The primary issues with oblivion - lets discuss...

Niteowl3915 · Post by **Niteowl3915** » Wed May 10, 2006 11:42 pm

For once I agree Fable, enough.
I'll never convince you that the 360 is worth your time, you'll never convince me it's worth less than it's component hardware.
Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that we're both fanboys of sorts, and we won't ever see eye to eye on this one.
That being said, the debate was certainly an exercise... a good one, really!

Now that that's behind me, the two posts previous to mine summed up the issues with Oblivion very well. Spot On gentlemen.
I remember playing the game in the first few hours waay back when, and getting excited over how tough just the local bandits were on the way to Kvatch.
Thing is, regardless of how very powerful I am now, I still don't have "enclave patrols fleeing me in terror" for those that get the reference. It still feels like chipping away at a mountain whenever I attack people without my weapons charged up, being that it takes what seems like hundreds of swings to kll just about anything. Nowadays I avoid a lot of enemies, not because I'm afraid they might kill me, but because fighting them would be boring.
For me, that sucks post-end game play (gameplay after the MQ is completed) out faster than a vacuum.

fable · Post by **fable** » Fri May 12, 2006 2:24 pm

Couple of posts removed. They weren't bad at all, but they had nothing to do with the subject of this thread.

And now, without the moderator hat: One of the things that bothers me but probably very few others about Oblivion is that it has next to no real character interaction. Story branching? Non-existent. Quest-branching? Non-existent. I do like some of the character dialog, but it's almost always a simple matter of "stand there, listen, say you'll take a quest or not, and do it." It's a good hack-and-slash game, but it's not truly interactive in that sense. I got far more of that from PS:T and BG2.

RebelousDarkElf · Post by **RebelousDarkElf** » Fri May 12, 2006 7:47 pm

About the hotkeys:

You PC players have it easy. On XBox, you have to go through all of your spells one at a time. At least there is a range of ten for you people.

Bloodstalker · Post by **Bloodstalker** » Fri May 12, 2006 10:59 pm

[QUOTE=RebelousDarkElf]About the hotkeys:

You PC players have it easy. On XBox, you have to go through all of your spells one at a time. At least there is a range of ten for you people.[/QUOTE]

You can set spells, weapons, and item to correspond to the directional pad on the XBox. this allows you to access up to eight spells with a simple flick of the thumb over the pad.

on topic, one major gripe I have is the fact that I have bodies littering areas that they shouldn't be littering. I killed some characters in a store, for example, and the bodies are still there weeks later. The store owner simply walks around going about his merry business selling me things without notice of the mess I left him.

mordib · Post by **mordib** » Sat May 13, 2006 3:37 am

its true, certain areas will eventually be cleared, i think through various quest triggers that reset the state of the area (Im thinking imperial city mostly here). This goes back to the bigger problem of people simply not reacting to things going on around especially when stealth is used (for example full chameleon in a pub, sneak attack one of two people chatting with each other, they may not be able to se who did it but they dont react at all that the peron they were chatting to has suddenly collapsed in a heap on the floor spraying blood all over them..)

RebelousDarkElf · Post by **RebelousDarkElf** » Sat May 13, 2006 7:37 am

[QUOTE=Bloodstalker]You can set spells, weapons, and item to correspond to the directional pad on the XBox. this allows you to access up to eight spells with a simple flick of the thumb over the pad.[/QUOTE]

Sorry, I'm still a little new, only had Oblivion for 3 days now. Only played it for about a half hour, though, due to baseball. Sorry for the incorrect info!

Uthwe · Post by **Uthwe** » Sat May 13, 2006 8:46 am

I definitly agree that theres not enough hotkeys and that it looks a little silly that rain falls through the roof. Ok Im going to nit pick here but who care?

Just noticed if your in a house you can see out the windows because of the cells system but they have a light affect that makes it look like day light is shinig in from outside. So anyway i broke into Dar Jees house to wait for him to get back and wat do you know other then 1 candle the house was illuminated by light shining through the windows. It was about 2 am but hay must have been a car parked outside for about 3 hours because when I walked out it was stil night

Basically light always shines through windowns even though its night outside

.

Uthwe · Post by **Uthwe** » Sat May 13, 2006 8:50 am

1 other thing beggars voices change while your talking to them and there is a seriouse lack of range of voices + all the npcs talk about the exact same things.

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Sat May 13, 2006 12:32 pm

[QUOTE=Uthwe]1 other thing beggars voices change while your talking to them and there is a seriouse lack of range of voices + all the npcs talk about the exact same things.[/QUOTE]
They all talk about the same things, I agree, but I don't see a problem with their voices changing during conversation. I know quite a few beggars who are considerably more intelligent than their occupation and appearance would lead you to believe, and it's quite common for them to affect some kind of 'street trash' type accent to provide them more success when asking for free money. Hence, having a beggar affect cockney when asking for money, but drop into straight English when giving you information as a peer (ergo, informant) is actually quite realistic. I'm sure Bethesda did it by accident, though.
There are four types of beggars. Indigent homeless, professional swindlers, people playing at begging, and working folk who have temporarily fallen on hard times due to some external factor(s).
As for why an intelligent person would be a beggar? Lets put it this way. My father introduced me to a retired beggar from Vancouver who owned four city blocks of the downtown core outright. It can be quite a lucrative profession if you're good at it. I'm not. This guy sold pencils on the street from a wheelchair at $0.50 a pop (retail $0.05 per, profit margin 90%), and went home at night to a penthouse apartment that he owned outright (and yes, the wheelchair was a prop). He also made several hundred thousand dollars a month from leasing his other properties. The 'beggar' was rich. And sneaky.

jdougan1 · Post by **jdougan1** » Sat May 13, 2006 12:56 pm

I want to steer the conversation in a slightly different direction...

Many (though certainly not all) of the issues registered above would require additional CPU processing time - and would hence slow the game down. Oblivion already requires a high-end system, and people still complain about frame rates.

Out of curiosity, how much system performance would you be willing to sacrifice in order to obtain the things you are asking for in this thread? For example, are realistic rain effects and slightly smarter NPCs worth the inevitable diminished performance?

I am not sure what the answer is - just wondering what people think.

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Sat May 13, 2006 1:37 pm

[QUOTE=jdougan1]I want to steer the conversation in a slightly different direction...

Many (though certainly not all) of the issues registered above would require additional CPU processing time - and would hence slow the game down. Oblivion already requires a high-end system, and people still complain about frame rates.

Out of curiosity, how much system performance would you be willing to sacrifice in order to obtain the things you are asking for in this thread? For example, are realistic rain effects and slightly smarter NPCs worth the inevitable diminished performance?

I am not sure what the answer is - just wondering what people think.[/QUOTE]
That is, of course, the inevitable trade-off. However, that is also misleading. Oblivion isn't slow because of its complexity. It's slow because of all the eye-candy. You can see this for yourself. If you're in the battle in the temple district, refresh is much slower than if you are battling a single bandit in a barren cave. The difference? More visuals to process. More animation to deal with == poor performance.
A better question would be, would you be willing to sacrifice some of the visual and auditory detail in favor of more realistic behavior and better AI? For my money, the visual and auditory detail in MorrowWind was fine, and I could run that with no probs on my old 1.5GHz Pentium system. Oblivion is slow on my new 3 GHz Athlon 64x2. I don't actually need that extra detail, and it is ruining the game experience. I would much rather that the extra eye-candy went away, the performance improved, and the programmers had the luxury of being able to trap rain collisions, although that, IMHO, is base nit-picking. I'd prefer better AI. The rain doesn't actually hurt me. The Minotaur Lords do.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat May 13, 2006 2:05 pm

I know quite a few beggars who are considerably more intelligent than their occupation and appearance would lead you to believe, and it's quite common for them to affect some kind of 'street trash' type accent to provide them more success when asking for free money.

But these aren't simply a change of grammar. Rather, the entire accent changes, and in some cases, a different actor was used. For example, there's an old lady wandering around the market district. Her voice is stereotypically elderly, but when I clicked on rumors, she suddenly switched to a posh, young woman's voice and spoke about the high class of people approvingly. It made no sense at all.

nih · Post by **nih** » Sat May 13, 2006 2:30 pm

I would like to add one that I'm not sure has been discussed yet but I cant stand it when the NPC's dont react to you properly. For example say you have to turn a quest in to a guy who is in his house. You go in, he greets you nicely, and you turn in the quest item he/she wants. As soon as you leave the dialog you hear something like "This is your last warning! Leave this house or I will call the guards" or "your not supposed to be in here"

Dude, you just asked me to come in here and give you something and all of a sudden you freak on me!!

anyway that's my $.02

Bloodstalker · Post by **Bloodstalker** » Sat May 13, 2006 7:56 pm

[QUOTE=RebelousDarkElf]Sorry, I'm still a little new, only had Oblivion for 3 days now. Only played it for about a half hour, though, due to baseball. Sorry for the incorrect info!

[/QUOTE]

Just to clarify, I wasn't stating that to point out an error in your post. I just thought the info would save you a lot of searching through your spells and such.

UncleScratchy · Post by **UncleScratchy** » Sat May 13, 2006 11:46 pm

SPOILER ??? You never know

[QUOTE=fable]I know quite a few beggars who are considerably more intelligent than their occupation and appearance would lead you to believe, and it's quite common for them to affect some kind of 'street trash' type accent to provide them more success when asking for free money.

But these aren't simply a change of grammar. Rather, the entire accent changes, and in some cases, a different actor was used. For example, there's an old lady wandering around the market district. Her voice is stereotypically elderly, but when I clicked on rumors, she suddenly switched to a posh, young woman's voice and spoke about the high class of people approvingly. It made no sense at all.[/QUOTE]

Simalarly, just before I did the final mage guild quest I talked to Traven. Selected the "Rumors" dialog option and he, Traven, said that he had heard that Arch-Mage Traven had been doing some good things for the mage's guild, or something of that sort. Here you have the dialog so screwed that the NPC is passing rumors about himself as though he was another person. For me, that was just not right.

Ashen · Post by **Ashen** » Sun May 14, 2006 1:07 pm

Meh, I’ve been meaning to get into this conversation for days now, and though I still plan on that post I want to mention something that is a purely subjective observation. I must admit that in the end it is precisely these kinds of things that will put me off game, or make me hooked and not the leveling, annoying NPCs etc.

I was just asked by a friend who was not a gamer at all to show her some parts of Morrowind and I chose the intro, the first movie with Azura and the last one. I have saved games in all these points and she was speechless, she loved it. Her comment was that it gave her the shivers, it sounder magnificent.

I have done by now a lot of the MQ in Oblivion and the feeling is just not there.

And it is not just the MQ but altogether I am missing that immersion in the game, I am missing that feeling that I am in fact this guy/girl walking around and finding all these neat ruins with artifacts, I am missing the feeling of wondering of where did they go, and who left this etc. I am not sure what is putting me off. I am not too thrilled with the MQ story. The wonder and the awe, not there. The story itself is not developed at all compared to what I expected. In fact I am finding myself going through the motions. The feeling is just not there.

"Nerevar Reborn, Incarnate:
Your first three trials are finished.
Now, two new trials lie before you...”

Still gives me shivers to hear that voice, not the mention how it was the first time. I want that.

REal953 · Post by **REal953** » Sun May 14, 2006 1:50 pm

I like how the torches burn out but I wish you could see how much longer the torch would last, so you don't run out when you need one.

Uthwe · Post by **Uthwe** » Mon May 15, 2006 3:26 am

I think again one of the most important things is npc reactions. Like you can walk into a inn and trash the whole place throw

things everywere but the npcs dont react.

Invincible121 · Post by **Invincible121** » Mon May 15, 2006 5:56 am

Yeah. Or if you throw fireballs at someone's house or streams of lightning at statues of the gods in temples. I'd like some kind out outrage!

jdougan1 · Post by **jdougan1** » Mon May 15, 2006 8:19 am

I mentioned something like this in another thread - but want to bring it up again. I am exceptionally disappointed by the utter sameness of the indoor environments.

Lets take caves for example - though similar points can be made for mines and temples and ruins and and forts and everything else. Every cave has EXACTLY the same types of caverns. Geez...in seemingly every bloody cave there is one of those big rooms with the crevasse running down the middle. Seen one cave, seen em' all. The only thing that distinguishes between caves is how the tunnels connect things.

Compare these caves to the ones in Morrowind. There were SPECTACULAR underground ebvironments in Morrowind. Remember in the Morrowind MQ where you had to retrieve a weapon (axe or bow - can't remember which) from a ancient ashlander buriel ground. There was a cavern with a spire you had to climb, with varions dungeon areas branching off the spire, with water cascading around you? I still remember that cave, years later.

I have done the MQ, Mage's guild, Daedric quests and about half the fighters guild quests in Oblivion - and I can confidently say there is NOTHING spectacular in ANY of the indoor environments.

Why did they skimp on indoor in Oblivion? My guess is that the need to get it all on one disc (required for the Xbox) meant they had to simplify the tile sets. I haven't played with the construction set - but would I be correct to say that there is far less variability in the tiles that are available to use.

I agree with Ashen - Oblivion never really grabbed be the way Morrowind did - despite the eye candy - and the farther I get into the game the less I am engaged. It does feel like going through the motions.