Game News Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion official

[littleboy]

I have 64mb GeForce 2 MX. The water was blue. Whatever.

yea well my graphics card hates me so it made the water brown AND put the water level over my head so i had to swim around town.

 

[taks]

last time i fired MW up, i felt the colors were actually rather realistic in terms of palette, just not nearly as vivid as i they should have been (patches have apparently helped, but not much, IMO). contrast that with NWN's OC, however, which the palette was almost cartoonish... waaay too bright and garish at times. there's a medium in there i hope they find with #4...

taks

 

[suibhne]

Morrowind's world graphics were great. Its characters were too low-poly and some of the textures weren't nearly as artful as they could have been - illustrated perfectly by the dramatic improvement offered by some fan-made texture packs, as well as the fanpack of character heads which are actually lower-poly and yet look about 82x better than Bethesda's - but the overall graphics engine was very nice. That's one of the things that kept me going despite the game's many drawbacks.

On the other hand, the performance of the graphics engine was, ah, regrettable. It's heavily CPU-dependent and scales rather poorly. That makes me a little cynical about the Oblivion eye-candy currently being tossed about.

 

[Avin]

i particularly found morrowind too brown... even more than daggerfall (which i consider a better ganes, despite of the "if you're not there you can't finish the game anymore" bugs).

 

[fnordcircle]

I'm looking forward to this a lot, but the whole idea of scaling back the world to appease the braindead 'oh my god there are more than 2 directions to go in' people pisses me off.

Put in some simpleton Fable-esque teleport system that can optionally be employed by people who buy games with the hopes that they can finish them in 2 hours and get all that out of the way.

 

[Sol Invictus]

I'm looking forward to this a lot, but the whole idea of scaling back the world to appease the braindead 'oh my god there are more than 2 directions to go in' people pisses me off.

Morrowind, if anything, needed scaling down. There were just too many areas (which were about a minute's run away from each other - funny that.) with very little actual content. It needed to be more focused and concise.

 

[Stark]

I'm looking forward to this a lot, but the whole idea of scaling back the world to appease the braindead 'oh my god there are more than 2 directions to go in' people pisses me off.

Put in some simpleton Fable-esque teleport system that can optionally be employed by people who buy games with the hopes that they can finish them in 2 hours and get all that out of the way.

what Exitium said.

 

[fnordcircle]

Morrowind, if anything, needed scaling down. There were just too many areas (which were about a minute's run away from each other - funny that.) with very little actual content. It needed to be more focused and concise.

Put in some simpleton Fable-esque teleport system that can optionally be employed by people who buy games with the hopes that they can finish them in 2 hours and get all that out of the way.

See, my way everybody wins. People are fucking polarized as shit over Morrowind and I can accept that. So make the 'omg the silt flyers and too much land ngah ngah' people happy with teleporters and make the 'omg don't scale it back kotor kotor' people happy by leaving it the way it is.

 

[Limorkil]

See, my way everybody wins. People are fucking polarized as shit over Morrowind and I can accept that. So make the 'omg the silt flyers and too much land ngah ngah' people happy with teleporters and make the 'omg don't scale it back kotor kotor' people happy by leaving it the way it is.

Believe it or not, one of the big complaints about kotor from people that seem to like everything else about it, is that you have a lot of running about between areas. They're not wrong, some of the running about is tedious, but it's nothing compared to many other RPGs.

Even with teleporters, some people aren't going to be happy unless they have a spell to teleport them to the nearest teleporter. Even then, they are going to whine about having to explore and find places that are not near teleporters. Look at how almost every tip guide for Morrowind advises people to use the boots of blinding speed cheat to make the character run faster. Even horses won't be fast enough: some people want to arrive instantly.

Personally, I would hate to see actual teleporters dotting the landscape. I would prefer to have virtual 'travel nodes' on the overland map that people can fast travel between by clicking on the map. And to appease people that hate looking for stuff, have a game option that automatically marks all quest locations on the overland map. That way the people that don't want to zoom about all over the place can ignore these options.

 

[voodoo1man]

Put in some simpleton Fable-esque teleport system that can optionally be employed by people who buy games with the hopes that they can finish them in 2 hours and get all that out of the way.

Ok, what exactly is wrong with making the mark/teleport spells in MW have multiple targets? This ensures that you have to travel to an area by foot at least once, and gives you a reason to learn more magic. Or if you don't want free-form teleportation points for "game balancing" or whatever (more likely so you can claim more playtime on your box), put in teleportation runes like in Gothic. Travel to any of the trendy hot-spots from wherever you want. Sure, foot travel is fun and entertaining if you have good graphics, interesting, populated landscapes, large view distances, and varied and challenging monsters (which is why most of the time I didn't use the runes in Gothic), but unfortunately MW is not a game with those qualities. The one unique thing MW lets you do to enhance the experience is make constant-effect levitation items, if you can find the time to make enough gold to pay for them (my "Fancy Pants of Flying" were an essential tool in my adventuring).

 

[mr. lamat]

i'd be happy if they brought back the travel system from daggerfall. you could take the scenic route or travel in a hurry and all was good.

those graphics are purdy... i hope there's more to the world than just that though.

 

[jiujitsu]

When I played, I made sure I always had the amulets of Almsivi and Divine interevention. That way you could always tele to the nearest temple or fort then take a silt strider. I also had a mark spell placed in my stronghold. The only running around I ever really did was when I had to go somewhere that naturally people wouldn't be able to get to easily.

It could have been a little better. I what way I don't know. It didn't bother me too much.

 

[geminito]

People who complain that they had to grind to increase skills in Morrowind were playing the game wrong. The most enjoyable way to play Morrowind is to role-play it! Don't worry about your skills too much, just play the damn game. Use the methods you prefer and you'll gradually get better at them. Open locks with lockpick and you'll get better at it. Or use Alteration spells instead and you'll get better at it too. Don't worry about the values, just play. Morrowind gets too easy at the high levels anyway, you don't need to worry about maxing all your skills. Role-players don't think like that. You're not going to get a GAME OVER screen and put your initials in a HIGH SCORE table.

Why are people so polarized about Morrowind, anyway? (Myself included.)

 

[Stark]

Morrowind, if anything, needed scaling down. There were just too many areas (which were about a minute's run away from each other - funny that.) with very little actual content. It needed to be more focused and concise.

Put in some simpleton Fable-esque teleport system that can optionally be employed by people who buy games with the hopes that they can finish them in 2 hours and get all that out of the way.

See, my way everybody wins. People are fucking polarized as shit over Morrowind and I can accept that. So make the 'omg the silt flyers and too much land ngah ngah' people happy with teleporters and make the 'omg don't scale it back kotor kotor' people happy by leaving it the way it is.

people (at least those here) are not complaining about the size of the world (too big, don't know where to go), so those of you that say gamers are polarized over this is missing the point.

read Exitium's post again. It's the emptiness and general nothing to do over a vast track of land that's the problem. If I'm not mistaken their second expansion addressed that problem (smaller island, but packed full of contents).

I would rather have a smaller scale world, packed with more things to do, than large, empty land where you fight occational rat and cliff hanger, and every other cave looks exactly the same as the one before, and every quest is just a variation of another. You know, quality over quantity.

People who complain that they had to grind to increase skills in Morrowind were playing the game wrong. The most enjoyable way to play Morrowind is to role-play it!

Why are people so polarized about Morrowind, anyway? (Myself included.)

The chieft complain I heard here (myself included) is not about the skill system. It's the static, single dimension NPC, lack of actual dialog, lack of quests with multiple solutions and lack of impact of your action to the gameworld. I agree with all those and think they're all valid complains.

There're some here who complained about how easy to exploit the skill system but I've always think if the player exploits it and spoils the immersion factor then it's their fault, not the developer's fault.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

People who complain that they had to grind to increase skills in Morrowind were playing the game wrong. The most enjoyable way to play Morrowind is to role-play it!

Since when does roleplaying prohibit people from minding their characters' levels and complaining about how the character system is implemented? If I want to roleplay a character that uses X skill, I have to be mindful of the skill's level. Hoping it will one day improve doesn't cut it.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Since when does roleplaying prohibit people from minding their characters' levels and complaining about how the character system is implemented? If I want to roleplay a character that uses X skill, I have to be mindful of the skill's level. Hoping it will one day improve doesn't cut it.

Role-Player is correct. You can role play anything, technically, but whether or not the mechanics of the system work and work well are wide open to debate. You can't simply say, "Just shut up and role play" because that's basically the same thing as admitting there's a problem with the system. There's something you have to ignore to enjoy yourself.

 

[suibhne]

There're some here who complained about how easy to exploit the skill system but I've always think if the player exploits it and spoils the immersion factor then it's their fault, not the developer's fault.

The problem isn't that it's easy to exploit the skill system; it's that the skill system is so imbalanced that it practically exploits itself.

For example, your armor skills go up by - wait for it - being hit in combat. What?! The combat skills go up with every successful hit, which means that they actually progress more rapidly at higher levels - since you encounter more baddies, and you need to hit those baddies more often to drop 'em. Most skills, in fact, are raised only by successes, when in real life we tend to learn at least as much from our failures - and this means that skills in Morrowind will raise more quickly once you're better at them, imbalancing the whole skill progression so that upper-level character gain skills more quickly rather than less. The Athletics skill is raised by running, which seems logical until you reflect on the fact that walking through the world is punishingly slow from the player's perspective; you're basically forced into an athletic character, with concomitant spikes in Endurance (which is the synergistic stat tied to Athletics), unless you want your time in Morrowind to take 160 hours rather than 80.

Those are just a few examples of why Morrowind's skill system seems to work nicely until you get to Level 15 or so, then becomes increasingly imbalanced. It's true that the progression slows down a bit near the top, but not nearly enough to balance the whole skills mechanic. And the patch made this even worse wrt combat skills, since Bethesda's solution to the lack of difficulty for high-level characters was to implement a difficulty slider granting additional hp and damage to baddies - meaning that your combat skills progress even more rapidly. Really, it's like they didn't even think it through.

 

[Stark]

Yeah. The skill system is broken at some level, such as the one you mentioned. also, it's incredibly tough to raise some of the skills due to the limited chance one gets to actually use them (lock picking and soul trapping anyone?).

and then there are those who strap a rubber band to their controller to let pc to continually run/sneak while they go off to sleep. People who play like this, then complain about the skill system being "broken", have no one to blame but themselves, since they conciously chose to exploit the system.

Another thing I noticed about MW: after i got past level 15 or so i hardly care if i gained another level. The thrill of "I just gained another level!!!" is just not there. In DnD there's the thrill of gaining feats and seeing them in action. In MW it's just more points to spread out, but do not introduce new tactics/toys to the table.

by then, i was just hurrying through the main quest and wanting to complete it and move on to other games.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

and then there are those who strap a rubber band to their controller to let pc to continually run/sneak while they go off to sleep. People who play like this, then complain about the skill system being "broken", have no one to blame but themselves, since they conciously chose to exploit the system.

More that you have to "exploit" the system in order to gain any decent skills. Ever tried attacking someone with a weapon you suck at, only to be killed because you can't hit them, because you suck at that skill? Yet the only way to improve that skill is to use that skill, which you can't do because you end up dead. So what do you do, you find a way to increase that skill. Catch 22.

 

[Sol Invictus]

It isn't so much a Catch 22 as it is a case of "go kill something weaker that won't evade all your attacks".

 

[Elwro]

When you have Long Blade at 60 you fight more difficult to hit monsters than when you have Long Blade at 20, so the rate of advancement stays similar. I found nothing wrong with this skill. Some others were poorly balanced, though.

 

[Nutcracker]

In the toilet hopefully where the game belongs.

I think we can un-dumbfuck Voulourn for this superb prophecy.

 

[Micmu]

I think we can un-dumbfuck Voulourn for this superb prophecy.

It wasn't really a science to predict that.

However I was shocked (I surely wasn't expecting that) how totally they killed the exploration aspect - something MW was good at.