The Oblivion Thread

[Kassiopeia]

Speaking of the physics: http://users.evtek.fi/~k0001695/susi.wmv

[Apocalypse]

Originally posted by Asher

If it was made for the PC first, the graphics would be worse.

For one thing, all of the trees in Oblivion are procedurally generated -- that is, they're randomly generated by an algorithm on the CPU before they're displayed. The Xbox 360's tri-core 3.2GHz processor can do this without breaking a sweat. In typical PC games the trees are all the same or with little variation and instanced. Boo!

Similarly, HDR incurs virtually no performance hit on the 360 due to the 256GB/s embedded RAM on the graphics chip, so it's used a lot. There's massive amounts of polygons/vertices because the Xbox basically has 48 vertex shaders when it needs them, versus 8 on the highest end graphics cards and 2-4 on the lower end but still playable graphics cards...

I'll agree with you on most of the Mac arguments, but this is just mssing/ignoring the point

[Nostromo]

Killing poor, innocent wolves

Btw, is there still a speed attribute? Or more to the point: in real life, I can walk faster than my Morrowind character can run. Is it still a problem in Oblivion?

[Kassiopeia]

I have a backstory-related question possibly wrt. Morrowind:

Spoiler:

I keep seeing Dwarven items like claymores and armour, but I have yet to see a single actual Dwarf. What's up?

[Nostromo]

@ Kass

Spoiler:

they disapeared, no one knows why

[Apocalypse]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
[q=Apocalypse]The graphics really aren't that spectacular.

Ok, now you are just talking nonsense... or don't have a top of the line computer.[/Q]
My friend does and I've seen plenty of screenshots from people. They look great, but there are many drawbacks still, such as akward draw distances.

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

The Morrow interface was a bit intimidating at first, but showed everything that was desired. The tooltips came up immediately so there wasn't a problem in seeing what things are.

Relying on 'tooltips', even after you've been playing it for months (what is the difference between two magical swords unless you wait for the tool tip to tell you) is a sign of an inefficient interface. You should be able to see it without relying on a tool tip... or at the very least, the tool tip should tell newbies what the graphical representations mean, but you don't need them as you put in more time.

Relying on heavy scrolling is very inefficent too. Especially for alchemists. Even with no names, things are listed alphabetically and the tooltips come up immediately. It took no time at all to do whatever I needed in the inventory.

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Also wonderful....people are fixing the level lists. There are already quick mods that make vendor inventory/enemy levels location specific as opposed to everyone leveling with you everywhere. There will probably be a couple good stand out mods in this regard in the next few weeks. It is unfortunate that Bethesda couldn't have just done this in the first place. It was probably done to improve replayability with the xbox version. Vanilla Morrowind was quite easy at higher levels. On the PC, hundreds of thousands of people downloaded mods such as Giants to make the game much more difficult at later levels.

So wait, first you say that Morrowind was too easy at the higher levels, then you applaud people messing around with the level lists?! WTF? The reason they are messing around with it is because they don't want enemies to scale with gaining levels, ie, they WANT it to be like Morrowind, because they think part of the fun is go from a nobody to an out an out God.

Don't you read the forum posts that lead to such mods, Apoc?

Nothing to be confused about. I said Vanilla Morrowind was too easy at higher levels if you did many, many quests (and I'll add powergame such as getting 5xes all the time). The problem with the current level lists in Oblivion is that everything is the same no matter where you go. People can beat every aspect of the game in very low levels. In Morrowind things were varied. Bandit and slaver caves weren't usually too hard but Dreugh and Ash caves couldn't be done well until later levels. Locations should be what get more difficult. There were lists that gave you harder monsters depending on what level you were, but they were different types at least. You'd be facing harder undead. You don't face harder rats though. Later levels you might get poisoned but you won't face some difficult level 50 rat.

If you read the forum posts for such mods, you will notice that most of the argument is with that, not that everyone wants to be gods.

[Dis]

I want to be a god

[Qilue]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
I have a backstory-related question possibly wrt. Morrowind:

Spoiler:

I keep seeing Dwarven items like claymores and armour, but I have yet to see a single actual Dwarf. What's up?

Originally posted by nostromo
@ Kass

Spoiler:

they disapeared, no one knows why

It was sort of explained in Morrowind. I assume Kass played MW and knows what is a Tamriel "dwarf".

Otherwise, a hint.

Spoiler:

altmer - high elf
bosmer - wood elf
dunmer - dark elf
falmer - snow elf
maomer - tropical elf
dwemer - dwarf

[Felch]

Originally posted by Apocalypse
My friend does and I've seen plenty of screenshots from people. They look great, but there are many drawbacks still, such as akward draw distances.

The draw distances can be changed in the video options. I keep them low, because of my weak card, so I don't know how high they go. Any idea how high your buddy sets it?

The game seems to be optimized for incredibly advanced systems in any event. For now, I'm just happy being able to play. Later I'll worry about a new video card.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Asher
Argh. First major annoyance: Vampirism...

Second major annoyance: The quest to cure Vampirism...

I never turned into a vampire in Morrowind. I had no idea how to do it, even if I wanted to.

[Asher]

It didn't give me a choice. Just slept and during the night I was bitten by a vampire and became a vampire...

[Solver]

The variety of quests seems great, and I've only done a few.

For the Mage guild, you need to get a recommendation from each city's guild. Each recommendation involves a quest, I've done two - Chorrol and Bruma.

Spoiler:

One had me going quite a ways to the north, to a cave, where I had a big fight and rescued a mage. The other quest, though, I completed without even leaving the Bruma Mage guild. And it was better than "find that piece of paper" mage guild quest from Morrowind.

Also, in Bruma, I encountered another quest that I think only has one outcome (not sure though), and it was again non-standard. It required me to also

Spoiler:

get thrown in jail to gain the trust of a prisoner.

Woo

[Kassiopeia]

Solver, I did the latter one too. I think it's possible to have two outcomes, depending on

Spoiler:

whether you kill the woman when you get ouf the prison to get the amulet, or not. Or, well, the lady will still be dead, but she'll have died by your hands and you'll have a murder on your back. The ultimate result, though, is probably the same - everyone dies and you get the money!

Originally posted by Qilue
It was sort of explained in Morrowind. I assume Kass played MW and knows what is a Tamriel "dwarf".

No, I did not. Your hint and a little Wikipedia cleared things up, though.

[Imran Siddiqui]

My friend does and I've seen plenty of screenshots from people. They look great, but there are many drawbacks still, such as akward draw distances.

Yes.. they look great. I'd call them spectacular. This is a game that has a massive outdoors, you have to end the draw distance somewhere.

Relying on heavy scrolling is very inefficent too. Especially for alchemists. Even with no names, things are listed alphabetically and the tooltips come up immediately. It took no time at all to do whatever I needed in the inventory.

But far easier to scroll than to place your cursor over a picture, read the tool tip and then repeat until you find what you are looking for.

I think XBox players would benefit from 12 items a page rather then 6, but Bethesda probably thought 6 looked better.

Oblivion's interface works much quicker than Morrowind's ever did.

Nothing to be confused about. I said Vanilla Morrowind was too easy at higher levels if you did many, many quests (and I'll add powergame such as getting 5xes all the time). The problem with the current level lists in Oblivion is that everything is the same no matter where you go. People can beat every aspect of the game in very low levels. In Morrowind things were varied. Bandit and slaver caves weren't usually too hard but Dreugh and Ash caves couldn't be done well until later levels. Locations should be what get more difficult. There were lists that gave you harder monsters depending on what level you were, but they were different types at least. You'd be facing harder undead. You don't face harder rats though. Later levels you might get poisoned but you won't face some difficult level 50 rat.

If you read the forum posts for such mods, you will notice that most of the argument is with that, not that everyone wants to be gods.

Except for the fact that there are NO level 40 rats. Level scaling merely means that you will deal with higher level creatures, not that ordinary creatures go up in level (except for bosses).

Dungeons being the same if you are the same level is in order to keep the game challenging. Morrowing got too easy, too fast. After you hit level 10, you were mostly sailing smoothly.

And if people want to beat the game at lower levels (they probably won't beat the bosses however), they can go ahead. Doesn't sound very fun to me, but hey, it's their game. I'd rather level up, get more cool stuff, but STILL have a challenge. I think Oblivion's model is very good for that .

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Yes.. they look great. I'd call them spectacular. This is a game that has a massive outdoors, you have to end the draw distance somewhere.

Why? The idea of "draw distance" seems odd to me. It would make more sense to gradually reduce the resolution, rather than have a sudden discontinuity. That's harder, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect.