Why do people hate Oblivion so much?

[rusty_shackleford]

Oblivion good.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Morrowtards let the shrooms get to their brain and forgot how awful it was.

What truly fantastic writing.

 

[Not.AI]

I suspect many games that have level scaling also have it because they are mostly procedural. Randomly generated. Not only because they believe level scaling appeals to the mythical wider audience. Though obviously the second factor is a main reason.

Procedural random encounters, that's a big issue. Like the traditional DnD wandering monsters.

Like the usual, lazy something randomly spawning when the PC enter or reenters an area...

If the randomly generated encounter is not level-scaled, it's one of the following.

(a) Boring. Annoying. Battle music starts. A small rat runs out of the forest. It bites the level 100 hero's shoe. The level 100 hero kicks the rat. It dies. The battle music cuts to the woods exploration melody. Edit. Basically cliff racers again.

(b) Probably insta-death for the underleveled player's character. Feels unfun and unfair. Since opponents are not hand-placed and they can't be anticipated in context or seen at a distance and can't be avoided. PC enters a room and they also come in.

These are not problems in games that hand-craft areas and encounters. Edit. Nor was it a problem for DnD. Tabletop there is an arbitrarily clever DM, who is a human being. If the random encounter is randomly too hard, they'll also make up something in the moment that saves the party. Maybe lets it escape. And make that exception feel plausible in the circumstances. No such option in past games (barring future AI) that were played after they were finished and shipped, with a fixed immutable content.

 

[Funposter]

Morrowtards let the shrooms get to their brain and forgot how awful it was.

What truly fantastic writing.

Can't remember if it's possible to filter rumours by class, but that's all the issue is. Commoners either shouldn't get the rumour, or they should get a version that just says "murder of some Hlaalu noble". Of course they don't know the names of every local noble.

Edit: I don't mean "shouldn't" like it's a bug, I mean "shouldn't" like it's a design flaw

 

[Hammer Of The Heretics]

(a) Boring. Annoying. Battle music starts. A small rat runs out of the forest. It bites the level 100 hero's shoe. The level 100 hero kicks the rat. It dies. The battle music cuts to the woods exploration melody. Edit. Basically cliff racers again.

For more intelligent mobs you can mitigate this by having them spawn and then flee when overmatched. A bandit who sees you coming and craps his pants at the thought of picking a fight with you feels like the world reacting to your character progression.

That doesn't work so well with animals that shouldn't have any awareness of how outmatched they are, though.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

animals that shouldn't have any awareness of how outmatched they are

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Skyrim didn't improve any of the things a typical Codexer would care about but it's inarguably better than oblivion at action-RPG fundamentals: character controls/actions, level scaling, world and dungeon design, itemization and many other important building blocks. Really the only thing that continued to get worse from oblivion to skyrim was the writing, but it's hard to taste a difference between cat shit and dog shit.

Skyrim continued the casualization and dumbing-down, even relative to Oblivion, though it did manage to improve certain aspects so that the overall quality is about the same regardless. Among other things:

• Attributes were removed entirely from the game, and the player doesn't even select skills to specialize in for a new character; Skyrim did add a perk system inspired by Fallout, but almost all of the perks are either boring (+20% to attack/defense/whatever) or useless
• The user interface is a joke, far beyond the console-directed UI of Oblivion, almost as though Bethesda were attempting to see how horrible a UI could be while still being lapped up by console players, while computer gamers simply downloaded a mod to replace the UI
• Dungeons were incredibly large in volume yet in design were almost all linear corridors through which the player runs from encounter to encounter, with an occasional optional side-path swiftly deadending in treasure
• The game throws as many quests as possible at the player, who has quest entries added to the journal simply by happening to walk near NPCs related to quests, who immediately launch into introductory dialogue monologue, even including most Daedric quests
• The game was rushed to release and in consequence a large amount of content was removed, which involved inter alia severe truncation and simplification of the Civil War questline, reduced to little more than a series of boring battles, nearly identical for either side

Skyrim did manage to greatly improve the environment and other aspects of the setting from Oblivion, since even a generic Vikingland is much superior to a generic pseudo-medieval fantasy grab-bag, and also improved NPC interaction (much larger budget for voice-acting), while the level scaling was far less obnoxious than in Oblivion.

 

[perfectslumbers]

The way animals act in RPGs always kills my immersion. Seriously a pack of four wolves or a single bear are going to attack me and die over and over again? It made me appreciate BG1 where bears were passive 99% of the time, although wolves still had the usual problem.

 

[Atlet]

When I played Oblivion long time ago, I didn't have much rpg experience (basically jrpgs from snes and ps1). But I enjoyed the mood and the vampirism we suddenly got from fighting those pale abominations. Absurdly cool for my then easily impressed eyes.

The game started to become odd with all the hell gates and scaling, even for a noobie, but till those final acts, I enjoyed my experience. Will def check this game out again with loads of mods and see if I still like it.

 

[Cael]

The way animals act in RPGs always kills my immersion. Seriously a pack of four wolves or a single bear are going to attack me and die over and over again? It made me appreciate BG1 where bears were passive 99% of the time, although wolves still had the usual problem.

Cave. Racers... >.<

 

[NecroLord]

I love a good VikingLand.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

(a) Boring. Annoying. Battle music starts. A small rat runs out of the forest. It bites the level 100 hero's shoe. The level 100 hero kicks the rat. It dies. The battle music cuts to the woods exploration melody. Edit. Basically cliff racers again.

For more intelligent mobs you can mitigate this by having them spawn and then flee when overmatched. A bandit who sees you coming and craps his pants at the thought of picking a fight with you feels like the world reacting to your character progression.

That doesn't work so well with animals that shouldn't have any awareness of how outmatched they are, though.

You should hear the music when rats appear near me. It is pretty epic.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

The way animals act in RPGs always kills my immersion. Seriously a pack of four wolves or a single bear are going to attack me and die over and over again? It made me appreciate BG1 where bears were passive 99% of the time, although wolves still had the usual problem.

Bears are more cowardly by nature, especially Blackbears, but it's still a dice roll. I had to put the run to a yearling that was into the garbage bins a few years ago and even though he was small, I could tell he was still weighing the odds in his head. Wolves should be hostile at all times, so long as the AI has them running in packs. If anything the AI should have them scatter/ avoid when directly attacked but continue pursuing and chipping away at your health/stamina as you try to escape or until you run out of steam. That would be pretty complex to program though.

 

[HeroMarine]

Among other things:

• Attributes were removed entirely from the game, and the player doesn't even select skills to specialize in for a new character; Skyrim did add a perk system inspired by Fallout, but almost all of the perks are either boring (+20% to attack/defense/whatever) or useless
• The user interface is a joke, far beyond the console-directed UI of Oblivion, almost as though Bethesda were attempting to see how horrible a UI could be while still being lapped up by console players, while computer gamers simply downloaded a mod to replace the UI
• Dungeons were incredibly large in volume yet in design were almost all linear corridors through which the player runs from encounter to encounter, with an occasional optional side-path swiftly deadending in treasure
• The game throws as many quests as possible at the player, who has quest entries added to the journal simply by happening to walk near NPCs related to quests, who immediately launch into introductory dialogue monologue, even including most Daedric quests

I knew there's another reason why I hated Skyrim other than the retardness of the PC killing a fucking dragon at level 1.

 

[Silverfish]

I hated Oblivion because I got filtered by the level-scaling.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The quests in Skyrim to find tiny objects scattered across the Gameworld is some cancer tier game design.

 

[Ol' Willy]

animals that shouldn't have any awareness of how outmatched they are

Smart bear

 

[octavius]

Daedric quests

I knew there's another reason why I hated Skyrim other than the retardness of the PC killing a fucking dragon at level 1.

Makes me think of Might&Magic 7...

 

[wishbonetail]

Daedric quests

I knew there's another reason why I hated Skyrim other than the retardness of the PC killing a fucking dragon at level 1.

Makes me think of Might&Magic 7...

I'm just playing MM7 and it turns out for my Paladin to learn any skill to master level I need to kill a fucking dragon. My thief is already master in everything without stupid promotions. I mean WTF man.

 

[MWaser]

Daedric quests

I knew there's another reason why I hated Skyrim other than the retardness of the PC killing a fucking dragon at level 1.

Makes me think of Might&Magic 7...

At least killing Morkarak the Pityless on Emerald Isle in MM7 is actually difficult to pull off, unlike the free wins you are handed in Skyrim against dragons due to level scaling.

 

[MWaser]

Daedric quests

I knew there's another reason why I hated Skyrim other than the retardness of the PC killing a fucking dragon at level 1.

Makes me think of Might&Magic 7...

I'm just playing MM7 and it turns out for my Paladin to learn any skill to master level I need to kill a fucking dragon. My thief is already master in everything without stupid promotions. I mean WTF man.

That's the weakness of all "hybrid" classes in MM7. They require more promotions to get any skills to a decent level, and their max is heavily limited too. In general I'd say the hybrid classes are not worth using unless you want to make use of a specific "Grandmaster" ability that only a specific class has access to (but the only example of that which I can think of that has any value is Grandmaster Archery only available on Archer - all the other hybrid classes can only grandmaster worthless garbage skills and you miss out on all the genuinely powerful bonuses from what the Knight, Sorcerer and Cleric can master). For all intents and purposes, Clerics are just better Paladins in MM7. By far and large, even, since they have full access to grand-mastering even Dark and Light magic later.

 

[TheSecondRanger]

Several reasons. The world is empty and sterile and everything looks like plastic. Only the NPCs look worse then the environment. The leveling system ist awful and not fit for roleplaying. The fact that EVERY enemy levels at the same time as the player, and just gets better in combat, is insane. This leads to a scenario when the player gets weaker relatively as he progresses if he does not level up optimally (combat). The combat mechanics are atrocious and maybe fit for consoles. It ridicules everything morrowind built up. Also, the setting is a lotr cashgrab.
But maybe I got filtered. It has certain comfy qualities, though.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I thought the same with Dungeon Siege II and the mod where you could play DS1 using DS2 engine. It was horrible.

 

[NecroLord]

 

[Robotigan]

• Attributes were removed entirely from the game, and the player doesn't even select skills to specialize in for a new character; Skyrim did add a perk system inspired by Fallout, but almost all of the perks are either boring (+20% to attack/defense/whatever) or useless
• The user interface is a joke, far beyond the console-directed UI of Oblivion, almost as though Bethesda were attempting to see how horrible a UI could be while still being lapped up by console players, while computer gamers simply downloaded a mod to replace the UI
• Dungeons were incredibly large in volume yet in design were almost all linear corridors through which the player runs from encounter to encounter, with an occasional optional side-path swiftly deadending in treasure
• The game throws as many quests as possible at the player, who has quest entries added to the journal simply by happening to walk near NPCs related to quests, who immediately launch into introductory dialogue monologue, even including most Daedric quests
• The game was rushed to release and in consequence a large amount of content was removed, which involved inter alia severe truncation and simplification of the Civil War questline, reduced to little more than a series of boring battles, nearly identical for either side

Wow, I disagree with nearly all of this:

• I get what attributes are going for, but in practice I just think perks are a better system. Attributes sort of wind up as leveling your skills twice. If you wanted a "Ring of Intelligence" in Skyrim, you'd just replace the intelligence stat buff with an alchemy+enchanting+magicka stat buff and it'd be mathematically equivalent. So what's the point of having attributes?
• Okay, so I don't exactly disagree that the UI needed more information, but it's weird that you would want to play an Action RPG with a mouse and keyboard. Having two analog sticks is just kind of better for 3d spacial orientation than Cursor + WASD which is why every platformer ever is designed for a controller. It's also nice to layback on your couch and play games. I have my PC hooked up to an Nvidia Shield so I can do exactly that.
• Morrowind and Oblivion were only slightly more plausible with their dungeon layouts and Daggerfall is Daggerfall. And they were all way more boring. Lemme ask you something, have you ever tried a corn maze without a map? It sucks. Isometric and 2d games can get away with mazes because you can see a lot more visual information at once. In a first-person game, you're just staring at walls the whole time.
• I'd rather have pages of active quests than bumbling around for something to do.
• Okay, fair. Some of the faction questlines are reduced to glorified side quests because of obvious cuts to make a date. The Mage's College was done so dirty, it should have gotten a DLC over Dawnguard.