As am I.

After reading many of the negative comments regarding SR and what there doing wrong and often been doing wrong since Oblivion I thought that putting this thread back up to be a good idea.

Haha yeah thanks. Its humbling. I guess though, you have to think.

svckerpunch was very poorly reviewed by critics, but grossed enough to put it as #2 over the opening weekend at the box office. It was referred to as "an unerotic unthrilling erotic thriller in the video game mold"

As a general rule, video games can be designed poorly, and then hyped up, and people will buy them because they think it's going to be a good product. What is the measure of success is whether in 10 years, people will still buy the game from the $10 bin and think "WOW! I got that for a song" (btw, in my currency, a new game for PC is $110)

I guess its really a measure of what the audience expects to see from the game. If Beth think "Man, we did such a crap job with this. Can't believe we got away" or gamers are criticising aspects of the game, that would be indicative to me that something needs to be altered about it.

They should aim to make the game unique and not just grab an old encyclopedia and start hijacking creatures from mythology and making all the armor look like it was freshly picked off of gondorian soldiers.

I feel many people are being critical about Oblivion because they are comparing it to games that came out in 2008-2010. Yes, by today's standards Oblivion is lacking in many aspects but back in 2006 it was great because it offered so many new features especially when it comes to graphics...Beth knows that if they release an 'Oblivion' in 2011 it will be the end of them despite it getting good ratings from gamespot etc back in 2006... It all comes down to evolution and expectations of gamers. At the end of the day, the dev team needs to ask itself "What are we going to offer that other games (like The Witcher for instance) do not?". In this respect, Bethesda never failed us and always set the standards for other games.

Gamespots philosophy and mine as well is that gaming standards get higher and higher over time, so a great game from 2006(like OB) will not be as good as a great game in 2011, even if OB actually had a scored a few points higher and it was done by the same reviewer. The games are judge on the standards of there times.
MW for example, even with the updated graphics of MW overhauled would not score that well these days imo.

or you used Almsivi Intervention or Divine Intervention in case you get lost
or mark a location and then use recall if you want to come back

You have to take consideration in the nature of professional reviews. Morrowind wasn't particularly easy to get into, and well, you need quite some play time with any RPG to be fully able to form an opinion. Oblivion was more accessible, but I didn't initially found all its flaws, as I started to dislike some things over time. Critical response, as well as commercial, doesn't say that much about the true quality of the game. Reviewers don't play enough to fully grasp the game in its entirety and more act on first impressions - which can be advantageous to certain games and disadvantageous to others, based on their nature - while sales - most being from the first week - are more a product of marketing, hype and the quality of the past game. I bought Oblivion day one, but that didn't meant I thought it was that good or better than Morrowind. If I buy a game that I dislike, it still goes towards the sales, the game being commercially ''better'' because of it. I don't think all this really means anything. Plus, professional reviewers often contradict themselves in reviews because they are biased, their reviews read more like advertisemant than an actual good, detailed review. Hell, I remember reading some Teamxbox reviews back in the day, they were sometimes 5-6 pages long - true there was some useless stuff, but still - while nowadays it rarely gets longer than 2 pages. IGN are just incredible with their short reviews which are usually cringe-worthy.

I can understand standards change a bit over time, but higher standards? You're kidding me, if anything they are low as ever, as evidenced by how well every CoD game got received or Mass Effect 2 for example. It truly shows the industry is loosing itself. The standards should be to make a quality game according to the current technology, and (sometimes) according to the past game. Standards are all about graphics and intense streamlining, I don't see how that's exactly better standards. Rarely do developers actually try to IMPROVE over past games, rather than iterating the same damn thing or adding a couple of new stuff, or changing everything altogether for a new crowd. Developers for sequels, should strive to constantly build upon the key features using the technology, but this is something mostly ignored except for graphics and AI to a very limited degree. Level design is getting simpler as the time goes by, rather than more complex, same for gameplay mechanics too, look how the Mass Effect dialog system is utterly simplistic and one-dimensional. While Bethesda did some missteps, they actually try to improve their games on something else than graphics. The Radiant AI, radiant story, trying to redefine the skill system rather than scrapping it or utterly streamlining it. Morrowind is a more complex game than Oblivion and overall better in so many aspects, I fail to see how it's less good than Oblivion because it doesn't have modern gimmicks or something. It would be like saying newer movies are better than older ones because technical limits and such, more often than not older movies are better, as for video games. Halo CE is by far the best Halo, Chaos Theory the best Splinter Cell, the original Ghost Recon the best one, only the industry's standards lowed down so much, that Ghost Recon will now be a rail-shooter with regenerating health and no tactics, totally unlike it was originally intended. The industry standard is to sell, and by whatever cheap tactic they can do. They almost put as much energy in marketing, the hype machine and reviews than the game itself. An exaggeration, but these still factor greatly in the sales. Show fancy graphics, movie-like bits, fancy tricks, and you'll get people's attention. There's exceptions, like Bethesda, but that's how the industry works mostly these days.

So if critical respones does not and sales do not what does? How about the fact that even 5 years later the OB mod communtiys is still going strong,does give us an impression of how good it is? And there are dozens of scores on metacritic the lowest gives OB an 80, are all of biased or poorly done? You say it takes time to get into the game, but OB got many awards and those awards where given long after OB was released, plenty of time for people to play it(and it won a lot of people choice and critics awards). How about sales of DLC, what about the expansion? If people that bought the game realized that did now like it, were the sales bad for those dlc and Shivering Isles?

Oblivion was a massive successes and Fallout 3 was as well. For Beth to change there current path would not make any sense.

Euh, as far as I know, not everyone on metacritic are professional reviewers. I'm not saying everyone is biased and all reviews poorly done, only that such thing shouldn't be taken too seriously, that it can be misleading. And like I said, sometimes games should get more, while others should get less, or at least the modern reviewing method makes it so for certain games. Some games are really hard to get into, but very rewarding once you do, so some games are at a disadvantage when reviewers need to be productive and not piss off some publishers (some reviewer was kicked off Gamespot after giving Kane and Lynch a low score, and Teamxbox stopped writing reviews for month right after giving FFXIII a low score), not everyone are like this, but it's just an example of what kind of industry we're in.

As for the awards, I don't take them much more seriously. Remember, what do these reviewers do all year long? Play games and review. Not everyone's gonna play the [censored] of certain games after constantly playing for your job. And even if they do play other games a bit, I'd be surprised they'd play games they weren't impressed with in the first place, but only those they preferred from the get go. So that's still tons of games which can't be properly judged.

As for DLC, I did bought Shivering Isles even if I was disappointed in OB. Remember, I like the game, but I find it very inferior to Morrowind. Yet sales are number, it's like yes or no, in no way do they inform what people think of the product. And where did I say everyone hated OB? But better sales =/= better games. Everyone who loved Morrowind and OB might very well buy Skyrim. And then, all those who never bought these games and played at friends places, or, all those who read about it and got interested. Does it say anything about the quality of Skyrim? No. Usually, the more popular a series is, the more chances you have at outdoing the sales, no matter if the game is good or bad. BUT if people thought the game was [censored], it can impact negatively subsequent sales.

And you have to realize, OB's biggest qualities lie in what technology brought, ie. it's not about ''what OB or Fallout'' brought in these cases. It would be more in regards to level scaling, level locked items, fast travel and such. And many of these elements are getting totally remade. Level scaling works in a totally different manner, there will be travel services, and other things. Bethesda also talked about how they always want to try to make their games different. Sure Bethesda are following some of Oblivion's and Fallout's doing and things that worked, but it's hardly what makes the game.

But I know, Oblivion IS more popular than Morrowind. But throwing out sales, reviews and awards barely mean anything. Hell, Blade Runner was despised when it was first released after all, it was a flop! It only stood the test of time because of die-hard fans, making the movie resurface one day and then everyone praising it to high sky.

Wouldn't it not needing to be constantly modified and added on to be a better gauge of how good it is? The constant modding seems to be more a reminder of how good it could have been if Bethesda could have been bothered to put in the work rather than shoving it out the door for the modders to finish. :shrug:

Well, in my opinion,

They take this forum into consideration because they made us, or brought us together from making their past games, so theyve had the past 10 years or so of feedback from people that would die for their games, and they know we arent all dumba$$es, and we can figure and take the rest of the fanbase into consideration. The people that actually take the time out of their days to say something about this game, those are the people they want to hear from the most.

But this is just my speculation of it..

Nice, conspiracy theories. I'm sure nearly every review of Oblivion was payed off.

http://www.gamerankings.com/xbox360/927345-the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion/index.html
http://www.gamerankings.com/xbox/480241-the-elder-scrolls-iii-morrowind/index.html

I often see posts proclaiming that "lots of people" had issues with Oblivion or that "most true fans" prefer Morrowind or generalized statements like that. "Lots of people" isn't a good way to make an argument at all. I for one like Oblivion better than Morrowind, even though I think they are both great games and some things obviously could use improvement from the way Oblivion did them.

This forum is a drop of water in a lake compared to the actual fanbase or those interested in the game. The fact of the matter is Oblivion was received very well by both the gaming press and most gamers who played it. That doesn't mean some people don't have a right to disagree, but it's just not in line with reality to claim Oblivion's reception was anything but overall phenomenal.

The original post was well constructed. It reminds me of an interview I watched today that I missed, where the interviewer starts asking Todd Howard about snow angels and snowballs and sled riding and Todd finally has to interrupt him and just say "other things need the development time more than stuff like that," or something to that effect.

There are some popular ideas (especially the 'realism' ones) that would be blasted as horrible game mechanics if actually put into the game. Then there are the ideas that seek only to force others to play the game in a certain manner, which goes against the very foundation of what TES is about.

That doesn't mean posting ideas is a bad thing though. Sometimes the developers do get good ideas from the pvssyr, but that doesn't mean people should expect every little idea to be put in the game or even noticed.

Negative reactions on message boards are a very poor gauge (most of the time). The reason is that the people upset about every little thing will come out in droves to complain about it, and positive gushing is much less common, hence the perception that many popular things have unpleaseable fanbases.

sorry to burst your bubbles but oblivion was rightly criticized for its many flaws.

first and foremost was the awful levelscaling. next was the very generic feel of the gameworld ie all ruins and all caves were the same. to pretend that oblivion was some perfect game and that only a minority of people had issues with it is pure bullcrap.

if you dont believe me then ask bethesda....why are they going out of their way to say that skyrim will not have level scaling like oblivion? why have they made it a point to show that there will be distinct areas and all dungeons will be different? they hired 8 dungeon creators instead of the 1 for oblivion. why have they pointed out the changes in animations and bodies/faces? if very few people had issues with these things and most people loved how they did the game, then why would they change anything at all, after all wasnt oblivion nearly perfect? :rolleyes: ive been accused of wearing nostalgia goggles but this is ridiculous.

as for reviews i should point out that most reviews are done before people have even finished the game they are reviewing or they made such a hurried playthrough that they miss many aspects. i really wish all review sites had a second review of at least major games 6 months after release to show how much patches have changed.

No, only popular games have a strong modding community. Games that are not popular that people don't like to not develop strong mod community's.

Beth other games also have strong mod community, also because people enjoy those games.

There's a TON they could fix from Oblivion. Just because it got high scores doesn't mean it was a great game. It's aged poorly, and its flaws have come to the surface.

However, it seems they're not entirely learning from past mistakes... I want to know what Todd meant with THIS

"and we are trying only to toss you around a little bit, by including the use of the compass. "

The compass was one of the most hated features of Oblivion for a lot of people, and they brought it BACK??

This is my point, you mean a lot of people on this forum. I liked the compass and if you looked at other games, many have features of this sort. I would like them to have good directions for quests, so I can use the map markers only as a back up. But that does not change the fact the many games use map markers.

Sorry but that's just not true. I'll cite X3 as an example of a niche game that has an extremely strong modding community and i'm sure there must be others.

I think the bottom line is, if you give people the tools to mod your game you will end up with a strong modding community. So it is not an indication that the game is popular nor it is an indication that the game is flawed. Even if Oblivion had been perfect in every respect it would still have had a vast number of mods adding in clothes, armor, weapons, housing, new dungeons or just changing things around for the fun of it.

I think that where mods do show that Oblivion had its share of problems is that some of the most famous ones were basically just correcting flaws in the vanilla game rather adding new content. But whichever way you look at it, mods must be a useful resource for Bethesda both as a form of feedback and perhaps even inspiration.

I should have said good game not popular. People want to mod for a games that they like, people want to use mods in games they like. Yes some fans will go out of there way to fix a game they thought was bad but are attached to for some reason(Gothic 3 comes to mine) but only well like games have the kind of mod community's that Beth's games do. Look at MW still going strong after all these years, that is a testament to the value people place on the game, same with OB. Look at Two Worlds 1, they had an sdk but it went no were because the game was not well liked.

Some of the flaw didnot show up untril people started to make mods like in one quest haveing custon races created problen.

It your opion and other people opin I like the compass as it make traveling easier.

The forum is a pretty tiny percentage of the overall playerbase. Taking any sort of "lots of people" from the forum as some sort mandate of the playerbase is quite a large leap in logic.

That said, as good as OB was there were plenty of things that needed changed. FO:3 made quite a number of improvements on the formula. Hopefully we will see an even greater improvement from FO:3 to Skyrim.

Well yeah, a game has to have something about it to inspire the modding community and TES games certainly fit that bill. Completely off-topic but I do wonder if anyone will still play OB once Skyrim comes out in the way that MW has continued since OB.

Anyway, I personally think that while Oblivion had some great qualities there were also some very obvious areas where it was deficient: Level-scaling, voice acting, generic dungeons...things which (I believe) almost everyone agrees could have been better.

It must be hard to decide on topics like Spears and Fast Travel though. These always get a lot of mention on the forums but I suspect that there is a silent majority that actually don't care about those things very much at all.