The lack of a keyring for my keys was annoying

Above anything and everything else it's the item scaling. Found a legendary artifact? It's now permanently nerfed because you found it at a low level. Out of everything else, that had to be the biggest gamebreaker for me. Then next thing would be specifically the monster level scaling. Instead of making the boss monsters stronger and stronger, or different tiers of the same monster (like wolves) why not just make a different breed all together? If the player reaches level 50, then there should still be those insane dragons that were impossible to fight at lower levels. The third thing was monsters appearing based on your level. How about different dungeons or areas in the province that are more dangerous than others? The entire concept in leveling up is to be able to defeat the toughest enemies by the time you're done. Whenever I personally play rpgs, I aspire to become as powerful as possible to give me the greatest advantage possible. tes games allow you to do whatever you want whenever you want, so I initially plan out my class and then slowly work my way up at my own pace.

So I guess that's all I truly care about. The leveling system in Oblivion is complete rubbish. There may be other things about the game that I was unsatisfied over, but I can live with it.

Actually, I would like the stealth system improved as well. Psychic guards were annoying. It would be cool if there were different steps that the npcs would follow before getting caught. These steps took some time depending on a few variables. The steps would begin as soon as something happens to them. If they were attacked, how fast do they react to it? Does that particular npc roll over crying or notice where the arrow is coming from? If they quickly turn to see where they were shot (or possibly stabbed) can they describe what they are seeing to a nearby guard? Perhaps different articles of clothing could help them identify who you are or possibly make it harder to describe you. After they take the time to inform to the guard the description of the attack or attacker (if they get away) then the guard would look for someone based off of what they have been told. Another scenario is if a guard is nearby and sees someone impaled by an arrow. He would rush in to see where it came from and investigate. If you're nowhere to be found then you may have gotten away.

First off, I love Oblivion. It is my favorite Bethesda game, and the one I continually come back to. That said, there are indeed a few key issues I hope won't be carried over into Skyrim:
- Level scaling. Who on earth thought that would be a good idea?? Fortunately since it wasn't in fallout 3, I'm sure it won't be seen in Skyrim either.
- Endless repeating areas, such as oblivion gates, aeylid ruins, and dungeons and caves. Variety keeps it fun.
- Less chances of becoming LOST and perpetually dependent on the user map to see where you're going. This frustrated me a lot.
- This goes without saying, but BUGS. They were a huge issue in oblivion, even after the official and unofficial patches. I hope Skyrim doesn't have as many glitches right from the onset.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned repair and agility, other than a brief mention of Clannfear stagger-lock. At higher levels of the game, my gear would be broken after one melee fight, and every melee character (even strength-based plate/shield) had to max agility or spend the game stagger-locked in melee. Those two things lead to a lot of meta-gaming and stat power-levelling, and in the long run, I modded gear to multiply durability by 10 so I could maybe make it through a single Oblivion gate without having to repair more than once.

Item durability - especially when gear is broken in one fight and we're carrying 100kg of hammers in our packs - adds little to gameplay fun, and is actually more detrimental to realism/immersion than having no durability at all. Having to power-level stealth on every melee character to ensure they can actually stand up through a battle puts entirely too much importance on one stat, and is detrimental to immersion and roleplay.

I haven't kept up with Skyrim news to know if the devs have already commented on these issues (I plan to pick up Skyrim anyway, and try to avoid too much pre-game information). However, for me, those were the two most game-breaking factors of Oblivion that required modding and/or meta-gaming, and I hope the devs address them (or it will be the first thing I mod, heh).

This.

That might actually be a good idea if there were any chances of it containing the same old tedious gripes being rehashed ad nauseam.

But don't mind me, I'm still terrified at the prospect that Maglir's descendants might appear.

Guns.

Pointless dungeons. They thoroughly damaged the raison d'être of the open world.

Imperials speaking with North American accents
Dunmers with red irises
Mundane foods
1 species of fish
leveled loot

Actually, Akatosh. Ya know...him wanting to eat us and everything...

Guns? I don't remember any gun in Oblivion.

My worst gripe with Oblivion was extreme hand holding that nerfed the core RP gaming for me:

• The sense of progression and development of my character to be able to do things that I could not before and go places that were off limit
  
• The sense of adventure and stumbling upon hard to find items and places without seeing them from miles away in the radar compass.
  
• And the sense of triumph of conquering hard situations were we have to actually use our minds and our character's skills and abilities to be able to solve a problem.

This. I like Oblivion and I don't care who knows.

Two things I could do without:

(1) Mini-games. I'm playing a game already . . .

(2) The Chargen dungeon - or a least a toggle to skip it. Sure, it's cool the first fifty-three times. Then Baurus starts getting on my nerves . . .

~ Dani ~

I get really sick of the excessive use of item and enemy leveling. In moderation it's fine, but when it's everywhere you go... it svcks. I'm sure they've improved this by now.

Most of the stuff I have a problem with, such as the level scaling and all that, have already been mentioned. However, there is one thing that doesn't seem to have been mentioned:

All the little snide remarks the NPCs would give whenever you walked by.

Honestly, it was pretty annoying when every single Nord woman I walked by would say "WHAT" like I was about to bring them bad news. That and some of the stuff NPCs would say when your skills were high, especially as a mage. "You look like quite the alchemist, how about mixing up some potions?" every time I was minding my own business in the town.

Vampirism needs to be treated with more respect.

Vampirism, according to most lore, is a pretty powerful characteristic, and I hope that vampires in Skyrim are much more powerful.

I was dissappointed in Oblivion when, having gone down into a sewer at 2nd level, and encountering my first vampire, the zombie I conjured up killed the vampire quick.

Even the youngest of vampires, fresh off the bite, should be powerful enough to require, maybe, a 10th level character (minimum) to defeat it. No way should a zombie be able to defeat a vampire.

If there would be any creatures that are "vampirish" below 10th level, maybe have them be guardians of vampires, or maybe humanoids in the process of becoming vampires, or something like that, but not actual vampires.

Vampires should be powerful, and should require powerful characters to defeat them.

As for level-scaling, perhaps there should be a mixture of some scaling and some "fixed" level creature spawn points. Without any level scaling, it could very well end up that we could be 20th level, but continuously meeting up with rats and wolves (or cliff racers from Morrowind).

Maybe in Skyrim, it would be good if there were an equal number of scaled spawn points and non-scaled spawn points, evenly distributed throughout the land?

Aside from the in-step leveling that removed all incentive to level up [for me], and the obvious leaning towards First Person, and the non-existent back-story (for the PC), the main annoyance with Oblivion [for me], was that it seemed like everything in the game was put out for show along the main path.... Those straying off the [popular] path never found much of anything. :shrug: (or at least I didn't). While I would not want sacks of gold, and trinkets behind every bookshelf, in every fountain, and under every stone of a certain size... I would really like to find a few places and a few things stashed in out of the way places; Not necessarily trinkets or prizes either. For example... When my Acrobat character climbed atop the city wall in the Temple quarter, there is nothing up there. Now I can understand that... but I did find an alcove, and expected to find a bedroll; somebody's lunch or something (or even a chair).

When my PC climbed over the Arena wall... it looks like an unfinished back-lot; (I can understand low geometry... but not no geometry).

Skyrim needs to have a much greater variety of creatures.

Morrowind's creature flaw was too many cliff racers. With Oblivion, I got tired of wolf after wolf, and then troll after troll, etc. I was not able to complete Morrowind (due to cliff racer boredom) until I downloaded the Giants mod, which inserted a ton of new monsters. And the same with Oblivion. I recently downloaded Martigen's Monster Mod, and now there is a good variety of monsters to fight.

I consider myself to be on the side of the "immersion" lovers, but introducing a greater variety of monsters does seem to take away from immersion (it's difficult for me to imagine a wilderness with tons of mystical creatures like golems, atranochs, etc that wouldn't naturally be there.) But, if I had to choose, I'd choose to have less immersion in this respect in order to have a greater variety of creatures to fight.

Empty ocean floors
"terrible" level scaling
Floaty physics
unfluid looking animations
lockpicking minigame
speechcraft minigame
mounts, with no mounted combat
tedious combat
"magic" compass
the map
repetitive dialogue.
no mutually exclusive factions
No "Jump" spell
no werewolves
no vampire clans
Dunmer voices
simplistic stealth system

In skyrim, with locked on chests, the chest with the more difficult lock should have a larger amount of treasure in it.

It seemed strange when I picked an easy lock, and in the chest I find 120 gold, mithril boots, and a ring of water walking, but when I picked the hard lock on the chest next to it, in that chest I only found 26 gold. Should be the other way around....

Also, people should have keys to the locked chests in their own houses! Do they have to pick their own locks? I would like to see the keys to their locked chests somewhere in their houses (maybe hidden) or in their possessions. I wouldn't even mind if they were hidden well enough to where I had to do a hard search for them, especially if the locks are hard or very hard.

Quest markers and compass icons.
Oh dammit, this guy said it all
Although a strong emphasis on the quest markers and compass icons (magic compass).

My take on quest markers is this... If someone marks your map, then you should know where it is (this is one point in favor of markers). Having the compass point to a location is just the implied understanding of where that location is (by the PC). (Though IMO this should be restricted when underground, and /or in the dark.)

If you are sent to find someone however... Having the compass follow them around like a loadstone is just silly [IMO], (and one major point against markers). In this situation, I would prefer the compass point to the last known location of the target (like the town they were last seen in, or their house ~not at them in the pub).

**But I would not be against a quest where the target had an amulet that let you track them. :shrug: (So long as that was unusual, and never commonplace).

This, though I would add, No spears, no crossbows and 98% of the NPCs suffering from ugliness.

What is a 'jump' spell?


I disagree. A lock's designed difficulty has no sensible bearing on the contents of the chest. It might be empty or contain sentimental junk, and there is nothing wrong or implausible about that ~and as a bonus you still profit for picking the lock.

Okay, here's some...

• Terrible, terrible level scaling (losing a lot of the sense of progress with Oblivion's scaling, also why do the bandits wear daedric and glass?)
  
• Plants not disappearing after I've picked them (if I can see where I've picked or not picked harvesting becomes a lot
  
• Horrible console UI... on the PC version of the game (a tedious interface can be game-breaking)
  
• Persuation and lockpicking minigame (character skill should matter more, and player skills should matter less)
  
• Ugly NPCs everywhere (it's okay with ugly NPCs, but all of them? Most of Oblivion's NPCs also lacked uniqueness)
  
• Broken leveling system (using your major skills should make you stronger, not weaker)
  
• Magical, all-knowing quest markers (having to search for your objective makes questing more exciting, instead of just following the arrow)
  
• Simplified enchanting (cast when use enchantments, more effects to choose from, and constant effect only available using high tier souls makes enchanting more exciting)
  
• Simplified lockpicking (larger variety of security tools, more lock levels, and traps makes lockpicking more exciting)
  
• Lack of politics and interaction between joinable factions (politics, interaction and conflicts between joinable factions makes the world feel more alive and real)
  
• Lack of requirements for promotion in factions (a warrior should not be able to rise to the top of the mages guild without being able to cast spells like a wizard)
  
• Lack of spells from earlier games (levitation, jump, lock, and other cool spells, the more spells the better)
  
• Too few voice actors (lack of variety breaks immersion, and becomes irritating after a while)
  
• Dunmer male voice (bring back the raspy voice, the voice from Oblivion didn't fit at all)
  
• Closed cities (I want to walk in and out of a city without having to see a loading screen, and not all cities need to have walls)