The Oblivion Thread

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by yin26
Bah! Anyway, I agree with making things options anyway.

I think they'd be happy with that as well.

Willpower is a very interesting thing. Some people want to mod things out because they can't help themselves. Personally, I try like Hell to prevent myself from reading threads with spoilers, because I'll try to read as much as I can about the topic, and sometimes I read 'too much'.

[yin26]

What might be interesting is if fast travel cost you (or lost you) something. Carrot and stick kind of stuff. I suppose you'd already lose some acrobat skill opportunities with fast travel, but that's hardly very important when you're getting that skill enough already. Anyway, if you have some meaningful bonus for actually doing the walking, that might be a good approach. Anyway, mod it. Make it an option. Whatever it takes to appease those who worry about willpower.

[Solver]

I don't see the problem, honestly. Fast travel is an option already, you don't have to use it if you don't want to.

It's just that in Morrowind, many people complained about having to walk to a lot of places. I liked it, I had enough fast travel through Morrowind's "public transportation" systems, and was happy to do the walking.

But since many people don't want to do that, why not give them the option not to? If you want to walk, fast travel affects you in exactly no way.

[Imran Siddiqui]

It's the willpower thing I said. Plenty of people on this forum have said how easy it is to cheat the AI in CivIV in diplomacy, etc, and how those should be eliminated, but it really ends up being an option, doesn't it? Don't do it if you don't want to... but its a case of having enough willpower to ignore it.

Basically the idea is download a mod diabling it... or an option to turn off fast travel.

Arguments are in the official thread that it is useless, but plenty have said they love the mod because they are too weak willed.

[ZargonX]

What might be interesting is if fast travel cost you (or lost you) something. Carrot and stick kind of stuff. I suppose you'd already lose some acrobat skill opportunities with fast travel, but that's hardly very important when you're getting that skill enough already. Anyway, if you have some meaningful bonus for actually doing the walking, that might be a good approach. Anyway, mod it. Make it an option. Whatever it takes to appease those who worry about willpower.

I think the basic penalty for fast travel is that you lose out on exploration opportunities. You'll never find that remote dungeon off the side of the road if you never walk down the road. That means lost loot and experience. For some people, that's too steep a price to pay.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Interestingly enough, on the Mod TES forums, they are discussing making a mod that allows horseback combat (even if it is unbalancing, it is necessary!)

[yin26]

Originally posted by ZargonX
I think the basic penalty for fast travel is that you lose out on exploration opportunities. You'll never find that remote dungeon off the side of the road if you never walk down the road. That means lost loot and experience. For some people, that's too steep a price to pay.

Agreed, which is why I would only fast travel along a route that I don't plan to explore (or already have explored) anyway. I like it!

[Nostromo]

Would someone do me a favour and post a screenshot taken at low graphics settings? All the marketing shots are obviously on high-highest settings, and I can't find low-quality anywhere.

Here you go

[Nostromo]

Thoughts? Oh, I'll also need to buy a new flat panel if I get the XBox360, so we're talking some serious money here.

Imagine playing Oblivion on a 44inch HD TV, while sitting confortably in your living room!

[Nostromo]

I'm fairly certain it will run well on your PC. Anyhow, even if you wanted to get a new video card, that would be cheaper than getting the 360.

No need to buy consoles

Not cheaper than a high end video card

[Solver]

You don't need to buy a 7800GTX to play it. I personally don't care about having graphics in uber-fancy mode. And a card such as the 6600 is cheap.

Besides, why does everyone assume that playing on a console is more comfortable? I don't have any HDTV, let alone 44 inch, I actually don't like TV anyway... so my monitor's better than my TV I guess .

[yin26]

Well, my XBox *is* connected to the living room T.V. just a short distance from a comfortable couch. What make this uncomfortable, however, is the Xbox does not allow my wife to watch Oprah while I'm killing Orcs. I'm safer in the PC room!

[Garret OneEye]

Well, after reading around various forums, I am a little nervous about a couple of things regarding the PC version:

1) I gather you either cannot (or, cannot easily) re-map the keyboard for Oblivion. Morrowind had an WASD style movement system, which I always re-map in any WASD style game. Also, the 1-8 weapon & spell hotkeys in Morrowind could also be re-mapped. This could be a major pain for me.
2) The inventory & info screen system is not very PC friendly. I don't recall all of the details of the screen info system in Morrowind, but I do remember that it was pretty good on the PC; not clumsy to use nor too intrusive. There are some posts around that criticize this area of the design in the PC version of Oblivion.
3) Some negative nattering about the savegame interface for the PC.

In general, some accusations of a somewhat simple 'port' of a platform interface into the PC environment. In my experience, this does not usually go over well in the PC community, and I usually end up annoyed at the interface, as well.

Any comments from Oblivion owners that would help shed some light on this subject would be appreciated.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I gather you either cannot (or, cannot easily) re-map the keyboard for Oblivion.

Incorrect. It's very easy to do so.

The inventory & info screen system is not very PC friendly. I don't recall all of the details of the screen info system in Morrowind, but I do remember that it was pretty good on the PC; not clumsy to use nor too intrusive. There are some posts around that criticize this area of the design in the PC version of Oblivion.

Frankly I think these people are nuts. I LIKE the interface. You can bring up -TAB- to get to the last info screen page, or hit F1-4 to bring up a specific info page (F1 for character info, F2 for inventory, F3 for spells, F4 for map & quests).

Though, this is what I was coming in here to talk about. The Oblivion forums are hilarious. There are people RETURNING the game because they think the interface was just a 'console port' .

I prefer it to Morrowind's, IMO, which just looked like a 5 year old did it (4 squares model).

Some negative nattering about the savegame interface for the PC.

Huh? Same as Morrowind's.

some accusations of a somewhat simple 'port' of a platform interface into the PC environment.

Which is silly. They designed an interface that could be used equally well on the PC and XBox 360. I don't see why they should have designed two seperate interfaces. There are already mods to eliminate the compass (which I find to be very useful myself).

[Nostromo]

Besides, why does everyone assume that playing on a console is more comfortable? I don't have any HDTV, let alone 44 inch, I actually don't like TV anyway... so my monitor's better than my TV I guess

Once, I brought my Xbox at my friend's home, and plugged it in his 44inch DLP. We played Splinter Cell: chaos theory all night. Man, it was great! I'm sold. Its unfortunate I can't afford o buy one.