If by ineractive you mean taht the stress is put on player skills, then I will agree that Oblivion is very interactive. Much much more then it should have been. You cannot ahve an RPG where the characters' skills do not metter. It is a contradiction in terms. Games that put most or all the value on player skills sure exist and are (probably) good as well, but as FPSs or hack 'n' slashes, but not RPGs

Personally I think a big issue there on BOTH sides of the debate also is that people only think there is "TOTAL failure or TOTAL success".

However you'd also have to see the variations of a "failure", with the system in Morrowind it was "action without reaction" which does feel kinda fake. When your weapon "missed" absolutely NOTHING happened, but something must have happened to make it miss, as we all agreed it did NOT dematerialzie. What could have happaned:

-The enemy jumped out of harms way - He had to use some stamina and his concentration on the environment probably dropped, evena chance that he slips and falls down = Failure to do damage but the enemy could be slightly more exhausted or even tripped.
-The enemy twisted/turned out of harms way - Doing so has a impact on your concentration and takes time to prepare for another attack = A connecting attack is much more likely to hit making it not possible to endlessly chain evasive moves like this.
-The weapon was blocked by a shield/parry - Takes a lot of strength to do, the blow could send him staggering = Continuous blows weaken the opponent or even havea chance to trip him.
-The weapon was stopped/bounced off his armor - The force of the blow still carries over into the armor = No health damage done but it weaken the opponent and dmages the armor, possibly even making it to damaged to wear.
-You DID miss entierly (swung to high or too far away) - Ever had someone fake a punch at you and you flinched? That can happen too, even on a near miss it can still scare your opponent = Being scared can sett off his concentration.


All those could effectively be considdered a failure since none of them did damage but all had a apropriate reaction to them.
As I said in the previous thread, it's true that the computer has to base the result on numbers but the outcome does not have to be 1 or 0, it can be anywhere between 0 and 1000 AND branch off into "result # - A, result # - B, result # - C...".

TES4 was the first and only "rpg" I've played, with a skillset and inability to fail in anything.
So I really hope they fix that, either going back to TES2-3 systems, or any alternative one that makes sense.

I can sympathize with those who want to go back to some sort of system where you can still fail, but it has to be better than Morrowind's. Low skill should not just mean you're going to miss that sword attack 95% of the time if your Blade skill is five.

There's got to be some sort of compromise between player skill and the game system, but it's got to be fair to the player and not tedious, which is the main problem. The rampant spell and attack failures in Morrowind were not fun, at least in my book. I love everything about that game, but I hate starting over and grinding rats until I can actually hit/cast something.

I'll go as far as to offer a suggestion that certain enemies should use more advanced AI packages that would make combat skill more important. I see no reason why a zero intelligence being like a skeleton, zombie, or the like should be bothering to dance, dodge, and hop around to avoid your attacks. Animals should be a little tougher, but they really should not necessarily be hostile in the first place. Bandits should vary, as they make a living preying on generally unarmed people. Now things like a bandit group's leader, for example, shouldn't be an easy fight. They should try to dodge your attacks, use their block skill, etc. This is where your random/skill driven element could come in - to do things like determine if your attack would make it's way past the enemy's block skill, or nick him before he can move away from your sword. Things like that.

One thing I don't think I've seen discussed is that it all comes down to the animation in the end. How many different combat animations is Bethesda going to be willing to animate for both the player and creatures you're going to fight? I think that's as big of a hurdle as the number crunching, myself. I love 'em, but animation is never really Beth's strong point.

For things like alchemy, I can see a failure system making sense - sometimes you're just going to turn out a dud potion. You're grinding ingredients to make magical concoctions and the like.

I don't really want to see out right spell failure back, so something like another poster suggested would be ideal, where your spells would have a strength range that varies on how strong you are in that skill.

Variants and getting rid of all-or-nothing? I'm down with that.


That's why animations shouldn't be used to give visual clarity to the results of chance-to-fail algorithms. AI packages should.

I heartily agree that Morrowind's brutal failure rates were frustrating, expecially because there was no way easy to avoid them by sticking to simplified tasks: weaker potions and spells, basic combat moves, basic repairs, etc. You had no way of telling the game "I just want to mix something to heal a couple points of injury" or "I just want to take a poke at it, not aim for the jugular". On the other hand, taking failure out of the game completely in Oblivion was like fixing a flat tire by taking all four wheels off the car. Sure, it was broken before, but now it's got a bigger problem. I don't claim that Morrowind's implementation was problem free by any means, but Oblivion lobotobized the game as a "solution".

I can be the character = The skills affect my actions and results, but aren't "randomly" dicerolled nor always succeeding. At level 1 I might succeed in almost anything, but I can also fail at level 100.