Oblivion, my observations.

[Flip-Mode]

"Why does it feel like I'm playing a beta?" is a question I have come to ask myself more times then I wanted to in the last few days.
I've got the Oblivion fever like most of you out there, I'm on break from school for 3 weeks and I just got the game and what does it mean? Endless days for monster bashing and looting.
But that massive play time comes with a dear price, you start to notice every little quirk the game has.
At first these odd things in the game are just that, oddities, but after a while you tend to ask yourself "Why? Why does it feel incomplete and shallow?".
I am no where near the end and in fact I have just started but still I'm starting to feel that the developers missed something. The game tends to feel rushed and not completely thought trough at times, the beta testers are the ones who should point out these things out and I wonder "What went wrong?".

Here are just a few things I feel are making the game miss its full potential:

Hit boxes - Where are they? The ragdoll affect is great, one of the best I've seen but why doesn't it matter where I plug the bad guy? I can put an arrow straight between the eyes and the bad guy looks at me with the arrow sticking from his forehead and runs after me, so why wasn't it implemented? Its not anything new, I just think it was one of those things that ware discarded so the game would be published earlier, so the least they should do it is put "Headshot should kill" fix in the first patch.

Scaling system - One of the most, if not the most, countervartial (spelling) topics about this game is the ridicules scaling system. If it was up to me the guy who thought about this should be banned from game designing forever.
In other games when a monster would level up together with you it would be considered a bug but here its a feature?
I'm sorry but bandits in full mythril armor and elven swords isn't reasonable, its not even logical. What happened, do the bandits get a newsletter informing them what should they equip them selfs with according to my level? "Yeah guys, put your 7000 gold worth armor and equip your 3000 gold swords and lets rob those suckers." they only problem is they are robbing 10 gold here and there and they are sleeping on the ground...
Sorry, to me it just doesn't make sense. Yes I understand wanting to make the game more challenging but why do I have to feel like I'm level 1 throughout the whole game?

Shallow skill system - Why is every blade out there governed by Strength? And why are all the blades under one category? The short sword/long sword method works fine for other games but here they just said "Nah, lets make it under one category and go out for drinks."
Why shouldn't a thief be able to equip a short sword or a dagger and have it governed by Agility?

Bad economy system - Well to be honest its not really bad, its lacking. I just don't feel its living to its full potential, why didn't they implement features like buying mines? Stores? If I go in and rid the mine from Orcs why shouldn't I be able to hire workers to mine it? Its been done in games many times so why skimp out on this feature?
If I go into town and sell a boat load of equipment shouldn't that merchant make more money off that and buy better equipment?

Wilderness monsters - This one of those "WTF?" question marks, it doesn't make sense, why are there monsters everywhere? "Ooh this is a nice spot for a picnic EXCEPT THE FIRE SHOOTING DAEMON!".

There are few other things that spring up question marks like archering but I'm too tired to go into those topics right now.
Do I like the game? Hell yeah!
Am I going to keep playing it? Actually I think I'm going to do few quests right now.
So why am I ranting? Because everything good has a bad side.
This game is good but it doesn't even come near being the "Best RPG ever" like most people brag about, those people are missing the few key points that make this game average and not above it and most of the times it just feels incomplete.

These are my views on the game, you might agree and you might not and in either way I urge you to post a replay on your thoughts just don't post things like "This is bull".
Thanks for listening.

 

[roid]

I feel the same way about most of you observations.I'm 1/2 to 3/4 through the content in the game and I enjoyed most of it.Although there were some questionable design decisions,this is the best game I have played in years.

Hit boxes
Shallow skill system

I blame those on the Xbox.Hit boxes are kinda useless if you using a gamepad.The skills(and other systems and interface) were simplified so the game would appeal to the joe sixpack console crowd that only plays a few hours a week.

Bad economy system

Yea the economy is horrible.I have yet to buy any items from a shop lol.I just use my (leveled)loot.Only thing I buy are enchant recharges and repairs.How do those shops stay in buisness after I go in and sell 8000+ gold worth of loot to and buy 100 gold worth of repairs.

Wilderness monsters

Havent reall thought about them much.I didn't see it as a problem.

Some funky bugs:

I became the head of the mages guild and had to steal from myself for another quest lol.Wont say any more than that dont want to spoil it for anyone.

A game this complex with tons of content is bound to have a few quirks.Overall best game to come out in years.

 

[FlakMonkey]

Levelling system? Agree, I hope for a mod, or even better an official patch - which wont happen.

Hit boxes? Same, its annoying when there are no headshots, but there is the sneak bonus which somewhat makes up for it.

Skills? No problems here. I see it to be just right to my liking.

Economy? Would be AWESOME to own shops and things. Own your own tavern, or other stuff. But not mad its not there.

Monsters? Just like EVERY other RPG. There are random monsters.

Still one of the best games in years, and for me, ever.

 

[LordDarik]

Hit boxes - I can understand not having this on the consoles, but with the precision of the keyboard and mouse I think it is unacceptable not to include it on the PC.

Scaling system - Doesn't bother me much, if some dude runs up to me in full glass or mithril or whatever; as long as I can kill him...well awesome! 7k for me. It may not be realistic or whatever but neither is summoning armor and killing lizard people.

Shallow skill system - Yes it does seem like this could of had some more work put into it. When you are attacking someone with a dagger slashing as hard as you can is the last thing that comes to mind, but again this does not bother me that much.

Bad economy system - I do believe that that kind of stuff would be awesome, but that is just asking for so much when this game already delivers more than any other game out now or in the past few years.

Wilderness monsters - I don't understand what your problem is with this, of course there are going to be monsters out in the wilderness. If you notice there will be more and more as you stray farther from cities. What would the game be like without the monsters?

 

[#18]

Wilderness monsters- That's the biggest problem I have with most RPG. It is just stupid to have mobs in every corner of the "world" everywhere outside town within a few feet away from each other.

Why can't any game developers get out of this stupid pattern and for example spawn the specific mobs near the player at random time only if the player had taken the specific quest, and only have some mob strongholds/camps/dungeons to "always" have mobs. While no mob should respawn in less than 15 min. I'd rather have more peaceful places without ugly stupid moron mobs walk around within a few feet away from each other EVERYWHERE outside town with 20 sec. respawn time.

 

[shard]

Most of the monsters dont seem all that random to me. About the only monster the bugs the hell out of me, is the bloody ogres. They always seem to show up in the dumbest places, but other then that, they seem rather well spaced out.

 

[Banyan]

Wilderness monsters - This one of those "WTF?" question marks, it doesn't make sense, why are there monsters everywhere? "Ooh this is a nice spot for a picnic EXCEPT THE FIRE SHOOTING DAEMON!".

i like that and makes the game funner.

 

[OC Noob]

"Why does it feel like I'm playing a beta?" is a question I have come to ask myself more times then I wanted to in the last few days.
I've got the Oblivion fever like most of you out there, I'm on break from school for 3 weeks and I just got the game and what does it mean? Endless days for monster bashing and looting.
But that massive play time comes with a dear price, you start to notice every little quirk the game has.
At first these odd things in the game are just that, oddities, but after a while you tend to ask yourself "Why? Why does it feel incomplete and shallow?".
I am no where near the end and in fact I have just started but still I'm starting to feel that the developers missed something. The game tends to feel rushed and not completely thought trough at times, the beta testers are the ones who should point out these things out and I wonder "What went wrong?".

Here are just a few things I feel are making the game miss its full potential:

Hit boxes - Where are they? The ragdoll affect is great, one of the best I've seen but why doesn't it matter where I plug the bad guy? I can put an arrow straight between the eyes and the bad guy looks at me with the arrow sticking from his forehead and runs after me, so why wasn't it implemented? Its not anything new, I just think it was one of those things that ware discarded so the game would be published earlier, so the least they should do it is put "Headshot should kill" fix in the first patch.

Scaling system - One of the most, if not the most, countervartial (spelling) topics about this game is the ridicules scaling system. If it was up to me the guy who thought about this should be banned from game designing forever.
In other games when a monster would level up together with you it would be considered a bug but here its a feature?
I'm sorry but bandits in full mythril armor and elven swords isn't reasonable, its not even logical. What happened, do the bandits get a newsletter informing them what should they equip them selfs with according to my level? "Yeah guys, put your 7000 gold worth armor and equip your 3000 gold swords and lets rob those suckers." they only problem is they are robbing 10 gold here and there and they are sleeping on the ground...
Sorry, to me it just doesn't make sense. Yes I understand wanting to make the game more challenging but why do I have to feel like I'm level 1 throughout the whole game?

Shallow skill system - Why is every blade out there governed by Strength? And why are all the blades under one category? The short sword/long sword method works fine for other games but here they just said "Nah, lets make it under one category and go out for drinks."
Why shouldn't a thief be able to equip a short sword or a dagger and have it governed by Agility?

Bad economy system - Well to be honest its not really bad, its lacking. I just don't feel its living to its full potential, why didn't they implement features like buying mines? Stores? If I go in and rid the mine from Orcs why shouldn't I be able to hire workers to mine it? Its been done in games many times so why skimp out on this feature?
If I go into town and sell a boat load of equipment shouldn't that merchant make more money off that and buy better equipment?

Wilderness monsters - This one of those "WTF?" question marks, it doesn't make sense, why are there monsters everywhere? "Ooh this is a nice spot for a picnic EXCEPT THE FIRE SHOOTING DAEMON!".

There are few other things that spring up question marks like archering but I'm too tired to go into those topics right now.
Do I like the game? Hell yeah!
Am I going to keep playing it? Actually I think I'm going to do few quests right now.
So why am I ranting? Because everything good has a bad side.
This game is good but it doesn't even come near being the "Best RPG ever" like most people brag about, those people are missing the few key points that make this game average and not above it and most of the times it just feels incomplete.

These are my views on the game, you might agree and you might not and in either way I urge you to post a replay on your thoughts just don't post things like "This is bull".
Thanks for listening.

You don't play many RPGs do you?

Hit boxes are almost non-existant in RPG's and althogh this has a little action-RPG in it, it is 99% tradtional RPG and despite people blaming it on Xbox there just aren't hit boxes in those kind of RPGs, in fact most just do a random die roll as to whether you hit or not and you don't even control where you hit.

So that is acceptable in the genre.


The scaling system sucks. I can see what they were trying for and it is much more realistic that if a mob (like a thief) attacks you it would be smart enough not to attack something 10 levels higher than it, thus they make it your level or a bit higher, but it still ends up being hookie and lame.

The skill system seems fine. There are some tweaks tha could be made, but it doesn't detract from the game.

Economy, someone needs to correct me if I am wrong, but you can buy stores with a merchantile skill that is high enough. As for buying any mine or property you clear out, that just isn't in the scope of any game. You can play a sim and get that, but no game has a feature where you can buy just any piece of property, hire workers, etc... That is just not realistic with the scope and processing power we have today, unless like I said it is a simulator.

Merchants are pretty static and could definitely be better, but the devs decided to put their effort into making content vs. implimenting a simulated, realistic economy. Its a trade off I guess.

Wilderness monsters, like people have said this is par for the course in the genre. It makes finding action easy, which is good for the game, but its not very realistic. Again its a trade off and people must enjoy it otherwise the genre would have changed long, long, long ago.


With a game of this scope you are going to get lots of bugs and this ES is SO much better than the last ES for bugs. The devs did a fine job considering the scope of the game. Again that is a weakness of the genre when you get massive games like this its not possible to catch and fix all of the bugs like it is with a platformer or a FPSer that lack the interaction of an RPG.


What makes up for all this stuff is the MASSIVE amount of content and how well they've handled things that are 10x harder to do because ther is some much content. Its a lot like a GTA game. There are so many areas that can be improved, but the devs can polish a few things and decrease the scope of the game to a pin point or they can throw tons of stuff at you with a lot less polish. What makes this game great isn't the level of polish, which is amazing considering its scope, its the content in the sandbox world that you play in. so some games may be really cleaned up or have better skill systems or better economies, but no game has near the length of gameplay, the content, the differnt things to do and all the duiffernt ways to do them.

That said, considering how much there is to do and the size of the game I think its a very polished game. There is so much tahts great in this game compared to so little thats bad and thats why its a great RPG (one of the best IMO). That is why game reviewers love it. You have to not sweat the small stuff and all the games flaws, with exception to the scaling system, are small. The scaling system does suck and I won't excuse it, but I can live with it considering all the good things i would miss if I didn't.


That being said, i can understand where you are coming from and understand why a lot of people whould not like the game and am just giving you an opinion from people who do enjoy the genre and the game, not trying to get you to like the game more.

 

[FudgeNuggets]

The one thing this game is missing for me is human element. Fable had relationships, marriages, sex etc... without being an adult RPG or a Sims game. I'd like my redheaded Xena clone to hook up with a little Gabrielle girl in some town...

 

[twoeyes]

WOW, WOW, WOW!

Hitboxes? Headshots?! THIS IS AN RPG NOT AN FPS GAME! This was the reason that it is not in. Although many of your complaints do have validity, and I agree the game is lacking something.

I feel the game is ruined for me. Why? Fast travel. I've seen EVERY TOWN in the game, no, I've not been to all the ruins, but they're all the same look, same with caves. So really, the question "whats over the next hill" has already been answered for me many times over. I feel like I'm using the COC command from morrowind, and just zipping around doing all the objectives with cheats.

 

[Flip-Mode]

I do play A LOT of RPG's, I've been playing Might & Magic and Betrayal in Krondor before most people here knew what RPG is so cut me some slack.
Call this game an RPG as much as you want but it is a FPS, RPG would roll the dice as you say and not count on your aim to hit a target AND if they do in fact want me to aim manually why not give me option to HS someone?
Oh, most RPG's have HS option BTW.
And you can't buy a shop, you can invest extra 500 gold into it which you end up buying so its not really investing.

 

[Bensa]

The blade skill being governed by strenght is completely logical if you have ever used a sword of any type. Those things are heavy and hard to use, and when fighting against anything armored, you need to exert a lot of pressure with the blade, not just fast.

 

[Jotolicious]

I feel the game is ruined for me. Why? Fast travel. I've seen EVERY TOWN in the game, no, I've not been to all the ruins, but they're all the same look, same with caves. So really, the question "whats over the next hill" has already been answered for me many times over. I feel like I'm using the COC command from morrowind, and just zipping around doing all the objectives with cheats.

there's a mod that removes all map markers. called Marker Remove. you can't travel there until you actually go there. if interested check elderscrolls mod forums

 

[grumperfish]

Y As for buying any mine or property you clear out, that just isn't in the scope of any game. You can play a sim and get that, but no game has a feature where you can buy just any piece of property, hire workers, etc... That is just not realistic with the scope and processing power we have today, unless like I said it is a simulator.

Merchants are pretty static and could definitely be better, but the devs decided to put their effort into making content vs. implimenting a simulated, realistic economy. Its a trade off I guess.

Give it some time. There were several mining mods released for Morrowind iirc. I wouldn't be surprised at all if someone builds a mod or mods to implement mining/economy-strengthening.

 

[shard]

Oblivion is just the tip of the iceburg, there will be countless mods and expanding upon this game, that it will take years to realy finish up what all there is to offer.

 

[Flip-Mode]

Oblivion is just the tip of the iceburg, there will be countless mods and expanding upon this game, that it will take years to realy finish up what all there is to offer.

Yeah well I've played all day long and now my eyes hurt....

 

[DBZ]

Correct me if I'm wrong but on one of the stat list that said how many stores you own?

 

[deathman20]

Ya theres some improvements that need to be made but overall its a great game and IMO hugely better then Morrowind.

Theres already a bunch of mods out currently and more will be added to the list to balance things out more. I'm currently enjoying my Warrior and added a few mods to the game to help out and improve things (visual effects and some other things). What really gets me though is no shop keepers really have cash to buy some of your high ends back without breaking there budget which sucks, but at least theres a mod that adds a guy that actually has a decent amount of money which helps when selling higher end items.

I'll play the game through with my current guy then go looking for mods or maybe start modding my own stuff. This game really has me cought up at the momment

 

[OC Noob]

I do play A LOT of RPG's, I've been playing Might & Magic and Betrayal in Krondor before most people here knew what RPG is so cut me some slack.
Call this game an RPG as much as you want but it is a FPS, RPG would roll the dice as you say and not count on your aim to hit a target AND if they do in fact want me to aim manually why not give me option to HS someone?
Oh, most RPG's have HS option BTW.
And you can't buy a shop, you can invest extra 500 gold into it which you end up buying so its not really investing.

Wow, Oblivion is a (FPS) First Person Shooter, heh.

 

[Krusty]

my 2 major problems:

1. GET MORE VOICE ACTORS! While you're at it, get them all to say more stuff. It's annoying to hear a beggar start out talking like life has them beat and then turn around and spout off information in some royal British accent.

2. For the love of God, if you are going to make enemies level with you, do it right! Logic dictates that, if you enter a dungeon and get owned by a boss, you can come back there in 2 levels and will have a much better chance to beat the boss. Instead of making all creatures level with you, make the zone contain creatures that are of the level which you were when you first discovered it.

for example, the first oblivion gate. I am level 15 and have yet to see an oblivion gate. When I go there at 15, the creatures will be 15. When I go there at 20, the creatures will be 20. It should be this: I go there at 15. The creatures are, and always will be, around level 15. If I went there at level 5, the creatures will always be level 5 (even if I come back at 15). It's a simple concept that will allow the game to level with you while still giving you the feeling that you are actually progressing.

EDIT: I lied. 3 things. I hate that the UI is still made for the xbox. At the very least, they should have shipped a better UI for the PC version.