Please don’t throw things at me - I didn’t enjoy Oblivion. Don’t get me wrong, I liked bits of it, the setting and the story, and that it’s a TES game obviously, but so much of it didn’t work for me (particularly the core mechanic of the entire world levelling with you) that I never finished it.
I keep hearing ad infinitum how Oblivion is okay but Oblivion with mods is like some kind of religious experience, but whenever I investigate getting the game again and putting some mods on I run into some barriers (I never realised how technologically illiterate I am).
First, I don’t have my original game copy - can I get the steam version and get mods? Stupid question I’m sure. I was thinking of getting the game of the year deluxe edition.
Second - which of the four hundred million billion mods that are on the TES hub site am I supposed to be getting?
Third - how the fucking fuck do you actually install mods? If there is a mod manager function in the game itself I never found it, and all the files in the TES mod site make me want to weep with incomprehension when I read the descriptions.
I really REALLY want to like this game more, and mods are apparently the way, but I need some help. If you sweet people could help I’d be very grateful as then I can play this to tide me over until Skyrim comes out, or even better wait until Skyrim has been patched/modded a bit so that it’s even better too.
Or should I just not bother and get Skyim instead? There appears to be no faith at all that it will be good out of the box despite Fallout 3/NV not having any notable problems that I could tell.
I don’t have time to get to the other questions yet, but I’ve played Oblivion modded and unmodded, and…to be honest, I wouldn’t call unmodded Oblivion “broken,” more “unenhanced.”
TBH most of the issues of Oblivion had to do with its leveling, which I thought was a feature and other people thought was a bug. I thought it was a way of making players think and plan their leveling strategy; other people thought it was an enormous waste of time, which I can understand. (What other game took 30 hours or more to go up 5 levels, as happened to me with the OOO Mod?) Now that that’s been changed, I think Skyrim is going to more accessible unmodded.
IMHO Skyrim is going to be a good game out of the box, and modded Skyrim is going to be a different game. I’m going to be dipping my toes into modding myself, just to keep my programming and algorithmic skills sharp, so I’m curious to see what happens.
First, get Oblivion Mod Manager. It makes things much easier.
Second, install the Unofficial Patch (yup, called just that). Fixes a lot of bugs.
Third, get a levelling enhancer of some kind.
The best place to get mods is here: http://www.tesnexus.com/ You will need to create an account. Mods are rated and have comments so you may get a few ideas of what to try.
As far as just enhancing the look of the game, my favorite mod is Natural Environments. It makes the trees much larger and imposing, makes the weather more variable, and makes the vegetation more lush.
Eh, the mods are nice and a major improvement, but don’t expect miracles. A lot of the overhaul mods idea of “rebalance” is “make everything punishingly difficult”. Which is to some people’s taste, but I found that many of those sorts of mods made the game a major chore (especially at lower levels). Of course, the balance of vanilla Oblivion was (IMO) broken in the other direction, being blandly easy from beginning to end, and scaling everything such that your level 1 character could beat the game as easily as a max-level character. But if I guess that was your major complaint, the overhauls might be for you.
The cosmetic mods are great, as well as some of the interface and gameplay tweaks.
Choosing, collecting, installing, managing, and fixing all the mods you’re interested in is a major undertaking in itself. Expect to spend many hours at it, and you’ll always be stuck with the nagging feeling that you installed one too many or there’s one more that will fix some weird thing that came up or…
I liked Oscuro’s Oblivion Overhaul as it’s fairly extensive. You can even pick and choose which parts you want - the whole thing is at least partly a mixing of some other mods in a way that they worked well together. I did end up tweaking some of the skill adjustments for my character, and didn’t use the full version. One thing you find with mods like this is that they’re slightly skewed toward the roles or quests the author likes. But having the ability to choose from so many features and know they’ll still work okay is one reason I went with it.
It’s easy. Find your Oblivion install directory. For the Steam version, it will be something like:
C:\Steam\steamapps\common\oblivion
Within the Oblivion folder, there will be a subfolder called Data. All the mods and game data files are in this folder. By default, the structure will look sort of like this:
The mod files will be downloaded as zips or rars, or possibly 7z. You unzip them into the data folder, making sure the subfolder material goes in the right subfolder.
Then when you launch the game, and the launch window appears, There should be an option marked “Data” (I forget the right word, I don’t have OB installed at the moment. ) Open that option and click the mod file to enable it. Then close that window and start the game.
The Oblivion Mod Manager will install things automatically for you. When you download a file it should tell you if it’s in the Oblivion Mod Manager format or regular zip formats.
OTOH, if you prefered with the leveling in Fallout as opposed to Oblivion, Skyrim is supposedly going to be more like Fallout. If you already don’t like Oblivion, you might as well move on, rather than buy it a second time.
While there are tons of extensive mods out there, the one I praised God for the most is a very simple one - automatic +5s to any stat except Luck on level up.
No more skills fuckery like picking Majors you’re never ever going to use, no more tracking which skills increased since the last level up, no more doing things only this or that way else you’re screwing yourself.
You know what, I think I might just stick with Skyrim. It’s not that I’m ungrateful for the advice, but I’ve watched the evolution of Bethesda’s game mechanics through the recent Fallout games and really enjoyed them. If Skyrim is following that trend (and what I know of it suggests it will) I think I’d rather go for that.
**Lazy **- actually my problem was that the game has no sense of progression as it was originally designed. You started off killing rats and chugging potions that gave you +20 HP, then you started killing bandits and chugging potions that gave you +100 HP, then you started killing Daedra and barrow wrights and chugging potions that gave ou +500 HP. The progression just seemed so steady that you were ALWAYS facing opponents matched to you, there was no sense of you getting stronger and being able to take on previously out of bounds areas, or being too weak to go anywhere. It was all just equally difficult.
I much prefer the fallout 3 system, as I said before, it actually made me feel like I was getting somewhere for my effort.
Another vote for Oscuro’s Oblivion Overhaul, OOO for short. I thought vanilla Oblivion was just a stupid console game, but OOO turned it into a great RPG that I played through many, many times.
I certainly hope your optimism for Skyrim’s systems pans out. I don’t consider the systems in Fallout to be Bethsoft improving themselves – it was already there before they got a hold of the IP, and they would’ve been DOA if they changed any of it (though adapting VATS to counterbalance the switch to first person was pretty brilliant). But if they happen to take a page from it for Skyrim, then all’s the better.
Honestly - and I know this is OT - you really don’t need to do any of that. Just play the game, use whatever skills you want and don’t stress about getting that magical +5 on level up. You don’t -need- that +5. Going out of your way to meta game the level up system just to get that +5 is what causes the problems with the leveling system. You only get 100 points in every stat. Getting +5 every time means you’ll just hit the cap lower than someone who levels with +3’s.
In the end, you’re going to have a 100 points in all your stats and all the skills you care about. You’ll get there no matter how points you get each level. There’s no need to twist yourself into knots just to get to the same destination that the normal players get.
I’m sorry, are you trying to tell me not to do what makes my character the most powerful ? Does not compute I’m pretty OCD about doing things “perfect” in RPGs. To give you an idea, I always tend to start out as a thief-type character, because the sight of locked chests I can’t open in the training areas drives me batty. I know there’s only 3 gold and a healing potion in there. I know in 30 minutes of game time I’ll be drowning in potions and gold.
I still want that one too. I *need *that one too. I don’t just want loot, I want all of the loot. All of it. Call it my Garrett obsession. That or I was a magpie in a previous life, whatever
Bottomline: on a conscious level, I know I don’t really need to do that. But it’s there, taunting me.
Besides, the game does fuck you if you don’t get at least your Endurance up first thing. The difference between achieving 100 Endurance on level 5 and level 25 can be to the tune of a couple hundred hit points. Which is not insignificant considering how hard Daedras can whack you for (esp. with mods)
I know exactly what you mean… like Pokemon… gotta get them all! (Actually I never played that, it’s just a good phrase for the moment.) That was almost the death of me playing Arcanum. Couldn’t pass a damn trashcan without rumaging thru it for parts. Nevermind that I had to bump up my strenght to carry all that trash around, you never know when you’ll need another spike trap or smoke bomb! (Right… those things never worked out… just hit it with the axe like you always do.)
My favorite thing about Oblivion was the custom spells. It felt like the world was more open somehow. I can’t wait for the day when we can just plug the damn computer in our heads and play these things in VR. It would be awesome (and pointless) if your character skills required you to have the skillset knowledge irl.
Somebody has figured out how to use Oblivion mods to go all Rule 34 on everything (link spoilered because some images are NSFW) including characters from other games. Had no idea the game was that flexible:
I’m pretty OCD about doing things “perfect” in RPGs. To give you an idea, I always tend to start out as a thief-type character, because the sight of locked chests I can’t open in the training areas drives me batty. I know there’s only 3 gold and a healing potion in there. I know in 30 minutes of game time I’ll be drowning in potions and gold.