Oblivion talk:Gripes

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I moved the gripes about NPCs into the Game Content section. None of the grips (mine included) were about the game balance, more about their quirks and failings, acting quality, etc. MurphyKieran 18:28, 5 May 2006 (EDT)

Contents 1 UI 2 Alchemy weight 3 Nethack 4 Dunmer 5 Walk through the game without killing someone 6 Useless useless statistics gripe 7 A Half-Hearted Defense of Voice Acting 8 Scaled Leveling 9 Skill and Leveling System 10 Reformating 11 Ayleids 12 Adding #'s 13 Whinge whinge 14 Spoilers 15 Annoying Rain Effect 16 Anti-Gripe 17 Why Bother 18 Sigh, not really that important

[edit] UI

Dear Aaa,

I'm a hardcore cRPG player. I know cRPGs well. I grew up on Eye of Beholder, Amberstar, Dungeon Master. Still, I skipped the short dialog about how to drop items, and needed to read the manual to learn shift-click or hold-long-till-UI-vanishes-while-not-facing-any-obstacles-then-click methods of dropping items. I had no idea you could put your own marker on map by shift-clicking it until someone suggested it on forums. Even the manual was useless with the lockpicking minigame. Guess that red hand means stealing, if you see it for the first time, and just don't watch the change of color. Or that you assign quickslots by clicking item while holding quickslot button. Or that F1-F4 are shortcuts to stats, inv, spells, map. (this one wasn't in the manual, just in the release notes). Try to understand wtf does "grab" mean (for a long time I thought it's some obscure ability that will be enabled further in the game). Or how did you learn how to yield in battle? It's not my inexperience with cRPGs that I don't get everything in the interface straight away. It's the horrible interface design. --Vook 02:30, 9 May 2006 (EDT)

I just want to add that the UI was much better in Morrowind on the Xbox than it is in Oblivion on the 360. I've been playing the 360 version for like 70 hours and I still can't get it right. I'm only pointing this out because I do not think the UI problems are because it was "designed for a console." Console or not, the UI is worse all around. --The Yar 17:30, 23 May 2006 (EDT)

[edit] Alchemy weight

[Comment by CessPitts: FWIW I believe that this is an inventory stacking issue and is not limited to a 'session' in the alchemy tool. If you create a potion that has exactly the same effects and exactly the same name (whether generated or entered by you) as another potion in your possession, then the new potion will stack with the old one and be assumed to be the same weight. However, the game does seem to 'remember' potions to some degree or other, because if you offload a stack of recently created potions (into a crate, say) and then generate another with the same effects and name, it too will take on the weight of the now 'invisible' stack. This bears further investigation, but there is definitely a bug of some description here]

This is not the case. I can have several different identically named Restore Fatigues that differ in strength or duration. Make Restore Health from Lady's Mantle and Fly Amanita Cap, then one from Venison and Ham. The first one will be 0.1, the other 1 weight unit, but besides that they will be identical and they won't stack. I haven't tried this but likely if it's true, if you dropped 2 corn in the first slot, 2 apples in the second, then one Lady Mantle and one Fly Amatia in the remaining two, you'll get restore fatigue+health that weights 0.1 or 0.2, then replace Lady Mantle and Fly Amatia with Ham and Venison, you'll still get 0.1 or 0.2 instead of (average) 0.5 or so.

And just for laugh combine Pumpkin with Watermelon.

I've tested this pretty thoroughly and I've put my conclusions on the Alchemy page under Weight. It definitely is not controlled by your session in the alchemy tool: if your level goes up during a session the potion weights will change (without any feedback to that effect appearing on the alchemy tool page!) And it's not a question of inventory: the game remembers the information for the rest of that character's life. (Really apparent with the price of Cure Disease potions... took me a while to figure out why those potions were always anomalously cheap). So my conclusion, that I've now put on various pages: any potion with the same name, magnitude and duration of effects will always have the same weight and price as the first one you created. I've modified the discussion on the gripes page accordingly.--Nephele 17:49, 8 June 2006 (EDT)

But having said all that, I have to admit that I don't understand the comment three paragraphs up stating that the player was able to get two potions that were identical other than their weight: in tests of several hundred potions I've never seen that... unless the names of the potions were different. Even adding three or four ingredients with a single common effect, the potion weight won't change. I'd be interested in finding out more details from whomever wrote that comment, because I'm really hoping to make sense of all of these alchemy quirks.--Nephele 17:49, 8 June 2006 (EDT)

Nephele says any potion with the same name, magnitude and duration of effects will always have the same weight and price as the first one you created and he's right with no doubt. I think I've figured out the reason of all these weight differences... I hope that I can express my explanation in clear English!

Potions created with the same set of Apparati and with the same Alchemy ability will weigh and cost the same, in other words will stack together. This implies that if you increase your Alchemy ability all new potions will stay separate from the previously created ones, with the result that you can have more versions of the quasi-same potion which form different stacks. The same thing will happen if you change any Apparatus (e.g. before you had Alembic Expert and now you have Alembic Master).

In this way the statement the player was able to get two potions that were identical other than their weight can be almost justified: some of the above mentioned parameters had just varied (most likely Alchemy ability) so that the potions seemed to be identical, but indeed magnitude and/or duration could differ for a number between 0 and 1 but this difference wouldn't be visible since we know that Oblivion displays non-integer numbers as truncated. There is another possible reason for this quirk: some Magic Effects don't have magnitude and/or duration, so that a Cure disease potion (or similar) created with some Alchemy ability stacks separately from a similar one created after, or with different Apparati.

In short, weight of potion is reset and stored again by the game mechanism each time you change something in your Alchemy world (set+ability). I don't know the exact formula to calculate it, but it should be something like the arithmetic mean of the weight of the ingredients you put in the first Potion you brew.

E.g. I created a Restore Willpower with Minotaur Horn alone (as Alchemy Master with all Master Apparati except the Retort) and it weighed 5, like the ingredient (alas!). When at last I found also the Retort Master I brewed it again with Primrose Leaves, and in fact it weighed 0.1!

I hope I helped to point out the question.

Anyway I ask Nephele to explain me why the Cure Disease potion is always anomalously cheap, because this is still a mystery for me...

—FstTesla^T 14.12, 15 January 2008 (GMT+1)

Cure Disease has no duration or magnitude. So I assume that when you first create this potion it will not change anymore in weight or price for the rest of the game. It could be worth testing if creating your first Cure Disease on a higher Alchemy skill gives a higher price for the potion than if you create your first Cure Disease potion with a lower Alchemy skill. --Timenn < talk > 09:30, 15 January 2008 (EST)

Umm, actually it really is based upon the potion's specified name, magnitude, and duration, not your skill level and equipment, at least based on the 3000+ tests that I've done of alchemy. I have hundreds of examples where my character's skill level has increased but the potion magnitude and duration did not increase (e.g., based on the underlying equations the magnitude went from say 9.9 (rounded to 10) to 10.1 (rounded to 10), and therefore the displayed/saved magnitude did not change); in all of these cases the weight remained at the previously fixed value. And the Cure Disease case also confirms this: because it does not have a magnitude or duration, you can change apparatus all you like, and you never reset the potion (not based upon speculation, but based upon many tests in game; I've also done many tests changing skill level as suggested by Timenn). So the explanation goes back to my original statement, which fully explains everything that I have ever seen when testing the behaviour of alchemy in the game. Other explanations do not correspond to what actually happens in the game.

In other words, all of my tests completely disagree with that one poster's comment. So I believe that any explanation needs more than just speculation about what could have occurred, but actually needs to be verified by someone reproducing it in game. --Nephele^Talk 12:00, 15 January 2008 (EST)

Summarizing all things that have been said, now I'll try to express all the points we share, according to our personal experience:

1. (Alchemy skill & Alchemy Set)→(Magnitude & Duration, if applicable)→(Price)
2. (Ingredients' weight)→(Potion's weight)
3. (Potion's first effect)→(Potion's default name)
4. (Name, Effect(s), Magnitude & Duration, weight, price)→(Potions stack)

This means that:

1. Magnitude and Duration directly depend on your Alchemy stuff, and so price.
2. Potion's weight is calculated with a formula based upon the Ingredients, even if it's a mystery when a new weight is calculated.
3. Of course, doesn't need explanation.
4. Lots of variables contribute to form a single stack of Potions, so that if only one of them changes (without considering the reason of the change), a new stack will be created.

If you agree with these statements, I think that we have a good common starting point from which we can try to point out the question more thoroughly without contraddictions.

—FstTesla^T 13.35, 16 January 2008 (GMT+1)

I'm not too sure what you're trying to figure out here. You do realize that there is already a full page at Oblivion:Alchemy that provides comprehensive and gory details of everything about how making potions work? If there is some type of need for changing that article or doing new research on information regarding alchemy, Oblivion talk:Alchemy would be a far more appropriate place for discussion. In particular, I'm not sure from your question what points in that article you are questioning.

With regards to your points:

• Magnitude and duration have no effect on price. Only your skill and mortar and pestle affect the price (other than the quirk related to when prices reset). See Prices of potions.
• The full details of how alchemy equipment affect magnitude and duration have been fully worked out. See Calculating Potion Strengths.
• The formula for calculating potion weight is also already known. See Weight. I don't even particularly think there's a mystery about when weights get recalculated. Every test I've done shows that it happens when the name, magnitude, or duration of the potion get changed.

The discussion here was started (more than a year and half ago, by the way) based solely on some ancient comments made on this page about the weight quirk. Those comments were made before the Alchemy page had been fleshed out to contain all the current details, and I was trying to get more details on what exactly those contributors were saying had happened to them. However, in my mind one unverified comment does not invalidate all of the other research that has been done on the topic. I personally feel that it's far more likely that one contributor didn't pay careful attention to the details before summarizing what had happened in his/her game.

So, if you have results from new tests made while playing the game that show that something on the alchemy page is incorrect, please feel free to bring it up there. But otherwise, I'm really not sure what is prompting this apparent need to discard everything that has already documented on the alchemy page and start from scratch with a new set of research into how potions work. --Nephele^Talk 11:57, 16 January 2008 (EST)

Thank you for your patient and thorough replies. Maybe now I've understood that, maybe because of my emphasis and because of a wrong comprehension of the actual topic of this discussion, I've extended it beyond the original one, even in good faith. I think I'm going to re-summarize deeply all this matter again (by myself) and retry in the next few days if I can help pointing out the question.

—FstTesla^T 19.15, 16 January 2008

[edit] Nethack

Moving from article: EDIT: Many players, myself included, were turned off to the fact in Morrowind that moving around in combat accomplished absolutely nothing, it was all a numbers game, so combat consisted of standing in front of the opponent mashing attack over and over. If anything, Morrowind feels "dumbed down" to me because the combat system didn't mesh with the free-roaming first-person aspect of the game. I don't understand the idea that because Oblivion has some action elements that it isn't a valid game. A comparison between Oblivion and NetHack is about as valid as a comparison between Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy VII - both tell a gripping story, but with completely different gameplay elements, and nobody would insist that Metal Gear is lame because you don't get to pick your actions from a menu. ^{—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.186.137.31 (talk • contribs).}

Yes, Morrowind's fight system was stats-based, not player reflexes based. That's what makes an RPG game as opposed to an arcade game. Oblivion of course is a valid GAME. Just not a clear RPG as it is advertised to be, but arcade/hack&slash one. Stats and decisions (interaction, problem solving) of the player are essential components of RPG game. A game that dictates you the next move through a forced hint system and limits your decision-making to how to kill another enemy isn't RPG.

-The point of a comparison between Oblivion and roguelikes is that many people are saying Oblivion is not an RPG- it's an action game that might let you make a choice every now and then. Now that I think about it, MGS3 had about as many RPG elements as Oblivion. Different ways to attack, multiple uniforms, slightly different paths to take...the point is, Oblivion is not a true RPG. That's the main gripe. And a comparison is between Oblivion and NetHack is very valid in this sense.

What do you mean? In Morrowind it was very possible to jump back and avoid an NPC/creature's attack. Sure, there were no power moves and you could not block on demand, but it was a little more than just standing in front of someone.

whether or not Oblivion is a "true RPG" or not depends greatly on how you decide to play it. The game certainly has an enormous potential for RPG immersion, so I think most of the gripes center around its flawed combat (and leveling) mechanics and its insanely goofy AI. If the NPC's were a bit more responsive to player-initiated actions (and more varied in *their* responses), I think Oblivion could be a wonderfully rich RPG experience. Future expansions and/or patches could, theoretically, decisively fix this problem. The incredible effects of many player-made "immersion mods" already shows this to be the case, so it's really up to Bethesda to take the hint and give the game a small makeover. It deserves it... Oblivion is still, flaws and all, a compelling and ambitious fantasy game. It's incredible popularity is a clear testament to that fact. ^{—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.186.137.31 (talk • contribs).}

[edit] Dunmer

I'm new here, so if I'm wrong on this, feel free to correct me, but I flatly disagree with the gripe about the Dunmer in the Misc. section of Game Content. It states, "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." I think it would be obvious that the elves that live in the harsh setting of their native Morrowind would of course be different than the ones who have chosen to live (or were "raised") in Cyrodiil. Morrowind is a much less friendly place, suffering from blight and other things long before the start of the game, whereas Cyrodiil is a normal place until soon after the game starts, when the normalcy is shattered. I'm just saying that it makes sense for them to be different, in my opinion.--Mikekearn 23:22, 4 August 2006 (EDT)

Personally... I wish that they'd still have a gruff voice (it doesn't need to be soo bad as in Morrowind --probably because of the Blight and dust in the air makes their lungs dirty--), and when you think about it... they are (in terms of conversation and attitude) exactly like any other NPC (even Orcs have more personality)-- I would have expected them to still be at least a little "different" from the other citizens of Cyrodiil. --Skober 07:07, 28 May 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Walk through the game without killing someone

"Also someone has managed to do the main quest without killing anything or anybody."

I can`t believe that this guy didn`t use any Cheats/Glitches because Mankar Cameron acts like a Sigil Stone in paradise.... (I will try to steal the Amulet of Kings from him and see if i can leave Paradise)

• EDIT: it may also be possible to get his kids to kill him *for* you. I haven't tested this, but after some of the insane riots that I've set off using Fury-type spells, it seems possible. I also like your idea of trying to simply steal it and I'll try that sometime, using a "chameleon suit."

It is impossible to complete the main quest without killing anyone. As it says in the article, you have to kill the ancient Blades, and there are most likely other examples. 84.67.175.26 20:32, 3 November 2006 (EST)

Possibly the person making that claim doesn't count conjuring creatures and letting them fight for you as "killing someone". -- JustTheBast 17:38, 13 February 2007 (EST)

This is a gripe? If it were possible to finish the main quest without causing the death of another character, that would be awesome. And a testament to how much freedom the player has to deviate from the game's script. Maybe this kind of thing will be possible in the next Elder Scrolls game? --Marbx 18:34, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

I take it you don't want to or can not use the console to give yourself an outrages Sneak skill? Also, does this 'not causing anyone's death' include the glitch of going into the Temple of the One immediately and exploiting the glitch coming after that, so the four Blades can remain undead? (I dont recall what the glitch exactly is from the top of my head). (*Possible Spoiler*) Furthermore, to finish the main quest Martin and Dagon need to die, you can state that Dagon isn't technically a humanoid, but Martin certainly is. Am I right to conclude that the Main Quest needs at least those two to die? - Korunox 19:53, 15 February 2008 (EST)

[edit] Useless useless statistics gripe

I've removed this:

• Some "statistics" are useless, such as the "Jokes Told" statictic (Why just jokes? What about Admire, Boast, and Coerce? And why is it grouped with Diseases Contracted?" and the "Books Read" statistic. The game does not in any way keep track of whether you've already read each book or not. You can stand in one place and open up the same book over and over again, and your "Books Read" count will keep going up.

Lots of games have this kind of completely pointless statistics. If the gripe is that the game should make every effort to get them right, then I think some people should lighten up...

First of all, the "jokes told" statistics is really the "number of times you've played the disposition mini-game" statistic, as each round will require you to tell a joke. This is also why having the other counts would make no sense, as they should all be equal. As to the "books read" statistic: yeah, that's arguably a bug and a sloppy way of doing it, but again, nobody should give a damn whether the game accurately counts the number of books you've read. Does anyone really want to be challenged this way? Why would you even bother playing an RPG rather than, say, collecting stamps? Not everything you can do is part of the game challenge. If you want that, check out the Japanese RPGs, they're usually full of this sort of "gotta catch 'em all" crap.

This is a gripes page, after all, so people can complain about anything. Oh, and with persuasion mods, jokes told does not nessicsarly equal the other statitistics. --Dylnuge(talk · edits) 20:14, 21 November 2006 (EST)

As per this above, I have reinstated the comment. While minor, it is still a gripe, and as such, deserves its recognition with the rest. Please sign your comments. --Dylnuge(talk · edits) 20:19, 21 November 2006 (EST)

[edit] A Half-Hearted Defense of Voice Acting

There are two types of voice actor. There are the 'names' that lend the weight of their current or past success in front of a camera to supplement their income for the day when fickle fame fizzles. All the rest fall somewhere on the Entertainment Industry Respect Meter (EIRM) between mimes and game-show hosts. This is despite the fact that the best of them are turning out better performances than you're likely to see from this year's Oscar hopefuls.

Voice acting is hard. You hear the actors from CGI laden blockbusters talking about acting with nothing but a green ball to indicate their acting partner. Voice actors don't even get that. They sit alone in a room with headphones, mic and script. What's worse is it's one of the first parts of production, meaning nothing else is complete or even begun. No animation; storyboards if you're lucky. It's a bitch.

That said, the voice acting in Oblivion does kinda suck. Despite a cast of 12 or more it sounds like the same 3 to 4 voices ad nauseum. I suspect that Patrick Stewart was under-used as the Emperor, as he could have filled the shoes of 5 of the minor character actors. The most annoying flaw of the acting is the varied pronunciations of proper nouns. This is not a fault of the actors but of the director ( bad, Mark Lampert, bad!) who at the very least should have had an underling in charge of continuity.--OGRastamon 19:55, 20 November 2006 (EST)

[edit] Scaled Leveling

Just learn how to play your character and you should have ===> 0 problem. This isn't a cake-walk, but it gets crazy easy once you learn your skill set. Learn how to play the game and stop complaining! Every class and every race and clean up even at the highest difficulty - just learn to play the game.

[edit] Skill and Leveling System

It's pretty funny that you feel 'forced' to take particular combos so you can get 100 luck. You don't need 100 luck to complete the game. 100 luck is only slightly more significant than 'books read' - it just gives you the warm fuzzies.

[edit] Reformating

This page is being increasingly cluttered with gripes and replys to those gripes. Therefore I am proposing a new format. A sample can be found on my Sandbox. --Ratwar 14:23, 20 January 2007 (EST)

Sounds great. Having a proper format that allows for the rebuttals that keep getting added will be very useful. And just having someone look over the page and do some of the basics (like deleting all the signatures) would be a huge improvement. Right now it's hard to do any cleanup on new additions to the page, because the contributors are often just copying the style that they see being used for every other entry. --Nephele 02:24, 21 January 2007 (EST)

What happened to your proposal Ratwar? I just added mods and icons as discussed in Community Portal. I'll gladly reformat the page as per your suggestion, just let me know.

-- Felic 02:49, 16 February 2007 (EST)

I've followed up Felic's changes with some of my own. Comments:

• Felic originally had 22 px icons on his sandbox, then switched to 16 px icons when he edited the page. I think that the 22 px icons actually work a little better, so I've switched to those. If that's not liked, we can switch back to 16px icons just by doing global search/replace.
  • Note: We still need a real 22px size reply icon.
  • Note: Surprisingly, the IMG template is very limited in alignment options (essentially, just left, right and center). This is pretty annoying since bottom alignment would probably look better. I beat on this a bit, but wasn't able to find a way around this.
• I've dropped the Gripe and Reply tags, since the icons take their place.
  • For the one section that I've edited more closely (Item/Spell Management), I've bolded the gist of the gripe to make it stand out.

Again, this is somewhat experimental, but seems more efficient/attractive to me. Note that discussion and tests have gotten spread around a little bit. See also User talk:Felic and Mod Info in Articles. --Wrye 21:58, 17 February 2007 (EST)

Agreed, let's keep the discussion here. I cleaned up my Talk page and left only the discussion bits.

Nice work Wrye, I like it! I was tempted to remove the Gripe/Reply tags, but didn't want to rock the boat too much. I do prefer the 16px icons as they are less prominent and don't cause extra width between lines, but will leave that up to the consensus (what if it's just us two who care? ;) ). Any suggestions on the reply icon, I can whip it up quickly.

-- Felic 03:45, 19 February 2007 (EST)

Just to reply to your earlier question about what happened with Ratwar's suggestion. That change was implemented already; that was when organizing the content into Gripe and indented Reply sections was implemented. This edit was the bulk of that change.

I like what you and Wrye have been doing to the page, and all the efforts that everyone has been making to reclaim this page and get it up to wiki standards :) --Nephele 13:13, 19 February 2007 (EST)

[edit] Ayleids

Unlike what is mentioned in lore, there are no wild elves to be seen, and that is really disapointing. Now, newbies who have never palyed any TES game are telling us veterans that there are no Wild Elves wandering the forests and that they died out a long time ago.--68.192.188.142 22:38, 30 April 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Adding #'s

I've notice ppl make a comment adding up to some thing like: "The noise of Light armor boots is 'difficult to' the ears". Some one put hard on (as in difficult to bare), but it was then re-edited as if some one mentioned an explicit word or phrase. I'm not trying to stir up trouble and definitely acknowledge and respect that NO profanity should be allowed here; but I am curious as to why this would happen (under the given circumstances).--Skober 06:45, 29 May 2007 (EDT)

My guess is that the #####'s were just added by some type of automatic filter that the editor had in place; I've posted a message about it on the editor's talk page. --Nephele^Talk 20:49, 29 May 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Whinge whinge

Now I cant even add balancing issues to gripes without having them removed therefore I have gone through and removed random ones from his page to show just how constructive removing other peoples ideas are. Thanks. Forlornhope 03:07, 20 September 2007 (EDT)

Your edits were removed because pretty much all they did was concur with another reply. That's not really the definition of helpful or constructive. If all you have to say is "I agree!" that doesn't exactl help anyone. --Saruuk 03:32, 20 September 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Spoilers

This section is filled with spoilers for SI. Wasn't expected.

It's on the front page, friend: Because the site's purpose is to provide information, some of this content may contain spoilers. You may want to play the games our articles describe before exploring the site. IWon'tFightUndead 07:21, 26 October 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Annoying Rain Effect

I love Oblivion and in my opinion it is the best game in my collection. However, the fact that rain will fall through a stone ceiling bugged the heck out of me. (ex. the stone plazas in the Imperial City) This was an annoyance I noticed in Morrowind but I hoped they would fix it by now. No offense to Bethesda but I can't see why they couldn't make it to where my character can take shelter from the rain without going inside a building.

[edit] Anti-Gripe

In my opinion there are not many 'serious' gripes, givin how big and complex the game is, so hereby I want to unofficially compliment Bethesda and everyone involved in making the game a very big thumbs-up ^^

(If there is an article for compliments that I missed, then please move this to the appropriate article.) - Korunox 19:38, 15 February 2008 (EST)

[edit] Why Bother

Oblivion is SO broken... there is more wrong with it than is worth fixing. Just play a different game. Bethesda obviously didn't care.

This is not the place for irrelevant comments such as this. If you don't like the game, "Why Bother" visiting a site all about it, and "Why Bother" trying to dissuade people who obviously share an interest in Oblivion from playing it? And if Bethesda didn't care, then why are their games so successful? --HMSVictory 05:16, 23 February 2008 (EST)

[edit] Sigh, not really that important

Personally, one look at the gripe format should have told me enough... but it is obvious that all true gripes have been removed to preserve the "feel good" nature of the page. (Don't argue against it please; the fact is I've read far more... hate... for the game than is presented here). Some gripes even seem downplayed in the fact that they no longer reflect the true purpose of the gripe, which the only reason I'm getting involved with this one is because I find it appalling that my biggest gripe seems to have been turned into... something or another. Either way:

The game puts less emphasis on character development and more on player reflexes and skills. "Turn Based Combat Sucks" "Manually strafing faster than an arrow is AWSOME" "Improved Fighting System" (Okay, it is a good point that Morrowind had a broken combat system... but the game isn't all about fighting)

My interpretation of the gripe is that player skill can vastly outweigh character skill and ruin the point of having skills. I recall reading an article that told me how to beat Oblivion with a level 1 character... and a tone of repair hammers. Yes morrowind's hit rate was absurd, but can YOU heave a sword through an enemy? Let alone a heavier weapon that requires far more control. The general point is that skills are now augmenting player ability instead of determining character ability... and an RPG is not suppose to do that. Lets make a hypothetical RPG, you are a weak inexperienced stable boy who now has to fight, and you pick up the nearby 50lb Axe... Morrowind says "you can lift it, but hell if you can fight with it", Oblivion says "Go right ahead, lift it, and fight like you've been fighting all your life"... (And yes, go ahead an make the claim your character is just "a bad ass")

It's not really just character ability, but the current level of AI doesn't truly support player attacks. Yes, more health and more damage makes things "harder" but if it doesn't fundamentally change your attack style it's really just the same thing over again, and that is what I see constantly in Oblivion. Sigh... who really cares. The point is the AI is based off of skills (sometimes) while the player can practically avoid them.

I'll close by noting that if you believe that pushing a few buttons on the keyboard equates to actually doing something in real life (i.e. I pressed a and I flawlessly dodged that attack) then be my guest, argue that Oblivion makes combat completely realistic... I forgot why I cared in the first place.

As far as the format: Simplifying a gripe to a single line and then letting others attack the argument WITHOUT subsequent attack on their rebuttal only leads to people acting as if the gripe is meaningless. (Or at least, that is my direct interpretation of these pages.) If you are going to list gripes, list them WITHOUT the one sided comments. Or if you're going to list comments, list rebuttals against them. 64.238.179.195 16:57, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

Anyone is welcome to respond to gripes and to replies to those gripes, including the original poster. There's no limit on comments.

As for what seems to be a complaint about Oblivion's combat system, I don't find it fun when I fail to do something (i.e. 'hit' an opponent) and the reason I failed doesn't seem logical. In Oblivion, at least I can hit my enemies by myself, whether I do much damage is determined by my weapon skills, the actual weapon, my strength, and my stamina, in addition to any number of variables applied to my opponent. It would seem that Bethesda agrees that numbers should determine how much damage you do, not whether you hit something, especially when you can clearly see that something and can click your mouse in that general direction. If numbers are going to determine whether I hit or miss, why even bother including the player at all? Just let the computer resolve combat automatically. Have it roll some D20s and let that be the end of it.

You also made a comment about pressing keys not being equivalent to doing something in real life; this is a computer/console game, man, what do you expect? Were you expecting Oblivion to be virtual reality? IWon'tFightUndead 19:49, 9 May 2008 (EDT)