Yet another long Oblivion "first impression" threa

[suibhne]

I've now put in about 35 hours, and my impressions remain mixed. The combat-heavy sections, like Kvatch and the gates, tend to be howlingly bad. The exploration-heavy or quest-heavy sections are much better.

- Like Ghan said, some of the voice-acting is phenomenal. I'm really pleased when the voices and faces seem to fit perfectly together. And I have to admit...despite the fact that the intro voiceover is poorly written (at one point the verb "see" is used twice in the same dull sentence)...Patrick Stewart's delivery of the last voiceover line, coupled with the music and the aerial tour of the Imperial City, is a stirring opening to the game.

- The quests are getting significantly better than Morrowind's. I still haven't seen any genuine instances of multiple solutions, but at least they're not simple FedEx quests; they frequently launch short quest chains rather than standing on their own. In other words, quests which at first seem short have a nice way of evolving in complexity. I'm still dissatisfied, but mostly just because social interaction in the game is wretchedly bad. And that, unfortunately, was a fully conscious design decision by BethSoft.

- The loot levelling got much better once I hit level 12 or 13. Levelling itself has also slowed down (finally). I have enough skill in certain areas that I can take down strong enemies when I focus on my advantages (stealth) and equip my best weaponry (and teh ring!!11), but I'm still extremely vulnerable when I get lazy. The game feels much better balanced for level 10+ than for lower levels, but we'll see how long that feeling lasts.

- Levelled critters aren't getting any better. I'm fine with killing a Skeleton in one arrow but needing 10 for a Skeleton Hero; what bugs me is killing a Skingrad-area Wild Boar with 2 arrows from a Steel Bow, yet needing 8 arrows from a Glass Bow for an apparently identical Wild Boar near Anvil. Ugh.

- After I cleared Kvatch, a lot of people outside of Kvatch recognized me for my achievement. Superficial, sure, but it's a nice touch. It would be even better if the Black Horse Courier wrote an article about my dangerous exploits. :wink:

I still haven't started the main plot (tho I cleared Kvatch because I was there, and I gather that's also a main plot quest), yet I feel I've barely scratched the surface. Otoh, I also suspect I haven't seen some of the real quality in the game; my recollection from Morrowind is that BethSoft spends much of its design energy on the main quest path, so many of the best dungeons and quests are there. The dungeons so far have been disappointingly drab affairs - bits of DX:IW-style consolization, nothing like the best Daedric spelunking I found in Morrowind - but I'm not willing to pass judgment on this until I've followed the main quest a bit. There were a lot of dull dungeons in Morrowind, too, which didn't make the great ones any less great.

Oblivion has a lot of questionable (or just plain bad) design decisions, but the only thing that really ruins my role-playing experience over and over is the goddamn mfing Persuasion mini-game (and dialog in general). Tbh, I think even Morrowind's piss-poor walking Wikis were better than this; at least there you had an analog for the sort of complexity that real human conversations can achieve (seriously, try to find any useful information among those topic lists ). In contrast, Oblivion's dialog is (mostly) capped at the attenion span of a 2nd-grade Ritalin whore. This easily ranks as the worst RPG design decision I've seen in years, and I'm baffled it didn't end up on cutting-room floor.

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

The persuasion minigame just doesn't work as an abstraction of persuasion, it makes no sense. The lockpicking game makes perfect sense and I enjoy it (and contrary to what some said, I have no chance to open a harder lock at low skill levels, and I don't think I have bad reflexes).
I basically avoided using it so far.

 

[Oarfish]

The persuasion minigame just doesn't work as an abstraction of persuasion, it makes no sense

Indeed, they should have just left it as a roll. It's way to easy to beat too.

The lockpicking game makes perfect sense and I enjoy it

I enjoy it, but can still pick very hard locks with a security of 30 and only loose a few picks. It's not a question of reactions as much as being careful and waiting for a slow tumbler movement. Not all that rewarding when you get 10 gold, an onion or a replica sword though. Leveling the visible loot in dispolay cases was just dumb.

 

[Solik]

I prefer it to a roll, because there's much less loading involved when my computer's RNG is being bitchy. But it's still a pretty weak minigame.

 

[suibhne]

The persuasion minigame just doesn't work as an abstraction of persuasion, it makes no sense

Indeed, they should have just left it as a roll. It's way to easy to beat too.

My Speechcraft has gone from 5 up to 61 in only 15 levels, just through this stupid minigame. The crazy thing is, it's not much easier now than it was at a skill level of 5, mostly because it was pathetically easy at the get-go. It doesn't make sense, but it's also just bad gameplay.

As for the lockpicking minigame, I hate it. Maybe because of the way I have my mouse set up for competitive FPS stuff, the lockpicking feels incredibly "floaty", not at all tactile. It's kind of like driving a manual transmission with a really loose gearbox - you're never quite sure what gear you're in until you turn the key...

Anyway, @ Solik: it doesn't have to check against an RNG if it's a skill check. Maybe you either have the skill or you don't, as in Bloodlines. The thing that really disappoints me in both of these minigames is that they collapse the broad real-world range of skill development into a very narrow set of values. I.e., a skilled diplomat or lockpick in real life has probably spent years honing those skills, and a difficult challenge for an expert won't even be within the realm of possibility for a neophyte. In Oblivion, tho, a total beginner can defeat "Very Hard" locks or "persuade" the thorniest person with a starting disposition of 10. And, as a corollary, there's very little evident improvement when you refine either of those skills, because they're tested only through minigames which by design represent a narrow range of challenge.

 

[Nog Robbin]

Another thing that bothers me with the lock pick is the magical time out in which it takes place. You can be running from a creature with it hot on your heels, reach a door that is locked - then take as long as you please to get through it, while the chasing creature does what? Trims his nails? Watches bemused? Has a little sleep? There is no apparent risk in picking a lock other than being caught opening something you shouldn't. How on earth (or Nirn) can you concentrate on a lock when a creature is beating on you (which it would be if it wasn't for the magical time out)? Another immersion breaker really.

[Note - this is based on what I have heard and read. I have not yet played the game. Thought I'd better add that in case I have been misinformed]

 

[Solik]

suibhne--

That would work pretty well in a game where skill increases at levelup or so. Don't think it'd work out very well in a TES-like game where usage is how you increase it. Maybe if they re-introduced huge numbers of random NPCs or something.

 

[suibhne]

suibhne--

That would work pretty well in a game where skill increases at levelup or so. Don't think it'd work out very well in a TES-like game where usage is how you increase it. Maybe if they re-introduced huge numbers of random NPCs or something.

There are so many PCs in the Imperial City alone that I levelled my Speechcraft from 5 to 46 before I'd even left those city walls, and there were a lot of people I didn't even talk to. I wasn't even P/Ling - I was legitimately under the impression that I might get more quests or better information if i raised everyone's disposition beyond, say, 25. Turns out I was (at least mostly) wrong, but also turns out there's no shortage of NPCs in this world. I stopped using "persuade" on 75% of people maybe 10 hours back, and I'm still at 68 with only about 1/20th of the gameworld under my belt.

 

[Claw]

Another thing that bothers me with the lock pick is the magical time out in which it takes place

Well, that's just consistent design. Afaik, the game also pauses while you rumage in your inventory, so you can change your complete armour and weapon between swings.

 

[franc kaos]

Easy workaround for both minigames (don't know if it's possible to mod it tho) - you get one chance, then kicked back into the game world.

Persuasion - yea, stupid, but if you only get one chance it would kill the easiness of it. As it stands you can try over and over until it's literally impossible not to max their disposition out. To try again you have to reinitiate conversation. Also, if you fail to raise their disposition you lose a skill point.

Lockpicking - when you attempt to pick a lock you become thoroughly engrossed, so much so that time slows untill you succeed or the pick breaks, at which point you're thrown back into the world.

I'm gonna post this over on the ES mod forum, see if anyone thinks it might be possible (thu' scripting (or as I prefer to call it, the black arts)).

 

[suibhne]

Still playing, still getting a kick out of it, and still irritated by a lot of the design deficiencies. I'm getting to the point where my excitement about exploring is sometimes offset by the horrid levelling mechanics, but a really good dungeon can still pull me in for an hour or two and make me forget about the bullshit. I don't regret my purchase, but I do regret that the game isn't nearly as good as it should have been.

I've complained about a lot of different things in this thread and others, and I haven't changed my mind on any of them. For example, the game's treatment of social interaction is just as dissastisfying as it was on my first day. But the only problem that actually deflates my enjoyment, every hour I play, is the levelling scheme. For me, it has these effects:


1. I often have little sense of accomplishment in the world, other than coloring in the white areas on the map. Yes, exploration can be its own reward; I genuinely enjoy discovering new dungeons, especially of the non-cookie-cutter variety, and I think level-appropriate challenges make a lot of sense in random dungeons. The system here is totally haywire, tho.

Re-visit bandit caves you previously cleared at lvl 1, and the lvl 20 Bandits are all wearing Ebony or Glass. It's like you accomplished nothing when you sweated tears to take down the last cornered Bandit with your Rusty Iron Dagger and 3 HP remaining at lvl 1.


2. The game economy is basically shot to hell. When you're looting 1800-septim Ebony Cuirasses from the still-warm bodies of high-level Bandits (er, sorry - Marauders ), you can easily amass huge piles of wealth simply by visiting a few different merchants. This is compounded because some merchants are bugged and never run out of money, but that bug really only streamlines what's basically a killer gold farming strategy: crawl those dungeons, or even revisit all the caves you've previously cleared and clear them again, and rake in the Glass, Ebony, Orcish, Elven, etc. l3wt.

Moreover, this ridiculous mechanic undermines basic economics. High-level items aren't worth more money because they're more powerful; they're worth more money because they're more powerful and rare. As someone else pointed out, Morrowind had maybe 2 sets of Daedric armor in the entire game, and that actually made sense. Here, tho, every lvl 22 Tom, Dick, and Harry has a Daedric or Ebony piece, if not a full set...so the obvious question arises: if this material is really so ridiculously common, why is it worth so goddamn much money? For that matter, why aren't all of the Imperial Soldiers and even City Guards outfitted in full Glass and Daedric gear?


3. The gameworld makes no sense. The overworld becomes more and more challenging as you level, to the point where you encounter uber Mountain Lions and Minotaurs on the highways along which you can fast-travel. In fact, the Wolves all magically transmogrify into more challenging Bears as you level up. A functioning Cyrodiilian economy is unthinkable in this situation - even tho characters and books in the game describe an active system of trade.

Another major consequence is that your own achievements become trivialized. I'm the "Hero of Kvatch" and the "Grand Champion of the Arena" - in fact, the City Guards in Anvil actually express awe at my Arena achievements, on the other side of the continent, and that's pretty cool - yet I get pwnt my Mountain Lions right outside the city gates.

There was a point in Morrowind where I could legimitately handle any randomly-generated overworld threat with a few arrows, unless they were monsters tied to specific places (Daedric or Dwemer ruins, caves, etc.) That just plain makes sense. Yes, monsters should still be able to give me a challenge, and sometimes they should even be unbeatable unless I'm really lucky or really smart (or come back at a higher level :wink: ) - but really, at least by lvl 15 or so, the wildlife shouldn't be anything more than an inconvenience.

It's not merely a matter of frustrating my ambitions to be powerful within the game; it's a matter of a deeply inconsistent gameworld, where your achievement in the Arena lionizes you as one of the greatest warriors in the land but your mundane game experience constantly denies that achievement. As a consequence of your celebrated achievement, your position relative to the gameworld hasn't changed at all and may even be lower.

Put another way, there's no consistency or scale of growth in this gameworld. The bar is constantly moving in thoroughly unpredictable ways, contradicting the game's own valorization of your progress, and the end result is a serious lack of logic within the gameworld.

 

[Solik]

I'm finding myself pretty much in agreement with your most recent post. Overall, I'm sort of looking at Oblivion like I looked at Civilization 4 when it was first released -- great game, but some mind-boggling flaws preventing it from being excellent. Lucky for Civ, it was patched in the first month to fix the worst flaws.

Re-visit bandit caves you previously cleared at lvl 1, and the lvl 20 Bandits are all wearing Ebony or Glass. It's like you accomplished nothing when you sweated tears to take down the last cornered Bandit with your Rusty Iron Dagger and 3 HP remaining at lvl 1.

I'm not so sure about this one though. True, there's enough dungeons that respawning isn't entirely necessary, but I still think it promotes replayability. It might be better if the respawned enemies were always of a different type, so that you don't feel as if you levelled up the previous owners by killing them; instead, it feels more like new inhabitants wandered in. It would really let you make a nice living for yourself -- get a house in a town and be the resident hero, periodically clearing out the nearby dungeons of dangerous inhabitants that move in to threaten the peace.

This is compounded because some merchants are bugged and never run out of money

This is not a bug. Merchants don't have money totals. Instead, they have a max amount that they'll pay for any one item. All it removes is the rest-for-24h-thing from Morrowind.

I haven't seen the high levels yet, but it does sound like the consensus is that stuff is too common.

The overworld becomes more and more challenging as you level, to the point where you encounter uber Mountain Lions and Minotaurs on the highways along which you can fast-travel.

This is my biggest complaint. I don't think the overworld should have much at all in the way of levelled lists (restrict that mostly to dungeons), and I really, really hate the high encounter rate on the roads. It makes no sense and is quite frustrating on a horse. Last night, I was being chased by a spriggan, two brown bears, three goblin skirmishers, a flame atronach, two bandits, and a timber wolf. I encountered every last one of them in a two-minute timespan. I'm seriously considering going ahead and grabbing the construction set to try to fix this myself (was going to wait until beating the game to open it in case of spoilers, but this is just too annoying).

 

[Excrément]

The overworld becomes more and more challenging as you level, to the point where you encounter uber Mountain Lions and Minotaurs on the highways along which you can fast-travel.

This is my biggest complaint. I don't think the overworld should have much at all in the way of levelled lists (restrict that mostly to dungeons), and I really, really hate the high encounter rate on the roads. It makes no sense and is quite frustrating on a horse. Last night, I was being chased by a spriggan, two brown bears, three goblin skirmishers, a flame atronach, two bandits, and a timber wolf. I encountered every last one of them in a two-minute timespan. I'm seriously considering going ahead and grabbing the construction set to try to fix this myself (was going to wait until beating the game to open it in case of spoilers, but this is just too annoying).

be patient at some time almost all creatures don't level anymore so if you are lvl 25 or more, the game is getting easier and easier.
the only creatures who level up with no limit are the dremora lord xivilai I think (I see a post about this issue on the ga forum)

so most people are right now complaining because the majority of players are below level 25.

maybe it is the difficulty evolution which is quite weird in Oblivion :
not too hard in the first 5 levels.
getting harder and harder up to lvl 15.
stable, slight decrease difficulty between lvl 15-25
after easier and easier, of course all of this depends on your specialized skills.

for me it is largely better than morrowind system because only the first ten level in MW were interesting or challenging, but it is surely not withtout flaws.

I like loot level because it preventsthe fact that any thieves in MW with cheap chameleon potion could steal at lvl 1 daedric weapons, now these weapons doesn't exist so the game is not broken.
the problem is more the frequency of high level items on the bandits or in the dungeons once you are lvl 15 in Oblivion.
I like the fact you can't find daedric stuff before being more than lvl 20 but I don't like the fact that each time you are looting a dungeon you found daedric stuff, that should stay rare and still need an achievement to obtain.

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

This is my biggest complaint. I don't think the overworld should have much at all in the way of levelled lists (restrict that mostly to dungeons), and I really, really hate the high encounter rate on the roads. It makes no sense and is quite frustrating on a horse. Last night, I was being chased by a spriggan, two brown bears, three goblin skirmishers, a flame atronach, two bandits, and a timber wolf. I encountered every last one of them in a two-minute timespan. I'm seriously considering going ahead and grabbing the construction set to try to fix this myself (was going to wait until beating the game to open it in case of spoilers, but this is just too annoying).

Hmm, I thought the encounter rate along roads and in the wilderness is actually a little too low. The landscape is nice, but I want SOME action when I travel.

 

[suibhne]

Hmm, I thought the encounter rate along roads and in the wilderness is actually a little too low. The landscape is nice, but I want SOME action when I travel.

After the gorramn Cliff Racers, I'm pretty damn happy about the rate of random encounters. :wink:

My only point is that encounters should be much rarer near cities or other settlements and along well-travelled roads, like the highways between cities. This would allow fast travel between cities to actually make some sense, and it would also mean the vaunted Imperial Legion can accomplish something other than being killed by roadside Bears.

 

[Solik]

Maybe it's the horse. If you bolt around on the horse, you run into encounters quickly simply because of how much ground you cover.

Still, there's just something immersion-breaking about seeing rabid wildlife relaxing in the middle of a well-travelled road in the heart of the Empire.

 

[AlanC9]

The overworld becomes more and more challenging as you level, to the point where you encounter uber Mountain Lions and Minotaurs on the highways along which you can fast-travel.

This is my biggest complaint. I don't think the overworld should have much at all in the way of levelled lists (restrict that mostly to dungeons), and I really, really hate the high encounter rate on the roads. It makes no sense and is quite frustrating on a horse. Last night, I was being chased by a spriggan, two brown bears, three goblin skirmishers, a flame atronach, two bandits, and a timber wolf. I encountered every last one of them in a two-minute timespan. I'm seriously considering going ahead and grabbing the construction set to try to fix this myself (was going to wait until beating the game to open it in case of spoilers, but this is just too annoying).

be patient at some time almost all creatures don't level anymore so if you are lvl 25 or more, the game is getting easier and easier.

But the objection is that the levelling makes the game world silly, not that it makes the game too hard. It's still going to be silly at level 25, probably even sillier.

I like loot level because it preventsthe fact that any thieves in MW with cheap chameleon potion could steal at lvl 1 daedric weapons, now these weapons doesn't exist so the game is not broken.

Surely the problem here was the cheap chameleon potion. That's what should have been fixed.

 

[suibhne]

But the objection is that the levelling makes the game world silly, not that it makes the game too hard. It's still going to be silly at level 25, probably even sillier.

The reason 55 septims feels like a big letdown, after you've defeated a lich and picked a "Very Hard" lock, is that at lvl 25 you're picking up multiple Ebony pieces in every dungeon - each one of which is worth between 1200 and 1800 septims. I've amassed over 25,000 septims without trying particularly hard, and that's after purchasing two houses.

In other news... Bagged a few more dungeons last night, and I'm getting a little disappointed. Even the cooler caves are mostly linear (tho there are some nifty exceptions). What disappoints me the most is that they feel totally non-organic. Once you've been in a few caves, you realize the textures and meshes merely disguise that they're all straight lines and right angles; there are no curved hallways or stone formations as in Morrowind.

Besides that, I've also seen nothing which can compare to the more atmospheric dungeons from Morrowind - the boat tomb, for example, or the incredibly deep tomb with the maze.

My judgment at this point might be unfair, because I'm comparing the most memorable dungeons from 100+ hours of Morrowind (including main quest dungeons) to the most memorable from 45 hours of Oblivion (without any main quest dungeons). And I've definitely seen some cool stuff; it just feels more rigid and much smaller than the cool stuff offered by Morrowind. E.g., I encountered an Ayleid ruin last night with a unique and really interesting design, but it was so tiny that it only had three rooms and three enemies.

A few things I like, which I haven't mentioned earlier:

- Archery is done right. It feels satisfying and "real" (tho archery is affected by the fact that physics for everything are a little screwy; my arrows shouldn't send an enemy flying 30 feet across the room).

- The swordplay also feels "real", as if the swords actually have mass. Claymores respond exactly as I think they should (well, other than the fact that swords still swing right through enemy models while they make a "hit" sound...).

- I'm starting to do more in combat than just spastically button-mash, and it's paying off. There's actually a system there. I don't find it deep or particularly intuitive, but it's a lot better than Morrowind's.

- Casting without stowing your weapon - huge improvement. kthx

- Levelling isn't always a problem. Goblins level up without having their loot levelled, e.g. This works well and should be the rule: all enemies should have a lower and/or upper bound with separate, lower caps for their gear/loot. The current system is an embarrassing mess that feels as if it was designed by teenaged min-maxers, but it's also totally fixable by people in the mod community with much better sense than Beth.

- I like the traps. I wish there was some sort of "trap sense" skill - maybe an icon could fade in representing your "spider sense", detecting imminent danger or something not quite right - but the traps are nicely designed. They also offer interesting tactical possibilities once you figure out you can use them against your opponents; e.g., I achieved an insta-kill against a challenging Goblin Shaman by luring him into a log trap. My only complaint is that the pressure plates on the floor are much too obvious.