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[Cheese]

In Morrowind in New Vegas, though...

Oh my god, I definitely want to play Morrowind in New Vegas.

Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for an ash storm...

House Dagoth, Where the Jackpots are higher than the red mountain.

Playing roulette with Dagoth Ur's head or the more extreme Russian roulette with cliff riders.

[PTTG??]

I like that one. That's the RR where you use a full clip and an AK-47, but instead of aiming at yourself, you aim at the cliff racers. It's really quite different from regular RR.

[Soadreqm]

I would consider the assumption that you can always kill any enemy the result of a design flaw, that being that you often CAN kill any enemy by reloading enough times until you achieve the proper mix of luck, and employing the right combination of items/heal potions in your inventory. I kind of dislike heal potions because oftentimes you can just carry so many of them that all fights just become a matter of chipping away at the enemy, no matter how strong they are. Even if they can annihilate you in a few hits, you can just keep chipping away and guzzling the red juice until they're dead. I think a good design would somehow discourage that type of thing.

Alchemy could definitely do with some nerfing, but I'd say the actual problem is the wide range of tactical options available. If you can call it a problem, that is. In Morrowind, you can drink magical elixirs that completely restore your health, fly out of reach of your enemies, boost your stats to be completely ridiculous and use a 100 point chameleon spell to render the AI completely incapable of dealing with you in any constructive manner. That last one could be handled better, but I'd say it's reasonably realistic. Oh, and you can deal five thousand points of damage with certain arrows that are probably an easter egg. All this obviously lets you kill most anything given enough preparation time. With the arrows, you can slay Dagoth Ur without removing his source of immortality first, breaking the game scripts that let you finish the plot. Batman would be proud.

While many of these things are individually way more powerful than they have any right to be, you'd still be able to kill things way bigger than yourself even if they were nerfed. I don't really think there's anything wrong with that, either. Having many ways to address a problem, and being able to address larger problems by knowing more about the game are a big part of what makes it fun.

[LoSboccacc]

and spell weakness combos

[Sensei]

...I'd say the actual problem is the wide range of tactical options available. If you can call it a problem, that is.

I think -albeit no small task- the best fix here would be to create AI that can deal with what the player throws at them. For example, melee-only characters are OK, but  you can fly. What if they hid when they couldn't find a path to you instead of going as close to you as possible? Or better, what if they turned it against you on occasion.

Edited, because I left out an important sentence. 

[Shadowlord]

Most games that I've played that notice that kind of thing do a cheap cop out instead, where the enemies go "Hmm, I can't reach you now, so LOL YOU CAN'T HIT ME ANYMORE." It's just about the most annoying thing I've ever seen in a non-MMO. World of Warcraft, at least, has a valid reason for doing it (So someone can't just stand on a lake or rock and leave their character shooting the same mobs all day long to gain XP without any risk, especially if they're ones which could normally kill the character).

But in a singleplayer game, if you manage to achieve such positioning that the enemies can't get to you, you should be rewarded, not punished. You don't see medieval castle defenders suddenly discovering that their arrows cannot hit their attackers, because their attackers can't reach them up on the tops of the walls, do you?

[tolkafox]

Just curious, but has the character building from oblivion been modified? It was fun if you're playing without a clue as to what the hell you're doing, but after you know how to properly build your character it blows.

I just don't want to stand there letting a crab hit my shield so I can train my endurance. I don't want to. "No, don't choose blade weapons for your swordsmen! He'll level up too fast and won't stand a chance when he's level 42!"

[Sensei]

It sounds like they're changing it a lot- and they've said one of their goals is to eliminate "don't make the skills you intend to use your major skills" syndrome.

[Soadreqm]

...I'd say the actual problem is the wide range of tactical options available. If you can call it a problem, that is.

I think -albeit no small task- the best fix here would be to create AI that can deal with what the player throws at them. For example, melee-only characters are OK, but  you can fly. What if they hid when they couldn't find a path to you instead of going as close to you as possible? Or better, what if they turned it against you on occasion.

Well, some things would be pretty easy to script. Like making spellcasting enemies use Dispel if you're flying and they're not. Or a wide-angle area effect Dispel if you're invisible. Actually, Dispel would also remove the magic stat buffs. Mysticism is the strongest school. Running away would make sense too. Enemies should really run away more often. I think that came up earlier in the thread.

Just curious, but has the character building from oblivion been modified? It was fun if you're playing without a clue as to what the hell you're doing, but after you know how to properly build your character it blows.

I just don't want to stand there letting a crab hit my shield so I can train my endurance. I don't want to. "No, don't choose blade weapons for your swordsmen! He'll level up too fast and won't stand a chance when he's level 42!"

A good solution to this in Morrowind was to just not use the damn trick, since the game gives you enough levels to max out anything important even if you don't get the best modifiers every time. Not sure how bad it was in Oblivion. Does the game really get too hard if you don't pay attention to leveling?

[3]

The way I see it, Morrowind gave the player so many broken items that it was only a matter of time before levels ceased to matter. Not so in Oblivion, where quest rewards are level-scaled and do not readjust. Since everything you're getting (and fighting) is scaled, you absolutely have to get the most out of each level, otherwise you're just digging yourself an ever-deeper hole. The game was (is?) also very good at scaling things badly resulting in random skeletons with 300 health that take forever to kill but aren't anything of a threat other than in attrition.

There are tons of character advancement mods for Oblivion, most created specifically for dealing with the said apparent issue.

[RF]

On the topic of running away: See Resident Evil 2. You KNEW you could kill Tyrant at certain points in the game (well, knock him down) and every time you did, you'd get an amazing item / piece of an amazing item.

But was it really worth wasting herbs / ammo doing it? It was entirely your choice, and a lot of players just ran away instead of doing it.

Why don't more games do this?

[scriver]

I think what Beth is doing to the character builds seems pretty good for the game (and remember that I'm one of those old Morrowind "they changed it now it sucks" geezers and "hardcore" RPG wannabee fanboys. Well, slightly. At least). Getting rid of the attributes, for example, seems like the smart thing to do - they've always been a broken part of the system, and there never where any outside-of-combat use for them. As much as I would have liked TES to morph into a deeper game with attributes having a bigger impact on what you can do, we all know that's not going to happen. It's a "light-weight" action game, and "streamlining" the action elements is probably healthier for the system. Different combat builds can be made from skills alone, with the perks making sure they don't all end up the same.

This is probably the only issue I'm hopeful about. Well, that and the exploration part. But I'm a bit more confident about that, since F3 made real headway over Oblivion. I think they actually learned something from Oblivion in this regard, even if they won't admit that it wasn't the gaming jewel of the century.

[Sordid]

They won't admit that Oblivion wasn't the gaming jewel of the century.

In other news, Oblivion's 5th anniversary special edition can be yours for only $30. Bargain of the century.

[tolkafox]

If you stick to the storyline quest and don't lvl past 21 it's fine, not nearly enough for anyone to notice.

But if you want to close all of the oblivion gates first, good luck playing completely ignorant. I remember around lvl 43 oblivion's creatures took forever to kill, and certain ones (ice boss in frozen plateau) could kill me in two bloody hits. At a certain point it changes from fun hit/run or hack/slash to hit/run/heal/hit/run/heal/hit/run/crapoutofpotions.

The main problem is the endurance leveling. If they changed it to be an instant effect instead of a level by level effect it would be better. Essentially, if you don't max your endurance at the very beginning you're going to be screwed later on.

Also, alchemy needs to be nerfed so badly. What's the point in raiding dungeons when I can turn 100G of food into 1k? Vampirism needs to be fixed as well, some way to disguise yourself or hide your face so you can do quests without everyone yelling at you. Making you go to a secluded hut as a vampire was fun though Quick vampire tip, being underwater slows the pain of the sun.

[zilpin]

Oblivion was a good game .... after downloading 1gb of mods from TES Source .... which no longer exists ... and if you never care about the main plot .... and you play mod plots instead .... and ....

Never mind.  It sucked.  The community around it was good, the engine was good for modding.
Wish they would apply that talent to a game which released source code, thus could be maintained by equally creative programmers.
Hint Hint, Wink Wink, Nod Nod.