With you, there. It's like friends saying they wish they there was a place they could rent for the fourth time Plan 9 From Outer Space. Not because the film is good, but because it's so bad it's funny. And the NPC conversations in Oblivion break the game's carefully built immersion, what with NPCs having their own schedules, merchants having closing times, etc.

Can anybody tell me if there's something you really liked in those NPC discussions? Maybe something I missed?

My Favorite things in Oblivion since playing Skyrim are:
1) Spell making
2) Acrobatics (Jumping in Skyrim is soooo limited)
3) Speachcraft wheel. (It was a lame mini-game, but at least it was something)
4) Rotting Zombies
5) Deadra (Yeah yeah, I know the whole lore thing, but...)
6) Greaves
7) Attributes
8) Skill selection (Hand-to-hand, mysticism, etc)
9) Open lock spells
10) More interactive NPC's

It's just small talk. If you don't eavesdrop on their conversation, but just let it be "background pvssyr," it doesn't need to break immersion at all. It's no worse than the conversation at some parties I've been to...

...So you hang out with the Stepford Wives?

If only you knew how much I hate what they talk about at work you′d understand how I wish it was Oblivion NPC:s who was talking instead!

Naw, but I used to work for an insurance company, and the office parties were deadly.

Oh I miss plenty of things. The biggest being the fact I cannot get as attached to the characters I make in Skyrim. I have no idea why, but my 6 or 7 Skyrim characters have been boring. Oh sure I have about 200 or so hours logged now, but little of that was any RPing, which was one of the biggest parts of my Elder Scrolls experience. Skyrim is good, don't get me wrong, but I found Oblivion to be the better game for me.

In Oblivion I play in first person mode almost 100% of the time. But I really love that every time I enter the menu I get to see a great view of my character. It seems like a little thing, but I think it is important. In Skyrim, even if you play in third person mode you are mostly seeing your character's back. To really appreciate your character's face and general appearance you have to stop what you are doing and fidget with the camera. I believe that is a mistake. And by mistake, I mean it is a decision that took away something that connects us to our characters. Plus, I cannot fathom why they took it out. There's so much wasted black space in the Skyrim menus, and our character is obviously in memory at all times. Strange.

Oh? I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition....


That above mudcrab line followed by NOOOOO would be perfect for the Conversation amongst NPCs thread.


Familiarity is also key.

I can't believe that some people here miss the armor and weapon degradation.Having to repair weapons and armor after every battle(and usually breaking all the hammers so i had to visit a smith after every dungeon)bored me to no end.At least in Skyrim you can last longer in the willderness and that is a major plus for me.

One of my great annoyances with Skyrim. SkyUI has done a fine job removing several of the worst failings of the horrendous UI, but the paper doll isn't back in, and I don't know that it ever will be.

Too bad they cut that out. I also like to see my character′s face and being able to spin him around to see how his clothes look and all. It is a very nice feature imo.

I laugh every time an npcs voice actor changes mid conversation, ask him about something quest related and get one voice actor then ask one of the generic questions and get a different voice.

I find it odd how i couldn't progress in the Thieves Guild in Oblivion to save my life, but i fell in LOVE with the Guild in Skyrim. And was on my way to being the Guildmaster in a very short time. Maybe it's because of all the job options? I was no good as a thief in Oblivion, but there are jobs in Skyrim that i absolutely rock at. :: Furthermore, i REALLY miss the Fighter's Guild.

From a roleplaying standpoint, I find I enjoy using in-game crafting stations to improve weapons more than an out-of-game repair menu to repair degradation.

Doing away with that was a good thing, imho. In Oblivion it got to be simply drudgery to have to open up the repair menu after ever single fight to fix my gear.

I agree. Scylla working in the smithy to create her own orcish armor and battle axe gave me (and especially her) a real feeling of accomplishment.

Complete agreement. Anything that takes my character out of the game to achieve something which could be done in-game, frankly, annoys me. That's why I didn't like the absence of immersive means of fast travel in Oblivion, and why I've got two mods that add that. It makes the experience, for me, more...continuous. This is also true of NPC schedules, which was missing in Morrowind (except in a mod). It brings a natural cycle of actions to gameplay.

I like using the blacksmithing stations in SK to improve weapons, that's definitely a cool addition. But I did find it odd that they completely removed weapon and armor repair in SK.

Having recently returned to playing OB, I find I like repairing my weapon again. It sorts of keeps me in touch with it, makes it feel more substantial. Maybe things degrade too quickly in OB (I'm sure that's been discussed before), but on the other hand no weapon stays perfectly sharp after use and no armor would stay perfectly intact after taking multiple impacts. So, in a way, OB's repair system helps increase my sense of "being there" moreso than its absence does in SK.

Night Eye (levels Illusion!)
Spell Making
Hair color during Character creation! You can really get some cool custom colors going!
Skill leveling - you don't have to worry about perks!
Oblivion GATES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't know why but OMG I miss kicking Dremora butt! LOL
Martin/Sean Bean <3

Hahaha, well there's a thread I never thought I'd see. And here I thought Oblivion fans were all about progress and new stuff

Sorry, no more mockery. I just hope that now you'll understand Morrowind fans a bit more and not say stuff like "your case is different, blah blah".

Skyrim is a lot more similar to Morrowind than Oblivion was, so naturally I will pick TESV over TESIV every time. That said, There is one thing I do in fact miss from Oblivion - horses (Morrowind didn't have them, so OB is the only TES I can relate to ). In Skyrim they are just so insanely stupid and while it feels realistic to me (sorry horse fans, my sister loves horses, rides them all the time, but says the same thing - they're as dumb as a stool), the inability to tie them to a tre or something isn't. So I'd rather have the low motility type from OB than the "come back here you piece of troll dung" type from SK.

It seems to me the devs wanted to return to the Morrowind feeling all along, starting with the Shivering Isles. I personally loved the mushroom trees in the madgod′s realm! The only thing missing were the Silts!

I was thinking exactly that when I was playing Morrowind last month. The Shivering Isles look just like the area north of Vivec (The Fields of Khummu?) where all the mushroom trees are. Morrowind even had Golden Saints as well. Weren't there Hungers too?

Yes indeed it were. They are even showed in one of the loading screens

There are practical and logistical problems to retaining degradation in Skyrim. Unlike Oblivion, where many things are accomplished out-of-game via menus, Skyrim's emphasis, philosophically speaking, is on doing away with menus and accomplishing as many things as possible inside the game world. So instead of merely opening our menu and making potions anywhere, in Skyrim we make potions at an Alchemy station. We have in-game carriage transport as well as menu-based transport. If smithing had been included in Oblivion we would merely open a menu. In Skyrim we have forges, grindstones, workbenches, smelters and tanning racks.

How does this affect degradation? With this new emphasis on in-game actions, if degradation were to be included in Skyrim at least one forge and grindstone would need to be placed inside every dungeon and in nearly every exterior cell across Skyrim to ensure that players would not get stuck inside a large dungeon or forced to fight a bandit or dragon with broken equipment and no way to repair it. I'm fairly sure Bethesda felt that sticking forges and grindstones in every cell in the game would be so intrusive and unimmersive that it would defeat the very purpose of trying to create a more realistic or plausible experience.

What a well-written post! You make a great point.

The one counter I will suggest is that smithing and potion-making in Skyrim, while indeed done "in" the game world, still bring up a menu when you use them. So, though we do see our characters smithing or mixing potions, nonetheless there is a menu in the foreground as they do so. All that being said, I take your point. In Skyrim I would imagine that your suggestion is correct, that repair would probably require access to a smithing station, unless they added repair hammers back to the game (or whetstones, etc.).