First, let me begin my rant with a little story....

- Psyched for Skyrim, decide to reinstall Oblivion for the first time in a couple of years
- Been a while, but i've done modding before.
- Gather up all of my fav mods (OOO, MMM, Deadly Reflex, Unique landscapes, Better cities, etc)
- Spend Hours carefully reading the readme's, installing the mods, setting the load order
- Start up game, crash to desktop instantly
- Spend an entire WEEK reading forums, re-reading readme's, adjusting load orders, making sure ive got the newest versions, etc.
- Game finally "runs", but still CTD's every ten minutes and is just generally plagued with ridiculous glitches.
- Learn about BOSS and use it, even try to learn Wrye Bash, but give up cause i can never get it to work.
- playing game, thinking to myself "huh, i seem to be not getting as many CTD's, maybe BOSS made all the differe-"
- Crash
- ..........
- Uninstall.exe


Now that i've got that all off my chest, let me get to my point.

I've noticed that alot of people on this forum are debating/arguing what had exactly went "wrong" with Oblivion in terms of total content/features as compared to its predecessor Morrowwind. Alot of people are worried about Skyrim following this same pattern (that pattern being with each iteration of the series, the game becomes more bland/"mainstream"/simple/dumbed down/etc) Now with my recent struggles with Oblivion had gotten me thinking about certain things about what exactly had gone wrong. People blame the "Casual Gamers" or that the series is becoming too "Mainstream" but personally i think thats not it. Of course the series is becoming more mainstream, thats the fate of all GREAT series! Look at Zelda, or Halo, all great series in there own right, and yes, now our beloved elder scrolls is out in the public eye, bringing in more fans to enjoy this awesome series.

but i digress, thats not the problem.

Now i realize this idea may not be particularly popular (especially on these forums) but i think it is worth considering. There are 2 problems.....

you ready for this?

1: Bethesda was Lazy

and

2: Bethesdas TOTAL reliance on the modding community to fix EVERYTHING

Think about it, When was the last time you played VANILLA Oblivion? been a while right? you might remember the experiance being........less then expected. Not to say Oblivion isn't a great game, it is. but lets be honest with ourselves here, Oblivion was not like Morrowind.....at all. Sure there were SOME few advancements made, most notable being the combat system (although to be honest it also feels rather bland, but that is fixed with mods such as Deadly Reflex) and alot of the quests feel alot more fleshed out then morrowinds. But to be perfectly honest, thats not enough. Think about all the content Morrowind had, or daggerfall, etc. now think of Oblivion, were looking at at least HALF of the content that was in the prior games, inexplicably gone.

Where am i going with this?

When Morrowind came out it was an AWESOME experiance, then Bethesda released the Modding tools and that experiance became even MORE awesome! What i think happened with Oblivion was just a case of Laziness. Bethesda took a look at all the innovative and creative mods that the communtiy were churning out, so i imagine what happened was they thought to themselves "hmm, perhaps since the modding community is so eager to "fix" all of our supposed mistakes, then for Oblivion we should just release a halfbaked/buggy/bland sequel, then release Mod Support shortly after so the community can "fix" whatever they don't like!"

see what I'm getting at?

Now before i am flamed into Oblivion (lolpun) I am NOT BLAMING THE MODDING COMMUNTIY FOR THIS! The Community consists of a large group of tatented individuals that were nice enough to share with us all their awesome mods, for which i beleive is safe to say we are all eternally grateful. Who i AM Blaming, is Bethesdas inability to create a game without relying on the Modding community to fix everything.

Bethesda (or somebody who is working on Skyrim) i seriously hope you are reading this. Now i am NOT saying that there should be no mod support for Skyrim (the thought of that is honestly scary as mods allow us to pretty much make the game into whatever we want, giving the game near infinite replayability) What i AM saying is, before you even consider releasing Mod Tools for Skyrim, make a solid, fully featured, and enjoyable experiance. Don't just do Oblivion 2.0 and make the modding community (I.E your FANS) "fIll in the blanks".

Cool story bro.


I had to say that. I never have gotten at all upset with Bethesda OR the modding community (Unless a modder abandons an amazing mod EX-AT torture chamber) I do hope bethesda gets more involved in their modding community though, and recognizes it more.

I could easily enjoy Oblivion and Morrowind without mods. I think everybody expects too damn much. If the devs were to implant everything the fans wine about to be in the game, it would never be completed. With such an open game like Oblivion, there's bound to be things that could have expanded on.

LUCKY! Damn, I envy you...

Oblivion's biggest gripe was the level scaling

Just gonna quote myself:



Elaborating on that, it takes a lot more time and effort these days to make meshes and textures due to the fact that it all must be made with such detail and high quality, to push the engines to their limits. Add in the fact that voice actors are needed much more these days (hence, less dialogue to save money) and you'll see developers are limited quite a bit now compared to back when Morrowind was released.

I really don't think you should accuse Bethesda of being lazy when you have absolutely no idea what went on while the game was in development. Oblivion turning out the way it did could have been the result of any number of things. And that's not to say that vanilla OB was bad in any way, either. Oblivion had twice as much content as any of the other big games coming out in '06.

almost never played Oblivion without mods, and if I did they were my own

I play on the console. I can say in all honesty that the game is just as fun as when I played it years ago. I have it for pc as well. I've done mods and I can say that the game is deep for me to not need mods. I think my first playthrough with "vanilla" Oblivion was around 140 hours. Morrowind I had double that with one playthrough because I was younger and less things to do and because I was trying to have the perfect character. I don't think that Bethesda was lazy and I think it is ignorant to think so. They created a game that gives more gameplay than any other game I've played.

For years, I played Oblivion with only a handful of mods that merely tweaked a few things (darker nights, louder chapel bells, that sort of thing). I could easily have done without them. I only just started playing with quest mods a few months ago. I've played some terrific mods, but I didn't need them to enjoy Oblivion. For me, Oblivion was a fun game and a solid experience right out of the box.

That's simply rude and signalizes that you have little understanding of how games are actually developed.

I do agree that Oblivion had issues, but saying that developers were lazy and their games had to be "fixed" (rather than they suffered from questionable design decisions) sounds like an insult.

You're giving modders way too much credit; tweaking systems is much easier than developing them. More so, when you work as a team, especially as big as Bethesda's, you have to deal with much bigger issues. Management, deadlines, communication issues, and keeping consistent quality: all that can svck creativity out of developers, sooner than you can imagine. You're not giving the devs the respect they deserve; they're making one of the biggest (content-wise games) out there.

Furthermore, most mods took YEARS to develop; years of bugfixes, odd decisions and constant iterations. I'm guessing that Bethesda did not have the same flexibility that fans have.
It's all nice and fun to say that Bethesda could have changed the game prior to its release. But keep in mind that incorporating changes late during production could delay the game to the point when it would be no longer profitable. Moreover, sometimes developers have to cut the features that do not work properly or were not developed in time; considering they were making a game for a next-gen platform, those issue were to be expected.

Sure, you could say that loads of those issues (you haven't mentioned any btw ) could be solved during the pre-production stage. That's true; but I can clearly see where they were coming from when they were introducing extreme level scaling, removing skills and stream-lining guilds. Some of the things that people complained about the most were: how easy Morrowind was, how useless most of the skills were, and "kill-that, fetch-that" mission structure of most factions. I can easily see where they were coming from.

Aside from exact playtimes, I 100% agree with this. Even now I prefer playing Oblivion, "warts" and all, on 360 rather than modded up on PC.

TC, you have some respect and entitlement issues, IMO. Vanilla OB is one of the best most playable WRPGs ever.

First of all, there are just as many glitches/bugs in Morrowind as in Oblivion.
It's not laziness that cause the games to be released with problems. Having the game rushed to market is more likely.

The modding community is amazing at finding and fixing these problems, so what's the big worry?


Sounds like you don't know how to install/use mods very well.
Here are 50 steps to guarantee success with modding OB: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1119325-50steps-to-stable-fcom/page__p__16452602__hl__steps+free+fcom+__fromsearch__1#entry16452602

Maybe you're trying to fix too much. I'm now playing with Francesco's, living economy, natural environments and unique landscapes. No problems at all, and the experience is awesome.

Developers are also never lazy. They've just got so many hurdles on the way to making the game that they have to make compromises. And if they don't do that, and take the time they need to finish the game, you'll see the community complain about games being delayed.

I play on 360, so I'd have to say that the last time I played vanilla OB was well the most recent time

There are some mods for Oblivion that had to use the "Script Extender". That thing most likely is the problem with your crashes. I could never use it and it crashed my computer every time.

I mean no offense to the maker of the "Script Extender", but that thing just killed my computer every time.

I say that to say, I hope Bethesda allows script making with their new Construction Set so we can avoid having another "Script Extender" problem again.

I agree that morrowind is its own hell in a handbasket, even without mods shizua to me all Morrowind needs when I play are some graphic replacers for the NPC's. a few quest mods just to add on to the pile of oh god you already can do, and some creatures mods and thats really it.

Oblivion I can not play Vanilla, I contemplating getting it for 360 just to show my love for the series but I can't bring myself to do it, I dont know how you guys do it, there is just too much not right about vanilla. I got the game for PC first, never looked back. Mods are what gave Oblivion shelf life for me, if not, such would not have lasted nearly as long as Morrowind --to - me--.

To say what is for Skyrim is to be somewhat foolish, which is why I face palm at the array of useless polls and suggestion threads. I feel when people say I HOPE, rather than I WANT its much more appropriate at this timeframe.

Who knows Skyrim can be literally anything in terms of gameplay, combat could be revolutionary, the gameplay may have more vertical sense in it rather than the annoying flat plane experience that is Oblivion (nearly everything is at your high/ ground level).

all we really can do is sit and wait for more information really, interesting that Modding may start from point 0 as it did with Oblivion and FO3, man those waits were some of the toughests in my lifetime

Ha, the exact same problem I faced with installing certain mods.

You can write scripts in the vanilla construction set, all the vanilla scripts are made with it. The oblivion Script Extender adds new functions which where not present in vanilla. What this means for Skyrim is that a script extender will likely be made because the devs can not anticipate all the functions the modding community might possibly want/need.

I don't think that gamesas became "lazy," or in any way hoped the modding community would "fix" Oblivion. I think Oblivion was designed from the ground up to be a console game where the player's main interaction was using a controller. The PC version was an afterthought. After all, the money's in console gaming, isn't it? All the other TES games were designed to be PC games, and only Morrowind made the jump to console. But that was a PC game ported to console, not the other way around. Notice that everyone in this thread who has jumped to Oblivion's defense is a console gamer? That's where the Oblivion experience is. I hope Skyrim is designed primarily as a PC game that will find its way to consoles, but I know that is simply wishful thinking. It is the console versions that will bring in the big bucks for Zenimax. And this whole enterprise always has been a "for profit" one ....

Can't play Oblivion without mods. It just is not about more quests or better graphics (although these are big reasons why I love mods), but agreeing with what the OP said, mods "fix" the game. Features like level scaling and tons of bugs are fixed by mods like OOO, Unofficial patches, Phitt's Phighting Phixes etc. Remember those omniscient guards? I can't imagine anyone being a big fan of that feature! Thanks to SM Bounty or Ren's Guard Overhaul, those are gone!

But then again, mods are about visions. Individuals will fix things because they have a different vision than what Bethesda has. Sometimes I agree with one vision over another. So even if Beth makes the "perfect" game, there still will be mods, and I am glad there will be mods.

Well I play on console and I have to say that I have no problem play "Vanilla" Oblivion. Could it be better? Yes. But I also realize there's so much in Oblivion, there's more content in it than any other game of it's time. I don't expect TES to be a game that will last me 5000 hours, I'm quite fine with it lasting me between 300 and 600 hours. That's still ALOT of time to put into one single game.

Maybe the dev team themselves can make a script extender that works better and offer that as part of the construction set. I'm not exactly sure how the script extender worked but there has to be a way to implement something in the construction set that allows one to make custom scripts without the need of the script extender.

Watch the making of Oblivion videos on youtube before you make untrue statments like saying that the Devs were lazy.

Oblivion is a huge improvement on Morrowind. Graphics, AI, quests, factions have stories, trees, MORE VARIED LANDSCAPE, better NPCs, NPCs talk, no cliff racers and there are more. I play Oblivion on the xbox 360 and of course DON'T USE MODS. People don't use mods because Oblivion is bad, they use mods because the more content there is the better. Yes Oblivion did not have pauldrens but at least you can actually sell everything you can find. Ebony Armor anyone? How on earth do you sell that stuff in Morrowind? I can't find anywhere!

Never used mods with Oblivion before I got downgraded or Morrowind.

Actually you are wrong about Oblvion and why mods were used. If you were to take a poll, a huge majority of people would vote that they used mods because Oblivion without mods was that bad. I've played both with and without mods. I played the game much more with mods than without on my XBox. As far as Ebony Armor in Morrowind? I have a character with a full suit of it and close to a full suit of it in a drawer in my house. Morrowind does have some level scaling in it and the higher your level the more likely you'll get Ebony Armor and Daedric Armor.

At least Oblivion lends itself nicely for mods, resulting in a customized game.