The Let's Rant and Rave About Oblivion Thread

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.

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.

I enjoy Oblivion much more with the balancing mods.

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.

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

I am NOT a masochist!!

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.

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


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

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.

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.

Originally Posted by Sorcha Ravenlock
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.

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.

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

Originally Posted by Corwin
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

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.

Originally Posted by JDR13
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 …

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 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?

Originally Posted by Zaleukos
I was always a bit perplexed by the technical complaints against Oblivion,

Much of it was the blatantly console-centric interface.

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

Originally Posted by txa1265
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."

Originally Posted by Zaleukos
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.