Oblivion

[Endoperez]

Are you sure? Remember that the graphics in Dungeon Crawl are very different from the usual...
http://dungeon-crawl.org/site/gfx/ss-dos-lg
It isn't always easy to learn to play a game with graphics like this. Besides, the smiley should have gien away something...

Roguelike games are very different from the rest of the computer RPGs. They have little more than combat. They execute that part very well, but you can hardly imagine yourself to be part of a real world that lives on its own. You'd need one of the Ultima games for that...

[shovah]

i know, im just saying that i prefer to avoid games like that (hurts my eyes you see )

[OG_Gleep]

I think I would definatley take different skills as my main one. I took alchemy for instance, and I've raised that so fast that it did have an impact on how I leveled. But normally I don't care about what is raised...the only thing I tried in the game was Armorer, and that was only so I could repair magical items.

VL did you look at the pre-designed characters? Maybe thats why you didn't get what I was saying?

[Cainehill]

Welp, got it - must say, Bethesda is still as retarded as ever. Don't get me wrong - some things are impressive. But : not being able to go directly to Inventory, or Map, or Skills, etc, is retarded from a user interface design PoV. They don't _use_ 'I' or 'M' for anything! And it has a disturbing tendency to semi-lockup : mind, Alt-Tabbing from a game does tend to cause that, but it's still a sign of sloppy programming. When you can turn and look at different things via the mouse, but the keyboard and mouse clicks are dead, that's a sign they screw up their input queues.

I think (hope!) I'll play it more than Morrowind, but so far I'll agree with Endoperez : mediocre game in nice tech.

[Vicious Love]

OG_Gleep said:
VL did you look at the pre-designed characters? Maybe thats why you didn't get what I was saying?

I did, I just fail to see how that undermines my argument; If you focus on their primary skills, they end up underpowered. Since one would assume Bethesda wants archers to have good archery-related stats, battlemages to have good battlemagic-related stats, et cetera, it's obvious they intended for archers to be battlemages and battlemages to be archers. Save that that would make archers archers and battlemages battlemages, which would make them underpowered and contradict the premise. Hence my confusion. To reiterate, whuh?

[shovah]

all im going to say is that my assasin took assasin skills and stats and i dont find him in any way underpowered (on any difficulty setting)

[Graeme Dice]

Vicious Love said:
I did, I just fail to see how that undermines my argument; If you focus on their primary skills, they end up underpowered.

Or, one could make the converse argument. If you focus on their secondary skills, they end up overpowered. If you game the system, then you end up with more powerful characters than if you don't. This is hardly new to either the RPG genre or the Elder Scrolls games.

[OG_Gleep]

Cainehill said:

Welp, got it - must say, Bethesda is still as retarded as ever. Don't get me wrong - some things are impressive. But : not being able to go directly to Inventory, or Map, or Skills, etc, is retarded from a user interface design PoV. They don't _use_ 'I' or 'M' for anything! And it has a disturbing tendency to semi-lockup : mind, Alt-Tabbing from a game does tend to cause that, but it's still a sign of sloppy programming. When you can turn and look at different things via the mouse, but the keyboard and mouse clicks are dead, that's a sign they screw up their input queues.

I can only comment on your complaints, and your only complaint that you listed that made it a mediocre game is the interface. "Retarded" is not the word I would use to describe them for making this choice. Actually by not developing it for the 360, they would have been retarded. I just think it was just *** out lazy to not spend more time to de-consolize Oblivon, and a big FU to the Fans who have been with this series since day 1.

I was a little pissed as well, and although it takes more clicks to get where you want to go, its not that big of a deal in the overall scheme of things.

If thats your only complaint...


VL: I was responding specifically to the overall thread of the conversation:

SC: Skill system Exploit
Me: Not Intent of developers
VL: I don't know what they intend
Me: Pre-Fab Classes suggests intent

From what I saw of the predesigned characters, they designed them like their title suggests. I didn't see anything that would suggest otherwise. I'll take a look again, but my point was that you can tell they didn't intend for you to play in the manner that SC suggested.

As for under-powered characters, I can only comment on what I have experience with, my one character. I play Heavy armor, Athletic, Blade wielding, low mana Mage that likes to make potions. I think I have half of my skill set magic related, and use magic mainly in a support role...primarily using my sword and shield as my main adventure tools. I have a total mana pool of 123 unbuffed at level 21. I have gotten +5 once, upon leveling and that was for endurance. Am I underpowered compared to a pure warrior who took care to maximize his stat increases? Most definatley. Have I nerfed myself? Most definatley not. I have had many many fights where I had to use all my skills to survive, but have only had one fight that I couldn't beat, and had to come back at a later time. No matter how I tried, the 3 slaves on 1 arena fight was way too tuff for me at low levels. There was a couple of fights pre level 5 that I had to retreat from, but more so because I was new to the game and didn't have the sufficent skills and tools to prevail.

I made a point not to powergame, and am glad for that choice. As I said, because I haven't maxed out my stats, fights are still a matter of using my skill set, instead of my stat lines.

I have heard that playing a pure mage (esp without alchemy) is hard, but playing a pre-uber level mage is typically hard. I have heard that once you crest a certain hill, things get easier.

[Saber Cherry]

Graeme Dice said:
Or, one could make the converse argument. If you focus on their secondary skills, they end up overpowered. If you game the system, then you end up with more powerful characters than if you don't. This is hardly new to either the RPG genre or the Elder Scrolls games.

Either way is the same. I like to play games that are fairly challenging throughout, but in Morrowind it was like walking on a balance beam - pick the wrong skill, play the wrong way, and suddenly the game is too easy or too hard... but you never know if you're playing too well or too badly until it's too late. In a normal RPG, there is self balance, such that if you get too powerful you can go to a "more difficult area" with commensurate rewards, and if you are too weak you can go to an "easier area". In Morrowind/Oblivion, there is no such option - when you become off-balance on either side, you just keep falling.

[shovah]

well theres always the difficulty slider which has a big impact (at minimum lvl i killed something with 3 shots and at max it was 10-20)