I was checking out some old reviews of Oblivion, for example Gamespot gave it a 9.3 and more or less went on and on how good everything about it is. Oblivion was similarly reviewed very highly by dozens of major games sites and it won many awards. It sold millions of copies. And over 4 years later still has a very active mod community. Beths follow up Fallout 3 also did very well.

Now Beth is making Skyrim and many on this forum feel that this or that issue should be fix, they will create a poll and go look 200 people don't want X,etc But what is Beth to do, there last game in the series was a major financial and critical success. It must be hard for Beth sometimes to pinpoint the real issues(for the majority of gamers, not the small forum subset that responds to a thread). Also many ideas put forth do not take into consideration dev time or the negative impact it may cause for others. Why would Beth listen to your idea when you clearly have not thought about the general impact it will have and that many others people might prefer it another way. Any idea should try to best accommodate all types of people who are going to play SR. And even if its optional you have to consider dev time.

Btw I am not saying Beth should not listen to feedback or that Oblivion was perfect so Skyrim will be too. I just want to get a feel for others views on this.

The interviews that Todd had with Gameinformer gives a little bit of insight on this subject.

Lots of people actually had issues with Oblivion. Especially on this forum.

Well, they need to add spears, for one.

Certainly good points, and ones that many here forget.

Yes us forum posters miss a lot from Morrowind, but the truth is, Oblivion outdid Morrowind, critically, and commercially, by a VAST amount.


Striking a balance will be hard for Bethesda, but I have faith. I LOVED oblivion. Not quite as much as Morrowind, but damn close.

Personally I feel Oblivion had a lot of flaws. Clearly it made a lot of improvements to the series aswell (Character creation, combat, AI ect ect). But but it also took away quite a bit from the series.. I'm hoping they figure a way to merge some of the old feeling and the improvements made in Oblivion into brand new and overall better features, instead of going with the two steps forward and one back that plagued Oblivion in a lot of areas.

Straight from Todd Howard's mouth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z58gVVcj5PI&t=4m15s

It's funny how all the reviews praised the game so much, but only now that Skyrim is announced http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/12/30/15-things-we-want-to-see-in-the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/

Couldn't they have mentioned those issues (level scaling in particular) from the start? :whistling:

They have like 2 days to review a game.

Game makers know this and aim to make the first 2 days or so of playing better than the rest of the game

Oblivion was enjoyable and has issues like every game. Most are going to be heard on the forums. I think reviewers in the last several years have improved on how they review a game. FO:NV had poor reviews for their console counterparts due to bugs and performance issues. GT5 - highly anticipated good good - not excellent reviews. IO think previously reviewers were swept up into the hope and a couple of wow factor gameplay moments ensured high scores.

True, but the majority I believe would disagree and say it was a great game. I had a couple issues with Oblivion but they were minor to my feelings on the game. Morrowind held far more issues that hit me than Oblivion did. People need to be objective when they play a game instead of trying to compare it to another game the whole time they are playing the game which ruins their immersion and experience of playing the game. Also, there are others that will never like any other game but Morrowind because it was their first experience in a massive world so they get emotionally attached to it and won't let any other game match up to it. People just need to judge a game for what it is and then they would enjoy Oblivion.

I still would have bought it anyway, and I can't be the only one. If the magazines and gamer sites slag Skyrim, I'm still gonna buy it anyway.

I thought that Oblivion was really well done. I'm still playing it today and I can barely put it down. The only problem that I have with the game is certain Enemies like Goblin Warlords or Grumite Deathdealers shouldn't be leveled scaled at all period. They should've had a set max level of 23.

This is a great topic and should be discussed more often by us fans. It must be very frustrating for Bethesda to try and please the Publisher, the average gamer and the hardcoe fans all at the same time. I think Todd handles this very well (the balance between complexity versus dumbed down) and he's always humble and open about critcism the games get and he admits design flaws, but he also stands for his vision and game design philosophy and explains it very well.

The views from these forums are more than a large enough sample of qualitative data.
Plus I would argue that the people here are the expert users, especially those that make mods.
It is wise for designers to conduct research on what people do and don't want.

Uh. They actually have longer than 2 days mostly. I'd say more like a week or so.

And actually, for all intensive purposes, the review copy is basically the EXACT same as the copy that everyone else gets.

And even then, some of Oblivion's issues could've been easily noticed within the first hour of playing. From that list that povuholo provided, tell me how you cannot notice the poor faces, the consolized UI, and the face zoom within the first hour of playing?

As for why they didn't mention these issues, they either didn't see them as an issue at the time, or (and here's the old rumor) they were payed a lot by Zenimax (and maybe even Microsoft) to tell us all how great Oblivion is and that there's barely any flaws with it.

I will say this. Oblivion is a great game, but it does have its flaws. Oh boy does it have its flaws.

Things change and games have evolved. It's going to end up being almost six years since Oblivion when Skyrim releases.

Imagine in five years they'll be publishing 15 things wrong with Skyrim
1 : No Multiplayer
2: Fast travel too complex
etc. etc.

The folks that played morrowind, or, any other ES title before Oblivion, had some serious issues with it. Those that were first timers to the ES world, thought it was a good game. Even beth later admitted that the level scaling in Oblivion was over the top.....

I just don't care for the trend of every game has fewer skills, fewer weapons, fewer skills that control leveling, etc. Oblivion, in my opinion, was a console game first, and simply ported to PC. Morrowind was a PC game first, and ported to consoles. I much preferred the latter method.

That said, some of the new features coming in Skyrim are things I have been waiting for for quite some time. TRUE dual wielding for instance. Granted, the game is beginning to look like a cross between Oblivion, and FO3...... So long as it doesn't have a third-party software requirement, I will buy it, and play it. See what I think then.

I think duelwielding is long overdue in Skyrim

oblivion seemed ... unfinished for me

so I have High hopes for skyrim

As much as we would want the population on these forums, no matter how big, doesn't represent the average buyer of Oblivion, Fallout 3 or Skyrim though. And Todd has expressed several times that he's aware of this discrepancy and he's proclaimed that he wants to make games that are attractive to a large group of people, not just RPG-buffs. He's also said that he has other information channels from where to get a feeling of what issues the average or casual gamers have about their games.

I've been playing since Arena and the only issues I had with it was fast traveling everywhere instead of just to cities and the level-scaling. Daggerfall was my favorite TES game, then it was Oblivion and followed by Morrowind. I do expect Skyrim to beat out Oblivion and Morrowind and might be able to dethrone Daggerfall from my favorite. Time will tell.

I think from what Todd Howard said in the recent videos there is a clear recognition that you have keep evolving and developing - that Bethesda are in no way simply going to keep churning out games that make no technological and gameplay advances. That has to be good news for us players!

We saw that this was the case with Fallout 3, and some of glaring mistakes (e.g the ham-fisted level scaling) was vastly improved from Oblivion. That should give us every reason to believe that things will have further advanced. For example, there are still regular threads here in the Skyrim system arguing that the levelling in Oblivion was a shambles, needs to be changed. But they already showed in Fallout 3 that they've recognised that and moved on. Expect it to be further refined in Skyrim.

Clearly the users of this forum are but a tiny minority of the overall user base, but we have the advantage (and disadvantage) of a certain amount of fanaticism. I'm sure the people at Bethesda recognise this. And whilst I'm sure they keep an eye on these forums, they are sensible enough to balance the views here with wider commercial realities.

I want the level-scaling/item-scaling changed and I want the attribute multiplier system that it shared with Morrowind changed. Other than that, I'm perfectly happy. :shrug: