Oblivion Pausing Menu and Instant potions, very handy but is it TOO handy???

Your about to die! You quickly open up your inventory and, cue the classical music, as you gently swift through all your many potions until you find the right one, maybe have a bite of your bread loaf before drinking your ultra Health Potion and then back to the fight!

Now... is it just me or is that a tiny bit over powering.

What would you like, the current menu system and potion system where it pauses the game and potions happen instantly with their full effects

Or would you like the idea of opening your menu with the world still spinning, and potions you take only take affect after the animation has played?

Of course it would make the game harder, but heck - i havn't died for donkey's years on this game. Guess it would just add to the immersion, tactics, hotkeying and the fun of Oblivion Have your say!

very good poll, really.

with all talks about immersion and realism stuff (which I am all for), and this detail is mostly left behind.

i actually use some 'exploits', specially creating skill boost spells for dialog, mercantile and security, BUT ONLY COZ THEY svck. all these instances require some sort of attention, and currently it doesnt matter if i am running from a Xivilai, i can do any of these at ease, and be happy about it... honestly...

OOO did it right. Potions healed over time, instead of instantly. This works wonders, because instead of having 1 hp go to 100 or something, if you had one health in OOO and waited to drink then, there is an actual chance you can die.
My opinion on the subject is: Keep the system as is now, but replace instant effects with Over time effects.

Ideally, both. What I'd really like is for the difficulty slider to affect more than just damage in and damage out. Easier settings can have potions take effect instantly while harder settings will have them take effect after a delay, or make them heal over time instead of instantly, or whatever.

Yer OOO did do it right ^^ I would use OOO too if it didn't take so damn long to download



Thanks Got the idea from just thinking about stuff (Oblivion) and yer, the idea of the world keep going while the menu is open would be an excellent addition for people who wanted it for immersion, it would have to be an additonal option as this system would make the game exceptionally hard, im sure everyones had a time where they've only jst managed to open their inventory before they died

at least it takes some time to switch weapons, for instance, or change items in middle of battles not being possible. Neverwinter Nights, another game I often feels among the best, handles this horribly (in a second you strike with a 2-h blade, then switch to hammer, etc.... in the same second....).

EDIT: pls, do not understand this as bashing NWN or Bioware in any sense. This is just a fact that does NOT turn that game any less marvellous, as well as the developers.

True, it does take time to swap weapons, but its instant to drink a potion after spending 5-10 seconds looking for it with a mudcrab munching on ur butt Just saying ^^, im not saying that Beth. made it bad, im just saying it could be improved upon ^^ but then everything can be improved up jst pointing out a little, non-important thing

I like the current system because I can't "think on my feet". It takes more time for me to process information and assess an adequate response. If it weren't for this kind of setup, this game like most others, would be unplayable and no fun at all. I appreciate that Bethesda now makes their games more accessible to people like me who have slow eye-brain-hand coordination and poor typing skills. I attempted Arena, but it took an ice age for me to get out of the starter dungeon prison, and I achieved nothing in town or out of town because my character was being killed constantly. That's not fun.

I also appreciate that there are many people who like that kind of challenge, and I wouldn't want to take that away from them, so a meaningful difficulty slider would be cool, but there is also the company to consider in this equation. They have a bottom line which may not be able to handle adding that kind of functionality in favor of other game features. As indicated above, these kinds of tweaks can be changed by modders who enjoy modding and the real world gameplay challenges that many others would like to have in their games. Thank you, Bethesda, for giving that power to the community, and thanks to the modders like Oscuro who put in their time and talent to help others enjoy their game the way they want to!

Peace, +Petrose

actually i think the best advice here was one of the difficulty slider. it could be divided in something like 4 categories, such as easy / normal/ hard / FINISH-HIM-ULTRA-EXTRA-DETONATING-HARD, with its many different characteristics.

Amen to that my friend!

I like it exactly the way it is, but I do work with it for RP purposes. I know there are mods that can do some of the things I RP, but I prefer to use mods for other things. I find imagination works perfectly well for many things.

If my character would not have time to pop a potion, she will not. Often, she can cast an invisibility spell to gain the safe time she needs to do this however. She has been known to disappear, run to a corner and guzzle a potion.

That is the same way she changes outfits in the middle of the street: Goes invisible, changes outfits and reappears. Voila.

For changing spells, we unabashedly enter the spell menu to do that. My fingers are too old to be as nimble as they once were. I figure Buffy can select spells quicker than my fingers can suport her choices here.

We deal with a similar consideration when using poisons with her bow. (The game actually applies poison to her bow, but she of course RPs that she applies poison to the tips of her arrows.) You can get off several poisoned shots in a row by entering the inventory screen and applying poison between shots. Here is how we 'RP' with that. Well, heck, I'll let Buffy explain in a snip from chapter 42 of her Journal:

* * *
I would have to fight this clannfear to proceed - another nightmare. I swallowed hard and backed up in the corridor until my quiver bumped the wall at the first turn behind me. Not a lot of range, but it would have to work.

After poisoning two arrows, I slipped the tip of one into a sheath strapped to the outboard side of my right boot where I could quickly grab it. The sheath was actually a short, slender quiver. It was waterproofed and ran from my ankle to the top of my boot. It could temporarily and safely stage up to three poisoned arrows, and had been Daenlin's idea - to help keep me alive. I nocked the other arrow.

As I pulled silk to cheek I could see my bow and left arm reappear in front of me. Slayer briefly evaporated the beast's speed and inflicted shock damage, while my arrow injected its poison. As the tiny bolts arcing around the clannfear's crested shield subsided, he recovered and resumed his race toward me. The impact of the next poisoned arrow staggered him again within a shower of sparks. Before he could continue his charge, the swirling green magic of my dancing cobra flew from my fingertips. The clannfear's body went rigid and fell to the floor. Before I could nock a third arrow, his glow extinguished. I would not be food for this clannfear today.

After cutting my arrows free, I climbed the ladder. Raising the trap door, I clambered up to the next level.
* * *

Yes. This is true for me too. I think a delayed effect and animation would be fine, but, for me, opening the menu must pause the game.

I have played games that don't pause when you go to menu and it just does not work for me. It's a deal breaker.

I like it the way it is. B)

Actually, what I'd like would be the ability to select menu items without a menu filling the center of my screen. I much preferred Morrowind menus where you could select spells from a semi-transparent menu that you could size and position in a way you found convenient. Pause + instant effect is more than balanced by the disorientation that I experience when I open a menu in Oblivion.

I think that when you open a menu it should take time, but spell effects are still instant. I'd also like it to take time when you read a book or make a potion, so it would be more like real life. For example: Reading 10 pages in a book 10-15 minutes game time, making 12 potions , takes an hour or two for example - not to time consuming, but would help immersion a great deal.

I agree with this 100%. :goodjob:

In fact I dislike almost everything about Oblivion's menus. They not only fill the whole screen, they look horribly cartoony. They were designed to be viewed on a TV from across the room, but on a high resolution monitor, seen close up, the menus are grotesquely ugly.

And that's not the worst of it. Having to navigate through all those tabs...and tabs within tabs is enough to give anyone carpal tunnel syndrome. It's the most awkward menu system I've ever experienced. If there was one thing I would change about Oblivion it would be those menus.

The HUD is also large and cartoony and needs to be scrapped for TES V...but that's another topic.

Oh god I just thought how awesome Oblivion would be with Morrowind-esque menus.
If I pictured it any longer I'd be needing new pants.

This, main reason I love OOO.

I prefer it like it is. Leave real-time potion usage for MMOs, I like being able to pause and select my potion.

This makes the bought or looted potions pretty worthless as their only benefit is instant healing or restore magic, the self made one are lighter and restore far more health and magic. Yes multi effect potions are easy to make.

For no pause of gameplay while in inventory, any MMO has this of natural reasons. They also has a far better menu systems with configurable on screen icons, any key can be used for shortcuts not only 1 to 8. Not to talk about the magic book and inventory in Obivion.
Short you hast to freeze the game to compensate for the horrible user interface.

Interesting subject. I voted to have potion effects take hold after the player's drinking animation. I do like the way things are now.... and flipping through menus on the 360 is quite a breeze, really. And yet, there is some doubt as to me being able to pause the game and fully access my backpack. I tend to hot-key constantly, changing it quite often, and attempting to use only hot-keyed items during battle. It works rather well. I also make all my own potions, so their effect over time has always been a given for me. I think the system is almost right. There are enough pauses as you switch weapons, and I've found that the enemy advances a bit during the pause while you are in-menu. Add that drinking animation, or weapon-switching, and it's just right.