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[Sordid]

Throwing around magic is not combat?

If you'd been paying attention, you'd have noticed were've been talking about melee combat. Or maybe you're saying that just to be contrary, even at the cost of looking like a fool.

Combat is obviously what the game's geared towards.

Nonsense. The TES series is obviously not geared towards combat.
Get it? You're going to have to do a lot better than that. Sticking "obviously" in front of your opinion does not make it fact.

[Draignean]

Playing Morrowind recently, had a brain wave over the whole mining/woodcutting/etc improvement and how it might be handled. In Morrowind when you trained you spent some gold, time passed, and boom you're all better. It isn't exciting but in Skyrim since it is drudge work you might just start the animation, watch a few frames, fade to black and come back a couple hours later with x resources. Not exciting, but simple enough for them to make it work.

[Sordid]

Ehhhh... that actually sounds really lame. If that's how they're going to do it, I pray to Armok that they'll make the animations skippable. I absolutely HATE how games ported from consoles tend to pad out gameplay time by playing these unskippable animations whenever you do something that you do pretty often, like going through doors or opening chests. They're short, but they do add up and become irritating very quickly.

[Lysabild]

Throwing around magic is not combat?

If you'd been paying attention, you'd have noticed were've been talking about melee combat. Or maybe you're saying that just to be contrary, even at the cost of looking like a fool.

Combat is obviously what the game's geared towards.

Nonsense. The TES series is obviously not geared towards combat.
Get it? You're going to have to do a lot better than that. Sticking "obviously" in front of your opinion does not make it fact.

We were talking time spent fighting, bows in M&B isn't melee either.

[3]

I'll attempt to explain my logic here:

1. The vast majority of game content is geared towards combat of some sort. Nearly all the game's dungeons are difficult, if not impossible, to traverse purely by stealth (thanks to the fact that most of them are just interconnected corridors). If you get spotted, the only way of getting people to stop looking for you is to - big surprise - kill everyone in sight. So without judicious abuse of invisibility (which I think can be safely considered an exploit on its own), you're going to have to fight things. Furthermore, there are virtually no quests that can be solved in a non-violent manner (some of the thieves' guild/mages' guild quests spring to mind, but little else).

2. When you do get into a fight, melee combat skills are almost entirely necessary. Ranged combat isn't designed to be effective at all (and wouldn't be if not for the backpedaling oversight) as anything other than a first strike measure. Magic is largely underpowered - an enchanted weapon (no matter what that enchantment is) will immediately render physical-resistant enemies vulnerable, while spellcasters have to use weakness spells, and spells are far less efficient than melee attacks regardless. Sneak attacks will never do enough damage to oneshot enemies without extreme munchkining, and, as I say, getting spotted by one enemy means he's locked on to you and will never stop chasing you until you get out of his AI range or one of you dies.

3. There is no exploration. There's running errands. You'll either find a place just by chance (because it appeared on the compass or just popped out in front of you), or you'll be being sent somewhere that you already know how to find. Even if I could consider that sort of thing "exploring" there's nothing stopping me from just blowing it off as padding, because there is nothing interesting out there. Well, that's not strictly true, but there's extremely little.

And if you're seriously making the argument that "I spend most of my time running about" makes the game less combat-based, then, well, I don't know. It's like saying that picking up coconuts was the real point of No More Heroes or something.

4. The other elements cited are those minigames that, in usual circumstances, players find chagrin in. But it appears that people aren't afraid of making double-standards when it benefits their argument (yes, I'm generalising. No, I don't care).

[LoSboccacc]

Magic weak? You serious?

I get you never undersrood the Magic weakness and stacking effects?

[3]

Yes, yes, I know all about the 100% magic weakness + 100 drain health for 1 second or whatever the hell it is. It's an exploit of a badly-implemented system. Not part of the design.

[Sordid]

We were talking time spent fighting in melee combat.

FTFY..

1. The vast majority of game content is geared towards combat of some sort. Nearly all the game's dungeons are difficult, if not impossible, to traverse purely by stealth (thanks to the fact that most of them are just interconnected corridors). If you get spotted, the only way of getting people to stop looking for you is to - big surprise - kill everyone in sight. So without judicious abuse of invisibility (which I think can be safely considered an exploit on its own), you're going to have to fight things. Furthermore, there are virtually no quests that can be solved in a non-violent manner (some of the thieves' guild/mages' guild quests spring to mind, but little else).

Having played a stealth-based character extensively, I have to heartily disagree. Sneaking through dungeons is entirely possible. Their layout is entirely irrelevant, it's the amount of light. If it's dark, an enemy won't spot you even if they physically bump into you. And most dungeons are very dark indeed. Getting away after being spotted is a pain, but you can pick the birthsign that gives you invisibility. It's super easy to abuse, true, but if you don't munchkin and don't cross-train your thief in magic or alchemy it's balanced out by the once-per-day limitation.

2. When you do get into a fight, melee combat skills are almost entirely necessary. Ranged combat isn't designed to be effective at all (and wouldn't be if not for the backpedaling oversight) as anything other than a first strike measure. Magic is largely underpowered - an enchanted weapon (no matter what that enchantment is) will immediately render physical-resistant enemies vulnerable, while spellcasters have to use weakness spells, and spells are far less efficient than melee attacks regardless. Sneak attacks will never do enough damage to oneshot enemies without extreme munchkining, and, as I say, getting spotted by one enemy means he's locked on to you and will never stop chasing you until you get out of his AI range or one of you dies.

There are alternatives to fighting. You can for example use charm spells to turn enemies against each other, disintegrate their weapons, or summon creatures to help you.

3. There is no exploration. There's running errands. You'll either find a place just by chance (because it appeared on the compass or just popped out in front of you), or you'll be being sent somewhere that you already know how to find. Even if I could consider that sort of thing "exploring" there's nothing stopping me from just blowing it off as padding, because there is nothing interesting out there. Well, that's not strictly true, but there's extremely little.

Granted, that is a valid objection. There really isn't much of interest in Oblivion. But that doesn't mean the game wasn't designed with the exploration aspect in mind, it just means the exploration aspect was designed badly.

4. The other elements cited are those minigames that, in usual circumstances, players find chagrin in. But it appears that people aren't afraid of making double-standards when it benefits their argument (yes, I'm generalising. No, I don't care).

Would you believe me if I told you I actually liked the lockpicking minigame? Up until the Skeleton Key made it completely irrelevant, that is.

[Lysabild]

We were talking time spent fighting in melee combat.

FTFY..

No idea what this means, but sure.

[Acid]

As I remember playing a Morrowind mage character, apart from the ridiculous sleeping times it was actually too easy for me to play, and I play on the above-moderate difficulty (not boasting here, just agreeing that there is always an alternative to melee.) I did notice though that when using a mixed-class (e.g. not pure mage) character, spellcasting gets shadowed by melee combat (at least in my games.) 

[Draignean]

Ehhhh... that actually sounds really lame. If that's how they're going to do it, I pray to Armok that they'll make the animations skippable. I absolutely HATE how games ported from consoles tend to pad out gameplay time by playing these unskippable animations whenever you do something that you do pretty often, like going through doors or opening chests. They're short, but they do add up and become irritating very quickly.

True enough, but it is something they could do without 'Overwhelming' the player market of idiots and the braindead. It's better than just standing there chopping wood and not actually doing anything which looks like the other big option.

@3

Oblivion for me can't be combat based, when I make archers they invariably end up firing super arrows that introduce a five-element + paralysis poison, the mages can one-shot pretty damn much anything and if it has reflect then they summon Captain nasty to their aid, fighters smash anything out of their way and into the dirt with the power attacks while wearing super armor. Thieves steal everything that isn't nailed down and put poisoned apples out onto every table.

Same with morrowind (Sans apples and poison), and probably same with Skyrim. 

Bulletstorm is about combat, Doom is about combat, Diablo is about combat and lootfest. TES has never been about combat, and hopefully will never be about combat.

If you have Oblivion as a combat game then you have a mediocre hack'n'slash with no gibs and too long between brainfest.

Not modding Oblivion is either laziness or base stupidity, it's a beautiful piece of work when done right.

[Draignean]

We were talking time spent fighting in melee combat.

FTFY..

No idea what this means, but sure.

FTFY = Fuck this, Fuck you.

Or

FTFY= Fixed that for you.

EDIT: Damn, this was supposed to edited into my original post. I do apologize.

[3]

Having played a stealth-based character extensively, I have to heartily disagree. Sneaking through dungeons is entirely possible. Their layout is entirely irrelevant, it's the amount of light. If it's dark, an enemy won't spot you even if they physically bump into you. And most dungeons are very dark indeed.

Besides that last remark (why can I see in dungeons with no torches?), I'll agree that it's possible and concede that point. But more importantly, is there any sort of incentive to avoiding combat (other than metagame stuff like roleplaying)? I don't think I remember picking a single pocket in all the time I've played, and the enemies wear all the good stuff anyway.

There are alternatives to fighting. You can for example use charm spells to turn enemies against each other, disintegrate their weapons, or summon creatures to help you.

Command is extremely underpowered for its cost and never keeps up with level scaling. Frenzy is much better, but (IIRC) its effectiveness via spellmaking is severely capped (making it useless at high levels) and it only affects NPCs, not creatures. Disintegrate weapon/armor is only somewhat effective and doesn't solve the problem of the enemy still walking around trying to hit you. Summoning creatures is a little more viable. I'd still say it's a pretty weak effort - both conceptually and otherwise - on Bethesda's part on encouraging non-combat-focussed playstyles.

Would you believe me if I told you I actually liked the lockpicking minigame?

I frankly wouldn't. It took me all of five minutes to figure out that any character could open any lock, the security skill was pointless even without the Skeleton Key, and that the minigame was basically an extremely repetitive timesink.

Not modding Oblivion is either laziness or base stupidity

Yes, well, unfortunately that's not how conventional game design works. The fact that the modding community has managed to fix the vast majority of things wrong with the game does nothing to alleviate the fact that it could've been a lot better in the relevant regards than it is.

[Draignean]

Not modding Oblivion is either laziness or base stupidity

Yes, well, unfortunately that's not how conventional game design works. The fact that the modding community has managed to fix the vast majority of things wrong with the game does nothing to alleviate the fact that it could've been a lot better in the relevant regards than it is.

So, You're flogging the dead horse that vanilla Oblivion sucked ass and had issues?

I don't think anyone will go too far out on a limb to defend Oblivon's base version, combat still wasn't the focus of the game in Vanilla but the game really didn't manage a focus at all back then.

[Sordid]

Besides that last remark (why can I see in dungeons with no torches?), I'll agree that it's possible and concede that point. But more importantly, is there any sort of incentive to avoiding combat (other than metagame stuff like roleplaying)? I don't think I remember picking a single pocket in all the time I've played, and the enemies wear all the good stuff anyway.

Wait, what? Roleplaying is metagame stuff now? How do you figure that? Oblivion is an RPG. You do know what that acronym means, right? Asking if there's any incentive to do stuff other than to roleplay in a roleplaying game is like asking if there's any incentive to drive around in cars in Need for Speed other than racing.

Command is extremely underpowered for its cost and never keeps up with level scaling. Frenzy is much better, but (IIRC) its effectiveness via spellmaking is severely capped (making it useless at high levels) and it only affects NPCs, not creatures. Disintegrate weapon/armor is only somewhat effective and doesn't solve the problem of the enemy still walking around trying to hit you. Summoning creatures is a little more viable. I'd still say it's a pretty weak effort - both conceptually and otherwise - on Bethesda's part on encouraging non-combat-focussed playstyles.

I didn't say these were particularly effective alternatives, merely that they exist. I agree they could've (and should've) been balanced better and been made more useful. Yes, combat is often the most expedient way of solving a problem in Oblivion, but that's due to developer incompetence rather than by design.

I frankly wouldn't. It took me all of five minutes to figure out that any character could open any lock, the security skill was pointless even without the Skeleton Key, and that the minigame was basically an extremely repetitive timesink.

All gameplay is repetitive when it comes down to it.