Damn Oblivion to HELL!!!

[hrvojej]

One of the things I loved in Morrowind was that sense of accomplishment when something that made you flee before you could now kill without too much trouble. It allowed you to feel really egotistical and proud of how strong you've become.

This is exactly what I miss in Oblivion. I remember how fun it was to try to fight the guy with the Umbra sword in Morrowind after every few levels to see whether I can finally beat him, and the sense of accomplishment once I finally did. Oblivion just lacks this sort of "man, am I pleased with myself" sort of feeling, since everything levels up when you do. I simply don't have that pleasure of pushing myself to the limit to be able to better handle whatever future may bring, as I know that everything I'll find in a given dungeon will be scaled to my level, and I won't get anything out of it that will enable me to tread deeper water - because ultimately, there is not deeper water to tread. Why would I even want to clear out more dungeons and level up when this is the case? There aren't even some appealing items that the stores have for sale that you an see right off the bat, as better stuff only shows up once you have gotten a few levels and you are finding those things all over the place.

On the other hand, this can create problems in the completely opposite direction as well. To illustrate it with an example: there is a quest where you have to help some farmers fend off goblins raiding their farm. If both of the farmers survive, you'll get the reward, if they die, you don't. I tried this quest at level 1, and somehow managed to kill the goblins but the farmers died. Ok, I thought, I'll reload and get back to it later when I'm able to slay the goblins more easily and before they manage to kill the farmers. But, surprise surprise, when I got back at level 8, the goblins have leveled up as well, and were equally hard to kill as they were before, but now they also killed the idiot farmers even more easily. IMHO that's just stupid, frustrating as hell, and throughly off-putting.

And yes, fewer quests and fewer factions are a negative. I like the freeform games, but since I don't feel compelled to improve myself otherwise, I guess a plethora of quests would do the trick to keep me occupied. However, due to the autolevelling thing you can complete a vast majority of the quests while at a fairly low level, which means that you can get them over with quickly and early - while at the same time you again don't have to work on yourself to be able complete them in the first place. At level 10, I completed nearly all of the side quests in the game (not the faction quests - but there are only 4 factions basically). On top of that, you do many of the quest together with some annoying companions whom you should in fact try to keep alive, but I would really much rather just kill them myself because they only get in the way and prevent me from playing the game the way I want to play it.

There are many other silly little things that are missing, some of which are not even normally found in RPGs or really important, but that were there in Morrowind and I really liked the fact that Morrowind had them. For example, the armor set is comprised of fewer pieces now, you can't wear clothes at the same time you wear armor, you can drink several potions at once during a fight while the game is paused, there is much less interaction with the NPCs and the interaction is ridiculously simple, etc. etc. Overall, the world just feels way less detailed and alive than Morrowind's. It feels like a run-of-the-mill action RPG, and not like a game in the same league as Daggerfall and Morrowind.

In short, my advice is wait for the bargain bin.

[NodachiSam]

I will be waiting until at least august when I get a new computer. I guess I will wait a little while occupying myself with something else until it drops in price.

[The_Emperor]

Well after a new grapics card (that also comes in handy for RTW) I am now settling back into Oblivion.

By the sounds of the Auto-levelling system it does seem rather silly that creatures will suddenly start dropping Daedric, Glass and Dwarven armour. In Morrowind I remember having a great time trying to track these sets down to wear on my Dark Elf.

Glass armour was only avaliable in a few places and the full Daedric set was only avaliable in one place from what I remember. Dwarven stuff was also likewise relegated to the lovely volcano that occupied the middle of the map and it made travelling a bit more involving...

"Bloody volcano in the way, have to go around it" (30 mins later still walking around the purple perimiter) "Jeeezzz how big is this thing?"

As for Oblivion I am starting to enjoy the Kvatch quests but I had a lot of trouble with the troops you get to help. They all enjoyed running around all over the place and pulling enemies onto me while the main quest guys passes out every few minutes... In the end I resorted to a kind of "Operation get behind the darkies", as in the NPC guys runs in and starts fighting while I am sneaking around behind him watching.

Certainly was more fun than running in and getting swamped.