Do you think Oblivion can be saved?

[Elhoim]

Do you think that mods can make the game more playable for RPG gamers?

Do you think that most of its flaws can be solved or not?

What else would you like a mod to do so to make Oblivion closer to being a RPG?

Any suggestions are welcome, as maybe we can implement them. I´m part of the OOO team and we are thinking about the next version of the mod. It would be nice to have some imput from real RPG gamers about what should be fixed in this game.

Thanks!

 

[User was nabbed fit]

If you could somehow redo all the missions and add multiple solutions to them... and redo the dialogue too. That would be a start, at least.

It seems like a hell of a big job to do, though. If even possible?

 

[Romanian_Dude2005]

Why redo all the quests? You can simply make a small isolated island and fill it with 40-50 Fallout-quality quests and add some Troikish dialog to say... 60 NPCs?

 

[sheek]

The design sucks, changing a bit of dialogue or adding quests won't change shit.

 

[VenomByte]

I'm not 100% sure what you've already done, but here's what I thnk would be necessary to make Oblivion playable

- Fix scaling, so that dangerous areas have dangerous creatures, and safe areas safe ones. More like Morrowind.
- Levelled loot. Rich people should have STUFF WORTH STEALING. The game is currently pretty pointless as a thief because you are simply not able to get equipment and goods which are above your level. No daedric bandits either. Some caves should have better loot than others, and correspondingly tougher creatures. Essentially, I should not have the exact same experience in every cave/dungeon I go in.
- Fix damage (maybe multiply ALL damage by 2 or 3), so that my puny mage dies in one hit from a troll but can kill it with half a dozen fireballs or so. Currently, I can take a dozen hits but I need 50 fireballs to take it down. Melee with fighters is just as retarded. It's fucking ridiculous. Everything, including the PC, has way too much health.
- Remove quest compass and blatant quest log hand holding hints e.g "I have arrived at the cave. I should go in now". Jeez!
- Add skill/level requirements to the factions.
- Add instant travel options in the mages guilds, and have horse & carriage services between cities, or something like that. For those of us who want something more immersive from fast travel than 'go anywhere you've been by clicking the map'.

That's just a few of the easier ones from the top of my head.

To make the game actually a good RPG rather than just a nice sandbox, you will also need to add choice/consequence into the mix somewhere. Have the daedric invasion actually do something. Daedra just mill about and look unthreatening and nobody in Cyrodiil gives a fuck!

 

[whatusername]

You forgot remove the shitty voice acting. Without it, there would be no more "I saw a mudcrab the other day" or "I heard the Fighters Guild is recruiting".

 

[EEVIAC]

Do you think that most of its flaws can be solved or not?

I'm leaning towards "not." The character system, the writing, the quest design, the world design, and the combat need to be overhauled. All you'd be left with are some art assets, Jeremy Soule and Havok. You'd be better off making you're own game from scratch.

Or, if you're really serious about making RP heavy modifications, you could wait a while and see how NWN2 turns out and make modules for that.

 

[sheek]

The art assets suck too. Everybody and everything looks retarded and if you are sane your first impulse is to smash it all to pieces.

 

[cutterjohn]

The art assets suck too. Everybody and everything looks retarded and if you are sane your first impulse is to smash it all to pieces.

Yes, I've always found when I see an NPC in Oblivion that even though Bethesda used facegen that the heads and faces of NPCs all look pretty similar and as bad, in their own way, as those originall in Morrowind. The body modelling is mostly better for humanoid, but the beast races would seem to be unsalvageable unless completely removed and replaced.

My best hope overall for anything decent in Oblivion lies with expansions that add landmasses and upgrade the engine, of which none are forthcoming so far as even Knights of the Nine, large as it is, does not upgrade the engine like Tribunal and BLoodmoon did for Morrowind.

My second greatets hope is the Tamriel rebuilt project. They appear to have some pretty decent work as far as models go for Vvardenfell, already having Redoran architecture/buildings, those ugly giant mushrooms, landmass laid out, etc. but no quests so far.

The Imperial City make over looks promising as well, however these will only work out well if they are completed. All of this being done, however the Havok physiks engine will still kill me as I remember the last time that I played for any length of time(a while ago) I witnessed my first physiks engine screw up. It happened when an orc was sitting at a table in a tavern and drinking. When he replaced his cup crap on the table went everywhere, along with when my char rented a room, I went up to find another NPC sitting at the table in my rented room calmly eating?! WTF?! Radiant A"I" in action? There was another adjacent room with the door OPEN with an empty table which the little batard was NOT using... presumably its' room.

(The above happened right after I had upgraded my video card to a 7600GT. I never witnessed the Physiks cockup when I had my crappy 6200, so maybe it has something to do with GPU processing which means it would be patchable. Radiant A"I" on the other hand is just fucked beyond repair.)

 

[sheek]

My second greatets hope is the Tamriel rebuilt project. They appear to have some pretty decent work as far as models go for Vvardenfell, already having Redoran architecture/buildings, those ugly giant mushrooms, landmass laid out, etc. but no quests so far.

Last I heard they decided to keep making it with the Morrowind engine. Changed their minds?

 

[MonkeyHead]

As far as some of the suggestions go there are a few mods out there already that address some of the concerns with game mechanics. I can't pull the names up right now but there is one mod that completely rebalances the scaled levelling and equipment so bandits for example will cap out at a certain level xp/equipment wise and dungeon crawls can now be generated at far above your level, adding a hint of danger to an otherwise repetitive experience. I don't know of any mods to remove journal entries but there are several to remove the compass and quest markers. Dialogue has always been a big sticking point for Oblivion, but considering that all the dialogue is voiced new dialogue would need a slew of voice actors if designers want to avoid having stretches of silence that starkly contrast with the current dialogue.

The minimum skill levels is probably a good change but even more so I'd like to see some slightly more subtle requirements especially for the mage guild side. In Morrowing a House Telvanni fortress did not have stairs leading to the upper level, mandating the ability to levitate just to get around your own fortress. As this was supposed to be a wizard's tower this was a reasonable requirement and added, I thought, a nice twist to your reward. Of course with the removal of many utility spells in Oblivion this could be more difficult. One possibilty could be invisible servants in a mage tower. Like one of the initial mage guild quests the only way to interact with your servants would be the ability to see invisible. I'm sure similarly interesting things could be come up with for underwater abodes requiring water breathing and the like.

 

[Thrawn05]

My second greatets hope is the Tamriel rebuilt project. They appear to have some pretty decent work as far as models go for Vvardenfell, already having Redoran architecture/buildings, those ugly giant mushrooms, landmass laid out, etc. but no quests so far.

Last I heard they decided to keep making it with the Morrowind engine. Changed their minds?

Morrowind will be finished with the MW engine, since Bethesda says they can't use MW models in OB.

 

[Elhoim]

Thanks for your posts everyone!

VenomByte, here are the responses to your queries.

- Fix scaling, so that dangerous areas have dangerous creatures, and safe areas safe ones. More like Morrowind.

This is fixed in OOO.

- Levelled loot. Rich people should have STUFF WORTH STEALING. The game is currently pretty pointless as a thief because you are simply not able to get equipment and goods which are above your level. No daedric bandits either. Some caves should have better loot than others, and correspondingly tougher creatures. Essentially, I should not have the exact same experience in every cave/dungeon I go in.

This is fixed too.

- Fix damage (maybe multiply ALL damage by 2 or 3), so that my puny mage dies in one hit from a troll but can kill it with half a dozen fireballs or so. Currently, I can take a dozen hits but I need 50 fireballs to take it down. Melee with fighters is just as retarded. It's fucking ridiculous. Everything, including the PC, has way too much health.

Starting health has been reduced, and weapon are more deadly. Magic also has been modified.

- Remove quest compass and blatant quest log hand holding hints e.g "I have arrived at the cave. I should go in now". Jeez!

The quest compass is removed by other mods, but there is still nothing about the quest logs. Maybe we could do something about them.

- Add skill/level requirements to the factions.

This is planned for the following version.

- Add instant travel options in the mages guilds, and have horse & carriage services between cities, or something like that. For those of us who want something more immersive from fast travel than 'go anywhere you've been by clicking the map'.

I think there is a mod that adds that too.

About multiple ending quests, it´s kinda difficult because of the VA. But we´ll see what we can do. For example, I´m thinking about another way of solving the Kvatch quest: Upon arriving to Kvatch, you found the city besieged by daedras. You can try to do the vanilla hero thingie at level 1 and be slained, or you can go back to Weinon Priory and ask for help. A small team of blades would help you closing the gate, but at the end they found a powerful daedra, and they order you to take the sigil stone while they hold them off. They die, and you escape thanks to them. But as you are the only survivor, everyone think that you did it alone, and they call you the "hero" of Kvatch. I think this is a nice example of how you can change the way a quest is done, whie not having to change all references to the Hero of Kvatch, or creating new references to the "Heroes of Kvatch" or the Blades involvement.

For the next version we are planning to do:

- More varied and inmersive Oblivion gates. This includes imperial barricades outside them, trying to hold off the Daedric invasion, and perhaps cooperative incursions with imperial soldiers.
- New faction interactions, and requirements for joining them.
- New quests, factions, enemies and equipment, as always.

 

[Monolith]

I'm really interested in what your motivations are. Do you like Oblivion that much? With all that effort you could do at least a TC and perhaps a totally new game on your own. Why bother with Oblivion? Many of the addressed issues can easily count as bugs. By removing them you're doing Beth's job for free - not a bad thing if they wouldn't deliberately exploit you. Why trying to increase a shitty game's quality (while the devs obviously don't give a flying fuck) without own profit when instead you could make an own quality game and profit from that?

 

[Goliath]

From a Lutheran point of view.. well, yes. Oblivion only needs to accept Jesus Christ as its lord and saviour (i.e. it must renounce Todd).
Luther tells us that no man (or RPG) can live up to god's standards so no being is worthy to go to heaven (to be called a proper RPG). However Jesus will drag you up anyway if your faith is true.
So the real issue here is not that Oblivion sucks as an RPG! God does not care, because to him everything sucks (I think he actually has a Codex account). The problem is that Oblivion does not believe in Christ.

BTW from a traditional Catholic point of view: No! Oblivion will burn in hell! (unless Bethesda transfers a huge amount of money to the Vatican's bank account)

P.S. from an atheist point of view: The Oblivion Dev Team will be executed for their crimes against the people!

P.P.S.: I am an atheist who was raised Lutheran so I am in favour of executing everyone!

 

[Twinfalls]

Elhoim - use Daggerfall as a guide (seems like you're doing that, and more).

I take it all the factions/quests/monsters etc added each have the option to be installed or not installed?

Best of luck with the project.

 

[Elhoim]

I'm really interested in what your motivations are. Do you like Oblivion that much? With all that effort you could do at least a TC and perhaps a totally new game on your own. Why bother with Oblivion? Many of the addressed issues can easily count as bugs. By removing them you're doing Beth's job for free - not a bad thing if they wouldn't deliberately exploit you. Why trying to increase a shitty game's quality (while the devs obviously don't give a flying fuck) without own profit when instead you could make an own quality game and profit from that?

Well, it´s not my crusade exactly, but of Oscuro. Perhaps the profit is in the experience you get (it´s easier for a begginer to modify something than to create it from scratch) and also to show Beth how the game it could have been much better (not that they care). But I think that +150.000 downloads is also great for the ego!

Personally I´m going to mod my book in NWN2, and perhaps I´ll see if I do it later as a indie game.

 

[piydek]

1) re-writing all dialogue is a necessity to make it suck less, along with completely removing voice-acting. the writing is simply terrible, and vocabulary, as well as structures of sentences are just painful. making dialogue trees with true options which have different consequences would be very important - but this actually means re-writing all of the quests...so it's not really possible i guess - far too much work.

2) removing all the freaking "mini-games", and making lock-picking and persuasion completely skill based (don't know if that's possible).

3) making your "class" and skills have a truly IMPORTANT role - not being able to do everything no matter what kind of character you're playing. i'd like to see LOTS of restrictions based on skills and classes, possibly even races.

4) SOMEHOW making the game actually react to your actions and to changes within itself is an absolute necessity.the "gameworld" is not only autistic to PC actions, but it's completely autistic and differentiated within itself as well, so that different parts of it are completely "floating in space" and are not interdependant. this results in feeling of extreme deadness of the world and consequently - the kind of super-duper-cosmic boredom in its essence which only ES games are able to capture.

these are IMO those ABSOLUTE neccesities to start to think about oblivion as a playable game. granted, OOO is a truly great mod that has already done a lot for a genuinely shitty game and one of the only few reasons i stuck to trying to play oblivion for some time.

but anyway, even with those changes i mentioned and if you'd be able to make them, you're still stuck with very boring and simple, linear quests and very poor, bland, boring game design.

even with 30+ gameplay enhancing mods, playing this game still feels like constantly banging your head against a wall. i've never had such feeling of truly WASTED time as i do after playing oblivion, even if it's for only 30 minutes.

 

[suibhne]

I think you can really improve Oblivion as an adventure game, but its hard-coded limitations mean it'll never be a good RPG. E.g., dialogue is necessarily screwed, no way around it; the whole Persuasion minigame is probably impossible to circumvent, and the hard-coded character limit for dialogue is just unacceptable. Bottom line: you'll never be able to have complex branching dialogue with Oblivion.

If you're going for an action-RPG, tho, it should be possible to make Oblivion much more interesting just by inserting a lot of quests with multiple solutions (including non-violent solutions). May never be a really great RPG, but it could at least be a pretty good game. The problem is, I can't see it working without ripping out a lot of the current guts in the gameworld, radically redesigning a lot of the quests, etc., because there's already so much junk out there that it'll simply make a mess to paint some good stuff over it.

 

[Monolith]

Well, it´s not my crusade exactly, but of Oscuro.

By you I meant your team as a whole but thanks for pointing that out.

Perhaps the profit is in the experience you get (it´s easier for a begginer to modify something than to create it from scratch) and also to show Beth how the game it could have been much better (not that they care). But I think that +150.000 downloads is also great for the ego!

It may be easier for a beginner, but the experience you get is also limited (having all the tools, graphical assets, a setting ...). And Beth doesn't seem to give a shit about good games and if they do they can look at all the awards they got and decide not to give a shit about you .

Personally I´m going to mod my book in NWN2, and perhaps I´ll see if I do it later as a indie game.

Wish you luck there.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Easier to wait for NWN2, I feel. Its modular nature will make making the storyline, quests, world design, dungeons, scaling, dialogue etc much easier, and those are things Oblivion really needs done from scratch.

 

[Elhoim]

Personally I´m going to mod my book in NWN2, and perhaps I´ll see if I do it later as a indie game.

Wish you luck there.

Thanks!

 

[cutterjohn]

My second greatets hope is the Tamriel rebuilt project. They appear to have some pretty decent work as far as models go for Vvardenfell, already having Redoran architecture/buildings, those ugly giant mushrooms, landmass laid out, etc. but no quests so far.

Last I heard they decided to keep making it with the Morrowind engine. Changed their minds?

Morrowind will be finished with the MW engine, since Bethesda says they can't use MW models in OB.

Did you see the guy that managed to procedurally import MW models into Oblivion and the hellstorm that Bethesda's new fans put up? (AFAIK the guy wasn't related to any mod projects, but just wanted to add MW as it was to Oblivion. He rapidly disappeared IIRC after a few postings...)

@Tamriel rebuilt, hmmm maybe it's not that particular project but an offshoot, IIRC there is one that IS using new fan made models and using the Oblivion engine, at least as far as the mainland part of Morrowind goes. I lost my bookmark to the project site, but they were also looking for people to work on other provinces and stuff...

 

[Ahzaruuk]

My second greatets hope is the Tamriel rebuilt project. They appear to have some pretty decent work as far as models go for Vvardenfell, already having Redoran architecture/buildings, those ugly giant mushrooms, landmass laid out, etc. but no quests so far.

Last I heard they decided to keep making it with the Morrowind engine. Changed their minds?

Morrowind will be finished with the MW engine, since Bethesda says they can't use MW models in OB.

Did you see the guy that managed to procedurally import MW models into Oblivion and the hellstorm that Bethesda's new fans put up? (AFAIK the guy wasn't related to any mod projects, but just wanted to add MW as it was to Oblivion. He rapidly disappeared IIRC after a few postings...)

Remember, this also applies for Oblivion and ALL games, people!

This also includes:
1. Those asking for Morrowind meshes or textures to be converted
2. Those announcing a mod that converts Morrowind meshes for Oblivion

From Pete 09/10/03:

Recently there have been a number of posts concerning Oblivion Mods and people using assets from other games, in whole or in part.

We do not and will not get involved in the policing of the Oblivion Mod community. However, in no way, shape, or form can we allow people to talk about taking copyrighted and proprietary materials from other games and using them for mods for Oblivion.

Any threads discussing using models or assets from other games in Oblivion Mods are going to be locked, no questions asked. As a software developer and publisher, we don't have the luxury of looking the other way on this. Sorry.

We certainly don't want anyone using the work we've done on Oblivion in mods for other games, so we have our part when it comes to other games. Please stop using assets from other products for Oblivion mods, and please do not use any assets from Oblivion for projects in other games.

Thanks for your understanding.
-Pete

That's why :wink:

 

[sheek]

As we already knew Pete Hines is a piece of shit. Oblivion is the sequel to Morrowind, it's not like some completely different game from a different company. 90% of Oblivion players will own Morrowind and he has no right to tell us what we can't do with stuff we own. And of the few TES4 players who don't own TES3, that's plain greedy hoping they can a couple more bucks out of a five year old game.

How can they expect to make money from modding when they then slap stupid restrictions on to it?