How is the lack of / invulnerability to encounter and complete restorative powers of this little "walk" justified?

That may be so, but that's how they were intended to move.

When you look at Silt Striders... they just look like fragile beast who really have to do there best to keep their balance on those legs wich clearly don't have many walking freedom... I guess that in a big storm they could easily could be blown on their side....

Also... Morrowinders are always whining that there are less hand-placed items in Oblivion..... Oblivion uses most special items as Quest rewards (So I can whine that Morrowind has no unique quest rewards) and as merchandise in stores (So I can whine that shopkeepers in Morrowind have no unique items) Oblivion does have some unique items wich you may come across:
-The Frostwyrm bow..
-The bow (of wich I forgot it's name) you can find in the Deadlands...wich is supposed to be the strongest in the whole game..
-Bands of Kwang Lao
-Fin Gleam
-Circlet of Omnipotence

not much but there are also the Rune and Doom Stones wich most people tend to forget.... There are alot of them.... the green ones.... aren't really special.... they just give a summoned daedric piece of equiment... but the other are really special and unique and without guidance really hard to come by since they are spread across the whole of Cyrodiil... There are 21 Doom stones.... 13 of them are related to the 13 birthsigns.. each gives you an unique blessing, most of them are greater powers.... You can only obtain 1 so you really have to CHOICE wich greater power you want the most...And at many occations greater powers can be better then an artefact.... the others are all related to the other celestial bodies... They too give really great great powers but instead you need to choice one you can have all... but you need to have a decent amout of fame and infamy to earn them... There are also Wayshrines in Cyrodiil wich give just like in Morrowind a temporary bonus (Just like the Ayleid wells) but those aren't really special... BUT the give the Pilgrim's Grace wich is a really powerfull greater power I use often and it helps alot...So now I can whine: Eeh... in Morrowind they don't have many Greater Power givers scattered around Vvardenfell....



Intended... but it isn't.... Vivec was intened to be a beautifull open venice-like city... but it isn't.. Morrowind was intened to play throughout the whole of Morrowind, but it didn't....

There's no representation of a moving silt strider, in either books or dialogue. They can only move how they're actually capable of moving, and the only evidence for what they can do is their appearance.



The former is also a problem in Morrowind. The other could be a simulation of how long the walk should take.

It's not a problem when you consider the travel is by vehicle and not alone. For example, A bandit is less likely to attack a wagon with someone riding shotgun (crossbow) than a lone traveler with a large purse on their belt who are tiring themselves out walking between A & B. A "long walk simulation" should include a "tired-out from trudging-about" simulation, not a "you awake refreshed and relaxed" simulation.

The driver of the silt strider wasn't armed, and neither were the captains. The latter would be easily to take, especially in the Sheogorad region, and the former would be easy to take for a skilled marksman or an agile bandit.

That you saw.

The latter in which grouping? Method or traveler examples?

Still no justification for the restorative powers of marathon hiking across the entire country while already mysteriously avoiding any and all possible pitfalls and hindrances with absolutely no cost, monetary or physical.

(I do not generally contribute to such threads because they usually end in BS arguments and passionate rantings of chosen individuals. This one looks promising though, so there I go.)

I've been playing TES since Arena and loving crap out of Morrowind and somewhat enjoying Oblivion as well. When OB came out, I spent four weeks playing as much as possible but lost interest too quickly because of the too generic look, generic setting, world that feels empty (because feels devoid of lore and RAI-driven characters do not help). Even when I wanted to fall back in love with OB, I could not do it no matter what mods I have installed. So I went back to MW, achieved new level of its appreciaton and joined the "morrowhiners" crowd. Few weeks ago I started playing OB again, this time on xbox and while enjoying the game again, I feel somewhat same as three years ago but this time I do not really care because I was prepared and I came for some quick and painless action RPG fun. And OB delivers. Playing the game on the gamepad is sweet indeed and you can tell the menus and whole game were designed to be played that way. And if you forget everything you know about MW then that'll do (pig .

But let's cut to the chase: the often mentioned argument about animations and graphics in general is valid until you realise that after a while you really do not care about the looks of game because when svcked into the setting, story, character, you no longer pay attention to such "details".

It is the graphics that helps you to get into the game, but it is the game world that keeps you going.

And this is the main difference between MW and OB. In the first one you feel like there is always something to do, in the second, just climb any mountain north of Bruma and you have seen it all.

And I sure agree it is weird, because in OB everything and everybody respawns so you can go on with looting and fighting as long as you wish but the experience is still somewhat empty, partly because of the levelling system which just spoils the fun, element of surprise and which makes exploration in fact useless, because you can keep going in the few same dungeons, forts and Ayleid ruins and getting the same levelled garbage.

As I can tell from Fallout3, devs made great progress and solved the lame levelling mechanisms, created interesting, unique, hand-designed and huge consistent world which fills me with hope for TES5.

Attacking a Silt Strider would involve more than just a couple of bandits, we're talking about a major tribal hunting group, and then you've got to butcher it, loot the passengers, and be gone before the Inperial Legion decides to find out why the Silt Strider is 45 minutes late getting into Balmora. You might be able to pull that off ONCE. Any more than that, and your tribe is due for a visit that could make the Spanish Inquisition seem like fun. After a few such incidents after the initial occupation, the tribes know better than to attack the Silt Striders.

It's not that "Fast Travel" broke the game in Oblivion, it's that it was "unexplainable" as to how you got there safe, rested, and healed by somehow just "appearing" there, because there was no representation of any form of transportation system in the game. There were no caravans, no hirable carriages, no paid passage aboard ship, no Guild Guide teleportation services, etc. In Oblivion, you could use the FT system which felt totally out of place in the game (RP breaking), or walk, and the game was designed with everything scattered so that "not using it" was a difficult choice; in spite of that, many chose NOT to use it. The complaint isn't that FT was added, it's that all of those other forms were removed between it and the previous game. In Morrowind, you could use the transport services which fit seamlessly into the game world, or walk, when both were viable options from a RP standpoint.

Going back to an earlier set of comparisons, Morrowind's combat worked well "under the hood", but was very poorly animated and looked terrible. You had multiple attack styles for most weapons, variable speed/damage tradeoffs by either spamming the attacks or "charging" them for full damage, and a direct representation of the character's skills and attributes versus those of the opponent. Of course, that all looked "wrong" when your weapon passed harmlessly through the opponent with no visible explanation. Oblivion had a more fluid set of animations that looked great and were "exciting", but took no account of character skills other than by "nerfing" damage; your Thief and Mage fought exactly the same as your Fighter, except that they did a few less points of damage when they hit. Neither system was a complete answer, and the main difference was more RP versus FPS, not "good" versus "bad".

Fencing teaches you how to avoid getting hit, because one hit and the combat is over. It's one extreme, where both opponents are considered "unarmored", and the first hit ends the action. The opposite extreme, in video games, is where two opponents beat the snot out of each other until one runs out of "hitpoints" and falls down. Neither is totally representative of armed and armored combat.

Are you referring to the smuggler's caves in Morrowind or Oblivion?




If the game mechanics behind fast travel in Oblivion intended to create the illusion of size, then they did a poor job of it considering how big Cyrodiil is supposed to be. Assuming that fast travel in Oblivion was supposed to emulate traveling by foot or horseback (as there is no other justification for HOW your character arrived at their destination), then the journey should have taken anywhere from a few hours to several days. This was not the case. You could travel from one corner of Cyrodiil to another within one day of in-game time. I think had they implemented something similar to Daggerfall, there would be fewer complaints about believablity, though complaints about removing any kind of integrated transit system (a la Morrowind) would remain.





Seems most of your points agree with my own arguments, so I'm not sure if you are defending my statements or arguing against them (which is usually the case when one quotes someone else's post, unless otherwise indicated). In any case, I agree with the above statement.

Then my http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1037616&view=findpost&p=15044716 still stand.





Again, it has been a couple of months since I last played Oblvion, so I'll admit that my memory is fuzzy on the details of many of the dungeons. However, ThatOneGuy gave a pretty good description early on in this thread that detailed one (typical) Ayleid ruin. From his description, there was little to no evidence about how the Ayleids lived, or the function of any particular room. For the most part, they seemed to be dungeons that were desiged for the sole purpose of dungeon crawling, with no real clues or links to the civilizations that had once thrived within. But, rather than take anyone's word at face value, I will replay a few dungeons in Oblivion and see for myself. I'll even ask your advice about which dungeons I should 'test'.





First, I find that the first part of this statement contradicts itself, though I'll need to reread what it was in response to. But, if you are saying that I need to extrapolate my own theories based off of random, off-hand references made every once in a while by NPCs and/or various items, then make conclusions based off of those theories and consider those conclusions as 'evidence', then I would still claim that the game was sorely lacking in the lore department as it offered very little in the way of indisputable information. The problem with basing conclusions ('evidence') on theories is that different people will interpret everything a little differently. Without hard, tangible, factual evidence (the kind written in books, et al), then we are all forced to come to our own conclusions, which is hardly an adequate way for a game like TES to explain the people, places and things found in the gameworld. If everything in TES were based off our own interpretation of things, then we would all have a different viewpoint of Tamriel and everything in it.



I've done my fair share of walking in Oblivion as well. However, if I didn't want to waste a bunch of time running across the map and wanted to get from point A to point B quickly, then what OTHER option is there besides magically warping (fast traveling) in Oblivion? In Morrowind, not only did I have the option of walking, but I could use Mark/Recall, guild teleportation, boats, silt striders, or Divine/Almsivi intervention. Not to mention, I could also fly



Since Oblivion's style of fast travel has REPLACED the fast travel methods present in Morrowind, it absolutely affects what I do in my game. Not to mention that Oblivion's system changed the number of options for fast travel from about six, down to one (two, if you consider riding a horse 'fast travel').





There's also the possibility that they galloped or jumped, though their name would suggest otherwise. But hey, since we're just throwing around theories....

I'll just copy this from my closed thread.


I'll admit, my playtime with Morrowind has been short, but I can say it feels leagues above Oblivion. I'll start by throwing a curveball: I like Morrowind's combat more than Oblivion's. In MW, I feel as though I've been developing my own "style" of combat, encompassing Crossbows, Throwing Stars, and a bit of destruction magic. I can easily backpedal and get off a few stars before an enemy catches up with me again.

Oblivion's combat was more defined, and more limited. You couldn't do much to spice up the battle after it came down to melee combat. It's a bit redundant, you can't really develop your own style when the flow of combat is block, power attack, block, power attack. There was no "fast" option for archers: you have to pull out a bow, nock an arrow, and fire a painfully slow arrow. In MW, a quick switch to some stars or darts is always an option.

Morrowind handles travel so much better as well. Actual travel options like the Silt Striders and the Mages Guild made the world seem more believable. I'm seriously supposed to believe the Countess of Chorrol is gonna walk to the Imperial City? Also, fast travel is not optionable! As a stealthy character, at level 22, taking a stroll outside of town will attract the attention of swarms of Trolls, Minotaurs, Will'o'Wisps, and those tree chicks, who will destroy a sneaky character.

So... yeah, I think I enjoy Morrowind more...

The thing that ultimately gets me (as in, utterly infuriates me due to the insanity of it), is how you go from Vvardenfell as shown in Morrowind....to Cyrodiil as shown in Oblivion. Namely, the way Cyrodiil, the heartt of the Empire, is such a hollow, cultureless land of vapid blowhards. I cannot comprehend how Bethesda ripped out the ONE THING that gave Morrowind such a lasting appeal. :banghead:

Where was the Elder Council? Where was the cultural distinctions of Nibeneans and Colovians? Where were all the different sects of the Nine Divines, and why should we believe they are "better" than Daedra worship? Where was the backstory to the Mythic Dawn, and how they managed to pull off the assassination of the entire Imperial Family? Why were all the faction questlines completely disjointed from each other? And above all else, why should we even care about the people of Cyrodiil when they were basically culturally dead and meaningless compared to the people of Morrowind?

It's like they just didn't care. Was it really to appease FPS console kiddies as it has been claimed on these boards?

If you want the short answer, yes

If you have playd both, and playd morrowind before that you ever playd oblivion, you will properbly agree with me. Look at oblivion and tell yourself, "what has been improved or upgraded in oblivion, and what have been downgraded.


Oblivion "upgrades": Graphics, voice dialog, world size, magic and combat.

Oblivion "downgrades": Lesser guilds, Lesser enchant, no vampire clans, no multiple summon unit, lesser skills, bad speechcraft skill, no werewolfs, lesser artifacs, khajit and argonian have human body, no levitation, jump, mark & recall and divine intervention spells, few islands, lesser voices and DARK ELVES DON'T HAVE THAT DEEP VOICE but sounds like little boys!, no unique caves or ruins, no spears, no unique landscape snow in the north, forrest everywere else, no ships to travel, cities are all the same, no legion garrison, lesser armor, lesser weapons, no hand placed items, soulgems do lookalike, no legion faction, no imperial cult faction, few different daedric monsers and last thing but properbly the biggest mistake their new level scaling svckS!

Kudos to the first and last statement. Fallout 3 gives me tons of hope for a decent [better than a Morrowind->Oblivion progression] TES5, in terms of gameplay, substance, ect.

Now, onto the discussion at hand. I think some of you are missing the last part of Mirelurk's statement:

You guys are just comparing silly irrelevant things. Morrowind is from 2002, that's 7 years ago, of course the graphics are going to look blocky, of course its not going to have as much voice acting, of course the animations will be silly, of course the AI is going to be simple, of course view distance is going to be throttled, of course the terrain is basically retextures. It's because the game is 7 years old. None of those "faults" are going to be repeated in a proper sequel, so debating them is moot to the point of this topic.

I wish I wasn't as tired, so I could properly contribute my opinion, but the jist of my feelings are to follow:

I feel Oblivion really lacked substance, back story, meaning, and immersion. I felt like story lines were basically a paragraph or two of dialogue, consisting much of theatrics, rather than lore, and didn't contain as much information or back story as in Morrowind. My best example in Morrowind, is when you finally talk to Vivec, he tells you so much of what's going on, about the history of the god's, the Sixth House, Lord Dagoth, Nerevar, Vvardenfel, and so much more. I sat there for a good 10-15 minutes reading all he had to say, and I felt like I really talked to an all knowing god. I got none of that in Oblivion. Part of that, is because I feel like the voice actors, while decent, weren't really capable of delivering the feeling and emotion in their short lines, as was possible in paragraphs of text.

I know some of you aren't fond of reading, so I think a compromise would be only voicing important/quest dialogue, and having a text based system similar to Morrowind's for the rest of the "unimportant stuff".

I also feel that removing some of the things in Morrowind, and adding in the lock picking and speech craft mini-games, was unnecessary. Dart's, throwing stars/daggers, crossbows, spears, enchanting, medium armor, unarmored, teleportation/levitation, a number of weapon types (tanto's, Katana's, ect), and a variety of other skill effects (sanctuary comes to mind) shouldn't have been removed. These added so much variety to a character, and makes Oblivion just feel empty with out some (though I could live without others). I don't see much of a compromise here, nothing wrong with variety, right?

Also, I don't really like the whole dumbing down thing. Getting rid of the barter system was silly, and made vendors, buying, and selling, feel really forced to me (also the lack of being able to drop gold seemed odd). The combining of axe/blunt and short/long blade didn't sit well with me. I could see why they did it, but I'd still prefer them being separate skills. A possible compromise is making each skill give half the skill gain to the other related skill (IE: axe skill at 68, blunt at 34. Would be more complex factoring attribute and major/minor/misc skills, making the two skill sets closer related.) or having one skill higher than the other would cause the lower to raise faster.

Lets get back to discussing the games, not arguing with each other, yeah?

EDIT: Forgot to add, you guys can keep a toggle-able Oblivion style fast travel as an option, but please, for the love of Akatosh, add in a Morrowind style system as well.

Oblivion has some preaty nice graphics and the gameplay rocks too, same with Morowind the games have some simularities but their far from the same.

I love them both ofcourse but I think that Morowind has some things that really make the game more non-lenear (sry if I mess something up I have only played Morowind for a few hours) like more weapons classes and Options for Combat.

Where in Oblivion there is a better combat system and fat travel which really saves some time. Better quest log also.

I dont know why they didnt add crosbows o OB when they could of, etc.

But OB is a next gen game and it always was the games are from two diferent game eras so to speak I think that Morowind for its time was the best game and both of them will be in the RPGs of all time.

I really DO hope and TES5 will be as fun as Morowind and as beautifull as Oblivion so we can have this kind of Topic on TES3 TES4 & TES5

Later

Oblivion was almost in every sense a failed game compared to morrowind. It lacked atmoshphere, mystery and discovery. Storyline svcked a lot and there weren't any conflicting faction paths at all. Be a master of all trades, don't be afraid of consequences child. Every questline happens inside of it's own bubble without effecting the gameworld much. Everything felt so one dimensional that it made the whole world feel quite implausible. Moreover the constant handholding annoyed the crap out of me. The clearest example of this is the notorious level scaling: scaled quests, monsters, npcs and loot. Oblivion was so streamlined for the masses that it hurts. Now that this has been said, let me think about the good aspects.

Oblivion had naturally few good aspects and those are centered around gameplay.

1) Melee and ranged combat systems.

Let it be known that benthesa did pretty good job. Combat system itself was well thought on paper. Different moves looked like a real thing. You could really feel when you hit the bandit with that gigant warhammer and how the foe in heavy armor was knocked back. Manual blocking was an other nice touch. Bow system was great too..sadly level scaling and streamlining ruined the fun.

2) magic

While I missed couple of magic effects from morrowind, the magic system was really stunning feature. Perhaps the single most complex thing in the whole game. In addition I adore still how easily one can mix combat, stealth and magic together. It flows so naturally.

3) perks. Not every perk was usefull or worthwhile but this is something i hope benthesa to explore further in TES V. Just balance the skills better next time please. And bring back the separate long sword, short sword, axe and blunt skills.

4) npc routines/AI. Watching npcs doing all those various tasks really created nice atmosphere. Also the whole A.I was a big step ahead compared to morrowind.

5) Stealth, well what can be said...they created a really wonderfull stealth system but ruined it with level scaling. No point thieving if everything is scaled. No point trying stealth skills if every monster has tons of health.

the problem i think is tht there were no requirements, so in Mw it was possible to join all of them, but your char. would have to be good at everything then. Not just master of every guild, meanwhile you couldve just smashed your way through the mages guild without really need to become a mage. im pretty sure tht was the case anyway.

"Being a mage" is meaningless in TES with so many hybrid classes with magic-using capabilities. I appreciate Bethesda's having done away with skill requirements for the various factions, and as for the MG in Oblivion, more of the quests could have been designed to encourage the use of magic. As it is, I hope they explore the "political advancement" idea as an alternative path to climbing the ranks in TES 5.

So you see nothing wrong in having an Archmage of the head of the entire Mages Guild who has all apprentice-level magic skills? Or even worse, magic skills that are all at 5? The skill requirements in Morrowind, IMO, did a good job of allowing flexibility in guild-joining character classes while still enforcing the idea that characters must have some practical relevancy to the guild they join. Morrowind's guildhalls requiring just one scant favored skill at 90, two others at 35, and INT/WILL at 35 is hardly authoritarian or unnecessarily restrictive. And it prevents taking that antithesis-of-magic barbarian beserker and effortlessly rising to the top with him. Or that kind-of-sort-of magic dabbler and again rising to the top with him.

I see rank as a way of earning it, through training as such, not hand given though quest after quest. Heck, people would not even let a lower rank member of the Guild do some quest unless they reach the require rank in Morrowind via by magic training. In a way, rank that Morrowind done actually mean something, not just for sounding cool.

Nope. Who says the archmage can't have been a political appointee? Or that the archmage even has to be respected? And while we're at it, does it even make sense for the PC to become the archmage in the first place?

Respected is one thing. Competent, however, is quite another. The Archmage as a political appointee? Who would appoint them? The Elder Council? That would kind of derail the whole point of working up the ranks via Mages Guild quests. And if not the Elder Council, why would the guild intentionally choose someone to be their leader, administrator, and chief instigator of policy, if that someone knew nothing substantial about the craft(s) which the guild is designed to promote? How could they trust their leadership to be effective or to encompass and take into consideration things that master spellcrafters should know? Who will they turn to if they have an issue regarding spell classification, for instance? If the Archmage is just a knowledge-less figurehead, then that renders the whole guild fairly stagnant and unable to grow. The ambitious lower members wouldn't stand for it; they'd force the figurehead out and establish someone they thought better suited.

This I will agree with.

Now you're getting the idea. :clap: It'll be interesting to see if Bethesda does indeed get that creative.