Oblivion

[PrinzMegaherz]

I completely agree with OG_Gheep.

You know, the real world too is not perfect. Governments are not perfect, people are not perfect. You can't expect games to be perfect, and you will always find a weakness you can exploit. However, if you have the capabilities to find such exploits fast and completely (a skill which I lack), you might put this to better use if you started to change things in the real world, instead of focusing your efforts on games.

[Nerfix]

Are you saying we should aspire to become real pretender gods? I'm afraid my worldview won't tolerate such an idea.

[shovah]

PrinzMegaherz said:
I completely agree with OG_Sheep.

You know, the real world too is not perfect. Governments are not perfect, people are not perfect. You can't expect games to be perfect, and you will always find a weakness you can exploit. However, if you have the capabilities to find such exploits fast and completely (a skill which I lack), you might put this to better use if you started to change things in the real world, instead of focusing your efforts on games.

its Og_Gleep. I agree with him too

[Vicious Love]

OG_Gleep said:
Your comparing apples and oranges. In SC's example, your playing in a way that the developers never inteded you to.

I have absolutely no clue what the developers intended you to do. Clearly they didn't intend for you to focus on your class' primary and secondary skills, as that would result in a ludicrously underpowered character(unless all of your class skills were based on the same stat). The system is fundamentally flawed, and SC's "exploit" is just a natural progression of the simpler countermeasures most Morrowind players take to avoid having the weakest possible character of any given level.

[DominionsFan]

Hehe I am still in the imperial province, never made a step out from it yet. This game is just awesome, I cant say it with words, you must experience it yourself. On my last quest, I was teleported into a painting, since somwhow the painting swallowed its own painter in that quest [I wont say more details ]!!! I am not kidding the diversity o fthe quests are like incredible. So I was doing that quest inside a painting, the whole forest looked like a painted forest during the whole quest of course, I was like omg this game is just....fantastic.
Now I am on my way to do some battles in the gladiator's arena, I never been there so far.

[Cainehill]

Vicious Love said:

I have absolutely no clue what the developers intended you to do. Clearly they didn't intend for you to focus on your class' primary and secondary skills, as that would result in a ludicrously underpowered character(unless all of your class skills were based on the same stat). The system is fundamentally flawed, and SC's "exploit" is just a natural progression of the simpler countermeasures most Morrowind players take to avoid having the weakest possible character of any given level.

Yeah. Most such "skill" based (as opposed to experience based) games are fundamentally flawed, in a very cheesy "console-ish" manner that dates back to Final Fantasy VII or so. Gamers should be rewarded for playing skillfully, for concluding battles in a skillful and expedient manner. Instead, these games to some extent force the player to drag the battles out, whether to build up skills, or to build up "materia" (FF series) or simply to ensure that all characters get swapped into the party so that they get experience. In order to win the hard battles, you have to dick around in the easy ones.

Contrast this with an experience based game : typically, little or no experience is gained for the easiest battles, so there is no reason not to rapidly blast through them as quickly as possible. Who cares if a character doesn't get 1/10,000th of the experience required to go up to the next level? This allows the player to spend her time and attention on the interesting, challenging, fights, instead of the chicken scratch ones.

[Alneyan]

PrinzMegaherz said:
If I'm not completely mistaken, you only level up by increasing your primary skills to a certain amount. Her strategy does not involve leveling those skills, so she would forever remain on level one. And I doubt that you could master the arena with a level one character, as your abilities like Hitpoints etc. would be far too low to survive some of the more fierce battles.

That's basically her purpose, actually. In Daggerfall and Morrowind, you do *not* want to level up, especially if you happen to be a mage. Compared to other games, your health is relatively high on level 1, and does not rise much with other levels; Mana does not increase at all, and you could aim for the 85 Intelligence on level 1 with ease in Daggerfall (Morrowind is a bit more reasonable here, I think). So, your fire power is comparatively greater than elsewhere, and your access to magic is virtually unlimited.

I have played a character with all skills starting at 5 in Morrowind, and frankly can't say I've noticed much of a difference. Though I had all my important skills in primary/major (and so levelled rather quickly), I was not seriously challenged past the first few levels - that is, once my Destruction skill reached an acceptable level (20% odds of casting isn't great). Note that it was playing the GOTY edition; in earlier incarnations of the game, Magicka was pretty limited (or so I've been told). In Daggerfall, I know I took down the odd Daedra Lord or three at level 2, while deliberately trying not to level up (bloody Language skills made me go up to level 2). Magic *is* powerful (continuous effects anyone?).

I also dislike very much the mindless levelling of some "non-combat" skills that the system implies. Raising, say, Speechcraft takes a *while* if you use the skill in a rational manner. There is only two ways of getting the skill to a reasonably high level without spending ten months on the same character: training, or the clicking madness. Speechcraft could be raised relatively quickly by bribing the same character left and right (until his disposition dropped to 0), even though there was no point in doing so. Training is the other panacea, wherein gold buys power, which buys more gold, and so on. Training has been revamped in Morrowind, though it may be even more useful than before, as you can now get trained above 50.

Note that I speak about Daggerfall and Morrowind only, as I haven't played Oblivion (but there does not seem to be any significant difference). I find the skill-based system to be more interesting than the classes found elsewhere; problem is, the particular implementation of the skills seem to be flawed in those games. It seems to reward the number of successful uses, no matter how trivial (spells without any "real" effect anyone?), and does not consider how important these successes really were. Quantity over quality... hey, doesn't that sound like the levelling scheme of your average MMORPG? (Ultima Online comes to mind here)

[shovah]

oblivion needs windows xp right?

[archaeolept]

or 2k

here's a review w/ system requirements

[shovah]

thank the lord. im getting it delivered today (after some delays) and i was worried that it was xp only (like BFME 2 which i am also getting today) since this comp is only 2k