I'm getting a bit bored of Oblivion

I'm really starting to lose a bit of interest in Oblivion. It was utter, utter, utter excitement at first. Now, the novelty is wearing off.

Anyone else not as over-eager to play it as when they first had it?

Is it me or do all the dungeons/crypts look the same? Granted they have different underground areas, but each one of each type looks like any other of the same type.

Are the menu items too big? For example, I have nearly ever spell in the game - scrolling through spells to find the one you want is a major pain - the font and the icons are too big - almost like they developed the menus for console users.

I haven't really noticed much of the much-touted Radiant AI - In fact, I don't see much difference between Oblivion and Morrowind.

The criminal system is still stupid - you can kill someone without anyone seeing you and the guards still arrest you on sight - um, how do they know you are the murderer?


I'm starting to wish that Oblivion was developed for the PC and then later down-graded to X-Box - not developed side by side. The more I play, the more I think this game has been restricted due to it being released side-by-side with an X-Box version.

Maybe the appeal would have lasted longer without God mode?
Anyway, I don't get it until Monday so I don't want to hear anything negative about it yet.

In fact, they claim the game world is much larger - I seems to me to be smaller. I also have a suspicion that Morrowind had more places (towns/dungeons, etc).

Maybe you'd have enjoyed it more if you'd played it as intended, instead of cheating as much as humanly possible? When you buy a book, do you read the last page first? :P

The heresy!!

I am enjoying it more now that I got rif of the vampire curse thing. Any game is boring in god/trainer mode. Too easy, not any real chalenges = bad gameplay.

I'd probably been bored within the first hour if I had godmode and could run around doing as I pleased without consequence.

Puki did you get out of the first room yet? lol (joke).

I would be very surprised if what your seeing is the entirety of such a hyped game. Are you sure you are not being a little too demanding on what might be the early stages of the game? This game is supposed to last months isnt it? - not minutes...

Keep us informed Puki please as I haven't bought into it yet - I'd like to know if it was just mere hype before I buy...

IPete2.

I'd never play a game in god mode unless just showing a few bits off to friends. In fact last game I played in god mode was probably doom.

I know where puki is coming from with the dungeons. Every one you go into has the same textures and areas. It's like they developed the dungeons using a generator with a limited set of room meshes or something.

I wandered into one and was like... I know I've seen this little stalagtite/stalagmite arrangement on a little raised platform thing before... Oh yeah. In the LAST three dungeons I was in.

that's poor, sorry but I expect more nowadays.

ive not even tried it yet:/ no demo, and no way of seeing if it would work half decently on here.

Certainly looks like the dungeons/caves/forts are made of 'rooms', they all look alike.

The game is huge, not that I can compare to morrowind I've never played it. Just walk off into the mountains and you will find forts/caves/shrines and the like dotted all over.

It still has the Wow! factor for me,take in the atmosphere the sights the sounds the music its a wonderful thing, makes you feel quite humble at times.

I found that following the main plot of the game got boring, so I created a new character and then wandered off going where I wanted just for the fun of exploration.

Maybe you got bored so easy because the game is crap?

The dungeons, as well as other type of buildings, tend to re-use components, and look a little bit the same. I myself find the dungeon parts a little boring.

What is impression is just the sheer amount of missions, sub-missions, etc... and all the hidden stuff. You can walk in any direction and find caves, mines, temples hidden away, or whatever.

Perhaps it is because I play the game in 1 hour gaming sessions, but I will be playing this game for another month without getting bored.

As for the vampire thing, I got bit by a vampire, and it said i contracted the disease, and then I used a Cure Disease potion one second afterward, and I don't appear to be a vampire. Does it take a while to take effect, or can you use the potion and because my character is Argonian, the lizard guys, who are partially immune to disease, so that helped me resist it?

i was gonna delve into this thing, but it sounds as if it would take up too much of my time... which i really don't have much of right now...

sounds like you guys are having a blast with it though... maybe at a later date...

--Mike

The Editor that Beth likes to make uses lots of premade brushes. Morrowind was even worse.

There are room parts, sections of hallway, and then sub parts like supports and chests and other things. There are 3 sets of pieces for dungeons. Cave, Aylied, and Fort. They can be intermixed and are a lot in the game.

There is a lot of repetition... I notice it the least in the Fort type, the most in the caves.

It comes down to believeability. The forts would be repeatative because they are designed with quickness of creation and with premade plans for rooms that the army gives out... it makes sense that they would share a lot of the same basic looks.

The Ayelid underground actually does a fantastic job... It is believeable that they would re-use a lot of the same plans to create major structure types. The undergrounds just lack that extra polish that would come from variances that the Old Elves would have installed since they weren't in a rush and they were built of 100s of years...

The caves are terrible... they are majorly broken into mine types and natural types but share the same main parts... and they just don't feel natural due to their prefabness... however.. Morrowind was much worse in all these respects.

It is a product of how they can make such huge levels... however, where in morrowid it reduced the number of loadings... I don't see that in Oblivion... some cave sections are really really small... however.. It might be to make them less confusing to go through.. which I have found a lot to be true.

Imagine how long it would have taken to had design everything in this game. 16 square miles of over world, at least 50 oblivion gates, 250 underworld maps, 16 towns (that I've found) and countless houses and areas.

It would have taken years to do.

Go get the editor and see how you use it to make things... I made a few things for morrowind, so I know what I am talking about when it comes to how they made the levels.


All in all it doesn't bug me... I find it is the arangement of the parts that makes for interesting layouts and some of these dungeons are simply stunning in the play-through..

and Puki is only bored now that he has raped the game in god mode.

yeah, there is a lot of repetition in the general wilderness dungeons. But its not as bad as morrowing by a long shot. Yuu get fairly large dungeons instead of 4 or 5 rooms. And there's always stuff to do .

I think they just used 3D tiles and threw a bunch of things together, and it probably is the weakest part of the game. Unfortunately you kind of expect it really, when the game is so vast. Anything built of prefabs is going to look samey, which is why I typicaly don't like games that use editors this way.

I'm still enjoying the game immensely though, and last time I looked I had already passed 40 hours.

I've gotta stop listening to game recommendations from this forum. Another game that is just gathering dust on my shelf...

Looks like

 game coders <> good game reviewers. 

This game is very generic and feels like it was put together with a very advanced version of FPS creator...

:|

Darkheart

yeah, but the game isn't really about graphics, and there is a lot to like in the gameplay. If you put it down to graphics, morrowind was the most generic game I have ever played :P

the GTA series is very generic and only about 5% as open ended.

No wonder......

I mean here you have an AAA game, widly hyped, very anticipated, and you're already saying "very dissapointing" just because some things are repeatitive......

This is why the industry will fail. This is why the indie market will fail. This is a beautiful game, it's designed to say "if your bored, make up a new way to play, its not hard". How many games have you seen like this? How many have you created like this?

It took them a couple of years to do this and in 3 days you are tired of the game?

As Evak said, and as many of you boast, its not about gfx, its about game play. The story is extremely robust and continues to entertain.

Its hard enough for the industry to do something 'original' and get funding for it. Original is risky, and no one wants to invest in risky, they want sure-fire, money making, done before crap.

I guess games will not win.

I think I might buy myself a hamster. Never had one before - always wanted one.

Me too, and I haven't even played it. Know what I mean?

DH... only Puki is saying that. and Darkheart... who obviously doesn't like this sort of game or something...

I've clocked in 66 hours thus far... and I will continue to play it.... besides... it isn't how much a game is played... its how much it sold in the first place... Oblivion sold a bunch already.. and will continue as people gush over it... I mean... Was it worth the 60$? for me... hell yes.

I still haven't bought it because I already suffered a pretty nasty fate at the hands of Morrowind.

Game's great - most people suck at it. They don't know how to kill and be quiet, or how to steal, or how to not take the game seriously and instead just have some fun.

I do :) It's great fun... Made a custom class though - anyone wanting to be a mage first off is gonna have a boring time.

You know, I agree with the FPS creator bit-

Little thigns like walking off something and the player continuing to walk on air until he hits something
It's kind of like they added the cool ragdoll stuff but forgot to finish the animation code?

Anyway, i do NOT agree with the generic stuff. It's a great game. I do believe the grass/hills should have been done a bit better, I've never seen so many cliffs!

Oh and my horse can ride up walls ;)

the last time I played a game for over 40 hours was KOTOR a couple of years ago. Considering most games cost $50 and rarely last more than 10 hours, and once finished I never play them again. This one is great value :)

I agree that the dungeons and especially the Oblivion gates are boring. (I did 3 Oblivion gates, and then decided to just not bother with the silly things unless it is entirely necessary or I have forgotten about the last one so it feels somewhat different again)

I just ignore them and do the quests, which are far more interesting than repetetive dungeons full of boring monsters.

In my opinion, the ultimate RPG has very few dungeons and instead just loads of interlocked, overlapping, well-written quests.

Oblivion could easily have achieved this if they had mostly ignored the dungeons and spent a bit more time with the quests. (Time to add details to them such as story carrying on from one to the other to the extent that one quest could go completely against another).
Since the dungeons are quite repetive, I can assume that they sort of did this, but they clearly didn't ignore them enough because it is still entirely up to the player to not pay attention to them for the game to continue to have its effect of incredible variety.



So far, I have found it to be of great value!
A welcome change from most games these days.
This is one of the few games that gives me the feeling that, if it ever starts to slow down, I can just start again and things will be completely different.

The game does feel a bit incomplete here, odd crashes, some bugs, very low gravity, etc. A lot of little things really, but add them up and its a big thing!

Yeah I'd like to see anything comparable out there right now....? no? well then.

I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But the next time I hear certain individuals talk about how gameplay makes the game and not how good the gfx are, I will be sure to say a very loud 'AHEM' to them ;-)

Hell, I am sure alot of the dungeons in MUDs were somewhat the same. And I am sure alot of the houses and buildings in the old Text-based RPGs were built out of primatives ?

:-P



I agree with the crashes. When I was riding horse back to the mountains with the priest and the heir, it crased on me 8 times. I was getting so frustrated, cause its such a long journey and I really wanted to see the landscape on the way... Saving every few min gets tedious.

It hasn't crashed much other than that, but it sucks when it does, cause you have to revert to a save point. Thats of course after rebooting the pc from the lockup.

Also, everytime I get a MSN message, the game comes out of full screen.. Not unusual, however when I go back in to it, I have no mouse control, thus have to force kill the process and restart the game :-(

Tonight is my last night of work for the week, and I am looking forward to getting home and playing it some more. Aside from social plans Friday night, moving a friend Sat, and spending time with the wife and kids on sunday, I hope to get some good oblivian time in.

I agree, I crash every time I try to quit the game... which isn't all that often... in fact.. I am much more likely to just stop playing after 4 hours when the game dies all on it's own...

I reboot every 4-6 hours when the game dies... just the same.. 4-6 hours of continuous play isn't that bad... and without the breaks... I might not stop playing at all...

gravity is a bit low.. everything is floaty.. and I hear you about the rag doll and animation...

however... It still blows everything out of the water.. and now that I've completed the theives guild and dark brother hood and arena quests.. I am very happy with the quests... they are much more varied than morrowind which gave you the fetch quest, the kill quest, and the *gulp* escort mission.

Those are all here, but there are other things... Like following people, and search quests, and still others. Enough to bring some variety.. and they are all fun..

You also have the ability to generate a posse... I have a kid from the arena who worships the ground I walk on, and a Murderer from the Dark Brother hood always following me... They go everywhere with me, and if I fast travel, they join me, even if I had lost them.... oh... and if they die, they come back... odd, but true.

this brings in a sort of party system... which is nice, and kinda works, and I don't have to bother with them... they can't get hopelessly lost or stuck.. I just can lose them in a dungeon for the rest of that dungeon... not forever.. so I don't need to worry.

It just keeps getting better.. I own a house and can decorate it with all kinda of cool crap I get along the way... I can send people out to assassinate people, kill monsters in the arena now and other perks.. I'm considering going back to doing the main quest... maybe beat the game and then hit up the fighters guild and mages guild, and whatever else I can find to join, and destroy...

I cant decorate houses at all, its too difficult to position things. I wish there was an upright button or something to ease my pain.

It takes some getting used too... the houses you buy and upgrade are designed to let you do things... sure, a table is hard to arange on.. but a book shelf is easy...

I'm playing it for a few hours a day - usually when I get home from work and it's grand entertainment. In a lesser way, it really is like having a fantasy life. Ahem.

As for Puki. Jeez. He loudly proclaims that he's playing the game in god mode - meaning no risks for rewards, and then inexplicably a short time later, posts that he's starting to get bored with the game?

No sh*t sherlock?

Come on guys, cut some slack!
It's Puki; the one who sees giraffes out of frosty glass bottles and chases woodland animals to play with them :P

Sounds like a nice game - haven't bought it, don't plan to. A game is only fun when it takes you a while to finish a challenge, and a game continues to be fun when there is no way to fully win. That's why I think "life simulators" are the next future game. You live in a perfect fantasy, where everything is as perfect as you want it to be, and you can do pretty much anything. It would be like a second life, which would suck you in for eternity. Life only ends when you die, and after that, if your religion allows it, you continue into the afterlife, or heaven, or whatever.

That would be one crazy game...of course, it would be so awesome, so perfect, that no one would go to work or school, and the entire world would stop (I ripped the idea off of the Pendragon series of books...Lifelight sounds awesome).

But that's just dreaming, and probably won't happen for another hundred years.

No. That's when it starts getting pointless.

Play it a while. I'll bet you'll get bored of it pretty soon.

Really? What would be the point in play a game that is in effect unbeatable, and offers no new experiences? Wouldn't it be just like IRC, but in 3D? Wouldn't it then be better to meet people in real life? Maybe play a round or two of Super Smash Brothers Melee or something?

Oh geez, when will this end? It happens with every release
of a super-hyped game. Half-Life 2 was the last example I
can think of.

The hype is still affecting your mind. Back away for a while
and let yourself make your own judgements.

Saying this game "sucks" is the silliest thing I've ever heard.
And that's because you are obviously expecting this game to
meet your super-unrealistically-hyped expectations. We all
know that NO game has ever been able to do that.

Back away from the game, get some logic back in your
heads, and play it again later. Then you'll have fun.

I just can't believe you went straight to God Mode.

What a terrible, terrible waste of a perfectly good game.

Get KOTOR from ebay instead, it's really good.

are you playing the game drew? Cause it has met all my super hyped expectations...

Still playing Oblivion with no sign of getting bored yet, having too much fun looting random people's houses after having joined the Thief guild...

One of the key points for me is that the quests are actually nice & diverse, only came across one fetch-quest so far and that's it, the rest actually have interesting things going on.
(like having to get myself arrested to speak to this wrongfully accused treasure-hunter, or helping this paranoid eccentric high-elf watch key NPCs to see if they're "watching" him...)

Watched the video on gamespot. looks cool. They gave it 9.3. Were they paid or is it true?

I really enjoy the fact that I didn't buy it and that I'm getting on with coding. And all this kinda fun for free.

Whilst still clicking on threads about Oblivion... hmm

Apparently a @#!*load of other reviewers gave it high-regards, and it wouldn't be GameSpot to take bribes...

Anyone any good at speechcraft? :-)

Somewhat, I find it too easy to do the minigames such as picklocking or pursuading people to like me to get info out of them, or to barter better prices.

I cant pick locks at all :)

best comment i can get is:

"Not now, not later, not ever."

Still, I just bought Republic the Revolution today for 1.99 - full version with manual. Looks pretty complex to play - but lots of stats and stuff for me to tinker with. So, I'll lesson that the "puki" way too.

gamespot is good since they have registered reader reviews to help you guage a game. Sometimes they get it totaly wrong but when they do you can tell, thanks to the readers review scores

That has got to be the bentest thing I have ever seen - I was awesome at speechcraft in Morrowind - I don't even comprehend the logic of Oblivion's speechcraft - I restarted my very first game as soon as I came across that pile of bentness.

Oblivion speechcraft = as bent as a tent being blown to buckling by a gale of "ENAY" sneezes.

the oblivion gates are same ol same ol..lol

But theres alot of stuff to do, I just spent to much time on the main quest.
Course I dont play as much as Puki , Ive got about 14 hours in ..and Ive had it since realese.

I havent had any crashes since the reboots (took the geforce out and cleaned it) now its running much cooler..lol

Sam

Aye, I mean hands up who saw this coming as soon as he started using God Mode? Everyone? Thought so. Hands up everyone who saw this coming even before it came out? Most people? Thought so.

It reaffirms my belief that enjoyment is directly proportional to how much you pay for and how much you're expecting from a game. Some of the best games I've played have been the ones I bought for next to nothing and expected very little from.

Oblivion doesn't really fit the bill as it was £25 and I was *kinda* looking forward to it, but I was very dubious about the Radiant AI. Thankfully Radiant AI turned out to be all hype and the NPC's aren't vastly different from before. They just chat among themselves a bit.

I don't see what's not to love. Apart from the Oblivion Gates which I agree are tedious. But if a game had no flaws at all, they'd never need to write a sequel. When is Elder Scrolls Volume V out again? :P

In fact, I haven't played Oblivion at all today. I may restart the game and not cheat.

I even got bored of my horse "Sausage" - not used him for 2 days before today - it was fun at first, then I decided I enjoyed running everywhere with my infinite fatigue and boosted speed stats.

Gabriel, speaking of Bang-for-the-buck, I picked up
SODA off road racing and Nascar Racing 2 for $10, 6
years ago.

I spent years afterwards modding Nascar and building
tracks for SODA. It was some of the most fun I've had
in front of a computer screen.

(SODA has some amazingly fun physics, making level design a real treat)

(no spoilers)
I finished the main quest, 17 hours and 43 min
Dagon is supposedly basnished forever.

That last part was pretty hetic...I got to level 6 but never got to rest anywhere to level up.

Still alot of world left to explore..Im still enjoying it.

Sam

Levelling is irrelevent in Oblivion - the game is scaled to the player. Apparantly, you can finish the game at at a lower level and some people are not even sleeping to level up.

All that happens is when you level up, the game scales the enemies to your new level - so, you can start a quest to see what enemies you face - then, quit the quest and reload then go back to the quest several levels later and you will find harder enemies.

So, you can only find certain types of armour and weapons after playing at higher levels.


I don't like this 'scaling' route - I'd rather have certain things that you need to level up to meet the challenge of, like in most RPGs.

you defeated your own arguement.

Leveling is not pointless, because things evolve.

You get to fight bigger and badder things.. and guess what... leveling actually has a reversed effect. Things get harder as you level, and it becomes MORE of a challenge to fight things until level 100 where things are a real challenge to fight... whereas, in Morrowind, after level 30 everything is a joke... sept for about 5 npcs... and after level 50 EVERYTHING is a joke.

Ah, but some things shouldn't scale.
For example, the scamps shouldn't because I hate them, they're small, and they would be fun to destroy in an instant.

I think this happens with things like rats, though...

I just find it odd that you can attempt any quest at any time - I'd like some quests that you know you need to go away and gain some experience first - this counters the 'Scaling' system.

There are a few quests that you need to be higher level for... you bump into them usually when exploring the wilderness.

the scale doesn't stop.. it just is unbalanced so a rat will get progressively weaker... they die from 1 hit... well.. a lot of things I fight die with 1 arrow while I'm sneaking... 3X dmg