Hot Topic #1: The dumbing down of Oblivion

[spyre101]

Hate draggin this up if ya'll finished with it, BUT....

 

Ok this is just my opinion and general feelings.

 

Oblivion seems to be suffering from what alot of games seem to suffer from, a substitute of graphics for gameplay/content. I feel that Beth did a good job on oblivion, but at the same time... ug.

 

Its almost as if the demograph they aimed the game at is 14 year olds with the attention span a gold fish could put to shame and too much pocket money: the challenge of the game is almost the same, leveled creatures work well in a linier game, but a dynamic game where you can take unlimited paths from one city to another... it wasn't until i used OOO & MMM that i had to pay attention, before you had mild entertainment as you traveled with the bandits and such jumping out and your horse got a quick breather while you dispatched them, now... lol as before i was running around only paying attention to my compass heading and ran around a rather large rock and bounced of a minotaur, hit it and saw no damage, did a runner after a few min, checked my back, good it wasnt following, looked to get my heading and walked into a Ogre... that ended badly, but thats the point, now i pay attention, stick to areas i know are safe and when i venture into the unknown its with care.

 

Perhaps being geared for the consol everything got overlly simple, lets face it, consol games in the majority are not the hardest and your pretty much led by the nose to the finish (why they cost so much i do not know) - or, this makes me laugh, you have a puzzle, to do the puzzle you need a spell, and in the corner of the room in a box is that spell... whats the point of the soddin puzzle if you put the answer right on top of it, at least respect me enough to realise i can read, write and apply reasoning thought.

 

Too many games seem to be half finished when they are released and its down to modders to finish it. A linier game with levels (game levels, not exp levels) and such you dont need to apply much, but as i have found with almost every modern dynamic RPG , ones with 'a world to explore' seem to be oh so pretty, but lack content, im glade the Ultima series died, id hate to see such a game become nothing more then pretty pixels.

 

Reminds me of the old saying; "There are pretty girls and girls with personality" only to be applied to games, bring back the old days when a game sold on how well it was coded and the content it had because graphics were limited. oooooh, does this then imply that we are becoming more and more shallow, that its looks over content that matter now... ug.

 

Going to raise a question, might be interesting, might not but hey... If this was TES1, how much of the lore that makes TES TES would there be? How much of the content that has flowed through the forefathers would there be? Not just the Lore but the races, skills, background to each and every thing? I have a feeling that if Oblivion was a stand alone game, it would be but a shadow of what it is now.

 

It is my understanding that games use to have an average turn aound time from start to finish of about 3 years, now its 1 year, thats 3900 hours of work that no longer go into the game, per person working a normal 37.5 hr week - another thought, if games are taking 1/3 of the time to do, get rushed and pushed out unfinished, then sometimes recalled, why has the price to the consumer gone up?

 

Ok i may have gone off topic, but this is close to my heart, growing up with RPG's and such - you know, we all might as well buy 486's with 640k cache and play old RPG's that have the content then spend, i believe someone said in the states games cost $120 on some half-assed, half-finshed eye candy.

 

BUT back on topic and to summerise my thoughts... Oblivion as it stands is nothing special, novelty of graphics wear off, BLUNT axes make you ask questions about the Intelligence of the developers and leveled loot means you might as well not bother searching for them because by the time you really needed it, it provides sweet FA to your char.

 

Most deffinitly dumbed down and leads you by the nose, the consol generation is here! WHEEE!

 

So BIG BIG THANK YOU!!!! to the moding community who have taken the time to help grow the game into what it should have been.... if you want something done right.... do it yourself.

 

*** Just re-read what i wrote, good graphics and good content lead to a good game, i dont fault the graphics one bit, it does feel good to play the game just wsh more thought went into it. ***

 

ok im done. :blush:

[Povuholo]

Nice post.

 

Going to raise a question, might be interesting, might not but hey... If this was TES1, how much of the lore that makes TES TES would there be? How much of the content that has flowed through the forefathers would there be? Not just the Lore but the races, skills, background to each and every thing? I have a feeling that if Oblivion was a stand alone game, it would be but a shadow of what it is now.

I think it still would've been successful, because of all the overhyped interviews and screenshots. The graphics and hype sold the game, with a little help of Morrowind.

[spyre101]

Success can be measured in many ways, units shipped is down to PR, but to be a GOOD game, its not financial, its when the designers can sit back and go... Wow!, everyone knows in anything they do whether they went the extra mile to make something special, and alot of the time the effort required is not that much more.

 

Tie-Fighter for example, for its time quite advanced but the game itself was so good, so well coded, atmosphear was astoinding... sometimes i feel the 'golden' age of gaming has passed us by for the mass produced consumer market... I dont know any other game that can do what elite/frontier did in its later guises and its ancient, landing on a planet, 1 of 100000s anywhere and deploying a mining drone, then flying half way accross the galaxy for whatever reason... ahhh i dont know, maybe i have too high an expectation.

 

I dont dislike oblivion, been playing it again for the last 2-3 weeks solid, but i sometimes find myself just standing in the street thinking, "ok what now?" thats when i turn my attention to my mod - which i hope i can back up my own words and go the extra mile. :P

 

Good Gamin All

[cryocry]

I enjoy it, but I think it could get some more content instead of the eye candy, and if we weren't told what to do. Why can't everyone be smart and patient these days?

[Daemonion]

Is Oblivion the game you were hoping for?

 

I had never played any of the other ES games. So I only expected what I saw in the trailers, which was a huge world and pretty graphics.

 

Do you enjoy playing it?

 

Vanilla was fun until I knew better. After playing the game for around 100 hours, I saw every flaw in the game ...they made me realize how unfinished vanilla really was.

 

It wasn't until I modded the living crap out of TES IV that many of the flaws were fixed.

 

To Bethesda and possibly 90% of all commercial companies: STOP RELEASING UNFINISHED PRODUCTS. MAKE QA TESTING MUCH, MUCH LONGER.

 

 

If you were lead developer of Bethesda, what specific, major changes would you make to the game that you think would improve it?

 

Give the game a damn soul, as it lacks one.

 

They dumbed down their potentially awesome AI to the point where each NPC was a clone of only five personalities.

 

RANDOM AI OCCURRENCES (I'm not making enough money with my vineyard ...should I try harder or steal?) INCREASE RE-PLAYABILITY.

 

REAL CONSEQUENCES.

 

NO HAND-HOLDING.

 

MORE DIVERSE ITEM AND SKILL-SET (unique items, anyone?)

[Anmana]

Hi there,

 

i´m from germany, so don´t be rude for all those upcoming mistakes, grammar is my favourit^^

 

 

Negative in Relathionship to Morrowind

 

Borders - What the vulk??? One of the most disappointing "features" in Oblivion and like the missing Explorergoodies. There are some cave´s and shrine´s but where are those tiny little "somethings" in Oblivion which makes me happy after a boring, half an hour taken walk through wildness?

In Morrowind there wasn´t allways something but often a little reward for exploring the world map. Underwater cave´s, secret Quests, Mudcrabs who have more money than you...all those "unnecessary" things are just not in Oblivion...

 

Athmosphere - still unlucky with it. I remember the first time i played Morrowind (I got killed instantly because of "thievery" (sry, don´t know a better word atm^^) and exit the game instantly. In a silence moment, i started over and well well well...i wasn´t able to stop playing the game. I collected ingredients, suffered in not finding the Quest person (a green indicator would have been pretty good sometimes) and was stunned sometimes about the City´s, the sorroundings and the whole bunch.

Music, landscape, NPC´s...hours of running around in Vivic...that was really great

Oblivion in Comparison...hum, it´s like an Addon, having Morrowind so good in memory. It´s just a green world where you never loosing yourself -> Morrowind:"Errr, what Quest did i started yesterday???"(and you´ve done 5 another quests meanwhile and lost the rest of time in just walking around and wondering why some Bretons are naked, how far you could jump with the famous Icarusspell or just fighting against those little Dwemerspiders...*sigh* i loved that^^)...and where´s my drugged Questgiver^^ I loved him, sitting stoned in his house and tells me what to do *laughing*

 

 

Of course, Oblivion is a new game but there´re some points which don´t fit in TES. I can´t explain it for sure but something is missing in Oblivion...and now to the point why i´m playing Oblivion and like it more and more:

 

MODS

 

I love them, i need them and i love the software company for the possibility they gave their community. All the tiny little things can be placed by yourself into the World of Oblivion and it´s wonderfull to do so. At last it´s not Morrowind but with knowledge and hard work, you can "push up" Oblivion to a more or less good sequel in TES :)

 

 

Hope, i didn´t kill anyone of you with my english^^

[shadow sun]

after having played morrowind alot more than i should have :P i was very dissapointed with the reductions in oblivion, although at first i was amazed with the graphics and the size of the map i started to notice way too many glitches, and to me it just didnt seem like a proper TES game, more of an add-on

[Povuholo]

I recently realized why I could never get into Oblivion as I could with Morrowind.

 

At first I thought it was the different environment, which is much more like other fantasy games. It's normal brick buildings vs shells/mushrooms houses.

 

But now I finally get it: It's the background, the conflicts, the culture, whatever you want to call it. Let's look at Oblivion.

 

The Mages Guild is struggling with the Necromancers, but the rest of Cyrodiil doesn't care. You'd think that when

Mannimarco

(Who was pathetic when compared to himself in Daggerfall and in books) came to Cyrodiil there would be panic. But no, every guild lives in its own little world which its surroundings don't react to.

 

Everyone is concerned about the oblivion gates and mudcrabs.

Everything is black and white: Temple and Martin good, mythic dawn evil.

 

Now look at Morrowind:

 

Morrowind had Dagoth Ur and the Tribunal. Was Dagoth Ur really evil (black) and the Tribunal good (white)? No, they were both gray.

 

There were so many different factions and groups in Morrowind who all had some kind of relation with another. Oblivion had the temple and that's about it. Something I found on the official forums:

Morrowind had several factions and they all interrelated. The Legion didn't like the Cammona Tong, the Tong wanted the Thieves Guild out and used the Fighters Guild for this. The boss of the Cammona Tong was a brother of the head of House Hlaalu, Hlaalu was fighting with Redoran over the Ebony mining rights, Redoran was trying to stop the Telvani enroachment, Telvani were just being themselves and keeping the Tribunal Temple at bay along with everybody else.

In all this chaos the Morag tong was taking contracts from everybody to off anybody to solve problems according to Dunmer Law.

You don't see any such thing in Oblivion. That's way too complicated for the 'average consoler', who just want to be a hero and kill stuff.

 

Oblivion had 'Radiant A.I.', but for me Morrowind felt much more alive.

 

This post was mostly lore related. If you want to read an (old and locked) interesting discussion about Oblivion's contribution to the lore you should see this thread. A few devs even got involved.

[Kenshkrix]

When it comes down to it, newer games, RPGs in specific, just have less content. As an example of an old game with lots of content, that doesn't 'hand-hold' at all. Nethack, one of the best RPG games I have ever played. Graphics? Your character is an @ sign, the monsters are letters, and yet, it has so much more content than many newer games its astounding. I think that all RPG game companies should look back to this old classic.

Here's a Link: Nethack

What I think is the best part of Nethack, is that the game is unforgiving, you do something stupid? You Die, Start Over. There are also a huge list of actions you can do. In Oblivion, you can basically just jump, attack, cast a spell, pick something up, or activate something.

[tsolless]

Of course the Vanilla game sucks. However...

 

With mods I can make my game whatever I want. Difficulty? Sure just use Morag Tong Hunters so that every once in awhile the Morag will hunt you down to slaughter you.

 

Graphics? Sure just get some textures.

 

Houses? Hell you can make your own house quite easily wherever you want it to be,

 

So basically, yes without mods Oblivion is a bad game. With mods, however, it is the best game I have ever played.