The Let's Rant and Rave About Oblivion Thread [Archive]

Zaleukos

January 18th, 2007, 16:20

Oblivion is the worst TES game I've played for any length of time and possibly my biggest disappointment ever (due to me liking the predecessors a lot). It's like a romantic comedy from Hollywood, incredibly skillful craftsmanship but very empty.

For me TES games always were about replayability and free form roaming through quantity. The quests and the characters might be flatter than in some other games, but I could always count on there to be something new for me to explore. I really looked forward to Oblivion as I was a big fan of Morrowind which is up there with the Gothics among my top RPG experiences. Daggerfall was also cool for its time but suffered from a very lacking presentation (lots of features werent fully implemented). These games also had level scaling, but not as extreme as Oblivion. So where did the much more polished Oblivion fail?

Quantity: Too few quests and factions makes you run out of things to do and reduce replay value A LOT. Replay value was IMHO the main strength of Morrowind, and the guilds were much more fleshed out in MW with questlines that were rather long compared to those in Oblivion.

Console interface that's developed for 13 year olds. The game feels like a console port. Menus and the like were not even rescaled to make use of the higher resolution on a PC.

MAJOR: Retarded quest mechanics where you dont get enough oral/written hints, making the bleeding COMPASS ARROW necessary for solving quests. The quests are also more often than not scripted in such a way that triggers have to be activated in a certain order...

MAJOR: Lack of branching in storylines and guild selection: The latter was admittedly a problem in Morrowind too, but there you could ignore it and just focus on one guild and still have enough things for your character to do. Not so with the low number of quests in Oblivion.

Level scaling: A historical weakness of TES games that was in Daggerfall (almost as dumbly implemented as in Oblivion, but less problematic as you could get by without optimizing your character) and Morrowind (where it was less intrusive) as well. But it reaches new heights here, making certain character types (a thief levelling on thieving skills) completely unviable. Any system that requires you to plan your levelling extensively disrupts the fun of the game and kills immersion. Allied NPCs also dont seem to level up to the same extent as your enemies. Anyone tried making the Kvatch guards survive at level 15 or so?

Voice acting: Sean Bean and Patrick Stewart do their part very well, but was there only money in the budget for 3 or four other actors? I hate hearing the same voices over and over again, and I find it a bit odd for High Chancellor Ocato to have the same voice as Glarthir the Psychotic. It would have been better to allow one to switch of voice acting completely, as the repeated use of the same few voices kills immersion.

MAJOR: NPC AI in combination with a ton of escort quests. Possibly dumber than in Gothic 3. NPCs run in BETWEEN MY SWORD AND THE ENEMY. NPCs hit each other and start killing each other. The so called Radiant AI causes a lot of friendly fire incidents to end with wholesale massacres.

A misused physics engine: Walk close to the shelves in a shop and watch the inventory fly all over the place.

MAJOR: Twitch-based combat is not for me. Combined with the "allied" AI its a game breaker.

A lack of weapon types and skills compared to earlier incarnations make each character feel less unique. I know this is cosmetic, but its a big deal to me.

MAJOR: The most populous province of a world-conquering empire has a rather ridiculous population density. The scale is way off. This was less problematic in Morrowind as MW took place on a frontier island, and not an issue at all in humungous Daggerfall.

MAJOR: Random dungeons. Why reuse the obviously faulty dungeon generation system of Daggerfall (combine about ten unique larger dungeon blocks at random)? Sure, the dungeons arent mating octopi this time, but they repeat. And repeat. Pure shite and inexcusable in this day and age.

MAJOR: Oblivion gates and the, as advertised on the box, infinite realm of Oblivion. Random generated lava levels just dont do it for me. I would recommend any new players to avoid (the realm of) Oblivion and its blasted gates by never going to Kvatch, so the shite doesnt shoot up all over the place.

Mods can fix some of these issues, but not the ones I labelled as major. Fans have told me that there are quest mods and the like, but my experience with mods for all games (including say NWN that was intended as a construction set) is that fan made content varies in quality, and that one has to wade through a lot of poo to get to the nice 5%. I played the game for 20 hours, uninstalled it, and wont touch it again. It bored me and that was due to what I perceive as major design flaws. In the future I'll try to only buy Bethesda "RPGS" from the bargain bin. I concede that the game looks good, some of the quest ideas were neat and new, and that the AI and physics engine could have been nice parts of better thought out design. This isnt Neverwinter Nights 1, a construction set with a campaign tacked on to it, but a GAME with a construction set tacked onto it.

txa1265

January 18th, 2007, 16:52

As I'm replaying now to work on the "Knights of the Nine" module I bought, I am reminded of a few things:

- The game looks great.

- It plays very smoothly with much load zone lag since the patch.

- All the characters look weird. I just don't know what is up with the faces ...

- Combat can be pretty fun. I still want to kick everyone, though ...

- The world is full or mostly pretty nothingness. I don't think it is wonderful strolling through the unpopulated hills ... sure it is pretty, but I want to feel like I'm in constant mortal peril, not occasional mild danger.

- There is a distinct feeling that nothing you do matters ... I have a nice 'Arena Champion' badge, and people heaped platitudes about how the Gray Prince was known throughout the land and how since I beat him ... well, you get what I mean. Nobody knows that I'm arena champ.

- Quests & Failure - when I took on the Arena champ, I knew I was betraying my promise to help him uncover his past. I was *failing* at a quest ... as he lay dead, I got a notice that 'You won't ever be able to uncover his past' - but the message was 'Quest Completed'! C'mon, hurt my feelings - let me know that I screwed up ... I can handle it! (*sniff*)

- Choices and Consequences - I met the guy in Wye who gives out the Fish quest, and pretty much talking to him gives you the quest and talking again ends it. What if I wanted to extort from him after getting the fish scales - he *was* pretty desperate after all ... sorry, not in this game.

And that sums up the major items - it is a huge world with loads to do, but little of it feels like it matters, nor do you feel like you are making choices.

Acleacius

January 18th, 2007, 17:10

Zaleukos very indept, it's been so long since I played DaggerFall, Morrwind or even Oblifion I didn't remember all your points until you mentioned them, thanks. :)

I couldn't agree more, when NoN was release I starting trying to reorient myself since there had been a patch as well since last I played.
The Massive amounts of Mods just trying to fix the game, so now since the patch most all previous Mods had to be updated.
This means if you had a set of Mods which at least made the game tolerable, you can only hope the Mod Authors are still around and you can find the thread.
Good lord have your tried to do a search on the offical forums, it's total insanity with a mind numbing number of post to try to sort through.

Add to this trying to get a grasped of the available Mods is beyond spending a couple hours of catching up, I proabably spent at least 3 nights of about 4 hours each and just scratched the surface, it will concievably take the time it would to actually play the game certianly 40 hours to get really up todate.

Plane of Oblivion was a joke, remember how they were guarding it as a secret?
Lol, can't imagine why. ;)

I agree just skip the Main Quest the talented actors give the MQ a little life but there is only so much they can do with poorly written story once you have to deal with the gates.
Even though there is a talented team of Modders that Rebuild Kavch and allow you to be ruler this means having to deal with the MQ and all the nasty gates.

Oblfion is like a relationship from hell, sure you want to try to like it but it constantly bites you. :p

Edit
txa1265
You can actually finsih the Grey Princes quest before fighting him and Spoilers;

He begs you to kill, even refusing to fight back in the arena.

Jaz

January 18th, 2007, 18:41

Plane of Oblivion was a joke, remember how they were guarding it as a secret?
Lol, can't imagine why. ;)
Well, we saw more of the planes of Oblivion in Battlespire :p.

Sorcha Ravenlock

January 18th, 2007, 19:27

it is a huge world with loads to do, but little of it feels like it matters, nor do you feel like you are making choices.

Yes, that sums it up for me.

It's a big world, there is lots do do, but even with mods like OOO, what you do don't matter.
Combine that with the fact that the game is incredibly linear ( In morrowind for example there was such an abundance of guild quests, you did not have to do them all to become head of the guild, instead you could leave onces you didn't like) and (without mods) does not reward you for the one thing that is so much fun about sandbox games, which is exploration, and it is a game that bores me to tears. The combat is fun for a while, but it only keeps me entertained for a while, after that I just want more out of a game.

I keep going back to it, trying to find the 'magic', that 'getting sucked into a game', like I had with Morrowind, but Oblivion leaves me cold. Or maybe I should say sometimes it leaves me red-hot, I had such high hopes for the game, I wanted to like it so badly. The whole game just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I wish I could like it, I really would, but in all honesty I doubt I'll buy any other Bethesda product straight at release...

magerette

January 18th, 2007, 20:13

I made it a sticky, so the visitors from the Codex could find it!! :biggrin:

:D Don't tease the animals.

I can't bash Oblivion since I didn't buy it--nothing about it, especially the hefty price tag, encouraged me to think I would like it. I did buy and play Morrowind and really enjoyed it in the beginning, but never finished it, if such a game could be said to be finishable.

I think Jaz had a good point about each TES game dropping some of the features you liked in the last--I found the actual rpg content of Daggerfall to really be dribbled away in Morrowind, tho the graphics did mesmerize me--but that's enough bashing from someone who hasn't played the game.;)

dteowner

January 18th, 2007, 21:17

There is a distinct feeling that nothing you do matters ... I have a nice 'Arena Champion' badge, and people heaped platitudes about how the Gray Prince was known throughout the land and how since I beat him ... well, you get what I mean. Nobody knows that I'm arena champ.Morrowind disappointed me so much that I never bought Oblivion, but this thought nearly sums up the critical flaw in both titles for me, as I've mentioned many times before. Rather than "nothing you do matters", I'd say "what you do doesn't matter" because character growth (and often story progression) was exactly the same for saving the world versus standing in the swamp for days and killing a million rats. You'd get the same skill increases, levels, loot (nearly), and recognition. Ick. I spent good money on a new video card just so I could play MW at a decent framerate (and with pretty water) and my frustration was mountainous.

txa1265

January 18th, 2007, 21:42

Morrowind was my first TES game (again, late to the party) ... and I was impressed with it for a bit in terms of size and scope ... but after I got Gothic 2 I could never go back.

Fenris

January 19th, 2007, 01:29

This Game is the Harbinger of Doom for Mankind. I played the Elder Scrolls Series since Arena and Morrowind was already a Disappointment for me (ok, Battlespire was also Crap ^^).

HiddenX

January 19th, 2007, 01:56

I played & finished

Arena
Daggerfall
Battlespire
Redguard
Morrowind
Oblivion

My TES favourites are still
Daggerfall, Battlespire and Redguard

Morrowind was good:
1) great story
2) lots of quests
3) huge world
4) many different groups to join

but not great:
1) bad enemy leveling
2) bad economy model
3) bad combat
4) less choices and consequences
5) mini dungeons

Oblivion was good:
1) lots of quests - some of them very good
2) better combat

but not great because of
1) bad enemy/chest leveling
2) even less choices and consequences
3) bad story
4) repetive gameplay (Oblivion plane, dungeons)
5) bad dialogue-system
6) bad interface

PS: All TES games are more action aventures than role playing games for me.

bottom line:

Bethesda is always trying to make a huge world simulator (exceptions: Battlespire and Redguard) with absolute freedom.

For my taste absolute freedom is boring.
I want to make choices with consequences to me, the world and the people.
I want to think about my next step.
I want a challenge.

So Bethesda think about this and read the crpg ingredients thread.

Corwin

January 19th, 2007, 03:41

But look on the bright side, they're also making Fallout 3!! :biggrin: Just think of the forum fun we'll have then!! lol

nameless hero

January 19th, 2007, 04:36

I bought Oblivion last year, played about 20-30 hours then stopped from boredom. Today I finished Gothic 3. Now im planning to finish Oblivion. My opinions of the games are that Oblivion is a more well-done (and optimised) game. I think I found oblivion better than Gothic 3, even though I was disapointed with it. Gothic 3 just didnt have that "Zaz" to it like its oredecesors. Offcourse I still think Bethesda could learn a great deal from PB, and vice versa.

mudsling3

January 19th, 2007, 05:27

I bet G3 would have been a different game if there were not Oblivion or $$ that it brought in. And I was hoping the influence would took place in the opposite direction. Oblivion, I have it since the first day...I just have too many other games to do...

Jaz

January 19th, 2007, 11:33

I played & finished

Arena
Daggerfall
Battlespire
Redguard
Morrowind
Oblivion

My TES favourites are still
Daggerfall, Battlespire and Redguard

Same p&f-list here; we two must be the only people in the world who played and liked both Battlespire and Redguard :).

Zaleukos

January 19th, 2007, 11:48

I should have mentioned that TES games fulfilled a different kind of RPG need for me compared to say Gothic. Gothic (except for number 3) has always been about great NPCs and a believable world, while TES was replayability through quantity. Depending on my mood I enjoy both concepts but spent more time with TES due to the nonlinearity.

I should add that my biggest gripe isnt that Oblivion spoiled a franchise I liked. That has happened before and will happen again. What I dislike is that it due to massive marketing, console domination, and relatively polished state upon release (in this case that for once is a negative:p) will be the golden standard of RPGs for the next 3-4 years. And given that it is a step away from the kind of RPG I enjoy that is very very problematic...

cutterjohn

January 20th, 2007, 21:58

My experiences with Oblivion are, primarily, derived from the following:
Played and finished Daggerfall, but skipped Redguard(looked more like an adventure game), and Battlespire(sounded like a Hack'n'Slash).

Later I picked up Morrowind GOTY edition, and played it alot, but never finished it. I missed random dungeons v. the small handcrafted ones of Morrowind. Missed some of the skills, like climbing, etc. The variety of quest, factions, and main quest was nice.

Gothic 2. Nice game. Good use of voice acting without overly limiting dialog. Horrid UI(inventory management hell). i.e. I enjoyed it, but no where as much as morrowind.

Didn't read much about Oblivion, but I had hoped that in the best case they would have moved more back towards Daggerfall style or in the worst case leave the Morrowind style unchanged, but using a newer engine. I was disappointed with the further dumbing down of the game by further reduction of skills, action based combat(and not very well done), poor application of some of the side technologies purchased(facegen, havok, the soil erosion thingy, etc.), quest GPS, trivial dialog, even fewer voice actors than MW, under populated capital and province of a continent spanning empire, changes to the magic system(dumbing down), obvious unchanged console oriented UI, poor quality of most of the quests(Dark Brotherhood ones were the best), lack of options in completing quests, lack of consequences(good or bad in completing quests), the mini games, loot & creature levelling, still using interior cells for building AND now cities, horse with no armor or ability to fight while mounted, nickling and diming for crappy little modules, NPCs that act no better than simple scripted ones(so much for "Radiant" A"I"), etc. So, in the end, I'd give Oblivious a 2/10 as an RPG, or a 7-8/10 as an action game, but since it was pawned off as an RPG it gets a 2/10. Quit after 15h, while looking over a house that I wanted my char to burgle, got to thinking about how nice it would've been to be able to fly/levitate or climb to that second story window and make an entrance coupled with yet another rock stupid NPC babbling about mudcrabs. It just drove home what a lousy implementation that Oblivion turned out to be, so I quit. (Plan to try it again some day with all sorts of mods...)

I have since played Gothic 3, and found that while it was released to early, that it was a MUCH better RPG than Oblivion. Combat impllementation was almost as bad as Oblivions. I was also VERY happy to find that PB had discovered the wonders of mouse pointer based UI. The world of G3 didn't feel like an empty disneyland. So, as a comparison I'd have to give it a 7-8/10 as an RPG.

I've also played NWN2. Overhyped, under deliverance on graphics unless you always zoom in max. Mostly linear. Lousy camera. Lousy NPC AI. Still, it's a better RPG overall than Oblivious. 7-8/10.

Played NWN1 too, but I still haven't been able to force myself to get past the halfway point ATM, after which I should have the purportedly better SoU and HotU plus Kingmaker series. Lousy NPC AI. No rating on this one ATM.

Played every IE based game. Found them to be dull and never was able to force myself to finish them. Lousy pathinding and NPC AI.

Bored with KotOR. *yawn*

Loved some of the old SSI AD&D gold box games, Darklands, Fallout 1 & 2, M&M through VII, Wizardry 1-8(I loved 8), Wizard and Warriors(overhyped, but I had some fun with it), surprisingly the action RPG Divine Divinity(didn't expect much, and it turned out to be pretty good).

Basically also cannot stand(very much of) Nox, Diablo 1 & 2, Titan Quest, Sacred, etc. i.e. pretty much every action RPG, but DO have fun with most roguelikes excepting nethack which I don't care for.

Can't stand the inevitable extended grind portion of MMO"RPG"s. I did have fun with Minions of Mirth when you could have parties of chars on the official servers, but now I mostly play with a party in a single player game.

Actually the most fun that I expect to have with Oblivion is when the PS3 version gets released, and then watching all the little XBOX360 and PS3 fanbois flame the crap out of each other. Should be good entertainment for one and all.

Fallout 3: I'll be waiting for that to hit the bargain bins, even IF someone who had similar experiences with Oblivious detailed here, recommends it.

Squeek

January 22nd, 2007, 21:28

The TES games have had a huge problem with balance ever since Daggerfall. IMO, Bethseda tried and failed to correct that with Oblivion. There's a lot to like about Oblivion, but it just isn't one of those games you love.

I was unable to complete Oblivion (or Morrowind for that matter), because I got bored. I tried a ton of mods, too. That helped, but not enough, apparently.

TES needs to do two things, IMO. First, they need to raise their standards for quality control. Their products are just too buggy. Second, they need to remake Daggerfall (It was clearly the best TES game, despite it's flaws).

ToddMcF2002

January 22nd, 2007, 22:13

Wouldnt it be easier to rename http://rpgwatch.com to http://www.bitchaboutbethesdadaily.com?

Acleacius

January 23rd, 2007, 01:27

Iirc, in the movie link given about the sivering isles, one of the devs said (something like) "we're using different actors for each NPC since they are so distint, but in oblifion we didn't need to use diffent voices since so many NPCs said the same thing."
Lol, the devs don't even get it. :p

Corwin

January 23rd, 2007, 02:26

Wouldnt it be easier to rename http://rpgwatch.com to http://www.bitchaboutbethesdadaily.com?

No, instead I started this thread!! What's your problem!!??!!

txa1265

January 23rd, 2007, 04:30

No, instead I started this thread!! What's your problem!!??!!

Exactly - if you have noticed, there has been a funneling effect of complaints here ... it is working. Expressing concern of Bethesda handling Fallout is not attributable to Oblivion bashing, as any reasonable fan of both games would definitely have concerns...

ToddMcF2002

January 23rd, 2007, 04:42

My problem??? Well I used to be able to run 8 miles a day and now 35 minutes on an eliptical makes me feel like I'm going to throw up. I can't drink more than 4 beers without feeling like shit the next day and I used to be able to kick back a solid dozen.

On the upside - I stopped this thread dead in its tracks for hours - leaving you all wallowing in guilt for your shamless bashing of Bethesda.

Now I've had my fun and you may resume your tirade!!!!! LOL

Corwin

January 23rd, 2007, 08:15

Yep, as I suspected, it's advanced old age and senility!! :)

xSamhainx

January 24th, 2007, 02:52

TES 4 Life!

That's all, carry on.

Jaz

January 24th, 2007, 07:31

Ohhh yes, Sammy.
...remember how our MW characters Iron Maiden and Gunther dated...? Teehee.

xSamhainx

January 24th, 2007, 10:04

There I was worried about her messing around in Dwemer ruins, little did I know that would soon be the least of my worries... ='.'=

Jaz

January 24th, 2007, 23:20

...and you're right to be worried. He suffered from porphyric hemophilia at the time.

ToddMcF2002

January 25th, 2007, 02:27

Ah Morrowind... the magic.. the mystery.. the romance??? err...

txa1265

January 25th, 2007, 05:08

Having just finished Knights of the Nine, let me quickly say that they didn't use that opportunity to fix any of the fundamental issues of the game.

Acleacius

January 25th, 2007, 08:15

An impressive constitution you have txa1265, congrats. :)

JDR13

January 25th, 2007, 09:09

Having just finished Knights of the Nine, let me quickly say that they didn't use that opportunity to fix any of the fundamental issues of the game.

Already??? Didn't you just start that last week?

txa1265

January 25th, 2007, 13:57

An impressive constitution you have txa1265, congrats. :)

:D

Actually, my total game time was just over 20 hours, and that included becoming Grand Champion of the Arena, ascending the Mage Guild ranks, and doing some other random quests ... so it wasn't too bad ;)

txa1265

January 25th, 2007, 16:58

Already??? Didn't you just start that last week?

Looking at my saves, I started on the 12th ... so about 12 days.

JDR13

January 25th, 2007, 23:28

:D

Actually, my total game time was just over 20 hours, and that included becoming Grand Champion of the Arena, ascending the Mage Guild ranks, and doing some other random quests ... so it wasn't too bad ;)

Ok, I understand now. You went straight to the KotN quest pretty much. I thought you had played through the whole game again.

txa1265

January 25th, 2007, 23:29

Ok, I understand now. You went straight to the KotN quest pretty much. I thought you had played through the whole game again.

I did start from scratch ... but had no desire to take on the whole 100+ hours again - too much other stuff to do!

Acleacius

January 26th, 2007, 11:58

JDR13
" I thought you had played through the whole game again."

Hehe, no one has that high of consititution, well no PC gamer.
Much less even playing it one time with no mods, not sure anyone could put up with the 150 hours worth of console crap popups every 5 miniutes, if any "PC only gamer" had completed everything without a mod, I owe them a beer. ;)

The No Popup mod maybe the greatest mod ever made. :)

JDR13

January 26th, 2007, 13:12

What do you mean by "popups"?

txa1265

January 26th, 2007, 14:15

if any "PC only gamer" had completed everything without a mod, I owe them a beer. ;)

Hey - you owe me a beer! My original play-through for my review was mod-free :)

What do you mean by "popups"?

Here you go - expect to see about a hundred of these during 'Knights of the Nine' ...

http://txa1265.spymac.com/pictures/Obliv_KotN_8.jpg

...and, yes, it really does occupy about 1/3 or the screen real estate.

JDR13

January 26th, 2007, 22:32

Aha! So what does the no-popup mod do? Reduce it to just letters?

ToddMcF2002

January 27th, 2007, 01:11

Total Removal actually. A must have.
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=3394

You should really check the description on alot of these. Some great stuff:
http://betteroblivion.com/alist.php

JDR13

January 27th, 2007, 01:33

I'm careful not to go overboard with too many mods. I've already decided that when I finally get around to seriously playing Oblivion I'll probably try one of those texture mods to sharpen the distant graphics, but not much else. I don't like it when mods change so many things that it becomes a different game altogether.

I was thinking about trying that "Obscuro" mod because I've heard a lot of positive thing about it, but it just changes too much. I would like to find a mod that does away with the auto-scaling for enemies and loot but not much else. An "Obscuro-lite" anyone?

I also refuse to use any mod that actually adds\changes any objects, enemies, spells, quest, etc. At least until I've played through the entire game and experienced it the way the Devs intended it to be.

Moriendor

January 27th, 2007, 01:53

I'm careful not to go overboard with too many mods.

A wise decision. The no pop-up mod is certainly not required. In fact, there are a few quests that are very hard to solve without the guidance (I can't wait for the first person to quote that statement to let us all know that they were oh-so uber hardcore to figure every single quest all out by themselves... OMG, I'm sooo proud of you! No. Really. I am! :biggrin: ).
Anyway, you will occasionally (maybe on about a half dozen to a dozen quests) be looking for the proverbial needle in a haystick without the pop-up pointers.
I'd keep pop-ups turned on for your first play-through. You can always just click on "continue" as you can see in the screenie above (i.e. without actually reading the help text) if you feel like your hand is being held too much. And then -if you should happen to get stuck- you can just check your journal (where the pop-up pointers will all be listed) if you require help.

GothicGothicness

January 27th, 2007, 02:29

I'm careful not to go overboard with too many mods.

I prefer not to change the gameplay with mods until I played throught the game once however there are are a lot of performance, and grahpics enhancement mods you really should install for this game..... not that it makes it any better.... but at least you'll get to look at very pretty graphics while playing :D

ToddMcF2002

January 27th, 2007, 04:21

I was thinking about trying that "Obscuro" mod because I've heard a lot of positive thing about it, but it just changes too much. I would like to find a mod that does away with the auto-scaling for enemies and loot but not much else. An "Obscuro-lite" anyone?

Francesco's levelled creatures is lighter. I've played it myself - it mixes things up well and keeps it challenging without throwing extra creatures at you (which Obscuro's does). More importantly, the installer allows you to deselect all extra creatures and items if you wish, leaving you with just the leveling tweaks. Obscuro's approach to leveling AND extra enemies can play havok with your framerate so be forwarned.

I plan on playing Obscuro's more extensively but my machine cannot handle 8-12 enemies on the screen at once which can happen with Obscuro's.

I am a bit puzzled about some of these folks who are anti mod and then turn around and complain about the handholding? Maybe SOME quests are particularly difficult without the compass and popups but so what? There are countless quests in the game and you can turn the handholding back on at any point???

JDR13

January 27th, 2007, 06:51

JDR13

January 27th, 2007, 06:54

[QUOTE=ToddMcF2002;17263]Francesco's levelled creatures is lighter. I've played it myself - it mixes things up well and keeps it challenging without throwing extra creatures at you (which Obscuro's does). More importantly, the installer allows you to deselect all extra creatures and items if you wish, leaving you with just the leveling tweaks. Obscuro's approach to leveling AND extra enemies can play havok with your framerate so be forwarned.
QUOTE]

Does Obscuro's mod actually add new creatures, or just increase the number of existing creatures? I also heard that Obscuro adds some new graphics(icons, effects, etc.) can you confirm that?

abbaon

January 27th, 2007, 10:54

I'm actually kind of surprised that Bethesda didn't release a patch to give users the option of turning off the auto-scaling. I mean considering all the negative backlash they've received because of it.

My guess is that they don't give a sh*t because they've already made their millions off the game.
You couldn't just turn off the auto-scaling. It would mean going through and setting the level of every wilderness area, dungeon, and quest. You'd have to balance those for different builds and different paths through the game, which means some degree of QA cycle. Lots of little details, like movement rates and enemy tenacity, were decided under the assumption that you can handle anything you meet, so they'd have to be reexamined. Loot availability would also require your attention, to keep a sprint through Xylywyld from netting the player a full suit of glass. In short, they'd have to address all of the issues that drove them to auto-scaling in the first place - and God help them if they messed it up. You can give a sh*t about the concerns of your most vocal customers and still not have the luxury of redesigning the game to appease them.

Of course, they may not care. I wouldn't. :)

My complaints with Oblivion, which I can't find mods to address:
You can win every fight with block, slash slash. If a power attack automatically broke a block, and your opponents knew it, then that might stop you from sleepwalking through every encounter, but it might also expose a different pattern for you to exploit. I suspect that the enemies simply don't have enough options to behave unpredictably in combat.
You can't get a higher-res texture pack that doesn't stomp all over Bethesda's art style. Texture artists have to leave every surface crawling with kenophobic "detail" (http://betteroblivion.com/textures/index.php).

JDR13

January 27th, 2007, 11:28

"Of course, they may not care. I wouldn't."

I guess it's a good thing that you're not a game designer:)

Acleacius

January 27th, 2007, 11:44

txa1265
"Hey - you owe me a beer! My original play-through for my review was mod-free"
Done. :)
How many hours did it take to finsih every quest and dungeon once, since the dungeons respawn?

JDR13
"I'm careful not to go overboard with too many mods."
"I was thinking about trying that "Obscuro" mod"
Just incase you didn't know for sure, these two statments are completly opposites, since
Obscuro changes almost everything.

Moriendor
"A wise decision. The no pop-up mod is certainly not required. In fact, there are a few quests that are very hard to solve without the guidance "
Are you sure your talking about popups?
The mod ToddMcF2002 and I are talking about has no effect on quest and/or log entries, not to mention as you sugeest leaving a popup up for guidence would be totally nutz, look at the size example txa1265 posted.
The quest log is uneffected, so if you get lost all you need to do is look normally where you would look, this mod just removes the in your face console unnecessary nonsence.
I can't help think you are talking about something esle.

JDR13
"I'm actually kind of surprised "
Oh you will be surprised at many things once you play it, guarnteed. ;)

" Does Obscuro's mod actually"
Nothing really worng with ooo but it changes core pricipal (i.e. gameplay) on all levels, though I am not sure about adding new mobs.
One thing for certian you won't get any thing close to the original game experience, I am not saying that is a bad thing.

Btw Quarks texture mod work is execellent overall, others are good too but if you were going for one complete work his is best overall, well last time I checked.

Dhruin

January 27th, 2007, 12:10

"Of course, they may not care. I wouldn't."

I guess it's a good thing that you're not a game designer:)

As I've said before, I believe Bethsoft sees the scaling as a huge success and therefore would have no reason or interest to switch it off (assuming that was feasible, anyway).

abbaon

January 27th, 2007, 12:17

"Of course, they may not care. I wouldn't."

I guess it's a good thing that you're not a game designer:)
RPG design is moving in a direction which I like and hardcore "fans" don't, so it's kind of a moot point. :)

JDR13

January 27th, 2007, 12:18

"Oh you will be surprised at many things once you play it, guarnteed."

Do you mean Oblivion? I've had it installed for months, I've just never started a serious game. I've probably played through the catacombs 9-10 times, but other than checking out some of the area around the first city, I haven't done much else.

"since Obscuro changes almost everything."

"Nothing really worng with ooo but it changes core pricipal (i.e. gameplay) on all levels"

Now I definitely know I won't be using it.

JDR13

January 27th, 2007, 12:32

RPG design is moving in a direction which I like and hardcore "fans" don't, so it's kind of a moot point. :)

And what direction is that? That's a very broad generalization you're making there. RPG's are part of a genre that isn't following any particular trend right now.

Unless you consider getting easier and dumbed-down a trend.

abbaon

January 27th, 2007, 12:52

So glad you asked! But let's pursue this digression in another thread. I don't want to mar the perfect hatred here.

Jaz

January 27th, 2007, 13:50

But the hatred in this thread isn't perfect! Not everybody participating in the discussion is an Oblivion-basher. Criticizing unloved features of a game you like is hardly hatred, it's criticism. And there'll always be a feature to discuss... I for my part haven't seen the perfect game yet.

LordRac

February 13th, 2007, 17:44

Isn't there enough discussion about Oblivion at RPG Codex? :)

I finished the main and thieves' guild quests back in June, and I haven't been back to it since. I don't think I'm the only one who's done the same.

Corwin

February 14th, 2007, 02:28

There might be 'discussion' there, but we have to at least offer our readers the same opportunity!! :)

Acleacius

February 14th, 2007, 16:40

Yeah and besides he was trying to keep most of the criticism in one thread. :)

Though, since many review sites actually mention oblivion in comparision to all RPGs now, some of us disagree with the reviewing benchmark and find it difficult not to say the "o" in a thread where the article actually starts the debate. ;)

Alrik Fassbauer

February 24th, 2007, 15:07

The bad thingh is that games that sell are considered a "standard" in German ganing mags.

Any game thast does not comply to that "standard" is ... well, not necessarily "bad", but it just doesn't comply with the standard, if you know what I mean. ;)

Or to put it the other way round : To say that a game does not comply to a "standard" is an *very* subtle way to say it is bad, because it *is* not "part" of the "standard". ;)

I must admit that this sounds quite far-fetched, but I do have kind of a sense to often detect subtle meanings in formulations. ;)

Prime Junta

February 24th, 2007, 17:00

I'm giving Oblivion another chance.

I got seriously bored with it when it first came out; the game balance/challenge issues were so severe that it got old fast. Well, pretty fast -- I did put tens of hours into it, which is more than most games take to finish. There was just no sense of progression or consequence in it, so I gave up. Also it gave what I thought was my pretty good video card the heebie-jeebies.

I've since upgraded my video card to something even nastier (GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB, if somebody cares), and Oscuro has been hard at work... so I re-installed it, dropped in OOO, and got going.

I'm just out the gate and I like it a lot more already. I'm getting my ass handed to me by bandits, since click-spamming with the short sword no longer works, which is as it should be, and I almost got et by a swordfish on my first swim. We'll see how it pans out later, but it does look like Oscuro may have turned it into something that's actually challenging and rewarding in the meantime.

Oh, and that mean new card of mine runs it smooth as butter at 1920 x 1200 even outdoors. Nyah nyah. It's also quieter with the stock cooler than my old one was with the Zalman VF700Cu cooler on it. I know 3 C's isn't chickenfeed, but it's one fine card for the price.

(I also made a conscious decision not to min-max or exploit: I picked a stock class matching the way I want to play, and intend to stick to it. If it turns out to be fun, great, if not, it's back to the ol' bookshelf with it.)

Relayer

February 24th, 2007, 22:24

I got Oblivion as a present and spend a few hundred bucks on a brand new video card (and power supply) only to play it for the first week or two.

I've started several games since and never get too far before moving on to some other game. It's highly polished, has amazing graphics, nice dungeons and of course lots of quests. And the combat system is improved from Morrowind.

But the way it throws you into the story is far from believeable - that and having the same handful of actors doing the voices for all the NPCs in the game really throws the immersion off and having several voices for ONE NPC? It's just ridiculous. Another big offender is the lack of dialogue options - you get a few responses, none of which changes anything in the story, leaving roleplaying a bit too much to the imagination.

Add the other little things like level scaling, a non-intuitive and non-customizable interface and it just feels like Morrowind Lite.

Corwin

February 25th, 2007, 02:12

Get some mods, they allow you to change the interface etc!!

Glacian

February 27th, 2007, 02:20

Honestly, I really liked Oblivion and spent many hours addicted to it. It's not perfect, and I certainly agree with and understand many of the complaints... but overall, I guess the total is greater than the sum of its parts.

I've probably played better games, but I had fun with Oblivion and that's what's important.

Dez

March 26th, 2007, 02:04

Heh today i lauched oblivion...its been months.. To put long story short I created a mage character. My main goal is to stay away from swords and armours..-Just rely on my staff and magic skills. I also found this great unarmored mod..a must for any mage player.. Heh like many other mods... Unmodded oblvion is rubbish.

I'm trying hard to give oblvion another chance...Last time I got bored shutting down those oblvion gates...this time i won't go near MArtin :P

mute

April 1st, 2007, 10:36

I always loved oblivion. As usual i stay clear of discussion boards of a Hyped game so i didn't know about "leveled" creature when i played through it. Now that i know i can think of it sometimes, but it doesn't bother me. Getting back to Oblivion buying Shivering Isle is interesting.

As Corwin said (i think), its a good game and a bad rpg, it says it for me too.

I am not a RPG type of guy, or a simulator friend, or a... i just want to have me self illusioned into another world. May it be in World Word II doing scavenger hunting in my Submarine. Might it be me trying to solve a mysterious quest involving Moses, or trying to solve the problems of myth drannor. Its seldom the mechanics thats problem for me. Illusion of a living world is enough and if am not aware of a particular bug, a deliberate design decision, or developer cutting corners, well. Then the game is good.

bjon045

June 26th, 2007, 19:34

Oblivion certainly isn't perfect but it is a hell of a lot better than 90% of the games we get these days which are either bug riddled or uninspired eye candy with no substance.

txa1265

June 26th, 2007, 19:43

uninspired eye candy with no substance.

Yes, Oblivion is inspired eye candy with no substance.

:D

(this is the 'trash Oblivion' thread, you know ... so whether or not I agree with you is immaterial ;) )

Zaleukos

June 26th, 2007, 21:50

Of all the gaming disappointments I had in 2006 Oblivion kinda stands out. The others (Sid Meiers Railroads, Medieval 2 Total War, Gothic 3, Neverwinter Nights 2) were bugfests and sometimes instances of developers biting off more than they could chew.

Oblivion wasnt. It might well be the most bug-free version 1.0 I've played this century. It looks as good as any of the others listed on my PC, and unlike any of the other games mentioned I get a smooth experience at maxed out settings. Unlike the others its not a "nice try"...

Yet I hate it more than any of the others (possibly except for Railroads). Bethsofts concept has strayed too far from my ideal RPG to be interesting. Presentation and things like AI schedules are vast improvements, but the multitude of quests and the choices to be made that I had in past TES games were removed.

MudsAnimalFriend

June 28th, 2007, 14:19

Bethsofts concept has strayed too far from my ideal RPG to be interesting.

But... but... the critics rave!

Quandary: 5/5
The quests available in Oblivion are the best I have played in any RPG. They contain many twists and are often more convoluted than they first appear.

Games Radar: 10/10
...this doesn't even touch on the enjoyable mini-games, including lock-picking, stealth action and persuasion. They don't feel like filler.

Yahoo! Games: 5/5
But the painstaking attention to detail, outstanding worldcrafting, and inspired AI make it a huge improvement [over Morrowind]

Gamespot: 93/100
The game's fine-tuned challenge is achieved in part because the enemies you'll encounter out in the world will get stronger as you do, though in practice, this doesn't come across nearly as contrived as it sounds. Growing more powerful in this game feels suitably rewarding, as it should in any role-playing game.

Worthplaying: 9.8/10
Oblivion is one of the best packages of the past several years, with no element even average; everything is as close to perfect as can be expected.

Gamershell: 9.8/10
The quests in Oblivion are probably the best in any RPG to date. Due to the huge environment and the excellent AI, the quests can finally involve a lot more than "Go to the swamp. Kill 20 lizards, and bring me their hides."

ActionTrip: 94/100
In many ways, [Bethesda] have once again revolutionized gaming as we know it.

Boomtown: 10/10
That’s about the exact moment I truly realised the sort of game Oblivion is... A masterpiece. One of the best ever made.
Also in the same review:
...your indoctrination into the Arcane Academy is a chore,
...becoming a vampire is about the single most annoying thing in Oblivion
[the plane of] Oblivion itself actually sucks.
Jeremy Soule’s score [is] almost exactly the same as Morrowind’s.
The Radiant AI is anything but...
The levelling-up system is rather clunky too.
...the "Loading Area" signs suck.

Dez

June 28th, 2007, 18:29

...this doesn't even touch on the enjoyable mini-games, including lock-picking, stealth action and persuasion. They don't feel like filler.

LOL I'm speechless!

The quests in Oblivion are probably the best in any RPG to date. Due to the huge environment and the ]excellent AI, the quests can finally involve a lot more than "Go to the swamp. Kill 20 lizards, and bring me their hides."

I want the same stuff he was smoking!

Squeek

June 28th, 2007, 19:06

Sometimes devs manage to make something worse by improving it. It’s quite a trick. Oblivion’s quests are a perfect example of that, IMO.

“Go to the swamp; kill 20 Lizards, and bring me their hides" is typical but hardly as bad as some of the quests dreamed up by Bethesda. In their previous game, many of them were nothing more than a shopping trip, “Go find this product at this store; buy it, and bring it to me.” Honestly, how much would it take to improve on that?

Oblivion did, but…(sigh).

chamr

June 28th, 2007, 22:44

The mass hysteria of the review sites is a bit baffling. When was the last time a game with so many deep, design flaws was so universally fawned over by the press? I think most reasonable and mature gamers, whether they're pro-O or anti-O, acknowledge that there are several significant issues with the out-of-the-box game that warrant discussion and debate. But that's a far cry from the "I have found Jesus, and he is Oblivion!" foolishness that seemed to completely overcome almost all the main game sites. :thinking:

txa1265

June 28th, 2007, 22:48

reasonable and mature gamers

Wait - there are reasonable and mature gamers?!?! Where?!?! Maybe I just can't hear them over all of the hysterical fanboys? ;)

chamr

June 29th, 2007, 03:03

Wait - there are reasonable and mature gamers?!?! Where?!?! Maybe I just can't hear them over all of the hysterical fanboys? ;)

Yeah. You know... us RPGWatchers... um... and... well -- you know!

:)

Corwin

June 29th, 2007, 11:12

Definitely, we at the Watch are reasonable and mature- some like a fine wine, others more like mouldy cheese!! :biggrin:

GothicGothicness

June 29th, 2007, 12:52

He is obviously talking only about you Corwin.

fatBastard()

June 29th, 2007, 13:03

So is it only allowed to rave and rant about Oblivion or can one rave and rant about the Oblivion ravers and ranters as well?

If not then: "Naughty Oblivion, bad boy" *shaking fist in half hearted attempt at indignation*

If it is allowed then let me just say that I'm really glad that I'm not in the business of making games that you lot like. I mean, don't change the encounter difficulty and you get blamed for leaving the higher ups no challenge. Change the encounter difficulty and the level scaling haters get going (could the level scaling system have been better? Sure, but at least they tried to do something). Leave the quests as they were in Morrowind and you get blamed for only doing the fed-ex or "go there kill this" kind of quests. Put an effort into attempting different kind of quests and you get blamed for the same thing by what appears to be the same people. What gives? Did anyone actually complete quests like the Agatha Christie styled "invitation to murder" for the Assassin's Guild? Or how about the paranoid woodelf in Skingrad? Or the rescue/manhunt quest in Bravil?

I could go on but I guess there is no point. Oblivion is a game that many people love to hate if for no other reason then it at least provides an easy target that won't fight back ... oh well at least I got my moneys worth out of the game, so I'm content.

MudsAnimalFriend

June 29th, 2007, 16:20

I could go on but I guess there is no point.
Those were my exact thoughts while I was playing Oblivion. Then I followed the magic pointer to the land of Control Panel and undertook the Add or Remove Programs quest. Much like the average Oblivion quest it too only offered a couple of dialogue options and left me with absolutely nothing to show for it on completion.

fatBastard()

June 29th, 2007, 17:18

Those were my exact thoughts while I was playing Oblivion. Then I followed the magic pointer to the land of Control Panel and undertook the Add or Remove Programs quest.
Ha good one :lol:

Much like the average Oblivion quest it too only offered a couple of dialogue options and left me with absolutely nothing to show for it on completion.
Wait, a quest is only good if the loot/reputation-boost is worth it? Is that it?

In that case I can much better appreciate the ire vented at the quests in Oblivion. And here I thought the actual reason, plot, background, implementation and experience of SOLVING in a quest was what mattered, not what you got out of it in the end.

Sorry my mistake. :sarcasticclap:

MudsAnimalFriend

July 2nd, 2007, 16:35

Wait, a quest is only good if the loot/reputation-boost is worth it? Is that it?

In that case I can much better appreciate the ire vented at the quests in Oblivion. And here I thought the actual reason, plot, background, implementation and experience of SOLVING in a quest was what mattered, not what you got out of it in the end.

The process of solving something involves establishing a series of steps to arrive at a solution and implies the application of intellectual effort. This is of course fundamental to all good adventure games and present in the better class of RPG quest. However most of Oblivion's quests require all the intellectual fortitude of a severely retarded ant with alcohol abuse issues. Talk to NPC at point A, go to point B, kill everything that moves and return to point A neither constitutes an enthralling story nor a brainteaser. It's also nothing the player can't already do - outside the structure of a quest - in one of Oblivion's many identikit dungeons. Given Oblivion doesn't use experience points, and the levelling scaling would render them worthless anyway, then there has to sufficient item/monetary reward to make the quest worthwhile.

Sorry my mistake.
I forgive you :hug:

Maylander

July 4th, 2007, 03:26

Well said.

fatBastard()

July 5th, 2007, 18:03

The process of solving something involves establishing a series of steps to arrive at a solution and implies the application of intellectual effort. This is of course fundamental to all good adventure games and present in the better class of RPG quest. However most of Oblivion's quests require all the intellectual fortitude of a severely retarded ant with alcohol abuse issues. Talk to NPC at point A, go to point B, kill everything that moves and return to point A neither constitutes an enthralling story nor a brainteaser. It's also nothing the player can't already do - outside the structure of a quest - in one of Oblivion's many identikit dungeons. Given Oblivion doesn't use experience points, and the levelling scaling would render them worthless anyway, then there has to sufficient item/monetary reward to make the quest worthwhile.
Okay, fair enough. It seems that what we're looking for in quests isn't the same thing.

I don't mind exploration, but only as an added bonus to what I'm really doing there. In a huge sandbox like Oblivion I really need a reason to go somewhere, be it a desolate place or be it a densely populated area. It doesn't have to be a major incident or part of the main plot line for me to go there, but SOME kind of incentive is needed or I'll just look around, shrug and say to myself: "So? Where do I go from here?" while I'm exiting the game. A REASON to go somewhere is what the quests do for me, not the reward they eventually bring. The journey and the details of the quest can be a little story/subplot in itself and THAT is what makes a good quest in my opinion.

Besides, if you split a quest into its' basics then you'll find that every RPG, even gems like PS:Torment or Baldur's Gate makes use of the same Fed-Ex, lair cleaning, target assassination or "save my <insert item/person here>" type of quest recipe ... so why would Oblivion be any different? It just seems that Oblivion is the only one being bashed for it ... :uncool:

Squeek

July 5th, 2007, 18:45

It just seems that Oblivion is the only one being bashed for it ... :uncool:Oblivion may not be the only one getting bashed; but it does get bashed the hardest, and you have to wonder why. There's obviously a lot to like about Oblivion. It got rave reviews; it has plenty of fans; it won all those awards. So why does it get bashed so hard and so much?

The World Wide Web has always had a certain kind of latent hostility. Even before the Web, the Internet had rules of etiquette that you couldn't violate without getting "flamed." Maybe one reason is simply the format we're using to discuss it.

And Oblivion is the perfect thing to argue about. It's a tremendous game and a huge success but also deeply flawed. Add to that all the arguably-false claims Bethesda made about it beforehand and everything they've said or didn't say after their customers bought it and found out about it for themselves.

chamr

July 5th, 2007, 22:40

It's a tremendous game and a huge success but also deeply flawed. Add to that all the arguably-false claims Bethesda made about it beforehand and everything they've said or didn't say after their customers bought it and found out about it for themselves.

That's pretty much the reason. Any game that's touted to be as revolutionary as Beth claimed it would be and is then subsequently slobbered all over by the press is natrually going to be held to a very high standard by critics and, when found lacking, will be bashed for it. It's not like O is just the cute "Little Engine That Could" and is only trying to make it over that big hill, so why is everyone so mean to it? It's been billed, by the company and the mainstream press alike, as the second coming of RPG's. In that context, I can see why folks find simplistic, unengaging quests based on a formulaic approach that's been around forever unacceptable.

Sorcha Ravenlock

July 5th, 2007, 23:06

I also think the problem with the Oblivion quests is not the quests themselves, but how they are presented. Of course other RPGs have similar quests (fed-ex, save my husband/child/kitten, go and kill this person for me). but with the compass and the pop-ups I lose a big part of the suspension of disbelieve.

"Go and kill a foozle" is one thing, but: Go and kill a foozle, follow the arrow to the cave entrance and then *tada*, a pop-up saying "You have reached the cave, you should enter"... it insults my intelligence and disrupts the feeling that I'm part of the game-world rather then playing a game.

Now, I reinstalled Oblivion and I find it a great game for when I want to run around and kill things. For when I don't want to be my party-member's shrink, don't want tohave to worry about what Bastilla/Jaheira/Elanee will think of my choices and so on.

It's like a sandbox fantasy-FPS that lets me pretend I'm RPing without having to worry about the consequences of what I do further on in the game. It fills a nice niche for me, and even though I hated it at first, and still dislike parts of it (all the blood, gore and corpses, the whole Dark Brotherhood) it is enjoyable as long as I don't expect too much from it.

And that's where the problem lies of course: if it hadn't been hailed as the new future of RPGs, the best thing since sliced bread, and so on... it would have been enjoyable for what it is.
I think I object mostly to the fact that it has a label it doesn't deserve, and the fact that for me it doesn't compare to Morrowind, which I still play and will always love.
My problem is that Oblivion wasn't the game I wanted it to be, and is not the game it is made out to be. But once I learned to ignore that: it's a pretty fun time-killer.

Septim741

July 24th, 2007, 19:06

Oblivion has it's flaws yes, but so does any other great game.

Morrowind was a bigger and better game than Oblivion is. It had low points, as all games do, but we tend to look past those low points and see the game for what it is. Despite a considerably slow player speed with wacky animations, and what we now consider bad graphics, it was always a good game. But we must take into account that when MW was released, these kind of animations and graphics were very advanced. Same with OB.

OB made great leaps with it's graphics and stuff, but it was not a "huge" as MW. I rather liked the vast, unexplored tribal lands as opposed to the "wilderness presented in OB.

But that's why I mod OB and not play it. I wanted more gameplay out of it, and I had to do that myself.

Dez

July 26th, 2007, 05:37

As much as I love ranting oblivion, there is just something which keeps dragging me back in the game. Not to mention the wonderfull mod scene., I've started playing oblivion again with all these great mods installed..(Not that I didn't use some before, but now i decided to make oblivion a whole different game.) For example I downloaded OOO. Its maybe the best thing ever happened to oblivion. It really makes the oblivion feel more like a rpg and if you add some mw gameplay mods plus few others in the mix, you'll get dozens times better game.

The most annoying things for me in vanilla oblovion are the level scaling, unbalanced skills, meaningless guilds and too many hack and slash quests with no real consequences,. Its just so sad, so much wasted potential. it just doesn't stop astonishing me, how benth couldn't comprehend how broken the whole level scaling was when they released the game. Aren't those guys supposed to be professional devs? Don't they play their own games at all?

Alrik Fassbauer

July 26th, 2007, 18:32

Don't they play their own games at all?

I guess they do - either in "God-mode" or they do know their games so well they don't perceive anymore how a newbie to the game would actually see it.

A similar thing happened to the RTS game Z (by the Bitmap Brothers), which was increadibly hard it didn't sell as much as it could have. Wasted potential.

The reason I remember from an interview was that the devs knew the game so well they could play it easily at the highest difficulty level - forgetting how it was and might've been to a newbie.

To me, the second Z game had a similar fate.

HiddenX

July 26th, 2007, 20:21

I played through Z and Z 2 without problems. I think it is the difficulty range of Incubation, Jagged Alliance 2, Gorky 17 - approximately 1000x times harder than Oblivion. ;)

rooroosta

July 26th, 2007, 20:51

Lol..they are definitely harder than Oblivion.

Dez

July 27th, 2007, 00:14

Its not the difficulty problem.. Vanilla oblivion isn't difficult at all!´the fighting at higher levels (+20) is just so tedious and boring..you'll only face anemies which have uber weapons and tousands of hitspoints. And weapons are like toys, as much as damage they deal..So instead of facing smarter and more fearsome enemies you will face enemies which have only more life and thus every single fight takes forever.

Thats why you need balancing mods.

Alrik Fassbauer

July 28th, 2007, 14:46

I played throgh Z as well - but in Z2 I simply lost the overlook.
Too many things at too many different places - it was driving me nuts.

rooroosta

July 28th, 2007, 15:08

I enjoy Oblivion much more with the balancing mods.

Bartacus

August 1st, 2007, 01:12

Perhaps I should give Oblivion a try again. After all there was stuff that I like about it compared to Morrowind.
Oblivion got a a good journal. It had spoken text instead of reading all those boring lines again. It had better voice acting then Morrowind (easy since Morrowind almost didn't have any). This time the graphics were better even when I count it in the time it was published.(I still like the Gothic 1 - Gothic 2 graphics much more then those of Morrowind)

About the negative aspects of the game -> I think they are already posted here, so no point in doing that again.

bjon045

August 5th, 2007, 08:38

Oblivion GotY edition is out next month, might be worth a shot, especially after apply a few mods to tweak it.

Corwin

August 5th, 2007, 08:51

I am NOT a masochist!! :)

Sorcha Ravenlock

August 5th, 2007, 14:09

I just wish there was a way to combine the best of Morrowind with the best of Oblivion.... that would make my day (week, year, decade).

When I play Oblivion I miss the large amount of guilds to join, the politics, the fact that not every NPC walks around with a glass sword on his back, the wonderful main quest that I can do when I want too (while it makes sense from an RP perspective) and the wildly different environments of Morrowind. I also miss the ability to make your own spells and enchantments from the start, I always get bored of the Mage's Guild questline.
Besides that, I miss head-packs. It's so much easier for me to make a pretty face for Morrowind with Photoshop then it is for Oblivion with Facegen. :blush:

When I play Morrowind, I miss the improved sneaking, the sneak attacks, and being able to zoom in with my bow. I miss being able to wield a weapon in one hand and cast a spell with the other. And I miss the fact that in Oblivion when I hit something visually, I do damage. Maybe not much, but at least I hurt them a bit. In Morrowind I quite often can't tell if my arrow missed because I didn't aim properly or if I had a bad dice roll. Oh, and being able to retrieve arrows that missed from the floor. And the cool traps which always makes me feel like some sort of Indiana Jones wannabe :p

Hopefully the next TES (I don't care too much for Fallout, I prefer fantasy, but I might give Fallout 3 a try at some stage) will get the mix right for me :)

GhanBuriGhan

August 8th, 2007, 16:52

You are probably aware, but Timeslip has a bow zooming mod for MW. And I heard some of the sneak mods are good as well.

Sorcha Ravenlock

August 8th, 2007, 17:54

GhanBuriGhan

August 17th, 2007, 01:47

No, I didn't know of the bow zooming mod. Thank you for pointing it out, I'll search for it.
A lot of mods that make Morrowind more like Oblivion use external programs though, and I've been avoiding those so far.

Yes it is one of those. However, I never expereinced problems with these extenders, so I'd recommend to give it a try. I can't live anymore without the enhanced journal that I can type into.

Lucky Day

November 7th, 2007, 00:56

Is it just me or shouldn't this game have its own forum? This was probably already brought up and discussed to death. It's possibly already too late considering Oblivion is past its prime now.

Corwin

November 7th, 2007, 01:31

No, just its own thread; that's all it's really worth!! :)

txa1265

November 7th, 2007, 01:59

No, just its own thread; that's all it's really worth!! :)

Plus, it is featured in every RPG review written in the past 18 months, so it is all good :D

JDR13

November 7th, 2007, 04:22

I wouldn't say Oblivion is past its prime, at least not from a technical standpoint. On the contrary, most gamers still don't have systems that can run that game smoothly on high settings.

txa1265

November 7th, 2007, 05:04

I wouldn't say Oblivion is past its prime, at least not from a technical standpoint. On the contrary, most gamers still don't have systems that can run that game smoothly on high settings.

Yeah, but it has been used regularly for more than a year as a 'whipping boy' - an example of how modern games should *not* do things ...

Zaleukos

November 7th, 2007, 16:19

I was always a bit perplexed by the technical complaints against Oblivion, as it ran much better than all the other 3D game I've played that was released in the last 2 years (G3, NWN2, Medieval 2 Total War, Two worlds), looked better than all of them except Gothic 3, and barely crashed on me:p Heck, together with Two worlds it's the only one I could run at max settings! I loathe the game but have no complaints about the technical standards or polish as such. But maybe that is due to the way I "balance" my homebuilt PCs...

And wouldnt it be interesting to see the graphs of activity over time for Oblivion fora at "serious" rpg sites?

txa1265

November 7th, 2007, 16:31

I was always a bit perplexed by the technical complaints against Oblivion,
Much of it was the blatantly console-centric interface.

Zaleukos

November 7th, 2007, 16:43

I was thinking of performance issues that some people complain about, e g when JDR said that "most gamers still don't have systems that can run that game smoothly on high settings". When I think of technical problems with a game I think of horrible loading times, constant crashes, underoptimised graphics, and the like. I didnt have any such problems and my PC wasnt even top of the line when Oblivion came out.

I rather think of Oblivion as a house where the builders successfully implemented the blueprints to the letter, but the artifact who made those blueprints was stoned. Roughly the opposite of how I feel about Gothic 3:p

JDR13

November 7th, 2007, 16:45

Yeah, but it has been used regularly for more than a year as a 'whipping boy' - an example of how modern games should *not* do things ...

Which is exactly why I said "from a technical standpoint."

JDR13

November 7th, 2007, 16:52

I was thinking of performance issues that some people complain about, e g when JDR said that "most gamers still don't have systems that can run that game smoothly on high settings". When I think of technical problems with a game I think of horrible loading times, constant crashes, underoptimised graphics, and the like. I didnt have any such problems and my PC wasnt even top of the line when Oblivion came out.

I wasn't refering to crashes, underoptimised graphics, or load times. Just the fact that many gamers still don't have the system to run Oblivion smoothly at max settings, which isn't a knock against the game at all. From a technical standpoint, the game was well ahead of it's time.

Lucky Day

November 7th, 2007, 18:37

Well I think there could be a lot of good discussion about the game and its mods. I'd certainly like to know about what the latest "fix" mod is. That's changed over the years. There was the multiplayer mod as well.

I think there's more than just cynicism that can be commented on it.

The one point about all the buzz on the net about it already is a good point. Certainly there isn't the interest in Gothic "out there" than there is here. It makes sense to have a forum. Does NWN2 need another forum then? Discussions of the game are certainly plentiful already on the Bioware forums.

But as I said, Its a bit of a moot point at now considering its release date. Mind you I made one comment yesterday and there were nine comments after so maybe Oblivion discussion is still relevant.

Zakhary

November 7th, 2007, 18:49

Oblivion subforum would make a lot of sense to me.
It's a CRPG. A very popular one too. And the GOTY edition
is just being released.

Or even better... a subforum dedicated to elder scrolls.
Now that would be even better. And make A LOT of sense.

All the past Elder Scrolls games... and the future ones.
Yeah!

Corwin

November 8th, 2007, 01:30

I'd support an ES forum, but such decisions are made by the Admins. Generally, they consider the amount of traffic a game generates on the site before deciding on new forums. We had an ES forum back at the Dot, but I rarely visited it

Lucky Day

December 30th, 2007, 06:45

With my new machine and a few weeks before class I was thinking of firing this up for real this time.

What mods should I get to play it with sanity. I recall there's a good comprehensive one that gets regular updates.

skavenhorde

December 30th, 2007, 07:11

It's not a bad idea having ES forum but don't make it just for Oblivion *Shudder*. Make it for all of them.

Lucky Day, Gamespy's ten essential mods. http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?id=41&view=Articles.Detail

If you are willing to download a 2 gig file then I highly recomend Qarl's texture mod III. http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=2363 It made a huge difference in the graphics. Although, the people in Oblivion still all have baby faces.

I think I found out about the ten essential mod list here at The Watch a long time ago. I used all of the ten essential mods except natural environments and it made the game a bit more playable, but in the end I still gave up. It was just too boring even with the mods.

Lucky Day

December 30th, 2007, 08:42

What about the BTMod?

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=25

or how about the list of most downloaded?

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/fms/TopRated.php?content=oblivionmods&sort=Downloads&dir=DESC&w=&p=1

Remus

February 29th, 2008, 01:50

I gathered numbers of user made contents from BallOfFire's Oblivion modlist page:

1) Phinix immersive DarkUI 1.2 + OOO SI compatibility fix
2) Purse of wonder 0.5
3) Realistic physics and force 1.0
4) OOO Complete 1.33
5) Sudden Violence 2.0
6) Deadly Reflex 4.03
7) Oblivion script optimizer 1.0
8) Atmospheric Wheater system 2.1
9) OMOD 1.0168

Any comments & suggestions?

SirJames

April 5th, 2008, 02:39

rant and rave huh?

Id love to join in, but im more in the mood for positive conversation today :þ

i will say this.... They didnt get it right, it pretty much sucked... Everyone who LIKES the game is not playing it the way the devs created it, they're playing Mod versions where non-game-dev users have made better additions than the actual company itself!!

Bethsoft? pffffffffft, they're absolutely crap. I fear for fallout 3 :|

Jaz

April 5th, 2008, 09:41

I liked it. I played it vanilla.

Zakhary

April 7th, 2008, 10:18

Yeah, I quite liked it too. I mean it could've been a lot better and it was far inferior to morrowind. But it was alright. And I won't touch mods. There are far worse RPG's out there nowadays.

Gragnak

April 7th, 2008, 13:50

One word:

LEVEL SCALING

I finished Morrowind and all expansions. I think Morrowind is one of the best RPGS around. My expectations were the same for Oblivion. I thought: "Ok. Here we'll have tha same good rpg system we liked in Morrowind, perhaps refined and implemented, and better sound and gfx....."
So I went to my local store and bought it.
Installed it.
Started it......
And I found a console game, with a lot of video effects, level scaling monsters and treasure (like a mix between a 3d shoot 'em up and flight simulator by foot...) and few, poor rpg elements.
I uninstalled it.

Zakhary

April 7th, 2008, 13:57

One word:

LEVEL SCALING

That's two words :(

Gragnak

April 7th, 2008, 15:34

Eh eh eh....
Ok.
One word:
LEVELSCALING

Squeek

April 9th, 2008, 20:31

Oblivion will always be regarded as one of the greatest games that could have been, IMO. Those kinds of games are always controversial, because there's plenty to like if you can get over the disappointment.

The single best thing that ever happened to those games are mods. So I will definitely mod Oblivion the next time I decide to give it another shot.

txa1265

April 10th, 2008, 01:19

Oblivion will always be regarded as one of the greatest games that could have been, IMO.

Really? Mainstream media consider it one of the greatest ever, while for RPG fans it is one of the most divisive ever ...

Squeek

April 10th, 2008, 02:47

Really? Mainstream media consider it one of the greatest ever, while for RPG fans it is one of the most divisive ever ...I think most of us are already aware of those things, Mike, and they add up to be much of my point. I'm missing yours, honestly. Do you think it didn't have that potential or that it actually achieved it? Or do you mean something else entirely?

JDR13

April 10th, 2008, 03:57

I see where Mike is coming from on that one, almost all of the reviews gave that game a very high score, while most hardcore CRPG players seen to either love it or hate it.

I'm still undecided myself, as I've never played far enough into Oblivion yet to determine whether or not I like it.

Foss

April 10th, 2008, 05:40

I thought Oblivion could be one of the greatest games I would have played. Because I liked Morrowind so much.
So imo it could have been one of the greatest, but the way they went opposite Morrowind in many aspects was a big dissappoinment, and though its not a bad game, its not one of the greatest nor is it better than Morrowind imo.

txa1265

April 11th, 2008, 02:06

I think most of us are already aware of those things, Mike, and they add up to be much of my point. I'm missing yours, honestly. Do you think it didn't have that potential or that it actually achieved it? Or do you mean something else entirely?

I guess I violate both of my points - I gave the game 8/10 ... and pretty much consider that 'as good as it gets' for the game. No matter what you patch, the Oblivion Gates are boring, the 'open world' is boring, the overwhelming majority of quests are one-dimensional, and there are pretty much zero actual choices.

Heraclitus Marr

April 12th, 2008, 01:00

What turned out to be bad about Oblivion is that Bethesda actually listened to Morrowind players. Ironic, I suppose, but there's a lesson there for game developers. Like the Chinese say "be careful what you wish for you just may get it."

Morrowind players wanted horses, and despite Bethesda developers saying they weren't worth the development time, they put them in Oblivion. Great. Happy? You've got your horse. You get on one for the first time, switch to 3rd person view and marvel at how cool your character looks riding through the countryside on horseback. But after a couple minutes of this you're like "uh... what now?" You can't fight on a horse; can't pick flowers; can't talk to anyone; can't enter indoor areas. It's just eye-candy and probably took hundreds of developer hours to put into the game.

Another big complaint about Morrowind was combat was too short: you could kill most enemies in 1 or 2 hits. So in Oblivion (thanks to level-scaling) every fight takes several hits. You swing and miss; dodge; block a hit with your shield; cast a fireball; whack with your sword; get hit with a blow... finally the enemy dies. Wow! That was fun and I really felt like I was in a fight for my life. You walk 30 feet and it's another fight. Then another... it just got so boring and tedious after awhile I just found myself racing through dungeons with half a dozen monsters chasing me because fighting was too boring to bother with.

One other thing that bugged me: Bethesda re-hired all the same voice-actors from Morrowind. So all the Redguards sounded the same; all the Nords sounded the same (hey! it's Wonder Woman again!). For anyone who logged hundreds of hours in Morrowind it really made Oblivion feel stale. Just to freshen things up couldn't they have hired new voice actors?

Jaz

April 12th, 2008, 08:50

They implemented features people had liked in Daggerfall and missed in Morrowind (horses and map teleport), but these features were rather unnecessary in a game world as small as Oblivion's.

Remus

April 13th, 2008, 03:58

I finished the game after completing the Dark Brotherhood and main quest lines. The questing system felt same as in Morrowind, no improvement, and got outshinned when compared to quest in The Witcher, Gothic series, Ice windale, etc.

However if you create your own adventure, collectig books, hunting, etc it's still as fun as Morrowind, with good atmosphere, good sound and graphics. It's better if you play it as a sandbox type game.

Konjad

June 17th, 2008, 14:45

Well, actually I feel bad when I think I payed for this $65 (Collector's Edition that I bought it in USA). The vanilla Oblivion was fun for a few days but later I saw how shitty it is. I mean I loved Morrowind, but everything that was good in Morrowind they made worse in Oblivion. The good thing about this game is a Construction Set and modders that really improved the game (Im not talking about new houses etc, but mods that improve the game technically, like "Deadly Reflex"). With gigabytes of mods this game starts to be fun. But still this game is dumb. NPCs that talks to me like I were a retard, MQ about being an epic hero saving the world from a bad guy etc. I am sure that I won't buy anything anymore from Bethesda (and now they make Fallout 3 :[ ).

Greymane

June 19th, 2008, 22:21

Well, I guess I disagree with most of you.
I love Oblivion. I think it's heads and shoulders over Morrowind, and any of the previous Daggerfalls.
The faction quest lines are quite good. I liked the Fighters Guild and Mage Guild lines, and I really liked the Thieve's Guild line, and really really like the Dark Brotherhood line, which surprised me, because I'm not a 'dark' type person.
There are more places to find and explore than most people have the patience to do, in my opinion. It is more of a sandbox world, of course, why else have a construction set allowing you to completely rebuild the world?
Just my worthless two cents, it's beautiful beyond belief, and I enjoy just 'being' in the world, and I enjoyed the Guild quest lines immensely as well as the main quest line. Are there some things I would like improved? Sure, but nothing so earthshattering that I'd bad mouth the game publicly. My thanks to Bethesda for Oblivion, I still enjoy it after all this time.

JDR13

September 9th, 2008, 11:08

GhanBuriGhan

September 9th, 2008, 14:16

I was thinking of reinstalling Oblivion after not having played it in over a year, I just have a question.

Is it still necessary to use a special patch in order to activate anti-aliasing + HDR lighting, or did they finally get around to fixing that?

AFAIK that was a hardware limitation at least for Nvidia cards. You can manually enable it for ATI cards. If your card is good enough for high resolutions, the absence of AA isn't very noticeable.

...Yup, thats what the FAQ still says: http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=561101
(topic 4.15)

GothicGothicness

September 9th, 2008, 15:56

Yes, the first card to support AA and HDR was the ATI X1800XT my geforce 7800 GTX was the last card not to support it :(

I think AA + HDR makes a very noticeable difference in certain situations.

JDR13

September 9th, 2008, 18:18

Thanks for the replies. I have a geforce 8800 GTS 512, so it looks like I should be good to go. :)

Kostaz

November 18th, 2008, 01:57

Hey guys why is this one still sticky?Les Let's Rant and Rave About Fallout 3:biggrin:!!

Corwin

November 18th, 2008, 06:48

It's still here to stop people ranting about Oblivion in the middle of Fallout 3 threads!! :)

JDR13

November 18th, 2008, 07:43

There simply isn't that much to rant about in Fallout 3, it's actually a good game!

txa1265

November 18th, 2008, 12:18

There simply isn't that much to rant about in Fallout 3, it's actually a good game!

Exactly, there are plenty of things to quibble about, and even some decent complaints, but *rant* ... not really. Certainly not like Oblivion.

Kostaz

November 18th, 2008, 14:50

There simply isn't that much to rant about in Fallout 3, it's actually a good game!
I agree but there are many people who hate Fallout 3 more than Oblivion,for me F3 is much better than I expected.

mute

November 18th, 2008, 21:32

...i just got Oblivion for my Xbox360. The GOTY edition. After playing Fallout 3 on my pc with a gamepad i wanted to revisit Oblivion, but on my pc the Gamepad didn't "work". (I have the Collectors edition for my PC).
(It worked but it was really lousy implemented)

(O boy, its Dead space fault that i even started with a gamepad...)

The experience on the XBOX on the couch its soo much better. I even like closing Oblivion gates now. The game feel much more relaxed.

And i was surprised about how good it looks on the Xbox... only thing i detest is the loading of extra content (shivering isle and knights of the nine). Lets hope i now finally finish this game.

(Just wanted to make sure this thread was about oblivion ... :) )

JDR13

November 19th, 2008, 10:28

I agree but there are many people who hate Fallout 3 more than Oblivion,for me F3 is much better than I expected.

I can't understand how people could hate FO3 more than Oblivion ( I personally like both games, although I've only played a little of FO3 so far). Bethesda did away with the #1 complaint, which was the level scaling.

I would guess that the majority of those FO3 "haters" simply don't enjoy the post apocalyptic setting, or they're old time Fallout fans who are still crying over the loss of their isometric view and turn-based combat.

txa1265

November 19th, 2008, 12:30

I would guess that the majority of those FO3 "haters" simply don't enjoy the post apocalyptic setting, or they're old time Fallout fans who are still crying over the loss of their isometric view and turn-based combat.

That would be my assumption as well.

lanux128

November 20th, 2008, 05:07

didn't Bethesda did a cool job of integrating the turn-based system in the game via the VATS system? i speak from hearsay since i've yet to receive my copy of FO3.

Yeesh

December 2nd, 2008, 07:32

I'd like to rave about the fact that Amazon sold me a brand new GOTY edition for $19.99 with free shipping. After watching USED copies go for $28-30 like clockwork on eBay, I felt like I won the lottery. Now that I have the game, I must wait 3 weeks or so before I have time for it. Still, I'm excited to play the game in it's mostly-finished (and properly modded) state, at a price behind which even a cheapscate like me can get.

The Master

December 13th, 2008, 04:02

I bought Oblivion shortly after I bought my 360, and I played it a few times, but the game is so big that I can't keep my attention focused on it for long enough to actually do anything. Don't get me wrong, it seems to be a very good game, it's just so large that I would never get around to finishing it.

Corwin

December 13th, 2008, 06:15

Welcome to the forums. Depending on how you play it, and what, if any, mods you use, the game is not actually as big as previous offerings like Morrowind, or Daggerfall!!

Korplem

December 14th, 2008, 22:07

I can't understand how people could hate FO3 more than Oblivion ( I personally like both games, although I've only played a little of FO3 so far). Bethesda did away with the #1 complaint, which was the level scaling.

I would guess that the majority of those FO3 "haters" simply don't enjoy the post apocalyptic setting, or they're old time Fallout fans who are still crying over the loss of their isometric view and turn-based combat.

I really like FO3. My main problem with the game is that they didn't completely get rid of level scaling. At level 16 I constantly run into death claws and I have to waste a ton of ammo just to get where I want. That was the show stopper for me. I couldn't stand the hordes of death claws.

Corwin

December 15th, 2008, 00:37

Weird, I've only fought 2 all game and I'm level 18.

Korplem

December 16th, 2008, 06:52

Maybe I got a random, hidden perk: Clawed to Death.

Seriously, I stopped having fun because of the amount of death claws...

lanux128

December 16th, 2008, 07:32

my experience is that Deathclaws are concentrated on the north-east section of the map. are you by any chance exploring that area?

xSamhainx

December 16th, 2008, 21:51

the only thing that i really fear are those behemoths!

Dez

December 16th, 2008, 21:54

my experience is that Deathclaws are concentrated on the north-east section of the map. are you by any chance exploring that area?

Yup they are roaming that area because there is actually a nest full of them in the north east..:)

Korplem

December 17th, 2008, 00:21

Last time I played I was in the south-west...

lanux128

December 17th, 2008, 05:29

then i can't imagine what it'd be like when you reach the Deathclaw Sanctuary. :)

naistradamus

December 17th, 2008, 07:46

I didnt think Oblivion was very good. Its just a huge world with nothing to do.

-The quests are boring and irrelevent to the world unless you do the main ones.

-the character facial generation is impossible to use to create a character with an even remotely "Normal" looking face.

-the world is too big with too much pointless stuff filling it up.

-autotravel from one end to the other end of the world makes the worlds size pointless

-starsigns are imbalanced in strength.

-spells and abilities are too scattered all over the place in an inacceble manner.

Relayer

December 24th, 2008, 00:01

That's why you download the Adventurer's mod.

Fixes a lot of those issues and makes the game a bit harder without adding too much (Obscuro's Overhaul).

Game still isn't great by any means, not even good as far as an RPG but makes it a less annoying, somewhat decent action/adventure RPG-lite.

So if you liked Oblivion, it will improve the game.
If you disliked it a bit, it may make you dislike it a lot less.
If you hated it, there's nothing that can be done, heh.

RivianWitch

March 25th, 2009, 14:30

Just back to that bit of off-topic up there, regarding FO3. Deathclaws? Well, will ya believe I spent 70 hours in the game, and completed the main quest along with a good few others, and I never encountered a Death claw? :S I have been planning to go back sometime and explore all the other vaults. I've only been to the two needed for the MQ, and apparently the others are interesting.

Regarding Oblivion: rants about it are just so old. Yes it's too easy and it has a ridiculous leveling system, but I enjoyed the setting and the little stories around the quests. I'm a Morrowind fan though. Oblivion doesn't touch it. :biggrin:

Gutted

April 24th, 2009, 01:00

Relayer

May 5th, 2009, 22:08

Oblivion and Fallout 3 were both very disappointing for me. I even tried going back to Oblivion a year or two after release, assuming the Mod community would have had time to 'fix' it, and still couldn't even play it. All the game sites that give these 2 90's or higher don't earn my respect. Oblivion at launch, with all the scaling problems, is like.. a 70

It's funny, after attempting to play Fallout 3 for the 3rd time and then going back to Oblivion for the 10th or so I think Oblivion sucks a bit less.

Both games disappoint me but I had no problem running around doing the odd side quest or exploring in Oblivion. It was ok, not mind blowing but sort of the mindless not-too-absorbing kind of fun you have playing Diablo or action RPGs (only not even as much fun). Couldn't do this with Fallout 3.

I could see where some improvements were made in Fallout 3 as it relates to skill checks and levelling system, but I just can't get into Fallout 3 AT ALL. Maybe I loved Fallout 1/2 so much that I couldn't accept the way it turned out.

The reason I keep going back to Oblivion is that I'm an ES fan and really wanted to like it... I keep going back to see if maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance. So I try a different class type, focus on one faction's quests, stick to exploring.

Still, every time I end up putting about 6 or 7 hours into it and then getting bored. But I don't think Fallout will get another chance. I hate it.

Konjad

May 6th, 2009, 09:26

It is same with me, Relayer. I'm coming back to TES4 but can't to FO3 even if both dissapointed me. It's also because of mods - Oblivion has a tons of great mods that makes it much better.

And yes, I also hate FO3 because I love FO 1/2 ^,^

blackcanopus

May 20th, 2009, 12:53

Oblivion was a little disappointing for me. But I got to like it in the end. It is not one of my favorites however. It is just OK.
But F3 is a whole different story.
I don't hate F3 because I am a F1/2 fan. I hate F3 because it is a poor game in its own right. The worst RPG gameplay? Check (Do you really call it a RPG?). The worst ending ever? Check. The worst character design possible in a game? Check. The worst story ever? Check. The most illogical story elements in the history of gaming? Check.

And before somebody starts arguing about how great F3 was, and how biased and negative my statements are, let me just give you an example.
When I first got to Megaton, I found a nuclear bomb which supposedly was dropped there by the Chinese. Imagine my utter surprise when I got to Fort Constantine and found a silo full of the same bomb, made by the Americans!
In Bethsoft's f..... game, the Americans NUKED THEMSELVES, only because Bethsoft's graphics design game didn't bother to make two different bombs, one for the Americans and another for the Chinese.
There are many other cases just like that. If you want examples, just call the shot.

Konjad

May 24th, 2009, 11:35

I don't hate F3 because I am a F1/2 fan. I hate F3 because it is a poor game in its own right. The worst RPG gameplay? Check (Do you really call it a RPG?). The worst ending ever? Check. The worst character design possible in a game? Check. The worst story ever? Check. The most illogical story elements in the history of gaming? Check.

You forgot stupid dialogues that are retarded more than in any game/movie/book I've ever played/seen/read.

http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/8325/screenshot81jw8.png
http://img116.imageshack.us/img116/3464/charismacheckspi7.jpg
http://img357.imageshack.us/img357/7533/screenshot121sa0.png
http://img71.imageshack.us/img71/4292/screenshot19vp6vs9.png

I wouldn't believe someone might write something so stupid if I didn't see this myself.

azraelck

May 24th, 2009, 20:39

I haven't bothered with Fallout 3 yet. The setting really has never interested me, so it's not a must purchase.

Oblivion, I picked up off a clearance rack for my PS3. And I wish I'd gotten something else. Like burned at the stake.

After a bland-if-tolerable FPS romp through the starter dungeon (of sorts), I made it to the outside world. About once every 30 mins or so, I might have even seen some combat. But only if I could catch the wolves before they ran away.

Oblivion has the most empty, boring world of anything I have ever experienced. It's barely RPG, I wasn't able to find a discernible plot. The only thing it has in that regard is a decent character generation system. A first person shooter actually has enemies, unlike this.

I gave it two hours. During which time, I could count on one hand the number of enemies outside of the starting dungeon I found. Not killed, they usually run from my mighty level 1 hero.

The most pointless thing is the looting. You can loot everything. However, WHY? I do not play a game like this to loot cups and glasses and plates. I didn't think much of that feature in Ultima 6, I think less of it now.

I reviewed it in another forum I go to, and it became one of 4 games to take a 0/5 score. Whats bad is I wanted a PS3 RPG, yet haven't found any beyond that.

JDR13

May 26th, 2009, 02:00

azraelck

May 26th, 2009, 08:44

First off, why would you buy a game like Oblivion for the PS3? You should have known better. I would never buy that style of RPG for a game console, simply because the modability is one of the best things about the PC version.

Because I wanted a PS3 RPG, and more importantly this laptop I'm on isn't really able to run Oblivion. Might do better now that I got rid of the vista Virus that sucked up 45%+ of my processor and 75% of my ram, but still. The Intel chip for graphics isn't much either.

My PC gaming is limited to those developers and publishers who are intelligent enough to shoot for a more commonly available, lower-end PC and laptops instead of the expensive gaming rigs.

Secondly, I bought Morrowind for PC, and felt I paid too much at $5. I should have pirated it, and then I'd still have paid too much. Oblivion was worse.

Finally, I very rarely buy games for PC due to proliferation of viruses being prepackaged with them from the major publishers. I'll generally buy from competent publishers, which means independents. I'm tired of having to replace hardware and reinstall OS's just because of idiots and crooks in an office.

I had Daggerfall, and liked it save for the general bugginess. If I could get it to install, I might have in on my computer now. Morrowind was only slightly more populated than Oblivion. Slightly. It's like the difference between a ghost town and a town where even the ghosts left for better pastures. I never played Arena, again it didn't seem to want to install. Then again, I downloaded it while I was still suffering Vista, so it may work now I have a decent OS.

JDR13

May 26th, 2009, 09:59

Secondly, I bought Morrowind for PC, and felt I paid too much at $5. I should have pirated it, and then I'd still have paid too much. Oblivion was worse.

Really?! A lot of people consider Morrowind a classic, and I'd have to say I agree. It was MUCH better than Oblivion imo, and it's an explorer's dream if you like sandbox style RPGs.

I'll never forget the first time I stepped off the boat in Seyda Need and looked around..... I almost fell out of my chair.

Daggerfall was slightly overrated imo, and I think the only reason it got so much attention was because of it's size and scope. I don't like randomized dungeons in crpgs, and seeing the same cookie cutter areas in DF grew old fast for me.

Jazzotron

May 26th, 2009, 11:00

Really?! A lot of people consider Morrowind a classic, and I'd have to say I agree. It was MUCH better than Oblivion imo, and it's an explorer's dream if you like sandbox style RPGs.

I'll never forget the first time I stepped off the boat in Seyda Need and looked around..... I almost fell out of my chair.

Daggerfall was slightly overrated imo, and I think the only reason it got so much attention was because of it's size and scope. I don't like randomized dungeons in crpgs, and seeing the same cookie cutter areas in DF grew old fast for me.

Seconded. I replay Morrowind every 6 months or so (since release) and am still finding previously undiscovered secrets! (Admittedly no longer - I ended up checking out the wiki last run through only to discover I had had found/completed everything in previous play throughs...*sigh*)
If that isn't bang for your buck, then I don't know what is...

Now, if only Bethsoft could populate their worlds with complex and engaging NPCs to interact and develop with...

DArtagnan

May 26th, 2009, 12:07

Morrowind and Oblivion are about equally bad, if you ask me - since they both suffer from the same core issues.

Oblivion looks better, though, but Morrowind was less generic.

azraelck

May 26th, 2009, 21:16

As I said, I felt Morrowind was better... but not by alot. Both suffered from the same problem; too much ambition. The end result was an empty landscape, devoid af anything worthwhile.

I don't play RPGs to wander around for a half hour, and only manage to see a single wolf in that time frame. Nor do I play first person shooters for that purpose. I do like sandbox style games, provided the sandbox isn't empty!

DF probably was overrated. I recall liking it, but I haven't managed to get it working since the Win98 days. And even then, I bought it off clearance. Still has the sticker on the case even. I do remember constant crashing, glitching, and other annoyances.

I remember the first time I started in Morrowind as well. I looked around, and thought: "This looks good!". A half hour later, I was dozing off due to boredom.

As a comparison, I can sit down right now with World of Xeen, which I have beaten at least a dozen times (including a 2 person party once), and play the rest of the day without noticing it.

Jaz

May 27th, 2009, 01:04

Daggerfall, sigh... my house in the mountains... oh the memories :). Loved that game to bits. Played it last in 2004 on a Win 98 machine. With the 20 MB bugfix and cheats enabled so I could get back out of the notorious holes in the ground (the ones the Dwemer probably fell through and vanished)...
Perhaps I should go for another round?
Morrowind was and still is another favorite. So many nice houses, so many candles and lanterns (I grabbed them wherever I could to illuminate my houses - inside and out). Should reinstall that one, too, once I get hold of a machine able to run it. And I would even reinstall Oblivion (my least favorite of the four along with Arena) even if it was just so I could say hi to Hieronymus Lex. And buy the houses :p.
My pet peeve with Oblivion - apart from the small world - was the fact that you couldn't move light sources. Other than that I had tons of fun.
The problem with Arena was - right, no houses to acquire. Apart from that, the game was fun enough.
The best dialogue of all Elder Scrolls games (at least of those I played) was that in Battlespire. besides, I preferred the Battlespire approach to Oblivion and its denizens to the Oblivion approach to Oblivion and its denizens.
And I should replay Redguard while I'm still in the mood; now that I know which quest best NOT to finish early, I'm pretty sure it'll be a blast :).

JDR13

May 27th, 2009, 01:30

Relayer

May 28th, 2009, 03:51

That description fits Daggerfall far more than Morrowind. It doesn't sound like you even explored much of Morrowind imo.

I agree.

Morrowind had a lot to offer, a hell of a lot more than Oblivion (I disagree they are both bad).

Oblivion was generic, small in scope, didn't have a whole lot by way of additional lore, had a stale atmosphere, simple characters and dialogue, stupid main quest, and the loot scaling was horrible.

Morrowind on the other hand had a great setting (political, social and religious tensions), immersive atmosphere, intriguing main quest, and although the ENCYCLOPEDIA style dialogue system wasn't ideal, at least the dialogue was very well detailed and descriptive, not dumbed down at all (like in Oblivion & Fallout 3). It had a better character system (more skills), the combat system though not great was more in line with classic RPGs and lead to more specializing.

And you could really have a lot of fun with exploration. Why? Because you would always come across useful, interesting and sometimes unique items and not everything was scaled to your level. The walking speed was a bit slower too so it didn't feel like there was a dungeon every few feet.

Add the inclusion of Bloodmoon and Tribunal which both added new mechanics, and improved quests and Oblivion is nowhere in its league.

Oblivion did have better graphics TECHNICALLY but not artistically.

Oblivion's combat felt a bit more robust but it felt like twitch skills meant more than your actual skill level with a weapon.

Oblivion had a ton more voice acting but the dialogue was horrible AND using several different voices for 1 character's different responses was beyond lame. Completely took you out of the game. Not to mention the voice acting was terrible.

Morrowind's main quest drew you in slowly, a piece at a time. It was sensible and logical. In Oblivion, well I won't go into it but we all know how silly and ridiculous the whole scenario with the King getting killed and you a complete nobody being tasked with seeking his son out and, blah blah blah. It just seemed like it was thought up at the last minute. So unbelievable. So lame.

Now Morrowind had its faults of course. The NPCs standing around all day/night for instance. Of course having played many CRPGs and JRPGs in which NPCs pretty much did the same thing meant this didn't bother me as much but I will say Oblivion's system was better.

There was a greater variety of quests in Oblivion as well, and some of the quests were actually pretty well done.

Also I admit that to really get INTO Morrowind you had to read some of the books that were lying around. Reading those, especially the ones dealing with the history of the place really drew me in the game more even if the game world did feel a bit static at times. So yes, more imagination than usual was required to enjoy this title but it was worth it. Bethesda will be known for their million selling sandboxy blockbusters but they should really be known for giving us the Elder Scrolls Universe which is really a unique and interesting game world

So it wasn't a perfect game by any stretch but it had soul and you can see those that worked on the game cared a great deal about the source. It's like some progressive rock magnum opus where more is revealed upon each successive listen, little details that you may not have noticed previously, music with depth, nuance.

Oblivion on the other hand feels like top 40 generic crap intended for quick consumption. Fun for a little bit but very little substance or staying power.

Also Cliffracers. Lol.

rpgdude

June 15th, 2009, 17:08

Euh. I actually like to have a thread for ranting about ALL the popular games. For each game, you select one thing that you don't like the most and let 's hear about it.

Raving is easy but ranting may not be allowed since it isn't good for business. :)

Let's see how you react to this: (1) the spawning of quests ' monsters in big D or (2) the yawning in BG I.

larry138

June 25th, 2009, 21:28

Morrowind was great, but after a while it kind of felt lonely. Can't really put my finger on why. The odd setting definitely furthered its appeal. No high fantasy bright-green woods and all the usual trappings of most RPGs these days. With that said, though, I definitely enjoyed Oblivion as well. The Dark Brotherhood questline was simply amazing and way more fun for me than the main story. The reference to the Friday the 13th movies was pretty sweet too.

I bought Morrowind the week it came out and replay it about every year, still finding new things on my different playthroughs. The crazy thing is still, to this day, I've NEVER completed the main story. I just always end up getting sidetracked with all the optional quests, usually right away in Balmora. With Oblivion I completed everything it had to offer within about a year of casual playing.

Both games are great in my view and I really don't understand how people dislike either of them.

e: Oh, and the reference to Something Awful in Morrowind killed me when I found it.

Tragos

June 29th, 2009, 00:37

Morrowind had a strong lore and background , of course battle and magic system was not the best but it had a believable world that i wanted to be part of .
I have spent hours reading books , re-examining story and finally deciding that i will not complete the MQ because i do not want to be manipulated by Azura .
I never care about gear and weapons in RPGs but hand placed objects plus lots of secrets and the concept that "your character can do this and not that , it is not your skill that matters but his abilities" appeal to me a lot .

Oblivion gave me the opportunity to play as an archer/sniper with it's almost perfect archery and improved stealth but beyond that there was nothing , too much hand holding, quests were boring, level scaling atrocious , books uninteresting and battle/environment generic .It is an empty world stripped of all it's essence , 500 lines of speech never gave me the rush that a Dunmer voice only saying "Outlander" could.

larry138

June 29th, 2009, 05:35

It's truly difficult not to be blown away by the amount of love Bethsoft shows their games. Definitely one of my favorite developers. There's hardly any "bland" areas, most are intricately crafted and really detailed. To see people still putting this much hard work into games and not just churning out some crap for a quick buck is really refreshing. Even though some dislike Oblivion, or Fallout 3, you really can't knock either game on the amount of detail, which is awesome.

JDR13

June 29th, 2009, 09:55

Relayer

June 30th, 2009, 18:23

I guess Bethesda can't be called lazy, they certainly put a lot of attention into details as far as their "worlds" are concerned.

Still, they need to pay a bit more attention to gameplay elements and stop making games that cater to RPG noobs. It's great that they want their games to be easy to get into but that's why some developers add TUTORIAL levels to their games. I don't want Quest/NPC GPS and step-by-step pop ups that leave NOTHING to the imagination.

They also need to stop appealing to FPS/Action game fans (Bioware is guilty of this as well).

I would love a game with the detail and amount of lore in Morrowind with some gameplay to match. More interactive NPCs, scripted events, and more quest solution options would have helped that game immensely. Still loved it.

Squeek

June 30th, 2009, 21:26

I’m a big fan of the TES series, despite its flaws. IMO, its weaknesses fall into two categories -- problems related to game balance and problems related to the sheer size of a true sandbox RPG.

It's worth noting that the simplifications in the series began with Morrowind (something Morrowind fans sometimes hate to be reminded of, but true nonetheless). For instance, training became an out-and-out exploit compared to Daggerfall, and the reputation system was gutted completely.

That's not to say Morrowind was crap. It wasn't crap. But it was simpler than the previous TES game.

IMO, a sandbox RPG without strict controls (e.g. Gothic) can't be done successfully as a single game, because it's just too big. Bethesda might want to try to figure out how it could turn the TES series into a single-player RPG universe, IMO, something that could work dynamically. That might enable solutions for its balance and size issues, I think, and would put it in a position to compete with WoW for its subscriber base.

larry138

June 30th, 2009, 22:38

You have to look at what they've done from a business standpoint as well. Making their games appeal to a large audience rakes in a ton more profit. Sure, all of us here would probably love Oblivion without the handholding and such, but doing that made the game accessible to those who don't normally play games of this nature.

A lot of my good friends don't play games, at all. Nearly every single one of them played Oblivion. That's probably about 10 people at $60 a piece, whereas if they didn't make the game user friendly they would've only gotten my money. Same situation for Fallout 3. Because these people liked Oblivion/F3 so much, they've gone back and bought earlier games in the franchise. Even more cash.

When you factor in that they wanted to appeal to a large audience and dumbed down a lot of parts, the game still does a commendable job at appealing to old fans as well. You may dislike the ease of use yet it's bearable.

Relayer

July 2nd, 2009, 00:30

When you factor in that they wanted to appeal to a large audience and dumbed down a lot of parts, the game still does a commendable job at appealing to old fans as well. You may dislike the ease of use yet it's bearable.

I disagree. While it's commendable that they make games for a broad audience, it hurts true RPG fans in the long run and it really hurts the genre.

Who wouldn't want the sales of Oblivion or Fallout 3? Or Mass Effect?

Sadly, we'll probably NEVER see another game like Wizardry 8, Baldur's Gate II, Arcanum or many of the more traditional RPG games released in the "good old days".

2001 - 2002 were the last of the great years:

Morrowind
IWD2
NWN (MQ sucked but it was still traditional D&D and multiplayer & mod scene was good)
Divine Divinity
Arcanum
Wizardy 8
BG2: Throne of Bhall
Gothic
Morrowind: Tribunal

Ubereil

July 2nd, 2009, 15:39

2001 - 2002 were the last of the great years:

Morrowind
IWD2
NWN (MQ sucked but it was still traditional D&D and multiplayer & mod scene was good)
Divine Divinity
Arcanum
Wizardy 8
BG2: Throne of Bhall
Gothic
Morrowind: Tribunal

What is it these games had that modern games lack?

Übereil

JDR13

July 2nd, 2009, 16:07

What is it these games had that modern games lack?l

They were actually good? ;)

Konjad

July 2nd, 2009, 16:10

I think that he just means that in years 2001/2002 there were many good cRPGs while in recent years there are not so many (if any) every year.

Ubereil

July 2nd, 2009, 20:31

Well, there are two games on that list I finnished, and I tried all of them (apart from ToB, because I never got through SoA. And that Morrowind Tribunal thingy, for pretty much the same reason). And that was back in the days when I finnished RPG's.

What was so great about those games that modern RPG's lack?

Übereil

Relayer

July 2nd, 2009, 20:43

What is it these games had that modern games lack?

In a nutshell: what JDR13 said!

Most of those games were challenging, had a decent balance (usually) of gameplay, story and features. Most weren't linear, or held your hand.

Today's games are mostly ALL story and flash with very little gameplay. They practically play themselves.

Most of those games are also highly replayable. Why on earth would I want to go through Jade Empire, NWN2 or Mass Effect again? They were [mildly] enjoyable the first time but there was nothing special about them and basically you see everything there is to see on 1 playthrough.

And most game nowadays lack character and charm. They're by-the-numbers, dull, nothing we haven't seen before. They use fancier graphical technology but do nothing groundbreaking in terms of gameplay experience.

I think what pisses me off even more is that it seems every RPG these days uses some FPS or FPS hybrid system. What's wrong with turn-based group combat? What's wrong with stats heavily affecting gameplay? Modern RPGs are really Action games w/RPG elements. Not much of a step up from Zelda.

And too much time AND money is spent these days on voice acting and graphics when involving gameplay is what matters. And not the type of gameplay where you're guaranteed to win every battle or have a ton of dialogue options that STILL lead to the same result.

Alrik Fassbauer

July 3rd, 2009, 14:59

And too much time AND money is spent these days on voice acting and graphics when involving gameplay is what matters.

Here we go again. And who is demanding great graphics and great voiceacting ? Gamers. And editors of magazines, of course, whose influence on the industry mustn't be underestimated.

It's a vicious circle.

wolfing

July 11th, 2009, 04:44

Here we go again. And who is demanding great graphics and great voiceacting ? Gamers. And editors of magazines, of course, whose influence on the industry mustn't be underestimated.

It's a vicious circle.

I don't really think gamers are demanding great voiceacting. Probably most just read the text and skip the voice. I know I do.

azraelck

July 11th, 2009, 05:26

Really, it's not the gamers but the publishers. They demand things that sell in high quantity, to pay back the initial investment. Fair enough, but that leaves more niche products, like good games, out in the cold.

Most publishers have it in their heads that only graphically pleasing, state-of-the-art looking games that mimic others that have sold well in the past will sell. Guess what? Our turn based RPGs didn't sell in those numbers. Zelda did. Thus, they slap some RPG elements on a Zelda clone to appease those who claim to be RPG fans, and draw in the most buyers they can.

Same thing goes for turn based strategy. Save civilization, they tend not to sell all that great. So what do we get? Warcraft clones. Look at MMO's. WoW clones are the most prevalent; if they don't mimic it entirely then they mimic the look and interface at least, if not the setting.

It's rare that a big-name publisher tries something "risky", like release a platformer with NES-style graphics. Sometimes, though, it's a hit. Really no less likely a hit than the "fancy modern 3D hyper realistic" stuff, when you look at it. But oh well. That's what indies are for. Good games.

human_male

August 28th, 2009, 01:31

I love Oblivion, but that being said I played it quite highly modded. If it were not for the mods I doubt I would have enjoyed it nearly as much (like level slow, chase camera mod and low loot). But how I've got it set up now it's nearly perfect. Not Fallout 2 perfect, but as close as I can realistically expect.

That's one thing I don't like about having to make the switch to consoles (I couldn't afford to keep upgrading the PC), you can't use mods. I really wish you could, then I could have modded Fallout 3 and made it much better.

The way I've got it now, I love Oblivion so much I wish I could just keep playing and playing, but I just can't stand to do the same thing over and over. That's why if I could have my choice of a super power it would be to selectively delete my own memories, then I could forget everything about it and keep playing it like it was the first time. How great that would be *sigh*.

Either that or force powers.

JDR13

August 28th, 2009, 02:02

The way I've got it now, I love Oblivion so much I wish I could just keep playing and playing.

Well....... are you gonna tell us which mods you're using or not? ;)

skavenhorde

August 28th, 2009, 04:32

human_male

August 28th, 2009, 11:29

Well....... are you gonna tell us which mods you're using or not? ;)

Certainly;

No Persistent Enchantment Glow. So you're not constantly glowing from wearing enchanted armour. Essential.

Chase Camera Mod. Makes the chase camera act like it does in Morrowind and I edited it so you can only zoom out as far as the camera does in Morrowind. That stops it zooming right out whenever you sit down, stand up, mount/dismount your horse ect. Also essential.

Deadlier Traps. Makes the booby traps in caves instantly fatal, not essential but I like it.

Level Slow. Slows down the rate you gain a level from between one and four times. I use x3. Essential and oh how I wish I could use something like this for Fallout 3 on the 360.

MCalebs Decompose Corpse. Handy to remove the clutter of dead bandits and stuff since they're too heavy to just pick up like you can in Fallout 3 (and make little piles).

Not Enough Charge. Stops the annoying "your enchanted weapon doesn't have enough charge" message.

My Fighter's Guild Chests. Adds a player safe chest and player only bed in each fighter's guild hall and DB sanctuary. And allows the player to use that one bed on the ground floor in Anvil that would be perfect for the player but actually belongs to Azan.

My House For Sale Revamp. Adds a few more decorations and another shelf and chest in the shack in the Imperial City.

No Quest Items. So you can drop quest items.

Respawn Timer Changer. So you can edit how quickly dungeons respawn. I always found it silly that a day after I'd cleaned a place out everything came back to life.

Natural Wildlife. Makes animals not automatically attack you.

Unoffical Equipment Rarity Patch. Makes valuable loot (like high end weapons and armour) much, much rarer. Very austere, but now you'll never, EVER see a bandit wearing elven, ebony or daedric armour. Essential.

Unoffical Mod Variety Generation. Mixes up the creatures in dungeons so they're not always the ones most appropriate to your level.

One that I forget what it's called but it removes the quest marker from the compass and makes all the items in the inventory smaller.

And my own No Deliver the Amulet Journal Entries. I made this because I wanted to start a new game without going through the opening dungeon and where I wasn't "the chosen one". I found a couple of alternate start mods but they weren't quite what I wanted. Making my own alternate start mod was a bit beyond me, so I just fast travel from the sewer to the docks of Anvil and, ahem... pretend my game's starting right there. And the journal doesn't mention anything about the Amulet of Kings. Instead it assumes I've just escaped a slave ship and washed up at the docks in Anvil. It also locks the door to Weynon Priory, cutting off the main quest completely.

Oh and I also edited the Mehrunes Razor DLC to remove the enchantment. I didn't like the disintergrate armour enchantment using up the charge all the time. I tried to just remove that one but it didn't work so I removed both. Now it's just an extremely wicked looking, big daedric dagger and I love it. Very good if you use the equipment rarity patch which is so austere you'll basically never find an actual daedric dagger.

And that's about it.

human_male

August 28th, 2009, 11:52

Definitely cough up those mods :)

I'm always interested in what mods people are using that made the game better for them.

I'm willing to bet you have at least put on there FCOM with OOO, MMM and Franseco's. It was a pain to get that to work, but when I finally did it made a huge difference.

Any mods from this site?
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Must_Have_Mods

No I don't think so. I don't think I know those ones. But I'll definitely have a good look through there if I ever play the game again.

I have the itch to play it now actually, but then I think about just doing the same old thing over again. I wish they'd never stopped making expansions. Why only one? Why?

skavenhorde

August 28th, 2009, 12:13

Thanks, human. I'll look into some of those mods the next time I get the itch to play Oblivion.

DArtagnan

August 28th, 2009, 12:23

I've been in love with Oblivion several times - based on the ton of mods I always use to try and enhance the game.

But I never get past completing the Dark Brotherhood questline before it dawns on me how dreadfully stale and derivative it all really is...

Even WITH a zillion mods.

bkrueger

August 28th, 2009, 19:59

@human_male: Which of those mods removes the level scaling?

human_male

August 29th, 2009, 00:49

@human_male: Which of those mods removes the level scaling?

I don't think it removes the scaling exactly. What it does is mixes the creatures up a bit, so for example even at high levels you might encounter a rat or simple skeleton. But you won't run into a land dreugh at level one. I'd actually like one like that. Especially if it gave a higher chance of finding a very high level monster the more remote the dungeon.

But anyway it's the Unofficial Mob Variety Generation v1.0 by PlasticFoamMan.

DeepO

August 29th, 2009, 02:08

@human_male: Which of those mods removes the level scaling?

If you can put up with a bit complicated installation procedure, try FCOM: Convergence.
It changes the game rather significantly for the better imo and among other things it shatters level scaling quite a bit.
Detailed installation instruction are here:
http://devnull.sweetdanger.net/convergence.html

You might want to checkout the dude´s whole site since it lists quite a few solid mods: http://devnull.sweetdanger.net/
Check out the quest mods there, some are pretty interesting.

Since I´m playing a battlemage of sorts I´m also using some magic enhancing mods, namely LAME, Supreme Magicka and Midas Magic. They play nicely together and I think that especially for magic heavy character they´re almost a must.

There are also some nice atmosphere enhancing mods, especially Better Cities, Unique Landscapes, All Natural Weather and Animated Window Lighting System.

Among others I also use Always +4 Modifiers mod which removes the need to grind skills in order to get better modifiers at level up. It may be a bit cheaty but especially with FCOM is doesn´t feel unbalancing.

Also, I´d say some interface replacer, like Dark UI which I´m using, is a must.

I'm always interested in what mods people are using that made the game better for them.

Probably won´t be of much use, but here´s my load order :):

Oblivion.esm
Francesco's Leveled Creatures-Items Mod.esm
Francesco's Optional New Items Add-On.esm
Jog_X_Mod.esm
CM Partners.esm
EnhancedWeather.esm
Cobl Main.esm
Qarls_Harvest.esm
Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esm
Mart's Monster Mod.esm
Enhanced Daedric Invasion.esm
TamrielTravellers.esm
FCOM_Convergence.esm
Cybiades.esm
Better Cities Resources.esm
HorseCombatMaster.esm
Diverse Wisps - Base.esm
Artifacts.esm
All Natural Base.esm
Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp
DLCShiveringIsles.esp
Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch.esp
Better Cities .esp
Francesco's Optional Chance of Stronger Bosses.esp
Francesco's Optional Chance of Stronger Enemies.esp
Francesco's Optional Leveled Guards.esp
Francesco's Dark Seducer Weapons Patch.esp
FCOM_Francescos.esp
FCOM_FrancescosItemsAddOn.esp
FCOM_FrancescosNamedBosses.esp
Atmospheric Loading Screens - Original Text.esp
Natural_Habitat_by_Max_Tael.esp
EnhancedWeather.esp
All Natural.esp
All Natural - EW + NW + AWS.esp
Symphony of Violence.esp
AmbientTownSounds.esp
MIS.esp
MIS New Sounds Optional Part.esp
Atmospheric Oblivion.esp
WindowLightingSystem.esp
AliveWaters.esp
AliveWaters - Koi Addon.esp
AliveWaters - Slaughterfish Addon.esp
Akatosh Mount By Saiden Storm.esp
Book Jackets Oblivion.esp
Bedrollsanyone.esp
CNRP Brumav02.esp
CNRP Cheydinhal.esp
CNRP Chorrol.esp
CNRP FightersGuild.esp
Oblivion Collectible Cards.esp
Qarls_Harvest.esp
Crowded Roads.esp
DLCOrrery.esp
DLCOrrery - Unofficial Patch.esp
DLCVileLair.esp
DLCVileLair - Unofficial Patch.esp
DLCMehrunesRazor.esp
DLCMehrunesRazor - Unofficial Patch.esp
DLCSpellTomes.esp
Book Jackets DLC.esp
Griffon Fortress 0.3.esp
SentientWeapon.esp
Thieves Arsenal.esp
AncientTowers.esp
DLCThievesDen.esp
DLCThievesDen - Unofficial Patch.esp
DLCThievesDen - Unofficial Patch - SSSB.esp
Cobl Si.esp
FCOM_Cobl.esp
Bob's Armory Oblivion.esp
FCOM_BobsArmory.esp
Oblivion WarCry EV.esp
FCOM_WarCry.esp
Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp
OBSE-Storms & Sound SI.esp
FCOM_Convergence.esp
FCOM_EntropicOrderRebalance.esp
FCOM_RealSwords.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Looting NPCs & Creatures.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Less Reavers.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Less Bone Loot.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Vindasel.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Foxes.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Dungeons of MMM.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Gems & Gem Dust.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Hunting & Crafting.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Farm Animals.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Durzog Addon.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Diverse Runeskulls.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Diverse WaterLife.esp
TamrielTravellers4OOO.esp
TamrielTravellersItemsNPC.esp
TamrielTravellersItemsCobl.esp
ShiveringIsleTravellers.esp
ShiveringIsleTravellersFriendlyFactions4MMM.esp
FCOM_TamrielTravelers.esp
FCOM_DiverseGuardUnity.esp
FCOM_BobsGuardUnity.esp
FCOM_HungersUnitySI.esp
FCOM_FriendlierFactions.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Shivering Isles.esp
Atmospheric Oblivion - MMM Patch.esp
Atmospheric Oblivion - OOO Patch.esp
OOO-WaterFish.esp
ClocksOfCyrodiil_BC_OBC_OC_OCLR_Vanilla.esp
Ivellon.esp
adTreeHome.esp
AlchemistsCave-COBL.esp
BravilSeaDomes.esp
Demonhunter.esp
DibellaTempleWillowLakeVillagev1.esp
MeteorShowerDiveRock.esp
HauntedHouse.esp
HeartOftheDead.esp
GlenvarCastle.esp
LetThePeopleDrink-fountainonly-Cobl.esp
mrSiikas_TheEmperorsTomb_ImperialPalace.esp
Malevolent.esp
MountainTower.esp
Museum.esp
TempleOfZealotsV2.esp
thievery.esp
Better Cities - Thievery.esp
VHBloodlines 1.2.esp
Better Cities - VHBloodlines.esp
AFK_Weye.esp
24HrArenaAliveV2.esp
DLCBattlehornCastle.esp
DLCBattlehornCastle - Unofficial Patch.esp
DLCFrostcrag.esp
FrostcragRebornCobl.esp
Knights.esp
Knights - Unofficial Patch.esp
Kragenir's Death Quest.esp
KDQ - Rural Line Additions.esp
Cybiades.esp
CybiadesDungeon.esp
The Lost Spires.esp
TOTF.esp
RTT.esp
RTT-Weye Relocation Patch.esp
HoarfrostCastle.esp
Shadowcrest_Vineyard_COBL.esp
FCOM_Knights.esp
ElsweyrAnequina.esp
road+bridges.esp
NRB4+Vineyard Patch.esp
Faregyl.esp
Faregyl-FGRoad-Patch.esp
Vergayun.esp
A Imperial Outpost - Fort Novi Sad.esp
Mimics!.esp
xuldarkforest.esp
xulStendarrValley.esp
Snow Dragon Temple v1.0.esp
xulTheHeath.esp
XulEntiusGorge.esp
DibellaTempleWillowLakeVillage-EntiusGorge patch.esp
xulFallenleafEverglade.esp
Anequina-Fallenleaf-Patch.esp
xulColovianHighlands_EV.esp
xulChorrolHinterland.esp
VeronaHouseBloodlines-ChorrolHinterland fix.esp
xulBeachesOfCyrodiilLostCoast.esp
VeronaHouseBloodlines-LostCoast fix.esp
xulBravilBarrowfields.esp
xulLushWoodlands.esp
HoarfrostCastle-LushWoodlands patch.esp
xulAncientYews.esp
xulAncientRedwoods.esp
xulCloudtopMountains.esp
xulArriusCreek.esp
xulPatch_AY_AC.esp
HeartoftheDead-ArriusCreek patch.esp
xulRollingHills_EV.esp
xulPantherRiver.esp
xulRiverEthe.esp
xulBrenaRiverRavine.esp
xulImperialIsle.esp
xulBlackwoodForest.esp
NRB4+UL-II Patch.esp
LostSpires-DarkForest patch.esp
LostSpires-Everglade patch.esp
KragenirsDeathQuest-RollingHills patch.esp
KragenirsDeathQuest-LostCoast patch.esp
Better Cities Full.esp
Better Cities - Full City Defences.esp
Better Cities - Unique Landscape Barrowfields.esp
BCBravil-Barrowfields patch.esp
Better Cities - Ruined Tail's Tale.esp
BCChorrol-ChorrolHinterland fix.esp
Better Cities - Unique Landscape Chorrol Hinterland.esp
Better Cities - Tears of the Fiend.esp
Adonnays Classical Weaponry.esp
Adonnays Elven Weaponry.esp
Enhanced Daedric Invasion.esp
FCOM_EnhancedDaedricInvasion.esp
Enhanced Vegetation [150%].esp
RealisticFlora.esp
Bag of Holding.esp
Birthsigns Expanded.esp
Cliff_BetterLetters.esp
P1DkeyChain.esp
Slof's Dogs.esp
Enhanced Quest Roleplaying.esp
Quest Award Leveller.esp
bgBalancingEVCore.esp
MidasSpells.esp
Midas Reduced Costs Half.esp
SupremeMagicka.esp
SM_ShiveringIsles.esp
bgMagicEV.esp
bgMagicSpellTomes_for_WryeBash.esp
bgMagicEVStartspells.esp
bgMagicBonus.esp
Druid.esp
Francesco's 14 days respawn time - 1-24 day lenght rescale.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Resized Races.esp
bgBalancingEVOptionalFCOMAdditions.esp
bgIntegrationEV.esp
Mag1cWind0w_The_Imperial_Water.esp
Better Imperial City.esp
Better Cities - COBL.esp
Better Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary for Cobl & OBSE.esp
Always+4Modifiers.esp
Artifacts.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Diverse Wisps.esp
Dwemer_Skyship_1_1_0_noQuest.esp
mrSiikas_ElvenShips.esp
Horse Dreamland.esp
Lakeview.esp
300_Lore_Dialogue_Updated.esp
To Feed an Empire - Wickmere Farm.esp
Harpsichords in Cyrodiil.esp
Night Shops of Cyrodiil Gates.esp
Skooma_Water_Pipe.esp
All Natural - Skingrad.esp
Castle_Seaview.esp
EnchantmentRestore.esp
ScriptIcon_Replacer.esp
Echo_ChapelChant.esp
SentientWeaponII-AncientYews patch.esp
Cybiades-Lost Coast patch.esp
mrSiikas_PrehistoricAnimals1.1.esp
DAWoolyPackMammothMount.esp
CastleSeaview+LostCoast Patch.esp
TelValus1pt1c.esp
Valus Cottage.esp
DeadlyReflex 5 - Combat Moves.esp
Bashed Patch, 0.esp

I´m also using some texture replacers, mainly Quarl Redimized and Bomret´s Shivering Isles Texture Pack, plus I´ve copied all music from Morrowind into it since it rocks.
I was setting it up almost whole weekend but the resulting clusterfuck of a game works pretty well as occasional diversion.
Surely I won´t play through all those quest mods in there but I like to have options :).

JDR13

August 29th, 2009, 02:20

Wow, some of you really get crazy with mods. :lol:

I haven't played Oblivion since shortly after it was released, but I plan on playing it after I replay Morrowind soon. I'll probably just go with Francesco's leveling mod, as well as something that enhances the textures in the distance.

skavenhorde

August 29th, 2009, 05:42

You have to try out FCOM. It's amazing. It changed the whole game...well almost. I wish it changed the story:)

It's a pain in the butt to get going. You pick which of the huge mods you want to put in there and it'll make it so they'll work together. Once it's all working together it's totally worth the time and effort you put in.

FCOM homepage: http://devnull.sweetdanger.net/convergence.html

Also I used a lot of mods from this guy who posted his list at rpgcodex (http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23729). I highly recommend you try out these two at least:

Kobu's Character Advancement System - completely overhauls the way your skills and stats go up. Skills affect more than one stat. Endurance changes change your life retroactively, so no need to level END early or be gimped for HPs. etc etc etc.

and

Persuasion Overhaul - removes the fucking bloody stupid idiot crappy minigame. Now get a speech option "persuade", then all 4 choices. you have to choose which you want to use, and the game calculates for each combination of race, class, stats, gender, which probability you have for each option. You, of course, have to guess / get a feel for it.

These made a big difference in the game. If you prefer a little more realism in your game then you have to get Real Hunger and Real Sleep. It's not as bad as it sounds.

There is another mod that I didn't list called realistic fatigue. However, I can't recommend that one. That one while making the game more real was too annoying for me. Oblivion is huge and realistic fatigue just made travelling a pain.

Enhanced Daedric Invasion
Bank of Cyrodiil
Real Sleep
Martigen's Hunting and Crafting
Less Annoying Magic Experience
Living Economy
Real Hunger
Safer Roads and Spawn Rates Reduced
DarNified DarkUI
Blind Lockpicking
Lockpicks by Grumblepunk
Quest Award Leveller

The ones that are in bold are a ton of fun. Even the blind lockpicking. I wasn't too sure about that one. It just puts a panel so you can't see the tumblers. It's fun trying to use the sound of the tumblers to lockpick the lock.

The persuasion overhaul is a must. It totally changes the whole minigame to use your stats instead of that silly minigame.

Edit: @DeepO What's 300_Lore_Dialogue_Updated.esp
Does that add more to the dialogue? I've been looking for mods that do that.

Also, what is druid.esp? That sounds intersting.

Thanks for the load order. That's my biggest problem with having all these mods. I never quite know if my load order is correct or not :)

DeepO

August 29th, 2009, 06:19

Edit: @DeepO What's 300_Lore_Dialogue_Updated.esp
Does that add more to the dialogue? I've been looking for mods that do that.

Also, what is druid.esp? That sounds intersting.

Thanks for the load order. That's my biggest problem with having all these mods. I never quite know if my load order is correct or not :)

Yep, 300 LDU adds quite a lot of lore topics to NPCs, based on their class etc., similarily as was in Morrowind.
Lore Dialogue 300 Updated (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=25091)

You might want to check out Kragenir´s Death Quest since besides its main quest it adds a lot of additional dialogues throughout the game too.
Kragenir´s Death Quest (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=26219)

...as well as Integration - The Stranded Light which adds a new guild, lots of other quests and contains tons of lore dialogue. A lots of ties-in with Morrowind and Shivering Isles, etc.
Its quests are significantly harder than vanilla ones, often contain a lot of various skill and attribute checks in dialogues, are very diverse and don´t use quest marker. Some of its characters may look a bit cheesy and some quests are maybe a bit too on the vague side, but as a whole this mod is seriously impressive.
Integration (http://www.theelderscrolls.info/?go=dlfile&fileid=349)

Path of the Druid adds various druid themed skills/abilities/spells which you can progressively gain upon level up. Its summons may be slightly bit overpowered, but overall it´s a very well thought out mod. There´s a short quest you need to do in order to start the path.
Path of the Druid (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20372)

For load order I used BOSS (Better Oblivion Sorting Software) which is a rather effective tool and greatly helps to cut the ordering hassle.
It doesn´t recognize all the mods, so those are needed to sort manually.
BOSS (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20516)

skavenhorde

August 29th, 2009, 06:22

Thanks, I'll be adding those to Oblivion on my next play.

I can't tell you how hard it is to not load this up right now, but I just have too much on my plate right now to start this one.

Thanks for the BOSS. That will help a lot.

DeepO

August 29th, 2009, 06:40

You´re welcome!

(edited 2 more lore-y mods you might want to check out too into my previous post)

human_male

August 29th, 2009, 09:46

I'm intrigued by the persuation and blind lockpicking ones, skavenhorde. The out of the box persuation mini game does suck when you think about it. It negates the need for having a speechcraft skill, as does lockpicking. I wonder if they did that deliberately. I much prefer the lockpicking in Fallout 3, where you can't attempt to pick a lock unless you have a high enough skill. Is there a mod like that for Oblivion?

Also, has anyone ever seen a really good vampire mod? I hate the system in the game because it messes my face up. My pretty, pretty face. I tried a comprehensive mod that more or less made it impossible to travel anywhere in the daylight, so that was no good.

skavenhorde

August 29th, 2009, 10:13

I'm not sure about the vampire mods. Never used one or even became a vampire before in Oblivion. I save my vampire fetish for Bloodlines;)

I did a quick search over at planetelderscrolls and I think this is what you want:
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=62

It gets rid of the vampire face and leaves your normal one.

There are literally dozens if not hundreds of vampire mods. Some on that site, some at others. Just search "vampire" over there or google "oblvion vampire mod" and you'll have a whole schmorgesborg of mods to choose from.

This mod will use your lockpicking skill rather than the minigame(exactly like Morrowind):
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=4553

I still prefer the blind lockpicking one. I don't mind minigames as long as they're not too easy. That blind locking mod makes the game difficult, but not impossible depending on your skill level.

The persuasion overhaul is definetely worth loading as a mod. That minigame was stupid and that mod gets rid of it totally.

Hope that helps.

JDR13

August 29th, 2009, 10:58

I've never become a vampire or a werewolf yet in any of the Elder Scrolls games. I was always too worried about what kind of impact it was going to have on the rest of the game. It's something I definitely plan on trying in my next playthrough of Morrowind.

Relayer

September 4th, 2009, 06:38

I tried tons of mods with Oblivion. Nothing can polish that turd.

Ok, that was harsh :) It's not a terrible game just very dull, lifeless, one-dimensional, unimaginative, illogical, damn, there I go again :)

Seriously, I ended up uninstalling everything (too many mods out there) and just playing with a few basic ones (GUI one, the one that kills the constant text pop ups, a couple others) AND Adventurers which unfortunately stopped being tweaked by the modder. I thought it addressed a lot of balance issues in the game and made the game mildly fun.

Tried Obscuros but that thing tweaked the game TOO much - I want to keep as much of the original creators' vision as possible (for better or worse).

Still, Vanilla Morrowind > Oblivion Modded To Hell & Back and if I had the time I would play it again (never did finish any of the expansions).

skavenhorde

September 4th, 2009, 07:33

I want to keep as much of the original creators' vision as possible (for better or worse).

Why do you want to keep their vision? They're blind :D

Seriously, why do people want to keep the creators vision for anything? I'll play a game the first time with what they made, but if it was good enough for a second play then I'll look to see if there are any mods that could make the game a bit better.

Take Wizardry 8 for example. I love that game. I've played it more times than I can count (only passed a few times though), but I have no problem loading up Dodd's mod or Flamestykes to give me a different experience.

To hell with the creators' vision, I just want to have fun.

JDR13

September 4th, 2009, 07:42

Still, Vanilla Morrowind > Oblivion Modded To Hell & Back and if I had the time I would play it again (never did finish any of the expansions).

I put nearly 200 hours into Morrowind, and I never even went to Mournhold or Solstheim. :)

About mods though, I don't mind using them, as long as they don't change the game into something else entirely.

DArtagnan

September 4th, 2009, 10:06

The problem with mods is that they're done, typically, by one or two people - and it's incredibly hard to keep all factors of the game in mind when trying to do something that affects balance or the overall gameplay structure.

You tend to break something vital if you go beyond minor tweaks, and then you have a broken game - even if it entertains for a while.

That's been my experience with most balancing mods, or mods that significantly alter gameplay.

Also, Oblivion content is pretty hollow and samey - and you just can't alter content without actually creating something along the same lines, and no single person has the resources to do it truly well.

I know there are exceptions, and I know there are mods with voice acting and similar - but in 9 out of 10 cases, they just don't feel right or work right.

Also, mods are constantly upgraded and changed - and there are new ones every day.

As a player, I like to feel I'm getting the best experience or the most thorough experience - which means I'll never be able to play Oblivion as I want to - because there will always be more mods around the corner, and there will always be minor issues that are just about to be corrected.

It's because I'm a "difficult" person, in that I'm pretty pedantic about getting a "pure" experience, or at the very least a thoroughly tested and balanced experience that is consistent throughout.

Mods are great, in theory, but I find the VAST majority of them just don't work in a way that grants the player a consistent feeling of cohesion and quality.

So, I'm with Relayer on this one.

However, there are mods that only change cosmetic aspects like textures, or add something you don't really have to use if you don't want to. Also, the removal of level scaling has been done very thoroughly by certain people - so there are definitely mods that are worth it even with the above in mind.

It's just that the game, at its core, is too damn sterile and boring - and I really don't see mods being able to change that without changing the ENTIRE game at the core, and redoing most of the content.

skavenhorde

September 4th, 2009, 11:13

Relayer

September 5th, 2009, 23:45

I put nearly 200 hours into Morrowind, and I never even went to Mournhold or Solstheim. :)

WOW, you should definitely replay the game then, there was a lot of great stuff in those areas!!!

JDR13

September 6th, 2009, 07:28

WOW, you should definitely replay the game then, there was a lot of great stuff in those areas!!!

Oh trust me, I definitely plan on replaying Morrowind. Time is my biggest enemy when it comes to games like that though, I never seem to have enough for all the titles I want to play.

Konjad

September 6th, 2009, 09:41

Oh trust me, I definitely plan on replaying Morrowind. Time is my biggest enemy when it comes to games like that though, I never seem to have enough for all the titles I want to play.

Solstheim has one hundred times better atmosphere than vanilla Morrowind. It's really amazing. You feel like you're somewhere outside in the wilderness trying to survive etc (at least I had that feeling). And playing werewolf is even more awsome! You have to play Bloodmoon if you like Morrowind.

Jaz

September 6th, 2009, 10:11

Solstheim has the Daggerfall feel, so I felt very much at home there :).

xSamhainx

September 13th, 2009, 08:56

What I liked about Solstheim was the fact that i could finally get seriously hurt there again, as opposed to everywhere else!

human_male

October 5th, 2009, 01:27

Would anyone know of programs that let you copy your face from one save game to another exactly? I've tried the Elder Face Copier but when I look at my new face it just doesn't look quite like my old one. I think it omits changes to Complexion, and that slider changes the face's shape as well as tone.

I've found one called Face Exchange Lite but that wouldn't start, it gave me an error message. I emailed the author and it got bounced back undelivered. I tried to download it from the Nexus and "File not found".

Are there any others?

pibbur

October 13th, 2009, 06:58

One feature of Oblivion can't be beaten: The rain. I like the sound of rain on the roof. Sometimes I listen to the Rain of Oblivion when going to sleep (the other times I listen to rain sounds on my iPod).

I know I'm weird.

Tragos

October 15th, 2009, 11:18

February 20th, 2010, 06:17

Oblivion has two major gaming mechanics. One is to explore the world, and the other is to build your character via that exploration. Oblivion removes the reason to do either of these things. Gone are the reasons to build your character's skills, gear, and magical prowess. The game lacked any sense of reward. That was it's flaw.

Without reward, human beings will not continue to respond with a specific behavior. In this case, that behavior is playing the game. Of course, the game is rewarding for some, but alas I am bias in this regard, as it simply was not a reinforcing experience for me.

- Enemies scale to your level. You never feel powerful, or weak, you always feel the same. Wow, you just found a new weapon? Cool, too bad it bares no real advantage within the game's combat system.(Or negligibly so.)

- There's no reason to explore the map. There are no unique areas with unique challenges(Or very few.) Why does exploration matter, if all you're going to find is scaled loot? If there's nothing unique to be found, beyond some bland visuals, some unrewarding quests, and sameness, what is the point?

The scaling, versus unique hand-placed content, works against the concept of exploration and rewards. One prevents the occurrence of the other. Exploration doesn't net the player unique loot(just bland scaled gear), and Scaled Gear does not offer any advantage when the monsters also scale.

Playing Oblivion was like playing a predictable flow chart that provided no real challenge, beyond a baseline challenge, which people adapt to and overcome, and Oblivion provided no reason to explore the world, challenge its denizens, or design a unique character. It was an utterly bland and pointless experience. If you played for 10 minutes, you experienced 100 hours.

There's simply no reward for continuing on in the journey. Maybe the developers felt that a blandly devised story was the reason to play. Alas, I simply don't understand the design goal. The game is anything but fun to play.

Relayer

August 19th, 2010, 05:41

In honor of Morrowind (the new article got me started!): Oblivion, you suck! :D

idiocracy

August 24th, 2010, 14:03

Dunno if it was mentioned earlier, but there is an almost finished (they introduce new dungeons with new patches) total conversion mod for Oblivion called Nehrim - At Fate's Edge (http://nehrim.de/startEV.html). It is already available in German, and English version is coming along very nicely.

It has better character development system (more Gothic-like), better exploration (more Gothic-like), better dungeon design (wouldn't you know it, more Gothic-like!) and better writing (though, it's not hard to top Bethesda at that). The team also seems to have tweaked engine a bit (there is automatic memory purger for instance).

Personally, I can't wait for English version, since all the stuff they're showing looks pretty neat.

Dwagginz

August 30th, 2010, 18:55

I've had Oblivion for a few years now, since perhaps the year of release, and after one or two playthroughs I just can't be fussed with it.

This is how much I liked Oblivion at the time/how badly the rose-tinted spectacles affected me: I had the Oblivion guide which I gave away to a friend once the Revised & Expanded edition came out, I had all the DLC on disc and I have the Shivering Isle guide. Oh, and my disc was looking like it was about to die so I picked Obliv GotY Deluxe and Morrowind GotY from Steam during that weekend sale a few months back.

Wow, what a waste of money. Inside buildings Oblivion looks fine, but once you step outside it's horrendous. Textures are horrible, performance is horrible and movement is poor. I had to use mods to get halfway decent looking characters and even then I wasn't that content with them. Combat is poor (Better than Morrowind's, though) and when it's "good" it's repetitive. "IMMA SLASHIN AT THE WOLF" sums my memories up.

I think it's a really bad sign when gaming magazines and communities are telling players that they need mods. Not "Oh, you might like this", but the "You need this mod to fix X, Y and Z" and similar comments. I shouldn't have to sit there for a few hours wrangling with mods to get a game looking better and playing correctly - That's bad development, and I don't think anyone can say otherwise. I should be using mods to enhance game play, add challenges or bypass things I don't like - I shouldn't be installing them to make the game playable.

I'd liken Oblivion to how I fixed my curtain pole. It works, but barely. Oh, I need to explain how I fixed it. The screw fitting has come out of the wall (taking some of the plaster with it) so now it doesn't fit in. I used string to hold the pole up, and it's not straight. It tilts downwards ;)

Fallout 3 was such an improvement, yet it also wasn't. The character creator was just as bad (Especially with the screen effect. Ugh.), but that's a rant for another day.

toltec7

September 13th, 2010, 20:31

Arthmoor

September 20th, 2010, 05:50

Wow. So much Oblivion hate. I guess I'm among a rare minority who loved the game and played to completion the first time with no mods (or at least nothing earth shattering). I thought the story was pretty good, and oddly enough the 2nd and 3rd times I completed the main quest it grew on me rather than boring me to death.

Someone quoted a list from 2002 or so:
Morrowind
IWD2
NWN
Divine Divinity
Arcanum
Wizardy 8
BG2: Throne of Bhall
Gothic
Morrowind: Tribunal

I played Morrowind, Tribunal, and Bloodmoon and loved them all.

Icewind Dale was good, its sequel sucked hugely though. Any game where I am compelled to cheat and STILL end up dead is not worth a second look, ever.

NWN, hated it through and through. Only finished it out of a sense of obligation to the money I spent buying it. Really should have taken it back but didn't. Therefore, never touched NWN 2 despite people saying I should play it. I simply won't, the NWN interface was so horrible it destroyed the rest of the game experience. A lot of this crap even carried forward into Dragon Age, which annoyed me to no end.

Divine Divinity - Barely even heard of it. So I can't comment.

Arcanum - Game was great, plagued with bugs as I recall, but I played it through twice just to be able to experience both perspectives of things.

Wizardry 8 - I've played that one 3 or 4 times up to a certain point, then it either loses something or I got stuck and couldn't get past the sticking point.

The BG series was aweseom, though BG2 felt very restrictive.

Gothic, well, I liked the first two despite only having played them in the last year or so. Graphics were horribly dated, but the stories were decent. Gothic 3 left a great deal to be desired though even with the massive community overhaul patch.

So I'm not at all convinced that 2001-2002 were the last of the golden ages. There have been some very good things released since then, and I count Oblivion among those. Sure, I play Oblivion heavily modded these days, and I've made plenty of my own too, but that's what keeps it freash, and that's why we're all still talking about it AT ALL 4 years later.

Obligatory mod list for those who will probably be interested:
Active Mod Files:
00 Oblivion.esm
01 TR_OoT_Main.esm [Version 17]
02 Hammerfell.esm
03 Cobl Main.esm [Version 1.72]
04 All Natural Base.esm [Version 1.0]
05 Open Cities Resources.esm [Version 3.5.5]
06 Armamentarium.esm [Version 1.35]
07 Artifacts.esm [Version 1.1]
08 VASE - core.esm
09 TamrielTravellers.esm [Version 1.39c]
0A CM Partners.esm
0B Cybiades.esm [Version 2.0]
0C Children Of Rourken.esm
0D Kvatch Rebuilt.esm
0E Windfall.esm
0F GTAesgaard_2.esm
10 Oblivifall Master File.esm [Version 1.0]
11 Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp [Version 3.3.1]
12 Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch.esp [Version 1.4.0]
13 Enhanced Economy.esp [Version 4.3]
14 DLCShiveringIsles.esp
15 All Natural - Real Lights.esp [Version 1.0.1]
16 All Natural.esp [Version 1.0]
17 All Natural - SI.esp [Version 1.0]
++ All Natural - HDR Brightness Patch.esp [Version 1.0]
18 Immersive Interiors.esp
19 Immersive Interiors - Lights Addon.esp
++ TamrielTravellersItemsNPC.esp [Version 1.39c]
1A ShiveringIsleTravellers.esp [Version 1.39c]
1B Happyhannah's Wines.esp [Version 1.1]
1C BHC_Expanded.esp [Version 1.2]
1D Cliff_BetterLetters.esp [Version 1.2]
++ ArmamentariumLL.esp [Version 1.35]
++ ArmamentariumLLMagic.esp [Version 1.35]
++ ArmamentariumLLArmaVendor.esp [Version 1.35]
1E ArmamentariumArtifacts.esp [Version 1.35]
++ Artifacts - ArmaCompleteAddon.esp [Version 1.0]
1F TIE.esp [Version 1.37]
20 IlluminateStaves.esp
21 Immersive Travelers.esp
22 Alternative Start by Robert Evrae.esp [Version 1.67]
++ VASE - Vanilla Cyrodiil.esp
++ VASE - Vanilla SI.esp
23 Cyrodiil Travel Services.esp [Version 2.0.4]
24 AFK_PrayerIdles.esp [Version 1.0]
25 DLCHorseArmor.esp
26 DLCOrrery.esp
27 DLCFrostcrag.esp
28 DLCThievesDen.esp
29 DLCVileLair.esp
2A DLCMehrunesRazor.esp
2B DLCSpellTomes.esp
2C Knights.esp
2D DLCBattlehornCastle.esp
2E SM Plugin Refurbish(Merged).esp [Version 1.30]
2F OCC-KOTN-Patch.esp [Version 3.0]
30 OCOD+FrostcragSpire Patch.esp
31 AFK_Frostcrag.esp [Version 1.0]
32 Oblivifall - Losing My Religion.esp [Version 1.3]
33 Whispered Warning.esp
34 Kvatch Rebuilt.esp [Version 1.1]
35 Kvatch Rebuilt Weather Patch.esp
36 OCC-KR-Patch.esp [Version 2.0.1]
37 Lost Paladins of the Divines.esp
38 RTT.esp [Version 3.01]
39 RTT-Weye Relocation Patch.esp [Version 2.0.1]
3A OCC-RTTv3 Patch.esp [Version 2.0]
3B Malevolent.esp [Version 1.02]
3C OCC-Malevolent-Patch.esp [Version 3.0]
3D GTAesgaard.esp
3E GTAesgaard_2.esp
3F Cybiades.esp [Version 2.1]
40 CybiadesDungeon.esp [Version 2.1]
41 Nascosto Isles 3.esp
42 All Natural - Nascosto Isles Weather Patch.esp [Version 2.0]
43 COR-Episode1 Secret of Enourk.esp
44 Ivellon.esp [Version 1.8]
45 WeynonRetreat.esp [Version 1.4]
46 The Lost Spires.esp [Version 1.4]
47 OCC-Lost Spires-Patch.esp [Version 2.1]
48 OldCrowInn.esp [Version 1.5.1]
49 HeartOftheDead.esp [Version 6.3.2]
4A Windfall.esp
4B LetThePeopleDrink.esp [Version 2.5]
4C The Ayleid Steps.esp [Version 3.4]
4D HackdirtCaverns.esp
4E Mimics!.esp
4F BrotherhoodRenewed.esp [Version 1.0.7]
50 EaglesRest.esp [Version 1.0]
51 Better Benirus Manor - Interior Only.esp
52 Better Benirus Manor - Helping Hands.esp
53 Better Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary for OBSE.esp [Version 2.3]
54 Gaelendryl.esp
55 Dungeons Merger.esp
56 Unique Dungeons - Lost Glory.esp
57 Unique Dungeons - Lichs Lair.esp
58 JQ-Return_of_Dagoth_Ur.esp
59 TheOubliette.esp
5A TheForgottenRealm.esp
5B PTArtifacts.esp
5C ImpeREAL Empire - Unique Forts.esp
5D ImpeREALForts+LostSpires Patch.esp [Version 1.0]
5E Valley_View_Estate.esp
5F InnsOfCyrodill.esp
60 Shezrie's Villages.esp
61 TR_Stirk.esp
62 Stirk_Compatibility_Patch.esp
63 To Feed an Empire - Wickmere Farm.esp [Version 1.0]
64 VHBloodlines 1.2.esp [Version 1.5]
65 AFK_Weye.esp [Version 2.1.Non-COBL]
66 Wellspring Vale.esp
67 ElsweyrAnequina.esp
68 road+bridges.esp [Version 4.5.8]
69 Feldscar.esp [Version 1.0.4]
6A Vergayun.esp [Version 1.0.6]
6B Faregyl.esp [Version 2.0]
6C Faregyl+Anequina Patch.esp [Version 2.0]
6D Molapi.esp [Version 1.0.1]
6E xulStendarrValley.esp [Version 1.2.2]
6F xulAncientRedwoods.esp [Version 1.6]
70 xulCloudtopMountains.esp [Version 1.0.3]
71 xulBeachesOfCyrodiilLostCoast.esp [Version 1.6.4]
72 XulEntiusGorge.esp [Version 1.2]
73 xulImperialIsle.esp [Version 1.6.5]
74 xulAncientYews.esp [Version 1.4.3]
75 xulArriusCreek.esp [Version 1.1.4]
76 xulPatch_AY_AC.esp [Version 1.1]
77 xulRollingHills_EV.esp [Version 1.3.3]
78 xulFallenleafEverglade.esp [Version 1.3.1]
79 xulChorrolHinterland.esp [Version 1.2.2]
7A xulRiverEthe.esp [Version 1.0.2]
7B xuldarkforest.esp [Version 1.0.5]
7C xulLushWoodlands.esp [Version 1.3.1]
7D xulColovianHighlands_EV.esp [Version 1.2.2]
7E xulTheHeath.esp [Version 1.1.1]
7F xulPantherRiver.esp
80 xulBravilBarrowfields.esp [Version 1.3.3]
81 xulBrenaRiverRavine.esp [Version 1.1]
82 xulBlackwoodForest.esp [Version 1.1.0]
83 xulCheydinhalFalls.esp [Version 1.0.1]
84 xulAspenWood.esp [Version 1.0.2]
85 xulSkingradOutskirts.esp [Version 1.0.1]
86 xulSnowdale.esp [Version 1.0]
87 HammerfellBorders.esp
88 West Roads.esp [Version 1.3]
89 WellspringVale+WestRoads Patch.esp
8A Castle_Seaview.esp
8B EaglesRest+LostCoast+CastleSeaview Patch.esp [Version 1.0]
8C LostSpires-Everglade patch.esp [Version 1.2]
8D LostSpires-DarkForest patch.esp [Version 1.1]
8E WeynonRetreat-ChorrolHinterland-Patch.esp [Version 1.1]
8F HeartoftheDead-ArriusCreek patch.esp [Version 2.1]
90 ValleyViewEstate-RiverEthe patch.esp [Version 1.1.1]
91 Anequina-Fallenleaf-Patch.esp [Version 1.0]
92 Mimics+Ravenview+Cloudtop Patch.esp [Version 1.0]
93 Gaelendryll-BrenaRiver patch.esp [Version 1.2]
94 KvatchRebuilt-CheydinhalFalls patch.esp
95 Lakewood+AspenWood Patch.esp [Version 1.0.1]
96 Feldscar+Snowdale Patch.esp [Version 1.0]
97 Verwen Brewery.esp [Version wen.]
98 A Imperial Outpost - Fort Novi Sad.esp
99 ClocksOfCyrodiil_BC_OBC_OC_OCLR_Vanilla.esp
9A AFK_ICTempleCleanup.esp [Version 1.0.LtPD]
9B bartholm.esp
9C WaterfrontMarketNoShack.esp
9D Open Cities New Sheoth.esp [Version 1.1]
9E Open Cities Bartholm.esp [Version 1.1.1]
9F Open Cities Outer Districts.esp [Version 3.5.5]
A0 Open Cities Reborn - Full Merge.esp [Version 0.6.3]
A1 OCC-ULCH-Patch.esp [Version 2.2]
A2 NRB4+UL-II+LtPD+OCOD Patch.esp [Version 3.0.2]
A3 OCLR+ULBWForest Patch.esp [Version 1.0.2]
A4 OC+Cheydinhal Falls Patch.esp [Version 1.0.1]
A5 OC+ULSkingradOutskirts Patch.esp [Version 1.0]
A6 AFK_Blades_EQ.esp [Version 1.2]
A7 WindowLightingSystem.esp
A8 Map Marker Overhaul.esp [Version 3.6]
A9 Map Marker Overhaul - SI additions.esp [Version 3.5]
** All Natural - Indoor Weather Filter For Mods.esp [Version 1.0]
++ Bashed Delayers - MERGE ONLY.esp [Version 2.0]
++ Enhanced Water v2.0 HDMI.esp
++ Enhanced Vegetation [100%].esp
++ Symphony of Violence.esp
++ Louder Nirnroot Sound.esp
++ Visually Realistic Lava.esp
++ TrollfLoadingScreens.esp
** Rusty+Fine Items.esp
** Book Jackets OB+SI+DLC.esp
** Clutter Graphics.esp
++ QuestDialogueFix.esp
AA PersonalMerge.esp
AB Streamline.esp [Version 3.11]
AC RefScope.esp [Version 2.0.2]
** NRB4 OCReborn Road Record.esp
AD Bashed Patch, 1.esp
AE MergedMaps.esp

JDR13

September 20th, 2010, 09:58

Icewind Dale was good, its sequel sucked hugely though. Any game where I am compelled to cheat and STILL end up dead is not worth a second look, ever.

Did you really find IWD II to be that difficult? I remember some parts being quite challenging, but nothing I had to cheat my way past. I thought it was pretty close to IWD 1 in overall quality.

Arthmoor

September 21st, 2010, 08:32

Yes, the later portions of IWD 2 were mind numbingly difficult. The final battle was outright impossible except by massively cheating. I'm talking about hex editing myself HP values into the thousands before I was able to get anywhere and STILL ended up with nearly the whole party dead. It was truly ridiculous.

JemyM

September 21st, 2010, 09:25

I cannot remember IWD2 as hard. I remember that the end boss was voiced by a famous Swedish actor.

JemyM

September 21st, 2010, 09:59

Oblivion is in many ways a great study on how game design can go wrong.

I support Xi's conclusion that there weren't any point in exploration or building your character. There are no exciting or unique locations to be found. Almost every place look the same. With respawning computer generated loot/enemies there is no reward in trying to explore new places. With leveling up foes there is no reward in getting stronger. Getting stronger accomplish nothing and leads to no reward.

I finished the game in vanilla mode and maxed out every stat. I remember jumping up and down cliffs to grind Acrobatics. I did it because I was interested to see if it could be done with the strange leveling up mechanics where leveling up too fast gave you a weaker character.

Without that grinding, Oblivion is a really short game. The total amount of *CONTENT* in Oblivion was really low. The game relied on generated content instead of handcrafted which ruined the joy of exploring the game. ME1 suffered from the same ussue. Playing games like Gothic 3 at the same time really hammered that point. Questwise there are like 40 quests in total, while often funny, very few of them surprised me. Whodunnit for Dark Brotherhood was the only I remember that felt different. The rest was "follow waypoint to X, there take item, kill enemy, speak to NPC or use what you find". Note though that "40" counts guild questlines as one each.

elco

January 25th, 2011, 08:12

overall liked it. but it was a good game where it coulda been a great game if they spent more time on making a seperate PC version.

Console ports piss me off. especialy when they crap on RPGs wich are PC turf in my opinion.

Crilloan

January 25th, 2011, 09:15

Obligatory mod list for those who will probably be interested:
Active Mod Files:
00 Oblivion.esm
01 TR_OoT_Main.esm [Version 17]
02 Hammerfell.esm
03 Cobl Main.esm [Version 1.72]
04 All Natural Base.esm [Version 1.0]
05 Open Cities Resources.esm [Version 3.5.5]
06 Armamentarium.esm [Version 1.35]
07 Artifacts.esm [Version 1.1]
08 VASE - core.esm
09 TamrielTravellers.esm [Version 1.39c]
0A CM Partners.esm
0B Cybiades.esm [Version 2.0]
0C Children Of Rourken.esm
0D Kvatch Rebuilt.esm
0E Windfall.esm
0F GTAesgaard_2.esm
10 Oblivifall Master File.esm [Version 1.0]
11 Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp [Version 3.3.1]
12 Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch.esp [Version 1.4.0]
13 Enhanced Economy.esp [Version 4.3]
14 DLCShiveringIsles.esp
15 All Natural - Real Lights.esp [Version 1.0.1]
16 All Natural.esp [Version 1.0]
17 All Natural - SI.esp [Version 1.0]
++ All Natural - HDR Brightness Patch.esp [Version 1.0]
18 Immersive Interiors.esp
19 Immersive Interiors - Lights Addon.esp
++ TamrielTravellersItemsNPC.esp [Version 1.39c]
1A ShiveringIsleTravellers.esp [Version 1.39c]
1B Happyhannah's Wines.esp [Version 1.1]
1C BHC_Expanded.esp [Version 1.2]
1D Cliff_BetterLetters.esp [Version 1.2]
++ ArmamentariumLL.esp [Version 1.35]
++ ArmamentariumLLMagic.esp [Version 1.35]
++ ArmamentariumLLArmaVendor.esp [Version 1.35]
1E ArmamentariumArtifacts.esp [Version 1.35]
++ Artifacts - ArmaCompleteAddon.esp [Version 1.0]
1F TIE.esp [Version 1.37]
20 IlluminateStaves.esp
21 Immersive Travelers.esp
22 Alternative Start by Robert Evrae.esp [Version 1.67]
++ VASE - Vanilla Cyrodiil.esp
++ VASE - Vanilla SI.esp
23 Cyrodiil Travel Services.esp [Version 2.0.4]
24 AFK_PrayerIdles.esp [Version 1.0]
25 DLCHorseArmor.esp
26 DLCOrrery.esp
27 DLCFrostcrag.esp
28 DLCThievesDen.esp
29 DLCVileLair.esp
2A DLCMehrunesRazor.esp
2B DLCSpellTomes.esp
2C Knights.esp
2D DLCBattlehornCastle.esp
2E SM Plugin Refurbish(Merged).esp [Version 1.30]
2F OCC-KOTN-Patch.esp [Version 3.0]
30 OCOD+FrostcragSpire Patch.esp
31 AFK_Frostcrag.esp [Version 1.0]
32 Oblivifall - Losing My Religion.esp [Version 1.3]
33 Whispered Warning.esp
34 Kvatch Rebuilt.esp [Version 1.1]
35 Kvatch Rebuilt Weather Patch.esp
36 OCC-KR-Patch.esp [Version 2.0.1]
37 Lost Paladins of the Divines.esp
38 RTT.esp [Version 3.01]
39 RTT-Weye Relocation Patch.esp [Version 2.0.1]
3A OCC-RTTv3 Patch.esp [Version 2.0]
3B Malevolent.esp [Version 1.02]
3C OCC-Malevolent-Patch.esp [Version 3.0]
3D GTAesgaard.esp
3E GTAesgaard_2.esp
3F Cybiades.esp [Version 2.1]
40 CybiadesDungeon.esp [Version 2.1]
41 Nascosto Isles 3.esp
42 All Natural - Nascosto Isles Weather Patch.esp [Version 2.0]
43 COR-Episode1 Secret of Enourk.esp
44 Ivellon.esp [Version 1.8]
45 WeynonRetreat.esp [Version 1.4]
46 The Lost Spires.esp [Version 1.4]
47 OCC-Lost Spires-Patch.esp [Version 2.1]
48 OldCrowInn.esp [Version 1.5.1]
49 HeartOftheDead.esp [Version 6.3.2]
4A Windfall.esp
4B LetThePeopleDrink.esp [Version 2.5]
4C The Ayleid Steps.esp [Version 3.4]
4D HackdirtCaverns.esp
4E Mimics!.esp
4F BrotherhoodRenewed.esp [Version 1.0.7]
50 EaglesRest.esp [Version 1.0]
51 Better Benirus Manor - Interior Only.esp
52 Better Benirus Manor - Helping Hands.esp
53 Better Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary for OBSE.esp [Version 2.3]
54 Gaelendryl.esp
55 Dungeons Merger.esp
56 Unique Dungeons - Lost Glory.esp
57 Unique Dungeons - Lichs Lair.esp
58 JQ-Return_of_Dagoth_Ur.esp
59 TheOubliette.esp
5A TheForgottenRealm.esp
5B PTArtifacts.esp
5C ImpeREAL Empire - Unique Forts.esp
5D ImpeREALForts+LostSpires Patch.esp [Version 1.0]
5E Valley_View_Estate.esp
5F InnsOfCyrodill.esp
60 Shezrie's Villages.esp
61 TR_Stirk.esp
62 Stirk_Compatibility_Patch.esp
63 To Feed an Empire - Wickmere Farm.esp [Version 1.0]
64 VHBloodlines 1.2.esp [Version 1.5]
65 AFK_Weye.esp [Version 2.1.Non-COBL]
66 Wellspring Vale.esp
67 ElsweyrAnequina.esp
68 road+bridges.esp [Version 4.5.8]
69 Feldscar.esp [Version 1.0.4]
6A Vergayun.esp [Version 1.0.6]
6B Faregyl.esp [Version 2.0]
6C Faregyl+Anequina Patch.esp [Version 2.0]
6D Molapi.esp [Version 1.0.1]
6E xulStendarrValley.esp [Version 1.2.2]
6F xulAncientRedwoods.esp [Version 1.6]
70 xulCloudtopMountains.esp [Version 1.0.3]
71 xulBeachesOfCyrodiilLostCoast.esp [Version 1.6.4]
72 XulEntiusGorge.esp [Version 1.2]
73 xulImperialIsle.esp [Version 1.6.5]
74 xulAncientYews.esp [Version 1.4.3]
75 xulArriusCreek.esp [Version 1.1.4]
76 xulPatch_AY_AC.esp [Version 1.1]
77 xulRollingHills_EV.esp [Version 1.3.3]
78 xulFallenleafEverglade.esp [Version 1.3.1]
79 xulChorrolHinterland.esp [Version 1.2.2]
7A xulRiverEthe.esp [Version 1.0.2]
7B xuldarkforest.esp [Version 1.0.5]
7C xulLushWoodlands.esp [Version 1.3.1]
7D xulColovianHighlands_EV.esp [Version 1.2.2]
7E xulTheHeath.esp [Version 1.1.1]
7F xulPantherRiver.esp
80 xulBravilBarrowfields.esp [Version 1.3.3]
81 xulBrenaRiverRavine.esp [Version 1.1]
82 xulBlackwoodForest.esp [Version 1.1.0]
83 xulCheydinhalFalls.esp [Version 1.0.1]
84 xulAspenWood.esp [Version 1.0.2]
85 xulSkingradOutskirts.esp [Version 1.0.1]
86 xulSnowdale.esp [Version 1.0]
87 HammerfellBorders.esp
88 West Roads.esp [Version 1.3]
89 WellspringVale+WestRoads Patch.esp
8A Castle_Seaview.esp
8B EaglesRest+LostCoast+CastleSeaview Patch.esp [Version 1.0]
8C LostSpires-Everglade patch.esp [Version 1.2]
8D LostSpires-DarkForest patch.esp [Version 1.1]
8E WeynonRetreat-ChorrolHinterland-Patch.esp [Version 1.1]
8F HeartoftheDead-ArriusCreek patch.esp [Version 2.1]
90 ValleyViewEstate-RiverEthe patch.esp [Version 1.1.1]
91 Anequina-Fallenleaf-Patch.esp [Version 1.0]
92 Mimics+Ravenview+Cloudtop Patch.esp [Version 1.0]
93 Gaelendryll-BrenaRiver patch.esp [Version 1.2]
94 KvatchRebuilt-CheydinhalFalls patch.esp
95 Lakewood+AspenWood Patch.esp [Version 1.0.1]
96 Feldscar+Snowdale Patch.esp [Version 1.0]
97 Verwen Brewery.esp [Version wen.]
98 A Imperial Outpost - Fort Novi Sad.esp
99 ClocksOfCyrodiil_BC_OBC_OC_OCLR_Vanilla.esp
9A AFK_ICTempleCleanup.esp [Version 1.0.LtPD]
9B bartholm.esp
9C WaterfrontMarketNoShack.esp
9D Open Cities New Sheoth.esp [Version 1.1]
9E Open Cities Bartholm.esp [Version 1.1.1]
9F Open Cities Outer Districts.esp [Version 3.5.5]
A0 Open Cities Reborn - Full Merge.esp [Version 0.6.3]
A1 OCC-ULCH-Patch.esp [Version 2.2]
A2 NRB4+UL-II+LtPD+OCOD Patch.esp [Version 3.0.2]
A3 OCLR+ULBWForest Patch.esp [Version 1.0.2]
A4 OC+Cheydinhal Falls Patch.esp [Version 1.0.1]
A5 OC+ULSkingradOutskirts Patch.esp [Version 1.0]
A6 AFK_Blades_EQ.esp [Version 1.2]
A7 WindowLightingSystem.esp
A8 Map Marker Overhaul.esp [Version 3.6]
A9 Map Marker Overhaul - SI additions.esp [Version 3.5]
** All Natural - Indoor Weather Filter For Mods.esp [Version 1.0]
++ Bashed Delayers - MERGE ONLY.esp [Version 2.0]
++ Enhanced Water v2.0 HDMI.esp
++ Enhanced Vegetation [100%].esp
++ Symphony of Violence.esp
++ Louder Nirnroot Sound.esp
++ Visually Realistic Lava.esp
++ TrollfLoadingScreens.esp
** Rusty+Fine Items.esp
** Book Jackets OB+SI+DLC.esp
** Clutter Graphics.esp
++ QuestDialogueFix.esp
AA PersonalMerge.esp
AB Streamline.esp [Version 3.11]
AC RefScope.esp [Version 2.0.2]
** NRB4 OCReborn Road Record.esp
AD Bashed Patch, 1.esp
AE MergedMaps.esp

Thanks for the modlist.
One day I will play it, just have a bunch of other games to finish first.

(among them IWD 2 wich is running together with Witcher right now)

C