I've just scratched a post earlier today because near ending I got into combat and it was an absolute rant. Oblivion's combat is not better than Morrowind's. Setting everyones agility to 1000 is not an improvement. Here is the rant part as now I don't think it was that bad off topic now as my other points were made by 2-3 posters above me already.

In Morrrowind, they say it is "miss, miss, miss, hit, miss, miss,miss,miss,miss, miss, hit". So you will hit your opponent 50 times and be able to hit them 12 times to kill them. NO. Before you try that, your opponent will waste you! If your combat won't last long, it will end with defeat or retreat. The linearization of quests and level scaling made Oblivion's combat bad experience for me.

In Oblivion, you talk to guards with 50 arrows in their chest. Best way is to slash as fast as possible. Constantly drain their healths, use your fast regen unlimited magicka to heal, attack to undying level scaled enemies. This is the best way because when they come in numbers, delayed power attacks will be the death of you. I finished Arena questline with my lvl 1 (I leveled during though) character(thanks to regeneration pool), I dodged from arrows(unlimited) with my back turned, replenishing my arrows and using them in next stage, when it was finally challenging they gave an animal to my aid, it finished them off for me. So I can say combat was nothing to be praised. In later levels, Morrowind plays like Oblivion too. At least you finish your enemies with right strategy in truly epic combats which can only be won with right strategy. And take that from a Quake/Duke/Doom culture guy. I want action! I want to use my targeting skill as well as brain skills as player skills. So marksmanship was in right direction it was 50 arrows in chest which ruined it. See Dark Messiah for melee combat.

I won't argue about design choices. All additions were good on paper, problem was they were not as good as they advertised it. Something happened, maybe because of time constraints or consolization, what I am trying to say is Oblivion was %45 of what it could have been.

Let me point good things:
Physics/Animation. It is good because they tried to add it. Being the first next-gen game, it didn't work well. Physics were not implemented efficiently. It was a resource hog. I can only play the game as a slideshow back then, I upgraded and it played with 16 FPS which was still unplayable. Thanks Streamline, or even my third upgrade couldn't fix it. I want to point to natural motion anolyzer technologies, such as Rockstar is using in their games. Euphoria. Off course if they can program it themselves, better. Animations were still bad, even with vertex blending.

AI. We all know it didn't work as advertised. Still, get praised for trying. Why I look like a graphics [censored], I am not. I'm an AI [censored]! But we aren't getting improvements in that department. Why I don't know. AI's impact on Gameplay was always underrated. I play Thief gold and MGS 1-2 to feel some good AI. Also lately, Rockstar did an amazing job at that. Those pedestrians acts to surroundings very well, I'm not talking about just Euphoria, they feel my intentions and act accordingly. I was surprised many times at that. "How did they know?" or "No, I wasn't gonna try that, it is a misunderstanding."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su_3bZnJhDw#t=2m12s
Narrating AI. :facepalm:

Schedules: Standing at the same position or going to work every day, coming back and lie down on a bed are equally boring. Where is holidays, heirs, natural cause deaths, migrations, special travels, seasons, aging, decay... I can go on and on about time effects in a game.

Graphics. It was beautiful. I think there were many occasions seeing bushes on country side and thinking, "wow, they look just like in Oblivion." If they tried a little harder, they could make Oblivion Crysis real. But it didn't aged well enough. Mainly LOD is ugly. MGE has to have perfect LOD on the other hand thanks to open city design. When I saw Daggerfall screens, I used to think they were static screens, like in Monkey's island or something... I had no idea it was real 3D open game environments. I can say compared to Duke/Quake/Doom, they were a light year ahead of everyone. With Morrowind they were above time. With Oblivion they were just first and it aged quickly. :sadvaultboy:

Horses. They were useless. I'm not talking about Fast Travel. No (distinct)variation on their speed, jump abilities. You can't fight on horseback. Horses has no character. They didn't even have a name. Yes, I want names for every one of them. And taming and ability to give names. Their animations were also really bad. No physics at all in movements. Go read some development notes from Shadow of Colossus about IK.
http://www.bruno-urbain.com/resources/making_of_sotc.pdf

Sorry, it is very hard in Oblivion's case. Feats are also its failings, what can I do? :shrug:

PS. I won't delete it this time. It is technical as you see. I wouldn't wanted to go into game mechanics because it's game design and preferences. But I had to talk about this combat nonsense. Back in old days when I had no internet connection(I was living in a cave, no actually we didn't have privatized isp by the time, no it's not 3rd world country ), the only mod I needed was World of Faces.

PPS. On a related note, I even liked the junction system of FF8. :chaos:

Sorry, it is very hard in Oblivion's case. Feats are also its failings, what can I do?

Yes, bring back walls of text with 15 different topics for you to try and find something useful, with the majority of those options having only three different variations! Absolutely stunning!

Replaying Oblivion for the first time in a while, and it seems to me that it is perfectly possible to play without the quest marker. A lot of times, NPCs say things like "Here, let me mark it on your map." So you have the point that you're headed to, all you have to do is resist the temptation to teleport there and set the active quest to something else (like Nirnroot hunting) so you have to navigate there yourself. When I got to Weynon Priory, I didn't have to use my quest marker then either, as Prior Maborel was happy to inform me that Brother Jauffre would either be in the priory house or the chapel. And on the way, there are plenty of unmarked caves, settlements, and shrines to come across that you'll miss entirely if you don't take the time to explore (A Shadow over Hackdirt was probably my favorite sidequest in Oblivion). Try it, it works

So long as you know where everything is in relation to the Imperial City, you can go anywhere without hassle.

You guys seem to be surprised that oblivion wasn't completely like morrowind. That's pretty foolish IMO. The same people who hate on Oblivion now because they 'changed too much' will hate on TES: V because 'they changed too much'.

Also Blog Reader how did you get lost in the Kvatch oblivon gate? Its really really really straight forward, as is the most of the rest of Oblivion.

"I liked the way they handled Magic in Oblivion. It was actually a viable alternative to using weapons. Unlike in Morrowind where I found it nearly impossible to make a pure mage (without mods), playing a mage in Oblivion was one of my favorite characters. Also, although some might disagree, I do like how spells can't fail in Oblivion. It could get extremely annoying sometimes in Morrowind when you'd try to cast a spell that has a very low chance of failing, but it still would, and you'd get damaged during some fight and it could completely screw you over."

I disagree with the spell thing said above and it being impossible to play as a pure mage in morrowind ….. but in my case cheating in morrowind was a way of life after the first time through the game. I used that soul trap on self loop hole so many ways, I lost track.

The top 3 things I did like however were:

1st fighting was the big thing for me, they made it easy. Casting spells and fighting with your weapon was cool, archery was a plus too…… the down side for me was that it took some of the intelligence out of the fighting.

2nd, the graphics; everything was bright and vibrant……. Down side though is that it took away some of the world's diversity. It seemed like I was looking at the same patch of trees no matter where I went in oblivion.

3rd plus was; not having to read what a character was saying to me….. Down side though is it took away from the options in interacting with that character.

Not to address the situation in general, just your points specifically:

1; Intelligence in video game fighting? The enemy was a stack of hitpoints in either game, arguing the intelligence of a fight angle is a weak way to go about deciding.
2; Though in Morrowind it was usually the same patches of dirt hills and wasteland. It isn't a point to either side.
3; And in Morrowind their interactions were often short and copy/pasted from someone else. Not much to either side.

Most of the Oblivion critics don't actually clam they changed too much, just the wrong things (no levitation?) for no good reason (no jungle???).

I got lost in the towers I kept on going in the wrong doors.But after I found my way all the other gates were easy.

2nd Same patches of dirt? Every region was completely different, including buildings and people…. I really don’t get this argument at all.

Some people think that Oblivion had variety, for some reason. Personally, I didn't even know there was a swamp until I was blatantly told. I thought I was walking around more forest. :shrug: