Oblivion had and still has a lot of potential to be and even greater game than it has ever been, yet so many features that could have been put in weren't. What wasn't in the game that you wanted/want to see?

Not a lot, really
I would've liked things that the Unique Landscapes mods implement, though. Unique environments are badass.

Well, by now whatever people didn't like were fixed with mods. For PC users at least.

Four things for me. And, as Holy Assassin says, all four have been fixed by mods.

1. Cities in their own worldspace. It runs counter to the sandbox, open-world philosophy of the Elder Scrolls series. It was done to comply with Microsoft frame rate regulation for the XBox but that doesn't make it a good idea.

2. Invisible borders around the game world. When you make a game that's all about freedom and exploration and going where you want, nothing destroys that faster than spamming an intrusive "You cannot go that way. Turn back." message from the developers over and over and over and over. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that in Oblivion the player begins the game in approximately the center of the game world and does not have very far to travel (particularly when traveling to the southwest or to the north) (or, heck, the east for that matter) before encountering the message.

3. Leveled loot. This I really hated. It helped destroyed my interest in the vanilla game. This is the infamous "bandits in Daedric armor" phenomenon. More annoying to me (since I quit playing before I leveled high enough to see bandits in Daedric) is the fact that the system controls virtually every piece of gear in the game. It pretty much killed the feeling of surprise and expectation that made exploring in Morrowind so rewarding. Knowing in advance that I would never, ever, see a single piece of, say, Mithril or Orcish gear anywhere in the game until my character reached the magic level 10 (and then, suddenly, it's everywhere all at once) was just fun-destroying to me. I used to love finding pieces of hand-placed loot scattered all across Vvardenfell.

4. A minor blunder: spamming the player with "Loading area..." messages from the developers every 192 feet when traveling outdoors. Bethesda goes to great lengths to create the illusion of a seamless world only to destroy that illusion by announcing . *smacks forehead* In general, the fewer unnecessary messages from developers that appear on my monitor the better.




Now to be fair, there are features found in Oblivion that I desperately wish were in Morrowind:

1. Radiant AI. I don't care what anybody else says, I loved it and I thought it was a massive improvement over Morrowind NPCs standing in one place twenty-four hours a day.

2. Combat. I'm going to confess it now: I was once one of those annoying players who blindly and passionately defended Morrowind's dice-roll system. That is, until about five months ago when I actually played Morrowind again. I hadn't played for years. I was astounded and dismayed at how clunky and awful-feeling Morrowind's combat felt to me. Firing arrow after arrow after arrow into a Mudcrab at point-blank range and watching my arrows pass magically through the body of the Mudcrab without doing any damage felt utterly wrong. More importantly, it wasn't fun.

3. Physics. Because hitting a bandit with an arrow or fireball and watching him tumble down a steep incline never gets old.

4. The lockpick mini-game. There are players who don't like it but I'm not one of them. I felt like I was actually picking a lock in Oblivion. I thought it was brilliant.

5. Stealth. This was vastly improved in Oblivion, in my opinion. I haven't used it much but every time I have I've been impressed with what they've done.

Yes. Just yes. A 'like' button wouldn't suffice for how much I agree.

Sutch.

I'm with Pseron Wyrd on that leveled loot. A very bad idea. But as its linked to have creatures that scale to you, I would suggest removing the scaling, as well.

The physics engine. They left out the Morrowind one, that let you put objects where you want easily, and never resulted in things being scattered all over the place, as though attacked by a hurricane, just because you ran by.

They left out silent NPCs. I wish they hadn't. I don't find spoken NPCs especially good as implemented, since so few voices were used. And the dialog between NPCs? It's sort of a game version of Stepford Wives. They're aliens, zombies, going through the motions of trying to act human but failing miserably. It's a game breaker.

On the positive side, combat is better than in Morrowind, being able to poison your weapons (and have your enemies poison theirs) is fantastic, the towns really look great, and thieves actually can make a decent living in the game. Though I don't usually play one, I'm actually thinking of doing so for my next run-through, and enjoying the prospect.

Deleting spells. Should've been incredibly easy to implement, but it seems they just forgot.

Honestly? Oblivion lacked very little that mods have not / cannot introduce.

Faction rivalry. The ones in morrowind.. none in oblivion.

This. I want Sutch!

I think that Knights of the Nine could've been a bit better done, why is there only a single small chapel for what we are meant to believe was a powerful knighthood?

Spears. I don't care what anybody says, spears are great weapons.

Leveled loot and scaled enemies, it's just doesn't make the game challenging enough.

Legion armour. Legion armour in Oblivion was... awful. Why the retcon? It looked much better in Morrowind.

Katanas, the blades katanas stop being useful after level 12.

Paint horses, they're just so... useless and slow. The cheapness and extra health doesn't make up for the slow speed.

Mud crabs. They're such a nuisance, the worst thing is when your trying to swim across the Niben on a paint horse and a couple of mudcrabs start attacking. It's got to be the slowest chase scene in gaming history. What makes it worse is that the mudcrabs can eventually kill the horse.

This.

I disagree. The primary failure of Oblivion as a game is that every quest is spoon-fed to the player. You're told where to go, what to do when you get there, and you're not allowed to deviate. The possible dialog choices are limited to those which force you down the game's canned pathways, the quest NPCs are made impossible to kill, and you can't remove quest items from inventory. All of which means that even quest "failures" are canned; other than with your own character's death, you can only fail the Main Quest at a couple of places.

Most of the quest lines have very simplistic, juvenile "story lines." The sub-quests are mostly "go to this dungeon, fight monsters, and bring me back X."

Mods add content, and they fix some of the glaring issues (like level-scaling, closed-cell cities, and bugginess), but they don't (and can't) do much to fix problems like limited voice actors, rigid quest-line choices, or lack of quest-line plot subtlety. It's quite true that one can reverse things like "Essential NPCs" and "quest items you can't lose," but one can't really mod out the plot linearity which makes those things necessary in the first place. (Just as an example: In Morrowind, you could accidentally kill off "essential characters," making the normal Main Quest line impossible to finish, but there still remained a "back door" method by which you could "save the world." It was a more complex game, with more possible interactions, and more varied outcomes.)

Oblivion is an excellent roleplaying sandbox, but it is actually a very poor quality game. There's very little mystery, very little chance to fail, and the only outcome of all the main quest lines is that you become the faction "boss."

Thoughtful post, Glargg.

Perfect post, right there. Good call.

Not much complaints here, to be honest. Not at first anyways.

I grew up playing D&D and other pen & paper games, as well as Adventure on the Atari 2600. Adventure was one of the first RPGs on console. From those days (where we had to imagine everything) I've always been looking for a game like Oblivion on consoles, a game which portrayed pretty much what I visualized in my head way back in the '80s playing with lead figureines.

I've tried game after game on the original Nintendo, PS, and PS2. Final Fantasy (several editions) didn't have what I was looking for. Bard's Tale was a riot , but didn't have what I was looking for. Neither did Gauntlet, Faxanadu, Legends of Dragoon, Crusaders of Might & Magic, and probably a half dozen other games on consoles. Baldur's Gate got close to being my dream-game, but it's too linear.

Got Everquest 4 years ago. Everquest is great in some ways, but its combat svckS. You literally just stand there. Hack. Hack. Hack. No dodging. No stumbling. I don't know what EQII is like, but Oblivion's combat system is miles ahead of Everquest.

So I didn't have a "Morrowind" or any other game to compare Oblivion to, other than Everquest. Guess I'm lucky in that respect. i wasn't disappointed by this game AT ALL, not at first, anyways. It wasn't until the game started leveling out of control and those dreaded glass-wearing bandits started showing up everywhere that I finally did register some disappointment, and put the game aside for several months.

I'm happy with Oblivion. I really can't think of a better way to say it. I love Morrowind and Daggerfall but Oblivions interface has them beat hands down.

I must be the only player in existence that's happy with Vanilla Oblivion.

Nope. I am happy with it too. About to fire up my PS3 in an hour or so matter of fact.

Notwithstanding what I said above, I am also quite happy with Oblivion. I play it far more than any other computer game. But it's the open, do-anything sandbox that keeps drawing me back, not the "game."

I'm Commander Shepard, and this is the best reply in this thread.
Oblivion is, as others have said, how I envisioned the ultimate rpg. I love it. Been playing on and off since release, and all vanilla too; many characters, many variations. It just doesn't get old.... I love it! I agree, I don't like that there is very little chance to fail, as in, no chance to fail. I want to have the chance that I can royally screw up a quest.

When I get a quest, I want to read directions and make my way to where I think the location is. I don't want a marker. I'd rather have: " Go two miles east until you see the big pasture. Take a left at the fat cow in the corner...." Things like this. I enjoy doing the pilgrimage.

Dual-wielding.
Deleting spells.
When two enemies are standing side by side, and I take down one with a single arrow, the other guy should freak out. Instead they stand there, daydreaming.
More joinable factions. And more: being able to do work for those factions. I want to join the Legion. I want to have to stand there and guard and do my duty. I want to get paid for my work. And if I do well with one faction, perhaps a rival faction feels like they should take me out. Legion vs the DB. I realize I'm reaching on the last one...

Actually, when I first played Oblivion and joined the TG, when I started collecting the clues on the background of the Grey Fox, I was starting to wonder if it was possible to turn him in to the Imperial Legion and use those clues as evidence to prosecute him (join TG to infiltrate them). Alas, as it has already been mentioned, Oblivion's quests were rather linear.

Edit: @ OP. When I first played Oblivion, coming from thoroughly playing Morrowind, of course there were many disappointments, but I cannot deny one standing fact. I'm still playing Oblivion to this day from release.

back on oblivion, hello again guys! and I play on ps3 and always thought duel wield and mounted combat would be cool

Value of loot.

This has always annoyed me to no end. WTF does it matter if a magical weapon I find is worth 15876 gold if I can only get 1200 for it??? Seriously, get rid of the outrageous values that are meaningless or uncap vendors.

Quest/Livelihood options for characters outside the law.

For e.g.: A Bandit/Marauder band to join.

Hmmmm it needs..........moar Oblivion...... because it's just not enough.