Oblivion

[Solver]

Some of the Oblivion restrictions are good IMO. Such as limiting the power of Alchemy. That's another thing that was just barking mad in Morrowind. Without resorting to any exploits, simply with a high Alchemy skill, you'd be damn near invulnerable. As a skilled alchemist, you can make really powerful healing potions, for example - just one of those affecting you is a lot. I'd call it rebalancing, not restricting.

I use Francesco's (I think) mod myself for the levelling stuff. OOO is too radical for my tastes and changes a bit too much.

Population size... yeah. In the Imperial City, no place except the Market District really feels full with people. Then again, it's a technical limitation. It's not difficult to populate the city with a few hundred random NPCs that roam the area, but it'd bring any PC down to a halt. Population is where you need to suspend your disbelief anyway. In-game lore also mentions huge battles and armies with thousands on each side... from what you see in the game, a thousand would be just about the population of Cyrodiil

BTW, what's up with their official forums?

[pg]

I still think the ultimate for the series would be if they redid the randomness of Daggerfall with modern technology then added on a lot of hand made stuff into the mix. That'd let you have huge endless dungeons to explore like a roguelike game and let you have the big cities too, etc.

[vee4473]

I tried to get into Oblivion, but the only thing that I have to really say with regards the past few or so posts is that mods are great, but if you need a mod to make a game fun, then the game failed.

I am all in favor of mods. But they should be seasoning to the original game, not something that makes it fun.

Everytime I see a thread, here or elsewhere, where someone says "get this mod and you'll like the game", I cringe.

Maybe just me.

(Not talking about UI mods)

[Skanky Burns]

Alchemy was extremely overpowered in Morrowind for those who chose to exploit it. Oblivion has removed that freedom and has gone way too far in the other direction. Not only are you restricted in how many potions you can have running, but there is damned little you can do to even affect how powerful a potion you can make. Intelligence now has no effect on potions, iirc potions of alchemy have no effect (despite their name), raising most skills or attributes above 100 actually has no effect, etc. Its one thing to prevent excesses, its another to totally castrate an entire segment of the game.

Also, I can understand the technical limitations of not having a huge population on display in the city all the time, but there isn't even enough housing to hold a large population in. Count the population by houses and it will be very small indeed. Incidently, I initially made this complaint on my original attempt to play Oblivion while I was in the market district.

[Dis]

well I'm giving up on this game. It just isn't my type of game. Sometimes I wonder if Morrowind was really that great, and maybe I only played it because I was bored.

And I hate to be one of those people who judge games based on looks. But the races of the Elder Scrolls world are ugly. I've felt this about Morrowind as well. I'm not looking for the eye candy such as a female blood elf in World of Warcraft (though they are hot), but just something not so ugly. Yes I do realize it is realistic for people to be that ugly. It's not like they had make up or cosmetics back then, but what can I say.

The combat system is weak. not that many spells. No magic missiles, no blizzards, just nothing really interesting.

And I'll have to admit, while it may be realistic that you can "shape" your character any way you want, I prefer classes. Give me a druid any day. Druids > Oblivion

[pg]

Eh, alchemy still seems way over powered in Oblivion to me at high skill. It's just no longer an instant win button. Personally I like Oblivion combat but I have so far always been using arrows. Thus I play it like a shooter.

[El_Cid]

Some good points by all sides of this divide :b

For me I think I can sum it up in one word: Choices(thanks Skanky Burns for helping me get to this simple point!)

In Oblivion I have less choices than in all the other games. Even when modded, certain key elements on how Oblivion was designed means it always feels restrictive in its rpg game style(i.e.players freedom of choice).

True that Morrowind was so incredibly unbalanced that you could pwn it by level 10....but it didn't force you to do so. Infact much of the fun I had with Morrowind was during my pre-modding days(playing on xbox), where I learnt to not exploit it and rpg it more.

So I kept with my low level Nordic ring mail armour choice if playing a nord, or maybe went with newt-scale if playing a dunmer of ill repute.

Even with it's flaws Morrowind retained the sandbox feature that had started in Arena and Daggerfall, it's still possible to play a challanging un-modded game of Morrowind.

In Oblivion I found it had become less about that role play, it gave me less choice in just about every area, and more about the combat(to put it simply).
To me Halo and Oblivion play about the same - I see an enemy and I either shot it or hit it, and score an actual hit. It wont matter so much what my actual characters skill level is, a hit is a hit.

Thats not 100% true of course...but thats how it feels when I play it, and how the game feels in terms of it's reaction to your action is very important. Especialy in an rpg where the biggest deal of that game genre is that you start out on the bottom rung of society and have to work your way up by improving your characters stats.

As soon as that mechanic is dilluted, then it just isn't really a role playing game anymore - it's an action game, an adventure game, many things but not an rpg. If your stats don't really matter anymore how can you really roleplay - you need something from the gameworld to help you judge your decissions.

"hmm no maybe I wont attack that Ogre as my Str is only 34 and my HP only 50, my sword is pretty weak and my sword skill only gives me about 25% chance each hit"

You can of course completely roleplay everything, as in make it up in your head completely - so you could say the sentence above in Oblivion and move on. BUT in the actual game you know you have a good chance to actualy kill that powerfull Ogre in that situation - you are going to hit it every blow and you are always going to heal yourself with magic when you try.

In Morrowind if my char was crap I know what to expect in combat - it could take me a while to kill the ogre, most likely he will kill me first as I'm going to miss with most of my blows.

Yes it looks odd when you strike something, and you see the blow land(but pass through them), I suppose if they had built in some animation for the npc you were fighting to like block your blow, or even dodge when you didnt score a hit, that would have been much better.

Still from a roleplaying game I want my char to feel rubbish when they are low level - it's part of the achievment you feel when you improve that character. In Oblivion most of that wasn't there for me, so my interest in it as an rpg vanished pretty quick.

As for some specifc stuff people have mentioned:

@Solver

I used Francesco's stuff over OOO - I found one of the problems with OOO is that it makes worse some of the things I already didn't like about Oblivion, i.e it's combat orientated game play. With OOO you just get more combat more often to create 'the challange' - for me that wasn't the point in the first place so much. Francesco's was(and i guess still is?) a good effort in terms of re-balancing aspects of Oblivion imho.

In ref about Morrowind and lack of challange(compared to Oblivion), I agree in terms of vanilla game. Learning to anti-power play was quite important for my enjoyment of MW.
Still now with my modded MW it's very different. My current char is level 13 but feels more like a level 4 char in unmodded MW. I die quite often either through quest related encounters or random wilderness ones.

I hate wasps/hornets currently the most. You hear them coming but they are hard to spot, and if a single insect you can get away with a nasty sting but rarely die. Still if you blunder into a small swarm of them(they like to congregate around flowers - herbalists beware!) they are more than capable of taking my level 13 char down.

Snakes are pretty nasty also, as is the larger slaughter shark. In terms of an actual challange, and being fearfull when exploring new places or known danger spots, my game is as challanging as Oblivion - and more realisitc with it also(bar the obvious MW combat oddness).

In this regard when you mod MW it's tempting to just put loads of goodies in the mix(like really powerfull weapons etc), but it's also entiely possible to make it naturaly much more challanging - it all depends on the mods you put in.

As for the official TES forums, well for me they went downhill as soon as Oblivion had started to be digested by the many. I don't post there anymore, but pop in for a quick look once in a while.

@vee4473

Yes having to mod a game to make it decent isn't my prefered choice, still IF you can do it then it's better than not being able to imho. CTP2 is a good case in point, as is Morrowind and many others. Oblivion can be moded, but due to many of the things that have been talked about here, I feel it has less potential in this area(plus you have to pay for some mods).
As the series progress' this will become more restricted(maybe you will have to pay for a license to be allowed to make the mods?). Oblivion isn't just a game - it's a statement on the state of the games industry imho. time will tell.

@pg

I'm completely with you on a real Daggerfall remake, no stripped down stats or any of that(infact give the player MORE choices!) - a real Daggerfall remake with the benefit of the randomness and the refinement of plenty of handmade content, and modding ability as good as Morrowinds atleast. That would be a king TES game, and entirely possible to make.
Still i can't see it coming from Bethesda anymore - they want the other way(it's making them rich!)

@Skanky Burns+Dis

well when(in Skankys' case) and if(in Dis') you do go back to Morrowind i'm contemplating making a detailed thread about building a super moded Morrowind. And in terms of stability my current build is as stable as any other TES game has been for me i.e it will crash sometimes.
It took me a long time to work it all out so it might be useful to some people if i share a bit of that here?

Oh and Dis if you want hot babes in your TES game then Better Bodies mod is for you! Plus a few others I can think of like the wailing wench tavern in caldera one. Cute guys also for the ladies.

[Solver]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
Alchemy was extremely overpowered in Morrowind for those who chose to exploit it.

No need to exploit it. Yes, I'm aware of exploits that would give you godlike potions - such as a potion that will keep your health at max for an in-game day. But even just creating a potion in Morrowind at a high alchemy skill would be way more powerful than any potion you could find/buy - and much cheaper to do, as well.

In ref about Morrowind and lack of challange(compared to Oblivion), I agree in terms of vanilla game. Learning to anti-power play was quite important for my enjoyment of MW.
Still now with my modded MW it's very different. My current char is level 13 but feels more like a level 4 char in unmodded MW. I die quite often either through quest related encounters or random wilderness ones.

Yeah... I used a MW mod for it a while back, called something like Creature Pack, and a couple of smaller mods. Pretty good. In a way it's like Oblivion actually, it adds tougher versions of existing creatures to the game to keep the challenge at higher levels. The various Daedra can be strong enough to keep a level 30 character challenged. Dragons, from a separate mod, result in long epic battles, though are actually easy for mages. Mages are damn powerful if you know how to play those.

As for the official TES forums, well for me they went downhill as soon as Oblivion had started to be digested by the many. I don't post there anymore, but pop in for a quick look once in a while.

I mean I can't get in anymore. I'm getting "you do not have permission to use this board", what's up with that?

Yes having to mod a game to make it decent isn't my prefered choice, still IF you can do it then it's better than not being able to imho. CTP2 is a good case in point, as is Morrowind and many others. Oblivion can be moded, but due to many of the things that have been talked about here, I feel it has less potential in this area(plus you have to pay for some mods).

+1.

There are many games that are ruined because they ship with some/many poor features that can't be fixed by modding. A game like Oblivion is really immense, in every sense. So I only see it as a positive that it can be modded. Over the years, I've been amazed at how many good mods I found for Morrowind. I enjoyed the game in its out-of-the-box state, but as time went by and I found more things that annoyed me, more mods appeared that fix them. Not to mention mods that aren't there to fix the game but rather to enhance replayability (new guilds, areas, quests, etc.)


Hmm. Playing Morrowind now probably wouldn't be too fun for me. I think I've done most of the fun things in the game, I've explored most of the map. And even with the challenge mods, there's not quite so much challenge. The horrid AI pathfinding doesn't help in having the challenge, plus, you have to restrict yourself a lot, apparently. You have to never sell potions, never drink more than 2 at a time, never train, never use Creeper, etc., in order to have some challenge.

Any suggestions for Oblivion mods that spice up the exploration? Francesco's works well to differentiate the enemies and all, but still, at the end of each dungeon you find good generic loot. In Morrowind I really enjoyed finding those artifacts. I wouldn't use most of them, just keep them around, in fact.

[El_Cid]

Originally posted by Solver
edit...

Hmm. Playing Morrowind now probably wouldn't be too fun for me. I think I've done most of the fun things in the game, I've explored most of the map. And even with the challenge mods, there's not quite so much challenge. The horrid AI pathfinding doesn't help in having the challenge, plus, you have to restrict yourself a lot, apparently. You have to never sell potions, never drink more than 2 at a time, never train, never use Creeper, etc., in order to have some challenge.

Any suggestions for Oblivion mods that spice up the exploration? Francesco's works well to differentiate the enemies and all, but still, at the end of each dungeon you find good generic loot. In Morrowind I really enjoyed finding those artifacts. I wouldn't use most of them, just keep them around, in fact.

It's true that even in a heavily modded Morrowind, you still will have the majority of the quests playing exactly the same, sooo that can get a bit repetative.
Why they started to focus on only scripted quests with Morrowind(and now Oblivion) i'm not sure. It is possible to have that and a bunch of Daggerfall like random quests to keep things fresh.... but not in any mod of course. That would need to be built in from scratch - a missed opportunity maybe?

Did you add any of the big landmass mods like 'Sea of Destiny' etc? I've increased my unexplored area so the whole game is much bigger now than Oblivion and about 30% larger than GOTY MW. Getting the right combination of these mods is important as many do overlap, which you want to avoid!

As for suggestions for Oblivion mods, i'm probably not the guy to really ask. I was running around a dozen when I stopped playing Oblivion(about a year ago?).
At that time I found essential the Francseco ones, a saddlebags one, an eat/drink/sleep one, an add real fatigue one, a distant textures replacer - can't remember the rest but they were some of the more popular ones.

[Solver]

Good point, I could just play through some of the bigger Morrowind mods. I'm sure a few more have come out since the last time I played MW. Oh I love my MW character

[EPW]

Originally posted by Solver

Any suggestions for Oblivion mods that spice up the exploration? Francesco's works well to differentiate the enemies and all, but still, at the end of each dungeon you find good generic loot. In Morrowind I really enjoyed finding those artifacts. I wouldn't use most of them, just keep them around, in fact.

Well one of the mods I'm using, OOO, MMM, Warcry, or Fransisco's usually leaves a good item or two in a dungeon.(i found a constant effect +8 speechcraft/mercantile/personality robe in an Ayleid ruin recently for example) I'm not sure which one it is though...

Originally posted by Solver
3. Universe role. This is simple. Morrowind simply has much more of the universe stuff - history of that world, in-game fiction and all.

I agree, I think this is Morrowind's greatest appeal. I felt like Vvardenfell had a unique and long history with many unique cultures. The different architectural styles were adapted for the local environmental conditions, which really made exploring interesting.
Oblivion lags behind Morrowind in both of these areas. However, I think many of the other features in oblivion make up for most the difference, and with a bit of modding is superior than (Vanilla) Morrowind.

[EPW]

On a separate topic, I don't like how you have to micromanage your skills in order to get the best attribute multipliers when leveling up in either game. In Morrowind it didn't really matter because you became godlike quickly, but in Oblivion it can be a major hindrance not to get the best multipliers. Luckily mods solve this problem as well.

[Solver]

I agree, I think this is Morrowind's greatest appeal. I felt like Vvardenfell had a unique and long history with many unique cultures. The different architectural styles were adapted for the local environmental conditions, which really made exploring interesting.

A drawback, though. With NPCs that never did anything but stand in the same place, Vvanderfel felt like a living, breathing world that froze the moment I entered it. The attention to detail, say, in people's houses was amazing. Then you see the residents who just froze. And nothing ever changes in Morrowind, either. It needs more suspension of disbelief. At least when an Oblivion character says something like "So I went to talk to the Mage Guild's leader", it feels more believable because these characters do move.

[Solver]

Note: Martigen Monster Mod looks sweet.

[Nostromo]

El Cid will love this...

Hot on the heels of a massive investment from Providence Equity Partners in Bethesda-parent ZeniMax Media's newly opened MMO-focused studio, word has reached us that the company has registered the domain name elderscrollsonline.com, throwing some weight behind the idea that Bethesda's popular RPG franchise could someday finally break free from its single player shackles and frolic the n00b-infested waters of the MMO.

It's true that many have often referred to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as an MMO without all the stupid. Still, the truth of the matter is that while we openly admit that The Elder Scrolls works well as a setting for an immersive single player experience, the world itself is nothing short of generic. The last thing the gaming world needs is yet another tepid swords and sorcery MMO, and the idea of having to lead an intricately armored horse to the pond to drink once a month seems more apt to turn our stomachs rather than our wallets.