Things about Vanilla that you like

[Megatarius]

When I first joined this board, I made a thread very similar to the current "Grinds my Gears" thread.

 

I also complain constantly about the unmodded game, even going so far as to make harsh judgements on Bethesda's talent levels.

 

But there are some things about the game that I like, unmodded. It's a short list, yes, but it's there. I'll probably add to it as I think of more things.

 

 

1. The level of brightness at night. I tried Darker Nights, and didn't like it, even though I insist on using Let There Be Darkness for the dungeons. Maybe it's just my eyesight (contacts that create mild halos around bright objects - it's a long story), but I found it very annoying having nights that dark. And besides, there are two really big moons in the sky. It makes more sense for nights to be bright.

 

2. The NPC's appearances. I don't use Ren's Beauty Pack, and I don't use any mod that makes NPC's look more beautiful. I don't think they're ugly. Very few of them are good looking, but that's to be expected. It's medieval times. I take issue with the face texture itself. It's far too small and it really Grinds My Gears that they used a male face with a full beard shadow for the women as well, and just got rid of it in settings. It makes for a very difficult time trying to keep women characters from having bright spots on their faces where the "shadow" doesn't cover. However, I think Bethesda did a good job with a lot of NPC's faces, male and female.

 

3. The Player character leveling system. I did a thread on it already, but basically I like it. I think it makes more sense than experience points. It has it's flaws, yes, but I like the idea of keeping track of skills that make you stronger in the specific ones that you use. It makes you think about what you're going to use, and how often, and sometimes makes for a fun side character that uses all non-combat skills as Majors, to see how long I can survive, and how to avoid certain things instead of engaging them. It's fun to roleplay a character that is not warlike, even though the world itself is.

 

4. Enemies leveling with you. To a point, it's a good idea. Bethesda just utilized it completely wrong and way too much. If done right, the idea of enemies' levels having an offset to the player's level, rather than their own unique level can create a very fluid and dynamic world. Combine that with leveled lists and you can create some very random and unique experiences that would make the game different every time you played it. Instead, they just filled them with improbable armor like Glass and Daedric, and made almost every NPC the same as you. Lame. :rolleyes:

 

 

That's all I can think of now, haha. :tongue:

 

I didn't mention stuff like the artistic side of the game, the modeling and texturing, the concepts. Shivering Isles is so far impressing the hell out of me in that regard, and the story is fun and cool because it's not about saving the world from yet another demonic overlord (at least not yet, please don't spoil the story, I've never played it before.)

 

Stuff like that is really good. The graphical capabilities, the LOD distant terrain system, I like these things a lot as well. But they don't have super popular mods trying to change them as if everyone hates it. (There's Quarl's Texture Pack, which I don't use, but that's not an overhaul like the textures suck and need to be replaced, it's more of a boost.)

[chronosmagus]

I agree on the appearances, the only thing lacking there is the diversity among NPCs and the lack of height / weight. If there's something that I'll never use, it is body mods that make either the player or the NPCs look like plastic super models. The world isn't perfect, and its people shouldn't be neither. I think in SI they did a wonderful job adding more diversity among NPCs.

 

The face adjustment tool is still awful though, it takes way to much adjusting to get anything near what you'd like to look like.

 

Another thing I really like is simply how they've done the world of Tamriel itself, everything looks like it belongs there. The repetition in dungeons and oblivion worlds is a bit less well done.

 

I install plenty of mods, but they're always subtle and never complete overhauls. The system isn't all that flawed as some seem to believe, a few tweaks and finishing touches is all it takes to make it an immersive and wonderful experience.

[Ferryt]

The system isn't all that flawed as some seem to believe, a few tweaks and finishing touches is all it takes to make it an immersive and wonderful experience.

Relativistic fallacy (Google it). That a great many people are claiming to believe the system is flawed leads a great deal of credence to the possibility that it may, indeed, be flawed. Thousands of mods created to "fix" flaws in the game attest to this, as well as does the hundreds, and some cases, thousands, of downloads of those mods and comments by people who are using them. That said ...

 

One man's meat is another man's poison. You might like the Vanilla game. I suspect for every person who likes the Vanilla game there are at least several who do not. I'm one of the people who happen to like Oblivion. It's my favorite game in spite of the fact that, for me, it takes much more than a "few tweaks and finishing touches to make it an immersive and wonderful experience". So, what do I actually like about Vanilla Oblivion? It's a short list, but it probably says as much about the kind of experience I want to have in a game like this as it does for the game design, itself.

 

1. I think the one thing that had me immediately agog about Oblivion was how beautiful the environment is. I've played Half Life/HL2, Borderlands, and Neverwinter Nights, and none of those games come even close to the variety in shapes and textures that I saw, especially once emerging from the Prison sewers for the first time. I'm a Second Life veteran, and was even a content creator in that online world until I quit going there for reasons of internal politics. There were some magnificent vistas to be seen there, but nothing like looking across the landscape in Cyrodiil and seeming to be able to see forever. The most amazing thing about this, to me, was that even with the game degraded as much as I could tweak it (to get it to run without my computer choking) it still looked beautiful. I actually cranked things up as far as I could make them go without crashing the game. It was ... stunning ... if only for a few seconds, since I couldn't actually do anything.
    
   
2. The Bethesda developers might not know much about weapons and real combat, from the looks of it, but they did their homework when it came to basic botany. I was actually able to recognize the plants when I first went out browsing for alchemical components. That impressed me a great deal. I guess you win some and lose some. Fortunately, I'm more interested in Alchemy than in combat in this game.
    
   
3. Am I the only one who thinks Goblins are cute? Seriously, I think Bethesda did them well. I just wish they had taken an extra step and made them more like NPCs than like creatures (with dialog and something other than just agonistic interactions with PCs).
    
   
4. I love the various architectural styles in the game. It really does make the world seem a little bigger than it really is when I can recognize the difference between Cheydinhal and Bravil just by glancing at the houses.
    
   
5. The seamless integration in the tilesets was another impressive thing to me. It took me awhile before I started noticing the repetition. I honestly wish they had spent a little more time and made the pieces more varied, though, and even the repetitiveness would be reduced to the point at which it would be easy to ignore. While I've cursed the tilesets using the CS, in-game I think this is one of the better features, since it makes it relatively easy to create immersive mini-environments like caves, mines, forts, and other ruins.
    
   
6. At first I was extremely impressed with NPC dialog, especially just random conversations. The system behind this, unfortunately, was terribly underused, which, after awhile, makes conversations just inane, and you beg for more dialog options with NPCs with whom you actually have to interact. Even so, while this is a prime example of underachievement in this game, the implementation of the concept was well done.
    
   
7. On a related note, the quest system is another thing going on behind the scenes that makes the game flow smoothly (most of the time, anyway). I suspect a lot of players who have never delved into the inner workings of the game likely don't appreciate how well constructed the quest system is.
   

 

I could go on a little more, I suppose. There are a lot of little things which Bethesda did well with Oblivion. It's a shame that they dropped the ball so badly on some of the big things that, to many of us, make the flaws begin to overshadow the good qualities -- but that's the reason we have such a large and talented modding community in the first place.

[documn]

Some things I like:

 

1. The graphics. I have tried a bunch of texture replacers and such (and liked them), but right now on my current install, I have vanilla graphics, and it doesn't bug me. Coming out of the sewers, going to Camoran's paradise, first time entering the Shivering Isles...those were cool. Aside from the landscape and architecture, I think a lot of the creatures are good looking, such as the clannfears, daedroths, spider daedra, minotaurs, zombies, skeletons, goblins, and liches.

 

2. Freedom to make your character however you want. As a Morrowind player, this is something I expected, and it's something I like. Sure, in multiplayer games, you gotta limit people to keep things fair, but in single player I think it's great that you can create yourself to be exactly what you want - super powerful, super weak, hybrid classes, etc. Certainly helps with roleplaying.

 

3. Voice acting. The very fact that all the dialog is voiced really impressed me when I stopped playing Oblivion and started playing other games.

 

4. The face generator. It's big and complicated and that's the way I like it. The only major issue I have with it is the low resolution of the default face texture. I would not have liked it if they put restrictions on the face generator to make it easier for players to make a "good" face. Yeah it's hard for a beginner to make a good face, but it gets easier. It would have definitely been nice if they included some good face presets though.

Example: I don't like the relative simplicity of the Fallout 3 face generator. Now that I am accustomed to the Oblivion face generator, the Fallout 3 one seems so confining. I have a hard time making faces that don't resemble each other. (I know you have access to all the sliders if you use the GECK, but that's quite a hassle.)

 

5. I like how you can hurt NPCs easily. I mean, in other games, you are often restricted somehow - like you can't attack in this zone, or your attacks don't do anything, etc. - but in Oblivion you can just attack whoever you want whenever you want. (I kinda liked it better in Morrowind though where nobody is set essential. The first time I killed an important NPC and that message showed up saying that I screwed up the main quest...I was like, "awesome.")

[ub3rman123]

5. I like how you can hurt NPCs easily. I mean, in other games, you are often restricted somehow - like you can't attack in this zone, or your attacks don't do anything, etc. - but in Oblivion you can just attack whoever you want whenever you want. (I kinda liked it better in Morrowind though where nobody is set essential. The first time I killed an important NPC and that message showed up saying that I screwed up the main quest...I was like, "awesome.")

 

Man, I remember how back in Morrowind I tried killing a Hlaalu guard in Balmora because I liked his armor. Proceeded to die very quickly. Oblivion? One shot, one kill. More if it's AoE.

[LFact]

2. The NPC's appearances. I don't use Ren's Beauty Pack, and I don't use any mod that makes NPC's look more beautiful. I don't think they're ugly. Very few of them are good looking, but that's to be expected. It's medieval times. I take issue with the face texture itself. It's far too small and it really Grinds My Gears that they used a male face with a full beard shadow for the women as well, and just got rid of it in settings. It makes for a very difficult time trying to keep women characters from having bright spots on their faces where the "shadow" doesn't cover. However, I think Bethesda did a good job with a lot of NPC's faces, male and female.

 

Like any other cosmetic mods, Ren's Beauty Pack DOES NOT make anyone pretty, including your character. It just gives new hair and eyes(and races). Yes, I do not much care about NPC looks as well, they may be ugly though, but with better facial textures, they look reasonably ugly or plain. I tried TNR once, but gave up.