Hot Topic #1: The dumbing down of Oblivion

[swordfish99]

Let me give you guys an example of how much I love Oblivion...

 

Ever since Morrowind came out I loved it. It was like choose your own adventure game. I was really anticipating another game like Morrowind but more realistic. Fable was supposodly going to give it a big shot. So many people had such high expectations for Fable, only it came out to resemble a bunch of @#$#.

It was when Oblivion came out I said to myself, "Now this is the Fable I've been waiting for." And seriously it is.

 

I love Bethesda softworks, they've always made great games and I will always continue to love them for the immense amount of work they've put into their games.

 

Thank you Bethesda!

[crimson.cosmos]

Wow...where to start...

 

First, great idea on the topic Dark0ne, it sure is a Hot topic.

 

Now, some of you made several fair comments, but others I find harsh or plainly exaggerated. I don't mean to offend anyone, and I make this post stating my personal opinions and views.

 

That being said, Oblivion is a "commercial"-ised version of Morrowind. Sadly, partly by the fact that it was ported for console users, partly because it was meant to draw a new "audience" and partly due to sheer time spent TES IV took a hit in several chapters. There were several improvements regarding the combat system, the visual part of the game, the quests - and perhaps others I'm missing now.

 

Yes, quests - Oblivion's main quest may be predictable and boring or whatnot, but the secondary quests are great. Some of them are indeed the best ones I've seen in games on the past few years. If you ask me, Bethesda started with a grand concept in mind, and started working on it. I think these secondary quests were part of that plan, and I also think that they didn't release this game as they pictured it. Don't blame the developers for all these issues - for one, they proved they can do better in Morrowind, and secondly, you can still see the sparks of originality amongst the breathtaking landscapes of Cyrodiil.

 

Someone said that modders make such a great job because they do it out of passion, they do it at their own pace, and they don't do it for money. Developers have a publisher, developers have a deadline, developers need to eat. These are the reasons this game came out "unfinished". The whole world breathes under the sign of the Dollar, and that is something we're going to have to get used to.

 

I didn't mod anything yet, some of you say that Oblivion isn't easy to mod, and yet it has one of the largest modding communities I've seen in a game. They did offer support for mods - perhaps they didn't grant us as much freedom as some of us would have liked, but the core is there, and with tools such as OBSE, more and more things become possible. If they didn't manage to make this game all it could have been in the time given, it's up to the community to bring it as close to perfection as possible. And you have to admit that releasing a game that is perfect for everyone is impossible, and only mods offer that degree of individual customisation.

 

Dungeons and caves - you say there is no reason to enter these in Oblivion. Morrowind had a whole lot more dungeons and caves than this one does and, granted, there were more unique items worth looking for. But don't tell me that hundreds of those caves weren't filled with just some clutter or leveled loot. And dungeons in Morrowind looked a lot more the same than Oblivion's dungeons. I feel that by reducing the size of the "game world" the devs aimed at increasing the detail of the world. And I think they managed at doing that - to me, Oblivion is a lot more diverse than Morrowind was. It may not have just as many different landscapes, it may not have just as many types of dungeons, but the ones that are here, are made pretty well. Add to that the Unique Landscapes and you've got a perfect "exterior".

 

I'm not saying that vanilla Oblivion is the game I expected it to be, and the reasons it's not are pretty clear to me. I too miss the skill system from Morrowind, I too miss the dunmer voices, I too think that it was a bad idea adding spoken dialog all over the place (I'll get back to this in a jiffy), I think the alchemy system could have been better, as well as the enchanting one. Every one of us had her/his own idea of how this game was supposed to be. And there is no way this game could have been perfect for everyone - not in even 5 years of development. Morrowind players want something, new players want something else - in order to expand the market you have to compromise. And don't forget that as PC users, we still have the CS to play with. If the game had to be tailored to fit a console version, at least we can build onto it and make it...well...perfect.

 

The dialogs - spoken - I think this was an attempt to add more immersion to the game. I have to admit that it was good to hear the people in the towns speak with each other when I first stepped through the gates of the Imperial City. Sadly, it does get rather repetitive after a while, and it does hamper the choices of dialog. I guess a solution would be either a much bigger pool of audio files, or text-to-speech implementation of great quality :)

 

What would I do if I was a chief dev at Bethsoft...Fire the publisher? No, really - games like this should be modular. You buy the game and it's "game world" is like the size of Vivec - in Oblivion's case - some sort of Imperial City with the sewers and the imperial isle. This way, for such a small place to create, the deadline would me much easier to respect and the quality would be as intended - or expected. Then each add-on (a whole lot of them), would add to this original area, as all that there was to do was add new locations, npcs, quests and, eventually, items. But the code for the behaviour, the main engine - the biggest "chunk" of the game would be done by the first release. I do ask, however, who would pay 30$ or so for a game of this size? If made right, it could offer you few good hours of gameplay, but not the same freedom it now offers. Buy that, then wait for a few months for another town. Hmmm...maybe the initial size ought to be a tad-bit bigger :) The idea I'm making here is I have no problem with a smaller game-world as long as you can meet the deadline, and add to it all that you planned or promised.

 

Cheers!

 

cc

[LHammonds]

Vanilla Oblivion was quite fun when I first loaded it up.

 

I enjoyed it for about 3 to 4 weeks (and never even finished it) before I started playing with mods.

 

I really had fun with the mods.

 

Even though it was not their original intension, I'm able to add weapons, armor, creatures, quests, etc. and MAKE something that I really enjoy playing. For example: Lost Paladins of the Divines. I can hardly believe that I jumped into the construction set and made it happen. If feels like I can create a game without the actual pains of REALLY creating a game. ;)

 

Ya, it would have been nice if everything was like a snap-on widget as extensible as an XML file but it's a darn nice compromise for getting to make something with such a beautiful game engine in a fantastic world.

 

Thanks,

LHammonds

[Luiakyn]

It wasn't really the game I was hoping for, but still had fun playing it.

 

If I was the lead developer, first would be character design. I would have done so much to even try to make it available for the characters to have hair that didn't clip, and when you change one value, it didn't affect any others, or at least an option for that. That, and I wouldn't put a level cap on the stats and skills, and I wouldn't have monsters level up with the player.

 

Other than that, I'd have made it easier on modders, as they have proven themselves to be a great asset to enhancing the game.

[21603]

Sadly, partly by the fact that it was ported for console users

 

It's actually the other way round. PC users got the console port.

[crazydave]

What would I do if I was a chief dev at Bethsoft...Fire the publisher? No, really - games like this should be modular. You buy the game and it's "game world" is like the size of Vivec - in Oblivion's case - some sort of Imperial City with the sewers and the imperial isle.

Most serious gamers would probable tear through that in a single night. Not to mention that they would charge you another twenty bucks(mabey more) for every expansion, so youd probly end up paying close to one or two hundred dollars for something the size of vanilla Oblivion. A modular game does sound like a good idea, but the best way to do that is probably through mods.

[Vagrant0]

What would I do if I was a chief dev at Bethsoft...Fire the publisher? No, really - games like this should be modular. You buy the game and it's "game world" is like the size of Vivec - in Oblivion's case - some sort of Imperial City with the sewers and the imperial isle.

Most serious gamers would probable tear through that in a single night. Not to mention that they would charge you another twenty bucks(mabey more) for every expansion, so youd probly end up paying close to one or two hundred dollars for something the size of vanilla Oblivion. A modular game does sound like a good idea, but the best way to do that is probably through mods.

That sort of modular concept really doesn't work well when you're trying to do something free roaming like TES. Even doing a mod like a series of several steps just wouldn't work too well until it was all completed. Such a design only makes sense when you have a linear or semi-linear base where one step can be built on the previous, but there isn't much jumping back and forth between them. It just wouldn't be TES without the open world to explore, something which cannot exist in modular form (like NWN). In modular form, the exterior worlds would be dozens of small world spaces linked by doors of some kind along borders, like most MMOs that use the same system, movement across many of these spaces can become annoying as you have to find the right place to cross and there are bound to be invisible walls keeping you from entering areas which are added by a future module. It just doesn't work... There's a reason most MMO's are moving away from that style, it just doesn't play well as there's this sudden border which only the player can cross.

[CloudVvulf]

I think Oblivion is great! Morrowind was too complex for someone who doesnt spend more than 2hours a week infront of a computer :P . The armour is still lacking but atleast doesnt look as ugly as the armour in Morrowind, i hate the massive pauldrons! Character creation is way better in Oblivion, you dont have to pick from about 50 hidious faces and another 50 hidious hair styles o_O, and atleast the characters in oblivion dont run like my badly drawn stick figures :D

[crimson.cosmos]

What would I do if I was a chief dev at Bethsoft...Fire the publisher? No, really - games like this should be modular. You buy the game and it's "game world" is like the size of Vivec - in Oblivion's case - some sort of Imperial City with the sewers and the imperial isle.

Most serious gamers would probable tear through that in a single night. Not to mention that they would charge you another twenty bucks(mabey more) for every expansion, so youd probly end up paying close to one or two hundred dollars for something the size of vanilla Oblivion. A modular game does sound like a good idea, but the best way to do that is probably through mods.

That sort of modular concept really doesn't work well when you're trying to do something free roaming like TES. Even doing a mod like a series of several steps just wouldn't work too well until it was all completed. Such a design only makes sense when you have a linear or semi-linear base where one step can be built on the previous, but there isn't much jumping back and forth between them. It just wouldn't be TES without the open world to explore, something which cannot exist in modular form (like NWN). In modular form, the exterior worlds would be dozens of small world spaces linked by doors of some kind along borders, like most MMOs that use the same system, movement across many of these spaces can become annoying as you have to find the right place to cross and there are bound to be invisible walls keeping you from entering areas which are added by a future module. It just doesn't work... There's a reason most MMO's are moving away from that style, it just doesn't play well as there's this sudden border which only the player can cross.

 

Yeah, well you're right. The whole idea of TES is, indeed, the freedom it gives you. But I was trying to find a solution to making sure one finishes all one planned before the bell strikes. Would you sacrifice the sheer size of the world to a more detailed one?

I agree that adding to the world could be possible, the way it is right now, only if you add something in the existing game-space - much like KoTN was structured. But this does assume that certain areas of the world would be rather plain at release.

As I stated before, I think that the devs didn't finish all that they intended on doing - some of the ambitions for the game mechanics were too high I guess, and some were just poor decisions (such as the simplification of the whole thing for TES III fans, or good - for the new crowd they've drawn in with TES IV), I think they spent too much time on "decorating" the world and the secondary quests, and didn't manage to create as much content as was expected. In the end, I think it should be a lesson learned.

Can anyone give an idea on how would you structure a project to make sure you don't end up short upon release?

[larsi_899]

Well, it was in the beginning, but later i just got bored of the same Wilderness, and the NPC's

Are not quite smart, + many of the evil guilds aren't for the player to play