What goes around comes around, at least for earlier games in a series. I just don't count MMOs... it's like a subscription or a serial. and they can be pretty addictive for a while (so I hear) - different experience.

I envy you the first experience with SI. I have left it for well over a year so that it will feel a little fresh again (although I am still on a months long OB hiatus.) I loved the expansion - visually, story, creatures... some really nice work there.





I've been keeping my eye on it and will probably buy it but I know it won't give me the freedom and lost hours of a game like MW or OB. I am also really keeping an eye on Divinity 2: Ego Draconis. Due in December. In the meantime, I will go back and do yet another playthrough of the Witcher... maybe I will eventually total up 200 hours with that game on replays - I actually might be close.

The only thing that really bothered me about Oblivion was the Mage's Guild questline with the false King of Worms. Would have been far happier if they'd made it clearer that it was just a Necromancer using that name for his own purposes rather than the actual character from Daggerfall.

Other than that, the levelling system turned me off. Completely moddable, but it just stings for the console players.

I am one of those that thinks that, in the context of their respective time periods, Daggerfall and Morrowind were both superior games... Oblivion is the better game overall, however.

I'm not sure who's fault it is for hyping up Oblivion so much before release, but I bet a lot felt it didn't deliver on the hype.
For me, it's an incomplete/ unpolished game wraught with enjoyment killing glitches that just never seemed to be released as a properly finished final product. If I've complained, the jist of it boils down to that.

Edit: as far as Morrowind goes, at first I was like one of the Daggerfall fans that kinda were disappointed that some of the Daggerfall staples weren't present. But after playing for a while and especially when I beat the game, I felt that it was a good and accomplished/ finished game. Unfortunately Oblivion still came short in the end and it was only saved by the modding community for me. If it weren't for the modding community I would have moved on long ago.

I guess that being said, it would have been nice if Daggerfall had of stuck to it's demo template. Can't complain about SI though.

That's pretty much the way I see it too.

I tend to visualize the process as the developers sitting and brainstorming and coming up with a bunch of ideas, then the suits coming downstairs and saying, "Nope-- sorry. We're not budgeted for that and we've got a launch date to meet, so that's gotta go and that's gotta go and replace that with that and stick a few more of these in here and get rid of that bit and nobody's going to miss that one and...... that's it-- good to go."

That's the best explanation I can come up with, particularly in the modern business climate, for the unsettling combination of hits and misses that is Oblivion.

I spent all kinds of time with Morrowind, and have mixed feelings about being even more obsessed with Oblivion (I miss MW, but love OB so much). Only other game I've spent this much time with was The Sims, and to this day there are still several things I've never experienced with my sims. For me, they're all just the sandbox where my imagination can run loose for a while, after being cooped up all day while I'm doing grown-up stuff. I like other games that have a specific storyline to follow, but there's only so much to do before the credits roll. With TES, the credits never roll, so I'm always finding new things to try out.



So ironic -- and I'm sure people will probably be saying the same about those who go nuts for TESV

I'm not gonna read through the other 6 pages of crap, so here's the stuff in Oblivion that pissed me off:

-Jump spells my ass: Yeah, you can fortify your Acrobatics, but in Morrowind you can make jump spells so powerful that you can cover the whole island of Vardenfell in two jumps!

-Lack of Levitation: I don't care if they took it out because it would've made quests shorter or because of cities being exterior cells. Flying around Cyrodill would've been so awesome. Take a look around you after you kill the last boss in KotN as you fall.

-Lack of Mark & Recall spells: Sure, there's fast-travel, but I'd rather be in the exact position where I marked rather than at the entrance with leveled enemies breathing down my neck.

-Exclusion of Polearms and Crossbows: Polearms were my favorite weapons from Morrowind and to find out that they were excluded in Oblivion felt like Bethesda saying, "Thanks for buying our product, now [censored] you!". Crossbows would've been awesome as well, along with the rest of the weapons they didn't put in from Morrowind.

-Enchanting system: Morrowind's enchanting system [censored] all over Oblivion's. In Morrowind, it was an actual skill and not some feature. In Oblivion, the max enchant you can put on anything yourself is 85 points and the soul gem would only be worth 500 gold.

In Morrowind I could soul trap Vivec in a Grand Soul Gem and the damn thing would be worth 5 million gold and a helluva lot more points ( correct me if I'm wrong )! Imagine if you could kill and trap Jyggalag's soul! Do you realize how much that would be worth?!?

-Exclusion of Medium Armor, individual guantlets and pauldrons, and other skills: Light armor or Heavy armor...where's the [censored]in' medium or unarmored classes?!?

It would've been nice to mix 'n' match different armor pieces. The armor in Oblivion look awesome ( minus some of the helmets ) and to be limited on what you can wear was disappointing.

-Merchants with ridiculously low money limits: If I'm correct, the most money any merchant can have is 2500 gold after investing. Anyone remember the Mudcrab Merchant? Didn't it have like 15k?

When I find an Amulet of Axes worth 15k and can only sell it for 2k, seriously what the [censored]?!?

-Oblivion's Night Eye Vs. Morrowind's Night Eye spell: Morrowind's Night Eye was basically like seeing night as day. In Oblivion it's like a smurf came in my eye!

-Lack of variety in weapons: Technically this is different from the lack of Polearms and Crossbows I've pointed out. In Morrowind, there was a larger variety in blades and blunt weapons. For the blades there were tantos, wakizashies, and dai-katanas. There were other things like staves ( not the stupid wooden ones in Oblivion ), one-handed hammers, scimitars, and the Daedric Crescent Blade ( what the hell happened to it?!? ) to name a few.

-Lack of unique weapons and armors: Anyone remember the Boots of Blinding Speed? The Robe of the Lich you get from Mournhold? Stendarr's Hammer ( lol )?

-Magnitude of powerful spells and their cost: I remember in Morrowind I could make a fire spell at 100 points of damage in 100 feet ON TARGET and it wouldn't cost much. In Oblivion ( with 223 magicka ) that same spell would cost me 1225 magicka. I could only make the spell if I put it's AoE at 18.

Leveling system: I'm sure everyone has said their share about this crap. I hate the fact that I can't find Daedric armor until I'm level 20(?). In Morrowind I could go to Bal Fel ( I think ) and use a disintegrate armor spell on the guy there and pickpocket his full daedric set ( minus the helmet ) at level 1 if I knew what I was doing.

I could also lockpick a chest there to get the Savior's Hide and lockpick a chest to fight a powerful Daedra warrior and get the Daedric Crescent Blade after I killed him. Best of all NOT ONE [censored] WEAPON OR PIECE OF ARMOR WAS LEVELED!!!

Honestly, I used to hate Oblivion. A lot. I still hate some aspects of it, but it's grown on me. What I think is the game's biggest flaw is its level scaling. I play it on the 360, so I can't do anything about it. All I can do is try and come up with a good explanation as to why it happens, my current explanation being centered around the appearance of Oblivion gates throughout the land. It's still hard to swallow, but that's how I'm dealing with it.

Also, I hate Oblivion's combat. I have no idea why it's considered so much better than Morrowind's when I find it incredibly frustrating, especially against multiple opponents. It's like Condemned was with its combat. It was great when fighting one on one, but add one or two more opponents and the [censored] hits the fan, you're constantly getting beaten down and stunned, and every time you go for a hit, it's blocked. In Morrowind, I never had that problem, especially when using something like Combat Enhanced and having certain attacks that could knock everyone in front of me down.

What I think is a HUGE improvement over Morrowind, though, are the quests. Oblivion may have way less of them, but the ones that are there are fun, have depth, and get me genuinely interested. I don't think I've encountered a single quest in Oblivion that I hate as of yet. In Morrowind, they often pissed me off or bored me.

Out of the two games, I'd still pick a modded Morrowind in an instant, but I consider myself a fan of Oblivion as well.

If Bethesda did something like the MorrOblivion mod, I would never touch Oblivion again unless they add it to Oblivion as an expansion with Morrowind's system.

im only 14 and i dont remember old games but i love them they are much better than what kids today are used to. But i had a ps1 and the games were brill kids today just think about grathics and not gameplay it annoys the hell out of me

I see it more as people being always on the lookout for new experiences. Pretty-shiny improvements work for this. But so do new gameplay experiences, even for the shallowest gamers.

Learning to look past uglier graphics for some other redeeming aspects is something you learn to do. I don't think anyone enjoys intentionally going uglier other than for nostalgic reasons.

My gripes...

Oblivion's generic questline... Ahh help us demons are attacking

Oblivion's generic enemies... Ahh a wolf, a bear, a minotaur!

Oblivion's generic dungeons... Didn't I just do this dungeon 5 minutes ago?

SI's last part... Yay I am a god, but wait, I still get killed by goblins...

Oblivion's Lack of Freedom... What if my male character wants to wear a skirt? What if I want to have daedric pauldrons and leather armor?

Oblivion's Compass... Not even going to go here...

Overall in all fairness the TES games work like this Daggerfall>Morrowind>Oblivion>Arena...

This is probably the complaint that confuddles me the most. I assume most people (yourself included Zalphon) refer to the quest marker "pizza slice".

It is as easily circumnavigated as fast travel.

Select a quest that you are either:

a) not doing at the moment, thus if you look at it, it's simply leading you astray and you will learn to ignore it.

or

the letter after "A" in the alphabet because the forum makes it into an emoticon when its with a bracket) select a quest that doesn't give you a slice of pizza. "The Collector" quest is the easiest one I can think of. There are a few others, but you get the point.

What I'm saying is many people freak out about things when they are easily "fixed" with a little creativity.

Yes some things were a little "questionable". The leveling system as well as the scaling system was rather un-RPGish IMHO but I don't know why people have to jump down Bethesda's throat about everything and then beg and plead for a TES:V.

if I was Grand-Master of Bethesda I would say screw everyone who flamed us about our last game (which they put good time into) and never make another game for all the ungrateful buggers who constantly put down their game time and time again.

/rant

Yes I see my hypocritical statement.

A lot of the naysayers are insane morrowind fanatics and compare the games far too much than they should. Personally I like morrowind 100 times more than oblivion, but I generally try not to compare the two and I can get plenty of fun out of either game.

Comparing Morrowind and Oblivion isn't fair... They just use the same lore and same world, other than that is like Night and Day (reference to Azura, one of the dunmeri people's deities) or Apples and Oranges...

You never played Daggerfall...

I've never played Arena either, but to the general concensus of fans that is how it works.

The general consensus of fans? How many people on the forums here seriously support the bug ridden mess that is Daggerfall?

In polls between the 4 games DF is always #1, followed by MW, followed by OB, followed by Arena.

We make up 3% of all fans, a sample of all fans, basically, times our numbers by 33 and we have 99% of the fanbase. DF is #1, we must accept it, even us Morrowindians and you Oblivionites, even the Arena-Junkies.

If you haven't played other games in the series, then you really are just repeating some random statements you've read. If you are going to argue in favor of one game over an other, it helps to have actually played the game.

This thread did okay for a while, in spite of having a rather flamebait-ish title, but it seems to have run it's course.