Oblivion and its problems

1,080

September 28, 2006 08:54 PM

Quote:Original post by JBourrie
Quote:Opponents scale with level? This is actually something like punishing the character for becoming more dangerous himself. You'd becoming better, and they will...
While scaling the enemies down might be viewed as an attempt to don't let the unexperienced character to be vaporized without chance to defend itself, the used system was set to punish all roleplaying and suboptimal character development.

Almost completely agreed. The only part I disagree with is the common misunderstanding that Oblivion is somehow different from the other Elder Scrolls games in this regard. People seem to forget that Morrowind chose enemy equipment based on player skill levels.

I will say this for enemies that scale with the player: it severly limits any benefit the player recieves from "power-leveling". I personally think this is actualy a huge benefit, as it focuses attention away from leveling and towards exploration and the story iteself. It also helps open the game up much more. If enemies did not scale, then in the begining of the game there would be a handfull of areas that would be safe to go to, while the rest were off limits if you wanted to stay alive. By keeping the monster level even with your character level, it really let you do all the exploring you wanted, when you wanted. And really, in a game like Oblivion, its all about exploring your surroundings.

My biggest complaint with oblivion is that I never got the feeling that enemies were actualy part of the environment. While exploring, it is common to come accross a mine or ruins or whatever, and invariably there would be a monster or two guarding the entrance, as well as several more scattered inside the dungeon. But thats it. Monsters were not scattered through the environment, moving about and interacting with each other, they were just positioned in or around dungeons and the only purpose they served was to attack you. Whenever you came near a dungeon entrance you knew there would be a monster nearby and vise versa, it all just felt artifical to me.

JBourrie

1,204

September 28, 2006 10:49 PM

After responding to this thread, I just fired up Oblivion again for the first time in 2 months. Yes, it still kicks ass.

Check out my new game Smash and Dash at:

http://www.smashanddashgame.com/

95CKILMA

118

September 29, 2006 01:47 AM

I loved the graphics on oblivon but really hated the leveling/difficulty.
I usally play games on about 75% of max difficulty not coz im some uber gammer but itll be more of a challenge that way and take me longer. On oblivon this soo buggred me, I played an elven archer mage I early on met a sprite got owned quickly, thought right ill get some new spells more mana and go kick its ass. i went back and it had become a troll and it owned me, i reloaded got myself in to severall "secure locations" and attacked it, with all my mana in fire spells and arrows i couldnt kill it. i got over these problems though as i learnt the game and then found it worked like this:

I could be rich just buy ferryign every peice of kit of the dead in a dungeon back to a smith and selling it.(just waste of time)
I could kill anything in with a combo, Sneak attack arrow thats been poisoned with a 3hp 15 second damage and a 3hp 18 second damage, and if it was still walking id blast it with magic.

and this wasnt far into the game, all i had to do was invest time to get the ingreedients or ferry the kit. I CBA in the end coz that just meant id spend a tone of ingame time doing that for an easy kill every time.

-JetSirus-

158

September 29, 2006 02:10 AM

The one bad thing I can say about the graphics in OB is that such a huge render distance made it seem very small. For some reason to me and several of my friends Morrowind seemed MUCH larger, yet it was actualy quite a bit smaller. Of course I don't see how one could fix that problem. Other than gimping the render distance in OB or making the game world much larger that it already was. Either way its a problem for the devs.

------------------This is so stupid!

TwistedMind

139

September 29, 2006 02:44 AM

I think there always will be cons and pros, no matter what game is being discussed, personally I'm fan of the Elder Scrolls series, though I haven't played Oblivion yet.

I heard and read about it, and as people have said, the main improvement you notice from Morrowind is the graphics, it has taken a great leap.

...Now they just need to make a multi-player version, it's the only thing I really missed in Morrowind, other human players. It was/is far too big and boring, to travel around in alone.

I would even be that bold to say, if they made Morrowind somewhat larger, and implemented multiplayer a long with better graphics, WoW will see the last of it days.

We only have the power to change the future, not the past. That's why we should learn from our mistakes, and be given the change to show we have learned from them.

frus

128

September 29, 2006 05:37 AM

This might not be agreeable by most people here, but I personally think the level design could have been better, especially of towns and cities. I seem to get more lost inside than being out in the jungle. I don't know if the level designer is trying to stay true to the "wealthiness" ranking of each city/town, but I think the street system inside the city should have been much better. For example, in some cities, streets leading up to the castle are not entirely obvious or celebrated. The door that leads to the castle throne was just a normal wooden door, I didnt expect it would lead to that space until I saw the text on screen. The architecture for the Imperial City is very beautiful (especially if you look at it from the mountains), but I personally think the streets system could be more effective eventhough it seem more organised. Its a good idea to divide into several districts but the tower at the center is a mess up. Its way too big, Ive to walk a big giant semicircle just to get another distant district (I prefer to just fast travel to these locations). And the entrances to each district should be more specific, like the entrance to the Market District looks just like the same as the entrance to the Elven District.
Thats all I shall rant about :D

Timus

100

September 29, 2006 07:39 AM

I hated Oblvion because:

1. Dynamic NPC's? "HEY U HEAR BOUT DEM MUDCRBS?" "LOLOL MUDCRABS R TEH SUCK", their NPC's were totally over hyped. Wow, they are programmed to be somewhere at a certain time of day, and to interact with other NPC's, it's not that great and it's not even game changing. If this contributed to my next complaint I hate Dyanmic NPC's even more.

2. Loading time, and the amount of times you had to load. Whenever I opened a freakin' door. Whats wrong with taking out un-necesarry crap like perfect physics engines, I sure as hell don't want to wait an extra hour for something that doesn't even *really* effect gameplay that much.

3. If you're a class that, in order to survive, needs to do a crapload of damage before your target notices you... you will not survive. Is it me or is the game built around the assumption that most people will make mages or warriors? It's silly how much illusion magic I have to use in order to get the job done. I thought an assasin would be able to do things quickly, how wrong I was.
----------

This doesn't relate much to your rant, but I felt like getting that off my chest anyway.

I have extremely detailed and unique ideas for major projects, anyone interested in advanced programming, server setup (I have about five gigs of webspace at my disposal) and multimedia design should E-mail me at Fatimus@Gmail.com

Raghar

97

Author

September 29, 2006 08:44 AM

Quote:Original post by JBourrie
Since you took the time to write this, I feel obligated to make a few counterpoints. And by a few, I mean too many.

Quote:Basically facial expression isn't necessary for RPG.

One thing that separates "role-playing" from other types of gameplay is that you will interact with other characters. Facial expressions allow a player to connect better with their characters, and therefore are vital to the continued evolution of role-playing.

I know three ways how to do that.
First.

Do it in the 3D. It will have a problem with generation of a probably too much vertexes rich model, unnecessary.

Create a small image, and show the facial expression inside of that image. It has an advantage in the possibility of creating an abstraction, and significant advantage in clarity. It will also prevent need for speaker face to be as close as 0.05 m from you face.

Create small bubble above head of speaker with icons about his mood and current state. Have you seen Tales of eternia series?

Also there are less graphically intensive helper solution like.

Create a text about speaker state in different window. (dependent on your speech skill)

Text coloring.

It seems like the "valley of 10000 terrors" doesn't apply just on the graphic, but also on a RPG like interaction. The more cinematic approach, the more ugly details are needed to be done. (for example ability of moving into less problematic location, to don't stand in the main doorway and chit-chatting for 8 hours). I didn't see a conversation when you and the other persons sat to the table and get some tea when that talk was supposed to be longer.

Quote:
Quote:Indoor gameplay also shouldn't be GFX limited.

I have no idea what you mean by this.

Try to read it literally. Indoor scenes doesn't need to show a small tornadoes of dust, weather effects, lightnings, and other elements. Indoors should be full of dusty nice drawn rooms full of soft colors, it looks like it was uninhabited for thousand years, then someone would touch you from behind.
For some strange reason indoor scenes required incredible amount of GFX power.
I didn't see a scene like. A men is sitting behind the table in the chair reading a book. While he turned pages the flame of the candle on the table flickered and throwed shadows of the book around the room. He looked from the book at you, his eyes had a red glow. You said "Hi, would you help me?". He closed the book, put it on the table, doused the candle. Room fell into darkness. The darkness was suddenly interrupted be a bright light. The room countures emerged sharply after the light spell was in effect. You stood still. "Yes", he said.

I never seen a scene as imersive in Oblivion. Thus it's hard to explain the high requirements for graphics power indoors. Especially considering how badly architecturally looked the indoors.

Quote:Players either play it as a fashion show, or they choose the strongest armor they can find, so unless you really want to look goofy in that Colovian Fur Helm you are probably going to ignore it completely.

And now compare it with the real life.

Of course I don't mean to enforce each boot different, and each glove in different fashion approach. However 3D character was better than the simplified item box they used.

The other bad thing on theirs armor system was how EASILY could be armor damaged by completely minor attacks.

Quote:Oblivion lost spears and crossbows. It gained a more controllable battle system and a huge improvement to archery. More isn't necessarily better, sometimes you have to remove lesser things to focus on the features that will make the game more fun.

None of these require to have less weapon skills than Dungeon crawl. In fact some people might like that spears, and crossbows...

Quote:
Quote:While in previous attempts it was always incredibly powerful things that if they'd wanted they'd crush all resistance quickly, but what for? In Oblivion it was just a simplistic opponent bland and without danger.

Without any real argument to back this up, it sounds like a fanboy rant. If you want to be taken seriously, please elaborate. How is this opponent any more bland, "less" dangerous?

You missed that part about mythology.

Quote:
Quote:Opponents scale with level? This is actually something like punishing the character for becoming more dangerous himself. You'd becoming better, and they will...
While scaling the enemies down might be viewed as an attempt to don't let the unexperienced character to be vaporized without chance to defend itself, the used system was set to punish all roleplaying and suboptimal character development.

Almost completely agreed. The only part I disagree with is the common misunderstanding that Oblivion is somehow different from the other Elder Scrolls games in this regard. People seem to forget that Morrowind chose enemy equipment based on player skill levels.

Side note. Previous versions used from 1 to max level approach. Thus these pesky titans appeared just occasionally. Oblivion looks like uses max level approach, or that "curve" is significantly worse. Thus the really powerful monsters are appearing surprisingly regularly.

Quote:I don't want to rain on your parade, and I'm not trying to say you are totally wrong. Oblivion is not a perfect game. But if you are going to do a design breakdown, you need less baseless ranting and more backed-up critiques. Please feel free to critique my critique of your critique if you like, and I'll probably end up critiquing that critique. If you read that sentence five times fast, your brain will probably pop out of your nose. Don't try it.

The smallest brain was in ownership of Dakaramu. It was orange sized. I doubt even orange sized device might fall through nose without significant effort from outside. ~_^

lancekt

348

September 29, 2006 10:15 AM

Quote:Original post by -JetSirus-
The one bad thing I can say about the graphics in OB is that such a huge render distance made it seem very small. For some reason to me and several of my friends Morrowind seemed MUCH larger, yet it was actualy quite a bit smaller. Of course I don't see how one could fix that problem. Other than gimping the render distance in OB or making the game world much larger that it already was. Either way its a problem for the devs.

This is a fairly common complaint on our forums. I suspect it's completely subjective--to me the world in Oblivion feels huge precisely because I can see distant cities and mountains and know that yes, I can actually reach that spot.

Of course, you can always just disable Distant LOD rendering in the video menu (on the PC at least). That would reduce how much of the world you can see at a time tremendously.

Orin Tresnjak | Graphics ProgrammerBethesda Game StudiosStandard Disclaimer: My posts represent my opinions and not those of Bethesda/Zenimax, etc.

Xai

1,851

September 29, 2006 10:49 AM

Scale in Oblivion is in conflict with itself. It always LOOKS absolutely enourmous ... which makes you "feel" emotionally that you are in a large, vivid, lush world when running around aimlessly.

But when you open up the map, and find a dungeon entrance or fort every half inch, it seems very very crowded (the opposite of big and spacious - cramped and full).

And when you are on a quest or have a goal related to such things, it often feels very small .... (oh what, I ran for 45 seconds an MISSED the next fort ... but I found another just past it ....

However when you have to talk around the main city, outside the wall .... boy it felt big then - wow, this feels like an actual CITY! ... a huge walled city of the time - walking down and up the hills, getting attacked by wolf and diseased (damn I hated the commonality of disease).

Then when you walk from 1 city to another, it was somewhat small again. Just follow this road for 3 minutes and your there.

Of course the thing is, they made almost all the right decisions. Because it is just so damn fun being able to go from 1 dungeon to another as quickly as you want ... when your in the mood ... but to walk for minutes up that hillside into the lush and different vegitation when you have a hankering to explore. So the countryside felt a lot like the world must seem to an 8 year old ... huge and full of wonder! Where a quest is riding your bike past the walk brigde to your friends swimming pool, stopping a few times to kick ants and climb stuff.

Oblivion and its problems

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Oblivion and its problems

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