The closer one gets to perfection, the more what needs to change becomes apparent. This game has received so many fans with it's past successes that more and more people criticize what is missing, not because the game is bad, or there are game-breaking defects or omissions, but because people are used to a certain level quality, freedom and immersion that they just want the previous platform built upon.

a lot of people realize this level of open-world, free-form game is not available anywhere else, and are counting on Bethesda to offer us something as good as the last one since most of us, here on the forums, still play Oblivion and keep going back to it after shiny new toys loose their luster. (mostly PC games, but not exclusively)

Our hopes and criticisms towards Bethesda are comparable to what an trainer would feel towards his trainee, we are so critical, and seem to always think the worst of them, but in the end we are so grateful to them for the past successes and ride them hard so they shine even brighter in the future. in a way, we ARE coaches, we cannot do their art, (though some of us can, to some extent) but we can offer an outsiders point of view. and a second unbiased perspective is always good ti have for ANY artist. I wish the forumites would give more constructive feedback and just being critical sometimes, and perhaps give a little faith to those whom have never failed to impress the world, but so long as the magical weavers at Bethesda take the complaints and nitpicking the right way, we are a great source of knowledge to them.

Oblivion might not have succeeded at all if no complaints were made about Morrowind.

on that note, let's not stop pointing out the flaws, and suggesting improvements, but lets give credit where it's due, and lets try to be more constructive and a bit less negative.

Bethesda will impress the world again on 11/11/11, but it will have it's flaws too. just remember to point them out in a constructive fashion, and point out what you love best so they know not to take it away.

Yes and I agree with the points, it appears that 1,2,3,6,8,10,11 and 14 are addressed from the podcast and other sources.

However it's quite possible to screw up, Oblivion level scaling was a response to the critic that Morrowind was to easy at high levels.
A lot of fear on the forum that changes in the magic system will make it better visual but cost us the spellmaker.

yeh but that was criticized and they adjusted accordingly, look at Fallout that had a much better balance
and it sounds to me that the spellmaking will allow for more flexibility, like casting a spell in a certain way

You're complaining just for the sake of complaining. How specifically was Oblivion held back by consoles? I can name many things that held back Oblivion, but I don't think that was it. I say this as a PC gamer even.I think the trend of less skill is take away redundancy. The main things wrong with Oblivion I thought was extensive level scaling,lack of unique dungeons/variety, and a some what weak main story.

I think it's safe to assume that Beth knows what they are doing and they are normal enough people compared to the average citizen to see what was wrong with Oblivion. I'm not worried at all about what winds up getting included, I'm worried more about what might be forgotten or looked over. That's where we come in. For instance, in the podcast when Todd said "No" to spears, he did add something like "at least not yet" which does imply Bethesda considers community input and it's entirely possible that now, because of us, there will be spears.

I do think MW's world design was better than OB, I am please to hear that there going back to fully hand-crafted world design for Skyrim.

Its because game reviewers review the game on a whole and focus on the major/important aspects of a game. People in here whine about petty things....like no spears.

The best way for bethesda to check out what can be improved is to check the more succefull mods, like OOO and the like. Many mods have convergent features that touch the core of what the comunity wants

More likely we'd get less gameplay overhauls and more quest mods.

True but there s also the fact reviewer play the game for a few hours due to the amount of work. So they aren t hit by ("ho noes, that again" for example) factors. And a lot of times they haven t played previous titles or similar titles so they don t have a north.

as long the first few hours 2 or 3 are ok ... its ok.

@skystorm77

Then it would be awesome, there s always extremely gifted individuals and groups out there to add content be it in Object or quest.

Its virtually impossible for BE to do a perfect game under the current setting (console focused) for PC for example.

But it would be awesome if BE would lay off a great game system, with large avenues for modding, and good content. That is a feasable dream.
all in all
There s no way beth can put the amount of cares modders put sometime on one item/one quest/quest set/ on all the game.

I think the main Beth core bussiness is the following:
Lay the base for the comunity, work with it to improve the game.
By base i meam:
No bug,
Compelling MQ and Lore
Very good and interesting gameplay

I'm no reviewer but I'm pretty sure they don't hand out game of the year awards based on playing the game for the first few hours and determining its ok.

But they don't play it very long either. At least not long enough to be annoyed by the level scaling and mention it in their reviews, which nobody did.

Level scaling was a major and valid concern. In my original post i was talking about petty things like no spears, no pauldrons....not major things like level scaling and fast travel. Those have valid gameplay implications.

I dunno. Considering the kind of utter tripe that gets amazing reviews (Fable), sometimes I think they just make it all up.

I trust reviews by consumers about a million times more than I trust reviews from magazines etc.

Yes they do, they give out game of the year or other such award to games they really like and hence played a lot. They are gamers after all, the game for fun not just for there job.

Have the game for a week but how long time to play? However I guess many of the revivers was playing it after work
Faces in Oblivion is not bad considering how many they had to make and the technical limits the Khajiit facial animations are still amazing. Only issue I see is memorisable/ characteristics face= ugly, this was also true in Fallout 3, the random raider babes looked far better than the named characters.
Face zoom, newer heard any complains, was some complains about Fallout 3 as it stated to get dated.
Main problem with Oblivion is level scaling, an you have to play a long time before it become a problem, you notice that bandit equipment get better but it don't get stupid before well past 20.

Morrowind is a greater game and had far more flaws

Those problems were minor compared to everything else in the game. Not enough to warrant a significant lowering of the score.

Morrowind was a great game. It revolutionized the genre. There were things that people did not like about it, such as weak animations and spell graphics as well as a terrible Vampire system.

People who loved Morrowind did not feel the same way about Oblivion. Oblivion introduced some of the bad things about Bethesda games (that you can also see in the two Fallout games). Weak, generic dungeons with a copy n paste feel were abundant. Like Fallout, Oblivion had a LOT of dungeons and was marketed as such.....but the reality was that they were basically 5 layouts and none of them were really fleshed out. Oblivion also hated the universally despised "level-the-world as you level" mechanic. With this, you got a common road bandit, dressed head to toe in Ebony Armor, asking you to pay a 100 coin fine...lol. This system also played havoc with the 20 Deadra shrine loot-reward quests as in order to get the best reward you had to be a certain level to achieve them. You could also never level and actually beat the game as a level one.

Lots of people did not take the skills they wanted, because using them leveled you up too fast. They used the skills they had no intention of using in order to get the maximum +5 stat boost when they actually did level. Complicated, but that's how a lot of people played.

And the quests in Oblivion were all pretty basic. Thankfully, Bethesda changed their quest system with Fallout. When that was announced with only 17 quests, people went into an uproar...but the quests were much longer and in depth. I hope Skyrim is more like Fallout and Oblivion, and I am betting a lot of people think that as well.

Oblivion was a very good game but it could have been an all time great game. It was sloppy. It was almost as if Bethesda said "okay, here is a construction set....you fix the problems, we don't really have the time to do so".

And that is why when you play Oblivion now, if you download the great player made mods the game is about a thousand times better.

This review did: http://computergames.ro/en/games/viewitem/id/686/article/748/name/the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion/section/review.html

That's the best review of Oblivion I've read (unsolicited "fan" reviews, aside).

What they are changing right now is fine, really the only thing I "hated"(If you can say I hated anythng in Oblivion)was the melee combat but I am fine with that(Oh and I am purely a melee character)

EDIT: Forgot in the main post that people are just nit picking and I trust Beth to do whats right, I havent been disappointed since Morrowind(Well if you count Fallout NV but that was bad because it is Fallout 3 reskinned)

Make Skyrim unique. Use the good old imaginations, look for inspiration for the bizarre creatures somewhere else than established places. For once, try and make something new. At least something few people have seen. Come on, it takes maybe thirty minutes for the initial idea, and then you can bounce it around. Morrowind was fantastic in the unique department, it all came together to be memorable and compelling to explore. Oblivion was so dry, drab, and boring I think you could persuade Tolkein to never write his own [censored] books if you went back in time.

I never heard of TES until I came to the forums for Fallout 3 stuff. I played Oblivion unmodified and could tell in 1 play through a lot of what was wrong or could be improved drastically. The games was good, but the combat was too simple, way too many cut/paste scenarios/dungeons, only seeing many opponent types in certain level ranges, magic and alchemy were too easily exploitable (game loses its fun when you find exploits).... well they needed an overhaul. compass markers were a bit over the top, fast-travel to ANY location took some of the fun out of exploration, the face creation..... ugh, level scaling quest rewards and over-scaling in general, dumb combat AI, being able to run faster than a horse and jump over trees while in heavy armor was stupid, level-up system....chasing the 5's, harder difficulty/high level enemies = bullet sponges... and I am not a very observant person.

They will surely aim to give us a new experience, I think that is the most great part of TES so far, you can play any of the previous games of the series and it will not feel like a simplified game compared to the newer ones. Morrowind offered a huge variety of stuff, Oblivion offered a great experience and higher detail than any game had seen and Skyrim will give us even better graphics and a totally new combat system that will feel very dangerous compared to old games. They are all unique. Just compare to cod series, it has been the same ever since the first game, the only thing they have made different is to add better graphics, enable multiplayer and.. That's it. Bethesda however, knows how to do games!

Anyone else got a feeling of deja vu?

I remember when Oblivion was announced six years ago, and this forum went nuts with fevered anticipation. Then it was released, and the boards were groaning under the weight of posts complaining about the awful levelling system, fast travel, the wooden dialogue, the flimsy story, the invisible border that rudely told you to go elsewhere, crossbows were missing, you couldn't fly or wear a dressing gown over your armour or go bald or have kids and take them fishing and so on ad nauseam....

There are loads of things that they could do to improve Skyrim, if they are taking Oblivion as a model. The number of mods that have been released to sort out all of these things is testament to this. Oblivion was a seriously flawed game made excellent by the modding community. The devs have already said they have taken insipiration from some of these mods, for example the increased power, and decreased loading speed, of ranged weapons (from Deadly Reflex, I think). I find it almost impossible to get excited about Skyrim after the deflation from Oblivion. Still gonna buy it though.

Skyrim will be better then vanila Oblivion I'm sure for 99%.