Two weeks to..... Oblivion

Cafe Society
141

The game uses more keys on the keyboard (minus the WASD keys) and buttons on a mouse than there are buttons on the XBox 360 controller. I know a lot of people are complaining here, but I just don’t see the problem. I guess a lot of people would rather hit ‘I’ or ‘J’ or ‘M’ rather than the F1-4 keys, but that’s no big deal at all to me.

I know people want hotkeys for everything, but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. The only game where I used more than a handful of hot keys was for Civ games (though with Civ4, I’ve gone back to using only a few of them).

142

Actually I think that is one of the best parts. Some of the books really go into the history of Tamriel. And, of course, I bought the Collector’s Edition solely for the 112 page ‘Pocket Guide to the Empire’.

F1, then click the tab for skills. You will see (next to the numbers), bars which are filled (red line) to various degrees based on how much you have improved them since you last leveled.

143

I don’t have the game yet, I’m waiting for my new comp to arrive. But is it true we can’t join the Imperial Legion?

144

Not quite. The bar tells you the progress you’ve made to the next skill point. There is no way to tell, between levels, just how many times you’ve raised your mercantile skill (that I know of). It would be useful for the min/max types, but I guess you could just take a screen shot (or 3) at level up and do the math.

145

Anyone else find the NPCs creepy? They’re way more realistic than any game I’ve seen, but they’re not quite 100% realistic, and the combination results in a not-quite-right human face. The mouth moves, but it’s slightly off. The eyes look at you… sort of.

The limited range of emotions is also weird. Like when an NPC is upset - the voice is agitated, or they’re screaming, but the facial expression is, at best, mildly disturbed. Most of the time they carry on like they’re talking about what they had for breakfast, but the words coming out of their mouth are dripping with fright (or excitement, or whatever.)

146

I think they may have missed a bet here. The Fallout games had a simple but remarkably effective gimmick. The faces of the characters talking to you would get happier or angrier as their feelings about you changed, and the look of the face tended to change how you percieved the voice. So, the same recording of the same dialogue seemed angrier with the angry face, and friendlier with the happy face.

147

The Prima guide contains no missions for the Legion. I dunno if that means you can’t join, just that there may be no missions for them as before.

148

Bah. For the glory of Tiber Septim, we should be honored to be in its service. I hope someone mods it in.

149

Damn…went out and got a copy today. Only to discover you need a DvD player to install it. I HAVE a DvD player in my computer…but its not working properly. So, here I have the game, the Prima Guide and a 'fridge full of Guiness plus some time on my hands…and I can’t play the bloody thing! Ah, the humanity!

-XT

150

I dunno… has anyone finished the game? Maybe there is a reason we can’t join the Imperial Legion ;). Or maybe I’m reading too many conspiracies into the plot? :wink:

151

I’ll tell you one thing, “Not now, not later, not ever!” is getting OLD.

Why in God’s name did they use different voice actors for various people but have them record the SAME lines of dialogue for the Speechcraft minigame? Easily the worst design decision I’ve seen in the game so far.

152

Btw, for those complaining that the PC game is a ‘port’ of the XBox, look at Morrowind, which was released for the PC first only used a few keys on the keyboard. In addition to what Oblivion has (minus the cast key, because in Morrowind you could only cast spells without a weapon, and the keep walking forward button) you have a ‘J’ key for the far more crappy journal, you have a ‘previous’ and ‘next’ button for spells and weapons, and ONE more (yes, one) ‘Quick Key’. Go ahead, look at the back of your Morrowind manual. I’m looking at mine. And I am quite sure they didn’t make Morrowind for the XBox first.

So even with Morrowind, Bethesda didn’t use a lot of the keyboard. They just don’t care to do it.

153

Fair enough. Poor interface design.

154

Speaking of horrible design decisions, the more I play this game, the more frustrated and annoyed I’m getting.

A pox upon Dynamic Difficulty! I am finding out that, just like in Homeworld 2, one of the best ways to do well in the game is to not get more powerful. In fact, I could have avoided a whole lot of headache by doing my best to avoid leveling up. Right now I’m a level 12 (or something) Mage, and I’m getting close to total frustration overload.

Instead of, like in Morrowind, being able to configure my character so that I’m able to do well in combaty, every increase in power I gain means that I’ll just face different enemies that are still able to kick my butt.

I’ve raised my intelligence to about 85, but I still don’t have enough magic points to cast more than one or two (fairly) damaging spells. Meanwhile, the game is throwing powerfull enemies at me that are taking forever to whittle down with my (relatively) puny spells, and that can hammer me into goo without too much effort.

Instead of knowing, for instance, that Dungeon X has Creature Y, and if I can just grind my skills a bit more I’ll be able to beat the dungeon, now I know that the more I grind my skills, the more freaking difficult Creature Y is going to be. Many quests I’ve played so far would be much, much less frustrating, and much more fun, if I’d simply stayed at level 1.

I would have much prefered if there was some difficulty-slider that I could adjust in game to make the game more or less challenging if I was getting bored. But, nope, it’s back to the Homeworld 2 mold where there’s no point in getting a bigger fleet (or leveling up), because all it does is make it more difficult for you to do well in the game.

This is just absurd… in Morrowind you could at least craft a spell that would, with a single cast, kill any Golden Saint you crossed paths with. Now, if you can finally get your skills to a level where you can afford to buy an uber-expensive spell, the enemies will have gotten strong enough that your new hand cannon is now scaled back to a pea shooter.

Instead of grinding skills in order to be able to beat parts of the game, now you grind skills in order to make the game harder to beat.

Gah!

155

I agree for the most part with your assessment, although random encounters and stuff being scaled makes sense.

But anyway - options, gameplay… you’ll find a difficulty slider.

156

Random encounters I can understand, and that does make sense. But… for quests? I just spent the better part of a couple hours running around in circles casting fireballs at wraiths in order to complete a dinky mage’s guild quest. Grrr.

You are my new ShorDurPerSav!!! I’m not sure if that option is there on the Xbox version, but boy howdy I’m about to go check. Thanks much!

157

It is there… and now I feel stupid. Thank you very much for your help, I guess I don’t have to jump up and down in frustration anymore.

158

There’s something I must not understand about the levelling attributes system. I really need str, so I made sure to improve blade, hand to hand, and blunt this time, but I only have a 2x str bonus.

159

Perhaps it only counts single skills? So if you go up three in blade, and three in hand to hand, and four in blunt, it just takes the highest as four and goes with that one? I know I’ve been getting 5X multipliers when I’ve been grinding single mage schools.

160

Working from memory…
3 skill raises for one attribute = x2
5 skill raises for one attribute = x3
10 " " " " = x5

So, if between levels you raise:
Blade +1
Blunt +1
HtH +1
That is three strength raises, or x2

Instead, if between levels you raise:
Blade +2
Blunt +2
HtH +1
That is five strength raises, or x3