What makes Oblivion so bad?

[The Wall]

Also, they should get rid of level scaling, since daedra invasion consisting mostly of stunted scamps is pretty silly.

Dude, I called that shit out when I was 8 years old as being ridiculous.

Pal, I played it back when I was 10 old kid and every other playthrough after first one (when I familiiarized myself with consequences of leveling up) I played it as if it was game of Invasion of Body Snatchers and stayed as far as I could from any bed. If it was to me back then, 10 year old kid with no prior knowledge of RPGs (target audience), weird how the Hero of Kvatch and Champion of Cyrodil all of the sudden is raped by single gmo mudcrub and bandits wear daedra armor after closure of all the Oblivion gates (maybe they held a sale afterwards) then how nobody from Bethesda's mythical QA noticed anything?

Not to mention that cooler wildlife like Daedroth and Minotaurs only spawned and populated game world after you would reach certain level. Genius design.

Level up icon was always in the corner of my screen. Not leveling up was better than leveling.
Cultural Bethesdaism - responsible for every bad game design in industry - from level scaling to horse armor dlc to now paid mods.

 

[Jarmaro]

TL;DR of last posts that sum it all:

Oblivion's world is absolutely plastic and unbelievable.

 

[buru5]

11 years and people still don't know that Mudcrabs don't scale. It's almost like half of these people didn't actually play the game. Weird.

 

[The Wall]

11 years and people still don't know that Mudcrabs don't scale. It's almost like half of these people didn't actually play the game. Weird.

I could swear they did. Don't know, maybe I remembered it wrongly cause last time I played it on lvl higher than 1 was almost a decade ago.

All I remember is one instance when I have just finished the main quest and after a month has passed returned to Imperial city for my Champion of Cyrodil armor and just as I've put it on me and left the city walls a single mudcrab almost killed me and gave me harder fight than all Oblivion gates combined and I was equiped with best armor, spells and weapon.

Maybe it was just some alpha mudcrab, one of numerous Todd Howard's Horcruxes.

 

[buru5]

11 years and people still don't know that Mudcrabs don't scale. It's almost like half of these people didn't actually play the game. Weird.

I could swear they did. Don't know, maybe I remembered it wrongly cause last time I played it on lvl higher than 1 was almost a decade ago.

All I remember is one instance when I have just finished the main quest and after a month has passed returned to Imperial city for my Champion of Cyrodil armor and just as I've put it on me and left the city walls a single mudcrab almost killed me and gave me harder fight than all Oblivion gates combined and I was equiped with best armor, spells and weapon.

Maybe it was just some alpha mudcrab, one of numerous Todd Howard's Horcruxes.

Then your character sucked. But really, even that's not possible. Mudcrabs shouldn't be able to kill you EVER. There is only one Mudcrab that scales in the game (a giant Mudcrab in a cave somewhere). It scales to level 3. The same for rats.

 

[Eriador]

11 years and people still don't know that Mudcrabs don't scale. It's almost like half of these people didn't actually play the game. Weird.

Tbh I never had any problems with mudcrabs in Oblivion. I don't even recall actually fighting one.

Heard a lot about them from the NPCs though. One would think they'd talk about the recent demonic invasion, but apparently mudcrabs are much more interesting.

 

[Eriador]

Another bad thing about Oblivion was that waiting (as opposed to resting) could restore your health.

 

[buru5]

Another bad thing about Oblivion was that waiting (as opposed to resting) could restore your health.

You can rest cheese in literally every Elder Scrolls game.

 

[Eriador]

Another bad thing about Oblivion was that waiting (as opposed to resting) could restore your health.

You can rest cheese in literally every Elder Scrolls game.

In Morrowind, a lot of times it led to this.

Spoiler

 

[StaticSpine]

Main Quest is retarded. If you role play it, and concentrate on the MQ, you'll miss most of the content.

Plus, what you will get are tons and tons of copypasted planes of Oblivion to traverse over and over again. That, and AIDS.

I'm surprised you're the only one who pointed to this.

That shit was unbearable.

 

[Wayward Son]

Main Quest is retarded. If you role play it, and concentrate on the MQ, you'll miss most of the content.

Plus, what you will get are tons and tons of copypasted planes of Oblivion to traverse over and over again. That, and AIDS.

I'm surprised you're the only one who pointed to this.

That shit was unbearable.

I thought they were cool. I was also 8.

 

[Jacob]

Meh, I never really consider Oblivion bad, I've never even played it.

Skyrim, on the other hand, it is boring, sure, but whatever, it is inoffensive and I don't have a problem with my friends enjoying it.

If I agree with the Codex about which developer should be shit on, it's Bioware and their embarrassing games with embarrassing writing. Only fat feminists played and enjoyed them.

 

[Brayko]

Because it tried to be an RPG and use stats instead of just being an open world action adventure game.

 

[Bl@de]

Yellow fat faces of doom

 

[buru5]

I think the only valid argument against Oblivion is the level scaling. I played Oblivion a few months ago, along with Morrowind and Skyrim. Oblivion becomes annoyingly unbearable at around level 10. Even if you leveled properly. 100 STR and the best weapon and it still takes over a minute to beat even the most pitiful bandits. Don't even get me started on Goblin Warlords or whatever. I remember eventually running away from those fucking Goblins. I could beat them but their health was way too high to waste my time with, even with the best equipment, max blade skill, max stats and uber enchantments. There's no feeling of getting stronger which is a staple of all good RPGs. Of course you can fix this with mods but I think these comparisons should be for vanilla games only because you can potentially make any game something it's not intended to be with mods.

Generic fantasy world? Ok, that's more of a preference thing. I have no issue with Oblivions setting despite the jungle lore retcon. Morrowind retconned more lore than any Elder Scrolls game ever did. I remember when Orcs were uncivilized swine worthy of nothing more than a blade to the gut. Good times. Potato faces? Who cares. Complaining about graphics is normie shit and anyone thinking that's a valid criticism is retarded.

 

[Jarmaro]

I think the only valid argument against Oblivion is the level scaling

So plot, dialogs, AI, "living world", voice acting, quests, combat, pointless exploration etc. are not valid arguments?

Generic fantasy world? Ok, that's more of a preference thing.

That Oblivion has generic fantasy world is fact. And I wouldn't say it's preference thing when game had specific alien feeling and it was changed into something generic.
The very "theme" of the game was destroyed. Game raped itself.

 

[buru5]

I think the only valid argument against Oblivion is the level scaling

So plot, dialogs, AI, "living world", voice acting, quests, combat, pointless exploration etc. are not valid arguments?

Generic fantasy world? Ok, that's more of a preference thing.

That Oblivion has generic fantasy world is fact. And I wouldn't say it's preference thing when game had specific alien feeling and it was changed into something generic.
The very "theme" of the game was destroyed. Game raped itself.

I was comparing it to other Elder Scrolls games. And yes, it has all those things, so does Morrowind and Skyrim. Plot? You're a storyfag. Enough said there. Regardless the side quests and guild quests are the best in the series. Maybe you'd know that if you weren't such a bandwagoner parroting generic complaints about something you obviously have no experience in. Combat is better than Morrowind and basically the same as Skyrim, so I don't see your point. And what fucking "theme"? Elder Scrolls has always been a mostly generic fantasy setting. It's glaring obvious that you're out of your depth here and have limited experience with the series as a whole. I guess some mushrooms is all it takes for you to consider something a unique masterwork of world-crafting? You're beyond help. Mario has a less generic setting. You're too busy caring about superficial bullshit to take your blinders off.

Dialog? What do you prefer? Wikis? Give me a break. Previous Elder Scrolls don't do dialog any better than Oblivion. There's simply more text in Morrowind and Daggerfall, but it's content is still mostly shit and it's repeated over and over by almost every NPC in the game. Yes, such depth.

Pointless exploration? You have to actually find every area in the game to fast travel to it (outside of the major towns). It's not entirely pointless. Don't like fast travel? Don't use it. It's not like traveling in Morrowind was actually exciting. Unless you're a masochist I guess.

 

[Wayward Son]

I liked Arena's attempt at a dialogue system best TBH.

 

[Danikas]

Lets not forget total retcon from morrowind

I think the only valid argument against Oblivion is the level scaling. I played Oblivion a few months ago, along with Morrowind and Skyrim. Oblivion becomes annoyingly unbearable at around level 10. Even if you leveled properly. 100 STR and the best weapon and it still takes over a minute to beat even the most pitiful bandits. Don't even get me started on Goblin Warlords or whatever. I remember eventually running away from those fucking Goblins. I could beat them but their health was way too high to waste my time with, even with the best equipment, max blade skill, max stats and uber enchantments. There's no feeling of getting stronger which is a staple of all good RPGs. Of course you can fix this with mods but I think these comparisons should be for vanilla games only because you can potentially make any game something it's not intended to be with mods.

Generic fantasy world? Ok, that's more of a preference thing. I have no issue with Oblivions setting despite the jungle lore retcon. Morrowind retconned more lore than any Elder Scrolls game ever did. I remember when Orcs were uncivilized swine worthy of nothing more than a blade to the gut. Good times. Potato faces? Who cares. Complaining about graphics is normie shit and anyone thinking that's a valid criticism is retarded.

What about pathetic story with even more pathetic set pieces like the famous battle of Kvatch, please name one character from Oblivion without looking on wiki, add boring lifeless world that doesent make any sense. You are in the heart of the empire yet cities have 20 inhabitants tops, there are for some reason ruins of imperial forts everywhere overrun with bandits with no fort manned by imperial legion present on the whole map . Elven ruins all look the same, that goes for the oblivion rifts also. Combat is pure shit no two ways around it, I remember that in the same year they released Dark messiah of might and magic which destroyed this game combat.




Compare with Bethesda combat.

 

[buru5]

^ how is this any different than Morrowind? You been in those dungeons recently? The towns? That's the point I'm making. People bitch about shit in Oblivion that applies to every other damn Elder Scrolls games. The only game that has more than 10-20 people per town is pre-Morrowind. It's not a masterpiece like many are deluded into believing. It's a pile of shit just like everything else post Daggerfall. Oblivion is no different. It's been on hard decline since Morrowind.

Oh and Glarthir

 

[Danikas]

^ how is this any different than Morrowind? You been in those dungeons recently? The towns? That's the point I'm making. People bitch about shit in Oblivion that applies to every other damn Elder Scrolls games. The only game that has more than 10-20 people per town is pre-Morrowind. It's not a masterpiece like many are deluded into believing. It's a pile of shit just like everything else post Daggerfall. Oblivion is no different. It's been on hard decline since Morrowind.

Oh and Glarthir

Thats why I dont know how people can like this game so much, bethesda games are definition of medicority they dont do anything great. At least Morrowind had a cool setting going for it and story that had some ambition. In Poland around the release of Morrowind we had Fanboy wars between Gothic fans and Elder Scrolls fans. For me Gothic was always better and much more fun.

 

[Miner Arobar]

I find it quite interesting that its universally agreed that Oblivion is shit-tier game, but that people always have different reasons for it. My personal favorite is - its a fucking plain as hell forgettable re-skin of Morrowind.

What are your reasons?

Shit-tier is a bit too much perhaps - I mean, the game basically works, it's not fundamentally broken like some other universally disliked RPGs (e.g. Ultima IX). Basically, what's offensive to me is the blandness of the setting compared to Redguard and Morrowind, and the disastrous combination of an open world, level scaling, and a main quest which you're encouraged to start right away. But above all that it came after Morrowind and presents itself as a successor of some sort to Morrowind. Were Oblivion a stand-alone game or the first one in a series, my opinion of it would be much more positive.

 

[deuxhero]

Let's make this easy: The only good things that aren't part of the expansion, TG or DB questline are mods, and that system didn't improve any from the Morrowind incarnation (How did it take Bethesda till Skyrim to include a built in load order sorter?).

 

[Jaesun]

Because it is a shit cRPG, and nothing but a pretty hiking simulator?

 

[Commissar Draco]

Still Oblivion has more of a soul than Skyrim that's for sure

Brofisted to this moment Skyrim with all its faults has a soul; as to Oblivion not wishing to repeat all those technical points why its piss poor game even for ARPG low standards:

Potato faces... those Potato faces I see in my dreams to this day.

Rape on Cyrodil and its Lore; came expecting Venice like Rome in Indo-China jungle got small neoclassicist town the way Rome was seen by Victorians a few War of Roses era towns all of this surrounded by temperate forest dotted by ruins of medieval monasteries Ayelids. As Comrade said before only town which was decently planned was Skingrad.

Main quest was beginning of pandering of player with random criminal scum trusted to carry the most precious of stones cause reasons; faction quests were actually decent indeed better than in Skyrim but they were fewer than in Morrowind and not connected. Hole game felt like visiting some Kwan Ren fair.

Exploration totally ruined by level scaling, quest and map compass and small but randomly generated dungeons.

By Contrast Nehrim was fun to the moment I lost interest in its linear main quest but to this point it had some kick ass Dungeons to explore, and XP based leveling system worked like a charm there too; So even on Oblivion engine you could make decent and fun game; problem is at this point Bethesda went full commercial and sold its soul for those 12 years old kids parents cash.