I expect Skyrim to be a Oblivion without level-scaling. So I guess I can't be disappointed.

I ended up playing Morrowind only because at the time my computer didnt have the specs for Oblivion. Oblivion feels like a casual game by comparison, with a total lack of attention to the lore save a couple references to previous games.I couldn't think of a more appropriate setting for the next game than Skyrim for taking a step towards resolving this problem.
I'd like to see the old weapon variety come back, spears, crossbows, shuriken, etc. As for what is going to happen with a Sheogorath quest, I can only imagine that they'll find some cheap way of making the impact of The Shivering Isles nearly pointless.

"But there's a difference between a good game and a great game, or, in the case of Oblivion, a HUGE difference."

Thats rather insulting.

"terrible shortcomings of Oblivion"

Oblivion had one bad thing in it. Level scaling. I can think of many worse things from other games in the series.

Everything else was because of the current tech and amount of time the team had.

All of those things were worse in the previous games!

Oblivion improved upon all of those things except level scaling.

And everyone is agreeing with him... It is insulting and it makes me very angry, I thought that the pompous Morrowind fan boys had excepted Oblivion, but with the announcement of Skyrim and the hope that it wont be like Oblivion, I can see now that I was sadly mistaken.


My god, I can't stand these guys. Don't bother responding. I am not going to be anywhere near this [censored] thread.

The biggest problems with Oblivion for me was the engine, the abanonded towns and the fact that every Imperial Fort was desrtoyed.

I totally agree, but i don t have any expectation in this sector. This downfall happened because BETHESDA jupped from a PC gaming, to a CONSOLE gaming, Console are more limited, the public have a diferent mind, and so on. Beeing Elitist or not, Skyrim has already announed itself without much imagination compared to other Fantasy games : DRAGON FIGHT, YOUR THE HERO, YOU SAVE THE WORLD. This smell a lot like Gothic, and gothic 3 and 4 are failures.
I am merely curious about Skyrim, certailnly the last chance i ll give to the séries, the sad its, i m probably not the only one that are customers since arena. I bought only Vanilla Oblivion shalved it about 2 month later a absolute guiness for Elder series and went back to MORROWIND, as i wanted a decent gameplay and the GFX in Morrowind where pushed near Oblivion.

Lets hope Beth doesn t blow it but i doubt they wont, The start is already flawed.

Actually, in Arena itself, Cyrodiil was a forest. No one mentioned anything about Cyrodiil being a jungle until Redguard in 1998. All Oblivion did was go back to the original lore, so I guess that makes Redguard and Morrowind the lore-breakers, eh? Also, Arena was released in 1994, not 1995.

Why are you taking personal offense to criticism of a game? The game isn't YOU, it's a game, which most everyone on these forums still loved.

Saying that level scaling was the only thing wrong with Oblivion is a very difficult claim to back up, and I'd like to see you try. You're trying to make this thread into a MW v OB thread, and that's not what it is. This thread is about looking at criticisms of Oblivion (the most recent game, which is why it's being looked at... most problems with MW were addressed in OB, but OB brought about some of its own issues, that's all) If you think OB is the absolute pinnacle of gaming, why are you even interested in Skyrim? How could it ever possibly be better?

My biggest complaint with OB was the lack of culture. Maybe it's because Cyrodiil is based off medieval Europe, which isn't nearly as interesting. MW had such a distinct sense of the alien and had a unique culture... Cyrodiil lacked that. But, both the Shivering Isles and the theme from the SKY trailer give me hope (sweet chanting? sounds good to me.)

Give me warring political factions, unique monsters, unique traditions and all that other jazz.

Edit: sorry for the double post.

I'm pretty sure that the graphics in Arena were too primitive to facilitate differentiation between deciduous forest and rainforest. Just saying.

I chuckled at the part about mods for Oblivion. I currently have over a gigs worth of mods loaded on Oblivion; just to make it interesting. I can easily say, with the vanilla version of Oblivion the developers made countless mistakes; some cleaned up by modders. The game itself was very unstable, as are all Bethesda games. Have they ever made a game that doesn't crash when you exit? Or CTD in the middle of game play? I hope their next game is a little more stable. There were a lot of things I agreed with the OP about. Like how in previous games certain aspects had much more free play, like creating spells and enchanted items. In Oblivion, everything was so dumbed down, it made me not want to waste my time dealing with those features. With modding it makes it a little more interesting; but, after playing through the game several times, it gets dull.

I was playing Oblivion earlier today and couldn't help but notice when I was riding down the gold road there seemed to be some kind of creature or bandit every 100 feet, sometimes you could see the next obstacle in the distance, while stopping to kill one, that's how close they were from each other. This was suppose to be a (safe) heavily patrolled road; yet, I was getting attacked every time I blinked by something. I think travelers would be safer if they walked through Oblivion gates. They made the mistake of forcing me to fight things to a point that it became predictable. I know if I go down the road from Bruma to Imperial City I'll have to stop and fight about 12 groups of npcs. So I don't even bother taking the horse, because it's tedious getting off and on, off and on. lol, I'm almost certain none of the developers thought about that when they decided to add horse travel in the game. Geeze they could have at least let me just knock the target in the face while riding by at full speed, ripping it in half, saving me time.

It's those little things that drive me crazy in these games. Seeing how they evolved their ideas from Fallout 3 to New Vegas concerns me in many ways. They added some minor things that I liked; but, they cluttered the core of the game up beyond reason, making it something I would never want to play twice. If New Vegas is a hint at the way Skyrim will be, it may be the first Elder Scrolls game that I absolutely hate. In the older ES games, the world revolved around your character; but, with each new game, it seems like the developers are trying to divide the game up between you and all the NPCs making it very lack luster. It's like playing an MMORPG all alone, where your character is thrown into an environment and told you are going to make a difference; but, in the end you are just some nameless pawn in some NPC's scheme. =/

No, it's forest. I've played the game. I played it last night and I'm even playing it right now. I'm looking directly at the forested Cyrodiil right now. It's definitely a forest. If someone could help me figure out how to take pictures with DOSBox, I'd love to show you. I even just stumbled across a town that looks similar to Bravil. It's got similar wooden architecture and it's right on the water.

Everyone, please remember that New Vegas was NOT made by Bethesda Game Studios, but by Obsidian.

Well, if we want to stick with simply stating problems with TES IV, the main problem would be that it isn't really an RPG, but rather is an action game with RPG elements tacked on as an illusion.

One person stated they want control of their skills (full control) in an RPG and that they have a complaint about Morrowind combat/magic or similar skill-based systems. Well, this is puzzling, to say the least. Why? Because for one thing, you have control of skills... use them and develop the character, and you will be able to successfully perform the various actions you wish to perform. Also, if you don't want to develop the character according to the rules of the game world, why are you playing a role playing game at all rather than playing an action game? It seems that some people want to play an action game despite TES being marketed as a role playing game, and the fact that Bethesda continues to market it as a role playing game franchise despite the fact that TES IV is action rather than RPG only leads to actual role playing gamers being annoyed and disappointed. In the end, Bethesda needs to decide which demographic is their market and stick with it.

As a comparison, the same problem happens with turn-based versus real-time combat. Real-time means that the outcome is not character-based, which means the game is not role playing. In addition, most real-time games implement real time very poorly and allow the AI to cheat horribly. Heck, let me cheat by doing things that are humanly, physically impossible and I'll win all the time, too... but that's what the AI does in most real-time combat games, so players are forced to use strategies to counteract AI cheating rather than merely using logical strategies that would work versus human players.

To see the problem, think about how many games (RPG or other genres) use real-time versus turn-based. There are very few of the latter, even in the strategy game genre. This removes any role playing, and thus removes choice for the consumer. It's very sad, really. There are very few role playing games on the market today because most everything offered uses real time, thus removing any character-focused role playing, and removing any choice for the consumer. Bethesda could correct this problem by returning to a focus on role playing rather than real time action, but I seriously doubt they will do so. Therefore, the entire market segment that wants role playing has nothing to play, and nothing to buy, because developers like Bethesda are all following each other rather than innovating and targeting unmet market demands.

We still have many good games offered, of course, but there could be so much more offered by actually innovating and targeting untapped markets, including markets that have been ignored but were once very vibrant.

Pilo_T, The truth is in the eye of the beholder. For me Oblivion WAS great, and if Skyrim will be at the level of Oblivion greatness, great! Better? Wonderful! And I am sure it'll be much better than Oblivion.

You're insulted? Really?

This is NOT about how [censored] Oblivion was or wasn't. You really need to accept that (yes, it's accept, not except). There's no reason for you to cry because I'm pointing out all of the terrible flaws of Oblivion. And there are WAY more than one (I lol'd at that, though). They've been mentioned millions of times, if you're in denial, that's your own problem. The thing is, when talking about Skyrim, what reason do you have to stop us from talking about things that should be changed and improved upon from Oblivion? Oblivion was the most recent game in the series, it had LOTS and LOTS of flaws and I'll say that till I'm blue in the face, but apart from the fact that I DID enjoy it (people seem to miss that even though I've said it many times) and I've purchased it 4 times, it ALSO managed to fix most of Morrowind's flaws. The two games do not share a lot of flaws. So why am I not mentioning the horrible parts of Morrowind? Because they've already been fixed. Why should I mention, in a thread meant only as harsh feedback for Bethesda to make Skyrim the best game it can possibly be, problems that have been fixed? It's true, I was VERY disappointed with Oblivion and I think Morrowind was leagues better. But I REALLY REALLY TRULY am here in a constructive manner looking toward the future. If you've never benefitted or dealt with harsh criticism, then I apologize that you're insulted, but it sounds like you've lived a very VERY sheltered powder puff life, so yes, do as you said and stay away from this thread and all others like it. Go give your mom a hug. She'll make you feel better.

There's one question I want Oblivion [censored] to answer. Just one. And feel free to ask me whatever you want about Morrowind if you think I'm a really devoted fan. My question for you is, would you have enjoyed Oblivion more or less without level scaling? Would you have enjoyed Oblivion more or less if there were no psychic guards that would hunt you and find you when you went to assassinate some random ass citizen to gain entry to the Dark Brotherhood or because you're roleplaying an evil character that killed said random citizen for no reason, where you CLEARLY should never have been reported. Would you have enjoyed Oblivion more or less if you were able to realistically lose pursuers instead of running half way across Cyrodil to finally not get that "you cannot rest while guards or coming" or "while enemies are nearby" message? Would you have enjoyed Oblivion more or less if there were Crossbows? Would you have enjoyed Oblivion more or less if the combat was deeper than a puddle? (Throw Morrowind combat in my face if you want, I wasn't a big fan of it and I acknowledge Oblivion's was better, however so slightly, in comparison. I know you're going to because no matter how many times I say it you STILL think I'm trying to pick on Oblivion and start a Morrowind vs Oblivion war) Would you have enjoyed Oblivion more or less if there were jump spells, levitation, lock spells (to lock a door behind you in some dungeon while you escape from something that's chasing you), etc... Would you have enjoyed Oblivion more or less if everything you fought wasnt automatically faster than you, forcing you to fight everything you come across or abuse the AI's poor pathing to slip away? Would you have enjoyed Oblivion more or less if there were lots more unique enchantments and armors and weapons to find and bandits weren't fully covered in glass armor 3 hours into the game?

Have I gotten the point though your skulls yet or are you still nerd raging at my terrible choice of title (I forgot how rabid people on these forums are; I should have put some thought into it, I apologize)? My point is, Oblivion had a lot of easily noticeable flaws. I haven't even scratched the surface of things that could be improved upon in this thread. Whether you enjoyed Oblivion or not, how can you NOT acknowledge that improving and fixing (cause some of these things aren't even features. How can you defend psychic guards when it probably wasn't an intentional choice to have that in there and was more than likely an oversight or something they couldn't get working in time for release) many of the things that held the game back from greatness and learning from Oblivion's mistakes can make Skyrim such a better game?

What never made sense to me in complaining about certain awful things revealed to us during Oblivion's development period (Hey, guess what? All the things people told me I was worrying about for no reason that I wouldn't even notice ended up being major flaws in the game. Go figure), is how anyone could love a game so blindly that they will defend it from betterment. You guys REJECT ideas that lead to an improved and better game. You easily accept faults and dismiss them and love the game anyway fully, and for what? Do you think the Dev's need your encouragement? They don't. When I first played Oblivion, I thought it was a great game. It wasn't a bad game, it could have been a lot better, but I didn't come here after [censored]ing about all the stupid mistakes they were gonna make. I came here and, the game being released and no feedback really being useful at that point, congratulated them on a job well done and talked about how much fun I was having. But, really, if they get your money, that's enough of a pat on the back for them. Not to mention they probably understand why we're making these threads, whether or not they ignore what's posted or can't live up to what we're laying out. People like us progress game development. People like you hinder it. A balance of the two is necessary because words of encouragement keep the devs from killing themselves, and harsh criticism shows them they have work to do and gives them goals to meet and keeps them motivated to try their hardest. But the real problem here is that I don't run into a thread about how awesome Oblivion is and [censored] about how I'm insulted that you think it's a good game. I understand the purpose of "Oblivion is the best game ever" threads and I stay out of them, or add to them (since I'm not a really devoted fan and can have different modes of posting). If this sort of discussion isn't your cup of tea, stay out of it. But if you think that improving the game is wrong then you're an idiot.
[/rant]

P.S. Merry Christmas Everyone!

OP: 1
Whiny kid: 0

moving on.... Hopefully all of these issues that have been brought up have been fixed. Besides bad animation, most of the problems of MW were at least addressed (maybe not completely fixed, but improved) in OB, so hopefully most of OB's issues are at least improved in SKY. SKY will probably have problems all its own, but hopefully they aren't nearly as glaring as OB's.

I completely agree with the OP, but I'm looking at things a little more optimistically. To help myself out, I'm going to try to avoid the hype train as much as possible. I think the infamous "woman fireballs dog" video resulted in a lot of disappointment when the game was released, and I'd rather avoid a potential let down.

Rainforest and deciduous forest are both forests. Hence the inclusion of the word 'forest' in their appellations. The crux of this designations is the presence of a landscape replete with trees. With Arena's engine, tree=tree. There is no differentiation between different arboreal biomes found within the separate provinces of Tamriel.

Then it's a deciduous forest. I figured out how to take pictures:

http://oi56.tinypic.com/szze2u.jpg

http://oi51.tinypic.com/33uu2px.jpg

http://oi51.tinypic.com/wh1b9g.jpg

http://oi56.tinypic.com/2elcvtg.jpg

Wow, that was quite a rant, although I agree with every point you made. However, I think we should put our emotions aside (it seems like both of you were a bit riled up), and try to have a reasoned debate, although that might not be all too possible with some of the forum members here. BTW Merry Christmas

Problem tend to be that Arena was basically made heavily with DnD and many generic fantasy on their mind, like the King looking like what he does in Arena for example. Then there location. If Arena were to be true, than Cyrodiil is a Forsest (rather than Jungle), Black Marsh is really a Desert (not a Marsh), Elsweyr is a Forest (which is not half Desert) and god forbid, Skyrim as Solstheim Mk II (which sound more like Norway/ Canada, if anything).

Its with Daggerfall when they really consider reconning and lore writing in their own way.

Yet Daggerfall stated nothing about a jungle and a deciduous forest is still a deciduous forest. Cyrodiil's appeared as a deciduous forest in two games, never as a jungle, Cyrodiil was only ever thought to be a jungle for one of four Elder Scrolls games (Morrowind), and what more proof needs to be given about Cyrodiil's terrain and origins than that? It started off as a deciduous forest and it's still a deciduous forest. What the developers were thinking at any point is irrelevant and three out of four Elder Scrolls games follow heavy "generic fantasy" tropes. Cyrodiil's original terrain isn't the only terrain in the series that has remained the same as its original version, either. Whether one supports Cyrodiil's current terrain or not is subjective, but it is a pure fact that the original lore and the modern lore both have Cyrodiil as a deciduous forest, just as Vvardenfell's terrain is still ashlands.

Well except, as I mention earlier, Arena is irrelevant as its just got started with many borrowed idea. Also, I am quite aware that Daggerfall did not mention clearly what Cyrodiil is, but we were given Pocket Guide to the Empire later on, which give us good sauce on this whole land and what it is. Problem is, they have to recon Cyrodiil's land with just a "simple" god burning the land. This is more than enough to show that the Dev were considering such an idea of a Jungle in a middle of Cyrodiil if they are will to add it, but time wasn't on their side. Many things were remove and they have to half ass it with a forest (which goes side by side with "familiarizing with generic fantasy", if I remember what Todd says clearly) while having to write the say recon that god burn the land, solo Bow and Arrow and say its "progress" while not adding all the throwable and Crossbow, and added the "Levitation" act to remove 3rd Dimension exploration.

Oh, and "Cyrodiil's appeared as forest in two games, never as a jungle, Cyrodiil was only ever thought to be a jungle for one of four Elder Scrolls games (Morrowind)", lets consider this: Hammerfell isn't 100% Arabia as Arena show, and it appear 3 times (Daggerfall and Redguard show a bit more diverse than just Arabia). Morrowind shows us that Vvardenfell is more than just volcanic Ash everywhere from Arena, but with Giant Mushroom and a Swamp-like area at the sount. High Rock? Practically combination of Forest, Mountain, and Jungle in Daggerfall (Arena just show Forest). In a way, all game location reconned Arena.

Mushroom trees are hardly Bethesda's invention. The "borrowed idea" theory spreads to everything in current existence and still doesn't make fact invalid. All Oblivion did was follow the original lore forsaken by Morrowind and follow the setting patterns of the first two Elder Scrolls games, which Morrowind also seemed to ignore.

Cyrodiil in Oblivion has snow to the north, rainforest/swamplands to the south, and barren plains to the west. It's also changed a bit, but is mostly deciduous forest, as Vvardenfell is still mostly volcanic ashlands.

Oblivion followed the old lore and gets flak for supposedly "breaking it" as a result. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, so why maintain it?

Oh I am pretty sure that Mushroom isn't one of Bethesda's invention, but than again, there isn't that many game that would presented some giant mushrooms like that of Morrowind, and this is not including the architect of the Telvanni, the shell from Redoran, Ghostgate surrounding Mount Doom, shady town at the coast line, plains at the North, Vivec, Imperial's version of their Town, etc. As for "borrowed" idea, I would not even be surpise if more than half the idea of Arena is from DnD, the father of all RPG (which game like Ultima to Final Fantasy "borrow" as well). Maintaining Cyrodiil to make it a jungle is an idea of making its it own unique land and make such land tell us the story/makes us wonder how such center of the Empire practically thrive in a Jungle rather than making a carbon copy of Middle Earth (which is pretty much how I see Cyrodiil in Oblivion).

1. leveling system (duh)

2. very plaine landscape. same forest over and over.

3. same art/design dungeons over and over

4. same voice overs alot of the time. embarassing after playing any bioware game.

5. less armor, weapon, skills, spells, than TES3. less everything.

6. the combat was an improvement over tes3, but could have been better>magic/marksmanship/melee. Not up to par with something like Dark Messiah.

7. horrid animations. seriously.