Oblivion = NOT for RPG noobs

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erf

[H]ard|Gawd
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Damn this game is kind of overwhelming. I've never really been a big RPG fan and decided to give Oblivion a run..........

Am I normal in saying that this game seems overwhelming at first? All these classes, magikas, level ups, stats, it's just too much mang. :D

I spent my first 2 hours getting killed for stealing shit.......lol.
 
Really? I thought Oblivion (and Morrowind) were fairly easy to get into. Maybe it's because I've played Daggerfall, which made both of them feel extremely constrained and limited in comparison. (Although Oblivion feels more alive than Daggerfall ever did).

Now Wizardry, there's an RPG that's not for RPG noobs. Then again, half of them come with a warning stating they're for RPG experts only.
 
Nytegard said:
Really? I thought Oblivion (and Morrowind) were fairly easy to get into. Maybe it's because I've played Daggerfall, which made both of them feel extremely constrained and limited in comparison. (Although Oblivion feels more alive than Daggerfall ever did).

Now Wizardry, there's an RPG that's not for RPG noobs. Then again, half of them come with a warning stating they're for RPG experts only.
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I, as well, thought Oblivion was very simple compared to any real RPG. The world itself can be a bit overwhelming, in a good way.
 
After playing 80~ hours of Oblivion, I concluded I didnt like it. I tried real hard to like it, but it never caught on. Despite the number of hours played, other than graphics I wasnt really impressed. Maybe RPG's like Elder Scrolls arent for me. And by the way, charging $2.50 for horse armor was a slap in the face, and really annoyed me to no end.

I did enjoy killing my arena fan a bunch of times though.
 
PornoSatan said:
After playing 80~ hours of Oblivion, I concluded I didnt like it. I tried real hard to like it, but it never caught on. Despite the number of hours played, other than graphics I wasnt really impressed. Maybe RPG's like Elder Scrolls arent for me. And by the way, charging $2.50 for horse armor was a slap in the face, and really annoyed me to no end.

I did enjoy killing my arena fan a bunch of times though.
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User made mods are the only things that kept me playing after two weeks.
 
This was my very first rpg... I always played first person shooters.. quake, doom ect ect.. this game blew my socks off.. and after 1000 hours Im still going strong. Right now playing 6 characters and having a blast...
 
I personally felt that TES:III was a much better game then TES:IV


Easier to get into, and easier to have fun in. It just seemed less massive and more engaging...
 
You do have a lot to do, but that can be enjoyable. I had fun with Morrowind. Only played Oblivion a bit though, I just didn't have another run of that time of game in me though it looked fun if you were up for it. I like my RPGs to be very story driven (even if it comes at the cost of becoming overly linear).
 
LordVampyre said:
This was my very first rpg... I always played first person shooters.. quake, doom ect ect.. this game blew my socks off.. and after 1000 hours Im still going strong. Right now playing 6 characters and having a blast...
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Thats real good man, I respect that sort of dedication. :D
 
I think the gameplay is easy enough to get into, but the world itself isn't..if that makes any sense. I remember when playing Morrowind for the first time I felt that it was way to big for me to be able to know what to do, and feeling kind of lost. Oblivion wasn't like that because I was used to it by that time.

Keep playing, it will come.
 
Oblivion shot itself in the foot by having quick travel, a quest compass, and copy & paste dungeons.

Quick travel and the quest compass made the game entirely too easy, IMO. Morrowind was perfect in that the quest givers told you just enough information (follow this trail and hang a right at *insert landmark*) and you were on your own.

Sure you spent a lot of time wandering around looking for a cave, npc, etc but it gave you a better sense that it was a real world and not just a forest covered land with hundreds of caves, ruins, forts that all have the same textures but are laid out a little different from each other.

I can understand why Bethesda "n00bed" it up so they could gather a larger customer base but it burns the vets of previous Elder Scrolls. :(
 
oblivion was at first and really addicting, but after a while i grew tired and felt soo isolated when playing it :(
 
KamelRed said:
Quick travel and the quest compass made the game entirely too easy, IMO. Morrowind was perfect in that the quest givers told you just enough information (follow this trail and hang a right at *insert landmark*) and you were on your own.
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QFT

This made the assassin's guild quests interesting and quite immersing, to this day I remember a contract for a guy who was living in a hut far away from any city and I had to actually search for him for some time. Much more interesting than any quest in Oblivion. Of course, Morrowind also suffered (IMO) from the fact that you could join each guild in the game world and work for them without ANY reaction from the rest of guilds. Wouldn't the assassin's guild be at least happy when one of their agents happens to be a grand master of house Hlaalu? Aren't mages intelligent enough to find out that you're also working for Dark Brotherhood? Things like this make some parts of the game look idiotic and totally break the fun. Of course you could "role play" (Oblivion is waaaay too poor story-wise to even try, Morrowind is kinda better) and don't join some of the guilds, but if you want to check out the game's features without restarting a bunch of times, it's impossible.

Also I disagree with OP - Oblivion is the definition of a modern noob-friendly CRPG. An average console player (let's say, some Halo 2 maniac) can probably run (or rather quick travel) through it in 8-15 hours, be done with it and get a new game. Only a braindead could get stuck in it :) Also, the game's mechanics make the funny "oh fuc-" *bam you're dead* situations impossible AND they don't allow the player to make a glorious come-back (after questing/leveling for 2 days) to an area where the "oh fuc-" happenned, which kinda sucks, but makes the game less challenging for the avg. player.

BTW, +1 on the Wizardy comment - now that was some hard shit. But the most hardcore, yet fun, crpg game I've ever played is called Demise - it's a classic dungeon crawl made in 3D. Old, extremely hard and really fun game.
 
dj_2004 said:
User made mods are the only things that kept me playing after two weeks.
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QFT. Without mods, the game is a failure. After playing about a week and reaching level 12, I was so utterly disgusted I quit playing for 6 months. The auto level/loot scaling is absolutely retarded. No risk or reward for anything you do. Oscuro saved me from wasting $50. Although even with his excellent mod, the game lacks role playing depth. In that regard, the series has gotten progressively worse since Daggerfall. The quests and dialogs were boring. The guilds were dumbed down. With the exception of the dark brotherhood and a few of the thieves guild quests, they really sucked. The radiant AI was such a load of PR bullshit. For these reasons, I feel like Fallout 3 will be a huge disappointment. :(
 
Oblivion is an easy RPG. It seems like the game held your hand to do each quest to make sure you would not fail.

I just reinstalled Baldur's Gate. I just can't believe how many times i died playing a new character. And you would have to be prepared for each encounter. If you get caught you are dead. Hope that some game companies start making classic/ group / isometric RPGs again...
 
erf said:
Damn this game is kind of overwhelming. I've never really been a big RPG fan and decided to give Oblivion a run..........

Am I normal in saying that this game seems overwhelming at first? All these classes, magikas, level ups, stats, it's just too much mang. :D

I spent my first 2 hours getting killed for stealing shit.......lol.
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As everyone said, it is overwhelming for everyone that did not follow the Elder Scrolls series (especially Morrowind).

However, the size of the game itself is overwhelming for anyone. It's just an awesome game, which gives us hundreds of gameplay hours and has a huge value in replayability, which is very rare these days. Definitely worth the money we pay for it.
 
KamelRed said:
Oblivion shot itself in the foot by having quick travel, a quest compass, and copy & paste dungeons.

Quick travel and the quest compass made the game entirely too easy, IMO. Morrowind was perfect in that the quest givers told you just enough information (follow this trail and hang a right at *insert landmark*) and you were on your own.

Sure you spent a lot of time wandering around looking for a cave, npc, etc but it gave you a better sense that it was a real world and not just a forest covered land with hundreds of caves, ruins, forts that all have the same textures but are laid out a little different from each other.

I can understand why Bethesda "n00bed" it up so they could gather a larger customer base but it burns the vets of previous Elder Scrolls. :(
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I understand what you said about quest compass. But I don't quite see your point concerning Quick travel. Quick travel exists, but you don't have to use it. I have almost 200 hours of gameplay in Oblivion, in which I used quick travel only half a dozen of times.
Quick travel is like a default Mark/Recall spell in Morrowind. You have it, but you don't really need to use it.
 
Oblivion was a pretty good game in my eyes, for sheer size, scale, immersiveness and beauty they get top scores, the gameplay (the fighting) was pretty good and there appeared to be a decent amount of ways to aproach combat.

I'm certainly no hardcore RPG fan, In fact I play very few RPG's but Oblivion I thought was really good, I'm still gobsmacked by the sheer level of detail over such a large scale even today, I've not seen anything that beats Oblivion in terms of beauty yet.

The user mods are nice but I think the game is worth playing no matter if you install mods or not, the only real thing I didn't like was the level scaling, as an assassin/thief I relied a lot on bow/arrows but even with everything maxed out for a character it still took way too many arrows to kill.
 
Silus said:
I understand what you said about quest compass. But I don't quite see your point concerning Quick travel. Quick travel exists, but you don't have to use it. I have almost 200 hours of gameplay in Oblivion, in which I used quick travel only half a dozen of times.
Quick travel is like a default Mark/Recall spell in Morrowind. You have it, but you don't really need to use it.
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Mark and Recall were much more useful since you could cast it while still over-weight, didn't have to be outside, and could use it during combat. Plus you had to either find items enchanted with those spells or find someone who could teach you the spells. In Oblivion, you are given quick travel right off the bat and you don't even have to find the towns. More power to you for not using it much but its just another thing Bethesda did to dumb down the gameplay a little.
 
KamelRed said:
Oblivion shot itself in the foot by having quick travel, a quest compass, and copy & paste dungeons.

Quick travel and the quest compass made the game entirely too easy, IMO. Morrowind was perfect in that the quest givers told you just enough information (follow this trail and hang a right at *insert landmark*) and you were on your own.

Sure you spent a lot of time wandering around looking for a cave, npc, etc but it gave you a better sense that it was a real world and not just a forest covered land with hundreds of caves, ruins, forts that all have the same textures but are laid out a little different from each other.

I can understand why Bethesda "n00bed" it up so they could gather a larger customer base but it burns the vets of previous Elder Scrolls. :(
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The world didn't really have enough uniqueness to it to go off of land marks. It needed much more variation. They should have also put way more effort into making less uniform in style. Fewer better dungeons would have been way better than what they did.
 
At least the dungeons were better than Morrowind's. They had a much better feel after getting custom loot/monster lists from Oscuro. I hated the idea in the vanilla game that you could wander into any dungeon and the monster and loot would be automatically set to around your level. Especially the loot. There was no point being a Thief when all you found was junk in the chests.
 
Stereophile said:
At least the dungeons were better than Morrowind's. They had a much better feel after getting custom loot/monster lists from Oscuro. I hated the idea in the vanilla game that you could wander into any dungeon and the monster and loot would be automatically set to around your level. Especially the loot. There was no point being a Thief when all you found was junk in the chests.
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Exactly, I hated that as well. Seeing every bandit in glass and daedric armor was pretty stupid too.
 
PornoSatan said:
Exactly, I hated that as well. Seeing every bandit in glass and daedric armor was pretty stupid too.
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Yeah that was bad. :D It's apparent to me Bethesda can no longer make a compelling RPG. I liked the combat, but they put too much emphasis on the graphics and completely blew the role playing aspect. I blame Todd Howard. I still can't believe how flawed the gameplay dynamics were out of the box.

I started as a thief and didn't make it to Kvatch until level 12. I swear the siege was impossible with my character. I must have tried it 40 times. We'd go into the city and 4 full size clanfear would rush us. The guards always died within 30 seconds. I couldn't use stealth to any advantage. Just 1 full size clann fear in a dungeon was a very challenging fight for that character, but 4 at once was a suicide mission. The problem is the game only looked at your generic "level" without factoring in your actual skills. No way a thief with an emphasis on stealth and illusion should face the same melee encounter as a warrior with plate armor and a 20 point AC advantage, slinging weapons hitting for 4 times as much damage as my pathetic bow. God help someone that tried to play Kvatch as a level 12 unarmed monk. :)
 
Stereophile said:
I blame Todd Howard. I still can't believe how flawed the gameplay dynamics were out of the box.
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There used to be an interesting read at No Mutants Allowed regarding Todd Howard. I couldn't seem to find it, but the gist is that Todd is the go-to guy for turning a series around. While Daggerfall was immensely popular, it wasn't a big seller, and Bethesda Softworks brought Todd Howard in to popularize the series with Morrowind, which was quite a departure from Daggerfall in terms of depth, scale and complexity (though I still love it -- I think that's because of the lack of emphasis on the Xbox version).

Todd's method of popularization is retardation. His goal is to take everything he touches and make it as simplistic as possible. Whatever he has to do to make it 'play' on the console is what he'll do.

Todd Howard might have been the best thing that ever happened to Bethesda, but it's likely the worst thing that's ever happened for people who know what makes an RPG an RPG, and what makes a hack-and-slash a hack-and-slash. Out of the box, Oblivion is an over-glorified hack-and-slash.

Wish I could find that damn article...
 
at first I wasn't that impressed with ESO but after I gave it some time I started getting more and more into it.. and then the mods came.. oh, the wonderful mods. :) I hadn't had so much fun modding a game since the original doom. I had not played many Elder Scrols games in the past but found Oblivion to be fairly easy.. I have played many rpg games so I knew what I had to do, just had to get used to the UI and mechanics of this game. If you're not an rpg gamer then this would have a rather steep learning curve.. and might not feel like the effort is worth the time.. also, until you're more skilled at sneaking and such (being a good theif), yeah, stealing stuff can be very frustrating.. you spend a lot of time in jail or getting your ass kicked by others.. I generally play all nice and stuff until I get more powerful, then I can delve into the darker deeds more. hehe.
 
Really not much to learn in Obliv. I was not to fond of the game, played it for a few hours and did not see much change in it, I got higher in level, the same mobs I was fighting just got a bit harder. Was not much to do compaired to other RPGs
 
There are many good points in this thread as to why Oblivion was a terribly sub-par game. As someone who grew up playing Wizardry, Might & Magic, Eye of the Beholder and other great RPGs, Oblivion is but a shadow of these games. It is a beautiful but ultimately shallow and empty game.
 
CyberCecil said:
There are many good points in this thread as to why Oblivion was a terribly sub-par game. As someone who grew up playing Wizardry, Might & Magic, Eye of the Beholder and other great RPGs, Oblivion is but a shadow of these games. It is a beautiful but ultimately shallow and empty game.
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Yeah I started with Bard's Tale, M&M, and Ultima series.The golden age for PC RPGs is long gone. I think it peaked sometime in the 90s.

erf said:
damn you guys are D&D nerds to the max!
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Your thread title is ironic. Oblivion caters to "rpg noobs". Actually like phide said, Oblivion is not really a proper rpg. More of a hack and slash game. It does that part well, but it's not really a good sequel to the ES franchise.

I don't think the people who made arena or daggerfall had anything to do with Oblivion. Elder Scrolls is just a brand now. Same as Fallout 3. Other than a post apocalyptic setting with some cutsie artistic inspiration from the originals, it won't be anything like the first games. I read Tim Cain actually approached Bethesda about helping out with FO3 and was completely brushed off. Oblivion with guns indeed. lulz ;)
 
The thing that scares me about Fallout 3 is that certain games become popular (even if just cult status) because of a specific audience, let's say Arena or Daggerfall. And the publisher simplifies the game to get a new audience, aka Morrowind. At that point you now have 5x the original audience who all think the new iteration is the best, so it's followup caters to the new crowd, not the original, aka Oblivion.

It's almost guaranteed that Fallout 3 will have a bigger audience than Fallout 1 & 2, probably a bigger audience than those two combined. And I'm certain there will be plenty of posts claiming how it's the greatest RPG, etc. And those of us who like the first two will be claiming why we like the older games, only to be told that the original games are aweful because of the old technology, that we're living in the past, it's nostalgia, etc. Now granted, there are some games that are remembered only due to nostalgia, and the old games are somewhat unplayable due to ugly graphics, bad sound effects, etc. In 10-20 years time, do you think people will be able to play Oblivion though?

However, there are games that have long been forgotten with great and fun gameplay that are forgotten because the audience is deemed to small to cater too. Every time a remake is made, there's always an audience that claims why are they remaking classics, and not making new games? This is a reason I don't mind remakes. Some games are just good enough that they deserve to be remade into modern technology to allow a new generation to experience them.
 
I wished some studio with a large budget would create a huge truly open ended RPG like daggerfall with cutting edge technology. Keep the rogue like elements while improving the procedural generation of quests and towns and dungeons. With today's computing power, it could turn out really good. But I think you're right. The market has changed too much to ever see a large budget RPG like that. The return on investment doesn't work out. So they make games like Oblivion for a mass audience.

I'm sure the vast majority of Oblivion consumers never played any PC RPGs older than baldur's gate 2. In fact, on the X360 version, it was probably the FIRST "rpg" many of them played. The tremendous financial success of ES:IV only reinforces the cycle. They will stick to that "formula" for FO3.
 
Allos said:
Oblivion is an easy RPG. It seems like the game held your hand to do each quest to make sure you would not fail.

I just reinstalled Baldur's Gate. I just can't believe how many times i died playing a new character. And you would have to be prepared for each encounter. If you get caught you are dead. Hope that some game companies start making classic/ group / isometric RPGs again...
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You might be interest in

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschalon:_Book_I

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drakensang:_The_Dark_Eye
 
It's a change of pace, but if you think Oblivion is tough, steer clear of Morrowind. Check out all the mods for Oblivion. take it slow though, if you start downloading and installing mods like a maniac, you might just break your game.

If the site is still up, you can try www.tessource.net to download mods, otherwise hit up the official forums www.elderscrolls.com/forums (they've changed their DNS, but you'll be redirected).
 
Although I agree with some points, like level scaling (the loot being adjusted to our level was ridiculous) and that some things (like quest compass) ruined the experience a bit, but IMO Oblivion was/is one the best games we've had for a while. Storywise and lure, Morrowind wins (especially when combined with the first exp - Tribunal), but Oblivion was not just a graphics feast as some try to make it. And if you saw nothing more than graphics, then you clearly didn't play it long.
 
KamelRed said:
Mark and Recall were much more useful since you could cast it while still over-weight, didn't have to be outside, and could use it during combat. Plus you had to either find items enchanted with those spells or find someone who could teach you the spells. In Oblivion, you are given quick travel right off the bat and you don't even have to find the towns. More power to you for not using it much but its just another thing Bethesda did to dumb down the gameplay a little.
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I was not talking about usefulness, but rather effect. Quick travel is very similar to what Mark/Recall was in Morrowind, in effect, except for the fact you could only mark one place at a time.
I can only agree with you partially, since, if used, Quick travel dumbs down the gameplay a little, however, it does not need to be used.
 
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