TES 4 Oblivion Remastered; STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM!!!!

[The Rogue Wolf]

Did they fix the broken leveling system? I remember playing this thing back in like 2007, and past a certain level cougars became like T-1000's.

I've heard that the leveling system has been shifted to be something of a hybrid between Oblivion and Skyrim. I don't know the details but a number of people I know have said that it's much better now.

I'm just wondering if bears will still be the world-ending force they once were. On at least one occasion I willingly ran into an Oblivion gate to escape a single bear.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I've heard that the leveling system has been shifted to be something of a hybrid between Oblivion and Skyrim. I don't know the details but a number of people I know have said that it's much better now.

I'm just wondering if bears will still be the world-ending force they once were. On at least one occasion I willingly ran into an Oblivion gate to escape a single bear.

I used to simply not let my character go to sleep once I hit a certain level.

Don't know if sleep is stil required to level up, by the way.

 

[FakeSympathy]

I've heard that the leveling system has been shifted to be something of a hybrid between Oblivion and Skyrim. I don't know the details but a number of people I know have said that it's much better now.

I'm just wondering if bears will still be the world-ending force they once were. On at least one occasion I willingly ran into an Oblivion gate to escape a single bear.

I used to simply not let my character go to sleep once I hit a certain level.

Don't know if sleep is stil required to level up, by the way.

Yes, you still need to go to sleep to level up. And if you forget about going to sleep, and keep leveling up the skills and gaining xp, they stack and you need to sleep multiple times to level up multiple times.

As for the leveling, it’s definitely a hybrid between oblivion and Skyrim; you no longer become weaker by leveling up the wrong way. The only way to go is up, so to speak.

Honestly, minus the need to sleep, I like this system. Because it’s not a complete streamlined leveling like Skyrim.

The damage scaling is still a bit weird, as it’s the combination of attributes, heavy/light armor skills, buff/debuff, and quality of the gears. I also experienced getting murdered by goblins. This this made worse when you take difficulty slider into equation, as on the hardest difficulty, the enemy damage multiplier goes up by x6 (at least I think so?)

I think there is one aspect that Skyrim did better, because due to the stream line system, damage scaling was way easier to understand.

This is one of many reasons on why I’m so curious on how Skyblivion will turn out because it’s Skyrim leveling system (I’m sure if it’s gonna support leveling mods). So the players can decide which system they prefer.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

having no sense of humour, got no choice but to supplant with someone who has

 

[Drathnoxis]

having no sense of humour, got no choice but to supplant with someone who has

Hearing the old voice lines come from new realistic faces just feels wrong.

 

[meiam]

Hearing the old voice lines come from new realistic faces just feels wrong.

There's a questline about shrine in the game, where the shrine is dedicated to a deity worshiped by ugly people, and everyone there is supposedly hideously ugly. Problem is, everyone in oblivion looks like a shovel hit to their face would improve things. So I wonder if they corrected their face and made them significantly uglier than everyone else.

 

[Agema]

Did they fix the broken leveling system? I remember playing this thing back in like 2007, and past a certain level cougars became like T-1000's.

I think that's a warm and comforting feature of many RPGs with scaling - you wander around a region thinking you're safe, and then realise you've triggered an upgrade in the level of random encounters and need to spend the next five levels desperately running away from the wildlife.

 

[meiam]

I think that's a warm and comforting feature of many RPGs with scaling - you wander around a region thinking you're safe, and then realise you've triggered an upgrade in the level of random encounters and need to spend the next five levels desperately running away from the wildlife.

The problem with oblivion old scaling is that if you level up "wrong" you wouldn't become much stronger while the wild life would, so you could end up with a very weak character compare to everything else.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

The problem with oblivion old scaling is that if you level up "wrong" you wouldn't become much stronger while the wild life would, so you could end up with a very weak character compare to everything else.

This is Skyrim, but it's basically the same deal:

 

[Agema]

The problem with oblivion old scaling is that if you level up "wrong" you wouldn't become much stronger while the wild life would, so you could end up with a very weak character compare to everything else.

I don't entirely know that it's the responsibility of a game to protect you from your own bad choices. If you're playing a game obviously full of dangerous beasties and have got to level 15 with nothing but lockpicking and athletics, you're kind of asking for it.

I appreciate that you can accidentally level up badly by not knowing the system, but leaning how the system works - often by trial and error - is a standard feature of computer games.

* * *

I actually loved the Morrowind / Oblivion levelling system. Yes, you can totally break and exploit it in hilarious ways... who hasn't run through Morrowind jumping all the time, especially down ramps to get that extra fall bonus. And yet I'm not sure why it was important to stop players doing that.

I like the old system where you rolled character stats, so you could sit there for hours pressing the re-roll buttons in the hope you lucked out and got something amazing. It's stupid, but also strangely satisfying. There's something weirdly stale about points allocations, because it tends to drive everything towards the exact same stats: a barbarian works best with these points allocations therefore 90% of barbarians all players make probably have the same attribute points, or maybe with only the smallest variations.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I don't entirely know that it's the responsibility of a game to protect you from your own bad choices. If you're playing a game obviously full of dangerous beasties and have got to level 15 with nothing but lockpicking and athletics, you're kind of asking for it.

I appreciate that you can accidentally level up badly by not knowing the system, but leaning how the system works - often by trial and error - is a standard feature of computer games.

In Oblivion though bears and cougars could go from regular threats to insta-killers from one level to the next. This had little to do with bad choices on the players part, and everything with the game suddenly beefing them up to a ridiculous degree because you past a certain level.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

This is Skyrim, but it's basically the same deal:

Stealth archer: "Aw, that's cute." (bow twang)

 

[meiam]

I don't entirely know that it's the responsibility of a game to protect you from your own bad choices. If you're playing a game obviously full of dangerous beasties and have got to level 15 with nothing but lockpicking and athletics, you're kind of asking for it.

I appreciate that you can accidentally level up badly by not knowing the system, but leaning how the system works - often by trial and error - is a standard feature of computer games.

The problem is leveling wrong here could involve things like "walking too much", "brought too much" or "used your main weapon too much", you also have the problem that you needed o pick your core skill before the game told you what that meant and you were stuck with your choice then.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I have just learned that I need to level up by sleeping. I haven't slept since i started and I'm like 40% through the main story.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Yeah, Oblivion's leveling system is pretty broken. The optimal strategy is to set your core skills to ones you don't intend to use often so that you retain control of when you level up, and can get the most out of stat bonuses and control enemy difficulty. It's just pure bad design.

 

[I can't enter my old name]

I don't entirely know that it's the responsibility of a game to protect you from your own bad choices. If you're playing a game obviously full of dangerous beasties and have got to level 15 with nothing but lockpicking and athletics, you're kind of asking for it.

Over the years I've read that people played the game normally and had no problems, like even kids beat the game. It makes me wonder if I've been fooled the entire time, and all the unfun I had grinding for +5, afraid my character was going to become useless was because a couple of dudes did nothing but level alchemy and sneak.

 

[Agema]

In Oblivion though bears and cougars could go from regular threats to insta-killers from one level to the next. This had little to do with bad choices on the players part, and everything with the game suddenly beefing them up to a ridiculous degree because you past a certain level.

Oh don't get me wrong, that is a thing and I remember it catching me out too. However, as said, nor was it uncommon for RPGs of the era - reload, move on. Obviously, many games are better designed these days.

But mostly the issue I was replying to was if your build or level up was flawed - and that's not necessarily a game design fault.

The problem is leveling wrong here could involve things like "walking too much", "brought too much" or "used your main weapon too much", you also have the problem that you needed o pick your core skill before the game told you what that meant and you were stuck with your choice then.

Sure. And I can absolutely appreciate how the old ES levelling system was not very intuitive to newbies (I'd gone through that on Morrowind).

But... loads of RPGs once you're part way through you realise you should have got that skill, or that spell, or even just picked a different class period. And it's not that different from losing strategy games because you didn't quite work out how certain units or abilities worked. Or having to reload in action games because you didn't realise that enemy had that ability or where the weak point was on the boss fight or that that door was about to open behind you and half a dozen grunts come out.

I accept that this is often a particular problem in RPGs compared to others, because it is awful to realise you've made a critical error at the start after you've sunk a lot of time and effort into a game, as the prospect of restarting and going through it all again is unappealing. However, if we see how RPGs have dealt with this challenge over the years, it's not so much that they have taken away the problem of character development for the inexperienced, but more that they have added very generous systems to respec your character mid-game.

Finally, please remember I'm mostly trying to say that Oblivion was a product of its era, and many of its flaws are typical for that era.

 

[Hades]

I may not be the greatest person to judge since I'm a very casual Elder Scrolls follower but Oblivion never sat well with me. Compared to everything else the game just feels so bland, but with everything we know of Cyrodil it really shouldn't be bland at all. Its supposed to be the heart of the continent, its empire's seat of power and a place where all cultures meet.

The main problem is that Cyrodil is just standard medieval Europe. With its Italian names, Roman inspired soldiers and status as a world spanning empire it should be Roman or at least Byzantine themed, but instead its just medieval Europe/Britain. The story seems equally dull with it just being about a generic ''demon lord'' trying to conquer the world.

This makes Oblivion the odd duck in the franchise when you consider that neither Skyrim nor Morrowind were that fanatically tame. Morrowind was all about traveling a completely alien world. Skyrim's Nordic aesthetic might not be very original but its at least a concrete theme to work with rather than a generic fantasy setting, and its premise of a civil war is far more interesting then just some demon invasion.

All in all a game set in the heart of the Empire deserved to be more interesting, and I think the worldbuilding suffers a small amount of damage by Oblivion insisting it actually is just really boring.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

All in all a game set in the heart of the Empire deserved to be more interesting, and I think the worldbuilding suffers a small amount of damage by Oblivion insisting it actually is just really boring.

Especially after how Morrowind was so weird and alien. As Yahtzee said: "It's like they took two hundred square yards of medieval English countryside, added a few wolves, then copy-pasted it until it was roughly the size of Yorkshire."

 

[Agema]

Especially after how Morrowind was so weird and alien. As Yahtzee said: "It's like they took two hundred square yards of medieval English countryside, added a few wolves, then copy-pasted it until it was roughly the size of Yorkshire."

I sort of agree, but... I also wonder whether that's what the players in total think. It's not necessarily easy to compare due to the time gap and differing gaming habits, but Oblivion sold much, much better than Morrowind.

Whilst there are a lot of players who want novelty, invention, weirdness, and are a little bored and underwhelmed by vanilla, the flipside is a load of people who find familiarity makes things much more accessible and enjoyable. For instance, there was a reason that for 30 years after the 60s every major epic fantasy author wrote a cod-European set trilogy with a quest and a dark lord and was hailed as "the new Tolkein": it's that a lot of people like the same, ordinary, relatively safe stuff again and again.

Consider gamers who think having to play a woman breaks immersion beyond their ability to play. There are people who would look at a game in some areas of Tamriel and think "Why is this place full of cat-people / lizard-people this is weird I'm out". They might even feel elves too much of a remove. Thus Oblivion was sort of boring, but that might have really, really worked for more players than it underwhelmed. Skyrim was also easy to buy into, because fantasy norsemen are another super-easy trope.

I would suggest that's might be why ES:6 is reputedly somewhere safely human-dominated and not weird (High Rock / Hammerfell), even though it's revisiting an area they've already done.