What makes Oblivion so bad?

[buru5]

^ massive retard

 

[Commissar Draco]

Sup Todd!

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

• Comprehensive creature-leveling such that all monsters and NPCs are set at the same level as the PC, with weaker types of monsters disappearing after the character gains enough levels, and stronger types of monsters not appearing when the character is low-level
• Comprehensive item-leveling whereby a high-level PC will not only encounter similarly high-level bandits but said bandits will have random pieces of extremely expensive armor and weapons, while a low-level PC will never find weapons/armor of such powerful material; or a weapon on display in a glass case in a castle will be a worthless replica if the PC is low-level but the real thing after the PC gains enough levels.
  
• A clunky interface, which was clearly designed for consoles, in sharp contrast to Morrowind's sleek menus.
  
• Reduction in the number of joinable guilds/factions offering many quests from 10 in Morrowind to 4 in Oblivion, keeping the more generic ones (Fighters/Mages/Thieves guilds)
• Factions now centered around quest lines, with 2 of the 4 (Fighters Guild and Mages Guild) being poorly written and boring
  
• Full voice-acting for dialogue, which necessitated a drastic reduction in the amount of dialogue per NPC, most of whom have one comment about themselves or their city to offer and nothing else
• Poor writing in general, with dialogue and books less interesting than in Morrowind
  
• Minigames for speechcraft and lockpicking
• Elimination of certain kinds of items, such as thrown weapons, crossbows, and spears
• Reduction in the number of skills to the point where axes are considered blunt weapons
• Regenerating magicka, which effectively means that all health can be easily regained after each combat, thus removing much of the logistics that existed previously
• Elimination of different physiques (and animations) for Argonians and Khajiits
• Both in-game and out-of-game world maps that offer far less information than their Morrowind equivalents
• Automatic fast-travel to any location that's already been visited
• A quest compass that points to your next destination, the use of which is made necessary by the combination of uninformative journal entries and an inability to ask directions
• A lack of aesthetics, especially compared to Morrowind's brilliant art direction
• A generic, medieval fantasy grab-bag setting, without even the coherence offered by Daggerfall's Iliac Bay region much less the spectacular sui generis setting of Morrowind
• A dull, poorly-plotted main quest, with the only plane of Oblivion featured in the base game (except at the very end) being a generic hellscape with little variation
• A half-baked action-oriented combat system so that success in combat depends greatly on the player's physical skill, yet is boring and tedious

But they did add a new stealth system, and the quests for the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild aren't bad!

Spoiler

Due to my enthusiasm for Daggerfall and Morrowind, Oblivion was a Day 1 Purchase for me, and I spent more time playing it than I'd care to admit.

 

[buru5]

^ generic list of BS complaints he read on "muh edgy rpg site" with scaling being the only valid criticism

 

[Jaesun]

What makes Bethesda's games complete fucking shit (as RPG's), is that they don't understand *basic* RPG mechanics, because they don't even play PnP games. Or incorporate them into any game systems (Obsidian DOES however).

They just design shit that is "cool" and AWESOME for console players to experience. THAT is their target audience.

And they continue to make MILLIONS doing this......

 

[Jarmaro]

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

 

[buru5]

And they continue to make MILLIONS doing this......

Really makes you think

 

[Doma]

 

[v1rus]

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

Oblivion is pretty?

 

[Jarmaro]

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

Oblivion is pretty?

Hiking simlutaor? Even walking and exploring is dull, boring and pointless.

 

[Wayward Son]

Zed Duke of Banville You summed up my thoughts on it to the T.

 

[Alexios]

I don't think Oblivion is "so" bad when compared to the other TES games. Most would agree it's the worst TES game, but I wouldn't say it's that far below the others. What it does worse than the others is aesthetics, level scaling, and tied into level scaling, barely rewarding exploration. Aesthetically it's far uglier than Morrowind and you'd have to be blind not to admit this. The main quest is retarded but some of the guild quests are decent, though the only ones I actually remember are the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood, neither of which were that remarkable. That's something of an improvement over Morrowind's and Skyrim's guilds which are mostly forgettable. As far as exploration goes, there is no real point since loot becomes increasingly pointless thanks to the broken level scaling system. Dungeons are also totally indistinguishable. Morrowind had a more rewarding exploration system, but loot still wasn't that valuable when you could just steal high level armor and weapons from people while standing right in front of them. Though I'm no fan of Skyrim, it kind of got around this by generally giving you more to do with the shit you find in dungeons (i.e. crafting).

I also thought Shivering Isles was pretty neat. Still, nothing would ever get me to reinstall Oblivion whereas I play Morrowind somewhat frequently and Skyrim less frequently.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Lahey]

best part of Oblivion continues to be memes

 

[KateMicucci]

Oblivion was the worst of the three but there were a few things it did well.

The cities all had their own distinct artstyle, and a few of them like Anvil, Skingrad and Chedenhal were gorgeous walks.

The quests were the best. Thieves Guild and DB of course but also some of the FG and MG were amusing/clever.

The first MG quest has the 100 pound ring in the well. Just a simple puzzle, no killing or clearing out dungeons. A nice change of pace.

First FG quest you're told that you need to deal with some rats in a basement, and then you find out that you need to protect the rats from a basement full of mountain lions. Funny inversion. Years later DA:O had the gall to have you killing rats for real at level one and a npc quips, "This is just like the start of every bad adventure tale." Indeed.

 

[buru5]

Aesthetically it's far uglier than Morrowind and you'd have to be blind not to admit this.

If you honestly think that this:

Looks better than this:

Then I just don't know what to say. I bet you're the type of person that praises their excrement every time they take a shit, "Honey! Come check out this huge stinker!" Morrowind is almost 100% brown shit color with mushrooms and the occasional patch of grass. I bet 90% of you haven't even touched Morrowind without mods because that's the only way it could even look half-way decent by any reasonable standard.

---

I also love the "hiking simulator" argument against Oblivion, and then the "Well fast travel sucks!"

Pick one. Do you want to hike everywhere or do you want to get to your destination quickly?

 

[Gepeu]

You really don't have any taste at all.

And yes, all men take pride in their stinkers. This is why we all value Morrowind. Grow up and be a man already.

 

[buru5]

You really don't have any taste at all.

I have more taste than your entire lineage. Now present a real argument.

 

[v1rus]

Aesthetically it's far uglier than Morrowind and you'd have to be blind not to admit this.

If you honestly think that this:

Looks better than this:

Then I just don't know what to say. I bet you're the type of person that praises their excrement every time they take a shit, "Honey! Come check out this huge stinker!" Morrowind is almost 100% brown shit color with mushrooms and the occasional patch of grass. I bet 90% of you haven't even touched Morrowind without mods because that's the only way it could even look half-way decent by any reasonable standard.

---

I also love the "hiking simulator" argument against Oblivion, and then the "Well fast travel sucks!"

Pick one. Do you want to hike everywhere or do you want to get to your destination quickly?

While I'm not too big on Morrowind either (Its prolly just the accumulated hatred for Oblivion/Skyrim/FO3/FO4, I should really replay it), when it comes to the visual aspect of the games, Morrowind pwns the shit out of Oblivion, imho. While Oblivion environments look way batter than I remember (then again, I played it on a potato pc), the main problem I have with its looks is the complete lack of visual identity. Its not about the colors, or the quality, its about the lack of visual "artistic depth", to call it like that. Morrowind might be all brown and muddy, but its like that for a pretty good reason since that sort of visual treatment is the best way to represent what the is game actively trying to represent - a completely alien world. I like to joke around that one of the Morrowinds best features is that retarded running animation - that completely unnatural and robotic movement of elbows helps the alienation even further.

Take this screenshot instead. If you ask me, its far better than anything Oblivion could produce - these are fucking gigantic mushrooms next to huge trees. Sure, thats the content thats being displayed, not the actual visuals - but thats the entire point. Morrowind's visual identity perfectly captures and enforces the feel of the world where giant mushrooms stand next to the trees. It was made to be like that. While with Oblivion, first and foremost, there is no actual content, or rather, no unique content to get displayed by the visuals - its nothing but thousand of soulless fantasy tropes and cliches, with nothing to set them apart, except the fact its new, and has better quality of the graphics. As such, Oblivions visuals dont really have anything to display and in result are as bland as the content.

 

[TripJack]

what morrowind actually looks like

Spoiler

what oblivion actually looks like

Spoiler

 

[buru5]

You just proved my point. This is a screenshot of modded Morrowind, looks like MGEX/MSGO. The same source for this image shows screenshots of their character holding equipment that doesn't even exist in the vanilla game.

Morrowind looks like a shitbrown hellhole with mushrooms without mods. But I wouldn't expect many people to know because everyone plays this piece of shit with mods.

 

[Sigourn]

Aesthetically it's far uglier than Morrowind and you'd have to be blind not to admit this.

If you honestly think that this:

Looks better than this:

Then I just don't know what to say. I bet you're the type of person that praises their excrement every time they take a shit, "Honey! Come check out this huge stinker!" Morrowind is almost 100% brown shit color with mushrooms and the occasional patch of grass. I bet 90% of you haven't even touched Morrowind without mods because that's the only way it could even look half-way decent by any reasonable standard.

---

I also love the "hiking simulator" argument against Oblivion, and then the "Well fast travel sucks!"

Pick one. Do you want to hike everywhere or do you want to get to your destination quickly?

This is Morrowind with just longer render distance, new sky textures and better lighting color.

It looks so much better than Oblivion it's not even funny. Aesthetically Morrowind is much prettier, it has more diverse and original landscapes and architectures that all look wonderful. I seriously hope you aren't comparing "technology" between a 2002 game and a 2006 game, because that shit isn't fair. We are discussing aesthetics here.

EDIT:

What you saw before my post WAS vanilla Morrowind. That ain't no MGE XE (and definitely not MGSO).

 

[v1rus]

You just proved my point. This is a screenshot of modded Morrowind, looks like MGEX/MSGO. The same source for this image shows screenshots of their character holding equipment that doesn't even exist in the vanilla game.

Morrowind looks like a shitbrown hellhole with mushrooms without mods. But I wouldn't expect many people to know because everyone plays this piece of shit with mods.

What exactly does this mod improve? And, why (your opinion ofc, you cant know for sure) those improvements werent in the base game?

 

[buru5]

What exactly does this mod improve? And, why (you opinion ofc, you cant know for sure) those improvements werent in the base game?

This is an old version of MGO. It revamps the sky, some of the lighting, adds trees and changes some landscapes.

More modded Morrowind

You could make your ass look like your face with mods. It's irrelevant. Mods should not be a factor in this argument. Or any argument about game quality for that matter.

What you saw before my post WAS vanilla Morrowind. That ain't no MGE XE (and definitely not MGSO).

Well it's not vanilla. That's for sure. See above. The screenshot in question was probably taken around 2012 or even before that, when rigs were shittier.

Here's an image from the same source:

Spoiler

Do you see those textures? The armor? The Cloak? It's modded. But I'm sure you've never actually played without mods so you wouldn't even have the knowledge to make that judgement.

 

[Tehdagah]

It's a Elder Scrolls game.