Oblivion:Gripes/Miscellaneous

The UESPWiki – Your source for The Elder Scrolls since 1995

This article provides Miscellaneous gripes, as part of the Game Content section of the Gripes article.

Spells lack any variety, visually speaking. The 6pt-damage Flare spell makes the exact same animation as the 110pt-damage Immolating Blast spell. It's nice being strong and all but if you're burning the enemy to a crisp, shouldn't it look like it? I want my head to turn into a dragon's head when I cast my 50 damage over 3 seconds in 20ft radius 'Nuclear Holocaust' spell!

Model it! Make a mod! Make it work with the same quality as the game looks, make it seamless and upload it. I would love to have that kind of plug in. Then, tell me how much time it took you and if it was really worth as much effort as you put into it.

Most of the time doing something like that would take days if not more, so it really is not worth it, though there is some mods that do that, look it up.

Alright, I don't know whats going on inside the heads of the people who work at Bethesda, but they really know how to screw things up. I can't stand it how they add ink wells, blank parchment, and quills, and then you can't write stuff! It's not like it's hard to make it possible for a player to be able to jot down notes, or write down recipes so that you can save them for later use. What's up with that?

Possible solution: get a real life piece of paper, and a pen, and write them on that... Although I think there are mods for in-game writing.

I think the point was that it is ironic that these items are provided, but you can't use them, at all. I suppose the counter-argument for that would be if they were absent then the countless other notes throughout the game wouldn't make any sense, how would they have gotten there?

Actually, being able to write your own notes and carry them around as reminders would be a useful addition to the PC game. Someone should make a mod like this. Unfortunately, people hardly ever sell parchment, ink or quills, so you would have to change that, too.

I don't care what the reviews say, this game does not give you the freedom to do what you want. You can be a warrior, thief, assassin, or mage. That's really about it, all the other factions and classes are just offshoots of these four typecasts. There is a monk class, but there is no real way to become an actual monk at an actual monastery. You can make yourself a bandit, but other bandits still attack you on sight. You can make a guard class, but still not be allowed into the imperial legion. Why didn't they make this more like Morrowind, with opportunities to be a Priest (with a choice of two different religions!), a Politician (three different houses), a businessman (EEC), a guard, an honorable assassin, a spy, or a native ashlander. Even when you became a vampire there were still vampire factions! As for classes, you can create a puny, wimpy beggar, and yet still the NPCs of the world say things like "you look strong, can you help me?" It really breaks roleplaying.

Even a level 1 beggar can look like he has some potential. Granted, I would rather trust a skilled man of the trade with my job than a simple beggar, but if you were extremely desperate for help, you'd accept almost anyone who pays attention to you.

Correction: the game does not give you the freedom to do what YOU want. I can do pretty much whatever I want. You apparently preferred Morrowind: your choices are either play Morrowind until a freeform game comes out that exceeds it in your eyes. It is impossible for a game to do absolutely everything right, and to satisfy every fan. You can continue to whine, but rest assured it will not have any effect on games being developed. The technology will be there for greater open ended gameplay when it comes, it will not come faster as a result of griping.

If you want to be a monk in Oblivion, you don't have to do any 'monk quests', simply find a temple or similar thing you wish to devote your time to, visit it daily, stay there, pray, whatever. Of course bandits attack you when you're a bandit.. I don't think there is a 'bandit alliance of tamriel' or anything. If I was a bandit, I'd steal from and kill other bandits too! The thieves guild however is more organized, and offers a community of sorts for thieves. If you want to be religious, just pray at specific alters exclusively. Of course even if you're puny you get asked to help.. otherwise there could be no quests, no real story. 'Hey beggar! Help me out... sweep my basement for 3 gold!' You can be anything you want. There are not quests for EVERY possibility, simply because that would make infinite quests, for infinite play styles. Just roleplay it.

Personally, I felt like there was TOO MUCH to do in Morrowind. It was overwhelming, exhausting, and ultimately frustrating. Particularly for people like me who enjoy experiencing everything the game has to offer instead of playing JUST as a thief or JUST as a warrior ect ect. I felt like Oblivion had a nice balance, and if there's something you wanna do, do it. Roleplay it. There doesn't HAVE to be a quest for it. If you wanna be an Imperial officer you could always find some Imperial armor, I know it's out there somewhere, and parade around town like a guard.

Many things were done right in Morrowind that were messed up in Oblivion, mainly the transition of the game's style from role-playing to more of a first-person shooter. For all the effort the game developers put into making Oblivion visually pleasing, they slacked off when it came to role-playing elements. Don't forget that The Elder Scrolls owes its beginnings to D&D. If Oblivion is meant to satisfy anyone, its people who will go through the main quest as quickly as possible and then never play the game again.

The hundreds of hours of gameplay people, including myself, have racked up are their own arguments against your gripe. It's quite possible to roleplay a variety of roles as the Roleplaying page describes in tedious detail. Neither do I think your claim that it's based on D&D is accurate. Tolkien would probably have something to say about that, to say nothing of the dozens of medieval bards that passed down stories of elves and dwarves.

If you think it's too much of an FPS (and you're playing on PC, as I am) just press the mouse wheel and watch what happens.

Invisible walls breaking immersion and preventing access to often needed places - horse appearing behind one after fast-traveling, no way to choose easier route along mountain tops, sudden obstacle in fight with an enemy as you run backwards, unable to pick rare plant growing just beyond reach, tactically approach (sneak) an enemy from behind, etc. It would make more sense to open up the borders, but have some sort of patrol catch you and tell you to return to Cyrodiil ("You have to go back, no citizens are allowed to leave the province without special permission whilst the imperial throne is vacant/during the oblivion crisis.")

Then what would they say when you completed the main quest?

Easy, "The Imperial Throne is Vacant."

And then there would be a gripe about "How can the border guards find you wherever you go?"

Again, easy: watchtowers. Cyrodiil is basically a giant valley surrounded by various mountain ranges. Watchtowers will be able to see a great distance off. Once that issue is resolved it's just a matter of hopping on the horse and racing towards the trespasser, perhaps firing arrows if the player doesn't comply.

How would a patrol of Legion soldiers stop you exactly? You can get 101% reflect damage, 100% resist magic, 100% resist poison and disease with a armor rating of 85 in this game so please explain how any of these soldiers would be able to stop you in any way shape or form?

The same way guards would be able to arrest you no matter what if only there weren't a "resist arrest" option. If there weren't subtle ways of nudging you in the direction the developers want you to go in, this wouldn't be a game.

To the above poster, yes, if you decide to cheat the game like that, then no, legion soldiers wouldn't be able to stop you from passing the border. Or stealing. Or going on a rampage. Or becoming the Emperor, for that matter. Or anything else. It seems more like you have a complaint about the fact that you can increase those stats to that point, rather than an opinion on the invisible walls initially outlined in the original post. If this is the case, this is the wrong section to be posting it under.

That's not what the reply meant by being able to easily "dispatch a patrol" what the reply meant was that everyone would end up doing it and then crossing the border then complaining why their is nothing beyond the border. Also in reply to the "above poster replying to the the post above his" it's not cheating his game if he plays the game like that, because he or she put up cash to buy the game, they should be able to play the game in anyway they see fit, it's their game their money and no one should tell them how to play their game. Also after reading that reply a few times over I didn't get the feeling that he was griping about artifacts in the game he or she was just stating a simple fact. Also as someone who has put close to 2,000 hrs. in to this game I can't really see as how of having watch towers or a great wall of cyrodil would have made the game more immersive since you would see the towers and walls a good distance away and it would just make the game world seem smaller. I don't know exactly where along the border the person who posted the gripe is talking about since I hardly ever have encounter any enemies at all when get close to the invisible border, and get told I can't go any farther.

2,000 hours? That's 3 months solid gameplay with 4 hours rest per day, 6 months very heavy daily gameplay, or an entire year of playing Oblivion for a good solid few hours every single day.

Either you're exaggerating or you need a new outlet. Personally, I think as long as the games designers implemented something to prevent items/creatures crossing the invisible barriers, then they're a fine way of preventing the player from leaving Cyrodill.

Actually, it is possible to cross the border at a certain point on the Western border. The landscape continues normally for a while but you eventually fall through the floor.

Unkillable NPCs. Yes, it would be much better to have the main quest be permanently broken if you kill the wrong NPC. After all, you should take some responsibility for your actions, instead of going sword-happy and killing whole town, being still sure this won't have any negative results except of an easy to pay fine. Having story-critical NPCs die may create a logistical nightmare for the developers, but the "essential NPC" flags were given out generously, often to characters that don't take part in any quest, or minor characters of insignificant, often already finished side quests. And of course "protect person" quests lose any meaning if the person you're to protect can't be killed.

NPCs can be killed by things other than the player, however. If Martin were attacked and killed by a bandit on the way to Bruma at the very beginning of the main quest, ruining the entire storyline, it would be much more frustrating than not being able to kill him later on. Many quest givers are in the wilderness or have to interact with it and if they weren't tagged "Essential" they could easily be killed by monsters or bandits and ruin the game

The workaround for that is not only easy but obvious. Prevent NPCs from attacking essential characters if it is not explicitly scripted in the relevant quest(s).

In the PC game you can change the Oblivion.ini file to allow the essential NPCs to be killed. You can do it by changing the parameter bEssentialTakeNoDamage in the GamePlay section to 0. You may also want to change bForceReloadOnEssentialCharacterDeath (General section) to 0.

If characters had to take total responsability for their actions, it would defeat the purpose of video games.

Doors tend to reveal their destination when selected and on map, which may occasionally give away something your character shouldn't know (the well in Cheydinhal...)

The game actually supports naming doors with generic names until you venture beyond (see Tower Portal outer door in Oblivion). It should have been applied to every door in the game. As a side note, how the heck do the main character know the name of every single place, including those which are supposed to be secret? (i.e. I'm in the sewers, look a door, I'm in a basement of x's house, wait, I've never been here before, how the heck did I know that?)

The character did have a life before the Oblivion saga (You start the game in jail and at least 20 years old); maybe he was an adventurer, or a cartographer.

Yeah, and maybe he wasn't. It's your character, after all. And come on, the world's greatest adventurer wouldn't know the purpose and owner of every single door in creation. Sometimes this is just a gameplay convenience, but there is such a thing as taking it too far.

It would really suck if you were in the thieves guild and you decided to snoop around peoples' basements via the sewers. You enter Some Random Guy's Basement, loot his stuff, then realise that you are stealing from FATHIS ULES, one of the most powerful fences from the thieves guild. And guess what? It's against the guild rules to steal from a fellow member of the guild. (I wrote this assuming that you are kicked out of the guild upon the act itself like in the Dark Brotherhood, as I have never stolen from a fellow thieves guild member before.)

Tool-tip text that shows when the crosshairs are over NPCs or objects can also spoil quests. You can find an invisible quest NPC at one point by moving the crosshairs over it.

If this refers to a Mages Guild quest, that is NOT an accident, no matter how many people seem to think otherwise! It makes sense that while walking around you could conceivably walk into something invisible and figure out it's there (you can find the NPC easily with Detect Life, too). It's simply another way of completing the quest. Wasn't there a complaint about linear quests here as well? What exactly do people want?

You can also see the guy, hes not completely invisible, it must be 95% or something, because I saw him and then only saw the tool tip when I tried to talk to him.

Walking around and bumping into an invisible person should be an alternative way to complete this quest, and should be a way to find invisible NPCs in general, however the fact that the game provides the tool-tip text for the invisible NPCs is immersion-breaking. The tool-tip text shouldn't be necessary to know that there is something invisible there with which to interact, and I think that this is what the original author was trying to say. The important difference here is that, without the tool-tip text, you, as a player, must be able to determine that you are bumping into something invisible and that it may be possible to interact with that something. With the tool-tip text, that knowledge is spoon fed to you, completely removing any effort on the part of the player (minor as it might be). The former case is arguably more enjoyable and more immersive, since it is easier to feel like you, as your character, are interacting with the environment. The problem with this approach is that in all computer games the interface necessarily causes the interaction with the game to be very artificial, and in many cases there are interaction artifacts that exist for various reasons (bugs, invisible walls, etc.). Because of these issues, simply running into the invisible NPC and allowing the player to determine on their own that it *is* an invisible character may not be reasonable, since players expect interaction artifacts and may assume the dead space (where the NPC is standing) to simply be another interaction artifact. Having the tool-tip text, on the other hand, definitely breaks immersion by giving you knowledge that your character may not normally have. If the appearance of the tool-tip text was based, somehow, on the intelligence of the character and the tool-tip text reflected this deduction on the part of the character, then the tool-tip text might make more sense. The point, though, is that the way the game currently functions is sub-optimal.

Just a quick mention-- bumping into the aforementioned invisible person IS an alternate way to complete the quest-- You can just Dispel him and finish the quest that way.

The ease of using detect life and dispel spells to finish the quest is an indication of Jeanne's magical incompetence that she did not think of trying that.

I don't have a super-duper system, so my display settings are highly degraded, so just seeing a blur in the background (invisible person) is REALLY difficult for me. The tool-tip helps me out. Sorry for being poor.

Okay, but I could argue that the game is broken to the point of unplayability because I have a laptop from the 90's that I know couldn't handle it.

Combat music breaks immersion by instantly letting you know you're being attacked before any blows are exchanged. You might have not even seen your attacker. Having the music start after you are attacked would be preferred. Also the moody ambiance interrupted by fierce battle music when the game warns you that while riding a horse you are chased by a mudcrab. Mudcrabs shouldn't trigger battle music, really. Alternatively the music could be set to start after the first blow has been landed. A mod can in theory do this.

For me it echoes the ability to sense danger or being discovered, so I have a head start when enemies start charging at my back. Like that prickly feeling you get on your back when you think you're being followed (in real life). But it really is annoying, however, for battle music to unexpectedly occur, and naturally thinking a bandit or a wolf is nearby I use Minor Life Detect to spot a hidden enemy, then realize it's just a stupid mudcrab creeping amongst the rocks. Talk about a false alarm.

Possible solution: turn off music.

How is that a solution? Disable a feature because it wasn't properly implemented? How about properly implementing the feature? Also, mudcrabs shouldn't attack you. They should run away and/or attempt to hide. You know, like real crabs.

Music can't really break your immersion, because if you were really there you wouldn't hear the music. The music itself 'breaks immersion' by being music. Yes, the solution would be to disable 'a feature' if you don't like how it worked.

I actually had a mud crab flee from me just today. No idea what the cause, though.

The Natural Wildlife mod changes wildlife AI to be more realistic (making mudcrabs pacifists).

Just a side note, Mudcrabs attack you because they are aggressive, territorial, and stupid, like slaughterfish. They are not cowardly little critters that spend their life peacefully grazing. There is a reason even the greatest warriors in Cyrodill hate them, and avoid them whenever possible.

Your comment isn't a solution either. Here's one: combat music doesn't start until hostile creature hits the player.

The problem with that suggestion is that sometimes when you're in a dungeon or anywhere at all, really, you see an enemy at the same time that enemy sees you. The combat music should be playing there, because you're both maneuvering for battle at that point. The moments leading up to the first strike are just as important as the first strike itself and that's why we have the system we have now. So...possible solution: battle music doesn't start until the enemy is visible to the player AND the enemy is also aware of the player.

You could have been in the jailcell for maybe a little under a week and in that case you maybe have been able to detect the subtle sounds of an approaching enemy before you saw them because all you can do in a jailcell is listen to the guards chatter and you developed an ear for it

Main Quest can be completed at level 2 without the use of cheats/aids. With tricks/cheats/glitches to get a daedric artifact it can even be completed at level 1 (normally the artificial limit of player level prerequisite stops you from obtaining an artifact on level one, but that has nothing to do with the actual quest difficulty). One such glitch involves killing Umbra without initiating Clavicus Vile's quest, this allows you to return the Umbra sword to Vile and receive the Masque of Clavicus Vile for use in the Main Quest.

The developers probably allowed this for those who want to beat the game before a high level so they can spend more time looking for treasure, completing quests etc. This is again a matter of personal preference and restraint. You don't HAVE to complete the main quests at level 2, and you don't HAVE to have Umbra or the Masque right off the bat. If you don't want to complete/acquire them, don't complete/acquire them.

Plus if you took the sword to Clavicus Vile when you were too weak, do you really think he'd care, he still got what he wanted, after all.

Well obviously if you cheat, use tricks or glitches the game won't be fun, long or challenging. The answer to this "gripe" would be: Don't cheat, play the freaking game properly, and suprisingly, it feels more realistic. That's like complaining that with collision toggled off you can walk through walls, which ruins immersion. Well, yes, it does, becuase it's not supposed to happen. Hence the term "cheat".

The real gripe should be that it's possible to get stuck such that toggling clipping is necessary. Which is especially crippling on XBox/PlayStation.

That's a fair complaint, but the developers of physics engines already try as hard as they can to prevent that. Any game that has physics has a way to glitch them, and I don't expect that to change in the next decade. Score one for PC, I guess.

Despite Cyrodiil being the largest, most important, and capital province, the imperial armies play a very small role in the Oblivion crisis. In fact, there are few legions at all besides roaming guards and City watch. Chancellor Ocato denies help from the legions because it would cause a "political crisis" as if such a crisis is more important than invasion and annihilation by Mehrunes Dagon. Said annihilation is happening over all of Tamriel, not just Cyrodiil, so the armies are obvious spread a little thin. Also guards seem to be sent to close portals in the middle of no where, rather than the ones located directly beside the roads. During one of the Dark Brotherhood quests you need to kill a mercenary leader and some Imperial guards want me to help close an Oblivion gate next to the fort. I wanted to say "Hold on there are about 4 other gates next to different cities that I'd like to stop first, but I will get back to you."

Most of the Legion are not in Cyrodiil, since Cyrodiil has the hero of Kvatch to protect it, the Legion is closing the Gates in other parts of Tamriel, to keep everyone there from getting killed by Dremora.

: There was originally a city called "Sutch" in the place you are talking about. It was removed from the game, but the guards and the gate remained.

Another huge realism breaker is that every Imperial fortress in Cyrodill is in ruins. Sure, this can be explained by the degradation of the empire over time, but come on. With no bastions of justice in the countryside we should be seeing bandits behind every rock and villages being burned to the ground by ogres. You can't be expected to believe everything and everyone stays safe because of the occasional patrolling legionnaire.

If I remember right, most of those forts were constructed just for the purpose of holding back the Akaviri invasion. As for everything being ravaged by bandits & ogres, that's not true. Most NPCs can (and usually will) defend themselves.

Some parts of the Main Quest have rather large fight scenes with soldiers from all over Cyrodill, and yet, there is an amazing lack of both Fighters Guild members and Mage Guild Members.

Could be wrong, but I don't recall ever hearing about the Guilds being a standing army.

The journal entry for the "Allies for Bruma" Quest makes a passing reference to convincing the Guilds into joining the fight.

The complete game is simply smaller than Morrowind. This is on top of the fact that in Oblivion any character can without too much difficulty complete ever single quest, as against in Morrowind where it was simply not feasible for a (for example) totally magic focused character to complete the higher-end Thieves and Fighters Guild quests. I'm really hoping for some major expansions very soon.

Oblivion is indeed much smaller than Morrowind, as Morrowind was much smaller than Daggerfall. Also, as Oblivion is far more accessible than Morrowind, just as Morrowind is more accessible than Daggerfall; there are less bugs, quests are more developed, and individual regions are generally denser. The game is smaller and shorter, but the expierence is richer.

You obviously never played Morrowind. The amount of hand placement and hand-crafted dungeons was insane. Oblivion's caves and hideaways are mostly based off the same templates and after awhile feel the same. Morrowind was bigger, yes, but it was better done. I don't know what happened to make Oblivion feel more on the generic side but I suspect is has something to do with spending too much time on the graphics engine and too little time on the mechanics and content.

I found exactly the opposite to be true. Morrowind had two or three generic dungeon types, just like in Oblivion. But in Oblivion, you get interesting traps, dungeons that have stories behind them, ruins inhabited by people near the surface who haven't cleared the bottom of monsters yet, and so on. In Morrowind, you had a big blobby cave with some bandits and a little wooden bit where they sleep, a ruin full of robots, cogs, and unexplained lava pits, or you had a bunch of crazies attacking you in a shrine. The layouts may have had slightly more variety, but they got old a lot faster. As for hand-placed, dungeons in both games were made the same way.

Geographically, Oblivion is bigger but seeing as you can teleport to every City in the game instantly (no exploration) it defeats the purpose of making the game big. And there is no point in exploring the wilderness because all there is out there is just repeatable elements with random, respawning contents that can be found in the immediate vicinity of Imperial City - really no profit difference if you explore different ruins by Anvil and Kvatch or just raid Fort Nikel for the 40th time, waiting for it to respawn the content after each raid. Exploring the wilderness may be profitable for Daedric quests, but after you finish the Umbacano and Shadowbanish Wine quests, further exploring of unknown ruins is pointless.

As M'aiq says: Nothing stops M'aiq from walking when he wants. Sure the enemies might be the same but the layout is different.

The layouts of the dungeons are extremely similar, and unless you're a cartographer, it's hardly what's going to keep your attention. The Oblivion gates, of course, just reuse layouts.

There are, in theory, infinite Oblivion gates. So yes, they rather have to.

The Main Quest's ending is fairly unfulfilling. While it probably had to be done for both plot and balance purposes, it suffers slightly from a feeling of Deus Ex Machina - the game finishes itself, and you are simply a pawn to get all the pieces there at the same time.

Allow me to direct you to this.

Look at it this way if you’ve played Morrowind’s main quest you fight a God the fight lasts about 5 to 10 seconds you kill the God like it was nothing and end up wondering why anyone would be afraid of him, worship him, or respect him? They did the Mehrunes Dagon and Akatosh fight very good, in the respect that they make them seem way more powerful then you could ever be. It makes them seem like gods instead of just another enemy you can easily run through, while yes this is different then most other RPG game endings. But call me crazy but I would prefer something like Oblivion’s ending were two God’s fight versus my character going to battle against Dagoth Ur, Almalexia, Umaril the Unfeathered, and Jyggalag, where I just breathe on them and they all fall over dead.

While battling with NPCs, it is all too easy to accidentally hit them, therefore causing them damage or even premature death. This can also lead to mysterious fines. I went into an Oblivion Gate with some allies, fought some Dremora, and they ran in the way of my blows and died.

Yes, but if you were fighting with an ally, there would be a certian amount of moving to dodge blows, so one could move in, not realizing that your friend is trying to attack.

I can't imagine a real solution. The best I can think of is the three-strike rule, which I could swear Oblivion already had. I know I have to punch my summons three times before they start fighting back.

This has caused me some trouble. Took me four tries to do the Falwil (Name?) Oblivion gate, because I accidentally hit him the first time, and he attacked me yelling 'assault' (wtf?), and the second time I accidentally hit him while he was on the edge of the bridge, knocking him into lava (I don't even know why he was there). I think that the ally AI should try toa void being hit by you, just as you have to avoid hitting them... should also be cautious and NOT run off of bridges and whatnot.

I assume you have not discovered the mystifying 'yield' function yet.

Less opportunities to find wonderful unique items by exploring and looking in dark corners. The few unique items there are all quest based.

The Fin Gleam Helmet is unique and not quest related and you can acquire it at any level. Although yes there are definitely less unique items found exploring in Oblivion then there were in previous elder scroll games.

The Dunmer have changed from being an interesting race of gruff, hardy and xenophobic people in Morrowind into a characterless race of people with voice acting that has a posh quality to it that is unsuitable for them.

Some news, Dorothy: I dont think you're in Morrowind any more.

But don't forget that most of the Dunmer on Vvardenfel were native born Dunmer, who are very sensitive to accent, clothing and manners, and can easily tell natives from outlanders. The Dunmer in Cyrodil are not Dunmer from Morrowind.

I think that's the point. That, and that it is still Tamriel. In Morrowind, the three types of elves were chariacatures. You had the comic bosmer, the severe dunmer, and the lofty altmer. Now you just have elves. For some of us, it's one of the most annoying effects of only using about five voice actors.

Do you have any idea how much space a sound file takes up, especially sound files that have to be high quality enough to pass as voices? There are already tens of thousands of separate voice sounds in Oblivion. Using fewer voice actors lets them save space by being able to use the same voice actors for Khajiit/Argonian, Bosmer/Altmer/Dunmer, and Nord/Orc. While, conceptually, a Nord and an Orc would have different sounding voices, such a feat would require a lot of disk space.

With a high enough sneak level, simply crouching in front of certain guards will render you invisible. (One case was in the "Ultimate Heist" quest, I was caught by guards. I moved to the side and crouched. The guards looked right at me, ran into me, and looked around. I was never seen. One proceeded to shoot an arrow to nowhere, hitting another guard. Fighting between the guards broke out.

Guards don't seem too intelligent anyway, Maybe they don't know how to look down. Not a joke.

I dont know what you're complaining about, that seems like a pretty humorous situation. While its certainly a little unrealistic to move four inches and be instantly undetectable, I've rarely encountered this issue, and only when my sneak skill was ridiculously high, like 90+.

Many people have complained that the game's content has been "dumbed down" to appeal to a more mainstream audience of "Weekend Warriors". This may be because the game's Main Quest and all 5 of its Faction Quests (Fighters, Mages, and Thieves Guilds as well as the Dark Brotherhood and Arena Guilds) can be completed in less than 20 hours. Some say it feels more like an action game with quests than a true RPG. One thread on the official forums sparked a comparison between "Oblivion" to the gameplay and content of the hack 'n' slash text-based RPG favorite NetHack. "NetHack" has no real graphics (while Oblivion's graphics were one of its main boasts), but is complex, long, detailed, and randomly generated.

The suggestion that a player with no prior knowledge of Oblivion can complete all five of its core quests with a game clock of twenty hours (let alone actual time played) is absurd.

On the contrary. With fast travel, low difficulty, and the compass markers, Oblivion's five core quests can easily be completed in less than 20 hours by a novice player.

I'm takling the liberty to differ. A novice player (not a novice character) will look around, talk to people, try things, get acquainted for the game. In the worst case, he will jog through the main quest, but he will not find out of other major quests even existing that way, especiually thieves' guild and dark brotherhood. He will also have to understand precisely what to do, which in some quests is not self evident at first. Think "Ultimate heist". You really have to know what you are doing, especially in dungeons of any kind, to speed it up. While it may be an interesting contest to minimize playing time - how much exactly did you spend to work this out?

If you are going to rush through the game instead of saivoring it and having fun, be my guest.

Furthermore, unless I'm very much mistaken, Nethack's minimum play time is also less than 20 hours, from character creation to completion.

You don’t actually complete the Dark Brotherhood or Arena factions; you can still get the quest Whispers of Death once a week, also you can still fight in the Arena once a week, in show matches. For the Fighters Guild you can decide whether or not you want to focus on recruitment, contracts or both once a month so in reality unless you get yourself expelled these factions are never ending.

Right, because that's so much fun you want to do it all the freakin' time. I bleedin' doubt it.

Any player who can complete all 5 of the main quests in under 20 hours is a hardcore player. Noone new to TES will do that, not even longtime adventure or RPG players. Nothing to do with reflexes or combat: there is simply a certain amount of time you have to spend on each quest. Of course someone who has memorized every main quest can do it in under 20 hours: people who memorize other games can do them in under 3 generally.

actually it is possible: i had had never played the elder scrolls series and i did all 5 main quests in about 17 hours. I was not trying to rush the game or do it in the fastest time possible, but i just found it incredibly easy. (I enjoyed the game though and continue to do so!)

The shield enchantment spoils the whole point of finding better armour. It is entirely possible to have your character equip a ring of shield 25%, a ring of shield 25%, and an amulet of shield 25%, (easily made from Sigil Stones) and nothing else besides his or her underpants. This Tarzan character would then have an equal AC to a character in full Daedric armour. Equip Tarzan with a rusty iron shield and he's maxed out his AC. In fact he's better off as his magical AC will stay fixed during battle while a physical AC will degrade and need fixing with repair hammers. So what's the point of Daedric armour then? Or Mithril? Or Glass? (note: Using armor instead of enchanted clothing frees you to use non-shield enchantments.) You want armour that's light and strong, just enchant shield on the rags you got out of prison with. There is a similar problem with enchanted weapons: when it is possible to enchant a dagger that will kill anything in four hits (Weakness to magic 100% for 3 seconds on strike, Drain Life 100 points for 1 second on strike) then you question the point of everything else. Umbra? Sinweaver? Goldbrand? They are nothing compared to what any apprentice wizard can make with a rusty dagger, a petty soul gem and 50 points in destruction. Your only option then is to do the same as what you do with the Chameleon spell: pretend these enchantments don't exist.

People can play the game how they want to.

Even purist players can become surprising flexible when they've failed a quest seven times because it was designed with the presumption that players would have access to 100+ concealment or 85 armor.

Sorry, buddy my pal. No such quest exists. 100% concealment and 85 AC are never requirements. My AC hovers from 40-60 at all times (I always prioritize enchantment higher than AC, turning down Goldbrand and Umbra in favor of weapons with better effects) and I NEVER use chameleon because I hate not being able to see myself. And yet, I find the game remarkably easy much of the time. Maybe you just need to improve your skill at making basic builds.

I think he was just being rhetorical. No need to get angry.

Self imposed rules are the best. Each game try starting out with rules that you will not break with this character, and stick to them. You'll find a lot more enjoyment that way. Remember, it isn't always about being the best and strongest.

Opening the console and typing in 'tgm' spoils th whole point of leveling, finding better armor, etc. No one is forcing you to do it. How do you even know the exact requirements to make such a dagger unless you attempted it yourself? Obviously, you're lacking in self-control.

No, that's not what's going on here. Sorry. There's always a borderline condition. The entire goal of the game is to make your character better and achieve quests. They go hand in hand. Each makes the other easier. Toggling god mode is beyond the borderline. It's something that's not possible in normal play. Chameleon is in the borderline. It's not a good example. Lacking in self-control definately doesn't come into it. The matter really should be simple. Do what you want to. He's not lacking in self-control because he dabbled in balance-breaking enchantments. I quite enjoy hoarding items that end up giving me high reflect damage or reflect spell. That doesn't make me lacking in self-control, it just means I have a different play style. The problem comes when people start thinking it's necessary to do these things, or that there's no reason to do anything else.

There are no polearms, spears or flails in the game. There are also many items in the game that could well have been used as weapons (such as kitchen knives, and, especially, scythes. Surely a scythe would be an awesome weapon, as what enemy could live through a two-handed slash from that?), but can't be, and there is also no way to throw objects at enemies (swords, javelins, etc). Fighting with kitchen knives and scythes could actually be an interesting mod idea for farmers to use. I mean, if I were attacked by some crazy drunken Nord carrying an axe (my character), I'd defend myself with whatever tool I had at hand, be it a scythe or a rake.

I actually happen to agree and disagree with you on this; In Morrowind, weapons were classified as Spear, Long Blade, Short Blade, Blunt Weapon, Axe, and Marksman. However, this actually tended to become quite tedious and actually annoying; too many times i remember finding a Dadric Battleaxe only to discover I had 82 blunt, and not axe. I do agree with the merging of certain weapon types (Blunt/axe, short blade/long blade) but not the complete exclusion of some of them (Spears, mainly). Also, it wouldn't be very taxing to add a few more item/weapon scripts for plain objects that could be substituted as weapons (I've attacked farmers hacking what with a scythe; rather than fight back with the long curved blade on the end of a pole, they pack up and fight with their fists). Also, Mai'q makes a comment about crossbows; I actually found crossbows in morrowind a VERY viable alternative to regular bows; they only took slightly longer to load, but it was much easier to launch a surprise attack or defend myself if ambushed with a crossbow, since there was no draw time.

Gravity seems almost moon-like at times. A dead enemy can be blasted off the ground with a fire spell, only to fall back to the ground like a snowflake.

This is most likely a technical issue. Rendering full ragdoll physics on a complicated model would be very hard on the machinery running the game if it ran at full life-like speed. Slowed-down descent gives the computer/XBox some time to catch up with the calculations.

I thought it was just supposed to be flashy. Just sort of, 'hey look, you can throw stuff around now. Isn't that new and shiny?'

This isn't on Earth... The gravity might not the same.

you have a point that the gravity doesnt perform like it should. I even tested it of dive rock with the adoring fan, a pearl, lettece and myself. we all landed at diffrent times.

{{Reply22} TES Laws of physics are different than the ones of this universe.

There is no way to add comments to map markers, or to add map markers of your own. The ability to check-mark map markers, for example, would be a great help to anyone who wants to keep track of what areas they have already looted, etc. On a similar note, markers for Oblivion Gates always say "A Gate to Oblivion" even when the gate is closed. It would be nice if they changed to say "A Closed Oblivion Gate" or something like that.

Try shift-clicking on the map. You can place your own marker, even in areas that you normally can't get to, like behind walls in a cave

Another issue is that you can only place one marker at a time; I do a lot of alchemy, and like to mark spots that contain a high concentration of favorable plants/mushrooms. Writing down locations work, but only for locations like Shadeleaf Copse, which are actually marked on the map. Locations in the middle of nowhere would be nice to be able to mark.

Say I want to go looting but blast! I forgot I had to sell the items I already looted to have more room for new stuff. Right now, I either have to write down the name of the cave/fort/whatever so I can 'teleport' back to that place after I go to the nearest city, or hope that I can remember which one it was to the west of the Cyrodiil map. I have a list of places on a spreadsheet I have on my computer, and I used it to remember which places I had looted and which places I hadn't (Talking about on the 360 version, by the way). That's a bit of a strain. There should be a way in the game to mark which places you have visited and looted (manually not automatic) that way you don't have to do a Dungeons and Dragons spreadsheet. So I heavily agree with the gripe.

No multi-player mode. The game world in Oblivion would be ideal for co-operative gameplay.

Actually, multiplayer wouldn't work without a rehauling of all magical items. I've thought about it a lot, and the best race in a multiplayer game would be..... Argonian. Why? 100% poison resist. With Atronach Sign, Escutcheon of Chorrol, Two of the three 33% reflect damage items, a Sorcerer's Ring, Helmet of the Mage, and Magebane Greaves, you would be immune to Poison, Spells, and any physical attack would do more damage to the person who attacked you. Plus, you would still have 4 more items to enchant with whatever you wanted, although one of those would probably have to be 180 detect life to stop 100% chameleon builds. Of these, at least two should be fire/frost/shock shield sigil stone enchanted (I don't know why, but for some reason the fire/frost/shock shield sigil stones provide more shielding than shield sigil stones), so that even if beaten down until your armor broke, one shield potion would keep you at 85 for the duration of the potion (with 50% from clothes/armor enchantments and up to 28% from the shield of escutcheon, which, as long as you have 50 block would never go down, you'd only need to cover a difference of 7!). And if you're going to use these very plentiful potions anyway (flax/tomatoes/potatoes/oranges/bog beacon asco cap/beef), these pieces of "armor" could just be clothing, although you'd have to use a few more completely unprecious potions. With the last piece... Fortify Magicka? You'd have 370 magicka anyway, another 50 almost seems redundant, but there is little else of value you could enchant it with. Throw in vampirism for a (completely pointless) 100% resist paralysis and disease, a few skills in athletics and acrobatics, and voila, an untouchable character.

Actually, turning the Leveling system into a multiplayer-friendly environment would be tough, especially with attribute changes and short range of skill increases

Actually, in fact, the game looks like it would be PERFECT for an MMO. For the player, suddenly those Damage Attribute and Burden spells actually MEAN something; mr Hotshot Full Daedric carrying 8 sets of armor in case one breaks suddenly cant move when you blast him with your 100-point burden spell, or your chain of 35 point Damage Strength spells. Not so tough now that your axe doesnt reach this far, eh? its fireballin' time. Recreating a few requirements (You have to have certain skill and high enough level to wear types of armor or weild certain weapons) would prevent lv. 1's from buying or receiving free full Glass from their level 38 friend. it would also be not hard to implement.

If 'player' level > than 18 then
action:unequip Daedric_Helm
if 'player' Heavy_Armor > than 85 then
action:unequip Daedric_Helm

(PS: I have no idea what the actual game script looks like, I'm using basic script here. Thats just a rough example.) However, I can see why something like that doesnt exist; the world itself is designed for a single player experience. The actual world would have to be modified. Add to that, its a breach of tradition; Elder Scrolls games are single player, through and through.

Normal multiplayer? Sure, that could be cool, though the dialog as it is now wouldn't make sense with a team. MMO? ...Okay, no. Oblivion works because it is centered around the player. There are two main ways this is the case: mods (for multiplayer to be at all feasible, you'd need exactly identical modlists--just trust me on this), and effect on the game world. You can kill off any (non-essential) NPC. With multiplayer, this would stop anyone else from doing business with them. You can do quests. With multiplayer, you'd have to either let every player do the quest (which makes no sense--NPCs get re-kidnapped, resurrected, or lose their items again once per player?), or only let one player/set of players ever do the quest (not exactly fair to anyone else). You can take anything. With multiplayer, that means it's not there for anyone, or everyone can get it and you all end up with the same loot. You can buy or take over houses ingame. Multiplayer? You have a real-estate crisis because there isn't space for everyone to have a home, and if it's a taken-over house rather than an owned one, other players could walk right in and take it and your stuff themselves. In-game economy? You all have effectively infinite wealth! Factions? What would that be, an infinite series of PvP fights over being the Archmage? That's the best I can think of, and in such a game, I wouldn't even bother finishing the quests if that's what I had to look forward to after them. No, I'm pretty sure the only thing extra players could do to Oblivion is suck the fun out of it.

About the losing the same item: It's been done before, numerous times, on many different MMOs. Try some.

Two person co-op? YES. Online battle? Maybe. MMO? HELL NO. Imagine what that would be like. You would be killed by some highly skilled player every 5 seconds. Without detect life, you would be pickpocketed by people with 100% chameleon. A battle would be impossible with someone with 100% Sheild and 100% Reflect Damage. You could be picked off out of nowhere by a bowman. Shopkeepers could be killed and you would have no access to them. However, I did come up with a solution. If there ever was an online community, there would be two worlds/servers. One of which, would let you kill anyone (excluding important characters). In the other, you couldn't kill anyone except useless NPC's. That would actually be really fun.

Full gameplay wouldn't work, but how about an arena? Any combination of you, other online players and various creatures duking it out in the arena; you'd use your SP character, and there could be different battle options, like level restriction, combat type restriction, keep/lose kit if you die, etc.

Use a wilderness system like Runescape or a Challenge system like WoW. Only certain areas allow PvP combat or certain other player interactions, meaning a lv 42 with full Daedric and a fire damage on self ring for a cool visual effect could potentially linger in a place where lots of lower lvs congregate, but be unable to attack. This would be difficult to do however, and would likely require the system to be overhauled to a TBS, which would be downright unacceptable for an ES game. There are a lot of ways it would be cool, but there are just as many ways it would be impossible. For now, we'll just have to stick to a real MMORPG like WoW or GW.

Some dead bodies remain in place for ever. You'd think someone would come along and bury them after a while! There have been three dead and naked (I sold their armour) thieves in a shop in Anvil for months now, while the owner ignores them and continues to do business.

Cyrodil is a lawless place, as anyone who has walked through the countryside can attest. Suffice to say that they become rather used to corpses. Or maybe they're just lazy.

Cyrodil is in no way lawless, as any member of the Imperial Legion will attempt to demonstrate should you be sighted breaking one of its many laws. I don't think there's an in-game reason behind this.

This is because some bodies are marked as quest items (Glarthir, Jauffre, et cetera) and therefore never disappear. Though that really is not an excuse.

The Arena plain sucks, both viewing it and fighting in it. The fighters simply run and hack 'n' slash. No fantastic spells, no large-scale battlegrounds. The grand-champion should give a few man vs. beast performances as least. And when being an arena gladiator, you should be constricted to certain time schedules, there should be a good big 'tournament' (possibly in honor of the emperor's death?) that one can fight in, with dozens of combatants each duking it out for number one. You should be able to meet all your opponents before you enter the ring. Say, sabotage the yellow team champion by hiding a poison apple in her morning breakfast, eh?

Like most things in Oblivion, you'll have a lot more fun with the Arena if you go there before you're waving Umbra around behind a giant bulwark of Daedric armor, or sneaking around with 125 percent concealment.

You must not have finished the Arena. You CAN fight animals in the Arena...once a week. You are also constricted to a time schedule:you can only fight between 9 AM and 9 PM.

The two comments above fail to see the point. This is not an issue of balancing, but verisimilitude. Obviously the Grand Champion can fight beasties, but we never see anyone else fighting them. If gladiatorial matches are so popular, wouldn't there be a FIFA-sized formal competition, complete with a ladder? And yes the player can fight any time he wants, which is exactly the problem, how do you schedule everyone to be present for a match arranged 5 seconds ago

Speaking to the Battle Matron reveals this: It hasnt been thought of to fight animals before, and its a right reserved specifically for you as Grand Champion.

When you try to sell several of the same item at once in a shop, if it exceeds the amount of money the NPC has it will not accept the trade, but if you sell them one at a time, they accept. I find it rather a pain to have to go back and sell them one at a time. since the transaction is no different, this should not be an issue.

Actually, there is a difference between the two transactions from a skill development point of view. You get a mercantile experience point for every individual item that you sell, which is why most wise characters at the beginning of the game endure periods of great tedium collecting and then individually selling tons of rat and crab meat, amanita cap fungi, and lotus seeds in order to bump up their mercantile skills to make better profits from more expensive items later in the game.

The point is valid, though. If the merchant does not have the money to buy a stack of five potions, they should not have the money to buy five individual potions instead.

Honestly, it really doesnt matter. If you've got five of an item that Varnardo (One of the higher gold merchants at 1000) cant buy, then you probably dont have to worry about Mercantile since those items are worth a truckload of money anyway. Maybe the merchant is just trying to watch their spending, and knows you wont get a better deal anywhere else, so would rather you sell them one by one for lower prices.

No more portable light sources. Remember those fancy and lovely lamps, candles and such in Morrowind? Well, those are gone in Oblivion. Reason? Frankly, I haven't the faintest idea... Sure you can get a few static candles with the stuff you buy to your house, but in most cases placed to the wrong corner or just simply not enough to warm up your favorite bungalow.

Torches make excellent portable light sources.

We don't want "Excellent", we want GREAT. And they really gave a place athmosphere, you know?

This also provides a bit of a detriment to stealth characters. I should be able to shoot a candle with an arrow and send it flying across a room/put it out, letting me sneak past undetected. On the subject, I find it incredibly annoying that I can't shoot an arrow at a wall just behind a guard's head as a distraction and get him to go check out the loud noise he just heard, getting him out of my way.

Sorry, this is hardly a conventional stealth game. Maybe it'll be better in TES5, though. You can hope. In the mean time, go play Splinter Cell.

One of the problems with games such as these is that everything is done in-house. Are there any successful authors of fantasy fiction on the staff of Bethesda? I don't think so, which is why most of the quests in Oblivion tend to be - let us admit it - rather unimaginative, badly structured, and even peurile. Wouldn't it be nice if Bethesda could spend some of their profits to hire a Terry Pratchett or a J.K. Rowling to help script the next Elder Scrolls offering?

I believe Oblivion offers some of the most original quests I've ever seen, in any game. Entering a painted dimension, trying to escape a "Hunters Run" or a game of Clue. As well, no rpg will ever resemble an author of fantasy fiction as it is YOU who would imagine such a world. A quest in Oblivion could be very similar to a novel, but you are playing, not reading it.

No offense, but I would NOT want a quest written by J.K. Rowling. Terry would be funny though. But to get a real hard-fantasy writer to make them, I'm pretty sure they'd offer their services for free. (Especially Terry though.)

We cant be playing the same game. How is saving a guy from his own nightmare with a magical amulet, entering a magic painting, protecting a crazy lady's rats from mountain lions, rescuing a girl from crazy hillbillies (See the town of Hackdirt), and then saving the world from a Daedra lord defying ancient divine magicks to sway a cult and attempt to 'reclaim' Tamriel in ANY way unoriginal?

Actually, these aren't just any hillbillies. The populace of Hackdirt is taken straight out of H.P. Lovecraft. On a more related note, allow me to point out that you don't want a Terry Pratchett or a JK Rowling. They write books. Good books make hideous games. And vice versa.

Agreed, but general plot ideas might be better coming from authors and then being modified into good quests by game designers. I mean, honestly, the main quest involves an assassinated emperor, a magical amulet, the blood of dragons, an evil cult bend on unleashing hell into the world, and a lost heir! And to the guy before you, "saving the world from [powerful being]", "[someone] defying ancient divine magicks" and "reclaiming [place]" are among the most generic possible fantasy plots. The minor quests you mentioned were clever enough, and a lot of minor quests in Oblivion are, but the actual main plots of the factions are, for the most part, less impressive. And yes, A Shadow Over Hackdirt was all a reference to H.P. Lovecraft's A Shadow Over Innsmouth.

I wonder if anyone else agrees with my major combat gripe that running while your shield is raised is not allowed. Clearly this is not realistic, and it results in the Hobson's Choice of either marching slowly towards an archer who is firing arrows at you with your shield raised, giving you only some limited protection, or else running to close the gap with shield lowered giving you no protection at all. In real life I don't suppose that you could run at full pelt with a raised shield, but you can surely move faster than a slow march. Perhaps a fair compromise would be half normal running speed. Is it possible to mod this?

As someone who does spar on a regular basis, with wooden, metal, and safety weapons, as well as various shields, let me tell you-- Moving faster then a slow march with a shield is a really poor decision-- In fact, moving with it up at all, outside of the above-mentioned archery example, is a poor decision-- It is hard to control and place, holding it becomes awkward, and you become an obvious target, beyond what you were before-- A shield is used in a fight, and it is used, quickly and for only a moment, to stop arrows-- Unless there are a multitude of archers firing staggered shots to give you no break, there is no reason to hold the shield up-- Just put it up for a moment when the arrow is incoming, drop it when you feel the impact, repeat.

While Oblivion offers a lot of new features, what I loved about Morrowind was the feeling of bewilderment when exploring the world and finding structures that make you wonder: What is that?? Oblivion offers some structures that make you ask questions, but far too often the structure is another ruined fort, or another set of abandoned ruins, or another shrine. After about the 3rd or 4th fort, you kind of lose the question of "what is this?" In Morrowind, you might find an ancient set of ruins, yet there is no "ruin dungeon" to enter, it was just a visual. Or approach Vivic and see the floating prison - you gasp in amazement and want to get up there. Oblivion has the gates, but again - you see them everywhere.

Just curious, what unenterable ruins? I imagine there were some purely visual ruins in Morrowind, but I don't remember them. As for gasping in amazement and wanting to investigate a place, I think it's all in visual taste and not in one game being better than the other. I've seen places that made me curious like that in Oblivion, and most of the ones I remember from Morrowind were the results of mods.

Magic has become something not at all arcane. It seems everyone knows a bit of magic and uses it relentlessly, combined with the quick animation for casting spells, which doesn't look as majestic as in Morrowind - in fact, it's like you're throwing rocks, not magic fireballs. Not to mention that mages are generally jerks and use to fight with daggers instead of spells.

They probably got rid of the “majestic hand motions” they had in Morrowind because of the time it took to actually cast a spell, if you remember correctly you could get hit quite a bit before getting off a spell, and if you got hit it caused you to fail at casting the spell, which could get very repetitive and annoying. Also they allow you to cast spells while holding a weapon and or shield in Oblivion which you could not do in Morrowind because you had to ready magic, so does it really make any sense to have huge hand motions while holding a claymore or battle axe or having hotkeys like you do in Oblivion? As far as mages fighting with Daggers or Maces if you’re dealing with necromancers, wouldn’t you draw a weapon and try to defend yourself if your mage character ran out of magic and was waiting for it to recharge?

Yes, that's the reason. But nothing stopped them from making spells more powerful instead of easier to cast. And as far as mages with daggers - it's not like they use them when they run out of magic. They don't fight with spells for too long, because they don't have too much magicka.

No, no, no, no, no. A 500 point fire damage spell that takes 10 seconds to cast is no more useful than a 100 point fireball spell that takes the same amount of time. Because you'll never get to cast them. The big hulking fighter runs up and smashes you with his warhammer. You stagger (mages don't really invest a huge amount in agility). By the time you're back up, the fighter could have killed you. You need it to go off faster, not bigger.

Pulling out a dagger while your skeleton bashes on the intruder is just common sense. It makes perfect sense that a mage NPC wouldn't use all their magic at the start of a battle and then run in with no chance of casting any healing or buffs. They save it for a (relative) emergency.

The Arena doesn't feel like it should have. When I first stepped out of the blood works into that long hall to the gate i heard the screaming of hundreds if not thousands of people. At that moment I just had to put the controller down and imagine what incredible experience was ahead of me. I imagined a huge coliseum with 5 on one combat. When i actually ventured out to start the battle i was confronted by the exact same AI who charged at me no matter how far back into the hall I got. I mean the most memorable moment was when some guy came at me with "Shimmerstrike" come on. As for the cheering of thousands, I counted no more than 24 people. I got more people than that together and we yelled as crowd like as we could and it didn't sound anything close to that, unless we really tried to sound like 2000 people. The biggest annoyance was the announcer's voice, always saying "can the blue team beat the yellow team" over and over and I'm tired of hearing him telling me "Victor of the blue team, go now and rest. You've earned it!" broke any remnants of immersion that were left. Maybe I'm just rambling on, but the Arena just didn't feel like it should have.

This is a matter of personal taste, I personally loved the arena questline and couldn't stop laughing at some of the comments the Blademaster and the Arena announcer made. Some people like or love certain things about a guild others dislike or hate certain things about a guild it's just a matter of personal taste.

Why couldn't they have just put the console, on the console versions? It's not like they fixed all of the bugs in the PC version in the official patches available for the Xbox 360/PS3. User-created mods don't have to be made available (although that would be nice), just the ability to control the game the same. Although entering console commands would be tedious using the OSK on the Xbox 360, a USB keyboard could be used instead.

Has anyone thought about how easy it would be to crash the game on the PS3 or 360? You can pretty much add anything in your inventory, and other things like that. Some of the stuff is unstable? what happens if you go from point A to point B with this buggy item, and then your game crashes because of this, only to find out that you had autosave on travel enabled?

Also, it could be used by people who just want the achievements -- by using the console to finish all the needed quests. Microsoft don't want things like that happening...

Staffs have become magical rocket launchers instead of just staffs where you can choose to either hit someone with it or have it enchanted to do something either when used or on strike.

It's the logical conclusion of the decision to take cast on use items out of Oblivion. Maybe you liked those, but I'll be honest. They had highly, highly limited usage. They were not good items on the whole, and I get the feeling they were not too popular. Since cast on use items were taken out of Oblivion, there needs to be a way to use the staff to cast a spell. Cast on strike is highly unsatisfactory, as it requires you to be close enough to hit them. So the logical thing to do is to make the staff fire off its spell when you click. I think it's more realistic anyway. What staffs in Morrowind did was give you the power to cast spells using their charges, really. Instead, the staff actually fires of spells. And finally, I leave you with this: "Why would one want to swing a staff? A mace hurts more. Or a sword...Can't shoot a fireball from a sword, though."

It would have been nice if they at least allowed you to strike with an empty staff, tough. There has been more been more than one occasion when I was using a staff and it ran out of charge, and I needed to get in just a couple more hits. Going back into the inventory to equip another weapon is a pain when you're in the middle of a fight.

You have hotkeys which you can use to equip staffs and weapons in, so you don't have to go into your inventory. Also as stated above you're going to do alot more damage with a mace a sword then you would with a wooden staff anyway so I don't really see your reasoning behind complaining about not being able to use a staff as weapon. The only real complaint I can see about staffs in Oblivion is that their very weak at high levels with the exception of the Mage's Staff that has paralyze instead of elemental damage.

Maybe one only carries a single staff? Also, mages usually hotkey a bunch of spells, being that they are mages.

You are only allowed to make one staff, and you can't even make that one yourself.

On the PS3 version (not sure about other versions) when you "Wait" the game autosaves [i]before[/i] the wait. So if you then die, the game reloads to the point before the wait and you then have to wait again in order to regenerate your health. This can be frustrating as it introduces unecessary delays and interruptions - why not just autosave when the wait completes?

You could also just save afterwards. It only takes 3 or 4 seconds to wait, anyway.

The autosave happens before the wait in case there is a hazardous or undesirable condition that occurs after the wait, such as a tough creature appearing nearby, or a time-critical thing you forgot to take care of before waiting, or who knows what. In Morrowind (which I realize this is not), creatures interrupted your wait often to attack you, and if the save started after the wait, the save would be stuck with those creatures attacking you on reload. You must have thought it was safe when you started the wait, so the game figures you also think it's a safe time to save - it may not be when the wait is done.

Wait twice. that way if you die you dont have to wait since the autosave is after the first wait.

The Physics for picking up a book always bothered me. Whenever i would pickup a book from a book case, every other book in that row (and possibly other rows), would start to shake, wobble, and violently thrust themselves from the book case. It really wouldn't be that hard to fix, just make the collision boxes on the books support themselves, and then add invisible space between the books.

This problem occurs with everything else as well, whether picking something up, putting something down, or merely walking by something. It's actually funny to walk by a table or watch someone sit down at a table and hear a thud followed by all manner of food, dishes, etc. flying everywhere. A world of clumsy swordsmen...

Its always daylight inside buildings. at midnight, if you sneak into a house to snag some loot for the local fence, take a gander at the windows. At any point during the day, they always emit the same mount of light, be it noon or night. I understand that a real window wouldnt be conventional as it would basically make having the area be a separate room pointless, but at leat modify the windows so that at night they dont glow brightly.

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