Things about Oblivion that make you roll your eyes

[niccolo]

What I don't like? Repair hammers.

 

Okay, things get damaged when you don't treat 'em right. but when there's one ding in my armour and fixing it breaks a hammer (Seriously, what did I do? beat the bejeezus out of a rock to extract the metal necessary to repair it?) it's just bizarre.

[Megatarius]

There are two problems with this game:

 

 

1. It probably didn't get enough QA. Quality Assurance, which is a nice way of saying Testing. I'm sure they tested all the technical stuff, trees floating and ground that isn't solid, but did they test the things that don't make sense, like pretty much everything people have been saying in this thread? Guards that "know" you stole something when all you really did was pick it up off the table for a moment, upstairs, behind a closed door, in another town. And there was a thunderstorm right overhead and you were wearing carpet slippers and invisible and just bathed and nobody else was in the building.

 

My guess is, no. They rushed it to production for the jock-tastic XBOX and didn't think about the real details. They didn't think that performing a certain action that activates the bounty which alerts the guards could lead to a lot of really dumb moments.

 

 

2. It can't decide if it wants to be a more traditional RPG with repair hammers and encumbrance multipliers, or an immersive first person action game with rag doll physics and direct combat instead of dice rolls.

 

 

The result is some really dumb moments in an otherwise awesome game.

 

 

 

 

 

What I really hate is encumbrance. It sounds good in theory, but not in practice. Right now my character's encumbrance is 350 or so. I don't really know because I just cheat with a mod that makes it over a thousand.

 

Why? Because it doesn't make sense to have a weight limit, but not a carrying limit physically. Withing the normal 350, I can carry several swords, axes, shields, multiple sets of armor, helmets, boots, and let's not even think about all the little glass bottles of potions and of course the alchemy apparatuses. Oh and then there's scrolls, pelts, books, and stones.

 

Where, pray tell is all that stuff exactly? It's certainly not on me. It just appears when I equip it. Did I just pull it out of the fourth dimension? If so, why the weight limit?

 

It needs instead to be very limited at first. Basically, you can only carry what you can carry. Several swords, daggers, a bow, an axe, maybe a few potions, armor that you have to wear or drop, and a few scrolls. And that's it! Weight limits would still be calculated, but only because those items would have their own weight.

 

Then you could get bags of holding that hold more and more. Hell, don't even think about skill ratings for this one and just do it Zelda style. You can buy or find better and better bags.

 

 

I haven't seen a mod that accomplishes this. Just stuff that makes your encumbrance higher, so I just decided screw total immersion, I'll just pretend (ugly word sometimes, huh?) I have a bag of holding.

 

Now I'm wishing I had decided, just to limit myself, that I would only carry a logical amount, but I don't want to re-start now. I'm level 29 and have only the Anvil Mage recommendation to go.

[Nyran]

I think the AI is just great sometimes^^

*me killing a commoner because of that annoying "I have seen ab mudcrab!"* :whistling:

*Guard suddenly appearing*"Pay for your crimes or...."*me killing him, another guard shows up with about 6others* :blink: "Pay for..."*long fight, escapeing running out in the woods*"Why tha' hell do they all know about that one damn idiot?Why are there so..." :mellow: *Ranger behind me*"Pay with your blood!"*turning around holding up my shield waiting for an arrow* ....time goes by.... *looking above my shield* "Um...hello?" :confused: *Ranger standing there doing nothing*

Such moments are just crazy and after killing that Ranger i went into the IC and what happend?Well the Guards started attacking one hit another(there where abount 15 of them all looking the same!)and the hitten one tried to strike back but hit another and they started to ignore me an fight of each other! :rolleyes: In the end I stood between I think 40 corpses and then a beggar came "May I have a coin?" :blink:

[Relativelybest]

The psychic guards who know you are a criminal on sight, those I can live with.

 

What I don't understand is this: When I steal a horse in the dead of night, why is it that not only do every npc in the world know it's not my horse, but also assume it's theirs?

 

Me: *steals horse from Chestnut Handy Stables, rides to Chorrol, do my business, and then mount my stolen horse again*

Random NPC: STOP! THIEF!

Guard: What seems to be the problem, ma'm?

Random NPC: That adventurer is stealing my horse!

Guard: Is it really your horse?

Random NPC: It's not her horse, so it has to be mine!

Guard: That's a perfectly logical argument! Stop, lawbreaker!

Me: *groan*

 

I also feel it would be more interesting if Khajitt and Argonians had their own clothing styles, since they are, after all, beast-like humanoids who would have developed separately from humans for most of their history.

 

Honestly, I would be satisfied if I could just once, you know, run into a gang of elves who all wear elf armor and use elf weapons, even if my level demands that everyone wear a random mix of Glass and Daedric.

 

What gets me with the races is not that they all get along, but that they have no cultural identity or communities of their own. (With the one strange exception of the all-khajiit Borderwatch.) I think having this perfectly integrated society of races who all live side by side, with all cultural differences implied at best, defeats the purpouse of having these different races to begin with.

 

The only differances between an orc and a high elf is that one is huge, green, has tusks and is -for some reason- less scary to look at.

 

I'm in the middle of an intense combat right before entering the Great Gate in the Main Quest, when I accidently kill a guard who happened to run right in front of my character swinging an uber sword around. "HELP!!! MURDER!!" >_>

 

This happened to me during the Kvatch battle.

 

The best part was going to sleep and be woken up by a creepy guy in black who congratulated me on my cold-blooded murder and invited me to join his secret brotherhood of cold-blooded murderers.

[Netwit2008]

1. Stupid stupid hex codes. Why, oh why, couldn't Bethesda have simply used the NAMES of the bloody objects, like in Morrowind?

 

2. Apparently my character has a combination of Parkinson's, Huntington's, epilepsy, and complete lack of depth perception, because it takes twenty minutes to put a book on a shelf the right way.

 

3. Ever noticed that sometimes, if you touch stuff on a shelf or a table, it moves around a bit and sometimes falls through to the floor?

 

4. "Look at the muscles on you!" "You have the hands of a healer." "Look at the muscles on you!" "You're a sneaky-looking sort." "You're a sneaky-looking sort." "You have the hands of a healer." "Look at the muscles on you!"... It's no wonder I end up murdering everyone I pass by.

 

5. "Pleasure doing--" *click* "You bought that for a--" *click* "Pleasure doing--" *click* "I wouldn't make that deal with--" *click* "That's a good--" *click* "That's a good deal!"

 

6. Beggars who randomly switch from "Aiiiiim an ooooooold maaaaan, Aiiiiiiim pooooooor" to "Here's what I know: I suddenly have a very deep voice and very good sentence structure instead of my normal beggarly, uneducated affect. Also, that dude that took that ring bragged about it in front of the watch captain. Idiot."

 

While I lmao at many of these, this one got me good! Yessss, all of those, not to mention- "Hey, aren't you the Hero of Kvatch, the one that.....yada yada..."

Me: yeah yeah, that's me, so why did you say "oh hi, it's you" just 5 min. ago??

 

The notorious flying items!! :wallbash: Why must my companions tear up every table I've painstakingly ordered, knock books, food and clutter from Skingrad to Leyawiin, then get stuck in the middle of a table??

 

Some of the glitches, like now not being able to sit anymore. I look like I have some horrible type of contortionist palsy when trying to sit ~sigh~

 

Is it just me, or did someone get veeeeery sleepy when it came to writing the whole Mages Guild questline?? I can do those in my sleep, with no weapons and naked in 5 min. or less each. Too easy and boring.

 

I love the game and have spent probably close to 500 hours playing it, but there are some minor annoyances that do irk me. Thank God for mods, that's all I gotta say, lol

[Shamikka]

Thank God for mods, that's all I gotta say, lol

 

Kudos to that!! LOL

[Relativelybest]

A couple of other pet peeves of mine:

 

-Leveled Goblins. Goblins were the first thing I fought in the game, back when I was so weak I'd get killed by the Mythic Dawn if I got between them and the Blades. Now when I'm somewhere between level 40 and 50, I whipe out bandit gangs on my own without breaking a sweat, jump from mountains, towers and tall bridges for fun, get into fistfights with bears, and is the legendary scourge of all daedra. But the damn goblins are still giving me trouble! Why is the empire even worried about the Oblivion invasion when these super-goblins are already here!?

 

-Wonky value of the treasures I find. Specifically, gemstones are all worth the same regardless of size. I have a flawless topaz the size of a man's palm, but it's still worth exactly the same as all other flawless topazes I have. And that's not much: 20 golds. The most valuable one is the Flawless Diamond worth 100 golds, which is still pocket change considering that any random bandit I run into tends to wear armor worth thousands of gold.

[crysthala]

-Leveled Goblins. Goblins were the first thing I fought in the game, back when I was so weak I'd get killed by the Mythic Dawn if I got between them and the Blades. Now when I'm somewhere between level 40 and 50, I whipe out bandit gangs on my own without breaking a sweat, jump from mountains, towers and tall bridges for fun, get into fistfights with bears, and is the legendary scourge of all daedra. But the damn goblins are still giving me trouble! Why is the empire even worried about the Oblivion invasion when these super-goblins are already here!?

There are mods that take away the leveled aspect of gameplay, and have creatures and such of varying difficulty instead of the whole world leveling with you. I don't use one, but there must be a dozen laying around. I'm sure you can find a good one if you shop around, though.

[Megatarius]

-Leveled Goblins. Goblins were the first thing I fought in the game, back when I was so weak I'd get killed by the Mythic Dawn if I got between them and the Blades. Now when I'm somewhere between level 40 and 50, I whipe out bandit gangs on my own without breaking a sweat, jump from mountains, towers and tall bridges for fun, get into fistfights with bears, and is the legendary scourge of all daedra. But the damn goblins are still giving me trouble! Why is the empire even worried about the Oblivion invasion when these super-goblins are already here!?

There are mods that take away the leveled aspect of gameplay, and have creatures and such of varying difficulty instead of the whole world leveling with you. I don't use one, but there must be a dozen laying around. I'm sure you can find a good one if you shop around, though.

 

OOO not only gets rid of leveling creatures and items (it caps creatures, so they level for a while, but items are totally redone), it also organizes it's own scenarios based on the new placement. No more random caves and dungeons filled with random monsters that you know how hard they will be. Now you have locations with a specific purpose, a range of difficult and easy monsters, a really nasty one at the end, and cool treasures like medallions that let you breathe underwater all the time.

[Miggim]

My list can apply across most RPGs and other games, but since I primarily play Oblivion:

 

STATS

People, animals, and monsters do not have stats. I do not have hit points. I do not have a level. I think these things should be left under the hood, and expressed in-game in other ways. If I hit a guy on the head with a hammer, he should go down and crawl on the floor, groaning and writhing. He should not get right up and continue fighting until his last point is subtracted with my repeated blows. And can I please just pull out the arrows in my stomach?

 

CHEAP MAGIC

Where magic is everywhere, it offers very little awe. Magic is supposed to do that. I know developers are competing and want to attract as many customers as they can, but with Oblivion's potential, they can do better.

 

CHEAP MONSTERS

A like issue is with monsters. I know that if I went into the woods and saw a minotaur, that would be a life-changing experience I would tell tales about for the rest of my life. Here, well, it's just another minotaur.

 

FUZZY STORYLINE

I call it fuzzy because I don't know much about it. It doesn't interest me. There might be a good story to Oblivion, but I can't bring myself to dig in and find it. Beth almost pulled me in with their great cinematic introduction, but there still wasn't much to begin, and ultimately it feels like nothing more than product glaze. Even the original Tomb Raider does better than this. At the least, take a look at how Metal Gear Solid works in a story.

 

TOO MANY FARMS

Oh, wait... Who needs to eat when you have thousands of pink potions to take care of your ills? Agrarian societies are stuffed up, I suppose.

 

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURES

I'd like to see a new approach to engaging NPCs in dialog. This way of choosing a reply, sometimes even when there's only one to choose from, is just a clicky-dicky relationship. I tried doing this at work last week and was quickly promoted, though only giving them the "Promote me or die, you infidel!" option might have had something to do with that. But this kind of employee interface does seem to have potential. Maybe I'll try it next time I go out on a date.

 

WAKE UP!

I can drop items on sleeping NPCs, make all sorts of noise, and still hear them snore. Okay, they don't snore. Must be a treat adenoids potion around somewhere...

 

HERE, HAVE A FORK. NOW GO TO JAIL

Too damned easy to pick something up and immediately be charged and convicted, without trial. Can't we be reasonable about a fork?

 

ANIMALS ARE EASY

I don't even have to drop food.

 

WHERE ARE MY TRAPS?

This is one thing I greatly long for. I want to devise my own traps out of the elements at hand.