Poll: Oblivion Was Better

[SajuukKhar]

I must have been thinking that fact that Skyrim doesn't make the races speed dependent on height.

You would be wrong on that also.

http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Races
"The movement speed of each race is dependent on its height. High Elves have the largest speed multiplier due to being the tallest race, with Orcs being second tallest."

 

[The_Lost_King]

I must have been thinking that fact that Skyrim doesn't make the races speed dependent on height.

You would be wrong on that also.

http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Races
"The movement speed of each race is dependent on its height. High Elves have the largest speed multiplier due to being the tallest race, with Orcs being second tallest."

I could have sworn there were no multipliers. Whatever, info can change as we learn more about the game or I could just remember wrong.

 

[Warsmith17]

The level scaling ruined Oblivion for me, the lack of progression just made me question why I was putting all the work into my character. On reflection the side quests may have been better.

One minor thing I thought was way better in Oblivion were the towns, I liked the individual architectural styles, and the grandness that was the Imperial City.

Isn't there a mod team working on Oblivion's setting/quests in Skyrim (ie Skyrim's mechanics, engine etc) That could be well worth playing, if it ever becomes a reality.

Edit: On reflection, the op was right, their were way more cool side quests in Oblivion, but due to the level scaling I have no desire to go back.

 

[Requia]

Whatever you think was great about oblivion, it doesn't excuse that the game was barely playable because the leveling mechanics+ the level scaling mechanics were so atrocious.

Oh come on, "barely playable" is a gross over-exaggeration. It had weird quirks, but it still functioned adequately for anyone who doesn't get too anal about min/maxing their characters. If you just played the game as you wanted too it would never get in the way, just sit the background little sense.

The level scaling was bad, but that just meant there was never really any sense of progression, because by the time you had top tier Daedric gear - so did everyone else and their mothers. Obviously that's a bit of a downer, but i don't think a vague sense of a lack of progression makes a game barely playable.

Personally i preferred Oblivion, but i suspect that's just because by the time Skyrim rolled around the initial appeal of the more recent Bethesda "a mile wide, an inch deep" approach had worn thin on me. Morrowind was the best in it's time, that was as deep as it was wide. But to me, nowadays, Morrowind is far closer to "barely playable" than Oblivion ever will be, it just doesn't hold to my more modern standards anymore. Which is a shame, but it'll always hold a place in my memories.

The problem isn't the piss poor ability to min max, its the piss poor ability to minmax while the level scaling happens. This means its actually fairly easy to end up in a situation where the game is unwinnable because random mooks are stronger than you.

 

[loc978]

I really don't see the depth people are talking about in Oblivion... the only redeeming quality I ever found when playing it was the fact that NPCs had daily/weekly schedules (very pioneering thing to implement, at the time). Everything else in the game from world design to combat mechanics to, yes, characterization and storytelling were horrendous. I'm firmly in the "it was barely playable" camp.

Didn't like Morrowind either, but I found it to be... marginally playable. Rather like Oblivion, but not even attempting to hide the shoddy combat mechanics behind any action, and the progression system made a tiny bit more sense. I have no idea how they actually managed to make that worse with the newer game.

...Skyrim is just a hack'n'slash action game with limited RPG mechanics and a huge open world... and it's better for that. It's like they finally realized what the system they designed was capable of (much, much less than they initially thought).

 

[Spectrum_Prez]

My personal rating of Bethesda games:

1.) Morrowind
2.) FO3
3.) Skyrim
4.) Oblivion

Vanilla Oblivion was simply not very fun. The narrative and setting were drab compared to Morrowind, and the gameplay was broken by the leveling system and the unwieldy combat. Delving into the Oblivion gates got boring really fast.

Skyrim at least had an engaging setting that was not terribly generic like Oblivion's was. Yes, some things were a step back, but frankly I prefer the leveling/skill system in Skyrim more than in Oblivion.

Perfect game would be Sky-wind (Morrowind on Skyrim engine) with old spells and travel system back in.

My ratings might be colored by the fact that Oblivion was below expectations while Skyrim was above expectations.

EDIT: Also, despite the technical beauty of Oblivion, all the character models were hideous.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I'd have to say Oblivion. Skyrim just bored me far too quickly.

In Oblivion, I found the world be constantly lush and beautiful, and even when I went up north it still held some appeal as a beautiful looking land. Skyrim, while it had its moments, really was just unpleasing aesthetically speaking. Too much of it looked washed out and depressing. I often found myself appreciating Oblivion's lush beauty, but I never had that same feeling in Skyrim.

Oblivion also had more appealing quests. Sure, Skyrim had more, but most of them just felt like a boring, ho-hum trek through the boring world. While Oblivion certainly had its fair share of those, there were plenty of quests around that kept me interested, be it guilds, NPCs in cities, or even random things I found around the world. I actually enjoyed working my way through the guilds in Oblivion, but in Skyrim, I don't think I ever finished a single guild because they just got tiring and I never made a connection to any of them. When I entered a city, I looked forward to the different quests I got. But in Skyrim, they just felt like another one to put on the list. If a random person ran up to me in Oblivion, I wanted to hear what they said and go through with the quest. In Skyrim, I just said, "Well, I'm sure I'll get around to it eventually."

There were other things, but those are the two major ones (and I'm too tired to go through every single one of them). I do prefer the combat of Skyrim, but the combat has never been good enough in The Elder Scrolls games to make one better than the other, unless I find one of them so broken it ruined the whole experience.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Love them both. Honestly I'm not sure I can decide. Oblivion was my first ES game so it will always have the super awesome nostalgia factor (and it's still an awesome game) but Skyrim is definitely better.

IMO things that make Skyrim better are:
Main quest
Graphics (duh)
Gameplay
World (by a rather large margin)
Enemies
Mage's Guild/College of Winterhold questline
Fighter's Guild/Companions questline
Custom weapons (Oblivion only had enchanting -custom weapons are super overpowered in both games so they don't mean that much to me)
Sidequests/Random events
Other questline (I liked the civil war questline a little bit more than the arena one)

IMO things that make Oblivion better are:
Daedric Princes quests (pretty close on this though. Oblivion has more that are truly outstanding so it gets the nod)
Dark Brotherhood questline (because -among other reasons- Who Dunnit is one of the greatest quests ever)
Characters (mostly because of Baurus and Martin. Paarthunax was cool and all but keeping Baurus alive through the whole game actually meant something to me)
Spell Making!
DLC (Shivering Isles trumps all)
Acrobatics Skill! (I miss jumping on top of buildings)

IMO What they are equal in:
Thives Guild questline (both had excellent stories and both had awesome rewards)
Unique weapons and armor (Goldbrand and Chillrend were my two favourite weapons for Oblivion. If neither of them had made an appearance in Skyrim, Oblvion would have gotten the nod. However, Chillrend is back and more awesome than ever in Skyrim)
Music

I voted for Skyrim because it's the better game, but I like both of them equally.

 

[electric_warrior]

Skyrim's gameplay (combat and so forth) and graphics are better, but Oblivion's missions and questlines were better.

 

[Evonisia]

I prefer Oblivion over Skyrim, and my opinion could be summarised by pretty much most of the posts about pro-Oblivion (World, Quests, Thieves/Mages Guild, spell system, variety of quests and so on and so forth).

However I don't see what was so bad about the levelling system, the only thing I didn't like about it was that on specific levels the difficulty curve goes up 50 miles so it's like running into a wall.

Skyrim has it's own good moments, but I stopped playing after I completed it... too boring, I'm not sure why either.

Edit: I think you'll find that Oblivion is like Fallout 3 because beyond a few gameplay alterations (level changes, guns/VATs etc.), Fallout 3 is practically a copy-paste of Oblivion.

 

[Lady Lucky]

Each was better and worse for different reasons. I couldn't say I liked one more than the other, because I played both of them a lot.

Same here, They both had their ups and downs. If it makes you feel better I haven't finsished Skyrim either. Morrowind was awesome though... I'm going to date myself here but I was about 15 when it came out...

 

[The_Lost_King]

The level scaling ruined Oblivion for me, the lack of progression just made me question why I was putting all the work into my character. On reflection the side quests may have been better.

One minor thing I thought was way better in Oblivion were the towns, I liked the individual architectural styles, and the grandness that was the Imperial City.

Isn't there a mod team working on Oblivion's setting/quests in Skyrim (ie Skyrim's mechanics, engine etc) That could be well worth playing, if it ever becomes a reality.

Edit: On reflection, the op was right, their were way more cool side quests in Oblivion, but due to the level scaling I have no desire to go back.

You can always get a mod. Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul and Francisco's whatever-he-calls-it both get rid of level scaling and make some areas tougher than others. There are also mods out there that change the leveling system. That is one of the best parts of the Elder Scrolls, don't like something? there's a mod for that.

 

[leviathanmisha]

I mean, let's be honest; Morrowind was the best one.

I loved Morrowind despite really only running around, killing guards, drinking all the skooma, and eating all the moon sugar. Fun fact, I once ran through a mountain so fast while high on skooma and moon sugar, I crashed the game and the file corrupted itself. So I went to my back up, opened that up, made a back up of that, and tried to recreate what I had just done. I never managed to, but we kept the corrupted file as a memory and a point of laughter.

OT: I also prefer Oblivion over Skyrim. I'm not sure why and that occasionally bugs me, because I'm the kind of person that has to be sure of everything. There's just something about the super polished attitude of Skyrim that bugs me and often sends me running back to Oblivion, even though I already have TWO 100% files and am currently working on another one when I'm not power leveling my blood elf hunter on WoW.

 

[lacktheknack]

Mmm.. mm. Mm-mmm.

Nope.

Skyrim is better in every way.

Well, that's not fair. At least Oblivion had a spellmaker, but the quests didn't really appeal to me in either game, and Skyrim just does absolutely everything else significantly better.

Also, neither game felt really empty to me... presumably, that's because I've played Daggerfall, which is emptier than an empty box.

 

[Gatx]

I like Oblivion a lot as well, partly for the setting and story, and partly because your pants weren't attached to your shirt, but there's so many things about Skyrim gameplay-wise that I don't think I can do without anymore, like the leveling, the spell casting (even though it comes at the cost of spell creation), and combat (it's not great but definitely improved over Oblivion's IMO).

 

[00slash00]

I mean, let's be honest, Morrowind was the best one.

Sorry! I'd mention Morrowind if I'd have played it, but I'm planning on picking it up during the Steam Summer Sale if that helps.

Fair warning, Morrowind has not aged very well (both in terms of visuals and actual gameplay). I owned Morrowind when it came out but my PC was too shitty to run it well. I bought it again during a steam sale last year and have played maybe 10 minutes of it since then. I'm still waiting for the Morrowind Skyrim mod (which would be the only reason I would load Skyrim up again)

 

[Cazza]

I could not get into Oblivion. After I was told to give up the necklace and find Martin. I swore out loud that he would lose it. It would have been safer with me who made to march into hell. As the player I was forced to hand it over because I wasn't ready for side quests. Come back he lost it. I go play some side quests and become under level in 5-10 levels. I've never played it again.

When I read that Skyrim had fixed the leveling system I thought okay I'll give it a try. I finished the main storyline, Companions storyline, College of Winterhold storyline and the Dawnguard storyline from both sides. With a fair bit of side quests before I got bored of the game. I liked Skyrim.