3 biggest flaws in Vanilla Oblivon?

[GMonkey]

Didn't joining the factions just depend on what your major and minor skills were? I distinctly remember belonging to two houses at the same time.

 

[JarlFrank]

Didn't joining the factions just depend on what your major and minor skills were? I distinctly remember belonging to two houses at the same time.

You can be member of all the three guilds at the same time [there is one fighter's guild quest where you have to kill a thieves guild member, though. The questgiver says "If you're in the thieves guild... you have to decide where your loyalties lie."], but you can't join more than one Great House.

 

[GMonkey]

I'm pretty sure I belonged to Telvanni and one of the other houses at the same time. I didn't finish either quest line tough. Does the exclusivity apply right off the bat?

 

[Darth Roxor]

I'm pretty sure I belonged to Telvanni and one of the other houses at the same time. I didn't finish either quest line tough. Does the exclusivity apply right off the bat?

Yes. The moment you join *any* great house, the other great houses start to despise you, because they are all rivals, so you cannot join them.

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

1, Level-scaling robs all the fun it could have had, and removing it is a patchwork solution that almost breaks more than it fixes.
2, It's unimaginative and unfantastic to the maximum. Everything about it - art, music, character system, setting and so on - is bleak and horrible. No thrills, no sense of wonder, just nothing at all. I just can't understand who could like it. If you like action, it sucks. If you like tactics, puzzles, strategy, story, anything at all, it just sucks. It seems to be a game for people who don't like games.
3, I can't believe I just posted in CF's Oblivion thread.

 

[Sirus]

guys im getting the impression you dislike this game

 

[elander_]

Anyone who played Oblivion and thinks you can role-play in that game is a flaw in the gaming community.

 

[Cassidy]

1. It was released by Bethesda
2. It was released
3. It

 

[Relayer71]

The game is chock full of flaws, can't pick just 3.

The only good thing about the game is the graphics (at the time, they still hold up but not impressive anymore).

And this excludes character design (worst faces and body animations in the industry).

Still, the art design in Morrowind crushes the design in Oblivion and is still pretty impressive even if it doesn't hold up well technically.

I would definitely replay Morrowind + Expansions using an Oblivion or better caliber engine with an overhaul of its "wikepedia" (as someone previously mentioned) dialogue system.

 

[Twinfalls]

1. It's not a work of art, unlike its predecessors

2. Gaming mechanics present barely a shred of actual roleplaying

3. Emil Pagliarulo's design and writing.

 

[Amateur]

It is really so hard to choose among endless flaws this crap had.

1) Idiotic storyline, unbelievably bad dialouges.

2) Level scaling

3) Small and generic landscape.

 

[A user named cat]

1. Mudcrabs

2. Repetition

3. Lazy design all around

 

[Amon Gesoto]

1: Little, to no, freedom of choice.

Reviewers tend to talk about how you can do anything in Oblivion, but as far as quests go you're restricted by how the developers think you should finish it. Most choices in quests boil down to taking up the quest or not. To be in my journal or not to be in my journal, that is the question.

2: No unique character dialogue.

In Oblivion I noted that most dialogue is written for one character; there's a sort of primordial well that every NPC in Oblivion draws on, but without putting any unique twist on it. Barring the fact that different races are voiced by different actors, there's nothing other than someone's appearance to indicate that they are different from anyone else in the world. They all talk the same, they all use the same words.

There are no conversations in the game, only lectures. Your character simply asks someone about a subject and the NPC dumps the information on you and then you're off on your merry way. A real conversation starts with a topic (often switching tracks to other topics) and then proceeds to a subtopic introduced to the main one by a person in the conversation, with members of the conversation giving their opinions on the active subject. How they give that opinion and whether or not it is mixed with the information being exchanged is the basis of character based dialogue.

3: Jack-Of-All-Trades playing

Oblivion makes playing as a Jack-Of-All-Trades easy as pie. I guess someone thought that advancing your primary skills to gain levels would curb that, but leveling up takes so damn long anyway (and most creatures are even with you in level) that it is pointless. This making replay value non-existent. Almost everyone who still plays Oblivion has stuck with one or two characters since release, only making new ones for aesthetic reasons.

In the original Fallout games (O holy Fallout!) although you could kind of branch out in a bunch of skills, it didn't really help you. You really had to stick to the skills you picked as your guiding lights, otherwise they didn't help all that much. In Fallout there was also playing as a stupid character which was funny and rewarding, which meant most people, who bothered anyway, could get at least two totally unique play throughs.

 

[Mr. Wednesday]

I had no idea so many people here played Oblivion. Should I make a new thread asking what the three biggest flaws in Halo were?

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

I had no idea so many people here played Oblivion. Should I make a new thread asking what the three biggest flaws in Halo were?

You should, everybody knows Halo is an RPG.

 

[Jason]

11) The assassin's guild in Morrowind was WAY WAY more fun and interesting than the mind-numbingly dumb Morag Tong crap, or whatever they were called.

You're confused. The Morag Tong quests were in Morrowind and the Dark Brotherhood quests were in Oblivion. And personally, I found the DB questline to have a bit more character than the MT, although both were much more entertaining than the Fighter's Guild questline in either game. It would've been nice if Oblivion had gone more in that direction altogether instead of generic fantasyland.

Yes. The moment you join *any* great house, the other great houses start to despise you, because they are all rivals, so you cannot join them.

There's a bug where an NPC (from House Redoran?) will let you join one house while still being a member of the other.

About the gigs of mods required to enjoy Oblivion, I've only played it with TIE installed (just 3 megs) and never had to face the horrors of level-scaling and such.

 

[Curunír]

The question is misleading.
It assumes that Oblivion sucks only because of some design decision.
That was the case for Morrowind, Oblivion is the product of a retarded design philosophy in just about every aspect. The question should be "What did they do (at least halfway) right in Oblivion?". That list would be considerably shorter.

 

[Imbecile]

I had no idea so many people here played Oblivion. Should I make a new thread asking what the three biggest flaws in Halo were?

You should always know your enemy.

and

1. Level scaling
2. Jack of all trades
3. Lack of C & C

Edit: What they did right.

I really like the XP system that triggers off the skills you use. (though the multiplier thing is ridiculous)
Lots do do (even though it wasnt always worth doing)
Looked nice (apart from animation and faces. And draw distance)
Oh and I actually found the combat to be much better than Morrowind.

 

[TheWesDude]

well, things they did right all come with caveats...

1) magic system. being able to "craft" your spells rocks very nicely. problems with removing old spells i dont need anymore though

2) creating magic items is nice and interesting, but exploitable, and not very powerful in some cases.

3) quest compass, i like it, but it wouldnt be needed if they did better descriptions in their quest journal.

thats about it from my side. combat was very blah, story blah, npcs blah, quests blah...

 

[Callaxes]

1. It was released by Bethesda
2. released by Bethesda
3. Bethesda

 

[Curunír]

I really like the XP system that triggers off the skills you use. (though the multiplier thing is ridiculous)
Lots do do (even though it wasnt always worth doing)
Looked nice (apart from animation and faces. And draw distance)
Oh and I actually found the combat to be much better than Morrowind.

The learning-by-doing system of Morrowind and Oblivion does not work for me at all. While generally an interesting idea and maybe even working fine if implemented correctly, it sucks in both games. It is exploitable, kills the fun of guys like me who like to try hard to optimize their character and milk every possibility of character development and generally ties character development to wasting time excercising skills instead of actually proceeding in the game. It also kills most of the incentive to do quests (especially if they are as boring as those of Oblivion).

The 'lots to do' argument doesn't convince me either. I prefer 20 hours of actual fun over hundreds of hours of boring stuff to do. The quests and gameplay opportunities in Oblivion simply suck, so it doesn't help if they come galore.

Ok, the combat system was halfway decent (for pure realtime, that is).
The graphics were nice too, as long as no NPC was nearby. (Hell, those faces were UGLY!)

@TheWesDude:

The magic system was mostly crap imho, because the ability to create your own spells resulted in very generic and uninteresting "basic spells". Spells created by such "basic effects" pasted together were generic and uninteresting, too.

 

[Glorm McGlorm]

1) Lack of story.
2) Lack of roleplaying.
3) Lack of characters.

 

[JarlFrank]

i considered converting him to our side but it has never worked before on my other friends so i decided not to.

Show him Arcanum and answer all his questions with "yes".

 

[racofer]

i considered converting him to our side but it has never worked before on my other friends so i decided not to.

i became pit grand champion yesterday.

i am now going to go try the dark brotherhood questline and after that let the guy bite me so i become a vampire.

Fail.

 

[racofer]

Cloaked Figure is the kind of new member that most people hate. he tries to emulate some threads he saw in 2004 but fails epically. he probably played oblivion, and felt it was average, but acts as if he hates it to try and fit in.

Cloaked Figure, go fuck yourself.