DraQ
Arcane
Yay for late replies.
Almost all I see in oblivious is changes to make the game more accessible at the cost of everything else:
Lockpicking is done on separate screen while the game is paused, rather than by actually using a lockpick on the lock in real time. That makes it less immersive almost by definition, but it improves accessibility by catering to all the morons who can't grasp the notion of skill.
Persuation minigame - can anyone in the right mind see it as an attempt to be immersive? Do you coerce, boast, joke and admire everyone all at once to get on their good side? Do you rotate some retarded wheels? Again, it was all arguably done for the sake of accessibility, to give ADHDtards something to do.
Dropping weapon types had nothing to do with immersion, if anything it reduced it. Claiming crossbows and thrown weapons are not present because all the effort went into making bows damn 1337 is a filthy lie, because bows are anything but cool in OB and healthy pincushions are decidedly non-immersive.
Same with dropping race-specific bodies - it was blatant cutting corners.
Removing levitation also wasn't tied to immersion, it was tied to technical limitations, badly optimized engine, laziness when it came to designing dungeons and lack of intellectual aptitude necessary to devise levitation spell that would play nice with walled-in cities (for example magnitude as max altitude, magnitude cap at below wall height, slowfall if altitude greater than allowed by magnitude, invisible walls in places where it would be impossible to avoid player gliding into a city), levitation could be slow to remove combat advantage.
Voiceacting was one of the very few things that could be seen as attempts at immersion, but it was also very obviously an attempt to cater for the illiterate.
Now, changing the Cyrodiil actually made it less immersive but more accessible to retards whose only contact with fantasy were LoTR movies,
making the plot derpy was less immersive, but helped make it understandable for people with sub 70 IQ, and so on.
Not to mention that even without this consideration oblivion NPCs are just awful.
Challenge that isn't skill based, such as challenges relying purely on randomness or perseverance to make them seem hard, but devoid of skill component, simply isn't a challenge, fuck your link if it says otherwise.
Random element can be a meanigful part of challenge if managing it involves skill. Same with perseverance, though perseverance based gameplay is general badly designed gameplay in all cases I can recall.
A good challenge needs particular type of difficulty curve.
A difficulty curve has player's skill on x axis, and player's performance on y axis. Typically there are two important plateaus - the 'clueless' plateau corresponding with the range of player skill where player simply doesn't meet the minimum skill requirements to actually play the game, and the 'master' plateau starting at the skill level necessary to perform optimally.
A good challenge has a curve where as few potential players as possible are on either plateau and where there is nice, fairly linear slope between both plateaus, that is inclined enough to provide easy discrimination between players' skill levels based on their performance.
Algebraic task on its own is a shitty challenge, because you either can complete it or can't. The part between the two plateaus is pretty much vertical step with virtually all players being on either master or clueless plateau.
Now, if you make the right formulation of the problem the difficult part, or provide a time based performance function, then it may become a meaningful challenge, but not on its own.
Most two-player games based on any skill can discriminate between any two players by their very nature, which makes them nice enough challenges if they manage to be symmetrical enough, but single-player games can't pit players directly against each other so they need a challenge with good enough difficulty curve.
And how all those supposedly aided immersion?
Almost all I see in oblivious is changes to make the game more accessible at the cost of everything else:
Lockpicking is done on separate screen while the game is paused, rather than by actually using a lockpick on the lock in real time. That makes it less immersive almost by definition, but it improves accessibility by catering to all the morons who can't grasp the notion of skill.
Persuation minigame - can anyone in the right mind see it as an attempt to be immersive? Do you coerce, boast, joke and admire everyone all at once to get on their good side? Do you rotate some retarded wheels? Again, it was all arguably done for the sake of accessibility, to give ADHDtards something to do.
Dropping weapon types had nothing to do with immersion, if anything it reduced it. Claiming crossbows and thrown weapons are not present because all the effort went into making bows damn 1337 is a filthy lie, because bows are anything but cool in OB and healthy pincushions are decidedly non-immersive.
Same with dropping race-specific bodies - it was blatant cutting corners.
Removing levitation also wasn't tied to immersion, it was tied to technical limitations, badly optimized engine, laziness when it came to designing dungeons and lack of intellectual aptitude necessary to devise levitation spell that would play nice with walled-in cities (for example magnitude as max altitude, magnitude cap at below wall height, slowfall if altitude greater than allowed by magnitude, invisible walls in places where it would be impossible to avoid player gliding into a city), levitation could be slow to remove combat advantage.
Voiceacting was one of the very few things that could be seen as attempts at immersion, but it was also very obviously an attempt to cater for the illiterate.
Now, changing the Cyrodiil actually made it less immersive but more accessible to retards whose only contact with fantasy were LoTR movies,
making the plot derpy was less immersive, but helped make it understandable for people with sub 70 IQ, and so on.
Except NPCs are part of the world, and if world is too derpy and bland to be given any fucks, then so are the characters.
Not to mention that even without this consideration oblivion NPCs are just awful.
"I want to forget but I can't oh god why" is not really something positive to be sad about the lore. Also, Morrowind's lore was mostly under the surface so you had to actually dig for it.
There is no such thing as challenge that isn't skill based, whether or not it involves random element.
Challenge that isn't skill based, such as challenges relying purely on randomness or perseverance to make them seem hard, but devoid of skill component, simply isn't a challenge, fuck your link if it says otherwise.
Random element can be a meanigful part of challenge if managing it involves skill. Same with perseverance, though perseverance based gameplay is general badly designed gameplay in all cases I can recall.
No, it'd make shitty game because it makes a shitty challenge.
A good challenge needs particular type of difficulty curve.
A difficulty curve has player's skill on x axis, and player's performance on y axis. Typically there are two important plateaus - the 'clueless' plateau corresponding with the range of player skill where player simply doesn't meet the minimum skill requirements to actually play the game, and the 'master' plateau starting at the skill level necessary to perform optimally.
A good challenge has a curve where as few potential players as possible are on either plateau and where there is nice, fairly linear slope between both plateaus, that is inclined enough to provide easy discrimination between players' skill levels based on their performance.
Algebraic task on its own is a shitty challenge, because you either can complete it or can't. The part between the two plateaus is pretty much vertical step with virtually all players being on either master or clueless plateau.
Now, if you make the right formulation of the problem the difficult part, or provide a time based performance function, then it may become a meaningful challenge, but not on its own.
Most two-player games based on any skill can discriminate between any two players by their very nature, which makes them nice enough challenges if they manage to be symmetrical enough, but single-player games can't pit players directly against each other so they need a challenge with good enough difficulty curve.
