Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion

[Guppy]

I'm getting this game tomorrow and I haven't been this excited since I bought my first computer, a Commodore 64 back in.. well, the mid eighties sometime.

So who's playing what class? Who's having the most/least fun with what class/race? And what's your opinions in general?

And a small plea for help.. I played Morrowind a LOT when it came out (to the annoyance of my now wife) and I remember I had to restart a character a couple of time due to poor skill/birthsign/attribute combination choices. There would usually be something that would be useless or something I wish I'd chosen and by that time I'd spent a dozen hours playing and was loathe to start a new character again.

So to avoid this again, I just wanted to hear your thoughts on what's the most useful choices for the characters you have. Most likely I'll choose a fighty+spelly type character but theiving sounds pretty interesting in this game.

I just registered to post a question on the www.elderscrolls.com forums and the traffic is so insane my post went to page 3 in 2 minutes!

[wolfx]

I think i'm alone when i say i don't like Daggerfall and Elderscroll series. I dunno why.

I like to see my bare nakedness when i take off all the armour though.

[Zentrandude]

Usualy a spellsword. The games always recommend I play a monk if I do those answer the questions to create a class.

[JsARCLIGHT]

So who's playing what class? Who's having the most/least fun with what class/race? And what's your opinions in general?

I got my copy the day after it came out. I bought the collector's edition and for the extra ten bucks you get a making of DVD, a nice book that gives you background on the land and all the people and a goofy fake gold coin. Worth it? Maybee.

As for the game I only have about ten hours under my belt so far, I don't have the time to play like I used to. I always play custom classes in the ES games because the presets limit me too much. This is my current configuration:

Race: Imperial

Class: Custom with emphasis on Stealth

Birthsign: The Warrior

Two best Attributes: Strength and Agility

Seven prime Skills: Blade, Light Armor, Armorer, Destruction, Security, Alchemy, Speechcraft

My opinion on the game is pretty positive. They changed just enough for this to be a new experience but left enough the same so that it's like a continuation of Morrowind without being a direct continuaiton. They FINALLY changed the combat to be more "correct"... no more "hitting them without hitting them" crap. The main praise I can give the game is that it is a lot harder than Morrowind combat wise and the logistics of block-strike-dodge have taken it up a notch. At the same time my cheif complaint against this game is that many of the once difficult activities have now become way too easy. Alchemy for instance... you cannot fail now. Every time you attempt a potion it works. Levelling up your alchemy skill simply makes your potions more powerful. While useful and profitable in Oblivion I miss the days of Morrowind when you botched most of your attempts because you where incompetent in early levels.

Also combat in this game is a lot more frentic. No more just walking up to a baddie and hammering them until they fall. With block now under your command you have to master the tricky "dance of death" pretty fast or risk getting wiped out every fight you get into. The one on one battles are more in depth now because you have to read your opponent's movements and block his attacks while waiting for openings to strike him. Spells and magic are quite useful for long range attacks early on because bow and arrow at low skill levels take too long to knock and fire accurately... however you CAN recover all your arrows now unline in Morrowind.

As a rule of thumb my kit my guy carries is a good longsword, a good set of light armor and shield, a good bow with good arrows hotkeyed and ready to use, a nice fireball spell equipped with a good healing spell hotkeyed and from there I just meander around.

And a small plea for help.. I played Morrowind a LOT when it came out (to the annoyance of my now wife) and I remember I had to restart a character a couple of time due to poor skill/birthsign/attribute combination choices. There would usually be something that would be useless or something I wish I'd chosen and by that time I'd spent a dozen hours playing and was loathe to start a new character again. So to avoid this again, I just wanted to hear your thoughts on what's the most useful choices for the characters you have. Most likely I'll choose a fighty+spelly type character but theiving sounds pretty interesting in this game.

Well, this time around they built into the game a brief tutorial/class maker section at the beginning of the game. Basically when you start you make your character by choosing race and their physical looks and then the game starts. From there you go through a little mini quest in which you are given a chance to use almost every skill in the game to some degree and you can see how well they work for you and if you want to specialize in them or not. When this minigame is over it asks you to pick your class based on how you played the minigame. After that you are set in your class, race and birthsign until the exit of the miniquest when it asks you again to make sure you want what you want.

The only advice I can give is to stay away from the "level blasting" skills... Don't make Athletics or Acrobatics a main skill because then simply wandering around levels you up and that can cause the game to get waaaaay too hard too fast by blasting you through the levels. When it comes to picking skills pick the skills you use the most that require high skill to use. For instance in this new game blocking is under your control... as long as your shield is up or you are parrying it will work to some degree. The better you are at blocking the better it is, if you catch my drift. Personally I know I'm going to be doing a lot of blocking so I know that skill will level up fast, but at the same time I don't want it to be a main skill otherwise it would "level blast" and I'd find myself at too high a level too early surrounded by mean-ass monsters while all I carry are simple early level weapons and armor.

Also keep in mind that speechcraft persuasion and lock picking are now minigames, your skill level really helps you in these minigames massively by giving you extra abilities. For as many goodies as their are behind locks you can't go wrong with security as a main skill.

Two new additions that so far are kind of useless to me are the horses and the "instant find" mapping. Horses are neat and all and you get one quite early in the game but unless you use it regularly for long range fast travel they are not much fun and are quite hard to steer. With the addition of the "instant fast travel" feature on the map using a horse is pretty much "only if you want to" sort of thing and outside of increased speed does not offer many perks. Combat on horseback is quite hard and I found myself dismounting to fight most of the time before I finally stabled the horse and left him behind. The other complaint I have is the "instant find" mapping that auto detects dungeons and such and leads you to them. While I can see how people could complain that they couldn't find anything in Morrowind that was the big draw for me... just wandering around seeing what I could find. Now that the game automaps everything when you get remotely close to it it sort of takes the mystery and fun out of stumbling across a daedric shrine out in the middle of nowhere.

In the end though Oblivion is a nice "enhancement" of Morrowind... they kept enough of the old game and changed enough for the new game to keep it fresh. Plus the "living world" factor is a neat plus. Putting the NPCs on a clock and making them need to eat and perform tasks really adds to the feel of the game. Sure it's a little annoying when you are lugging 100 pounds of spoils from your last dungeon trek and you really want to sell them only to discover it's 3 in the morning and all the shops are closed. But when you think about it it just adds that extra level of "real" to the game that makes you play "smart" as opposed to simply blasting through the game with your ass on fire.

[JsARCLIGHT]

This is a question that I'm not sure anyone here has the answer to yet but do enchantments and soul gems work the same in Oblivion as they did in Morrowind? I have a few enchanted items already that I pryed off of dead guys and I have a few soul gems but I lack the skill level for soultrap right now and I have yet to find a place to enchant items so the mechanics of it all are still not known to me.

That was one of the big "sucker punches" of Morrowind, was getting a few grand soul gems with golden saint souls in them and then enchanting some rings and amulets with constant effect stuff like constant health, fatigue and magica recharge and then the other two with constant effect bound daedric armor and weapons. Then I'd get two more golden saint souls and enchant my exquisite shirt and pants with constant effect feather and constant effect water breathing. I was able to make my guy near invincible in Morrowind that way by giving him perminent bound armor, weapon and shield (that had pretty good armor ratings and attack power with no weight) with constantly refilling life, magica and fatigue with the added bonus of feather so I could carry like 600 pounds of extra crap plus breathe under water. I was a walking tank at that point and the game just became so easy that it was almost pointless to do anything.

I wonder if that sort of strategy works in the new game? I bet they took steps to prevent that this time around... it was kind of a game killer in hindsight. Then again you had to be pretty badass and play quite a while to get all the grand soul gems and golden saint souls needed to pull that off... not to mention all the loot you needed to have to buy the enchantments. Then again once you found that rediculous talking mudcrab merchant you could unload anything in the game for profit. All those daedric dai katanas and other crap worth several hundred thousand gold now paid off.

[Southpaw Samurai]

Got Oblivion Tuesday. Was supposed to get the PC Collector's version, but due to messed up delivery by UPS (let at depots and such) and THEN my company's internal shipping department losing it...I STILL don't have it (so much for overnight). Anyway, when the first UPS delay showed up on tracking, I went and also bought the XBox360 version (figured it'd be fun on a big screen anyway).

Having a ton of fun. Only been able to manage to get about 8-10 hours in total. Laughably, I've maybe only gotten 2 hours into a single character. Did a couple of restarts...at first because of uncertainty over what type of character I was going to play and also wanting to get the most out of the stats (I don't want to powergame, but I also don't want primary skills so high there will be little chance to level). Surprisingly, my last character 'reboot' was actually out of changing what kind of role I wanted to play....probably not important to many, but I sort of like staying 'in character'.

The A.I. isn't as rich as some of the early demos, but it's much better than Morrowind's static, mindless drones and it alllows for Ultima VII like 'daily living' behavior with a slightly dynamic twist as they know what they need to do, but aren't scripted to do it in a particular fashion. So if an A.I. knows its dinner time, but you stole the apple on their dinner table, but left the carrot on the cupboard, they'll either walk over and eat the carrot or even bring it back to the table and eat it there. Sort of fun to stalk people...one guy like to wander around and he only seemed to stop to talk to women, passing guys unless they approached first. There's a hope among the community that the older, wilder A.I. is still in there and can be unlocked, at least on the PC version. While apparently more active A.I. resulted in weird situations like townsfolk wiping each out in anger/desperation, it would be very cool to see such behavior and even toy with it.

Otherwise, though, the game is beautiful. Having grown up on CRPGs, the old combat never really bothered me, but the more actiony-if YOU can hit, your character will definitely hit, with damage being stat-based is actually pretty cool. Like having archer/magic shootouts...came across two bandit archers in a dungeon room full of pillars...very nice ranged dueling.

If you like RPGs (well, specifically more western-style, non-console 'RPGS'), it's almost a guaranteed recommendation. Early on, especially if you're at first just playing around in the capital, the game feels a little 'souless'...hard to describe, actually...just feels like its missing something. That actually fades to varying degrees of success as you get further in the game. So if you're unsure and decide to rent first, don't give up after your first three or four hours if it's turning you off.

Have my typical 'too-curious-for-his-own-good' Khajit secondary character, but after some misfires with my Morrowind-esque Imperial (decided I wanted something different), my Nord 'skald' (basically, a custom battlemage/bard type), and a Altmer warrior/mage (yes, deliberately wanted the handicap of an Altmer warrior...wanted to play a more nimble, less armored fighter/mage than I have before), I actually fell back on a Dunmer jack-of-many-trades type mainly because I decided after walking around (and given how certain things in real life have irked me of late), I wanted to be a much bigger jerk and I couldn't bring my prettyboy Altmer to do wrong (yes, I had to justify behavior that most people wil do anyway, even if they've made their character a 'paladin' or something... like I said, I just like to stick to a role when I play roleplaying games). I'll leave the other characters for maybe a second play through.

[JsARCLIGHT]

After hearing of Southpaw's "Archer duel" it makes me wonder... what is everyone's Oblivion ROE?

My personal choice in combat is to pelt the target with fireballs at long range then when the magica is gone I raise my shield and close in for the kill with my longsword. I only use my bow and arrows for disarming traps and other mundane uses like hunting deer, knocking things loose and sniping small weak critters like mudcrabs from a distance. I also prefer to travel as light as possible using only light armor and relying on rest and magic for healing rather than carrying potions... although I make boatloads of potions with the alchemy skill to sell for profit. I guess you could say my characters are always "lightfighters" in that I purposely travel light but give them tons of strength and agility to haul back the treasure to sell and to dodge and block like a mug when the furballs get thick. My non combat ROE are suave talking and lock picking... I love going from person to person, talking them into liking me, then greasing them for anything they have to give or sell. That is why I almost always play as an Imperial... the bonuses to speechcraft and mercantile are always put to good use by me. The lock picking is a necessity in this game it seems, everything good in the dungeons are behind locks.

[mikeszekely]

I picked it up. I'm playing a dark elf custom class, with a fair balance of blade combat and magic (screw stealth and marksmanship!). I took the Ritual for my birthsign.

Well, so far so good. I like that, unlike Morrowind, they start you with some kind of direction (give the amulet to what's-his-name). However, upon reaching the town, I've found the sheer freedom to do pretty much anything beside's find what's-his-name a bit daunting, and haven't played since.

[JsARCLIGHT]

That is this game's (and Morrowind's) blessing and it's curse... it is so open that people like me who are constantly looking for ways out of the chains that common games put on you it's manna from heaven but the same openness causes a lot of people to quit playing feeling there is no "direction". I think that is why I loved Morrowind and I'm starting to love this game... the direction is up to you.

When I play games on the PC I'm always clawing at the walls of my cage like a rat... meaning I always try to do things in the game that I want to do, not neccessarily what the game wants me to do. Be it trying to shoot my teammates, trying to "get out of the maze and see what's behind it" to trying to open doors and go into places I can't go. When I was a kid I was that kid who would see a tree limb and try to climb up there, I'd see a ledge on a rock face and see if I could get up there. When it comes to games I feel cheated when I can only take one path, take one direction, only be the good guy or bad guy. There are so many greys, so many inbetweens left unexplored. Call me a rebel but RPG games like most of the japanese ones that coddle you and handhold you, limit you to only doing what they want you to do, really make me not want to play RPGs. It's the openness... the direcitonlessness of it that I love. I feel the game lets me do whatever I want to do, it does not preach to me to play it only one way like most games today do. Oblivion is a game I feel is purpose made for you to "get lost in". Simply exploring the countryside, picking things, seeing the deer jumping around, watching the trees sway... the simple exploration is great. Then finding a temple or a cave or something is all gravy. Putting the shackles of order and direction on it would make it like everything else out there.

Then again I was never an RPG fan... I was always that guy invited to play D&D with the D&D dorks who was constantly telling the gamemaster that I wanted to go do something else other than his quest he had in mind. The guy killing the other players and taking their stuff or burning down things, starting fights and doing things "just because I could".

Sure the kingdom needs saving... but that old elven ruin over there behind those trees looks more interesting.

(Edits)

Edited March 24, 2006 by JsARCLIGHT

[Duke Togo]

I spent the first day getting the game to stop crashing. The second day was spent messing with my guy's facial features. Today I actually started playing a little.

Name: Marcus Valerius

Race: Redguard

Birthsign: Thief

Specialization: Combat

Class: Ranger (Custom)

Favored Attributes:

- Strength

- Wisdom

Major Skills:

- Alteration

- Armorer

- Blade

- Block

- Light Armor

- Marksman

- Restoration

His Redgaurd Race insures that'll he be a strong fighter and durable. I took the Thief Birthsign mainly for the +10 Luck bonus (Luck is very hard to get up), but the +10 to Speed and Agility help round out my character. Marksman allows me to soften them up (or kill them outright) before I move in. Restoration keeps me healed, and Alteration will let me open those locks.

Looks wise he is Redguard in name only. I made him classically Roman looking, with a touch of a young Marlon Brando and a young George Washington. He wears his hair in a rogue not, kept short.

His starting stats:

Strength: 55

Intelligence: 30

Willpower: 35

Agility: 50

Speed: 50

Endurance: 50

Luck: 60

Personality: 30

Edited March 24, 2006 by Duke Togo

[JsARCLIGHT]

I spent the first day getting the game to stop crashing. The second day was spent messing with my guy's facial features. Today I actually started playing a little.

What sort of issues where you having? Mine only took some messing with the settings to get a good balance between looks and peformance it has since been running like a top.

And does anyone have the HDR renderer up and running? I heard you need one of the new uber video cards to pull it off. I'm running a ATI X800 PRO and the HDR setting is greyed out (always off) on me.

[Duke Togo]

Actually, video wasn't my problem, it was audio. The AC3Filter I have installed was causing it to crash, and even spontaneously reboot my computer after clicking the 'New" game button. I hadn't realized I had left the Filter selected for not just AC3 audio, but PCM, DTS, MPEG, and PES. Once I unselected those, its worked beautifully.

My video card is a Powercolor Radeon X800XL VIVO, and the HDR option is greyed out for me as well. I believe your card has to support Shader 3.0 to be able to use HDR.

[Sundown]

It's the openness... the direcitonlessness of it that I love. I feel the game lets me do whatever I want to do, it does not preach to me to play it only one way like most games today do. Oblivion is a game I feel is purpose made for you to "get lost in". Simply exploring the countryside, picking things, seeing the deer jumping around, watching the trees sway... the simple exploration is great. Then finding a temple or a cave or something is all gravy. Putting the shackles of order and direction on it would make it like everything else out there.

Is there strong direction in the game if you want to follow it? I've always been someone who needed a story, a meaningful experience, a feeling that I made a difference in the world to characters with personalities that are their own. It's very easy for me to spot the patterns in a generic simulation of a world, and when that happens, the illusion of a real living and breathing world dies very quickly-- and it's only the story and character interactions that can provide unpredictability and meaning at that point. So I guess I'm a bit of an opposite, since purely open-ended games have never left me very satisfied in the end. Instead of wanting to be lost in a game, I tend to want to find something compelling in it. So I can only play so much of games like The Sims, and whenever a developer tells me their game is more of a creative sandbox than a "game with shackles", I want to stab them repeatedly.

At the same time, the games I've loved the most have married story with openess. I think one of my all-time favorite games was Ultima 6. The writing was fantastic, the plot interesting, and there was serious direction and a satisfying climax. However, the design of the game had you follow up hints, explore, and pick up direction when and where you felt like it. Alternatively, you could choose just to wander, kill things, or loot villages if that was your thing (with karma penalties that made it impossible to finish the game if you turned into a psycho murderer, I believe). Nearly every character had unique appearance and dialogue, and there were plenty of them. Even though there was solid direction, requiring you to be more proactive in following up leads granted the illusion that you were doing things on your own initiative. It didn't force you from level to level and railroad you from NPC to NPC in order to get the story to progress. I miss a good, epic, game like that.

Does Oblivion offer an engaging and meaningful story that's actually worth doing, with characters that are actually worth remembering? I loved the idea of Daggerfall way, way back, but just couldn't get myself to play it for very long. A whole town of NPC's that were obviously randomly generated and all say the same thing killed any illusion of a real, meaningful world fast.

Edited March 24, 2006 by Sundown

[JsARCLIGHT]

There is a story to Oblivion and a definate path you need to follow to "beat" the game... the problem is that you are not railroaded through that path. Just like Morrowind (and to an extent Grand Theft Auto), the actual game itself is not all that long and consists of only about a third if not a little less of the total possible actual gameplay in the game... the rest is all side quests and optional adventures. It's that openness however that is daunting. Without the game forcing you to "complete it" people can get lost.

Edit: and there is always going to be repetition in a single player game no matter how large they make it. You can still see repetition in Oblivion... but that does not bug me as it is mostly dialogue repetition and that sort of thing is no big deal in my book. To give everyone unique dialoge all the time would take ten or more DVD discs of just audio. That is a tad excessive for me.

Edited March 24, 2006 by JsARCLIGHT

[Sundown]

There is a story to Oblivion and a definate path you need to follow to "beat" the game... the problem is that you are not railroaded through that path.Without the game forcing you to "complete it" people can get lost.

Edit: and there is always going to be repetition in a single player game no matter how large they make it. You can still see repetition in Oblivion... but that does not bug me as it is mostly dialogue repetition and that sort of thing is no big deal in my book.

383804[/snapback]

Ah, gotcha. If the story's solid and the path itself is engrossing, it sounds like a winner. I love openness as a means of finding the adventure written, prepared, and polished, waiting to be found... but I'm not a big fan of when developers tell you to "create your own adventure" with their generic sandbox as an excuse for not providing any content of their own.

If it's anything like GTA, with real progression and a living world, a game in itself, to do it in, it sounds pretty solid. And repeating dialogue's not bad so long as it's apparent that the developers are trying to keep it to a minimum and aren't just being lazy.

Edited March 24, 2006 by Sundown

[JsARCLIGHT]

Ah, gotcha.  If the story's solid and the path itself is engrossing, it sounds like a winner.  I love openness as a means of finding the adventure written, prepared, and polished, waiting to be found... but I'm not a big fan of when developers tell you to "create your own adventure" with their generic sandbox as an excuse for not providing any content of their own.

As for how "engrossing" the story is that is up to the player's tastes. I myself find the main story of Oblivion that I have seen so far to be quite commonplace and very "seen it before". There is not much of anything special about it as far as I have gone in the game... it may go totally nuts on me at any point but Morrowind never really did that to you. Sure there where some times in Morrowind when you just said "oh f##k" when you saw how things where going down but the majority of the story is spent running between setpiece battles. And that is why I relish the non-story depth of the game. To me the real joy in these ES games is in just wandering around between the towns getting into trouble. Find a dungeon and smash it, find some bandits and wipe them out... heck last night while playing I had just found an old fort and was walking around checking it out when this Kajiit highwayman just wanders up to me and tries to mug me. It's that totally open, random, craziness that draws me into the game.

[Guppy]

I'm installing it now so I may be gone for awhile.. Talking about the freeform nature of the game that's what I really love too. I even like the way you sometimes make up quests for yourself. Like trying to find a particular armor set or having to build up enough skill to beat a tough monster, etc. Now that's creating your own adventure!

I remember from Morrrowind, Speechcraft was one of my favourites. The added dialogue/persuading options you get make it a must for me a major skill.

And did anyone ever do the combo fly ring+boots of blinding speed+dispel majic ring so you could fly like superman around the land? I count that as a glitch.. you could dive bomb your enemy or just shoot him with arrows from the sky. I wonder if OB will have something similar. Like JsARCLIGHT said, I reckon they'll eliminate these 'sucker punches' this time around. After playing the game for so long, when I got to be a supersonic flying tank I lost interest.

And hopefully my Nvidia 6800 GT will cope. I read a few posts that NVIDIA cards can be a bit crashy.

[Duke Togo]

This leveling scaling thing just isn't working for me. I can go anywhere, anytime, and it never gets any harder. Where is the fun in a free form game if there isn't ever any challenge, or places you cannot go? Where is the challenge of going places you aren't supposed to in an attempt to get things you shouldn't have yet?

Bah!

[Hikuro]

Hmmmmmmm I'm still debating.....I had it pre-ordered back in I think August.....but once I heard the game was being pushed back over and over I canceled it.....I hear mix results at work from those who play it on their PC, hardly anyones got a 360.

Hmmmmm......tough call.

[JsARCLIGHT]

This leveling scaling thing just isn't working for me. I can go anywhere, anytime, and it never gets any harder. Where is the fun in a free form game if there isn't ever any challenge, or places you cannot go? Where is the challenge of going places you aren't supposed to in an attempt to get things you shouldn't have yet?

Bah!

384228[/snapback]

I'm not sure where you are wandering but I've been killed four times so far and had more narrow escapes than I can remember. I just now finished playing a round and I barely made it out of a cave with my arms attached. I even had to restart and change a few of my specialties because I kept getting totally creamed in combat. I had to switch to a nord with heavy armor and block in order to attempt to hold my own against most of the heavily armed bandits I was encountering in dungeons. The dungeon I just finished this morning was rife with bandits carrying silver weapons, heavy armor and two really nasty summoners who fired up a herd of zombies. There have been several times, even with my new guy in my new game, that I have bolted in a fast retreat from a lot of fights muttering sh!t sh!t sh!t sh!t sh!t while trying to heal myself as fast as I could.

I will admit that I have yet to encounter a dungeon or cave that is just totally off the charts as far as running into something ten times stronger than me... but from what I have been hearing that is supposed to be the Oblivion gates. I have yet to see an Oblivion gate mostly because I have totally ignored the storyline quests and have been just bumming around Skingrad region for most of my play time.

[zeo-mare]

can any one tell me how good the pc one is? i saw the 360 version the other night on my brothers system but i do not have a 360. i just found out about the pc one, IGN gave it a very high score but i would like to know what you guys think of it.

chris

[JsARCLIGHT]

I have only played the PC version so all I can do is tell you what I think the positives and negatives compared to the XBox version are.

Positives:

- graphics are superb provided you have a system that can handle it

- very fast load times, almost no wait (once again system specs)

- mouse/keyboard combo is IMHO the only way to play FPS style games, no matter what their style

Negatives:

- slowdown... I have encountered it a few times and have had to keep trying to adjust my system settings to get the best framerate while keeping the look of the game going. I even have a "high tilt" system, too... or so I thought.

- graphical annomilies... I have encountered a few, mostly in item pictures. A lot of the "breeches" items icons are corrupt on my game.

All in all the greatness or the terribleness of the game I think is going to be totally dependent on your hardware. A killer rig will give you the best possible experience while a bargin rig will make you wish you never got the game... then again the same thing can be said for every PC game. In the end I think the only massive standout difference between the XBox and PC version is the question "Are you more comfortable with a controller or a mouse/keyboard?"

[zeo-mare]

thankfully my pc seems to be able to meet the required specs so i may check it out. i am used to pc games useing the mouse and keyboard so that is no problem for me either.

chris

Edited March 26, 2006 by zeo-mare

[Duke Togo]

I'm not sure where you are wandering but I've been killed four times so far and had more narrow escapes than I can remember. I just now finished playing a round and I barely made it out of a cave with my arms attached. I even had to restart and change a few of my specialties because I kept getting totally creamed in combat. I had to switch to a nord with heavy armor and block in order to attempt to hold my own against most of the heavily armed bandits I was encountering in dungeons. The dungeon I just finished this morning was rife with bandits carrying silver weapons, heavy armor and two really nasty summoners who fired up a herd of zombies. There have been several times, even with my new guy in my new game, that I have bolted in a fast retreat from a lot of fights muttering sh!t sh!t sh!t sh!t sh!t while trying to heal myself as fast as I could.

I will admit that I have yet to encounter a dungeon or cave that is just totally off the charts as far as running into something ten times stronger than me... but from what I have been hearing that is supposed to be the Oblivion gates. I have yet to see an Oblivion gate mostly because I have totally ignored the storyline quests and have been just bumming around Skingrad region for most of my play time.

384245[/snapback]

Sounds like you have leveled too quickly. You probably have some easily leveled Major Skills, which is killing your attributes.

[Zentrandude]

Oddly I can play it fine on my laptop which only is a amd3k64 with a 64mb ati9600 (mins says 128) but I never got into any weird corruption icons that guys is getting.

I do like they natualy support wide screen resolutions instead of stretching them.

The first obvlion gate was wicked for me, by the time I got to the end to close it down most of my armor was broken and my steel longsword was almost gone thankfully being a spellsword the frozen touch spell really helped... plus looting dead bodies for the armor and weps helped too.

Has anyone been playing with the phyisic engine? I been noticing I like to try to throw things around and grab bodies and put them in funny poses (sounds kind of demented I know ) oddly only flame astroches the ones I can pick up off the ground throw them about an inch, rest I can move the limbs and head.

[JsARCLIGHT]

Sounds like you have leveled too quickly. You probably have some easily leveled Major Skills, which is killing your attributes.

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I'm not sure... I'm only at level 8 and don't have too high of stats. I have no skills at journeyman yet but a few are close.

I just did a huge hike from Skingrad to Choroll, took down two caves and and two elven shrines on the way. Found a few nice enchanted items like a firebow and a few other pieces to round out my combat a bit better. I also ran into my first two Trolls in the game... scared the bajebus out of me when the first one came plodding up in a dark cave.

I think my main suckiness early on was a result of me not being used to the fighting the game has and making very poor choice in equipment... now that my block skill is higher and my guy is wearing heavy all steel armor and using a decent silver sword I can hold my own against almost anything. Magic users give me the hardest time though... I can't seem to block any magic thrown at me (I'm not sure you can actually block magic) and dodging it is a real pain in the cramped dungeons I keep encountering these punks in.

[Duke Togo]

What are your Major Skills?

[JsARCLIGHT]

My Major skills and their current levels are:

Armorer (35+/-)

Heavy Armor (42+/-)

Block (28 +/-)

Blade (near 50, closest skill I have to Journeyman level)

Speechcraft (35 +/-)

Destruction (25 +/-)

Security (32 +/-)

I got bonuses to Armorer, Blade and Heavy Armor from being a Nord.

Edit: Other skills that are high but are not main skills are Restoration (near 23), Alchemy (above 30) and Mercantile (above 25). I also have not paid for any training in this game yet. I know in Morrowind you could atomic level blast if you had tons of money but I think they limit it in this game to only 5 levels through training. I do have a ton of cash though from selling everything that is not bolted down, I'm above $20K right now.

Edited March 26, 2006 by JsARCLIGHT

[Zentrandude]

Whats your strength at jsarclight? I have to leave bunch of loot when im raiding haunted areas.

[JsARCLIGHT]

When I leveled up to 8 it was in the low 70 range. I know I can carry 395 pounds of crap with me, about 140 of that is my armor, weapons, alchemy junk and various potions and other gear.

The trick with tomb raiding in these games is to only take what is worth something. My rule of thumb is that if it is not tiny, weighs nothing and sells for a good price or is large and fetches a ton of gold then I'll bring it with me. The best items to loot are the "useless to you" enchanted items... like today I found some stupid shirt that was enchanted to be like a constant +10 to something dumb like acrobatics so I just sold it... netted me over 1000 gold.

Also cook yourself a few dozen nice feather potions. The ones my guy is barfing out with his meager alchemy skills are good for quite a boost of strength for quite a while. This last trip out I wandered off with a bunch of silver weapons. I was over encumbered so I just chuged about four feather potions on my way back to town to sell the stuff.

I have made almost all my money by looting the guilds I belong to for everything that is not bolted down that will not get me a steal offense and selling it to the shops in town and by making tons and tons of potions and selling all of those except the feather, magica recharge and health recharge ones.

Edited March 26, 2006 by JsARCLIGHT

[Kin]

Nice graphics.. though it runs on low with my specs.

Damn those scary dungeons.. give me 100 torches

Edited March 27, 2006 by Kin

[mikeszekely]

That is this game's (and Morrowind's) blessing and it's curse... it is so open that people like me who are constantly looking for ways out of the chains that common games put on you it's manna from heaven but the same openness causes a lot of people to quit playing feeling there is no "direction". I think that is why I loved Morrowind and I'm starting to love this game... the direction is up to you.

When I play games on the PC I'm always clawing at the walls of my cage like a rat... meaning I always try to do things in the game that I want to do, not neccessarily what the game wants me to do. Be it trying to shoot my teammates, trying to "get out of the maze and see what's behind it" to trying to open doors and go into places I can't go. When I was a kid I was that kid who would see a tree limb and try to climb up there, I'd see a ledge on a rock face and see if I could get up there. When it comes to games I feel cheated when I can only take one path, take one direction, only be the good guy or bad guy. There are so many greys, so many inbetweens left unexplored. Call me a rebel but RPG games like most of the japanese ones that coddle you and handhold you, limit you to only doing what they want you to do, really make me not want to play RPGs. It's the openness... the direcitonlessness of it that I love. I feel the game lets me do whatever I want to do, it does not preach to me to play it only one way like most games today do. Oblivion is a game I feel is purpose made for you to "get lost in". Simply exploring the countryside, picking things, seeing the deer jumping around, watching the trees sway... the simple exploration is great. Then finding a temple or a cave or something is all gravy. Putting the shackles of order and direction on it would make it like everything else out there.

I agree, there's very little actual role-playing in Japanese RPGs. But like I said, I think Morrowind was just a little too open-ended for me. At least I have a clearr-cut objective.

In my opinion, though, the game that struck the best balance between freedom and direction was Neverwinter Nights. The Hordes of the Underdark expansion was even cleverly written so that even an evil character would have motivation to take up the quest (drow stole my stuff).

I even have a "high tilt" system, too... or so I thought.

You'd be suprised what is and isn't "high tilt" anymore. I'm running the Windows Vista beta, and Vista will give your PC a rating (obstensibly, so that in the future a game might just say something like "needs a 5 or better to run). Now, I know I have a crappy video card (NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX 440, 64mb), but the rest of my system (2.6GHz Pentium 4 with Hyper Threading, 1.5GB RAM) should be pretty good, right? Apparently not... Vista gives my computer a 1 (out of 10). Well, I was planning on building a new one next year...

In the end I think the only massive standout difference between the XBox and PC version is the question "Are you more comfortable with a controller or a mouse/keyboard?"

Well, I don't think that's all of it. I think there's also, "Do you want to spend time installing it now and have it run fine later, or do you want to just pop it in whenever at the expense of some nasty load times later?" Or "do graphics look crisper on your monitor, or did you invest in a HDTV?"

Personally, especially since I'm dicking around with Windows Vista, I'm not inclined to do any hardcore gaming on my PC right now. I went for the 360 version, and I don't regret it.

[Kin]

I'm sure being free in the game is cool but if you try to find your direction... you'll have to take huge amount of time to find out... talking to people and searching some stuff.

Oh dear... I'm addicted at looking into chests, boxes, bags etc... I even brake in at night and steel stuff lol. I got so many stuff I just can't walk anymore. Lol I didn't choose "Thief" as profile.

Also funny to run over tables and kicking away bottles, cups etc..

Edited March 27, 2006 by Kin

[Zentrandude]

That is this game's (and Morrowind's) blessing and it's curse... it is so open that people like me who are constantly looking for ways out of the chains that common games put on you it's manna from heaven but the same openness causes a lot of people to quit playing feeling there is no "direction". I think that is why I loved Morrowind and I'm starting to love this game... the direction is up to you.

When I play games on the PC I'm always clawing at the walls of my cage like a rat... meaning I always try to do things in the game that I want to do, not neccessarily what the game wants me to do. Be it trying to shoot my teammates, trying to "get out of the maze and see what's behind it" to trying to open doors and go into places I can't go. When I was a kid I was that kid who would see a tree limb and try to climb up there, I'd see a ledge on a rock face and see if I could get up there. When it comes to games I feel cheated when I can only take one path, take one direction, only be the good guy or bad guy. There are so many greys, so many inbetweens left unexplored. Call me a rebel but RPG games like most of the japanese ones that coddle you and handhold you, limit you to only doing what they want you to do, really make me not want to play RPGs. It's the openness... the direcitonlessness of it that I love. I feel the game lets me do whatever I want to do, it does not preach to me to play it only one way like most games today do. Oblivion is a game I feel is purpose made for you to "get lost in". Simply exploring the countryside, picking things, seeing the deer jumping around, watching the trees sway... the simple exploration is great. Then finding a temple or a cave or something is all gravy. Putting the shackles of order and direction on it would make it like everything else out there.

I agree, there's very little actual role-playing in Japanese RPGs. But like I said, I think Morrowind was just a little too open-ended for me. At least I have a clearr-cut objective.

In my opinion, though, the game that struck the best balance between freedom and direction was Neverwinter Nights. The Hordes of the Underdark expansion was even cleverly written so that even an evil character would have motivation to take up the quest (drow stole my stuff).

I even have a "high tilt" system, too... or so I thought.

You'd be suprised what is and isn't "high tilt" anymore. I'm running the Windows Vista beta, and Vista will give your PC a rating (obstensibly, so that in the future a game might just say something like "needs a 5 or better to run). Now, I know I have a crappy video card (NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX 440, 64mb), but the rest of my system (2.6GHz Pentium 4 with Hyper Threading, 1.5GB RAM) should be pretty good, right? Apparently not... Vista gives my computer a 1 (out of 10). Well, I was planning on building a new one next year...

In the end I think the only massive standout difference between the XBox and PC version is the question "Are you more comfortable with a controller or a mouse/keyboard?"

Well, I don't think that's all of it. I think there's also, "Do you want to spend time installing it now and have it run fine later, or do you want to just pop it in whenever at the expense of some nasty load times later?" Or "do graphics look crisper on your monitor, or did you invest in a HDTV?"

Personally, especially since I'm dicking around with Windows Vista, I'm not inclined to do any hardcore gaming on my PC right now. I went for the 360 version, and I don't regret it.

384328[/snapback]

Don't forget the pc version has more mods you can install and usualy free when from talanted fanboys who knows how to do stuff like that.

The games been just out and there already is two mods you can use.

Those with the xbox360 one with problems with slow load times.

@http://elderscrolls.filefront.com/news/Xbox_360_Load_Times_QuickFix;25861

A few people have complained about the long load times on the xbox 360 version of Oblivion. The game uses the harddrive extensively to cache data. The slowdown is often caused by the cached data being overly fragmented. To solve this problem, reset your Xbox, and hold down the A button as the game is booting up, which will clear its hard drive cache, and create a new one. Once you see the Bethesda Softworks logo video, the game is already loaded, and the cache should have been cleared. This does not affect any save games.

[JsARCLIGHT]

Chalk up another "Holy freaking sh!t!" moment for me while playing today... well that and I just noticed I almost spent all weekend playing this game. My wife is sooooo pissed at me right now.

Anyway... has anyone else checked out that cave along the trail leading up to Cloud Top just outside of Chorrol? At the bottom of that cave are the gruesome twosome... two mother f'ing OGRES. I had my ass handed to me about two times before I finally developed the Monty Python "RUNAWAY!" fighting style.

Oh and in case people are wondering... running away and out of the cave means one thing: the heavy sh!t you where running from follows you out of the cave.

I finally killed the second ogre at Chorrol's front door, and only then with the help of Chorrol militia. One of them even got totally goosed by that last ogre.