The Elder Scrolls

[Pike]

Let's talk about this series. It's a pretty great series. I love all the lore and such and how open-ended everything is. I'm currently playing through Morrowind and having a lot of fun! :jess:

[Quindiana Jones]

I don't want to make any extravagant claims, but it's safe to say that I am the greatest Elder Scrolls player that gaming consoles have ever seen.

[Slothy]

I don't want to make any extravagant claims, but it's safe to say that I am the greatest Elder Scrolls player that gaming consoles have ever seen.

Well if you're playing them on consoles then you're doing it wrong aren't you?

I've only played Oblivion so my opinion of the series isn't super high. Mind you I've heard from numerous sources that only playing Oblivion is probably the worst way to experience the series.

[NeoCracker]

Having played III, IV, and V I can safely say I have no Idea why this series is regarded as highly as it is.

I can appriciate a lot of what it does, but the praise these things get is boggling to me.

[Alpha2099]

I got Oblivion as a high school graduation present. I had never played an open world RPG before, and this game blew me away. Needless to say, there went my summer. Unfortunately, the laptop I had for school couldn't handle Oblivion, so to get my Elder Scrolls fix I backed up and got Morrowind. Loved that game too, but the technical gamer in me repeatedly pointed out things that were tedious/annoying/just plain stupid in Morrowind that Oblivion fixed up. It was, perhaps, the clearest case I found at the time of a game whose sequel fixed the mistakes of its predecessor and surpassed it in terms of quality. I love Morrowind and think it's a great game, but Oblivion is better.

And I haven't played Skyrim yet. I'm looking to fix that soon-ish.

[Laddy]

Actually, I find Oblivion to be quite mediocre and Skyrim underwhelming. Choice and freedom is great. But I care not for so many things to do if none of them are particularly interesting.

Morrowind and to a lesser extent, Daggerfall, were both highly enjoyable though.

[Quindiana Jones]

With each new installment, Bethesda add or change loads of things for the better, but remove considerably more. It's very upsetting.

[Clo]

I like to ride Shadowmere down waterfalls, brandishing my sword and killing elk. No bigz.

[escobert]

I've played III IV and V. I like Oblivion the best. Skyrim's cool and all but I just liked the feel of oblivion more. And Morrowind takes more thought and I guess perseverance to play

[Bunny]

I started another character on Skyrim to maybe finally beat it but I'm starting to get bored. The game is great, and I really do like it, but it is just so overwhelming with the amount of freedom that you have and the amount of things there are to do that it just becomes too much.

I'm going to try and keep going but who knows. I'll probably good bored as soon as a mage blasts my orc warrior to shreds.

[Jiro]

Morrowind is still probably my favourite. It's not quite as polished as the others but in terms of being absolutely incredible, it takes the cake. The map was huge and with the lack of quest markers you just had to live in this world if you wanted to get the most out of it. Truly amazing.

[Sephex]

I plan on playing Morrowind and Oblivion, but I have enjoyed my current run through Skyrim. I was late to the party on this series because I preferred Fallout. I keep stopping and starting every couple of months or so. Partially because I clear time for other games and partially because while I like it, I have grievances with the game.

[Madame Adequate]

I just spent half an hour writing a post explaining why Oblivion is a terrible game and it got deleted so smurf that noise, I'm just going to bulletpoint it.


The fascinating setting of Morrowind was abandoned in favor of generic fantasy claptrap. Cyrodiil is actually the Roman Empire in a big jungle but screw that for some medieval forests!
The leveling system is stupid and it means unless you plan and focus what you are doing you will gimp yourself.
When you do level, the leveled lists are terrible and you will come across common bandits wearing armor worth more than a city.
No, Todd Howard, a difficulty slider that adjusts damage taken and enemy HP does not make up for this
The daedric invasion should be a complex, scary, fascinating event. Instead it's a few scripted battles and a bunch of generic, repetetive hellish dungeons. Outside of these there's absolutely no idea you're in the middle of a war between planes of existence, no threat that demons will spill out of someplace and force you to run back to the city, nothing at all except boars, goblins, and bandits demanding ONE MILLION HUNDRED SEPTIMS while wearing a suit of armor worth enough to let them retire to a beachfront manor.
Daedra aren't supposed to be a bunch of mindless demons and you should be able to interact with them as individuals and factions in a parallel world.
Ahahahaha what the hell is wrong with the speech options in this game.
The combat is superficially improved thanks to active blocking and removing whiffs, but that and the addition of ragdolls isn't enough to make the game any more balanced or enjoyable in any underlying fashion.
I ain't even touching the writing, quests, or plots, suffice it to say that you can approximate the same experience by feeding someone with diarrhea a spicy curry and waiting a few hours, then listening at the bathroom door.


In short Oblivion is a terrible game. Not a good game with flaws, not a decent game which simply fails to live up to its promise, a thoroughly broken, unenjoyable mess that I have no desire or inclination to ever play again.

[Quindiana Jones]

Your second point is incorrect, but the rest are pretty sound reasons.

[escobert]

I just spent half an hour writing a post explaining why Oblivion is a terrible game and it got deleted so smurf that noise, I'm just going to bulletpoint it.


The fascinating setting of Morrowind was abandoned in favor of generic fantasy claptrap. Cyrodiil is actually the Roman Empire in a big jungle but screw that for some medieval forests!
The leveling system is stupid and it means unless you plan and focus what you are doing you will gimp yourself.
When you do level, the leveled lists are terrible and you will come across common bandits wearing armor worth more than a city.
No, Todd Howard, a difficulty slider that adjusts damage taken and enemy HP does not make up for this
The daedric invasion should be a complex, scary, fascinating event. Instead it's a few scripted battles and a bunch of generic, repetetive hellish dungeons. Outside of these there's absolutely no idea you're in the middle of a war between planes of existence, no threat that demons will spill out of someplace and force you to run back to the city, nothing at all except boars, goblins, and bandits demanding ONE MILLION HUNDRED SEPTIMS while wearing a suit of armor worth enough to let them retire to a beachfront manor.
Daedra aren't supposed to be a bunch of mindless demons and you should be able to interact with them as individuals and factions in a parallel world.
Ahahahaha what the hell is wrong with the speech options in this game.
The combat is superficially improved thanks to active blocking and removing whiffs, but that and the addition of ragdolls isn't enough to make the game any more balanced or enjoyable in any underlying fashion.
I ain't even touching the writing, quests, or plots, suffice it to say that you can approximate the same experience by feeding someone with diarrhea a spicy curry and waiting a few hours, then listening at the bathroom door.


In short Oblivion is a terrible game. Not a good game with flaws, not a decent game which simply fails to live up to its promise, a thoroughly broken, unenjoyable mess that I have no desire or inclination to ever play again.

most of these are common flaws with like every Bethesda game!

[Slothy]

Your second point is incorrect, but the rest are pretty sound reasons.

No, his second point is bang on. Unless you're sufficiently leveling different skills before leveling up you will not maximize your attribute increases. And unless you know in advance which attributes you need to increase for your playstyle, you may still screw yourself. Because since enemies level with you it is remarkably easy to leave yourself underpowered very quickly and unable to deal with the enemies you come across.

In fact, I did that exact thing the first time I played the game because the level system is about as poorly described in the manual and in game as possible, and it's easy for a new player to underestimate how important the attribute bonuses are if you are used to RPG's that aren't idiotically designed.

And sure, there's a difficulty slider there to help save your butt if you screw up your build, but it's really nothing more than a band-aid for a terrible smurfing system. And to add insult to injury, leveling those skills to get the attribute bonuses takes so stupidly long that were I playing with the intention of getting to a high level without screwing myself I'd probably choose to just go play a game that wasn't stupid before I ever succeeded.


most of these are common flaws with like every Bethesda game!

Considering the leveling and combat were less stupid in Fallout 3 I'm inclined to believe that Oblivion is something of an anomaly in this regard until I actually play another Elder Scrolls game. That said, I didn't like Fallout 3 that much either so I'm in no hurry to play anything else Bethesda.

[Jiro]

The first time I tried to play Oblivion I ended up pretty fucking screwed when I got to Kvatch (or whatever it was called). Then I restarted and instead just never levelled up.

[Slothy]

The first time I tried to play Oblivion I ended up pretty smurfing screwed when I got to Kvatch (or whatever it was called). Then I restarted and instead just never levelled up.

That's largely the decision I came to during later play through attempts. I'd usually save before leveling and see what the bonuses were. If they weren't sufficiently high I'd reload and wait hours before trying again.

There is something severely wrong with your game when not/barely using what should be one of the most important game mechanics is playing optimally.

[Quindiana Jones]

Saying that Oblivion's levelling system screws you over is like saying that not IV and EV training your Pokémon screws you over. You don't need to max everything out. It's completely unnecessary. Whether you think it's bad or not isn't the point, I'm simply pointing out that you would have to do something inconceivably stupid to find yourself gimped by levelling. I literally cannot think of what you must be doing to find yourself in such a situation.

I agree with Jiro that levelling is arguably pointless. It's main use is to unlock higher level armours, but I thought they were ugly so would rarely bother with them anyway. I would just enchant normal clothes and do my adventuring like that, just because I could look cooler.

My main disappointment with the Elder Scrolls games is how they keep removing brilliant things. Where the hell is spellmaking? Why have my enchanting options been completely nerfed? Where have loads of spell types gone? It flummoxes me that Bethesda can continue to decrease the replayability (*gag*) of their games and still be considered one of the best companies in the industry.

[Madame Adequate]

most of these are common flaws with like every Bethesda game!

I think Bethesda are somewhat overrated but Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Skyrim, and yes even Fallout 3 have all been pretty enjoyable to a greater or lesser degree and have one way or another avoided most of these problems. For example Morrowind and FO3 have level-scaling like Oblivion does, but they both handle it infinitely better and more sensibly from a gameplay standpoint and neither ever screwed things up like Oblivion does as standard.


Saying that Oblivion's levelling system screws you over is like saying that not IV and EV training your Pokémon screws you over. You don't need to max everything out. It's completely unnecessary. Whether you think it's bad or not isn't the point, I'm simply pointing out that you would have to do something inconceivably stupid to find yourself gimped by levelling. I literally cannot think of what you must be doing to find yourself in such a situation.

You don't need to max everything out, but if you go level up through non-combat things like alchemy, barter, lockpick, or speech (ahahaha never use speech) then you're not going to be able to increase your combat stats like strength and endurance even remotely enough to keep up with the enemies. Just because you avoided it does not mean it is "inconceivably stupid" to fall victim to it, and not only do we have people saying this happened to them in this very thread, but it's also one of the foremost complaints about the game since it came out years ago and you can find an abundance of posts discussing it all across the Internet.


My main disappointment with the Elder Scrolls games is how they keep removing brilliant things. Where the hell is spellmaking? Why have my enchanting options been completely nerfed? Where have loads of spell types gone?

This I agree with, I want more magic making and enchanting options and MORE SPELLS

[Hollycat]

Oblivion (PSP) - UESPWiki (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion_%28PSP%29)

[Quindiana Jones]

The lack of Chameleon and Weakness to- enchantments and spells are my most hated thing about Skyrim. As soon as I heard about the dual-wielding, I was massively excited to have an element spell in the one hand and it's coinciding Weakness spell in the other. Broke my heart.

I've Majored in all those skills, often at once, and never found myself ruined in combat (though certainly challenged against certain enemies), hence why I don't consider doing such a thing an inconceivably stupid act. I was assuming something spectacular, given the level of complaint. The levelling system is stupid, I should mention, but anyone should be able to complete the game on Normal, regardless of their Major and Minor skills.

[edczxcvbnm]

I think Fallout succeeds where the Elder Scrolls fails (Fallout 3 excluded). I tried a bit of Morrowind and hated it, I played a decent bit of Oblivion and hated it (Fallout 3 fixed a lot of mistakes) and I have played a good amount of Skyrim and thought it was decent enough but I am not prepared to cast the judgement upon it that I will the rest of the series because it looks like it tries to do something different and make steps in the right direction.

Elder Scrolls doesn't allow me choice in my character. I can make any character I want but I have no real say in the story. I can't choose to help the "bad guys". I always have felt constrained in that I can't make the choices that actually matter. Fallout 3 had this problem as well. If you look at New Vegas, a lot of the missions don't greatly differ in the lead up to the final confrontation but your decisions on who to side with start to mount up until you have picked your horse and the outcomes for all sides have there positive and negative aspects making it so that there truly is no right or wrong choice. I got to pick my side whether it was House, NCR, Caesar or myself. In this way, I could be the character I wanted and in Oblivion I couldn't side with the demons or whatever to destroy all of these psychic assholes that magically know I stole their spoon when they were 8 towns over.

Skyrim looks like it attempts to offer the choice I seek from the get go but I don't yet own it to see if these choices are superficial or if it starts to really define my character by the choices I make and the alliances I form. I honestly have no faith in Bethesda because I feel they have always screwed this up in all of their games.

Oblivion was also a shitty game to play. Fallout 3 improved upon pretty much every single aspect of that game. Skyrim, I am indifferent to. They tried to go in a new direction and it makes sense but I also feel like it forces me to play endlessly just to get good at a certain set of skills, it really shouldn't be a problem in a game like this but in the 10 hours I played I failed to do even one side quest. The world seemed very uninteresting to me until my rental ended when it finally seemed like it was worth exploring when I reached the snow university thing :/ I mean...I couldn't even go around randomly slaughtering people. I tried to do that to this one town but everyone was invincible. They just kept getting back up. This was the town on my way to be the DragonBorn. If I want to be king of the assholes then I should be allowed to. Even Fallout 3 let me kill damn near anyone and I did just that. Nuke Megaton and throw old asshole off balcony. Valid gameplay decisions. Elder Scrolls doesn't believe in this.

I guess this kind of shows where my interest in Open World RPGs lie. I am just anticipating Fallout 4 but with a weary feeling. Bethesda is going to make it and I just don't think they understand that series. New Vegas had a lot of bugs but it is a far superior game in terms of choice to Fallout 3.

[Laddy]

The laughably low amount of skills, weapons, and spells are why I am incredibly underwhelmed by Oblivion and Skyrim. Yay! Sword, dagger, mace, hammer, axe, and bow! Six weapon types, two armor types, and like, ten spell types at best is inexcusable for an open-world RPG. There needs to be more options not only in combat, but expanding stealth and diplomacy as options rather than less-effective and generally pointless alternatives would be nice.


The fascinating setting of Morrowind was abandoned in favor of generic fantasy claptrap. Cyrodiil is actually the Roman Empire in a big jungle but screw that for some medieval forests!
Fuck yeah! This! and Skyrim to a lesser extent. I can't give two shits about Cyrodiil as a locale because they made it some generic fantasy wasteland instead of some actual world.

Shivering Isles, however, is throughly entertaining.

[Pike]

Well I'm definitely not here to say that Elder Scrolls is the best series ever, but I do think it's fun when you feel like running around and exploring and beating stuff up.

[Slothy]

Saying that Oblivion's levelling system screws you over is like saying that not IV and EV training your Pokémon screws you over. You don't need to max everything out. It's completely unnecessary. Whether you think it's bad or not isn't the point, I'm simply pointing out that you would have to do something inconceivably stupid to find yourself gimped by levelling. I literally cannot think of what you must be doing to find yourself in such a situation.

Considering the game never adequately explains leveling to the player either in the game itself or in the manual, and taking into account what MILF said about leveling up through anything other than combat skills, the only thing you have to do to completely screw yourself is to literally just play the game and level up when you're able to like any sane person would do.

I'd love to see you explain how that's inconceivably stupid because if you honestly believe that then I'm at something of a loss for words. The only inconceivably stupid thing about leveling in Oblivion was the way they designed it. They basically made a system which strongly rewards deferring levels for as long as possible, punishes leveling once you're able to which no other game I've ever played has ever done making it the complete opposite goal that any gamer would have ever encountered before, and then they never tell you that these idiotic incentives exist. And the fact that you agree that leveling was pointless only shows that you realize how stupidly broken it is yet a player who inadvertently gimps themselves must have been the one to do something idiotic. Not the developers who created this smurfed up system of punishments and rewards to begin with?

[NeoCracker]

Well I'm definitely not here to say that Elder Scrolls is the best series ever, but I do think it's fun when you feel like running around and exploring and beating stuff up.

This is a sentiment I can agree with, regardless of my own issues. :p

[Laddy]

Morrowind did one thing better than any game I ever played: atmosphere. This game had an amazing atmosphere to it. The soundtrack, while it did loop, was excellent and epic without being cheesy. The island of Vvardenfell was incredibly unique-looking, almost like a cross between Wonderland and a prog-rock album cover. But above it all, the game introduced you to a mystifying culture that you were an outsider of. The Dunmer, their religion, their culture, their architecture, it blew me away. The sound of the silt striders over the main theme, the issue of slavery, the daedric worship. It was truly engrossing and despite its less-than-fun combat system, Morrowind managed to blow away every other game in that department.

This song is amazing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJD-Ufi1jGk).

[Quindiana Jones]

Considering the game never adequately explains leveling to the player either in the game itself or in the manual, and taking into account what MILF said about leveling up through anything other than combat skills, the only thing you have to do to completely screw yourself is to literally just play the game and level up when you're able to like any sane person would do.

I'd love to see you explain how that's inconceivably stupid because if you honestly believe that then I'm at something of a loss for words. The only inconceivably stupid thing about leveling in Oblivion was the way they designed it. They basically made a system which strongly rewards deferring levels for as long as possible, punishes leveling once you're able to which no other game I've ever played has ever done making it the complete opposite goal that any gamer would have ever encountered before, and then they never tell you that these idiotic incentives exist. And the fact that you agree that leveling was pointless only shows that you realize how stupidly broken it is yet a player who inadvertently gimps themselves must have been the one to do something idiotic. Not the developers who created this smurfed up system of punishments and rewards to begin with?

It is a stupid system, yes. My argument is that at worst it adds nothing to the game. You're doing something wrong if you find yourself being defeated by the game because of the useless levelling mechanic. The blame is on both of you. Levelling is meaningless in Oblivion by virtue of the equally stupid scaling, so it shouldn't have such a large effect on your game.

This discussion has made me want to play Oblivion again. xD

[Slothy]

Well I'm definitely not here to say that Elder Scrolls is the best series ever, but I do think it's fun when you feel like running around and exploring and beating stuff up.

I'd probably like the idea of playing another Elder Scrolls game if Bethesda let another company like Obsidian make one instead. As much as I love the idea of exploring these sorts of open worlds just because, I've gotten bored with the worlds in both Bethesda games I've played. But I absolutely loved the world Obsidian built in New Vegas. Yeah, it probably helps that a lot of the guys that work there apparently worked on the older ones, but still, I like what they did and I will definitely take a lot more notice of their future titles now.


It is a stupid system, yes. My argument is that at worst it adds nothing to the game. You're doing something wrong if you find yourself being defeated by the game because of the useless levelling mechanic. The blame is on both of you. Levelling is meaningless in Oblivion by virtue of the equally stupid scaling, so it shouldn't have such a large effect on your game.

This discussion has made me want to play Oblivion again. xD

If you level without sufficiently building up your combat attributes enemies quickly outpace you in terms of strength making the game dramatically harder in only a few short levels. The leveling system isn't just stupid because it has backwards incentives. Enemy level scaling makes it worse because there's no accounting for how much your character actually developed and in what areas. If you level your character every time you're eligible to level up, or even just accidentally if you take advantage of sleeping a lot to heal, you will be calling up the menu and sliding the difficulty setting down before too long.

I mean stop and think about this for a second. This is a game where you create a character, you select dominant attributes and skills to level to build them the way you want. And then, once you actually start playing the game, the best thing you could possibly do is never use the system that's supposed to let them further raise attributes and develop your character. And the game never tells you that. Or even explains how the system works in sufficient detail to allow you to predict it on your first play through without reading a guide or wiki.

I'm sorry, but the player has absolutely no fault when the system is so unbelievably backwards and stupid. It's 100% the fault of the developers for creating letting such a broken system into the final game.

[Quindiana Jones]

If you're not picking a single combat skill as a dominant skill, then it's your own fault. Just because the mechanic is broken, it doesn't mean that players making bad decisions don't deserve some of the blame for their having a rough time. What skills are you picking such that you find yourself having to reduce the difficulty?

On a different note, Oblivion has the best soundtrack out of the three most recent installments, I think.

[escobert]

Yeah if anything I've had to put up the difficulty in Oblivion O_o I can usually get to the mid 20's without really trying at all. I just run around and whack everyone with my sword and they die.

[Hollycat]

Fallout 3 is best game ever.

[escobert]

Fallout 3 is best game ever.

Fallout 3 is fun but, when you'e level 15 have everything you want and like 30,000 caps. It's not so fun anymore. I think of any of the games the leveling is broken in FO3. by the time I'm level 20 I can kill anything in seconds have more money/ammo/stimpacks then I will EVER use. maybe it's because I scrounge through every inch of every room looking for anything I can sell or use. But, I just dominate everything in this game at sucha n early stage it gets boring quick. At least in Oblivion and Skyrim it takes me a little while to get that strong. Shit Skyrim I wasn't that strong until I was a level 45 magic user. Using melee weapons in Skyrim I need to level a bit more to be a beast like you can with magic.

[Slothy]

If you're not picking a single combat skill as a dominant skill, then it's your own fault. Just because the mechanic is broken, it doesn't mean that players making bad decisions don't deserve some of the blame for their having a rough time. What skills are you picking such that you find yourself having to reduce the difficulty?

You're missing the point. Even if you pick a combat skill to level faster, if you level as soon as you're able to all the time you are probably going to get into trouble. Many players do on their first time playing, because you will be ready to level up long before you have decent modifiers for your attributes.

So I'm going to say it again, if a developer makes a stupid system with backwards incentives which can work against you if you do the obvious thing then it's their fault if the player ends up in trouble because they leveled up sub-optimally. And this is really what it comes down to. If you make a system that doesn't work the way any sane person would expect yet looks like it does work that way, any problems that fall out of that are on the game designer for doing a terrible job. There really is no sane argument you can make to push the blame for a bad system that resulting in stupidly bad results on the player.

You act as though you have to basically try and do poorly to end up severely underpowered in Oblivion, despite the fact that it happened to people like myself on our first playthroughs even though this certainly wasn't the first RPG we'd ever played. I've got plenty of experience with leveling systems from literal decades of playing games. I've seen lots of bad leveling systems, boring leveling systems, broken leveling systems, and even leveling systems which were kind of pointless. Oblivion was the first time I encountered a leveling system which did the exact opposite of what a leveling system should do unless you spend the time reading up on the intricacies of how it works. Oblivion literally punishes new players for doing the obvious thing.

You're entire rebuttal has basically been nothing but "well, it didn't happen to me so it's not a real problem. The people who had trouble just need to learn how to not make stupid decisions." This isn't a valid argument.

Edit: I think the worst thing about leveling in Oblivion though is that with some simple tweaking it could have been better. Not great mind you, but better. Just remove leveling to raise attributes and tie attribute raises to skill leveling. You can even have enemies gain levels with you still. Just tie their levels to the levels of your main combat skills so there's no way they can outpace your ability to kill them and get progressively harder unless you specifically make tougher enemies appear at higher levels. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be pretty much the same leveling system minus the possibility of new players who lack the insider knowledge to realize they're screwing themselves actually screwing themselves.

[Jiro]

Living in Oblivion (http://www.screencuisine.net/section/livinginoblivion/) is one of the best things to have come out of Oblivion.

[Quindiana Jones]

Have you read his Skyrim one? It was also brilliant, though I mourn the death of Living in Oblivion.

[Pete for President]

Now that Dark Souls has shown me the path I will most likely never return to an Elder Scrolls game again.


It's all about getting to a player's heart really. In Oblivion, every creature and the majority of the NPC's you meet are mindless, generic beings. Repeating lines to other NPC's, the hellish monsters felt really uninspired and out of place and whacking your sword around usually does the trick anyway. Towns, cities, NPC's and creatures weren't placed in the game because they added value and depth to the player experience, but because Bethesda wanted to create the biggest world they could. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make for a pretty bland experience.

This is the Dark Souls part, warning for serious spoilers again:

Dark Souls is the exact opposite: everything in there is placed carefully, and with reason. Everything that wouldn't add to the player experience is scrapped. The world is compact, yet every part of it will be of value to you. You will be amazed by the ingenius shortcuts you'll find, and you will be relieved every time you explored an area and make it back alive. Enemies don't cheat by levelling up with you. You will learn how to defeat them, and you will have a hard time at first. But since they don't level up with you, by endgame you feel like you've mastered the world. Dark Souls is one of the few games that's pure in it's characters too. They're really, really few in numbers, but that's exactly why every NPC you meet is a relief, an instant friend. Eventually though, when you adventure long enough all characters will go hollow (mad), just like the opening sequence predicts. They will attack you, and you will fight the very NPC friends you've made. You will kill them. That alone brought up more emotion than I've ever felt in a game. Serious props to FromSoftware to make such a daring decision.

So long story short:
Comparing Oblivion to Dark Souls is like comparing a big box that's full of generic, carelessly thrown in items to a small, compact box full of perfectly fitting pieces of art. Excuse me for the mediocre metafore.

[Quindiana Jones]

Dark Souls and Dragon's Dogma have pretty much ruined Western RPGs in terms of combat.

[Loony BoB]

Morrowind - Awesome, rewarding, interesting.
Oblivion - Annoying, repetitive, pretty but then you realise that the prettiness is also repetitive, more so than FFXIV and that's saying something.
Oblivion with mods - Rewarding, repetitive, beautiful but then you realise that... oh, you know.
Skyrim - Awesome, rewarding, beautiful.
Skyrim with mods - Fun!

[Araciel]

Do I like playing them? For about thirty hours.

Have I beaten any? No.

[Clo]

Do I like playing them? For about thirty hours.

Have I beaten any? No.

Does anyone beat them? I know no one.

[NeoCracker]

Do I like playing them? For about thirty hours.

Have I beaten any? No.

Does anyone beat them? I know no one.

I've beat Skyrim. :p

[escobert]

If you're not picking a single combat skill as a dominant skill, then it's your own fault. Just because the mechanic is broken, it doesn't mean that players making bad decisions don't deserve some of the blame for their having a rough time. What skills are you picking such that you find yourself having to reduce the difficulty?

You're missing the point. Even if you pick a combat skill to level faster, if you level as soon as you're able to all the time you are probably going to get into trouble. Many players do on their first time playing, because you will be ready to level up long before you have decent modifiers for your attributes.

So I'm going to say it again, if a developer makes a stupid system with backwards incentives which can work against you if you do the obvious thing then it's their fault if the player ends up in trouble because they leveled up sub-optimally. And this is really what it comes down to. If you make a system that doesn't work the way any sane person would expect yet looks like it does work that way, any problems that fall out of that are on the game designer for doing a terrible job. There really is no sane argument you can make to push the blame for a bad system that resulting in stupidly bad results on the player.

You act as though you have to basically try and do poorly to end up severely underpowered in Oblivion, despite the fact that it happened to people like myself on our first playthroughs even though this certainly wasn't the first RPG we'd ever played. I've got plenty of experience with leveling systems from literal decades of playing games. I've seen lots of bad leveling systems, boring leveling systems, broken leveling systems, and even leveling systems which were kind of pointless. Oblivion was the first time I encountered a leveling system which did the exact opposite of what a leveling system should do unless you spend the time reading up on the intricacies of how it works. Oblivion literally punishes new players for doing the obvious thing.

You're entire rebuttal has basically been nothing but "well, it didn't happen to me so it's not a real problem. The people who had trouble just need to learn how to not make stupid decisions." This isn't a valid argument.

Edit: I think the worst thing about leveling in Oblivion though is that with some simple tweaking it could have been better. Not great mind you, but better. Just remove leveling to raise attributes and tie attribute raises to skill leveling. You can even have enemies gain levels with you still. Just tie their levels to the levels of your main combat skills so there's no way they can outpace your ability to kill them and get progressively harder unless you specifically make tougher enemies appear at higher levels. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be pretty much the same leveling system minus the possibility of new players who lack the insider knowledge to realize they're screwing themselves actually screwing themselves.

I just don't understand this. what skills do you use? Why are you not leveling your combat skills anyways!? I've played this game I don't know.. a dozen or more times and I have NEVER had ANY problem with leveling or ANYTHING being too difficult that I couldn't level up once or twice and complete it.

[NorthernChaosGod]

I beat Morrowind a couple of times, I fucking loved that game. I really like Skyrim too, but I haven't gotten close to finishing it yet. :(

[Slothy]

Why are you not leveling your combat skills anyways!?

I never said I wasn't. Trouble is that if unless you only level one skill to the exclusion of anything else and that one happens to be a combat skill (unrealistic not to mention impossible) you'll be ready to level up before you get a decent modifier for the combat skill. Getting even a measly +2 at a time could leave you falling behind the enemies after several levels.

Especially if you happen to level a lot of other skills like athletics, armorer, speech etc. for other reasons. In fact, I always found any time I played Oblivion that my combat skills generally leveled slower than any of my other major skills because even if you're exploring every cave you come across you're probably still using them less than a lot of other skills.


I've played this game I don't know.. a dozen or more times and I have NEVER had ANY problem with leveling or ANYTHING being too difficult that I couldn't level up once or twice and complete it.

Again, it's not a question of running into things that are hard and needing to level. Honestly, I have to question if some of the people in this thread even know how the leveling system works in Oblivion. If you level up as soon as you're able to, odds are you're only going to get a +2 modifier for a combat stat. It is entirely possible that if you continue to level as soon as it becomes available the game will become progressively harder. This is not something that happens instantly. It is a problem which compounds itself the longer it goes on making the game a bit harder every time you gain a level.

And again, this isn't some esoteric, happens once in a million years if you actively try to go out of your way and accomplish it sort of thing. It is something which happened quite frequently to new players and is well known to exist. Just because it didn't happen to you guys does not mean it is some impossible to accomplish thing that couldn't possibly happen. It's remarkably easy to pull just by not realizing how the leveling system works.

And I'll say one last time that this only happened to me on my first play through. After that I read up on why the game was getting harder, found a lot of people with the same issue, and looked into how the leveling system works so that it never happened to me again. It didn't happen because I was an idiot, or because I had never played an RPG before, or because I did anything wrong when my decision to level as soon as possible would be correct in any game where the leveling system made sense. so if people are going to continue discussing this as though I must have done something wrong and the difficulty I experienced on my first play through was my fault and not a result of a leveling system which was both broken and gave incentives to postpone using it as long as possible without explaining that rather important fact (something no sane person could argue makes sense, let alone is acceptable), then I have no real interest continuing this discussion.

I've made my argument based on how the game actually works and the real experiences of many players who found themselves in the same position I did on their first play through. If anyone doesn't understand how it can happen then feel free to fire up a new game and try it for yourself over the course of 10+ levels or so and tell me that the game doesn't get steadily more difficult. Keep it up over 20 levels if you really want to see how ass backwards the whole thing is.

[escobert]

I always leveled asap, and I have gone into the 20's and 30's. I tend to do speed, endurance and strength. I always use blades, and tend to put a lot into repair and athletics/speed. I almost always play Khajjit. I love when I get to the point where I run faster than any horse in the game.

[Pike]

This is my favorite thing to come out of Oblivion: I played Oblivion blacked-out drunk and here's what happened (via picture story) (http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=631191)

[Slothy]

This is my favorite thing to come out of Oblivion: I played Oblivion blacked-out drunk and here's what happened (via picture story) (http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=631191)

That is indeed one of the better things to ever come out of Oblivion.

[Sephex]

This is my favorite thing to come out of Oblivion: I played Oblivion blacked-out drunk and here's what happened (via picture story) (http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=631191)

That is great! I have played games blackout drunk myself, but not that point. I at least remember bits and pieces.

[Quindiana Jones]

I usually +5'd Intelligence due to boosting Alchemy up to max. Everything else would be +1 - +3, at best. I always ignored Luck and, when I could, Endurance because pfffffrrrrrrt! I'm all about Speed and Agility! Athletics and Acrobatics all the way!

I thought you were just talking about your Skill levels being low compared to your Character Level, which I thought was understandable. But your argument is about the modifiers?

[escobert]

This is my favorite thing to come out of Oblivion: I played Oblivion blacked-out drunk and here's what happened (via picture story) (http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=631191)

lulz. This is actually kinda how I learned of the game kinda.
One day while at my friend Seth's house smoking he popped in Oblivion. So then my friend Brandon and I proceeded to see who could last the longest in the imperial city just killing everything.

[Jiro]

Have you read his Skyrim one? It was also brilliant, though I mourn the death of Living in Oblivion.

I have not! I will have to chase it up then.

[Quindiana Jones]

There we go. (http://www.pcgamer.com/author/clivingston/) 36735

[milliegoesbeep]

I love the series, even though there are plenty of bugs. For me, I find them rather amusing and see them as a quirky add to the games. I've played Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim and I find them really visually appealing. The games themselves have a very unique structure of game play and I like the fact that they are loose ended.

[Jiro]

Why thank you kind sir. 36735