Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't notice the ever-so-slight texture changes. That's ok then, it's completely different! [/sarcasm]

EDIT: Added in this statement to make it sound a little less harsh. Was a bit much

Actually, the Gold Coast, Colovian Highlands and Heartlands look pretty similar, with the most variation coming from the different light. In game, their differences amount to "this part is slightly more yellow, the other slightly more green, and all are more or less sparsely wooded soft rolling hills."

The texture differences weren't that great in Morrowind either.

I think what made Morrowind's environment stand out was probably simply the way the animals were more thoughtfully placed, plus all the unique stuff it was populated by.

I could tell the difference between Molag Amur and the Bitter Coast :shrug:

Most of the differences in Morrowind where the actual Meshes. I could tell I was in Telvanni areas when I saw mushroom towers. I could tell I was in Redoran areas when I saw hollowed out shell homes. I never got that feeling in Oblivion. There was tiny differences between each town, and none between each settlement.

I'm about the most caustic Oblivion critic you'll ever see but I can admit Oblivion got a lot right.

1. NPC scheduling. Made cities feel MUCH more genuine and alive. Made bandit camps less predictable. Made day and night meaningful.

2. Magic system. Mages were just about forced to be narcoleptic in Morrowind to keep up with warriors because you could cast like 3 spells and then have to sleep a day. To add insult, magic ITEMS pretty much replaced the need for mages. Oblivion mages can keep up.

3. Stealth system. Oblivion is the first TES where stealth seems fully integrated into the game. The creators of the Thief series helped out here and it shows. And at last, the Sneak skill actually helps you do Thief/Assassin guild MISSIONS.

4. Combat system. Not very deep, but it's a start and better than morrowind's spam-clicks.

5. Distant land. Need a pretty modern system to take full advantage, but damn is it beautiful.

6. The removal of Levitate. Mountains, heights, Acrobatics, ledges, and dungeon z-axis actually impact the gameplay. It's engrossing!

7. The whole idea of including the player in the use of skills I think is a good one. In many cases, the implementation was disastrously badly done - the easiness of the Security minigame for example pretty much makes the Security skill useless. But if they put some decent game designers on the task in TESV I think this is a much better model to follow than Morrowind's "tell the character to do something and roll a d20 to see if he succeeds". I want to be involved!

8. Dungeon size. Daggerfall's dungeons were legendary in hugeness. Morrowind's were dinky. Oblivion got it just right.

9. Dungeon cells. Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion all heavily reuse their dungeon cells - it's the only way to make a hundred dungeons without unreasonable production costs. But in Oblivion it always feels like there's at least one cell per dungeon I haven't seen before.

10. Dungeon traps. They wimped out on making the traps actually do anything - you need a mod for that - but playing ironman with the possibility of being one-shotted by a booby trap makes for delicious heart-in-throat tension.

11. Havoc physics. Frustrating when I'm trying to arrange my bookshelf. Ridiculously entertaining otherwise.

Neither system is better, so to say, but, imo, Morrowind's is the better RPG system, by far. Character skill actually makes a noticable impact.



:facepalm:

I believe it's very likely that you're alone on that one.

In reply to the mention of how, as you raise up in skill with magic, there should be more than just some new, unlockable tier - perhaps they could take a leaf out of Fable 2's book (which is one of my favourite things about the game) where the spells become more powerful, widespread and generally more impressive in animation as you go.

Also, there should be some benefit for charging spells up for longer, and an animation for this charging. The whole business (in Fable 2 again - no I'm not a massive fan of the game, just this aspect) of building up an immense ball of fire and then dumping it to the floor with devastating effect compared to releasing an instant, tame blast is pretty awesome.

maybe the minority, but in http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1102092-levitate-mark-and-recall/page__p__16117894&#entry16117894 Levitate got more criticism than support.

I think Levitate should certainly come back. Who doesn't like flying? Just make it nontrivial to get/use so that the z-axis actually matters.

Making whichever NPC is tasked with defending stuff actually aware of it, and both use it as well as have active defences against it (archers, mages with long-range spells like burden and dispel and so on) would go a long way to making it simply a "high-level" tool, but not game-breaking.