The Oblivion Thread

[Nostromo]

Hm. As far as balance goes, I'm now having a bit of trouble with my Atronach mage.

In Oblivion magicka regenerates automatically, but not for the Atronach, of course. Yet, I go into a dungeon and have enough magicka to kill maybe a third of the monsters inside, and after that I have potions for the second third, but for the third third, I'm pretty much stuck.

Maybe Atronach went from the best mage sign to the worst. Auto regenerating magicka sounds easy.

You can't summon a ghost or something? You know, the old Morrowind trick : You attack it, it attacks you, you absorb the magicka...

[asleepathewheel]

I really need to get this game. Was giong to get it this weekend, but fell ill and barely left the bed.

Have any major bugs been found yet?

[Nostromo]

The multiplayer is completely broken

[Kassiopeia]

Don't sleep in a dungeon full of traps after committing your first murder. The guy from the Dark Brotherhood will show up to invite you into the order, but he will die from the traps on his way out meaning you can't progress along the quest chain to become a member of the Brotherhood.

[Solver]

Originally posted by nostromo


You can't summon a ghost or something? You know, the old Morrowind trick : You attack it, it attacks you, you absorb the magicka...

Don't have a spell to conjure any casting creature yet. I can conjure a skeleton alright, but it doesn't cast spells.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by BustaMike
Really?

First of all, it makes leveling pointless. You can beat the game at level 1 or level 100 and regardless of what level you are the difficulty will be the same... in theory.

IMO, that's horrible by itself but it actually causes more problems. The game doesn't stay the same when you level, it becomes harder. This would be fine if you were progressing and going on to new things that are supposed to be harder, but that's not how the system works. The same things become harder. Closing the Kvatch gate at level 2 is much easier than closing it at level 30. That's just wrong.

The reason this happens is because when the enemies go up in levels or get replaced by harder enemies, it's always a combat increase. When you level, you don't necessarily get a combat increase. If you level your speechcraft and mercantile you aren't any tougher, but the monsters are. Even if you level combat skills but don't get a new weapon, spell, or armor the monsters do. Every level you get makes the game harder. It's completely counterintuitive to how leveling is supposed to work.

When I gain a level I should be stronger. The point of getting stronger is so that I can take on an enemy that I couldn't before. In Oblivion, this enemy doesn't exist because the enemy is always my level. There is no boss that I need to level up for. That boss is always my level. It's ridiculous.

Yeah, powergamers aren't going to like it, because Bethesda decided to make the game challenging as you increase levels. This is to address the biggest complaint about Morrowind, that it got too easy as you leveled beyond anything (though in Morrowind there was some scaling as well, just not as much).

Hey, if you want to beat the game at Level 1, be my guest. If you don't want to level because there is no boss you have to be prepared for, then don't. This is a role playing game. I level so I can be stronger, but I don't want it to end up with me being a God over everyone else. Is the solution having a level cap instead of scaling? I'm sure you'd get people pissed off over that as well. I want a challenge to this game, unlike Morrowind, so I enjoy the level scaling, even though there isn't this amazing boss somewhere that I need to level up for.

Oh, and as for making the game balanced for thief classes, you always will have someone lose out. If you get rid of scaling to allow thiefs the ability to progress, I don't know how you expect them to beat the big bad bosses? After all, they aren't leveling in combat. Level scaling requires them to remember that aspect of the game. And if you want to make it challenging to the thieves without level scaling, then the warriors breeze through the game.

Bethesda made a damned good compromise.

edit: Btw, just read something on the official forums where a guy was a lvl 17 thief doing Kvatch. He knew he'd get killed if he went toe to toe, so, what did he do? He played like a thief! He snuck around the really hard baddies and killed the ones he was able to. That's the way it should be if you are a thief.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by bonscott
My frames outside typically range 25-40. I get some drops down to 15-20 in spots in the great forest but no biggy. Interior I get about the same, depends how detailed the textures are.

So if you think your mid-range PC can't run this game and look great doing it, think again.

Btw, what is your program that displays the frame rates? I have fraps, but I dislike the yellow numbers in the corner of my game.

[Solver]

I do like the level scaling system so far, but the jury's still out on whether I do get stronger as I level. I don't want to be a god or to kill anyone with one shot, but I want my character to become stronger to some degree where I can feel that I'm stronger.

One good thing to accomplish that is to still have weak creatures later in the game, so I can get rid of them in one-two shots.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I've heard that some people say that reducing the difficulty works wonders in giving some the feeling that they are powerful. Some may hold their nose at it, but you can make the argument that, perhaps, Bethesda has the difficulty too high (as they had it too low in Morrowind).

[Guynemer]

Looks like a lot of fun. I assume my P4 3.06Hz 1GB RAM with Radeon 9700Pro will be able to run it adequately. However, I'll probably wait a little while to see if any big patches come out or if the price comes down a bit, as it's not my usual sort of game.

If you've never played a game of this series before, will you miss out on a lot of plot details and whatnot?

[Skanky Burns]

In theory, couldn't you just keep increasing skills without levelling? You would still get the majority of benefits from levelling (better skills) only instead of everyone increasing with you, just you would increase.

Ahh, it feels like Morrowind already!

[Imran Siddiqui]

No, not at all. If anything the other series stuff are kind of like bonuses (in terms of immersion, not gameplay) for those who have played Morrowind, etc.

[Kassiopeia]

Skanky, your stats would suck though. I want more intelligence so I can cast the beefier spells! (Of course the suckitude of stats would be unimportant since your skills would be so high... hmm)

[Quillan]

Originally posted by nostromo


Looks good. Would look even better without the jaggies

Perhaps, but the game doesn't allow you to run HDR with AA. You can do one or the other. I'm running with HDR and Bloom enabled. By the way, the jaggies are less pronounced in the game for me, because I run my desktop at 1024x768 while the game display is 1280x1024. That pic is blown up more when I look at it on the internet than it is in the game.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Solver
Hm. As far as balance goes, I'm now having a bit of trouble with my Atronach mage.

In Oblivion magicka regenerates automatically, but not for the Atronach, of course. Yet, I go into a dungeon and have enough magicka to kill maybe a third of the monsters inside, and after that I have potions for the second third, but for the third third, I'm pretty much stuck.

Maybe Atronach went from the best mage sign to the worst. Auto regenerating magicka sounds easy.

You should be able to conjure a Scamp at a fairly early level ... I'm playing a Conjurer, customized conjuring and archery based class, and Scamp was my primary level 5-to-10 conjuration. They cast Fireballs; not sure how many MP they have, but they cast several fireballs at least per conjuration.

Atronach in this game (as opposed to morrowind) though definitely weaker as a pure mage; except for the potion factor. There are SO MANY restore magica ingredients out there; i mean, some of the more common mushrooms do it ... just hit ~50 alchemy, and you don't actually need to regen magic ever. (I don't use potions much, just because it would be way too easy then... but it's certainly possible.)

Of course, that weakens atronach ... but I think perhaps Atronach might be good for a spellsword-type, almost thinking like an earth-magic knight from guild wars; where you use your magic only for protection and for extra help against ubernasties (who usually are going to be casters). But I never really used atronach in morrowind, either, so I'm not sure how it would work here