I can't agree with that, Oblivion is one of the best games I've played. I didn't find the gameplay or writing shoddy.

I agree. Also, Oblivion has the most original quests of the series.

M'aiq the liar:

"Some say that 4 is greater than 3, but some also say that 1 and especially 2 are better than 3 and 4. Does it not make sense that 5 is better than them all?"

I say, "M'aiq loves the sheep too much".

Wow... too bad for M'aiq.

It'll depend a bit on which way they will take the series next, I think. There's bound to be people who absolutely adore the new game, regardless of its actual merits as a sequel to the previous ES games, but the amount of people down in the trenches on the other side of the front will depend on how well the game is a "return to form", so to speak. At least I feel like Oblivion, as glorious as its best moments are, wasn't the "improved Morrowind" that I hoped it would be. Heh, the "split" will happen regardless of what happens with the new game, anyway. It's the nature of us dear humans. I'm also sure of the MW vs. OB vs. V -thing happening. This community as a whole has existed for long enough that Morrowind will probably always be regarded as one of the "modern TES games". I could be totally wrong though, I haven't been here long enough to speak from experience.
I don't remember any sort of DF vs. MW -debate being present when I joined...could it be that Morrowind did something right, and it was Oblivion that actually warranted the comparisons and debates? Or could it be that I was still a little child back then and can't remember squat? :spotted owl:

I think OB and MW will be forgotten for a while, but a game like MW will never not be played. I do think that there will be a lot of comparisons to MW and OB, and alot of criticism as well. We'll just have to wait and see

Sorry for the double post, but it'll be interesting to see how us MW vets act when the new un's come in and start acting like TES genious's

The funny thing is, TES is infamous for its broken base. So yes, a lot of the old folks will violently hate it, and there will be lots of new folks who love it, and under their clashes and flamewars I'll be enjoying myself with the series as a whole and laughing at their stupidity. Either way, I win.

I agree with you and I hope to place TES V in my signature once it's released. Some of the old fans really hate Oblivion, though. I was watching some Arena videos on Youtube the other day and some of the comments were something similar to "Oblivion is crap compared to Arena and Oblivion is for casual kiddies" with 10+ thumbs up. After seeing those comments, I realized, for a fact, that some people just like to criticize newer things because they are new and/or more popular than the older things(for those who haven't played Arena, trust me, Arena is not close to being even as good as Oblivion).

Yeah, "us and them" -talk, that's the way to go. *round of sarcastic applause*

This is how it should be. What pisses me off more is the fact that this happens all the time (and everywhere, I might add) and it's not pleasant to watch and know exactly how things will unfold. Sometimes an open mind seems like too much to ask. I tend to steer away from communities as soon as I can smell the freemasonry creeping up, because it's stupid.

Saying that what we talk about is "stupidity" is ignorant and foolish. Its about personal preference and opinion of what the TES series should aspire to be. We fear that if we did not like one of the new games (Oblivion, for some, Morrowind for others) that the next will continue with certain trends, reducing our enjoyment more and more. We just want to protect what we love.

Bad games exist. Good games exist. I'm amazed at how many people try to sidestep these facts.

Sure, there's a lot of personal preference. Some people liked the die-roll system for actions in Morrowind (tell the character to swing a sword or pick a lock and the game will tell you if it happens) and others prefer Oblivion's personal involvement, modified by skill. Either can be a good game if it's designed right (in Oblivion's case, the minigames were designed horribly because character skill had almost no bearing on your success. But it CAN be done well and be very immersive).

But look me in the face and tell me that anyone will be happy if TESV continues the trend of less dialogue, fewer books, fewer factions, fewer quests, fewer skills, flat level scaling, identically-equipped dungeons, generic environments, and inferior lore.

What trend? Of course introducing voiced dialogue results in less of it, but they can only improve in amount from there. As for fewer books, are we including Arena, which had no books? Oblivion may have introduced less books than Daggerfall and Morrowind, but where is the proof? Find me a total count and I'll believe that claim. As for fewer factions, notice that in Daggerfall, none are fleshed out, all knight factions act the same and all templar factions act the same, effectively resulting in only 6 joinable factions in Daggerfall(Thieves' Guild, Mages' Guild, Fighters' Guild, Dark Brotherhood, knightly faction, and a templar faction; whether it's military or not, it doesn't matter) that aren't fleshed out at all while Oblivion, with KotN and SI, has 7 fleshed-out joinable factions(Arena, Thieves' Guild, Mages' Guild, Fighters' Guild, Dark Brotherhood, Knight of the Nine, Court of Madness) with several other not fleshed out ones(Blades, Knights of the White Stallion, Knight os the Thorn, Nine Divines). As for fewer quests, again, I point to Daggerfall's randomly-generate quests that come from a very small variety of boring formulas obviously designed for cutting and pasting. Oblivion's quests are the most original of all quests in all TES games, and are more numerous in number than both Arena and Daggerfall's quests, considering ones from the same basic formulas unsurprisingly are just as uninteresting and repetetive as all others sharing their basic formula and even those that don't share their basic formula).

As for fewer skills, again it's ahead of Arena's 0 number of skills, and, while I dislike a fewer number of skills, shaving off some of the more useless skills of Daggerfall in the transition from Daggerfall to Morrowind then to Morrowind from Oblivion was for a reason. I don't really agree with it completely, but it's not a trend that is there just to get the series closer to being casual heaven. It has reasons behind it. As for level-scaling, I can't say much about it, but what trend is that a part of? People complained about Morrowind being too easy, and level-scaling gets kicked up ONCE from the level-scaling of its predecessors. I can't agree with artifacts and unique items being permanently stuck at one level, though. As for identically-equipped dungeons, again, I refer to Arena and Daggerfall. Their dungeons were all boring labyrinths with no sense behind them other than making them unnessarily long, boring labyrinths. Oblivion actually did have dungeons that were unique with some interesting stuff in them(Vilverin, Fort Urasek, Sideways Cave, Black Rock Caverns), and I'm only referring to ones that aren't quest-related right now. Those aren't even all of them and those don't include any from SI. What's so unique about Morrowind's dungeons? I've explored a decent number of them that seem to be there just to be there.

As for generic environments, again, I point to Arena and Daggerfall, which were far more generic than Oblivion was, and again, that is without SI. As for lore, why is that so? That is a matter of taste, is it not? From Oblivion, knowledge of the Ayleid language was learned as well as knowledge of their culture, social structure, role in the history of the empire, and even how they disappeared. The first and last pieces of knowledge learned are lacking from knowledge of the Dwemer. Oblivion also contained much other information about the history of the empire, including knowledge of Morihaus, Alessia, Pelinal Whitestrake(thank you, KotN), the Chim-el Adabal, and much other knowledge, With SI, much about Daedric Princes(specifically Sheogorath and Jyggalag) was known and, even without SI, knowledge of a Daedric hierachal structure was learned. Whether you find any of the interesting or not is YOUR opinion, but claiming it is inferior to whatever you are comparing it to(I know you couldn't have played Arena or Daggerfall due to some of your claims, so I'll assume it's Morrowind)as a fact is just as you claim Oblivion is broken as if it is a fact. It is just your opinion, not a fact, unless you assume that me finding it just as interesting as Morrowind's lore means that there is something wrong with me and that I must not be realizing the absolute truth. If that is the case, then I'm proud to claim there is something wrong with me.

I love all four numbered Elder Scrolls games(haven't played the spin-offs, yet, so I can't comment on those), but some claims are just ridiculous and, in the case of your claims, seem to ignore the first two Elder Scrolls games(Arena can't come close to Oblivion and those who claim Daggerfall is much better due to more of everything usually fail to mention the boring generic-ness, true generic-ness, of it, and the same is true for those comments claiming all of Tamriel is explorable in Arena).

Seti, notice I said TREND.

Arena had 0 joinable factions.

Daggerfall came after Arena and had, as you say, effectively six factions that were pretty generic. Daggerfall is a better game than Arena in this respect, so the trend is up.

Morrowind came after Daggerfall and had 10 decenty fleshed out factions. Morrowind is a better game than Daggerfall in that respect, so the trend is still up.

Oblivion came after Morrowind and had 4 decently fleshed out factions. So with Oblivion, the TREND is downward. It's still a better game than Arena, and arguably better than Daggerfall (depending on whether you want more personality in your factions or more faction options total). But games are supposed to get better over time, since the developers have more tools at their disposal. When the trend goes down DESPITE advances in technology, that's a problem.

Not if you're openminded. :rolleyes:

I'm for no factions at all, if it means more focus on the mainquest. That's how openminded I am.

I am even openminded to different ways of spelling open minded.

Why would you want TES's focus to be exactly the same as every other RPG series?

I believe he/she was being sarcastic, especially about those in this thread who claim to be 'open minded' while lambasting others for their opinions.

I'm not open minded enough :/

Maybe I think the storytelling has really suffered, and the mq deserves more focus. Maybe TES isn't like the other guys' games for other reasons, besides irrelevant 'factions.'

This. Though I am not a fan of factions from daggerfall, morrowind, or oblivion. I want to believe an Elder Scrolls game can be good, without having joinable guilds.

I've read that Redguard has a good, linear story.

in relation to factions, they can play a part and be interesting without having the standard progression of starting out as a newbie and ending as the grandmaster. i would prefer a bigger, more involved series of quests that has a bigger impact on the game world, even if it means i don't get to progress to the very top. factions should exist as background for the world, and they should have their own views, leadership, problems, etc. but they don't necessarily have to have the classic structure.

Really, I only mentioned factions as one of many examples of how Oblivion can be part of a downward trend while still being better than ARENA.

I'm also not saying that the number of factions is the only measure by which a game can be judged. If Oblivion's factions were much deeper than Morrowind's and had interesting politics and such then you could certainly justify going from 10 to 4.

But Oblivion was not a matter of "having less of x so we can do more y", it was just flat out less of x in most ways.

...and Daggerfall? What about quest originality? The hard work put into Oblivion didn't just disappate into thin air.

The truth is that Redguard has a somewhat linear story. Good is a stretch too far, but it is fun.

If they brought back the standard random type quests that you could do in the guilds, they could definitely include the guilds in the progression of the main storyline with impact on the world. They let you advance to a point in the overarching guild plot, but you only get the random quests available till you can continue.

And I'd like to say that guilds are only reasonable in the gameworld if they include representations of the guilds you can't join. The weaver's guilds, the tanner's guilds, the stone mason's guilds, and so on. There was a plan to put a hoker's guild into a game, and now they don't even have hokers.

I stand by my criticisms of OB, but i have to admit that a MASSIVE amount of work and love went into that game, just in the wrong areas IMO.

If TESV is able to have many dynamic guilds with varied social structures that played into the global nature of the game-world without sacrificing interesting plot twists that also enabled the main quest to be more robust, then I think all of the comments I just read about guilds would be satisfied. It is unlikely that the game would be so heavily developed in regards to the factions/guilds, so in reference to the original topic of this thread, there shall be divisions still at least in this regard.

I had such anticipated desire for TESV for so long that had it been released by now, I would have surely been let down as my expectations would have been so high... it has been so long without even a peep from Bethesda, that this anticipation has waned into sort of a dull "just tell me you are making a game..." emptiness that I will likely be blown-away by anything they put out at this point

That being said, I'll still always have a warm place in my heart for Morrowind.