I kinda agree with a lot of your thoughts. I would like to point out, though, that for me, a lot of those combat/game mechanics/magic things were both good but frustrating, since I had come from playing Morrowind, which relies heavily on the dice rolling.

I don't want to get into the MW vs OB argument. My point of view is that they both had good points and bad points and meh points and my personal preference is to play Morrowind, especially as I have older gaming equipment that just has trouble handling Oblivion sometimes. I liked Oblivion, but I had some trouble with it. The rest of my post is going to be comparing the two of course, but only because my experience with other TES games is limited, so I'm trying to pick out what MW did right and what OB did right and combine it so the devs can see it and hopefully use it for Skyrim.

I think the magic system was incredibly frustrating in Oblivion, though. I really like the "if your attention is split you do less impact" idea, I think that's a wonderful way to encourage mages to be mages and not use weapons, but at the same time it doesn't forbid it. I absolutely hated the 100% success rate thing. Morrowind was irritating as poison ivy when it came to casting spells and failing, especially with the non-rechargeable magicka. I liked Oblivion's recharge system. I think in Skyrim, what would be great is a magic system that is more forgiving than Morrowind's, but you can still fail spells. I think they should NEVER EVER use the "you can't cast this because you are not this level" idea, because you should be able to do whatever you want. You should be able to do whatever you want, and the game should be able to punish you for doing something stupid. So, I think you should be able to try very difficult spells, but you're likely to fail if they are too difficult, and maybe if they are super difficult you have a chance of failing badly, like accidentally burning yourself with a fancy fireball spell, or something.

I was okay with the combat system in Oblivion. I liked it better than Morrowind's system, which was mostly clicking really fast. I never got into combat much in Oblivion, so I can't speak for the swords and stuff. However, I REALLY liked the bow mechanics. It's one of the things that makes me sad when I go back to Morrowind, since Morrowind, despite having a wonderful variety of marksman weapons, was unrealistic and frustrating. So, my input for combat: Bows are great. But arrows can't go through everything, so can you put in throwing weapons and crossbows and maybe blowdarts? Crossbows can punch through plate armor, if I recall correctly. That would be super nifty.

Stealth was better, for me, in Oblivion than in Morrowind. I liked the better sneaking implementation, but I agree with the troubles you mentioned. I would be satisfied with the same system, except:
- Toggleable eye, like "do you want the eye on your HUD or not"?
- NO PSYCHIC GUARDS
- Be able to re-hide
- Searching behavior

Alchemy you didn't mention. I liked bits from MW and bits from OB. So do this:
- You should be able to try to combine any two ingredients. MW let you combine any two ingredients with effects in common, but OB made you only able to combine ingredients if you had already discovered their effects. You couldn't experiment. I think you should be able to combine ingredients and get worthless potions that do nothing OR at least be able to try to combine two ingredients and the game says "no effects in common, can't make potion." I remember discovering that one of saltrice's effects was restore health ages ago before I could properly see the effect. It was really cool.
- Keep the sorter. OB had a "highlight the ingredients that I KNOW have effects in common with this one" option. That was fantastic.
- Potions should PLEASE BE PHYSICALLY SMALLER. No one swigs a gallon of potion. Make 'em a few tablespoons at best.
- You should be able to apply any potion to a weapon and eat any poison. Yes, this is probably worthless in game, but c'mon, everyone's made a deadly poison that accidentally restores fatigue which the game thought was a beneficial potion and wouldn't let you dip your arrows in it.
- If you apply a poison to a blade/arrow/thingy it should last for a few strikes. Maybe it should last as 100% intensity first strike, then 50% then 25% then none or something. Also, you can dip more than one arrow in to a poison, I'd think. At lease 5 arrows per poison bottle, c'mon.

As for levelling, I think a sort of combo would work. I'd like there to be regions of easy, medium, hard, where the creatures would level with you for only 3 or 4 levels and then stop gaining. That way you can get interesting fighting out of a place for a little while, and then you get better and it stops being interesting. I also think that low-level creatures should stop attacking you. Come on, now, lone wolves wouldn't attack. Deer run away. Bunnies run away. Bears would nom you, but yeah.

Wow, lots of text. I sure hope the devs have thought all of this through. And I hope they actually get the time to implement their stuff properly.

*EDIT: I want to mention, actually, devs, if you're reading this: If you ever have the choice between outright forbidding something or making that something very difficult and likely to go horribly wrong, please take the latter. I mean, real life doesn't have safety fences. If you want to cast that 200pt fireball spell as a total noob, okay... but... you might light your hair on fire and not touch anyone else. The way to make things undoable is to give penalties for being stupid. Like, mages can totally wear heavy armor, but, you get your agility and magicka docked for it while it's on. Make people do stuff you want them to do by making the other options inconvenient/dangerous.

irst, the NPCs. Ironic that the whenever the developers addressed things like no mounted combat and no crossbows or throwing weapons and no spears, their argument was that they didn't want to half ass anything; that if they were going to do it, they were going to do it right. Ironic then that NPCs were done SO horribly. They had the most ridiculous conversations with each other, their facial expressions were robotic and lifeless, the voice acting was ehhhhhhhhh, and they all said the same things. Radiant AI was also wasted. It was a quest gimmick that didn't have wings outside of that. All the things gamesas did to try and bring life to the NPCs had the opposite effect. The Morrowind NPCs were more convincing and far less ridiculous (as well as more useful).

Really? So NPCs standing around doing nothing all day is better than NPCs with routines?

I actually agree with pretty much everything OP said. To me, Morrowind was an RPG. Oblivion was just an action game, a first person shooter in medieval times. Ever since I laid my eyes on Oblivion, it was clear to me it was made for "kids", for those new generation of gamers with fancy consoles and graphics, for those who can't stand to read texts in the game or who were frustrated of the fact that they miss hitting the enemy with the sword.
So, when I saw the trailer for Skyrim, I didn't see Morrowind 2 or Morrowind meets Oblivion. No, I saw Oblivion 2.
To me, Skyrim would be perfect if it was like Morrowind but with Oblivion graphics.

As much as I agree with the OP, I still want to say that these type of threads becoems tiresome. I could amost swear that we see atleast 1 type of these threads per day. While I do think that the OP had a point, I do also think that we have seen way to many of these threads. We already know that most people of the forums like Morrowind better, and was disappointed with Oblivion, but I still see no reason why we must see a whole thread 4-6 tiems a weak where a single person will express his feelings about it. Its almost like it was back in the days where you logged on and saw a "Morrowin Vs Oblivion" thread.

My point is...

The majority on these forums like Morrwind better, but we already know that, and we needs to stop bashing the last 2 games in the series for being so different. We have already seen plenty of stuff in Fallout 3 that was improved over oblivion, so we need to move on. All of us!

You know what? I entirely agree with everything, literally everything in that post. I might have had high expectations for Oblivion, but heck it had nothing on Morrowind. It wasn't an improvement except for graphics and AI. A huge amount of stuff that I loved about Morrowind was removed. For example...

Ranged Combat:
The removal of Crossbows and throwing equipment really put me off ranged combat. It's not the fact that I didn't enjoy using a bow in Oblivion, it was actually nice to hit what I was aiming for, but eventually using a bow got very boring. I needed more variety in ranged weapons, but every single one except for bows were removed. How is that fair to people who want to play as Archers or other classes that use the Marksman skill? The answer is that it's not really.

Melee Combat:
You're right, there was a complete lack of variety in weapons, and it was pointless to have that little variety anyway since there wasn't much difference between them. But it wasn't just the removal of Spears, yes that really svcked, but also different combat skills, such as Short Blade, Axe, Spear (obviously)... Axes were classed as Blunt Weapons. I would have preferred to just keep the Axe skill rather than have something labelled so stupidly. Also, when you learned that thrusting move at Master? It was pretty terrible, to be honest. When you stab someone, it shouldn't push them away. And don't even get me started when you pull out a dagger and it makes the regular longsword unsheathing sound. That irritated me.

Locations:
Too generic. I'm guessing that this was because of the introduction of the quick travel feature. The team probably thought that people wouldn't do enough exploring to notice anyway. Well I found 99% of the locations in Oblivion, and I wasn't impressed because the forts, Ayleid ruins and caves that weren't quest related were just full of your regular RPG stuff: wild animals, undead or bandits. This isn't why I fell in love with the Elder Scrolls series! I fell in love with the series because attention was paid to just about every dungeon Bethesda had made back in their Morrowind making days, where you could explore and find something new every time you did, all the way up until you explored every inch of the map! Does anyone else miss those days? Because I sure do.

Menus:
In this, I am specifically talking about two menus: The Bartering Menu and the Sleep/Wait Menu. I won't go into too much detail with the Barter menu since Bethesda have fixed the issue that I had with it in Fallout 3. The only thing I can do here is pray to the Nine that they haven't gone back to Oblivion's Barter Menu. Basically a confirmation every time you wanted to buy/sell something, and some cheesy line that came after every time you bought/sold something. I didn't like having to scroll my mouse to the confirmation, then clicking on something else to move the cursor all the way to that confirmation again, and repeating that for a good amount of loot that I wanted to sell. Sure, I could have used my keyboard, but even then I still prefer Fallout/Morrowind's Barter menu, because you can actually trade things in exchange for a discount off an expensive item, rather than being underpaid for a pretty nice artefact that I found. And I definitely didn't like hearing "that's a fair price", "that's more than I usually pay" or "you've earned quite a bit of gold", every time I sold something.

Now, to some of you people who have seen the Morrowind waiting menu, you'll know that it works it's magic much faster than Oblivion/Fallout's waiting menu. Also, with Morrowind you could sleep in the wilderness, at the risk of being attacked by creatures that were native to that region. In Oblivion you couldn't sleep, and you didn't have to because it seemed like waiting for an hour actually fully healed you anyway. This was probably one of the reasons why I never carried health potions.

Voice Acting:
Another thing that was lacking in the variety department. I hope this issue has been sorted with Skyrim. Also, the guy who voiced Martin was incredible! I'd like to hear more of him in Skyrim. I know that Martin won't appear but that doesn't stop the voice actor from acting as another character.

First of all, the OP said MANY times that this thread and his opinion aren't related to "Morrowind vs Oblivion" threads.

Also, do you really think it is that clear and obvious? Plus, if we stopped making threads like these, then would the devs really get what we're trying to tell them? Personally, i believe that while most people who played Morrowind liked it the most, the majority of them, when asked, will still prefer Oblivion's features, like voice acting, fast travel, etc. Morrowind being better than Oblivion (or the opposite) isn't really set in stone, so discussing about it is just natural, considering how much we all love TES.

I'll agree these threads tend to be annoying after a while, but they are necessary for the people who post in them to actually understand why they have certain opinions or feel so strongly about one game being better than the other...

Agree with most of the things the OP said here. Very, very good ideas on magic.
I would love a general system where magic is much, much harder to cast successfully and master, with chances of failure, but the spells that are cast actually do have a significant effect.



I didn't play that game but this idea sounds BRILLIANT. With the guilds and factions we are surely going to have in Skyrim, it makes a good fit too.

Hey, um... I am pretty sure that I dissagree with you on everything. Sure those aspects of Oblivion are bad but they are Better than Morrowind.


ALSO! Stop trying to get them to dumb down Skyrim by making it like Morrowind! Its gonna be better than Morrowind and better than Oblivion! It wont be anything like Oblivion! It won't be anything like Morrowind! Making it like either from where it is NOW will be DUMBING IT DOWN!

I started with the impression the OP would be another of those ranitng kids, due to a "[censored]" tag showing up right in the first 2 lines, which is always a bad sign. But I see nothing wrong at all with his post, as it is purely opinion put in an organised and non-confrontational way. Just because he is pointing out his frustration in an inescapable comparison with the predecessor TES does not make this 'another' OB x MW thread at all (but then again reading skills are not a requirement on the internet).

That said, my opinion is that computer games are NOT made by fans. I.e., I cannot put myself in a situation where I am testing the game and I do NOT notice:
- the Psychic Guards inconvenience;
- horrible leveling shortcomings;
- Wielding Claymore, War Axe and War Hammer just being graphically different, having Axe and Blunt mixed in Blunt (?) and no difference between Blade and Blunt perks AT ALL;
- Damage base.... Daedric Dagger = 19 (x6 Sneak = 114) and Daedric Claymore = 26 (x 2,5 power attack = 65);
- Magic damage caps (...), spells only get cheaper (and A LOT cheaper) by Master level and that is all;
- Races and racial headstarts, which are persistently and mistakenly called boni;

And more. And these are just game mechanics, add the lackluster dialog sys and story design.... It makes one wonder if these important things were tested at all. Oblivion ended up being a very beautiful game, which you could go wonderful places, with a good ambience music.

I have no problem with anything in Oblivion except for 2 things. I got hit with the A-bomb and couldn't finish my first game and that was really disappointing. I learned here to get the game done in under a year game time and that's worked. I have a great time playing. The other thing is too few voice actors and I don't think that'll be a problem in Skyrim because the voice acting is so great in Fallout New Vegas. It's important and I'm pretty sure they realize it.

I am sorry, but I disagree entirely. Yes - B is a company, always facing challenges regarding scarce resources, critical deadlines and need for both profitability and critical mass sales to cover ever-increasing costs.

But TES games were NOT made as a game for 'a mass of superficial players'. In Arena and Daggerfall you wanted to explore and forget about the main quest whenver you wanted to, The main quest ends, the game is NOT over, in fact many still go on questing and doing other things. The game's success led to a huge increase in its audience and it is an easy trap to start trying to be more accessible, generic as you pointed out. TES games are not just action games targeted at Casual Bob that Oblivion looked like in many terms explained here and in countless othe threads.

Philo_T: I share your sentiments. However you want to shake it, stir it, or mix it up, I was left disappointed with Oblivion. Don't misread me, Oblivion was still a great game - just not what I expected from an Elder Scrolls game. You nailed most of my misgivings. Another that I would add was the meager incentive to explore; almost everything seemed generic. Thank you for expressing your valid frustrations.

The OP did not say to make Skyrim like Morrowind.....the OP was venting on things from Oblivion that are not desired for Skyrim. I would like for people to stop trying to turn every thread into MW v. OB or Fo3 v. FoNV..... the horse was buried a long time ago so stop trying to dig it up.

I've never really understood the whole "he's swearing so whatever he says is invalid" mind set. I understand that people who swear a lot TYPICALLY end up being the kind of people who spew a lot of things that are... well, [censored]. But to dismiss everything someone says immediately because of a little swearing? That's why I've never been a fan of formal debates. That kind of rule is just for a bunch of pinky prodding [censored]wads.

But anyway, I see in my absence I've been told a few more times that Morrowind isn't awesome and that Skyrim shouldn't be like Morrowind. Glad to see that I can say the same thing over and over again and have it still never get through to some people. But, more than excessive swearing, that's a perfectly good reason to ignore everything they say. Someone arguing for the sake of arguing without anything intelligent to say isn't even entertaining. I wish there was a little moderating going on here.

Now let's see if I can't go back through the thread since my last post and see if there's anything I should respond to.

tl;dr

Oblivion came out in 2005, this is nearly 2011.

Nothing was like it in 2005.

This whining is really redundant.

It's not whining. GG.

At this point in time, yes, it is.

It's about as constructive as complaining about Goldeneye 64.

No one's complaining about Oblivion. You're in the wrong place. I bought it 4 times, I obviously enjoy the game.

There were a lot of mechanics that were not well implemented. I was frankly, a little disappointed with how Oblivion turned out. I'm hoping Bethesda has not ignored the statistically significant portion of their fans who feel the same way. It's got to be hard to hear some of these things, especially considering the success of Oblivion. And as you said...it's not that Oblivion is not a good game. It just falls far below it's potential, given it's pedigree.

I agree with this and your original post, unfortunately I see a digression in the gaming market towards short burst of compact experience towards a cinematic approach.

Many of your points I remember all to clearly both pre/post release of Oblivion and the rabid response in general being;

"What the [censored] are you guys thinking?"

Wait...so you're telling me a great game had flaws? Impossible! How did we miss this before? Mother of God, I will now repent my sins and proclaim Morrowind to be the flawless gem of all Elder-Scrolls fandom!

Get a life. Jesus, I realize that Oblivion had shortcomings, but it was also a Great game, that surpassed Morrowind in many ways. Oblivion is not the [censored] sibling of TES series, and I certainly enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than any of the previous titles.

You feel the need, as do 10,000 other people on these forums. It gets a little frustrating to defend a game I love every single day. Yes, I LOVE Oblivion. Call the lynch mob if you want, but Oblivion is my favorite game of all time (though I love Morrowind as well). I simply love exploring the wilderness, I love the pretty scenery, I love the amount of things I can do, when it comes to raiding dungeons when I want some action, or picking flowers and mushrooms when I want some peace. I have devoted hundreds and hundreds of hours to the game, and will continue to until (and even after) Skyrim comes out.

So is it that hard to understand why I get a little unhappy when people accuse Bethesda of having lost its creativity, or being stupid for "dumbing down" the game for the so-called "casual console" market? I came to these forums to talk with like-minded people about how awesome Oblivion is, but all I see is "the game svcks" and "I hope ESV is nothing like Oblivion". Yes, there are shortcomings, but that doesn't stop the game from being an amazing piece of art.

(sigh) Well, I know people are going to argue with me. I'm not going to bother continuing to defend my favorite game of all time. Maybe I should play it instead of talking about it.

I also bought OB 3 times, regular,GOTY than Collectors tho lol
but ya I agree with OP totally 100%

I beat Assassins Creed Brotherhood today than went back to playing Oblivion and was thinking "why the hell can't I hide?! Or why the hell can't I attack on horse back?O_O!!"

So without "psychic guards" and level scaling and with the other changes mentioned here, you don't think Oblivion would have been a better game? You think there's nothing for gamesas to learn from the game? If you truly think that you're a really devoted fan. Oblivion is your favorite game of all time. Well, Morrowind is mine, and guess what, there's no way in hell Skyrim should be just like Morrowind either. You're thinking about this the absolute wrong way. Really. This thread is not about Oblivion. If you had no problems at all with Oblivion or Morrowind, then you have no reason to post here, because the purpose of this thread is to point out things in those games that can be changed or corrected for Skyrim. I couldn't care less if you mastvrbate with the hole in your Oblivion disc. The point here is to talk about what's been done wrong before (as someone pointed out, these games aren't perfect, none of them) and what can/should be done to prevent it from happening in the future. Feedback for the best possible game for Skyrim. The only whining going on here is from the people who don't want this thread to exist and are coming to the defense of Oblivion. You're completely out of context here. I believe there are at least 5 million other threads that serve the purpose you're trying to fill. Go there to make a defense, not here. You can't even defend Skyrim here because there's no information out yet, so come back when gamesas has given me something to be concerned about. Thanks.