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Going back kto the levelling and rarity of items, I honestly don't have a problem with the enemies in Skyrim being too good or too bad. Bandit Chiefs with high-level weapons and armour are great for those of us who don't want to spend hours buffing smithing, and offer a nice challenge even at higher levels. At the same time, sometimes having a bunch of weaklings to hack up at high levels is also fun at times, so I don't see how having enemies at your level and below is a problem. Also, while you can make yourself pretty much untouchable at about level 50+, you don't have to; I have had characters at that level running around with steel or silver swords, basic crossbows and leather armour. It makes the game much more fun, I think, to see how far you can go with your first weapons than to just trade them in as soon as something shinier turns up.

I also much prefer the level system in Skyrim; on Oblivion, it was all just numbers and a slow slog to increase them, whereas the perk system on Skyrim (and not having to choose major/minor skills) give you far more freedom in building and progressing with a character.

 Psienesis wrote:
... the Champion of Cyrodiil did not become the Avatar of Akatosh, The final, "game-ending" quest is nothing more than a simple escort mission. The CoC is just some guy/gal.

The Campion of Cyrodil becomes Sheogorath, Daedric Prince of Awesomeness (and Madness). This is even insinuated heavily in Skyrim.

 Paradigm wrote:
Going back kto the levelling and rarity of items, I honestly don't have a problem with the enemies in Skyrim being too good or too bad. Bandit Chiefs with high-level weapons and armour are great for those of us who don't want to spend hours buffing smithing, and offer a nice challenge even at higher levels. At the same time, sometimes having a bunch of weaklings to hack up at high levels is also fun at times, so I don't see how having enemies at your level and below is a problem. Also, while you can make yourself pretty much untouchable at about level 50+, you don't have to; I have had characters at that level running around with steel or silver swords, basic crossbows and leather armour. It makes the game much more fun, I think, to see how far you can go with your first weapons than to just trade them in as soon as something shinier turns up.

I also much prefer the level system in Skyrim; on Oblivion, it was all just numbers and a slow slog to increase them, whereas the perk system on Skyrim (and not having to choose major/minor skills) give you far more freedom in building and progressing with a character.

In both games, something I have always wanted, is for example leather armour of many different levels. So I dont have to walk around in armour I think is nice but is pretty useless because its low level.

In Oblivion you are rewarded for using skills. If you do something enough it will keep getting better and your skill tree will gain skills naturally. For example if I use a blade a lot, both during the game and during leveling up im rewarded by having an increase of blade skill constantly. At the same time increasing the major skill associated with blade will make my use of other minor skills of the same tree better. It feels like a better system to me, it progresses as you play. The one problem with this system is that you can exploit it by making a character thats opposite to your intended character, then abusing it for 5+ level ups.

Oddly enough in Skyrim I miss making a class. Like the best bit of any RPG is making a class and character.

Next character im actually gonna do the main quest line, do the Oblivion gates stop once you have closed all the gates? Or are they like the Dragons that never go away?

Oblivion gates close when they get closed and won't re-open. More will open as the Main Questline progresses, until they're all gone after you're done with it.

Thats a relief, I dont wanna be closing gates for ever haha.

Cheers

 Psienesis wrote:
... the Champion of Cyrodiil did not become the Avatar of Akatosh, The final, "game-ending" quest is nothing more than a simple escort mission. The CoC is just some guy/gal.

And then later became Sheogorath.

I made a new character last night (Nord who uses Heavy Armor, Blade, Conjuration and Destruction). Played the main quest up till you need to open the portal to Paradise. Felt good to be playing Oblivion again.

Until I had to pick a lock. I fething hate the lockpick minigame.

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:
I made a new character last night (Nord who uses Heavy Armor, Blade, Conjuration and Destruction). Played the main quest up till you need to open the portal to Paradise. Felt good to be playing Oblivion again.

Until I had to pick a lock. I fething hate the lockpick minigame.

Thats why the skeleton key exists, first thing you should do when you hit level 10 is go get it

Handy tip with picking the lock, something I noticed last night which made it easier, is to tap the pin 3 times before you attempt to keep it up. There is a pattern and you can get the slow ones very easily.

My issue with the game's plot that you weren't the hero. Nah you were the guy who just did the legwork. Martin to me comes away as being the important one. Sure yes it was entirely necessary to have a guy helping him on his way, but without Martin you wouldn't have been able to do anything.

OK yes you were a hero and all, just that you seemed like more of a dogsbody at times. The Nerevarine was the guy who actually defeated the big bad and all I mean. To me it would have fit more if you were the one to kill the big bad at the end, not to put down the ending of course.

Though on the subject of the Nerevarine, and something somewhat lost with Skyrim, I did like that you really were just some guy (the same with Oblivion actually, though less bullgak being involved). Not some last of your kind hero, nah they needed someone to think they were a reincarnated king, so picked some random guy off a prison ship. ,,,Canonically you apparently were really Nerevar, but I like it better to think that they just needed someone for the job and you seemed to fit. However by you thinking you're the Nerevarine and acting like him you the Elder Scrolls did their reality altering thing and as a result that random prisoner actually became something they weren't (as in people are capable of manipulating the scrolls if they know what they're doing, case in point the Thalmor trying to bring down reality in Skyrim). Hmn, though I'm getting a bit OT here.

Ack, but that's me being a bit meta. That Morrowind itself states that the whole thing really is just a video game (Vivec was just your average NPC until her saved scummed his way to godhood according to some books) shows the series attitude to canon. Players can think and do what they want with an individual game's plot, and what they do is the truth to that playthrough. Come the next game though Bethesda put together the Elder Scrolls are being able to rewrite history, so even if you happened to do one thing, something else may be regarded as canon due to the events being altered (there's that whole faction in the Mages Guild in Skyrim who deleted themselves from history and so wound up working outside of the bounds of reality). Though in case anyone didn't happen to notice things have been at a stand still for hundreds of years in Tamriel due to its existence as the Arena, so everything's reset to the status quo by the Scrolls. Try and mess around with things too much and things are brought back into line (the Dwemer being destroyed for trying to mess around with things too much as a way of correcting the balance).

...Tsk, I think I read in game books too much. The regular games are just generic fantasy settings, the whole reality manipulating thing's hardly delved into at all (and by that token that these changes all happen because Tamriel's really just a video game setting). =P

 EmilCrane wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:
I made a new character last night (Nord who uses Heavy Armor, Blade, Conjuration and Destruction). Played the main quest up till you need to open the portal to Paradise. Felt good to be playing Oblivion again.

Until I had to pick a lock. I fething hate the lockpick minigame.

Thats why the skeleton key exists, first thing you should do when you hit level 10 is go get it

I know, I'm still only level 5, had to do it for Sheogoraths vanilla quest to get Wabbajack. 5 tumbler lock and I was only skill 14. But I did eventually notice the pattern in the tumblers, like Swastakowey said.

Tsk, did you then reload a save from before you did Sheogorath's quest, but that has to be one of the better Daedric ones. Its fun to do it at different point through the Shivering Isles quest line, be it at the start when you're some nobody, in the middle when you're berated for not handling the real issue of youknow the whole end of the world thing, or at the end when Haskill replaces Sheogorath as the one giving the voice over. Personally I never really found much use for the item so I wound up just doing it for the dialogue (I'm pretty happy they replaced the default squeaky voice with new guy from the DLC for one).

Both oblivion and skyrim are similar in that you can pick any lock in that you can pick any lock regardless of your skill, its just harder.

In morrowind you were just SOL.

Morrowind was like most RPGs where it was percentile skill based. Like a pen to paper one.

I think getting rid of that and heading towards more of an action style game really got its popularity going. Much like fallout 1 and 2 bieng traditional then it exploding with fallout 3.

If my memory is correct in morrowind you could fail almost everything based on skill/fatigue like spells.

 Swastakowey wrote:
Morrowind was like most RPGs where it was percentile skill based. Like a pen to paper one.

I think getting rid of that and heading towards more of an action style game really got its popularity going. Much like fallout 1 and 2 bieng traditional then it exploding with fallout 3.

If my memory is correct in morrowind you could fail almost everything based on skill/fatigue like spells.

Yes, spells, attacks, alchemy, anything

You're certainly right about increasing popularity, and personally I think oblivion got the right mix of proper RPG stats and leveling and ease of play.

Thats how feel too, as much as I love tradition style roleplays, I can do those with my mates any time. A good mix is always welcome as something different.

For example the fallout 1 and 2 games, you can take them as they are, put them to paper and they will work with a bunch of mates. And thats what we ended up doing, in fact I think it came with the disks we got. Many of the old games where percentile based (I think thats the term) but being able to play a game that takes the bases of the RPG and mixes them with a little excitement is pretty decent to have.

Well, FO1 and 2 were developed by Interplay/Black Isle while FO3 is a Bethesda game, and FONV is an Obsidian Studios game. The change in the format of the game has as much to do with the studio developing the game as it does any natural evolution of the game itself.

Wasteland 2 is more of a "modern" Fallout, in the sense that you can draw a direct line to it from FO1.

This isn't to say I don't like FO3 or FONV, because I certainly do, but the whole "vibe" of the game definitely changed going to an FPS-style engine.

I'm going to have to re-install Oblivion after reading this. Not played it since Skyrim came out, and after hitting 1000 hours on that it's probably time to add to the over 1000 hours of Oblivion I had played up 'til then.

If I remember right, my last character had a set of clothes which gave him 120% Chameleon,
and a set of Feather (to a ridiculous amount),
and a set of absorb/reflect magic,
and a set of reflect damage (enough that I could walk in a room full of people, not lift a finger, and they would all be dead before me),

I'm sure there was something else, but I can't remember.
All my characters would have a shield of detect life and one of night-eye (sometimes a ring) and would switch between them in dark caves etc...
I miss the night-eye enchantment, even if I did spend a great deal of time looking at a blue screen.

By that time, it was just an exercise in purely collecting stuff (which is the main thing for me in these games).
I'd start off raiding places, taking all the loot (sometimes making multiple trips), keeping the best and selling the rest. Until I got a house... It's the same every time, get a house and then think, "I'll just store these here and sell them later"... later, I have a house full of stuff that no-one can afford to buy off me... and I keep collecting more.
One of my characters had a collection of skulls, for no reason but to see how many I could find.

and I would sneak everywhere, at all times. Was always the first thing to level up.

I did make a point of finding every marked place in both Oblivion and Skyrim. Not found anything new in Skyrim since ~700 hours (when I'd long thought I had found everything), a hatch in a small island in a small lake; been to the island before, didn't find that hatch.

I actually miss the weapons and armour becoming damaged. When I saw the forges in Skyrim, I thought it would be great to repair things at an actual place rather than somehow combining two swords to make a better one, but no, you make new things and they never degrade, ever. Weird.

I seen a mod for Skyrim which does add the degradation back in actually (because yeah there's a mod for everything). If you have a flawless sword over time it'll go down in the levels of upgrading until its just a regular sword, and probably after that becomes a worn version.

Heh, it did strike me as weird the first time I did it that yes you could have 100% Chameleon, but I suppose it took me long enough to find out that the devs didn't think to patch it out. Invisibility runs out and doesn't allow you to attack. It was odd to be able to run about with Chameleon for ever and be able to stab away at enemies without them doing anything to you. Yeah, if you want to cheat your way through the game with zero effort that'll let you do it.

Personally though I preferred just wearing a nice looking outfit without enchantments. Come to think of it I'd love if someone ported the Amber Armour set to Skyrim. ...Well the one which changes the green cloth to brown and adds a new helmet. Actually as far as Oblivion goes I spent a silly amount of time in the Shivering Isles as opposed to Tamriel. There wasn't so many mods for it sure (I had to spend a good while porting over a few item and enemy mods myself for it), but I really liked the look of that DLC compared to the generic fantasy Cyrodiil. It would have been nice if there had been even a hint towards the forces of Order in Skyrim, and I was hoping for one, but for some reason they were left out. Hmn, though Skyrim tried to distance itself from Oblivion that much that it doesn't even include many Daedra (I like the rarity of Dremora, but it would have been nice for Conjurer's to summon Clanfears and Scamprs, or at least non-Mehrunes Dagon related Daedra. I don't even think there's a mod that fixes that), so I guess that was to be expected.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Hmn, though Skyrim tried to distance itself from Oblivion that much that it doesn't even include many Daedra (I like the rarity of Dremora, but it would have been nice for Conjurer's to summon Clanfears and Scamprs, or at least non-Mehrunes Dagon related Daedra. I don't even think there's a mod that fixes that), so I guess that was to be expected.

I've seen a mod that puts Golden Saints and Dark Seducers into Skyrim as playable races, but I don't know of one that puts them on the summon list, or the random encounter list.

There's a mod which takes the Daedra from the Skyrim Monster Mod and puts them into the game actually. However the models are mostly hacked up versions of other creatures, so its not amazing. I'd prefer if someone actually made models which looked like what they're based on I mean, but I guess people are fine putting out yet another high poly skimpy armour set instead. I know Skyrim's supposed to be distancing itself away from the Daedra heavy Oblivion, but it seems odd that Conjurers only summon atronaches rather than the common Scamp. So there's that mod, and I think I found one which takes the Dragonborn Daedra and adds them to Conjurer's, but for a game that's been out for years its a damn shame that nobody's made a mod which adds in such an integral thing to the series to that game.

Hmn, are the inhabitants of the Shivering Isles Daedra btw? I mean the Grummites, etc, not the Goldern Saints/Dark Seducers. I seem to recall that Sheogorath didn't create the Shivering Isles, he just rules it. So it is on another plane to Tamriel, and it is ruled by a Daedroth who has altered it to an extent, but I don't think he created its inhabitants. ...Or is this me just misremembering the background (yes which is rather full of crap not exactly apparent in your regular playthrough unless you want to sit for hours reading everything)?

The Saints and Seducers (and anything that lives in Oblivion) is a Daedra. The world literally means "not our ancestors" in ancient Altmer, so it's a pretty broad word.

Reading the wiki article yeah, Balliwogs, etc are Daedra. Sheogorath moving in and taking the place over was forgetting that the place used to be entirely different in its original Order guise. The bottom feeder type creatures remind me that in the novels there's unintelligent animal like Daedra clambering about in the background in scenes set in the Oblivion realms (for instance when a character falls into some water there's things swimming around in it with them). Hmn, I guess Daedra are seen as being those demonic, but intelligent creatures which the player fights in the games. Realistically though in the realms you may find Daedric butterflies or whatever I suppose.

Ah right and Daedra are those that descended from the Princes, whilst men and mer come from the Aedra right? Though the whole setting's a bit weird in that it has multiple planes, not just your typical Nirn and the Daedric realms. IIRC elves come from a different plane which was merged with Nirn and destroyed. God the setting really does read like its part of D&D (someone must have made a supplement for it by now ...then someone else ran a campaign with it as part of Planescape), though a roleplaying game would actually be kind of cool come to think of it.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Frankenberry wrote:
Not sure if you care, but there is a modding group that's remaking both Morrowind (for the true-masochists) and Oblivion for use with the Skyrim engine. I can't recall the name of the group nor the title of the remastered games, but it's a pretty popular up and coming release.

Also, I loved Oblivion too but Skyrim made the franchise better - if cheapening the overall TES feel.

So is it a total conversion for Skyrim then?

I believe so, they're taking the Skyrim engine and reworking Oblivion and I dont know if the same team is doing Morrowind, but there's a remake in progress.

I saw someone mention Elsweyr, there's a (skyrim again) total mod that adds in the Khajit homeland - got pretty rave reviews from Nexus and Brodual on Youtube.

I've seen attempts at such large scale expansions before, but they take so long that a lot are dropped. I mean Tamriel Rebuilt for Morrowind's still going, but that's certainly a simpler task to achieve given that a lot of the dialogue is text based. Morroblivion looked all right when I last looked at it, but rather than the makers creating everything from scratch they just ported over the Morrowind assets, and so whilst it was cool to go back to Morrowind, I don't think they changed much from the base game and it felt a little empty. Now it would be cool to go back to an earlier game's setting with a newer engine, but the problem that I have with remakes is that they don't update what's there to fit what's going on in the current timeline. I guess that's fine and all, but then its a case that I'm just replaying an older, if updated game, with the fault that when I played the older game I felt like I needed to install a ton of mods, things which aren't always available with the remakes (IIRC Morroblivion allowed you to use mods, but I don't know if that included the dialogue or just world objects). So I'd give Skyblivion a shot, but given that its not set at the time of Skyrim I'd have trouble playing it alongside my Skyrim playthrough, minding that Cyrodiil's changed a deal with the whole Imperial succession and Oblivion crisis things.

Moonpath to Elsweyr was all right from a visual standpoint, but at the time I played it I didn't think the quests were too amazing. Its not an open world, rather a set of areas, which is fine, but just something to note. That does allow it to have some fairly interesting locations though and that's the mod's strongest point. At the least I enjoyed the Skyrim engine being used for something other than snow, which I'll say that it makes jungles and deserts look pretty nice actually (a real shame then that Bethesda decided to cancel the damn Hammerfell expansion then).

Wyrmalla wrote:I seen a mod for Skyrim which does add the degradation back in actually (because yeah there's a mod for everything). If you have a flawless sword over time it'll go down in the levels of upgrading until its just a regular sword, and probably after that becomes a worn version.

I shall have to investigate that next time I go back to Skyrim.

Heh, it did strike me as weird the first time I did it that yes you could have 100% Chameleon, but I suppose it took me long enough to find out that the devs didn't think to patch it out. Invisibility runs out and doesn't allow you to attack. It was odd to be able to run about with Chameleon for ever and be able to stab away at enemies without them doing anything to you. Yeah, if you want to cheat your way through the game with zero effort that'll let you do it.

Yeah, there's that moment when you realise that you can enchant things with 20% Chameleon AND that you can have 5 such items, and for a while it is great. Then it can get a bit boring. That's why I stopped my latest Skyrim character, I could sneak up and kill a dragon with one hit (and that's without Chameleon. Silent shoes, legendary sneak, x15 dagger damage, and a high damage dagger). Where's the challenge...

That's the point where I go off to find the last few places I haven't been and start collecting for collecting sake.
On that note, just remembered that my first Skyrim character (who has done everything) had a collection of a full set of every type of armour available. That was quite fun/frustrating to find the last few items of the rarest sets.

Personally though I preferred just wearing a nice looking outfit without enchantments.

Yeah, being able to have a custom look is nice when you don't have to sacrifice your character's effectiveness. Those super-powered sets above were all clothes, I think, so that I could have the character look how I wanted and not just have to wear a full set of Daedric armour. Of course, you don't have to wear the best armour, but there's always the voice in the back of my mind saying "why would you not wear the best". That's what I liked about the Mage Armour spell in Skyrim; wear what you want (not armour) and still have protection... then the spell runs out and a dragon eats you... and you realise that you haven't saved for the last half hour... but at least you looked good.

... Clanfears and Scamprs,....

Oh, I'd forgotten about them. Hate those Clanfear's, always caused me problems.

Re-installed recently and modded to the max with OOO, frans and marts. Heart of the dead.

I missed it too much.

My friends and I simply wear clothes in cities and wear armour when we leave.

I love the idea of a conjurer though because you can look innocent then BAM be in full daedric Armour ready to kill.

I find clanfairs harder to kill than the Daedric dudes. They are slower but tougher.

Also, IRT lockpicking in Oblivion...

Keep a lit torch equipped in your off-hand while picking locks. The game is apparently coded to take this into account, as the heat of the torch "warms" the lock, and makes the pins a bit "sticky", which slightly debuffs the speed at which they travel.

This is mentioned in an in-game book on lockpicking, and actually functions.

Swastakowey wrote:My friends and I simply wear clothes in cities and wear armour when we leave. ...

I like that idea. Consider me doing that from now on.

While I don't have a problem with picking locks, and quite enjoy the mini-game (I do really REALLY dislike the "you're not high enough a level to even attempt this lock" thing, mostly because I will forget where that lock is and will never know what is inside), I'm going to have to try that with the torch too.

Re-installed, and off I go...