Why do people hate Oblivion so much?

[HarveyBirdman]

I mean, even if you don't like TES, mods can fix it so you can. So you're not exactly wrong.

 

[theSavant]

Your entire point A is at odds with point B btw.

Let me elaborate this briefly (assuming I understood what you meant): basically the combat in all 3 games eventually ends up being the same. The reason for that is that special moves, special interaction events, special key combinations in Dark Messiah are either obsolete (like those finishing moves), don't have that immense impact to really care about (like when trying to focus on attack swing directions instead of just bashing), are too stressfull (like requiring to hold and press 8 keys or so at once), or even too complicated to remember (like remembering the key combinations for a special attack move in the heat of the battle). And because of that players will strive for the easiest and most enjoyable way to combat enemies, which is:
- Kicking (to keep enemies away)
- Clicking left and right (to attack and block)
- Jumping on enemy when adrenaline is full (to land double damage)

And that's it. I'm pretty sure most people did nothing else after a while. And that combat is not much different to Oblivion or Skyrim.

Edit: the only remarkable difference between swordfights in Dark Messiah and Oblivion/Skyrim is, that a shield in Dark Messiah does completely block an attack (like arrows or so), while in Oblivion/Skyrim it only dampens a percentage of the damage. This is the biggest gripe I have about TES combat.

 

[mfkndggrfll]

Oblivion doesn't do anything that either Skyrim or Morrowind does better and Dark Souls beats all three games in every respect.

end thread

Oblivion has better guild quests and quests in general
Better storyline
Better world building
Better level design/dungeons
Better writing

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Oblivion is cool. The level scaling sucks but it's an enjoyable game, with mods, too. I actually wish they'd bring back the (often hilarious) random dialogue between NPCs. "Hi!" "Hello." "Have you heard of the High Elves?" "Well, good day!" I mean, polish it up and bring it up to 2019 standards, but that would be a neat addition again. Much better than NPCs saying the same lines over and over and over again (what were they thinking there?) I also absolutely love the Speechcraft mini-game. It's a guilty pleasure of mine. Preparing for the incoming mass Retadred ratings, but still, it was fun.

 

[Oracsbox]

I also absolutely love the Speechcraft mini-game. It's a guilty pleasure of mine. Preparing for the incoming mass Retadred ratings, but still, it was fun.

ok

 

[Okagron]

The speechcraft minigame was fucking stupid. Instead of finding out what the person likes or dislikes through dialogue like a normal conversation, you have a dumb minigame where the npc does stupid faces everytime you hover a specific part of the speechcraft wheel.

 

[Butter]

It's stupid as fuck, but if you divorce it from the context, it's a mildly engaging mini-game. I'm not sure it's such a downgrade from the Admire spam in Morrowind.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

The minigame is definitely better than admire spam. But then again, it's also a downgrade from taunt spam.

 

[Funposter]

Neither is a good system because both are entirely divorced from what the point of Speechcraft should be - the act of talking to and persuading people. The problem is that implementing Speechcraft properly would have required Bethesda to actually write dialogue, have non-violent solutions to quests, and implement skill checks in dialogue. Like an RPG or something.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

Never shit talk taunt spam in my presence ever again.

But in seriousness, I will point out there is a stylistic choice in not writing the dialogue. It was conscious, not laziness -- we don't know what the player wants to say to admire somebody, or taunt somebody, or whatever, so we let them imagine it in their heads. Same concept applies to the Wikipedia dialogue from Morrowind.

I think the idea is good, but the implementation is bad. And maybe it can't be implemented well.

 

[Poseidon00]

Oblivion has a few one ups on Skyrim; Hand to Hand is still a skill, you can craft spells, fight Dagon, and use the block skill with your hand to hand. Factor mods in, and it doesn't even have half of those going for it. It has nothing on Morrowind. But there are so many drawbacks where do I even start. For one, it fails in its most basic task as a Role Playing Game: instead of encouraging you to PLAY the ROLE you chose, it penalizes you for it. The best way to get good at the skills that define your character is to use EVERY OTHER SKILL besides the one you chose so you can grind for stats and not get ganked by the 1-to-1 level scaling.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

The best way to get good at the skills that define your character is to use EVERY OTHER SKILL besides the one you chose so you can grind for stats and not get ganked by the 1-to-1 level scaling.

Bethesda has always utterly failed at creating leveling systems. They clearly know they're bad at it, which is why they keep trying to fix it, but they just end up making other shitty systems. Huge drawback.

 

[Funposter]

Never shit talk taunt spam in my presence ever again.

The ability to spam taunt is certainly one in the game's favor.

But in seriousness, I will point out there is a stylistic choice in not writing the dialogue. It was conscious, not laziness -- we don't know what the player wants to say to admire somebody, or taunt somebody, or whatever, so we let them imagine it in their heads. Same concept applies to the Wikipedia dialogue from Morrowind.

I can see what you mean, but this is the same system which allows the player to solve all of their problems by throwing thousands of gold pieces at an NPC until they completely reverse their decision. It seems entirely bizarre to me that a character looking to solve things displomatically is limited entirely to bribery or making a pass at someone (as the NPC responses imply). Taunt and Intimidate are actually implemented well. Taunt for obvious reasons, and Intimidate for working in a way which is logical. You mechanically raise an NPCs disposition, which means they are now more open with information, but they dislike you more the next time you speak to them. It's too bad that this option is made entirely pointless by the bribe option. As much as it sometimes works in an abstract way, most quests where you need to talk to someone or persuade them work like this.

1. Talk to NPC and click the relevant option
2. Either they tell you to fuck off, or your faction/global reputation and Personality are high enough that everyone naturally likes you, solving the problem immediately
3. If they told you to fuck off, you either spam Admire (if you're poor) or just throw 6,000 septims their way until they agree with you. You don't Intimidate them because that takes into account factors other than Speechcraft, making it less likely to succeed.

At no point do you ever need to go through a dialogue tree, or search for the correct option. At no point can a character unskilled in Speechcraft attempt to reason with someone diplomatically and then fall flat on their face. At no point can your own character ever make an impassioned plea to somebody, or rationally explain to them why what they're doing may be wrong, or illogical, or ineffective. If it was a conscious design decision to "let the player imagine", it has also taken a lot of agency away from them.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Oblivion
- Quest markers, skill removal, and fewer factions were mistakes.
- Main quest can never top Morrowind's, but was a very solid entry.
- Everything else was a direct improvement over Morrowind.
- High water mark.

Comment on the writing

 

[HarveyBirdman]

Oh yeah, I fully agree. Just saying I respect what they tried even though it didn't work out.

Comment on the writing

The writing in Oblivion is better than Morrowind in just about every way except for the main quest, and the main quest is pretty well-written. Thank you based Kirkbride for Dagoth and Mankar.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Funposter So what? Use your God damned imagination. That's why RPGs today are on the decline, because you need every speech option in dialogue, everything laid out for you. Use your imagination. Someone mentioned it already but that's why Morrowind is good, you Admire and you can imagine in your mind anything you want, same with Taunt. I was just saying I like the Oblivion minigame for Speecraft not connected to its context but how it plays out. If you added some sort of minigame or more than a dice roll *yet still connected deeply with stats* in Morrowind it would be fine. Morrowind was organic, not some heavily scripted thing (which we have plenty of now, time for devs to try something new.)

 

[Projas]

Just IMAGINE you are playing a good game bro.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

This is thread shows why we can't have nice things.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

Just IMAGINE you are playing a good game bro.

Please, please, please give me a voiced protagonist! I can't hear my own voice when I read -- hell, I can barely read -- so a voiced protagonist would really help me out.

Conceptually, there is not a difference between a silent protagonist and minimalist dialogue prompts on the player character's part. You're free to think it's a bad design choice, but at least notice the road upon which you tread.

 

[Projas]

Just IMAGINE you are playing a good game bro.

Please, please, please give me a voiced protagonist! I can't hear my own voice when I read -- hell, I can barely read -- so a voiced protagonist would really help me out.

Conceptually, there is not a difference between a silent protagonist and minimalist dialogue prompts on the player character's part. You're free to think it's a bad design choice, but at least notice the road upon which you tread.

[Taunt]

 

[HarveyBirdman]

That does it. (Goodbye)

 

[luj1]

I mean, even if you don't like TES, mods can fix it so you can...

Mods have a ceiling though. They can't turn Oblivion or Skyrim into PC games.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Morrowind
- Skill removal, fewer factions, and wikipedia dialogue were mistakes.
- Everything else was a direct improvement over Daggerfall.

The reduction in the number of skills from Daggerfall to Morrowind is almost entirely accounted for by Daggerfall's language skills that were nearly useless and weren't missed. As for the number of factions/guilds that can be joined and that offer a large number of quests, this actually increased to 10 in Morrowind (House Redoran, House Telvanni, House Hlaalu, Fighters Guild, Mages Guild, Thieves Guild, Imperial Legion, Imperial Cult, Tribunal Temple, Morag Tong) from just 6 in Daggerfall (fighters guild, mages guild, thieves guild, knightly order, temple, dark brotherhood), unless you're counting each knightly order and temple as a separate faction.

Oblivion
- Quest markers, skill removal, and fewer factions were mistakes.
- Main quest can never top Morrowind's, but was a very solid entry.
- Everything else was a direct improvement over Morrowind.
- High water mark.

On the subject of Morrowind vs. Oblivion, there is a lengthy list of failings of the latter relative to the former:

• Comprehensive creature-leveling such that all monsters and NPCs are set at the same level as the PC, with weaker types of monsters disappearing after the character gains enough levels, and stronger types of monsters not appearing when the character is low-level
• Comprehensive item-leveling whereby a high-level PC will not only encounter similarly high-level bandits but said bandits will have random pieces of extremely expensive armor and weapons, while a low-level PC will never find weapons/armor of such powerful material; or a weapon on display in a glass case in a castle will be a worthless replica if the PC is low-level but the real thing after the PC gains enough levels.
  
• A clunky interface, which was clearly designed for consoles, in sharp contrast to Morrowind's sleek menus.
  
• Reduction in the number of joinable guilds/factions offering many quests from 10 in Morrowind to 4 in Oblivion, keeping the more generic ones (Fighters/Mages/Thieves guilds)
• Factions now centered around quest lines, with 2 of the 4 (Fighters Guild and Mages Guild) being poorly written and boring
  
• Full voice-acting for dialogue, which necessitated a drastic reduction in the amount of dialogue per NPC, most of whom have one comment about themselves or their city to offer and nothing else
• Poor writing in general, with dialogue and books less interesting than in Morrowind
  
• Minigames for speechcraft and lockpicking
• Elimination of certain kinds of items, such as thrown weapons, crossbows, and spears
• Reduction in the number of skills to the point where axes are considered blunt weapons
• Regenerating magicka, which effectively means that all health can be easily regained after each combat, thus removing much of the logistics that existed previously
• Elimination of different physiques (and animations) for Argonians and Khajiits
• Both in-game and out-of-game world maps that offer far less information than their Morrowind equivalents
• Automatic fast-travel to any location that's already been visited
• A quest compass that points to your next destination, the use of which is made necessary by the combination of uninformative journal entries and an inability to ask directions
• A lack of aesthetics, especially compared to Morrowind's brilliant art direction
• A generic, medieval fantasy grab-bag setting, without even the coherence offered by Daggerfall's Iliac Bay region much less the spectacular sui generis setting of Morrowind
• A dull, poorly-plotted main quest, with the only plane of Oblivion featured in the base game (except at the very end) being a generic hellscape with little variation
• A half-baked action-oriented combat system so that success in combat depends greatly on the player's physical skill, yet is boring and tedious

Conversely, Oblivion had a better stealth system, and did a better job on the stealth-based guild quests (Thieves Guild & Dark Brotherhood versus Morrowind's Thieves Guild, Morag Tong, and House Hlaalu).

Oblivion was a massive disappointment at the time of its release, marking the decline of Bethesda Softworks.

 

[Yosharian]

People defending Oblivion's persuasion system

 

[Poseidon00]

They should have used the Knightly Order and Priesthood names that they had in Daggerfall, even if they lumped them all under one "Temple" faction. But the Imperial Cult kind of makes sense as a watered down version of western religion in a primarily eastern land with much different beliefs.