Sorry, that bit was referring to this post:

only because they have an opinion and are mad it wasn't like morrowind. honestly, i thought morrowind was terrible. and i can honestly say that oblivion is and will always be my favorite game that i've ever played. no, i'm not trying to say morrowind is an unappealing game to everybody, because people still play morrowind and say its their favorite game, i may disagree, but everybody still has their own opinion on this game and that is also why u never take any 1 (in this case hundreds) person's word on any game, if the game appeals to you then play it.

Quick Summary: Don't judge a book by its cover

That's also my case. But I really enjoy both games and I will enjoy (I am sure) TES V.


How do you define your "objective" standpoint?

No they're both compatible. I have both, and they both work on 360

I have played both games (first Oblivion, then Morrowind) and to me they are both great games. Each one has its strengths and its flaws - IMO, Morrowind has a better conversation system and better interaction between guilds, while in Oblivion combat and magic are much more fun and it has some more interesting quests.

All in all, I think that Beth is always trying to create a different experience with each game, and I applaud them for this; there is already a large number of developers who never like to take risks and just keep churning out the same game year after year.

My only major issues with Oblivion were the lack of political intrigue and the reduced number of joinable factions; after a hundred-odd hours on Morrowind I hadn't even touched the Temples or the Legion, for instance. I also think it was a mistake to make guild promotions soley dependent on quests completed, meaning that you could become head of the Mages' Guild without without actually having to be even a half-way decent mage. That said, the Morrowind system did tend to lead you to just abuse trainers to reach the required status for promotion. Thinking back on it, in Oblivion, it was the Mages' Guild which seemed to suffer most in this respect, and I guess this is down to quest design rather than anything else; with the Thieves' Guild, for instance, you had to be a pretty good thief to complete the questline, due to the nature of the quests involved. I guess the solution would be to design quests for the Mages' Guild that actually tested a member's ability to use magic, but this is easier said than done; any random 'dungeon-dive for a particular item'-style quest is going to be just as beatable for the sword-wielding warrior as the fireball-tossing mage, for instance. I dunno, I guess it just comes down to more ingenious quest design, which is easier said than done. Still, the level of complexity in the Fallout 3 quests bodes well for the next TES game, at least.

I aslo have a couple of bugbears with the Thieves' Guild, namely:
(1) The quest rewards are especially dreadful (save one final exception) - a reward of, say 200 gold is pathetic, you can earn far more from a spot of random dungeon-diving. Instead, there should've been unique artifacts a la the Dark Brotherhood, though giving access to better fences was a better idea in theory. Unfortunately, this leads me to...
(2) The Independent Thievery Quest was fine in theory, but the thresholds needed to be MUCH higher, like, adding a zero at least. Any self-respecting and halfway decent thief would have sold enough to render the quest redundant in their first few days in Cyrodil, and my characters always end up with chests full of unsold loot, selling barely a tenth of their hauls for fear of crashing the questline altogether until they've made head of guild, by which point they have more money than they know what to do with anyway.
Stealing and crime is generally much improved from Morrowind (it's one of the things that makes going back to Vvardenfall so disappointing for me, far more so than the graphics etc.), but it's still an area that could use some work. It's funny, the actual questline for the Thieves' Guild is one of my faves, it's just that the Independent Thievery quest acted not as an incentive to steal, but rather a brake on my freelance thievery.

For all the [censored] i put on OB, it's a beautiful looking game. I was just expecting the same level of effort into the world that they gave MW. When i got OB, it looked like the budget and effort that went into the graphics was siphoned from the resources allocated to writing.

That's one of the reasons why it seems we hate the graphics, its like shredded rpg in every pixel. Its also why we froth at the mouth when OB enthusiasts talk about the graphics.

I'm sure it's been said before, but I'm sure that at the time of Morrowind's release the graphics were considered pretty cutting-edge, and no doubt there were Daggerfall fans complaining that too much effort had gone into the visuals at the expense of *whatever they felt was lacking in MW*. Not slating your opinion or anything, but I would argue that "graphics" (whatever that even means in this context) actually are quite important for a CRPG, else we'd all still be playing text adventures or table-top roleplaying games.

But hey, it's an argument that's been had, many, many times before, so I won't labour the point.

Yeah Oblivion is a beautiful looking game, but everyone seems to forget that Morrowind was also beautiful for it's time. Graphics have always been a high priority for Bethesda.

Quoted from an IGN review of Morrowind in 2002:




If anything, I'd blame the lack of dialogue and quest content on voice-acting.

Youre correct that your definition of a RPG is strict

I wouldn't call Oblivion an action game with minor RPG elements, the Call of Duty series is more along those lines. Seriously, let your weapons carry over through missions and let you get some better armor out of the environment or from enemies and youd have a CoD RPG. :bolt:

But as has probably been said many times through this thread: everyone is entitled to their own opinions. Each ES game is different enough to make them unique and a fresh experience when you play them. However, in making them different enough to do that you create this issue where a minority of players aren't interested in looking at the positives of each game individually and rather spend their time not playing the game and bashing it for its negative aspects :meh:

i agree. the predicessors always get reverence. Take a look at mario for christs sake. mario is practically an icon for gaming as a whole. why? well its not gameplay (jumping up and down) not graphics (2d) not really story (a plumber saving a princess, although still kudos for originality). so why is he so popular? basically because he was the very first form of what we know now as rpgs. How many of us actually go home and play mario over the new games? how many of us even own mario?. The same type of reverence is seen with morrowind. simply because it was created first it is hailed as "grand master".

:blink:

Paper Mario aside, Mario is not, nor has ever been, considered an RPG. It pretty much invented the platform game as we know it today (though that's also debatable), but still...

RPGs have their roots in pen-and-paper gaming, think Dungeons and Dragons.

If by RPG you mean 'videogame' even then Mario is not the first, the form had been around for a decade or so by then. I beilieve the first genuine videogame was 'Spacewar'.

(Also, the reason that Super Mario Bros. is held in such high esteem is that it's pretty much a perfect game, one of the tiny, tiny handful of games that's just as fun to play now as it was on the day it was released.)

I have added spice to my game by doing a few fun things:

**
One of the things I have started to do the last few games is to set restrictions on myself, or goals my character must reach - kind of like a mini-game within the game.

For instance, you can make yourself go without armor, and either use hand-to-hand or just a dagger the whole game (this is the one my son does) - or you can refuse to touch a weapon and do the whole game relying on magic only, etc. You can try giving yourself a job you have to do to survive - like say you are a bandit, you can only survive off what you rob from people, and not take any other monies, etc. - or you could be a hunter and only live off the pelts you can bring in, etc. I played one game as an alchemist, and that is the only money I would get, forcing myself to only loot ingredients while out and about. (had to do a lot of running from enemies, lol).

Also, you can (and this is one I love doing) - get every stalker quest in the game activated, and let them chase you around Cyrodiil. There are a bunch of stalkers in the game, plus the Mythic Dawn who are disguised in each city. The Bleak Mine gives you 6 stalkers, you can get one in the "Nothing you can Possess" quest, another is a corrupt Imperial guard, etc. Do the Path of Dawn to incite the Mythic Dawn, then just trot around Cyrodiil avoiding getting murdered - it is very fun to be chased and hunted.

Also, getting the Unicorn early in the game makes for a very exciting game. The Unicorn is wild and unpredictable, and always chooses the wrong side in a fight. Try doing the main questline while riding the Unicorn, and you are in for a very fun game.

I also wish there could have been more political intrigue and more factions - there was a potential there with the improvement on the faction questlines to go for broke and design double-crossing/betrayals right into them, but alas, the greatly reduced joinable factions made that rather unfeasible. What I've seen in Fallout certainly gives me hope that they'll realise that in the next TES. While I agree the MG questline could have been better implemented, there was a reason in-game for those without any magic skills making some rank - I wouldn't mind seeing this expanded upon in the next TES as a sort of back-path to advancement. After having played several unorthodox characters, I actually rather appreciate having guilds uncoupled from strict class-lines.

What's wrong with it, you ask? Very well. From a previous thread:



Goodness... Where to begin?

Sigh. I suppose I should have a disclaimer beforehand... [Disclaimer]I did and do enjoy Oblivion for the game it is, and despite the list of complaints soon to follow, it was fully worth the money I paid and is still a Bethesda game, which means it is far above most games out on the market.[/Disclaimer]

OK.

1. A freaking stereotypical "Holy crap the entire world is threatened save it right now!!!" main quest that forced or severely guilt-tripped the player to shoot out of those sewers like a bullet to quickly preserve the empire from its terrible calamitous fate. As well as ending up segregating the whole universe into good guys versus evil Daedra, or morally ambiguous guys versus evil Daedra, or evil guys versus evil Daedra by proxy because the end of the world is bad for business. There was no real slow approach to the world if roleplaying was involved, as there were few excuses one could come up with to simply abandon the clamorous beginning of the game and pursue their character's own interests for a while.

2. Faction quest-lines that operated in their own little worlds, had little-to-no bearing on each other, had little to no acknowledgment of the Empire crumbling around them as the Deadlands slowly began encroaching on Nirn, and emulated the main quest by trying to have somewhat overarching plot-lines for each guild, as opposed to simply representing the tasks required to advance within the guild (often mundane, disjointed, and anti-plot-driven) and using those tasks and the strings attached to them to provide massive characterization to the guilds/factions.

3. The overall neutering of factions. Granted, it's been a trend the past two games, but seriously. Five? None of which have any form of relationship with one another? So joining one will not affect your standing with another? Ugh. Oh, and neutering skill and attribute requirements for those factions? Awesome. Now my level 1 pure combat Warrior can theoretically become the Archmage of the Mages Guild. Or the Gray Fox. Without any real investment into improving skills as well as factional reputation.

4. Level scaling and leveled lists, both applied to hostile NPCs and creatures, and applied to loot. If the game simply raises the challenge bar with you continuously, then what exactly is the benefit in leveling? Where's the real sense of accomplishment from going from level 1 to level 30? The world should not develop with me. The world should be a fairly static playing field in terms of differing skills, and the player should start out weak and floundering, struggle to hone their skills to become on par with the world, and then work hard to surpass the world and prepare themselves for above-average otherworldly challenges. AKA the basic D&D model of progression:
Early levels: Struggle to survive.
Mid levels: Moderate difficulty.
Late levels: Struggle to actually die.

When it comes to leveled lists for loot, there are serious flaws. I reach level 15 or so, and the leveled loot lists start churning out expensive enchanted items. I find a valuable constant-effect necklace and celebrate because I have found something exquisite and rare. Within the next dozen dungeon crawls, and as I level more, my loot container at my house suddenly will get completely overwhelmed with supposedly mythic and rare and uber-valuable enchanted crap. Answer me: If all this loot I'm suddenly finding because my level is getting higher is honestly so "valuable," then why am I suddenly finding so much of it? Why does my game lag when I access my loot chest at level 25 or so, because I have so much excess "rare" crap that I haven't even bothered to sell due to the sheer amount of it all?

5. On a related note: randomization of loot. Now, I'm not against the usage of loot lists, and using percentages to determine what's found there. But Oblivion sorely needed a hand-touched feel to its dungeons, and there just wasn't enough hand-placed loot to give it that feeling. There were no hand-placed artifacts a la Morrowind, everything that was hand-placed in almost all dungeons were of low quality at best and largely suffered from copy-paste syndrome. Dungeons in Morrowind could tell stories with their hand-placement of items and loot. Oblivion's dungeons lacked that.

6. Fast Travel. Don't bother telling me it's optional. There's no decent alternative, AKA sensible travel networks between some cities. And don't bother telling me it's the same as Morrowind's limited cost-inducing system of travel, because the only way I can simulate Oblivion-style FT in Morrowind is through using the console and typing COC. Fast travel removed the immersion of having someone in the world whose job was to move people around. It removed the whole possibility of escort quests, because they would be, by and large, stupidly easy. It removed the absolutism of distance, meaning that no region in the game required the player to pause and think how they needed to prepare for entering it, because heading back to town was as simple as a hop, skip, and left-click away. It removed the severity of all in-game diseases, because the nearest cure altar was, again, a hop, skip, and left-click away. True, the player can resist the urge to use such things, but absolutism is a worthy quality in games, and an absolutist understanding of distance fits that as well. Should it be optional whether that difficult enemy I'm facing with a half-broken longsword has the standard 90 health or an optional 10 health? Should I have the option between a regular iron dagger at the game's start, and another iron dagger scripted with an infinite kill command?

7. The removal of skills, namely, axe, short and long blade, medium armor, unarmored, enchant, spear, etc, etc. The removal of spells, namely Blind, Jump, Sound, Levitate, Poison (as in Poison of the school of Destruction), etc, etc.

8. The creation of a minigame for both lockpick and speechcraft, both of which rendered character skill completely null and void. I could pick any lock in the game with a security skill of 5.

9. The removal of major lore tidbits. Cyrodiil not being jungle. No mention of the old theories and theorists who claimed that the Emperor's sons were dopplegangers placed there by Jagar Tharn. No multiple sub-sects of worship for each divine, scattered all throughout the province.

10. No political warmongering. Cyrodiil, the heart of bureaucracy and deadly political maneuvering, was sans politicos. There was no Elder Council. And hardly a mention of the Elder Council. The player, in the whole main quest and side-quests, dealt with no political factions and problems at all. Completely unforgivable.

11. Magical green-arrowed GPS. Never get lost again! Never have to receive and coherently follow directions and use landmarks like an intelligent person. Never have to learn the lay of the land. Right up there with Magical Points-of-Interest navigational system. A beacon to every possible thing within 500 yards of you! Even such notable tourist attractions as Necromancer dens that would probably like to stay hidden, or Shrines to Daedra like the King of [censored], Molag Bal.

12. The inclusion of a Fame/Infamy system that acted as a word-of-god game-prejudging-a-universally-represented-standard-of-morality system. Instead of letting factions and sub-factions of people judge your actions according to their own personal standards of morality, as done in previous titles, the game simply tabulated every "good" and "evil" act you committed and uniformly and universally raised and lowered dispositions accordingly.

I find Morrowind to be a more enjoyable game than Oblivion for various regions. Most concern, as you've heard time and time again, the depth of the game. Morrowind had a sense of strangeness that was appealing, a place that you've never seen before. Giant mushrooms in abundance, an island of ash surrounded by the Imperialized Southern parts, the Redorian-style Mid-Western parts, the poor fishing villages to the North, and the wizard-holdings to the East. Overall the Dark Elves ruled the land, and outsiders were often-times frowned upon. Slavery was rampant, primarily consisting of Argonians and Khajiits. What an interesting thing to see! Waring Factions! Three of them! All with cultural influences spread over Morrowind. Another world!

What did we get with Oblivion? A fairy-tale that we are all accustomed to. The Roman-esque Imperial City, with its gladiatorial Arena. Everything is clean, no shacks no shanties, an abundance of normal-looking dressers and drawers and tables and desks with nothing to ever find in them. No original architecture that I found myself impressed with. The Imperial city was non-believable. Unnatural. To top that off you have the center of the Empire, but equality for all? HA! What silly lore that is! >.<

Well, what about the Waterfront? But yes, I mostly agree with your points.

I have come to see what Oblivion's flaws are, and I agree with most of ThatOneGuy's points. But the game is not the dumbed-down, depthless game that many people say it is. It does have many flaws, but many people exaggerate its flaws immensely.

There's also the descriptively named Super Mario RPG, and the Mario & Luigi games on the Gameboy and Nintendo DS. All of them have been fantastic.
Just saying, because, well, everybody should play them

This thread seems to be dying down, so I'll just thank everybody for the civil discussion. I'm pretty sure I know why the haters feel the way they do now.

Have you tried any of the other TES games yet? IF you haven't you really should. But yeah, this is probably the nicest thread I have seen on why people dislike Oblivion. Either way, I think the reasons were all reasonable and stated as decently.

There was an interview where one of the Beth guys commented on the mods that are continuously made and downloaded the most. The style of mods that are put out, ala Marts Monsters/Mutants, Weather increases, graphic tweaks, etc.

If what im pulling from the little interview is right there going to make the game we've been "modding" oblivion/F3 to become. We want more monsters, we want slower leveling, we want better graphics... Most of all we want more immersion. ((lore up the wazoo))

I have faith have always had faith, and i hope some random elements come into play ala Arena. Random quests that keep comming are something that can breath life into a game. infinite dungeons aswell or random generated dungeons to dep delve in

oblivion has many flaws i will name a few (most apply to my new rp)

no musical insterments to play (i am a bard)

no camping gear (tents berolls ect.)

cant start fires (i just like fire and wont to make some)

the guards are psycic and always know where u are

items like forks and plates cant be sold for a profit

tons of animations for cpcs but hardly any for u

those are the main things i dont like but oblivion has too many things going right for me to count it is one of the best games i have ever played and i am on console

EDIT: i forgot the leveling system is one of the worst flaws i have seen in a game (that is not game breaking)

Agreed! Whatever my other criticisms may be, the dungeons are a series of steadily unfolding enigmas. If I look in UESP the guide will say a "typical Ayelid ruin."
Sounds easy or boring? Mr first char got hopelessly lost in every "typical"dungeon even with the game compass that we didn't have in Morrowind
So far to me the dungeons are among the best parts of the game.
Criticism then? Levelled loot means that she runs like rat through a maze for a few iron Axes etc. and 150 drakes. Dungeon looting for a low level char just doesn't seem worth it to the role-played character. As I said earlier, usually if you can get a Major Artifact in Morrowind at level 2 (or lower,) it's all yours.

Absolutely. The dungeons in Oblivion are amazingly unique and interesting.

It always amazes me when people say they are "cookie cutter" or all the similar.

Puzzles, story lines, diverse layouts.

To say they are not unique seems to me to be prejudice, or a lack of observation; and defintely false.

Lots of very unique and interestnig dungeons and things you can find in dungeons in the game.

I have to agree, I just "discovered" Sideways Cave for the first time today. It literally blew my mind how cool that dungeon was. I had never explored it due to it being so close to the Imperial City that I just assumed it had to be a crappy little intro to Oblivion dungeons so I never went in it. It is easily my favorite dungeon in any of the Elder Scrolls games that I have played. And to me, the dungeons were one of the best things about Oblivion. They were much bigger, more detailed, and more challenging than any that I found in Morrowind.