Video & PC Game Discussion

SaltyJon wrote: Todd Howard said that the enemies no longer scale up with you (to address the other concern).

Oh yeah, I knew they were dropping that. I mean, I wasn't going to play Skyrim under any circumstances anyway. I'm just saying, from what I've heard, without modifications that it's kind of a big deal when attempting to play Oblivion.

SaltyJon wrote:    Sure, they had a problem with most of the guards looking exactly alike, but mods fixed that in Oblivion and hopefully it'll be fixed in Skyrim either by the company themselves or by modders again.

And that's the Bethesda way. f**k it, we don't need to finish the game, fans will do it for free and nobody will complain!

Radiant AI is the system used

lol, I don't believe in Radiant AI. It was in Oblivion and Fallout 3 too, and AI never lives up to the promises people make beforehand...

And Henry reminded me of another gripe: if people love the game so damned much, why doesn't the fact the game is only really playable because of fans mods, not seem to make any difference?

The out-of-the-box game was crap.  People had to mod it to make it playable.  Yet it's still somehow a GotY game and people still seem to think it's amazing even though most people who say this have it modded to become playable!

Henry Plainview wrote: SaltyJon wrote: Todd Howard said that the enemies no longer scale up with you (to address the other concern). Oh yeah, I knew they were dropping that. I mean, I wasn't going to play Skyrim under any circumstances anyway. I'm just saying, from what I've heard, without modifications that it's kind of a big deal when attempting to play Oblivion. I don't know, it didn't bother me very much, because not all enemies scaled with you - some did, but many stayed the same pathetic creatures they started as throughout the game. SaltyJon wrote:    Sure, they had a problem with most of the guards looking exactly alike, but mods fixed that in Oblivion and hopefully it'll be fixed in Skyrim either by the company themselves or by modders again. And that's the Bethesda way. f**k it, we don't need to finish the game, fans will do it for free and nobody will complain! Well, that's part of it, true.  Then again, what the guards look like isn't one of the most important aspects of the game, and maybe they were trying to make some sort of social commentary, that all guards/officials are just clones/slaves of the system. Radiant AI is the system used lol, I don't believe in Radiant AI. It was in Oblivion and Fallout 3 too, and AI never lives up to the promises people make beforehand... They claim that they've improved it for Skyrim, but as you said we'll have to wait and see (and by we, I mean I and the others who actually care about the game, not you )

James wrote: Yes, there was the Dark Brotherhood but wasn't that only available later in the game (by which time I had got bored of the game)? No, you could join the Dark Brotherhood at any time...all you had to do is kill any random NPC who wasn't explicitly part of one of the guilds. What I meant though was not so much an assassins guild but the fact that if you joined the Warrior or Thieves guild in Morrowind, you ended up having to kill the leader of either one of them.  This was actually kind of could be circumvented and you could join all guilds and complete the game but Oblivion's guild system didn't feel quite so good to me. In Oblivion's Fighter's guild, you don't need to kill the leader (IIRC), but instead through your actions taking out a competing, corrupt guild you somehow end up taking over.  With the Thieves' Guild, the leader is basically "whichever individual is in possession of the Grey Fox's mask", and the current bearer of the mask wants rid of it so he can come out of obscurity and return to his life from before.  Again, not necessary to kill him (and if you do, you miss out on one of the more interesting guild questlines in the game). Yes the Ridge Riders were annoying but at least things happened whilst wandering about.  In Morrowind, you have the wizard who falls to the ground dead and the Ridge Riders who attack you constantly.  The wizard falling to the ground is great, but the random attacks by the stupid ridge riders just got repetitive and incredibly dull.  In Oblivion I just felt I could walk around without even getting attacked ('cause you could avoid the animals).  Many times, this was the case.  I don't know how it will be changed in the new one, but we'll see.  The world around me felt too safe to be in.  Except a few places, but you could avoid those too. I know I could enter a cave and get attacked by Daedra.  I meant on the surface mostly.  Daedra were almost exclusively on the surface of the world, in outdoor areas.  And the respawning Daedra was indeed annoying as well.  I realise other RPGs I do like have respawns too (Dragon Age 2 for instance) but they approach it differently. How was it annoying?  They are demons coming from another plane of existence, explained pretty well. I don't want to do fetch quests.  In Oblivion the intro is actually the most exciting part of the game! I understand the concept of sandbox games.  I just haven't yet found one that I really like.

Apologies, I was getting confused with the endless amount of respawning bandits and the amount that also seemed to be vampires.

There's no need for that amount of bandits!

The only reason I was tempted to continue to play was to get the stronghold and build it up.  Plus I wanted to collect all books in the game, 'cause I'm sad like that.

That reminds me: I also got annoyed when a book I required fell down the back of a shelf and was forever lost in the game!


Edited by James - November 09 2011 at 19:09

Ah, speaking of building up a stronghold, you must be back on Morrowind.  I only did that on one of my playthroughs of that game, because it was so time consuming to get through the House questline I was interested in in any of them without somehow upsetting the House and getting kicked out.  I haven't played Morrowind in quite a while, so I can't remember the frequency of the respawning of the bandits and/or vampires.

I used to love to sit and read through all the books I could find in Oblivion (especially once someone came out with a mod which allowed you to increase your character's Intelligence by reading them [yes, you could just leave it open and AFK until you saw the Intelligence increase notice, but that was no fun]) so I understand the enjoyment of collecting all the books in the game...I just wish they were full-length books instead of only like 8-20 pages.

As with the "things falling/getting lost which are required to continue one of the storylines" thing, that is a problem I've noticed in the games.  Eventually, I got tired of a glitch affecting my playability, so I'd do the quest up until the point where I was required to get the item, then use the console to give it to myself and advance to the next stage of the quest, then continue it on.  It felt a bit like cheating, but at the same time it was justified because the world broke somehow and the item disappeared.

Maybe you just suck at the game, James. 

Oh I know you could use the console but that's not what should need to be done.  The amount of times I dropped something down the back of a shelf and lost it, annoyed me.

No, I'm pretty sure I'm referring to the additional strongholds you get with the GotY Edition in Oblivion but then I am probably confusing myself.  I played more of Morrowind than I did Oblivion.

And yep, that was another offputting aspect of the game too.  Having to do crappy quests just to unlock bits of your stronghold.

I like the idea of purchasing houses of course though.  Plus you basically get a free shack near the beginning of Morrowind anyway when you kill that dude.

I'm the sort of guy who when he does collect stuff, wants to actually display said stuff on shelves.  That's probably why I lost a lot of items!  All that dragging of items around just to get it on the shelf properly was a right pain.

For some odd reason in Morrowind, whenever I started a new game, I spent most of my time trying to climb that wall so I could access the barracks and some half-decent armour and weapons.  I didn't have to but I always did.  Hmm.  I guess doing that endlessly didn't help much either.

Yeah, I know it's not what's supposed to need to be done, but with a world as expansive as the one in Morrowind/Oblivion, some glitches seem to have gotten lost in the cracks when they were bugtesting and patching the games.   Annoying, but it's how it happened.

You didn't get any additional strongholds with the GotY Oblivion, only the Shivering Isles expansion and Knights of the Nine.  You could buy some DLC which introduced housing into the game, specifically set up to fit each type of character (fighter, wizard, thief), but they were generally overpriced (the cost of the DLC, I mean) and not enough new content to justify buying. 

The houses in Oblivion, as far as the unmodded game goes, always seemed way too cheap for me...I was always able to buy the nicest ones without any trouble at all, just by hoarding random items I wouldn't use and selling them to the vendors (who in the unmodded version, by the way, had a curiously infinite amount of money to trade with). 

The placing things on shelves issue, neither game was very good at without the addition of mods.  For Oblivion, there were some very nice ones introduced which made bookshelves look very nice in player-owned houses. 

As for the stock of weapons and armor in the building at the beginning of Morrowind...I'd always steal the key to the place (along with everything else in the room) right before leaving the first building.  If you'd grab something then drop it before the guy auto-talked to you, you could always pick it up again without any repercussions.   Then you go into the building you mentioned, grab everything when the guard's on the other side, and start off the game with some sweet equipment you should ideally have to work a lot harder to get.

James wrote: SaltyJon wrote: Yeah, I know it's not what's supposed to need to be done, but with a world as expansive as the one in Morrowind/Oblivion, some glitches seem to have gotten lost in the cracks when they were bugtesting and patching the games.   Annoying, but it's how it happened. Not sure how anyone could miss that major bug. You didn't get any additional strongholds with the GotY Oblivion, only the Shivering Isles expansion and Knights of the Nine.  You could buy some DLC which introduced housing into the game, specifically set up to fit each type of character (fighter, wizard, thief), but they were generally overpriced (the cost of the DLC, I mean) and not enough new content to justify buying.  Those are the ones I'm talking about.  I'm fairly sure you got those with Shivering Isles or KotN(which was with the GotY Edition).  I know I had to torrent the Warrior Stronghold though as that one wasn't included and it was the one I actually wanted.  The same with the crappy horse armour.  I just torrented it.  You're right though.  They were overpriced. Nope, none of those come with the GotY edition.  You can trust me on that.  I have owned both the regular edition (one Collector's Edition for Xbox 360) and the GotY (PC) and neither of them came with those strongholds. The houses in Oblivion, as far as the unmodded game goes, always seemed way too cheap for me...I was always able to buy the nicest ones without any trouble at all, just by hoarding random items I wouldn't use and selling them to the vendors (who in the unmodded version, by the way, had a curiously infinite amount of money to trade with).  The placing things on shelves issue, neither game was very good at without the addition of mods.  For Oblivion, there were some very nice ones introduced which made bookshelves look very nice in player-owned houses.  As for the stock of weapons and armor in the building at the beginning of Morrowind...I'd always steal the key to the place (along with everything else in the room) right before leaving the first building.  If you'd grab something then drop it before the guy auto-talked to you, you could always pick it up again without any repercussions.   Then you go into the building you mentioned, grab everything when the guard's on the other side, and start off the game with some sweet equipment you should ideally have to work a lot harder to get. I was a warrior, so I couldn't steal the key (the one on the shelf?  I always got caught).  Besides, climbing that wall seemed more fun and if you were a warrior like me, annoyingly difficult!  It didn't matter what class you were, it was more about how quickly you could steal it then open your menu to drop it.  I also had an issue with those stupid lockpicking games but I know there were mods for those as well.  I just got too annoyed to ever download one.  Lockpicking in Morrowind was horrible, I thought it was somewhat better in Oblivion but still not exactly my favorite.