and they blocked sleep, while having horrible pathfinding meaning it took forever to actually have them get in range of a swordswing.

[NamelessArchon]

Oblivion suffered from several problems, relative both to Morrowind, and to other games that came before and after.

1. Voice dialog too limited and voice assignments totally fuxxored.

NPCs have a very limited volume of speech dialog to use, and thus they can be found talking to "themselves" about "themselves" despite three different NPC 'bodies' being in play.

Solution: More voice dialog, better assignment.

2. Level scaling presents situations both absurd and game breaking.

This is the classic "Bandits in Daedric Armor" syndrome. Morrowind got around this by not using randomized content as heavily (NPCs were placed and equipped manually, not spawned from random lists). However, level scaling as a concept is a good idea - having your dungeons adapt to a player in a sandbox game is a GOOD idea. The problem is that the scaling had no limits, which caused problems with verisimilitude, such as when bandits are all level 30 and packing enough daedric armor to retire in style for life if they just walk into town and sell it all and move out into the country.

Solution: Limit level scaling and equipment scaling on NPCs to sensible values. Better randomize NPC levels.

3. Cut-And-Paste Area design.

Sorry, I know that Morrowind was also guilty of this to a degree, it's true, but after the fourth or fifth dungeon in Oblivion, it starts to get REALLY obvious. If I can look at a dungeon and recognize the architecture from another dungeon I've visited, I can actually know where the unexplored corridors will go in Oblivion in many cases - they're just the same "tileset" units arranged differently, after all.

The "tileset" mechanism isn't bad, on its own. It eases the process of allowing mod developers to add content to the game (which I'll address in a minute). The problem comes when the number of pieces in a tileset drops too low, and the number of tilesets is too low as well.

This is the "Seen one cave you've seen them all..." problem. The number of "different" or "unusual" caves is incredibly limited. The problem repeats for Imperial ruins, Ayleid tombs, and Daedric realms.

Solution: Wider "tileset" variety, deeper "tileset" selection.

4. Sparse, bland quest content.

Oblivion had dozens and dozens of sites, and probably 95% of them had NO quest tie in, no reason to explore them, and no purpose other than XP grind. Those that DID have quest tie-ins were almost always tied to bland "fetch" quests. Gone were multiple quest solutions from Morrowind (Bribe the necromancer, pay her guild dues yourself, persuade her, kill her, perform subquest) and they were replaced with very, very linear and scripted paths.

While some measure of this is inevitable to provide the space for modders to develop their own "enemy lair" content and quest tie-ins, the sparse and incredibly linear quest content does NOTHING to make the game stand up to lengthy play. Don't just wind the player up and turn them loose, keep re-engaging them into the quest. People approach the player, beg for his help with uncompleted quests, messages arrive asking about progress updates.

Don't have linear quests be the vast, vast majority of your content. If "find the foozle" is the quest, the quest shouldn't boil down to "sneak in and steal the foozle" or "kill the foozle thief with a sword" or "kill the foozle thief with a fireball", and too often in Oblivion, they do. Where's my non-violent solution to bribe or persuade them to give me the foozle, or even to perform a task for them to trade for the foozle, or the chance to find a completely different foozle-substitute?

Solution: More content. Not just areas, but non-linear quest and plot content in particular.

4. Player choice variety pared down much too far.

Cutting skills out limits player choice. Guy with a sword, guy with a axe/mace, guy with a spell, guy with a bow. That's basically it for Oblivion. Gone are truly customized player enchantments. (Swords with cast on use effects? Gone. Rings with fireball spells stored? Gone.) Gone are two (significantly different) categories of weapons and also unarmored defenses. Gone are many of the spells I really enjoyed in Morrowind.

Why no jump spell? Because the engine doesn't really handle a player soaring along the landscape at high speeds and being able to look over the countryside or perch in trees that aren't really solid 20 feet above ground level. Why no levitation? The same engine limitations. Hordes of summoned undead? My conjurer in Morrowind could drown even multiple enemies under a constantly renewing tide of rotting flesh and bones, if I had the juice for it. My mage in Oblivion can't get more than one ally at a time, and so makes a very pale imitation. The engine "improved" but lost out on a lot of customizations and choices that players truly enjoyed. It was truly "dumbed down". Offering players meaningful choices engages them in game play, while reducing them means they quickly find the path to the cheese and move on.

Solution: Bring back Morrowind's magic system. Bring back the pared down and removed player choices and mechanics. Stop making games for brain damaged 12 year olds playing on consoles and start making them for thinking adults using PCs. (I'm also looking at you, UI designers.)

5. Stability.

Morrowind is not the most stable game I've ever played (it's not that bad) but Oblivion has so many freakin' unpatched bugs it's absurd. Oblivion is one of the least stable and reliable games I've ever had the misfortune to purchase. It crashes on exit routinely, even with no mods installed. (I'm leaving the game so the impact is minimal, but still!) Save game corruption? Oh yeah. Been there. Containers that can't handle a wide variety of objects (some appear or vanish from the lists when changing container contents) or crash the game when the list handling code borks? That's really bad, guys, and it took me under two hours to find it on my first playthrough. The Horse Armor DLC breaks the AI on the Dark Brotherhood horse, for cryin' out loud, and you paid EXTRA for that?

Solution: BETTER QA. MORE QA. QUIT RUSHING RELEASES TO MEET ARBITRARY DEADLINES AND START RELEASING WHEN THE PRODUCT IS READY. Ahem.

Now, I'd be remiss if I didn't point up what Oblivion did right.

1. Graphics.

It's much prettier. Morrowind is painful to look at now, but that's a function of age.

Solution: This is good enough. We don't need to see individual eyelashes to have a good game. Quit focusing on graphics over gameplay.

2. Good voice talent.

Hey, the Emperor did sound right, and most of the individual lines of dialog were well spoken, but I can't help but wonder how much it cost them to have their childhood idols speaking dialog.

Solution: Spend less on voice talent next time. Maybe move that money into QA and content development to pick up the split.

...and that's really about it. I should leave off here - but you can count me as someone who really enjoyed Morrowind (many many more hours played time there) but saw Oblivion as a regression of the series in nearly all aspects that weren't explicitly audiovisual or physics improvements.

I will NOT be purchasing TES:V at launch. Maybe when the GOTY edition comes down in price, because I have no doubt that it will have one, nor that it will contain DLC to that point. Bethesda really put their foot in it last time out of the gate.

[Rae]

+1 for Morrowind II.

Give me static content. I want a reason to travel to the dungeon in the middle of no where, rather than the one just outside the city. With all creatures and loot in Oblivion randomly generated based on your level, there was just no immersion at all. Put powerful items in distant dungeons, with an appropriate difficulty to acquire them.

Give me back the full range of equipment slots from Morrowind, instead of Oblivion's 4 or whatever it had.

Give me back the robust enchanting system.

Ditch 'click on map' fast travel. Give back boats and other means (ie. silt striders) of fast travel. Also: Flight. Otherwise, the 'world' isn't a world at all, just a 2d map with interesting points to visit.

Variety of enemies and weapons.

Variety of weapon skills. (Blunt and blade? Thats it? Seriously?)

Give me a leveling system that doesn't need micro managed.

[Hazkali]

There was a brief period, just after you'd become a high enough level for them to spawn, when they were a deadly threat. After that, they were just an irritation. They'd follow you about, stopping you sleeping, but in order to kill them you'd have to use a ranged weapon or some sort of levitation magic.

Also, +n for Morrowind Two, Return of the Morrowind. I haven't played Oblivion but something as deep and complex as Morrowind is always good.

[MCerberus]

Something about level scaling that hasn't been hit on very much is that it actively punishes you for even attempting non-combat skills. It was common if you didn't cheat their system to level up without killing anything. This left you effectively a level behind your level-scaling enemies. It could get so bad you'd have to go murder your horse repeatedly to get it back up.

Of course that method would get you kicked out of the thieves guild...



They made the best potential melee combatant the Archmage class (as long as you don't actually use any of the spells)

[Eldan]

Well...
Oblivion as it came out was bland. Now, I might actually go back and play it, after adding the total collection of Unique Landscapes, extensive mods to all questlines, the combat system (blocking, shield bashes, dodges and so on), Midas Magic, and, perhaps most important, an interesting main quest with Shivering Isles.

Basically, Oblivion had nice graphics, but, as others said, I mainly played Morrowind by just walking out into the country, staring at the sky and wondering what interesting thing would be behind the next corner. I can't do that in unmodded oblivion.

So, my choices for TESV are as follows:

Wait for two years, buy, and mod to hell

Hope that it has a better story and more exotic landscape.

Perhaps also both.

[NamelessArchon]

On the subject of the levelling system (when combined with auto-scaling foes) the best way I found to play it was to get a mod that gave you the +5 attribute bonus regardless of what skills you levelled up, and then play the game without having to worry about whether you were min-maxing or not.

Success and effectiveness is still mostly determined by skills, so while the game is "easier" that way, it's not such a vast difference that it crushes gameplay.

[Muz]

Don't have linear quests be the vast, vast majority of your content. If "find the foozle" is the quest, the quest shouldn't boil down to "sneak in and steal the foozle" or "kill the foozle thief with a sword" or "kill the foozle thief with a fireball", and too often in Oblivion, they do. Where's my non-violent solution to bribe or persuade them to give me the foozle, or even to perform a task for them to trade for the foozle, or the chance to find a completely different foozle-substitute?

Okay, that's it. Elder Scrolls V must now be titled "Quest for the Foozle!" :smallbiggrin:

[SolkaTruesilver]

6) Spell variety. It can be done. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yymBkioFY3A)


I love you and want you to carry my child.

[warty goblin]

+1 for Morrowind II.

Give me static content. I want a reason to travel to the dungeon in the middle of no where, rather than the one just outside the city. With all creatures and loot in Oblivion randomly generated based on your level, there was just no immersion at all. Put powerful items in distant dungeons, with an appropriate difficulty to acquire them.

Dear gods, not this. I've got enough games with this sort of stuff. The joy of Oblivion for me was that I could go exploring without having to quicksave every ten feet for fear I'd stumble into the lair of something put there as a 'challenge' for upper level players.

The thing is, I don't need, or even particularly want a big material reward for going to Location X. I'll go there when, and if, I damn well feel like walking through that bit of landscape, not because I want some item or spell. If they do that, then every single game becomes exactly the same thing- go to Snow Peak for the healing spell, the Blood Canyon for that one helmet, and so on. Thanks, but no thanks.



Give me back the full range of equipment slots from Morrowind, instead of Oblivion's 4 or whatever it had.
Oblivion had Helmet, Cuirrass, Gauntlets, Greaves, Boots, two Ring slots, and a Necklace slot, which was OK. Personally I want a game where I can buy every major piece of armor individually-pauldrons, upper and lower canons of the vambrace, and so on.


Ditch 'click on map' fast travel. Give back boats and other means (ie. silt striders) of fast travel.
No, just no. I thought Oblivion's solution to fast travel was simply divine. There if you wanted it, and never a deal to have to worry about. Far Cry 2's fast travel system was like what you describe, and I think I used it a total of maybe 10 times over the course of a thirty plus hour game, because by the time I got to a bus stop, sat through the loading screen, then wandered over to where I wanted to go, I could have just walked there. The whole point of fast travel is to allow me to avoid walking bits I don't want to do, not to force me to do other walky bits I don't want to do.



Variety of weapon skills. (Blunt and blade? Thats it? Seriously?)
I was pretty happy with the weapon variety to be honest. Polearms would have been nice, but I've yet to see a game that does a particularly good job of them.

[Rae]

Dear gods, not this. I've got enough games with this sort of stuff. The joy of Oblivion for me was that I could go exploring without having to quicksave every ten feet for fear I'd stumble into the lair of something put there as a 'challenge' for upper level players.

The thing is, I don't need, or even particularly want a big material reward for going to Location X. I'll go there when, and if, I damn well feel like walking through that bit of landscape, not because I want some item or spell. If they do that, then every single game becomes exactly the same thing- go to Snow Peak for the healing spell, the Blood Canyon for that one helmet, and so on. Thanks, but no thanks.

There was absolutely NO point in exploring in Oblivion. Not only was the landscape pretty much the same, and the dungeons pretty much the same, the enemies and loot were pretty much the same. Coupled with the fast travel system, why have a world at all? All you're really getting is a random dungeon generator.

With Oblivion's 'do any quest, any where, any time' system, there was no point in leveling up. There was no point in exploring. There wasn't even a point in looking for cool items, because they'd be obsolete after you leveled a few times. The quests were fun and interesting enough, but once you've done them the game was pretty much over.



No, just no. I thought Oblivion's solution to fast travel was simply divine. There if you wanted it, and never a deal to have to worry about. Far Cry 2's fast travel system was like what you describe, and I think I used it a total of maybe 10 times over the course of a thirty plus hour game, because by the time I got to a bus stop, sat through the loading screen, then wandered over to where I wanted to go, I could have just walked there. The whole point of fast travel is to allow me to avoid walking bits I don't want to do, not to force me to do other walky bits I don't want to do.

It's quite possible to have fast travel system which doesn't feel so fake, while still keeping it convenient. Morrowinds' system was decent for this - though could have been improved. I understand this is a personal preference thing, but Oblivion's setting just felt so damn bland and this was a big part of it.



I was pretty happy with the weapon variety to be honest. Polearms would have been nice, but I've yet to see a game that does a particularly good job of them.

It's not that it was so terrible, its that Morrowind did a much better, if still lackluster, job at this. Oblivion simply stepped backwards twice for every step forward it took.



Personally I want a game where I can buy every major piece of armor individually-pauldrons, upper and lower canons of the vambrace, and so on.

Morrowind had this.

[warty goblin]

There was absolutely NO point in exploring in Oblivion. Not only was the landscape pretty much the same, and the dungeons pretty much the same, the enemies and loot were pretty much the same. Coupled with the fast travel system, why have a world at all? All you're really getting is a random dungeon generator.

And that's the beauty of it- I can go there because I feel like it, not because it will have some specific reward or unique thing. The fun was wandering between the trees, hunting for mushrooms, looking down into the Imperial City, taking in the sights.

I can see if you like rewards and quests and stuff that this isn't very satisfactory. I don't care overmuch whether I'm walking through fields of flowers because Sir Enpecee Questgiver III told me that on top of that mountain there's a big old treasure chest, or whether I'm simply going there because I feel like climbing that mountain.


With Oblivion's 'do any quest, any where, any time' system, there was no point in leveling up. There was no point in exploring. There wasn't even a point in looking for cool items, because they'd be obsolete after you leveled a few times. The quests were fun and interesting enough, but once you've done them the game was pretty much over.
I'm really thankful I don't feel your need to be rewarded for playing the game. For me, playing the game should be its own reward, whether or not I'm getting more money, or +5% fire resist or nothing at all.



It's quite possible to have fast travel system which doesn't feel so fake, while still keeping it convenient. Morrowinds' system was decent for this - though could have been improved. I understand this is a personal preference thing, but Oblivion's setting just felt so damn bland and this was a big part of it.
I never really saw what was fake about Oblivion's fast travel system in a bad way. It's like the 'speed up time' button in a lot of sims. Sure I could play all of X3 in real time, but it would be an aweful lot of not doing anything. By speeding up time, it is slightly less time spent not doing anything. ArmA does the same thing. Sure I could jog the half kilometer to the extraction point in real time, but nobody's following me, I'm not under any threat, and the route is secured by friendly forces, so why would I want to?

Same with fast travel in Oblivion. In my main game my primary house was in Anvil because it was cheap. Thus I spent a lot of time around Anvil, and pretty quickly had most of the surroundings pretty thoroughly explored as far as Kvatch to the East, although not quite so far to the South or North. Walking back through those areas held little appeal much of the time, so I prefered to fast travel that distance. It was convenient and saved me running around doing stuff I didn't want to do so I could get back to doing things I wanted to do.

Sure the game didn't give you a reason to explore, but it didn't give you a reason to use fast travel all the time either.

Of course, I mostly walked in Oblivion. Horses were badly done, and I like exploring. I really only fast traveled through areas I'd been through multiple times.

[factotum]

And that's the beauty of it- I can go there because I feel like it, not because it will have some specific reward or unique thing. The fun was wandering between the trees, hunting for mushrooms, looking down into the Imperial City, taking in the sights.


I'm a bit baffled by that attitude, to be honest. If I want to wander around admiring the scenery, I'll open the strange rectangular wooden thing in my house that normally blocks access to a place they call "Outside", where you can find lots of scenery. I don't see the point in doing it in a game, unless the scenery in question is of a type that you wouldn't find in the real world--and once again, that's where Morrowind had Oblivion beat, of course; Vvardenfell was just a strange, strange place, whether it was the cantons of Vivec or the ash storms on Red Mountain. See one forest in Oblivion, you've pretty much seen them all.

In addition to that, sure, you could wander around looking at the sights in Oblivion...for maybe 10 seconds until you ran into a bandit wearing Daedric armour, or a mountain lion intent on eating you because all the lesser creatures had mysteriously vanished and it had nothing else to survive on, etc. That's what the level scaling in Oblivion did, and if you can genuinely say it didn't damage the immersion for you to find the entire world changing according to your character's level, then I truly don't understand you.

[warty goblin]

I'm a bit baffled by that attitude, to be honest. If I want to wander around admiring the scenery, I'll open the strange rectangular wooden thing in my house that normally blocks access to a place they call "Outside", where you can find lots of scenery. I don't see the point in doing it in a game, unless the scenery in question is of a type that you wouldn't find in the real world--and once again, that's where Morrowind had Oblivion beat, of course; Vvardenfell was just a strange, strange place, whether it was the cantons of Vivec or the ash storms on Red Mountain. See one forest in Oblivion, you've pretty much seen them all.

I go to college in a flat cornfield in the middle of Iowa. There's not even a hill within four or five miles of me, and people tend to object to strangers wandering over their lands. There's no forests, no streams, no wildlife, and people sodding everywhere. So yeah, it makes Oblivion look pretty awesome. I should note that I have the virtual wandering urge much less often when I'm home, and actually have woods and streams with wildlife and very few people in reality to go wander in.


In addition to that, sure, you could wander around looking at the sights in Oblivion...for maybe 10 seconds until you ran into a bandit wearing Daedric armour, or a mountain lion intent on eating you because all the lesser creatures had mysteriously vanished and it had nothing else to survive on, etc. That's what the level scaling in Oblivion did, and if you can genuinely say it didn't damage the immersion for you to find the entire world changing according to your character's level, then I truly don't understand you.
Only if you were hitting up the dungeons. If you stayed more than a hundred feet or so away from them, there wasn't much in the way of bandits, and most animals can similarly be avoided if you push the draw distance out past their detection radius.

Anyway, why should fighting bandits in Daedric armor be any more immersion breaking than fighting the same bandits in Steel armor? There's still no explanation for where it comes from, and I'm sure there's absolute loads of travelers to waylay in a cave a mile away from the road. Both are frankly very non-realistic, its just that one has better stuff than we associate with banditry from other games. And really, by the end of most RPGs you're fighting scads of people/creatures that are ridiculously more powerful than those that were in the starting area, yet that isn't considered immersion breaking.

[Matar]

I'm really thankful I don't feel your need to be rewarded for playing the game. For me, playing the game should be its own reward, whether or not I'm getting more money, or +5% fire resist or nothing at all.

The thing with Morrowind is that you could wander onto some really amazing things without knowing it. The Dragonscale Armor, the Skull Crusher Hammer, the Vampire Ring and Bittercup.

You could explore Morrowind and find some amazing secrets. You could explore to explore, or you could explore to find some amazing secrets. Oblivion didn't have that.


Anyway, why should fighting bandits in Daedric armor be any more immersion breaking than fighting the same bandits in Steel armor? There's still no explanation for where it comes from, and I'm sure there's absolute loads of travelers to waylay in a cave a mile away from the road. Both are frankly very non-realistic, its just that one has better stuff than we associate with banditry from other games. And really, by the end of most RPGs you're fighting scads of people/creatures that are ridiculously more powerful than those that were in the starting area, yet that isn't considered immersion breaking.

I'm Morrowind having a full set of Daedric armor was amazing. It was damn near impossible to get a full set of and it felt special. Oblivion didn't have that, because everyone had some.

Also: Alot of those caves didn't have Bandits, they were filled with smugglers who didn't want to be caught. No just bandits.

Another bonus with Morrowind is that you get to feel more powerful. At first going to Red Mountain would be insane, and even a Cliff Racer or two can kill you.

Once you hit 20+ you still see Cliff Racers and can kill them with ease. You can go to Red Mountain and stand a chance. You can kill guards with ease and you feel powerful.

In Oblivion you don't have that. Everyone levels with you. The only reason someone else can't do your job is because they are NPC's. See, that ruins a game for me. It also totally ruins immersion for me. If every guard is as strong as me, the only reason they don't do the questing is because I'm the PC. I never felt that way in Morrowind. I knew that I could kill several guards, and I knew that I was fighting things that could do the same.


I go to college in a flat cornfield in the middle of Iowa. There's not even a hill within four or five miles of me, and people tend to object to strangers wandering over their lands. There's no forests, no streams, no wildlife, and people sodding everywhere. So yeah, it makes Oblivion look pretty awesome. I should note that I have the virtual wandering urge much less often when I'm home, and actually have woods and streams with wildlife and very few people in reality to go wander in.

It's a typical fantasy setting. See, another reason people play Morrowind is because of Morrowind. Mushroom Tree's, people living in giant Mushrooms, the builds all look different, people live in round huts, they travel in giant bugs. It was different from damn near anything out there.

You could pick up any fantasy game and find a setting just like Oblivion. But with Morrowind? It was unique, and it was amazing.

Honestly, one of the biggest mistakes of Oblivion was changing Cyrodil. It was supposed to be a swamp with a lot of rice and stuff. Something different then the norm. But... they changed it to "Generic fantasy setting #56". And that's just sad.

-Edit:

Also. The compass. I freaking hate that damn thing, and it's impossible to play the freaking game without it. Honestly, I swear the only reason they put that damn thing in was because they weren't able to fit enough voice acting in in-order to give proper directions. I know they said that it was done in order to find NPC's, but that's just BS. How hard is it to say "He's at 'blank' at around 'blank'." It just ruined immersion.

Also: Fast Travel. I didn't like it, because it felt fake to me. I would much rather prefer having to go to a city or something to fast travel. You know, pay gold to get somewhere quickly. But it's not that bad I guess. It doesn't ruin the game, and unlike the compass you can remove it and nothing is screwed up.

FYI: Shivering Isles was the best thing to ever happen to Oblivion. I don't give a rats ass what Bethesda said. It was made in order to fix some of the things that they ****ed up on with on Oblivion. Like the setting. Shivering Isles was different, and fantastic. Really, I was amazed at how good it was compared to the rest of Oblivion.

Don't get me wrong, there are some good things about Oblivion. Like the combat and spells. Morrowind is just better at damn near everything else.

[warty goblin]

The thing with Morrowind is that you could wander onto some really amazing things without knowing it. The Dragonscale Armor, the Skull Crusher Hammer, the Vampire Ring and Bittercup.

You could explore Morrowind and find some amazing secrets. You could explore to explore, or you could explore to find some amazing secrets. Oblivion didn't have that.

A lot of those little details are in Oblivion as well. Vilvarin is really well put together, as are a lot of the other dungeons I thought. A lot of them are pretty generic, but there are definite standouts.



I'm Morrowind having a full set of Daedric armor was amazing. It was damn near impossible to get a full set of and it felt special. Oblivion didn't have that, because everyone had some.
Honestly I like that in a game. I'm just another schmuck with a loose moral code and disturbing aptitude for random violence. Why should I end up with better stuff than everybody else?


Also: Alot of those caves didn't have Bandits, they were filled with smugglers who didn't want to be caught. No just bandits.

Another bonus with Morrowind is that you get to feel more powerful. At first going to Red Mountain would be insane, and even a Cliff Racer or two can kill you.

Once you hit 20+ you still see Cliff Racers and can kill them with ease. You can go to Red Mountain and stand a chance. You can kill guards with ease and you feel powerful.

See, I prefer my feelings of raw power to come with the knowledge that it's a more or less level playing field. If I've got better gear, five times the health, five times the magica and far more spells than everybody I fight, I feel like I'm having victory handed to me.

Honestly I end up feeling far more badass in a game like ArmA or STALKER, where I play with nearly the same rules as the NPCs. I've got some advantages, but they're pretty few.


In Oblivion you don't have that. Everyone levels with you. The only reason someone else can't do your job is because they are NPC's. See, that ruins a game for me. It also totally ruins immersion for me. If every guard is as strong as me, the only reason they don't do the questing is because I'm the PC. I never felt that way in Morrowind. I knew that I could kill several guards, and I knew that I was fighting things that could do the same.
See, this is the exact opposite of my reaction. Keeping my powers in line with everybody else's made the world far more convincing. Instead of me being Mr. Arbitrarily Powerful Person, I was the person who outdid everybody else because I was smarter and more determined. Put another way, the fact that the world felt like somebody else could be doing what I was doing made the place that much more immersive. I was a person in a world who happened to be in the right place at the right time, not the godlike PC going out and saving all the helpless little peon NPCs from their useless little selves.



It's a typical fantasy setting. See, another reason people play Morrowind is because of Morrowind. Mushroom Tree's, people living in giant Mushrooms, the builds all look different, people live in round huts, they travel in giant bugs. It was different from damn near anything out there.

You could pick up any fantasy game and find a setting just like Oblivion. But with Morrowind? It was unique, and it was amazing.

Honestly, one of the biggest mistakes of Oblivion was changing Cyrodil. It was supposed to be a swamp with a lot of rice and stuff. Something different then the norm. But... they changed it to "Generic fantasy setting #56". And that's just sad.
I don't believe I have ever denied that Oblivion is fairly generic. All I recall saying is that I liked being able to explore it.

[EleventhHour]

A lot of those little details are in Oblivion as well. Vilvarin is really well put together, as are a lot of the other dungeons I thought. A lot of them are pretty generic, but there are definite standouts.


There were a few, but practically every cave in Morrowind had it's own little piece of originality, wether it was a rare and powerful piece of equipment, or a random note of a dead adventurer.



Honestly I like that in a game. I'm just another schmuck with a loose moral code and disturbing aptitude for random violence. Why should I end up with better stuff than everybody else?


Because you were strong enough to take on the towering Ogrims, or sneak through the lava-filled Daedric ruins. You got things for being smart, or for levelling up, not for Min-maxing through everything.



See, I prefer my feelings of raw power to come with the knowledge that it's a more or less level playing field. If I've got better gear, five times the health, five times the magica and far more spells than everybody I fight, I feel like I'm having victory handed to me.

Honestly I end up feeling far more badass in a game like ArmA or STALKER, where I play with nearly the same rules as the NPCs. I've got some advantages, but they're pretty few.


It is a fair playing field up to level 20, which is about as high as they expected you to get, bandits are normal (demi)humans trying to get by with a small amount of money made from thier robbery. Thus, they have steel and leather armour. If you want a challenge, you find something bigger. There's Daedric ruins full of challenge for high levels, there's Dwemer ruins for midlevel challenge, and bandit camps for... lower midlevel. Unique ruins/stuff is for high levels, or paticularly smart players.



See, this is the exact opposite of my reaction. Keeping my powers in line with everybody else's made the world far more convincing. Instead of me being Mr. Arbitrarily Powerful Person, I was the person who outdid everybody else because I was smarter and more determined. Put another way, the fact that the world felt like somebody else could be doing what I was doing made the place that much more immersive. I was a person in a world who happened to be in the right place at the right time, not the godlike PC going out and saving all the helpless little peon NPCs from their useless little selves.


...how did a group of ordinary humans manage to kill a demon? You did in Morrowind, because you got stronger as an adventurer. In Oblivion? The demons are mysteriously weak... well, the same strength as you. No matter how pathetic you are. Level 1? The Guardians of Hell Itself aaarrre... just as tough as you. So are the meager bandits. And the guards. Incrediblely 'skilled arena champion.' Patheticly weak, he had to be scaled to the PC, instead of being amazing in his own right.

Not to mention for Oblivion wolves mysterious disappear in favour of Daedroth. :smallconfused:

[Matar]

A lot of those little details are in Oblivion as well. Vilvarin is really well put together, as are a lot of the other dungeons I thought. A lot of them are pretty generic, but there are definite standouts.

I'll give you this point. Oblivion had a few dungeons that stood out. Just... very few.

Very, very few.

Also: Oblivion lost a dimension to it's exploration when it cut out the Jump/Levitation/Slow Fall spells. Dungeons were not based around this, nor had this extra design in mind.


Honestly I like that in a game. I'm just another schmuck with a loose moral code and disturbing aptitude for random violence. Why should I end up with better stuff than everybody else?

Because it's supposed to rare? Because they are powerful artifacts? See, this attitude works with a realistic game, just not a fantasy one.

The things with Morrowind is that you had to earn everything. That Daedric armor? It was freaking hard to get. Skull Crusher? It was defended by a ton of Daedra. You earned it, that's why you got something so powerful.

In Oblivion? Random Bandits have that stuff. All of them do.. Also, those real powerful artifacts? They scale as well. If you get it at a low level, hen it's going to suck at a high level. This is a cop out in my opinion. Don't make the Artifacts weaker then normal items just because you're a low level. Make them hard to earn, and if someone manages to get it at a low level then fine. They earned it for putting so much effort into getting it.

You're a normal joe-shmo at first, yes. At lower levels you're just like the bandits and stuff. But once you get a higher level, you're no longer some random mook. You're something amazing.

How should I say this... well, I suck at Greek Mythology, but maybe this will make sense. At low levels you're just some mook, but at higher levels you become something akin to a Greek hero. And you earned it.

Oblivion doesn't have that.


See, I prefer my feelings of raw power to come with the knowledge that it's a more or less level playing field. If I've got better gear, five times the health, five times the magica and far more spells than everybody I fight, I feel like I'm having victory handed to me.

Honestly I end up feeling far more badass in a game like ArmA or STALKER, where I play with nearly the same rules as the NPCs. I've got some advantages, but they're pretty few.

Now, see, this is where I see some misunderstanding. This isn't STALKER (Fun game, btw). This is a high fantasy game where you're supposed to be the hero.

In Morrowind you were the only one capable of stopping what's going on. You were a hero, and you knew it. In Oblivion everyone leveled with you, and you didn't feel so heroic. After all, if some random guard is just about your level, why don't they take care of it?


See, this is the exact opposite of my reaction. Keeping my powers in line with everybody else's made the world far more convincing. Instead of me being Mr. Arbitrarily Powerful Person, I was the person who outdid everybody else because I was smarter and more determined. Put another way, the fact that the world felt like somebody else could be doing what I was doing made the place that much more immersive. I was a person in a world who happened to be in the right place at the right time, not the godlike PC going out and saving all the helpless little peon NPCs from their useless little selves.

It depends on what you fight. Ascended Sleepers, Werewolves, certain bosses, Fabricantes, ect. Those things are challenging at higher levels. And damn near suicide at lower levels, unless you play it extremely smart. But some normal guard? Some highway bandit or smuggler? They shouldn't be a threat to someone like you.

Another thing I like is that nothing ever stopped you from going to these really dangerous places. You went there, died real quick or ran away as fast as you could... and came back at a higher level. And you could handle them. It showed that you improved, that you got stronger, that all the time you put into your character meant something.

It felt nice.

Oblivion doesn't have that either.


I don't believe I have ever denied that Oblivion is fairly generic. All I recall saying is that I liked being able to explore it.

My mistake then.

Oblivion had some strong sides, yes. The combat was fun, the spells were awesome, it looked nice, the AI was... better, but still really bad.

But, compared to Morrowind? It just wasn't as good.

If you don't mind me asking, did you ever play Morrowind?

[d12]

Oh boy, another Elder Scrolls thread. :smalltongue: Anyone who's ever read any of the other recent TES threads probably already knows where I come down on a lot of the arguments surrounding Oblivion/Morrowind, and I don't like repeating myself in general, so I probably won't go into a lot of detail.

For the most part, I agree with Warty Goblin. And I generally like my sandbox games to be, well, sandboxes. I just don't get the feeling that I can truly explore and do things in the order I feel like if I'm just going to get killed in the face because I wandered outside of the "n00bs go here" zones. As such, level scaling is a plus. I can see expanding the scale a bit to possibly include tougher enemies than Oblivion threw at you most of the time (like, I dunno..maybe run into a minotaur at level 8 if you were unlucky (I don't remember what level they generally started showing up at, but you get the idea), and it could give horses a purpose, such as running away from higher level spawns if you weren't all that confident in your skills) as well as keeping lower level creatures around (sort of like how some areas would always have "nuisance" creatures like rats and mudcrabs), but I don't really see as much need for keeping the lower end because I would still run into wolves around level 16-17 (or maybe they were timberwolves, I dunno, I just kill them and move on). The real area where the scaling system fails is that allies generally don't scale with you (at least from what I remember reading), which can put an artificial cap on what levels you should do certain quests at if you're interested in the NPCs surviving. I don't really have strong opinions either way on essential NPCs. Wouldn't mind them being gone if it were still possible to do quests associated with them if they're dead.

As far as enemies getting better gear as you level goes, I just never really saw a problem with that I guess. I could possibly see having a class of bandits that didn't get anything past steel equipment if that's such a huge concern, much the same way goblins don't seem to ever get great stuff. Maybe have that as one of the distinctions between bandits and marauders. Perhaps one class is better organized or more successful in general. *shrug* As far as level-based loot goes, I guess you could do similar scale-expanding to what you might do with monsters (cuz God knows I got absolute garbage for loot enough times). Perhaps make the odds of higher level stuff fairly low.

I also never really understood complaints about fast travel. It's not like you're forced to use it if you don't like it. I've always seen it as being like declaring, "We go to the next town," with the DM responding, "Your trip was uneventful." Boom, you're there. No fuss. I actually tried walking to my destination from wherever I was a few times, and aside from the occasional random monster, it is pretty uneventful, so no huge loss there. And you still need to discover the area first anyway (excepting major cities), so you're going to need to trek out there at least once already. If you want to make an excursion out of every trip out there, go ahead (I sometimes do if it happens to be not too far from where I currently am). Yeah, I know about the transportation systems in Morrowind, but really, I could do that and lose money, or I could just declare that I walked the whole way and be there right now rather than walking into town to do it. :smalltongue:

I've also never understood why some people think that every single location in the game must be of critical importance to some quest or another. It just makes more sense to me that not every cave and ruin is going to be important to anybody. It might be interesting if some of them had weird little stories behind them, but if they all do then it starts to look kind of ridiculous.

And I guess settings mustn't by necessity be strange or unusual for me to like them. I liked Oblivion's general setting well enough (yes, I know Cyrodiil was originally supposed to be jungle/swamp, and I don't really care, nor would I if it was jungle/swamp in the game). Morrowind's setting seemed decent enough. Shivering Isles' setting is perfectly cromulent. Guess I just don't care much where settings fall on the generic/exotic scale, so whatever.

What would I like to see in TESV?

Better looking models in general (yeah, having everyone being generically beautiful isn't really realistic, but everyone doesn't need to have some weird flesh-eating disease either--this is fantasy for cryin out glaiven), but that seems to be a problem of Bethesda's in general though.

More factions would be nice. I never really did the Thieves' Guild or Dark Brotherhood quest lines because I just can't do stealth. Ever. No, not even then. Outside of having a "be stealthy" button with perfect success rates, it just doesn't work for me (yes, I did have a character who ended up getting a 100% chameleon outfit, but that just makes the game too easy, though I did consider using it, or parts of it, in order to do those quest lines. Only ever really used it in one or two situations that I thought would be especially tricky (which ultimately probably weren't anyway) and held onto it mostly to be able to say "yeah I can be completely enemyproof if I want"). So really I'm limited to two factions in Oblivion.

Kind of would rather not see kids as NPCs if they're going to be treated in the Fable/Fallout3 completely-invincible fashion. I'm generally not a huge "immersion is everything" kind of player, but I can think of few things that would more quickly remind me that I'm playing a video game. Either man up or don't put them in at all. If you feel the need to comment on their absence, a few "lol media idiots can't distinguish fantasy from reality and don't understand ratings" remarks would be sufficient.

Adding an option for fighting on horseback would also be nice, so that I wouldn't need to spend 10 seconds dismounting, with attending camera changes which give me ample opportunity to forget where the attacks are coming from, as well as worrying about my horse getting in the way and getting kicked from my guilds because they think horses are members. Incidentally, this is why I almost never use horses.

Getting rid of psychic guards and shopkeepers would be wonderful. I'm not exactly a mass murderer in the game nor a kleptomaniac, but come on. I understand shopkeepers in Morrowind only got upset if you tried to sell something to them which you stole from them, which would be a better option.

More options in quests would be great too. Generally most quests only seem to have one way of being completed most of the time. By contrast, in Mass Effect, when I fully realized the number of options you had in the mission involving getting a garage pass in order to go to Peak 15 on Noveria, I was just about literally rolling in the aisles (especially when I did/saw some of the renegade options, but renegade will do that to you :smalltongue:). And I'm sure that mission doesn't even have all that many options compared to some quests in other RPGs (and I'm still confused about why I couldn't just shoot the guard at the door to the garage. Just pull the "are you getting in the way of my mission?" card. Security alerted everywhere? Oh noes, rent-a-cops. I'm a Spectre; I'm good at fighting).

There may be more, but those are the ones that stand out right now.

[warty goblin]

There were a few, but practically every cave in Morrowind had it's own little piece of originality, wether it was a rare and powerful piece of equipment, or a random note of a dead adventurer.
Fair enough.



Because you were strong enough to take on the towering Ogrims, or sneak through the lava-filled Daedric ruins. You got things for being smart, or for levelling up, not for Min-maxing through everything.
Except to the degree required to deal with Oblivion's retarded leveling system I never felt like I was min-maxing. I wanted to use mostly melee weapons, so I used mostly melee weapons. Of course due to the clusterhumped leveling system I had to use maces, sword, hammers, and occasionally simply punch things to death, but at the end of the day I wasn't engaged in weird quasi-gamebreaking activity.



It is a fair playing field up to level 20, which is about as high as they expected you to get, bandits are normal (demi)humans trying to get by with a small amount of money made from thier robbery. Thus, they have steel and leather armour. If you want a challenge, you find something bigger. There's Daedric ruins full of challenge for high levels, there's Dwemer ruins for midlevel challenge, and bandit camps for... lower midlevel. Unique ruins/stuff is for high levels, or paticularly smart players.
Funny, most of the commentary I've heard on Morrowind has been that it was really easy to become completely overpowered at very low level.



...how did a group of ordinary humans manage to kill a demon? You did in Morrowind, because you got stronger as an adventurer. In Oblivion? The demons are mysteriously weak... well, the same strength as you. No matter how pathetic you are. Level 1? The Guardians of Hell Itself aaarrre... just as tough as you. So are the meager bandits. And the guards. Incrediblely 'skilled arena champion.' Patheticly weak, he had to be scaled to the PC, instead of being amazing in his own right.

See, I've never really been overly fond of the 'get stronger as an adventurer' bit. Done in moderation it can be good, but going from 'threatened by giant rat' to 'kills gods' is buggerall annoying to me. I find that being overly powerful doesn't put me in the world, it pulls me out of it.

I beat Shivering Isles at level two or maybe three, and I didn't find the experience ruined by that at all. The final battle was an awesome fight, and I felt legitimately badass for having won it. If I'd done it at level 25 I bet I'd have felt the same way.

Mostly I suspect this is because all the leveling up RPG stuff tends to be just windowdressing to me. I like that Oblivion and similar titles give me some flexibility in terms of how my character plays, but all the numbers work to pull me out of the game, so having them effect other stuff in the world doesn't make the system any different than any other game. I engage in weird immersion breaking behavior, so does everybody else. No mystery there.


Not to mention for Oblivion wolves mysterious disappear in favour of Daedroth. :smallconfused:
Natural selection. Demons should, by your own admission, be tougher.

[Matar]

Funny, most of the commentary I've heard on Morrowind has been that it was really easy to become completely overpowered at very low level.

Thaaaat mostly depends on how hard you try to break it. Morrowind is easier then other games, yeah. But so long as you don't abuse Potions/Enchantments then you're rather safe off.

Every game is like this though. With some way to break it in your favor. Morrowind is just a bit easier then some.


Natural selection. Demons should, by your own admission, be tougher.

Now you're just being silly >_>

[SolkaTruesilver]

I will ask to you: what does Shivering Islands bring to Oblivion?

And I don'T mean like a new world, new NPCs. I am talking about game mechanics. I want to know what enjoyment more I will have out of Oblivion (the core game) because I downloaded Shivering Islands.

[Matar]

Absolutely no new game mechanics.

And even without them, it's still utterly amazing.

The setting is original, the dungeons are cool, the NPC's are awesome, the quests are awesome (Even the Fetch quests are cool), ect ect.

Play it. Even when you don't like Oblivion you should like Shivering Ilse.

[warty goblin]

Absolutely no new game mechanics.

And even without them, it's still utterly amazing.

The setting is original, the dungeons are cool, the NPC's are awesome, the quests are awesome (Even the Fetch quests are cool), ect ect.

Play it. Even when you don't like Oblivion you should like Shivering Ilse.

Absolutely. It's worth the money for the skyboxes alone. The night sky is about enough to make you do all your questing at night.

Man that gives me a fabulous idea, become a vampire and play through the entire Shivering Isles questline again. I'll do the Dementia side this time too, last time I went Mania.

My personal favorite quest:

The one where I had to get the chalice out from the base of the tree. To get into the tree, I had to get hopped up on some funky narcotic harvested from a species of insect that inhabited said tree. The drug gave me nice boosts to several stats, but I became addicted after just one hit. Worse, the withdrawel symptoms gave my severe penalties to several important statistics, including Strength. Strength of course determines how much I can carry, and at one point my symptoms put me way over my carrying capacity.

I had only one dose of the drug left, and knew I'd need it to win my next fight.

So, deep inside the bowels of a tree filled with drug pushing bugs, my brain a spastic mess of neurons, I did the only thing I could do.

I removed my pants. Things got kinda weird after that...


Some people thought the madness theme wasn't prominant enough, but I thought it was pretty well done, with most characters being clearly a bit screwy, but very rarely descending into the realm of ridiculousness for ridiculousness' sake that could so easily happen. Haskill in particular is wonderful, and possibly so sane he's insane.

[EleventhHour]

My personal favorite quest:

The one where I had to get the chalice out from the base of the tree. To get into the tree, I had to get hopped up on some funky narcotic harvested from a species of insect that inhabited said tree. The drug gave me nice boosts to several stats, but I became addicted after just one hit. Worse, the withdrawel symptoms gave my severe penalties to several important statistics, including Strength. Strength of course determines how much I can carry, and at one point my symptoms put me way over my carrying capacity.

I had only one dose of the drug left, and knew I'd need it to win my next fight.

So, deep inside the bowels of a tree filled with drug pushing bugs, my brain a spastic mess of neurons, I did the only thing I could do.

I removed my pants. Things got kinda weird after that...



:smallbiggrin:



My journey under the roots went much the same. Fortunately, I had normal clothes for "roleplaying" in the city, which I changed into. Never did get that armour back.

...This of course, reminds me of how it always ends up for people in... The Statue Incident. You know what I mean. You get your statue at the end of the game, and it seems to always pick the most random outfit that you had changed into, were changing out of, etc. Mine ended up naked, wielding a staff that I had used maybe twice throughout the game. (Once being during the end fight/run.) I was disappointed, and surprised. >.>

[MCerberus]

And that's why I'm glad I never leave home without my demented feather-enchanted set of weightless armor

[Zeful]

I will ask to you: what does Shivering Islands bring to Oblivion?

And I don'T mean like a new world, new NPCs. I am talking about game mechanics. I want to know what enjoyment more I will have out of Oblivion (the core game) because I downloaded Shivering Islands.

Why would new game mechanics bring new enjoyment to a game? Why wouldn't a new world, npcs, quests, not be enjoyable at all?

[warty goblin]

Why would new game mechanics bring new enjoyment to a game? Why wouldn't a new world, npcs, quests, not be enjoyable at all?

To be fair, it does add the forging mechanic. It isn't really anything to write home about, but it's sort of nice. Some of the ending perks are pretty nice, and the spell that summons The Most Awesome NPC Ever is wonderful beyond all reason if only to get thoroughly put in your place from time to time.

Some of the new alchemy ingredients are nice as well, and I found made low level alchemy much more interesting since I no longer forced to spam Restore Fatigue potions in all the colors of the rainbow until I got to Journeyman and could make something useful.

[CrazedBanana]

Hot gazoobies! I'm gone a day, and look what happens!

[Zeful]

To be fair, it does add the forging mechanic. It isn't really anything to write home about, but it's sort of nice. Some of the ending perks are pretty nice, and the spell that summons The Most Awesome NPC Ever is wonderful beyond all reason if only to get thoroughly put in your place from time to time.

Some of the new alchemy ingredients are nice as well, and I found made low level alchemy much more interesting since I no longer forced to spam Restore Fatigue potions in all the colors of the rainbow until I got to Journeyman and could make something useful.

Why, not what. Why does having new mechanics make things more exciting/enjoyable?

[warty goblin]

Why, not what. Why does having new mechanics make things more exciting/enjoyable?

Good point. I'm quite happy with a number of expansions that don't really rewrite the gameplay significantly. Crysis Warhead is plenty brilliant, and all it really does is add a couple new guns, make ammo for the SCAR actually pop up with reasonable frequency, and rewrite the AI for the aliens to make them enjoyable to fight for a change.

Same with Shivering Isles really. It didn't add to the base game mechanically, but I liked the base game's mechanics just fine. Being able to duel with frogmen under purple galaxies surrounded by giant mushrooms just made everything that much cooler.

[Matar]

Same with Shivering Isles really. It didn't add to the base game mechanically, but I liked the base game's mechanics just fine. Being able to duel with frogmen under purple galaxies surrounded by giant mushrooms just made everything that much cooler.

This.

Just... this.

This is basically how I felt about Morrowind the whole damn time. Don't get me wrong, the game hasn't exactly aged well... but still.

[Alleine]

Just give me back my damned rocket pants you bastards. You keep your fancy fast travel, your boats, your bugs, and your horses. I'll be taking the rocketpants express thankyouverymuch.

To clarify: Bring back morrowinds magic/enchanting system. Sure, it was broken as hell and you could do all sorts of overpowered things with it such as summoning a golden saint and then capturing its soul to power your golden saint perma-summon machine, but you could also make rocket pants.

Oblivion? No horribly broken spells. Paralyze was considered strong by me compared to the rest of the spells. But what was it I couldn't do? Oh yeah, make rocket pants.

Fortify jump 1000 points. Just make sure you cast featherfall before you land on the other side of the island.

[factotum]

In Oblivion you don't have that. Everyone levels with you. The only reason someone else can't do your job is because they are NPC's. See, that ruins a game for me. It also totally ruins immersion for me. If every guard is as strong as me, the only reason they don't do the questing is because I'm the PC. I never felt that way in Morrowind. I knew that I could kill several guards, and I knew that I was fighting things that could do the same.


This. I couldn't have put it better myself.

warty_goblin, I can't help but get the impression that you don't actually like RPGs. Pretty much every RPG that has ever existed, whether pen and paper or computer-based, has included the concept that your character(s) get more powerful over the course of the game and are thus able to take on greater challenges. To my mind, this is the main way RPGs differ from other games--you're dependent on the skill of your in-game avatar, not your own twitch reflexes. (Although the combat system in Oblivion got that wrong, too :smallsmile:).

Don't get me wrong, I'm quite happy to play games that DO rely on me having a fast trigger finger--it's just nice to have something different too!

[Matar]

Really, I never understood the complaints about Oblivions combat. I mean yeah, games like Dark Messiah have better combat by a land slide, but it's not that bad. And it sure as hell beats Morrowind's "Swing and Miss" mechanic.

Okay, that's sorta a lie. Both were ****. But Oblivions was just ****. The combat in Morrowind was major ****.

Oh, btw. What would I like in number five? Reflect spells that actually bounce the spells back at you, not make the spells effect you automatically. God is that ever lame.

[Eldan]

Get some combat mechanic mods. Really. I mean, shield bash alone makes the game much more enjoyable. Now, I was never really able to time my dodging, but dodging these giant club swings from the gate guardian in Shivering Isles just looks awesome.

[Matar]

We were talking about whether or not Oblivion was good.

Not Oblivion with mods. Biiig difference. If mods count, then Morrowind is the best damn game ever <_<.

[Eldan]

I must admit, I never modded Morrowind. And it's still in my top.... hmm. Top five. I know four games I like more.

[Matar]

First off, you will burn in the abyss.

Modded Morrowind is eefing amazing.

[Eldan]

Guess so. But the Myst Games still top everything I know for me.

[Oslecamo]

Modded Morrowind is eefing amazing.

Yeah, but finding said mods is harder, since oblivion has those handy websites that make finding said mods easier. And hey, people are still modding for it!

Now excuse me while I return to my pimped oblivion with OOO, custom race, exp leveling and enanched graphics. When I finaly end the main quest, perhaps I'll pick up Morrowind. If it's that much better, then it will be more enjoyable. If not, then I can drop it quickly.

[Eldan]

Meh. OOO. I don't remember why, but it had some features which irked me.


Morrowind: remember, it's old. The models are very crude, there are pretty much no facial expression, conversations are text only, combat is simply hack'n'slash and it has tons of other small stuff which Oblivion did better. It did just have the more interesting world and story.

[SolkaTruesilver]

Why would new game mechanics bring new enjoyment to a game? Why wouldn't a new world, npcs, quests, not be enjoyable at all?

Because I am wondering wether or not it would be worth getting before finishing the initial game. Like Immortal Throne bringed a lot of great new mechanics, or Lord of Destruction.

Or In Nomine.

My point is, often a game will be better on the whole because of an expansion, since that expansion will bring more than just new content at the end.

[warty goblin]

warty_goblin, I can't help but get the impression that you don't actually like RPGs. Pretty much every RPG that has ever existed, whether pen and paper or computer-based, has included the concept that your character(s) get more powerful over the course of the game and are thus able to take on greater challenges. To my mind, this is the main way RPGs differ from other games--you're dependent on the skill of your in-game avatar, not your own twitch reflexes. (Although the combat system in Oblivion got that wrong, too :smallsmile:).

Don't get me wrong, I'm quite happy to play games that DO rely on me having a fast trigger finger--it's just nice to have something different too!
It's not that the game doesn't rely on my twitch skills that bothers me. I play turn based strategy a lot, and if there's a less twitchy genre than that, or one where you're more reliant on the skills of onscreen people, I've yet to see it.

I don't even object to leveling up and increasing my skills/abilities per say. What I really, really do not like is essentially becoming a god by the end of a game. Becoming more skilled to the point of aggressive competance is cool, being a walking incarnation of death just points out all the stupid artifaces of the world.

[Stormthorn]

a) No level scaling of enemies. None. Not even a little, teensy bit. If I have to grind levels to make it easier to defeat a big boss then let me do that, don't make the boss just as difficult whatever level I face him at!


c) Quests where I can actually choose what to do rather than being railroaded down a particular route.

d) Genuine intelligence in the AI, so that if I talk to a woman after finishing a quest for her I don't get "Who are you? What are you doing in my house?".

I agree with options C and D.
I removed option B because i have yet to see any other game that comes near that games size with forests, mountains, swamps, grasslands, and icy forests that are so well done.
I doubt any two cells of the outdoor game are copy-pastes of one another and the sheer variety of trees, bushes, fallen logs, boulders, enemy camps, and alchemical plants makes this game well and beyond the best forest environment anywhere. I sometimes play it just to get that woodland feel when im stuck indoors.
So yea, B is silly.

A is interesting. You might make the game work without level scaling but doing so would make it so you cant have a sandbox world, since some areas would be "high level" zones and some not. Also, since scaling was present in the third game and in Fallout 3 i doubt their just going to get rid of it all of a sudden.


6) Spell variety. It can be done.
If i knew how to i would email the developers that video.
I would start a petition to make whoever does thos emod spart of the design team for the new game.

[MCerberus]

It's not that the game doesn't rely on my twitch skills that bothers me. I play turn based strategy a lot, and if there's a less twitchy genre than that, or one where you're more reliant on the skills of onscreen people, I've yet to see it.

I don't even object to leveling up and increasing my skills/abilities per say. What I really, really do not like is essentially becoming a god by the end of a game. Becoming more skilled to the point of aggressive competance is cool, being a walking incarnation of death just points out all the stupid artifaces of the world.

The problem is usually with a lack of shift in tone. In some games, you become a god and you fight things beyond goblins or other things you fought at the beginning. In Oblivion, you fight bandits. When you level up, you find more bandits. Hop into a gate to fight something non-bandit related and there's the same stuff you've seen before sometimes with an adjective in their name. Why does a zombie get twice as many HPs and hit harder when it doesn't have a head?

What's worse is that, if you use the skill system as intended, you get worse at fighting bandits.

[SolkaTruesilver]

If i knew how to i would email the developers that video.
I would start a petition to make whoever does thos emod spart of the design team for the new game.

The main problem I see with that is that it'd make the magic too powerful. I mean, if you can create spells that pushes you away, how can a Warrior-like character ever hope to beat a wizard?

You'd have to find a way to make wizards weaker somehow, or the only proper character build would be Wizard.

(We DO need more fighting moves, I think. Thinks like "Special spellcasting disruption hit", Crippling thrust, etc... )

[Lorn]

The main problem I see with that is that it'd make the magic too powerful. I mean, if you can create spells that pushes you away, how can a Warrior-like character ever hope to beat a wizard?
There's a spell in Vanilla Oblivion called Paralyze. This is worse than pushing someone away... mages are generally the easiest enemies to take down, they can't block properly, don't run fast and have very little health.

[Matar]

Yeah, but finding said mods is harder, since oblivion has those handy websites that make finding said mods easier. And hey, people are still modding for it!

People are still modding for Morrowind as well. Yeah, it's slowed down. But the quality of mods sure hasn't decreased any.

And it's really easy to find good mods. There are tons of lists and stuff out there.


Morrowind: remember, it's old. The models are very crude, there are pretty much no facial expression, conversations are text only, combat is simply hack'n'slash and it has tons of other small stuff which Oblivion did better. It did just have the more interesting world and story.

And some other things were better. Like, actually feeling epic and like a hero. Monsters in it were alot better as well.

And honestly, I like text only conversations. When something actually talks it made me feel like it was going to be huge. And you could squeeze in alot more information compared to a game with dialog.

Oblivion took two steps forward and three steps back. The fixed alot of holes in Morrowind, but then took some of the best things about Morrowind out of the game.

[warty goblin]

The main problem I see with that is that it'd make the magic too powerful. I mean, if you can create spells that pushes you away, how can a Warrior-like character ever hope to beat a wizard?

You'd have to find a way to make wizards weaker somehow, or the only proper character build would be Wizard.

(We DO need more fighting moves, I think. Thinks like "Special spellcasting disruption hit", Crippling thrust, etc... )

It's a singleplayer game. It doesn't need to be balanced. What it needs is for different character builds to be playable and fun.

[Oslecamo]

If i knew how to i would email the developers that video.
I would start a petition to make whoever does thos emod spart of the design team for the new game.

Didn't you get the memo? Most gaming companies are cuting down gameplay options for shinier graphics, and call it "revolutionizing the genre".

It's not only Oblivion. Look at DoW II. No buildings, the number of troops you get can barely be called a military force, almost zero customization for maps on multiplayer, ect, ect.

Borderlands has a bazilion guns, but in the end all they do is damage in diferent degrees, and every class has a single activated ability.

On the other hand, I recently tried Master of Magic, a quite old game and I was blown out by the variety of choices available. You can cast spells(of wich there are a lot) half a world away, lots of diferent troops with actualy diferent abilities, enslaving other races, mercenaries, heros, complex economic-mana-food system to keep your empire going, change the land itself, and then good tactical combat in top of that. But it's graphics are horribly outdated. I would pay well for a version of this game with exact same mechanics but shiny graphics.

[SolkaTruesilver]

It's a singleplayer game. It doesn't need to be balanced. What it needs is for different character builds to be playable and fun.

My point exactly. If the ennemies you meet keeps you away with spells and kill you that way, what fun is there in playing a nonmagic character?

If you NEED magic to beat magic, there is little fun to be had in customization. The game effectively shafts you for not casting spell. You end up with a Wizard-in-D&D problem, where the abilities of the wizards don't fit into an encyclopedia, and the Warrior is reduced to slashing his sword.

[warty goblin]

Didn't you get the memo? Most gaming companies are cuting down gameplay options for shinier graphics, and call it "revolutionizing the genre".

It's not only Oblivion. Look at DoW II. No buildings, the number of troops you get can barely be called a military force, almost zero customization for maps on multiplayer, ect, ect.

Or concievably not having base building is a deliberate design choice made by Relic to support their vision for the game? Because there were absolutely no buildingless RTSs back 'in the day.' Except for Ground Control. And Myth. Or all the party based RPGs where you had a small number of powerful units. Weirdly these were precisely the genres that Relic was trying to combine with DoWII's single player.

And basically nobody plays multiplayer in most games anyway. The less money spent on catering to them the better, I say.


Borderlands has a bazilion guns, but in the end all they do is damage in diferent degrees, and every class has a single activated ability.
Unlike guns that don't do various amounts of damage? I'm confused here. They're guns. You shoot things with them. Things die. How long it takes to do that is a function of damage, something guns in FPSs have been defined by since maybe DOOM.


On the other hand, I recently tried Master of Magic, a quite old game and I was blown out by the variety of choices available. You can cast spells(of wich there are a lot) half a world away, lots of diferent troops with actualy diferent abilities, enslaving other races, mercenaries, heros, complex economic-mana-food system to keep your empire going, change the land itself, and then good tactical combat in top of that. But it's graphics are horribly outdated. I would pay well for a version of this game with exact same mechanics but shiny graphics.

Your wish is my command. (http://www.elementalgame.com/).

[Tavar]

Your wish is my command. (http://www.elementalgame.com/).

Has there been a game yet that Stardock's either made or had a part in marketing that hasn't been good?

[warty goblin]

My point exactly. If the ennemies you meet keeps you away with spells and kill you that way, what fun is there in playing a nonmagic character?

If you NEED magic to beat magic, there is little fun to be had in customization. The game effectively shafts you for not casting spell. You end up with a Wizard-in-D&D problem, where the abilities of the wizards don't fit into an encyclopedia, and the Warrior is reduced to slashing his sword.
Figuring out how to kill them anyways? It also depends how much a keepaway spell costs to cast, how effective it is, and so forth. It's possible to balance singleplayer games so that the player gets access to powers that would totally break multiplayer, but in SP are fine, even if some of the enemies can also use them. The nanosuits in Crysis are a good example, they make most game magic look weak in terms of flexibility, and used intelligently are broken beyond belief. Even when the Koreans break out their nanosuits you can still outfight them with some care and thought.

I do get wanting to avoid having a dictionary's worth of magic powers though. It's why I almost always play melee character. You've got one hotkey for your sword, one for your two handed sword, and one for health potions.


Has there been a game yet that Stardock's either made or had a part in marketing that hasn't been good?

I read their 2009 summery thing this afternoon. It made me want to go have experimental surgury so I could have Brad Wardell's babies. About the only really major issue* I think there's ever been was the sorry state of Demigod's netcode at launch. Of course Stardock, being awesome, admitted it was a total screwup, and then fixed it while allowing people who felt screwed over to return the game for a full refund- even if they had bought it retail.


*Some people think Sins of a Solar Empire doesn't have enough depth and has shallow singleplayer. These people are deluded and need help.

[Tavar]

Yeah, I was reading it too, and it actually made me look at Demigod. Looks kinda interesting, but I'm not sure if I should really shell out for the full version.

[SolkaTruesilver]

I read their 2009 summery thing this afternoon. It made me want to go have experimental surgury so I could have Brad Wardell's babies. About the only really major issue* I think there's ever been was the sorry state of Demigod's netcode at launch. Of course Stardock, being awesome, admitted it was a total screwup, and then fixed it while allowing people who felt screwed over to return the game for a full refund- even if they had bought it retail.


*Some people think Sins of a Solar Empire doesn't have enough depth and has shallow singleplayer. These people are deluded and need help.

Stardock hasn't developped Demigod nor Sins of a Solar Empire. They were the publishers only.

Ergo, Stardock has a 100% batting average for games I like, when they MADE the game.

Too bad Brad is so stupid politically, IMHO. But then again, he doesn't need to be anything more than a game-designer genius :smallbiggrin:

[factotum]

I don't even object to leveling up and increasing my skills/abilities per say. What I really, really do not like is essentially becoming a god by the end of a game. Becoming more skilled to the point of aggressive competance is cool, being a walking incarnation of death just points out all the stupid artifaces of the world.

And level scaling DOESN'T reinforce the idea that you're playing a set of bits and bytes rather than a living, breathing world? In real life, if you get better at something, everyone else doesn't automatically get better as well! Chances are good there will always be SOMEONE out there who's better than you, though, which is how I like an RPG to work--e.g. there will always be difficult fights available to even a high-level character, it's just you have to find them.

[warty goblin]

And level scaling DOESN'T reinforce the idea that you're playing a set of bits and bytes rather than a living, breathing world? In real life, if you get better at something, everyone else doesn't automatically get better as well! Chances are good there will always be SOMEONE out there who's better than you, though, which is how I like an RPG to work--e.g. there will always be difficult fights available to even a high-level character, it's just you have to find them.

To me, level-scaling breaks immersion in the exact same way that pretty much every RPG ever breaks immersion: You end up fighting more powerful enemies because the the player gets more powerful, and combat needs to remain challenging.

Most RPGs have the luxery of moving the player through a linear world, and if not outright denying them the ability to return to previous locations, at least not giving them a particularly obvious reason to do so. This means that they can put the level 1 monsters outside the farming town, the level two monsters on the route to the city, the level three undead in the swamp town*, the level four orcs in the mountains and so on. We go along with this, even though there's usually nothing that should keep the demonstrably more powerful orcs from beating all the monsters between their mountain and the starting village and taking it over. They've got the motivation, and certainly the power, since you just did it.

But Oblivion wants to be a sandbox game where you get to go wherever you like. So the geography conceit, by design, really won't work. Leveling enemies seems to me like about the only way to pull off what it's trying to do. Which isn't to say that the particular implimentation they went with wasn't deeply screwed up, because it was. But that doesn't mean it has to be badly done.


*Is the swamp town filled with undead some sort of cosmic RPG requirement? Because I seem to go there a lot.

[Triaxx]

F3 seems to have hit the nail on the head. The enemies get stronger, but only if you move to them and then they get stronger in their area.

Zombie Swamp Town seems to be an inside joke among RPG's. Diablo had one and they like to pay homage to it. Meaning they give you a place where you can kill a lot of things.

[Cybren]

The names Shadow Realm and Skyrim are just rumours.

Personally, I hope that it's set in Summurset Isle.

Everyone with taste hopes that because everywhere else is either boring or too weird. Morrowind was weird and it was cool but really, anyone who wants to play in the argonian province is a creep

[Matar]

You mean the place where the trees are alive, the swamps are filled with countless blights, and the land itself wants to devour you and all your loved ones?

It sounds awesome to me, but I'd prefer Skyrim.

[Eldan]

What does Skyrim have? I don't remember anything particularily exotic about that one. But yeah, the Argonian province Sumerset sound interesting.

[EleventhHour]

What does Skyrim have? I don't remember anything particularily exotic about that one. But yeah, the Argonian province Sumerset sound interesting.

Ice, snow, mountains, grassy plains, and the Nords. (VIKINGS?!)

I'd say Valenwood, but they probably wouldn't be able to do it perfectly due to graphical constraints.

[Matar]

Skyrim has...

Nirn's second largest mountain (Second only to Red Moutain). This is a big thing for me, actually. Morrowind was limited by it's age and limitations. But if this one takes place in Skyrim we can get something really incredible for a mountain.

It was the land where all human races were decended.

Snowy lands, Forests (God I hate forests...), and honestly whatever else they want. See, I don't think the land is very developed here, so they could get away with adding a bunch of neat stuff. Like, say, deep icy crags in the earth and stuff.

Personally, Skyrim would be a good choice. Freedom enough to make something awesome, yet firm enough to fit in with the rest of Tamrial.

Then again, I would like it to take place in either Elsweyr or the Black Marsh. So yeah.

Anything except Summerset. **** ELVES.

[Eldan]

Hey, with so many crags, mountains and so on...
they could finally try and implement climbing. It's the one thing I've always missed.

[Stormthorn]

To me, level-scaling breaks immersion in the exact same way that pretty much every RPG ever breaks immersion: You end up fighting more powerful enemies because the the player gets more powerful, and combat needs to remain challenging.


The other option is a linear world, which also break immersion by having really stupid reasons (higher level versions of the same enemy) for you not being able to go where you want to.

"I want to go into the darklands"
"You cant do that, the undead their are all level 3459383239!"
"But....their just palet swaps of the enemies i fought in the tutorial level."
"Dont be fooled. Their rusted swords are now for some reason made of pure damage. You cant go their. Stay here and finish this quest chain instead."

Really, you cant maintain emersion in a game where the hero scales in power, unless you 'only' fight rats in the early areas and never re-use models later on for stronger enemies.
Borderlands is an example of doing it wrong in this way. The same bandits i fight at the begining of the game are still around 30 levels later but now for some reason they have more health.
Borderlands also uses a second way to break immersion: The door that wont open until quest X is completed.


It's the one thing I've always missed.
Missed? I have never played an RPG with a "mountain climbing" skill chain.

[warty goblin]

The other option is a linear world, which also break immersion by having really stupid reasons (higher level versions of the same enemy) for you not being able to go where you want to.

"I want to go into the darklands"
"You cant do that, the undead their are all level 3459383239!"
"But....their just palet swaps of the enemies i fought in the tutorial level."
"Dont be fooled. Their rusted swords are now for some reason made of pure damage. You cant go their. Stay here and finish this quest chain instead."

Indeed. Or the fire/ice/acid/other element color coded enemies. Man I hate those. Gee, fire enemies in the lava level. Never saw that coming. Perhaps I should use ice magic?. What's the probability it does an extra 50% damage or so?


Really, you cant maintain emersion in a game where the hero scales in power, unless you 'only' fight rats in the early areas and never re-use models later on for stronger enemies.
And even then you have to wonder why giant rats can only thrive in the dungeons around the starting Farming Village, but not in the dungeons around the Orc Fortress five levels later. They certainly look the same. Exactly the same. Almost as if...the same tileset had been used.

Mind you, usually by the time one is done with giant rats, one is so heartily sick of the little bastards that never seeing them again is just fine, immersion breaking or no.

Personally the best example of power scaling without totally shafting immersion I've come across is Far Cry 2's. You don't gain health or special abilities or anything. Instead you can buy upgrades to the amount of healing items you carry, and better guns. Much better guns. In the beginning of the game you look forwards to unlocking the POS AK-47 because it liberates you from the even worse carbine that you get before that. By the end game I wasn't even bothering with the good assault rifles, because the .50cal sniper rifle, the scoped multiple grenade launcher and the autoshotgun, all of which occupied the same equipment slot, were much, much better.

Your enemies stay the same, but get slightly better weapons later on in the game. Their numbers go up as well, but both of these things fit with the story since the conflict is escalating. But both me and the people I fight are just as durable thirty seconds before the game ends as thirty seconds after it begins. Fights tend to be more lethal due to the increased firepower both sides have available, but it's nothing you can't handle by that point.

I had, in short, a real sense of escalating power, but it never felt egregious or damaging to the immersion.

[Stormthorn]

The problem with that is that Far Cry is not an RPG.
RPGs have unique problems due to the general belief that by the end of the game the hero should be slaying demons.

In a game like Far Cry you go from soldiers to soldiers and end with soldier as your primary enemy. Perhaps by now the enemies have better armor, if that.
In an RPG making your tutorial fight and your final dungeon have the same enemies would be developer suicide unless you had some other really really good angle to play.

[warty goblin]

The problem with that is that Far Cry is not an RPG.
RPGs have unique problems due to the general belief that by the end of the game the hero should be slaying demons.

And in some ways I think this really limits RPGs in terms of story. After all if you're supposed to end the game exponentially more powerful than you began it, you'll need something exponentially more powerful to fight as well. Demons, in short, become not something put in the story because they belong there, but a neccessity of the game design in order to conform to the expectations of the genre.

Now to some degree this is true of pretty much all games. It would be a poor RTS that did not give you an interesting enemy to fight after all, and FPSs need things that can be shot in entertaining ways. But I think the degree to which this restricts design is much, much less. I've played a lot of FPSs without boss fights, and quite a few with. I've never seen or heard of an RPG that doesn't have them.


In a game like Far Cry you go from soldiers to soldiers and end with soldier as your primary enemy. Perhaps by now the enemies have better armor, if that.
In an RPG making your tutorial fight and your final dungeon have the same enemies would be developer suicide unless you had some other really really good angle to play.

This is one of the reasons I find the FPS gameplay template stronger than that of the traditional RPG as typically implimented. I can happily spend hours fighting basically the same dudes in an FPS if they've got a halfway decent AI behind them and the enviornments are somewhat varied. In most RPGs they charge at me, I fire off some ability or other, dudes whack at each other for thirty seconds or so, then I go through and loot the dead dudes before going on my way.

[Eldan]

Well, isn't it pretty much tradition that by the end of an Elder Scrolls game, you fight godlike enemies, since you are a prophesied chosen hero, often from the Elder Scrolls the game is named after?

[Zanaril]

Hey, with so many crags, mountains and so on...
they could finally try and implement climbing. It's the one thing I've always missed.

As for climbing, simply being able to step up /pull yourself up onto ledges would probably improve the clipping/collision problems. I hate the way you end up sliding on things. I'm not asking for parkour-style acrobatics (although how cool would that be if you played a theif?) but simply well defined edges.

I also feel that having some way of using inventory items with the enviroment or with each other would open up a whole new set of possibilities when it comes to quest puzzles.

[Mystic Muse]

I'd enjoy a larger variety of Bows. Morrowind seems to be lacking good bows from what I can tell.

[Zanaril]

I'd enjoy a larger variety of Bows

Maybe it's because I never got to a high level in Marksman, but I always found bows underpowered. They took too long to load and draw, and the arrows moved too slowly, (at least comparatively to what I remember from my singular IRL attempt at archery).

Some kind of targeting system at higher levels could work, maybe as an enchantment for arrows?

And crossbows are a must, just because they're cool. :smallcool:

[warty goblin]

Well, isn't it pretty much tradition that by the end of an Elder Scrolls game, you fight godlike enemies, since you are a prophesied chosen hero, often from the Elder Scrolls the game is named after?

That's rather my point. It's traditional, and it really shouldn't have to be. I'm not saying 'never have the player save the world' I'm just saying that I think having that as a de facto requirement for the genre is quite limiting.



Maybe it's because I never got to a high level in Marksman, but I always found bows underpowered. They took too long to load and draw, and the arrows moved too slowly, (at least comparatively to what I remember from my singular IRL attempt at archery).

Some kind of targeting system at higher levels could work, maybe as an enchantment for arrows?

And crossbows are a must, just because they're cool. :smallcool:
I tried marksmen characters on several occasions. The problem I ended up suffering from was that it was hard to actually get killshots with the bow unless I was sneaking. If I was sneaking, I would only take one or two shots, which wouldn't level up my Marksmen character particularly fast. Even if I took Marskmen as a Major Skill, it went up very, very slowly, underpowering me in just a few levels.

I actually rather liked the bows in Oblivion. They weren't great, but the arrow physics were pretty cool-seeing them stick in some things and not in others, and needing to account for moving targets and arrow drop are all things I like. Of course then they made them have nigh on perfect horizontal accuracy...

And the zoom should have been available much, much earlier.


If you find bows take too long to reload, I think you're not going to like crossbows much.

[Zanaril]

I actually rather liked the bows in Oblivion. They weren't great, but the arrow physics were pretty cool-seeing them stick in some things and not in others
I admit I got a laugh at seeing my character run around as a pincushion.


If you find bows take too long to reload, I think you're not going to like crossbows much.
You probably right.

Maybe a magic crossbow with a certain number of charges? :smalltongue:

[warty goblin]

I admit I got a laugh at seeing my character run around as a pincushion.

I was particularly annoyed when I was running close to the weight limit, and would get immobilized by the weight of all the arrows sticking out of me.


You probably right.

Maybe a magic crossbow with a certain number of charges? :smalltongue:

We call those 'wands.'


Seriously, I think the thing to do for bows is to impliment location based damage. Make the zoom available from Apprentice or so, then really reward careful, well aimed shots. In the open if I'm playing a dedicated archer, I should be able to waste one or two melee guys before they get to me.

[Mystic Muse]

And crossbows are a must, just because they're cool. :smallcool:

this is where Our opinions differ. I hate the look of crossbows in every game I've ever played and won't even use them in D&D.

[warty goblin]

this is where Our opinions differ. I hate the look of crossbows in every game I've ever played and won't even use them in D&D.

Crossbows are not the sexiest of weapons. On the other hand they really should provide an experience much closer to an FPS than a standard bow. A bow you'd actually use as a weapon has such a staggering draw weight, you're not going to be able to hold it back indefinitely.

They should also be easier to aim and, for the more powerful ones, have much better armor penetration than a recurved or longbow. Not that many games really model body armor penetration all that well.

[Matar]

That's rather my point. It's traditional, and it really shouldn't have to be. I'm not saying 'never have the player save the world' I'm just saying that I think having that as a de facto requirement for the genre is quite limiting.

Well. I don't think any game really had the "Save the world" kind of feeling. Maybe Morrowind, but Dagoth Ur was mostly using Biological warfare... so yeah.

Let's see if I remember...

Arena: You save the Imperial Empire by defeating Jagar Tharn and rescuing the King from an interdimensional prison.

Daggerfall: You get some item that controls a Bronze Godlike Golem who's so freaking big that it can change the tide of war and make an entire nation bend knee. Doing so unleashes a magical force so powerful that it rips Nirn away from the flow of time and all seven endings take place at one.

1: Mannimarco becomes a god and stays a human.

2: The Orc place earns it's freedom, thus becoming a player race in Morrowind.

3: The Hero dies and lives.

I don't remember the other ones off the top of my head.

Morrowind: You stop Dagoth Ur from spreading his divine disease all over the world. You stop him from recreating the Bronze God using the heart of Lorkhan and driving the Nwah from the land.

Dagoth's plan is a take over the world plan. He wants to do so by using the Bronze God as a figure head and a **** ton of biological warfare.

So... yeah.


I also like the big bad of Morrowind far more. You're fighting a **** ton of Eldritch Horrors. How is that not freaking awesome.

In Oblivion you're just fighting demon. Boring.

[Eldan]

See, in my personal canon, I used my powers as leader of mots of the factions to throw the imperials, the religions and house Hlaalu in a gigantic conflict, then openly revealed myself as the true Nerevarine (I even was a dunmer on my first playthrough) and threw of imperial rule over Morrowind in a wave of bloodshed and slaughter.
What? It should totally have happened.


A propos Eldritch Horror: the Dark Brotherhood should totally become more important and get more quests.

[Triaxx]

I'm guessing that's why they added Knights of the Nine. Felt more like a final boss than simply running to the temple then kicking ass.

Bows: Short and Longbows would make excellent options. Especially if we get mounted combat. And long handled weapons.

[Eldan]

Mmmhm. Delicious halberds. I can see that.

[warty goblin]

Mmmhm. Delicious halberds. I can see that.

Just so long as they were animated well. So many games make anything larger than a knife swing like a baseball bat with a brick tied to it. Real weapons are immensely mobile when made and used correctly. Polearms are a particularly frequent offender here, since their use is somewhat more subtle than one initially would expect due to strikes and parries with the haft.

To do them right you'd almost need a second attack button. Your primary attack would handle strikes and thrusts with the blade, the secondary with the haft and butt, and a third button for blocks. Most of the secondary attacks would be for targets closer to your body, while the primary strikes would be used for targets farther away.

[Triaxx]

Now that you mention it, you'd only need two buttons. Mouse 1 for attack/head attack, mouse 2 for block/haft attack, and then hold both while using a polearm for blocking. Solves it without requiring people to grow another finger.

[Eldan]

Well, there was a mod (I know, I know, I should stop mentioning that) which, apart from shield slams and dodges also had secondary attacks for most weapons...
So, at least from a control standpoint, it can be done. It included a few letters to be pressed with the left hand, though. I think I had "V" for shield slams, but somehow, it worked.

[Imposter]

Can I just quickly comment that setting it in the argonian province would be pretty cool? And if the dunmer are still running slave raids* under the empire's nose you already have a conflict, an easy basis for a load of sidequests, and can write a plot that doesn't resort to "There are demons in the basegameworld. Here's a cheap plot device, go do something."

And I liked my crossbow of paralysis. It won me a lot of fights. I really never understood their decision to take them out, the official explanation was that they were cut so that they could concentrate on the bows. Which makes it sound like they just never got around to building animations+models for them.

*This would require them to retcon the thing where slavery was banned after morrowind, but I honestly don't care. It gave you a feeling that you were doing something good, as opposed to just killing a lot of smugglers for their stuff.

[Eldan]

Well. The title is Shadow Realm. This, of course could mean a region in the game world we haven't heard about, it could mean a supernatural region, as in "Oblivion", or it could actually mean Shadowmarsh, which would be pretty cool.

[Dogmantra]

Well. The title is Shadow Realm.
That is just a rumour, you know?

[Eldan]

Oh. I thought that was confirmed. Well, then. All bets are open.

[Triaxx]

On slavery: Yes, well stealing things isn't legal. Necromancy was banned. Randomly slaughtering entire towns isn't legal either. Didn't stop anyone at all.

[Imposter]

On slavery: Yes, well stealing things isn't legal. Necromancy was banned. Randomly slaughtering entire towns isn't legal either. Didn't stop anyone at all.

Well, yes. But the big buyers seemed to be large plantations and the telvanni mages. While I could see the telvanni simply ignoring the empire ("These aren't the slaves you're looking for"), I doubt house Dres would be able to pull that off. Especially since it's explicitly mentioned that they didn't.

[Eldan]

Wasn't it mentioned that as part of the treaty between Vivec and the empire, the Dunmer were still allowed to keep slaves?

[Matar]

Well. With the Temple ruined and the King of Morrowind (Forgot his name) wanting to get more Buddy-Buddy with the Imperials, the King banned slavery. Needless to say, there was a ton of bloodshed and in-fighting, but the King won in the end... with alot of losses.

Honestly, even though Oblivion ****ed up on alot of things, I do like these changes to lore. Some of them. Like this one. Nothing was retconned, but the world is still changing. Ald-Ruhn has been destroyed as well.

What I don't like is that alot of the things the player did in Morrowind just... failed in Oblivion. Raven Rock, Thrisk, ect.

[Eldan]

Or the greatest cop-out of them all:
"After killing all the gods and declaring himself the Mahdi Nerevarine, the great hero left the continent and didn't come back."

That's just stupid. I mean, even killing him in the civil war would have been better than that.

[Matar]

Freaking tell me about it.

He was supposed to drive the Nwah scum from the land! Turn it into a great nation, greater then it ever was!

Instead he abandons it, getting a ton of people killed over it. IIRC he brought troops with him... troops that could be used to hold of Daedra and stuff. Just a huge cop out =/

[Eldan]

I've heard a lot of fan theories about that, in fact. They range from "the emperor had him assassinated and then replaced by a mage" to "he was actually an empire spy all along".
Hey, perhaps there will be a game where he comes back. Or we get to play him in Akavir. That would be cool, seeing some of the other continents. Though the lack of humanoids in these lands probably means that it's not going to happen.

[SolkaTruesilver]

I don't know. "He decided to leave in the sunset" is a classic copt out. Sigmar did it. Myrmidia did it. The Vault Dweller did it.

[nooblade]

"After killing all the gods and declaring himself the Mahdi Nerevarine, the great hero left the continent and didn't come back."That is, kindof, what you actually did, though. You quit playing sometime. There was just nothing left to do, like Morrowind suddenly got better at taking care of itself.

Having connections with the Blades must make it pretty difficult to do anything that the emperor doesn't want. And it's also interesting to think that the Blades, being the naughty manipulators that they are, would actually kidnap the protagonist and take him away to prevent anyone from finding out about his involvement. A historian would say that nothing of consequence happened afterwards. Something over the top would've been better though, like one of the prisoners at the start of Oblivion, random race/sex combination, saying, "Hi, I was the Nerevarine." Or, maybe he knew that noone would believe it... :smallamused:


Now, if it weren't heavily implied in the main quest that you worked in conjunction with the Blades, then you could drive the imperial dogs from the land or something... That would be a fun mod, actually, like the ones that let you join the sixth house. You could have an option for any of the great houses to take over the role that the Blades played in vanilla Morrowind. It would fit in well with the sixth house raiding quests in Redoran, fer sure. It would also go in well with Tamriel Rebuilt, for House Dres or Indoril and their extra motives.

What happens when your dear Uncle Crassius finds out that you've been infected with Corprus disease? See? So much potential for fun dialog.

[Lamech]

Hmm... I haven't read through everything I'm just posting what I want for TES:V

A) Better AI. I liked what they did with the AI in oblivion. Its cool. It rocks. And it leaves so much to be desired. Improve it.

B) More Custimization of body types. 2nd-rate RPG's can do it now. You should too. (And by second rate I mean second to TES.)

C) Less scaling. Or at least more variablity. I hate fire archons and scamps and what not dying out. Its sucks.

D) Better random generator and a little bigger. Morrowind was maybe too big oblivion was too small.

E) Levitation. Yes I know why this went, it makes all sorts of stuff cool stuff easier to do. (Like puzzels and stuff, oblivion planes would get wrecked by that spell.) I think all those cool things were worth it. I want you guys to be good enough to design all that cool stuff with out levatation ruining it.

F) I would like a bit more variety in the skills. A little more like morrowind.

G) Balance. I can still brutally rape stuff by locking it with paralysis or magic weakness. Potions I could break. It seemed that I could sometimes lock down enemies even with simple melee. It seems a common theme that magic is either just like archery (with bomb arrows) or is too powerful, so that will be hard to solve.

I) Scaling quest rewards: I shouldn't have to put off getting my quest reward so it stays useful. I hate that as well. Either have it get better as you level, or make it static.

On the whole I think that oblivion was a great game. I liked the new combat system, the quests were great, the lore was amazing, the scenery was beautiful.

So question about TES 4-5. In the lore wern't the anti-deadra fires supposed to stop the ancient elves (I'm not sure the guys with the ancient ruins in oblivion) from summoning dedra armies? I mean its great you stopped the four arms, but... didn't some of those guys survive in forests and crap?

P.S. Haven't played it in a while...

[Aemoth]

I agree, vanilla Oblivion was really buggy, the leveling was anoying, it felt bland, boring and rushed. They over payed for the voice acting that had around 5 minutes total of lines. . . but they give us the dev tools for a reason! They fully expected modification of the game and to ignore that is like ignoring half of the game.

The problems with leveling are easily solved both by the +5 attribute and OOO's scaling levels but with a cap to them. So yeah you can kill rats till 30, and the rats may have a 2 level spread, but you could also walk in on a vampire coven at level 1 and have those great "Oh Shi..." moments.

Environment can be diversified and cleaned up with weather packs.

OOO fixed most of the "LAWL RANDOM LOOT" chests that were in the dungeons and put in a reason to go exploring most of them.

You can get epic weapon quests where the rarest player made weapons are hidden in random places.

Scaling Quest rewards so you don't have to wait to get those items till you're level 20... get them now and they will grow with you.

a TON of diversification both in monsters as well as weaponry.

Combat can be changed with either new weapons, skills, techniques, or new magic. Archery can be fixed so the arrows don't move like they are paper being thrown through the air and it's actually worth using a bow.


For TES 5 I just want the dev tools to keep coming with it and I'll be happy. I'd love a more open main quest that's not all "Fetch" lined and extremely short, but I can deal with that as long as there is an open environment for the mod community to work with.


Seriously, I had to fetch the bastard son of the king, the soon to be savior of the realm from his chapel? THEN go fetch various random items, THEN go fetch sigil stones from gates (I ended up no clipping a few because they got boring even with all the mods)

[warty goblin]

Hmm... I haven't read through everything I'm just posting what I want for TES:V

A) Better AI. I liked what they did with the AI in oblivion. Its cool. It rocks. And it leaves so much to be desired. Improve it.

Agreed. Oblivion had awesome AI. I had a fight with a bunch of vampires once, one of which had no weapons. He was pretty deep in the cave, and by the time I got to him, I'd already killed three or four of his allies. He took one look at me, apparently realized that he might have some trouble punching a fully armored lady with a two hander to death, and promptly ran past me back up the passage where he grabbed one of his dead companion's weapons. That was totally awesome, so more moments like that please.


B) More Custimization of body types. 2nd-rate RPG's can do it now. You should too. (And by second rate I mean second to TES.)
What RPGS let you pick body scales? It creates a lot of problems with animation, and Oblivion has a lot more physical interaction animations than most games.


C) Less scaling. Or at least more variablity. I hate fire archons and scamps and what not dying out. Its sucks.
Honestly I don't care. They're all just stuff I reap.


D) Better random generator and a little bigger. Morrowind was maybe too big oblivion was too small.
I rather liked the size of Oblivion, since I could walk anywhere I wanted to go in a reasonable timeframe. On the other hand, more map is seldom a bad thing.


E) Levitation. Yes I know why this went, it makes all sorts of stuff cool stuff easier to do. (Like puzzels and stuff, oblivion planes would get wrecked by that spell.) I think all those cool things were worth it. I want you guys to be good enough to design all that cool stuff with out levatation ruining it.
I think they actually got rid of levitation because it would play unholy havok with the way they instanced pieces of the map. I suspect that this ties into AI design as well, although I'm not certain. I'll bet it would actually be fairly difficult to simply dump in there though.



G) Balance. I can still brutally rape stuff by locking it with paralysis or magic weakness. Potions I could break. It seemed that I could sometimes lock down enemies even with simple melee. It seems a common theme that magic is either just like archery (with bomb arrows) or is too powerful, so that will be hard to solve.
The one thing they really need to fix is stealth, which as it is I find completely unplayable. If I one-shot everything my weapons skills are so low that I can't outfight anything, which screws me over the instant I run into something I can't one-shot.

[Imposter]

Quick explanation for why levitation was removed in oblivion, for those who don't know:

A: Convenience. Map making and game design gets a lot harder if the player can simply fly around most of the obstacles.

B: The way large cities are built in game. Most of the map is a single gameworld, and the game automatically loads the landscape and objects around you as you move through it. However, cities are inside their own private gameworld, and those are only accessible through loading doors. (Other examples of this in action are the various oblivion areas, and the shivering isles). As a result, if you were to fly over the wall of a city in oblivion, you'd find yourself in an empty mockup of the town, designed to look good from outside of it. The main advantage of this is that the game can handle much more busy and detailed cities than morrowind could.

C: AI. For those who have played morrowind, you might remember the AI response to levitation. For those who haven't... Well, it wasn't very true to the "intelligence" part of the acronym. Now, there are a few ways they could have fixed this, the most obvious being to improve the AI. However, that's a long and difficult process. Removing levitation is easy, and it fixes so many other problems with the game too...

[Zeful]

What RPGS let you pick body scales? It creates a lot of problems with animation, and Oblivion has a lot more physical interaction animations than most games.

Phantasy Star Universe and Phantasy Star Portable for sure, and maybe Phantasy Star Online.

[Blaine.Bush]

What RPGS let you pick body scales? It creates a lot of problems with animation, and Oblivion has a lot more physical interaction animations than most games.

Guild wars. At least when I last played it.

[Stormthorn]

I) Scaling quest rewards: I shouldn't have to put off getting my quest reward so it stays useful. I hate that as well. Either have it get better as you level, or make it static.

If your weapons level up then you would only need the starting sword during the game.
Honostly, how many RPGs have weapons that passivly level after you own them?

[warty goblin]

If your weapons level up then you would only need the starting sword during the game.
Honostly, how many RPGs have weapons that passivly level after you own them?

Actually, it'd be pretty awesome. Make your sword a character! How sweet would a sentient weapon be? It could even justify something like VATS in game as well- you're letting Edgy McCutterson call the shots.

Actually there could be some real milage here. Give the player an intelligent axe/mace, sword, and bow. As you use the items, they level up along with you, 'remembering' powers they used to have in Yon Olde Glory Days. Let the player use other weapons, but your intelligent armory is a prickly lot, and if you use a mundane sword too much, Edgy will take offense and 'forget' powers. The rest of your sapient arsenal is fine though.

[Stormthorn]

Actually, it'd be pretty awesome. Make your sword a character! How sweet would a sentient weapon be? It could even justify something like VATS in game as well- you're letting Edgy McCutterson call the shots.

Actually there could be some real milage here. Give the player an intelligent axe/mace, sword, and bow. As you use the items, they level up along with you, 'remembering' powers they used to have in Yon Olde Glory Days. Let the player use other weapons, but your intelligent armory is a prickly lot, and if you use a mundane sword too much, Edgy will take offense and 'forget' powers. The rest of your sapient arsenal is fine though.

That requires most weapons being sentiant and haveing long lists of powers.
Which requires lots of time programing and memory space.

Especial if you want to have the same range of weapons as in the past games.

Because you cant have just 'some' weapons be like this, or players will stick with their first good sentiant weapon and use nothing else for the entire game, making your whole list of weapons useless.

[Zeful]

That requires most weapons being sentiant and haveing long lists of powers.
Which requires lots of time programing and memory space.

Especial if you want to have the same range of weapons as in the past games.

Because you cant have just 'some' weapons be like this, or players will stick with their first good sentiant weapon and use nothing else for the entire game, making your whole list of weapons useless.

If you do it that way, yes. If you were to make it so deceased party members gave power-ups that could make weapons sentient, it would be a different matter all-together.

[warty goblin]

That requires most weapons being sentiant and haveing long lists of powers.
Which requires lots of time programing and memory space.

Especial if you want to have the same range of weapons as in the past games.

Because you cant have just 'some' weapons be like this, or players will stick with their first good sentiant weapon and use nothing else for the entire game, making your whole list of weapons useless.

Exactly. I'd do it by giving you a sentient weapon set fairly early on. Maybe not tutorial level early, but certainly by second or third level. Every five or ten levels or so, you get access to another, better weapon and can transfer the consciousness of your old blade to the new one. The base stats go up a bit maybe, you get a cool new look, but your weapon keeps all the powers that you loved about it. Obtaining new weapons suitable for this could be fairly major quest chains.

The thing is I honestly don't care about equipment in most RPGs. It's just a thing, and all of the items are so devoid of personality that I'm completely happy to dump one for a better specimen, but I really don't feel excited about doing so. It just lets me keep up with the leveling Joneses. Even the special items are just normal ones with a marginally new coat of paint, and I'll happily dump the blade given to me for some quest the instant I find a better on the corpse of some random dude I just murdered.

What this system would allow is for you to have a couple weapons that were actually interesting. I care about my sword because I've had it for a long time, because it snarks wittily when I kill a major enemy, because it is really my sword, not just another thing I wave around. Who cares about the sword carried by Random Mook #2,451?

Besides, constantly taking dead people's stuff is a bit creepy and unheroic, no?

[EleventhHour]

Besides, constantly taking dead people's stuff is a bit creepy and unheroic, no?

Kleptomania : The Hero Complex.

It's true.

[chiasaur11]

Exactly. I'd do it by giving you a sentient weapon set fairly early on. Maybe not tutorial level early, but certainly by second or third level. Every five or ten levels or so, you get access to another, better weapon and can transfer the consciousness of your old blade to the new one. The base stats go up a bit maybe, you get a cool new look, but your weapon keeps all the powers that you loved about it. Obtaining new weapons suitable for this could be fairly major quest chains.

The thing is I honestly don't care about equipment in most RPGs. It's just a thing, and all of the items are so devoid of personality that I'm completely happy to dump one for a better specimen, but I really don't feel excited about doing so. It just lets me keep up with the leveling Joneses. Even the special items are just normal ones with a marginally new coat of paint, and I'll happily dump the blade given to me for some quest the instant I find a better on the corpse of some random dude I just murdered.

What this system would allow is for you to have a couple weapons that were actually interesting. I care about my sword because I've had it for a long time, because it snarks wittily when I kill a major enemy, because it is really my sword, not just another thing I wave around. Who cares about the sword carried by Random Mook #2,451?

Besides, constantly taking dead people's stuff is a bit creepy and unheroic, no?

I think Deus Ex did that kind of thing really well. You grew to appreciate your sidearm as you went.

And I still compulsively looted.

Hey, some dudes had Tranq darts.

[warty goblin]

Kleptomania : The Hero Complex.

It's true.
Since the usual order of operation is me bursting into their dwellings, then murdering them all and then taking their stuff, a more accurate description is probably Breaking and Entering, 1st Degree Murder and Robbery.

Since this often occurs as part of a premeditated 'loot run' it's Murder in the First Degree. Often I have a contract for doing so, but occasionally I simply go kill people because its an easier way to make money than honest work.

So yeah, Ye Olde RPG Hero is less a kleptomaniac, and more of a mass murdering sociopath for hire.

[chiasaur11]

Since the usual order of operation is me bursting into their dwellings, then murdering them all and then taking their stuff, a more accurate description is probably Breaking and Entering, 1st Degree Murder and Robbery.

Since this often occurs as part of a premeditated 'loot run' it's Murder in the First Degree. Often I have a contract for doing so, but occasionally I simply go kill people because its an easier way to make money than honest work.

So yeah, Ye Olde RPG Hero is less a kleptomaniac, and more of a mass murdering sociopath for hire.

Why I picked Death's Head for the Fallout LP, yes?

Mass murdering sociopath for hire is just a rude way of saying "freelance peacekeeping agent."

[ninjalemur]

So basically, you want Morrowind II?
I applaud this opinion.
I second the applause.

[Mewtarthio]

The thing is I honestly don't care about equipment in most RPGs. It's just a thing, and all of the items are so devoid of personality that I'm completely happy to dump one for a better specimen, but I really don't feel excited about doing so. It just lets me keep up with the leveling Joneses. Even the special items are just normal ones with a marginally new coat of paint, and I'll happily dump the blade given to me for some quest the instant I find a better on the corpse of some random dude I just murdered.

I honestly feel the same way. The only weapons I ever real feel any sort of emotional attachment towards are early-game ones that quickly have to get dumped for something newer and better. It's always really disappointing when that time comes, though. *sniff* Sorry, family heirloom blade that reminds me of the life so cruelly stolen from me, the legacy I strive to uphold, and the loved ones I fight to avenge, but generic ice axe #158 has three rune slots, so...

There is one exception to the "stats eventually win" rule, though: Helmets. If you have a detailed character creation screen that I spent any length of time on, I am not going to cover that face up, no matter how much I'm crippling myself. Exceptions for Dark Side Kotor (in which I quickly buy an opaque visor to hide the signs of corruption) and Dragon Age (in which the game thoughtfully removes the helmets during conversations, so it doesn't matter).

[ninjalemur]

I think a cool option for V would be to lead one of the kingdoms in revolt against the Empire to for it's own nation.

[factotum]

Quick explanation for why levitation was removed in oblivion, for those who don't know

Or, to put it more simply: Bethsoft couldn't be bothered to implement it properly, so they dropped it. (And I consider putting the inside of cities into a separate zone to be a backward step--the cities in Morrowind were completely integrated into the surrounding environment, why couldn't the ones in Oblivion have been the same?).

[ninjalemur]

I agree to ditch the scaling (as pretty much everyone does). One of the things I loved about Morrowind was the ability to find truly epic loot at low levels. I still remember being level five and finding a tree stump right next to the Thirsk Meadhall that contained an enchanted sword, a pair of gloves that boosted your sneak and security by 15 each, a ring that gave you night vision and a +20 marksman boost, as well as the five Ebony Arrows of Slaying, the best weapons in the game.

Some things they need to change in V:

1. Bring back the Morrowind NPC interaction system. The individual Bribe, Taunt, Intimadate, and Admire options were much easier and effective then the circle monstrosity you use in Oblivian. I loved being able to Taunt NPC's into attacking you. It is a great way to get rid of people with out getting a bounty. I killed the king of Morrowind this way.

2. Add more weapon classes. I would love to see Ax and Spear come back, but Blade should stay as a single class.

3. Add horseback fighting. I hate having to dismount every single time you have to kill a bandit.

4. Add more Factions. I loved the number of Factions in Morrowind. Makes for lots more side missions.

5. Less repetitive main story. God Oblivian's sucked. Morrowind's was actually pretty fun.

6. This is extremely unlikely, but i would love to see Crassius Curio show up. He is the most hilarious ES character to date. I loved being able to find The Lusty Argonian Maid in Oblivian.

7. The ability to become a werewolf, or at least be able to find Hircines Ring.

8. A Threads of the Webspinner style free-form quest. That was the hardest/most fun quest in Morrowind.

[Eldan]

Or, to put it more simply: Bethsoft couldn't be bothered to implement it properly, so they dropped it. (And I consider putting the inside of cities into a separate zone to be a backward step--the cities in Morrowind were completely integrated into the surrounding environment, why couldn't the ones in Oblivion have been the same?).

Well, I tried the Open Cities mod... it killed my computer, totally. One frame per second style, and it's a good machine. So, I guess, they just saw that they couldn't do it.

[Matar]

Well, I tried the Open Cities mod... it killed my computer, totally. One frame per second style, and it's a good machine. So, I guess, they just saw that they couldn't do it.

You know, I don't know if that's the fault of current technology or the coders at Bethesda just sucking ass.

Seriously.

Morrowind had the worst coding ever. Even on current computers it can. Even on the most top of the line current computers it can lag. Just because of how bad the coding is.

Oblivion is the same. In certain situations, you will lag. No if, ands, or butts. Even on top of the line rigs.

I can play Crysus just fine. Dragon Age just fine. Modern Warfare 2 just fine. This game should not lag in places, god damn it.

Like I said: Morrowind does have it's flaws. All round though, it was just... better then Oblivion. Did Oblivion fix some of them? Yes, it most certainly did. But it also got rid of some the best things about it.

Shivering Islands fixed some of these flaws, yeah. But quite a few were left, and it sucked.

Seriously, the whole Elder Scrolls franchise is like... getting things right, and then screwing it over. Daggerfall was great, but it had it's flaws. Morrowind was incredible, but it had it flaws and lost some fun that Daggerfall had. Oblivion had some good things, but lost things that Morrowind had.

So yeah.

[factotum]

Seriously, the whole Elder Scrolls franchise is like... getting things right, and then screwing it over.

Totally agreed. Magic was too powerful in Daggerfall, so they nerfed it into pretty much near uselessness in Morrowind; non-regenerating mana, pretty much all the nastiest critters in the game having high values of magicka reflection...at least that's ONE thing they finally got about right in Oblivion!

Even with that, though, I would rather play a spellslinger in Morrowind than pretty much any class ever in Oblivion. The immersion factor is just so much higher.

[Dogmantra]

they nerfed it into pretty much near uselessness in Morrowind;
I must just play this game really badly with melee characters, or excellently with magic characters, but I always saw R, ready magic, as the "I win" key.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Totally agreed. Magic was too powerful in Daggerfall, so they nerfed it into pretty much near uselessness in Morrowind; non-regenerating mana, pretty much all the nastiest critters in the game having high values of magicka reflection...at least that's ONE thing they finally got about right in Oblivion!

Even with that, though, I would rather play a spellslinger in Morrowind than pretty much any class ever in Oblivion. The immersion factor is just so much higher.

Drain Magicka (x) on Self for 1 sec. Instant full regen of mana.

[SolkaTruesilver]

You know, I don't know if that's the fault of current technology or the coders at Bethesda just sucking ass.

Seriously.

Morrowind had the worst coding ever. Even on current computers it can. Even on the most top of the line current computers it can lag. Just because of how bad the coding is.

Oblivion is the same. In certain situations, you will lag. No if, ands, or butts. Even on top of the line rigs.

I tried playing Morrowind after playing Oblivion for some time.

Bad mistake. The interface is... clunky. Oblivion was much more intuitive. Which is a shame, because I totally believe everybody telling me that Morrowind has much more depth.

When will there be a Total Conversion of Oblivion --> Morrowind?

[Eldan]

Someone already ported the entire Map. I think they are currently doing quests and NPC conversations.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Actually I prefered the Morrowind interface for the most part. You could actually equip stuff while watching your stats and you could fit more than 10 items on the inventory screen at once.

[Matar]

Actually I prefered the Morrowind interface for the most part. You could actually equip stuff while watching your stats and you could fit more than 10 items on the inventory screen at once.

Agreed 100%.

There is a mod coming out that seems like it'll be awesome. It basically uploads your current character data to a server for everyone to look at. Plus, you can earn trophies and stuff by doing certain things. It looks freaking great.

[factotum]

Drain Magicka (x) on Self for 1 sec. Instant full regen of mana.

Eh? How can that possibly work? You're draining magicka from yourself and giving it back to yourself, so by all rights you should end up with exactly what you started with, minus what it cost to cast the spell!

[Triaxx]

Absorb Magicka works that way. Drain Magicka however, lowers the Magicka stat and when it increases again the magicka on hand rises with the stat.

[factotum]

Wow. That is such a cheesy exploit it nearly makes my head explode. :smallbiggrin:

[Dogmantra]

You can also do Drain Intelligence 100 pts on self for 1 sec, but then you're making magic even more overpowered than it already is.

[Matar]

Magic? Overpowered? Only if you go out of your way to break it. Because of reflect it's almost useless at times.

Unless you use it to buff yourself. Some buffs are godlike.

[Dogmantra]

As I said, I seem to be the only person (even on an ES forum I frequent) who thinks that way, so I suppose it's just me that's weird.

[Triaxx]

Reflection is bad yes, but absorption is worse.

And come to think of it, the neve..never... the PC from Morrowind isn't seen on Morrowind again, doesn't say the empire doesn't see him again. Of course they could all be the same character, continually resurrected by a cabal of evil wizards, bent on making it die by it's enemies, but instead it just continues to live on through each test they put it through.

I hope it doesn't turn out to be aliens again.

[nooblade]

Magic isn't nearly as bad as Alchemy in vanilla Morrowind. You could do almost anything with that stuff, once you find a nice vendor with restocking ingredients (sell them back to increase the stock every time you look at it, no limits involved).

Do any of the mods really fix it? Part of it is the brokenness of bartering... I am fond of the restocking (now we're cookin' with gas!). It'd be nice if the potions had more of a logarithmic effect. You know, so I don't get one that restores 1000 health per second for a day.

[Triaxx]

Something else that annoys me. I don't mind levitation being gone. I didn't play Morrowind despite trying, but I wish they'd included slow fall. Because leaping off Anvil castle with guards chasing me isn't exactly fun when I have to load the autosave because I smashed into the dirt.

[Matar]

The trick to not breaking Alchemy is to not break alchemy >_>. Just don't do it, and there are no real worries.

Honestly, in the next Elder Scrolls I want there to be like... when you cast a ranged spell, it actually bounces off the reflect instead of auto effecting you. That would be great.

[Slayn82]

Personally, i would settle for the next game not starting with the same "you are a prisoner of the empire that escapes/is freed and goes to fullfil a greater destiny". Arena, Morrowind and Oblivion did that, Daggerfall had a shipwreck instead.

What, is there in the imperial city an holy cell where all those guys stayed, with an "imbue with destiny" buff? I kinda picture all those 4 heroes getting reunited to decide the fate of the kingdom, and them confraternizing about how bad was the gruel there and how they let the goblins and rats run rampant.

Anyway, i think the most powerfull hero of the games was the hero of the first. He could beat down liches easily. And, at least, he can look the heros of Daggerfall and Morrowind and say: yeah, yeah... you had it easy, just a province, sometimes not even that, but i had to walk around the entire frakking continent. Took me years, i say, years.

All the games always had something exploitable; Arena had Stat boosts(that turned healer the most solid class), Daggerfall had magic itens and magic training (e r - casting and cancelling the spell anyone?), Morrowind had the alchemy, dunno about oblivion, not had played it very much. But pratically every game in it style has some easy exploitable way.

[factotum]

Magic isn't nearly as bad as Alchemy in vanilla Morrowind. You could do almost anything with that stuff, once you find a nice vendor with restocking ingredients (sell them back to increase the stock every time you look at it, no limits involved).


They did actually patch it to make it slightly less broken--in the game as released you could make potions that would boost your Intelligence by more than 100, and since the power of the potion you created was based on Int, it was pretty trivial to make an Int potion, drink it, make a stronger Int potion with your new Int, drink that, and before you knew it you'd have Int of like 35,000 and could make some seriously broken stuff. Once they set the upper limit of a Fortify Stat potion at 100 it became a lot harder to do that!

[Matar]

Really? I never really abuse all that badly myself. Didn't know that.

Doesn't matter though. Potions stack with themselves, so getting arbitrarily high stats is simple enough.

[Eldan]

There was a video on youtube once, of someone starting a new game with an alchemy character and then finishing Dagoth Ur in a handful of minutes after brewing the +9000 potion of epicness.

[Matar]

Impressive, but not all that amazing. I've seen a vid of someone beating it real quick without that abuse.

And here we are. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1IRxTN-_kU&feature=related)

[nooblade]

A mod that puts an upper limit on the Fortify Attribute effect would be awesome. I'll search for one just in case I have an interest in playing again soon.

You don't need Keening if you want to kill Dagoth Ur, you can skip the whole Heart of Lorkhan business. The potions do it better, Alchemy will make you faster and stronger than any mere god. I did it once with a ton of Fortify Strength, Auriel's bow, and a single Ebony arrow. Never tried it with a weaker bow, but I'm guessing it would still work just because there's no upper limit to strength fortification. I was a little disappointed that it didn't work in Hand-to-hand, but I did knock him down. I think it could've worked with more strength.

Shame that Azura doesn't show up to congratulate you. I guess he did do a Sauron thing or something.

Speaking of which, you can also kill the Heart of Lorkhan itself, avoiding the script that does it, using the same business. Not as specialized as Kagernac's tools, but it would've still got the job done if there were a script that recognizes the death of that thing. It kinda just disappears.

[Rae]

A mod that puts an upper limit on the Fortify Attribute effect would be awesome.

Why bother? It's a single player game - if you don't like a mechanic, just don't use (abuse) it.

[EleventhHour]

Impressive, but not all that amazing. I've seen a vid of someone beating it real quick without that abuse.

And here we are. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1IRxTN-_kU&feature=related)

These people always make me laugh, especially the ones who go "Watch me beat your precious hours-long game in TEN MINUTES! lol."

This is my line for those people ;

Guy : "Watch this, I'll beat it in ten minutes!"
*nine minutes, fifty seconds later*
Guy : "HA! See? Your game is pathetically short."
E : "...What about the thousands of side quests? And the unique items? And all the actual quests in the mainquest? You have... 5... 4... 3... 2... Oh, too late. Get back to playing, gameslave."

[Rae]

This is my line for those people ;

Guy : "Watch this, I'll beat it in ten minutes!"
*nine minutes, fifty seconds later*
Guy : "HA! See? Your game is pathetically short."
E : "...What about the thousands of side quests? And the unique items? And all the actual quests in the mainquest? You have... 5... 4... 3... 2... Oh, too late. Get back to playing, gameslave."

I think your missing the point mate.

[Mewtarthio]

Impressive, but not all that amazing. I've seen a vid of someone beating it real quick without that abuse.

And here we are. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1IRxTN-_kU&feature=related)

How did he manage to kill the Heart before Sunder/Keening's mortal wounds did him in?

[factotum]

Impressive, but not all that amazing. I've seen a vid of someone beating it real quick without that abuse.

And here we are. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1IRxTN-_kU&feature=related)

There appeared to be several very obvious jumps in that video...the guy could have been doing ANYTHING during those!

[Rae]

There appeared to be several very obvious jumps in that video...the guy could have been doing ANYTHING during those!

The 'jumps' were from using the intervention/recall spells.

[Stormthorn]

The 'jumps' were from using the intervention/recall spells.
Yes. You can indeed beat Morrowind that quickly.

Its a result of the game developers being way too leniant on the players. I would make Sunder and Keening kill you instantly but give you a warning when you pick them up about that.
Problem solved.



You don't need Keening if you want to kill Dagoth Ur

But in-universe killing him this way is worthless. He is immortal, after all. He just sorts comes back the first time you kill him, with the assumption that any smart player wouldnt bother attacking him any more. Lazy development that they didnt assume people would still try to kill him and have him keep respawning in game.


The abusable thing in Oblivion is magic.
Make a spell that gives Weakness to magic 100 for 5 seconds. Name it Spell A.
Make a duplicate spell and name it Spell B.

Cast A and then B. Since A is alreayd in effect, B will be doubled. Then recast A, to have its effect re-applied with the double bonus of B. Then cast B again...and so on.
In fact, just three castings of each one will give a 3200% percent weakness to magic. Now you 20 damage fireball is a 640 damage fireball.

[Matar]

How did he manage to kill the Heart before Sunder/Keening's mortal wounds did him in?

My thoughts on how it happened.

He picked Orc for his race because it gets a nice bonus to attack and such. Rage is nice.

And then just attacked it faster then what it wounded him.

Easy xD.


The 'jumps' were from using the intervention/recall spells.

Indeed.