Why do people hate Oblivion so much?

[PorkBarrellGuy]

Looks like you're pointing to a lot of flaws but none of them is a legit reason to hate Oblivion.

1. Sounds like a reason to hate Bethesda, not the game. Its a case of 'could have/should have been'. Maybe the current tech didnt support lush jungles for the scale of the game, isnt that a good reason? Why would they not create a lush jungle besides that? They could have copy pasted a lot of lush jungle trees but the game would have been released on 10 CDs... Its only an issue if you care about TES lore too, for someone who doesnt know that the game is meant to be a jungle it doesnt really matter.

I hate Beth too, thanks

2. Sounds like a reason to hate TES games in general... Cant really say that Oblivion is worst than the others in that regard.

I don't consider myself a TES fan and pretty much only like certain parts of Daggerfall and Morrowind, I'm confident the franchise would be much better off in non-Beth hands

3. It was a fun mini-game to me and overall felt pretty well implemented. Maybe you managed to get crazy potions by reading guides or w/e but alchemy isnt an issue in this game. Its not like the game forces you to use the alchemy system anyway.

it's far too easy to simply outmode a lot of spells and break whatever economy exists in Oblivion with Alchemy. I like the basic idea but the implementation needs work

4. I found them to be okay. Not as deep as DF but the game had a decent magic system compared to the average RPG. There IS a spellmaker, it required a certain rank in the mages guild.

I dunno what you consider the average RPG but I can tell you right now that spells in systems like AD&D 2E and 3/3.5E are way more variegated and interesting, and those systems back a number of RPGs

5. Too easy to min max and ruin your own fun by using OP enchants? Just dont use them. Like alchemy you arent forced to use enchants.

Fair enough but I really think easy BSG access was a huge mistake

6. Considering that most good RPGs have much worse graphics my reaction to the potato faces has always been ''Why the fuck does it matter?'' They did what they could with the tech. That tech also allows you to create YOUR OWN horrorshow rejects which is one of the best part of the game. Seriously there is one thing that the technical improvement ruined in video games and its the ability to model your characters like in Oblivion.

Because one of the selling points IIRC was the "vibrant" graphics and the "amazing" chargen

7. What about Daggerfall where you can resell them their own gear? Or Morrowind where shops are open 24/7 and owners never sleep? Seems like Oblivion isnt the worst here...

Both retarded, I'll give you that, but the answer to being retarded one way isn't to be retarded a different way. The contraband system felt lazy as hell in Oblivion.

8. Level scaling is both a flaw and a blessing. It also allows you to try most of the game's content (if not all) at level 1. Its one of the main reasons why Oblivion is aging well, unlike Morrowind you can pick it up and do anything, no need to grind. Bandits in glass armor is the downside to that system, and it happens pretty late.

I would prefer to keep bandits in iron and steel/leather and fur and instead have things like bounty hunters etc. that might have an excuse for wearing high-tier armors. I dunno, something. A bandit with access to Glass or Daedric should probably look at the prospect of giving up banditry, selling some armor or adventuring with it, idk. Seems really silly.

9. Technical limitation maybe? To avoid potential abuse and having to implement anti abuse mechanics. I prefer no spear to some OP weapon. You're already whining about OP enchants and alchemy....

There are mods that put them in and balanced them nicely IIRC, which begs the question "What's Beth's excuse?"

11. The Adoring Fan is a highlight of Oblivion. Killing him is one of the most satisfying moments of the game. Theres a ton of youtube vids of people killing the fan in every way possibly.

Different strokes, admittedly a minor quibble to begin with

12. Bad AI is better than no AI I guess? Its a massive improvement over Daggerfall as far as Im concerned.

Isn't saying much, but the idea of a living world was so neat and all we got were conversations about mudcrabs and goblins

13. Now you're just talking shit. Quest design in Oblivion is the best of the series by a long shot. Its the reason why the game is still worth playing today. Dungeon design was cool. Not as huge as DF but the physics based traps were neat, and the overall design was decent.

Morrowind quest design was significantly better overall IMO but that really isn't saying much

14. Fast travel is mandatory in a game of such a scale. Then again you arent even forced to use it, so why complain?

Fair enough, relatively minor quibble, just seems in contrast to the point of this kind of game and Morrowind did it in a far more interesting way

 

[FeelTheRads]

They could have copy pasted a lot of lush jungle trees but the game would have been released on 10 CDs...

The more trees the more CDs.

This guy sure knows what he's talking about.

Also lol at "technical limitations".

 

[Dodo1610]

I do not hate it, it's a completely inoffensive Action RPG made for brain-dead console kids who believe wasting 300h in a game equals fun.

 

[mfkndggrfll]

4. Dude the spell system in Oblivion is the same as DF and Morrowind minus some spells. It still has a TON of spells and possibilities with the spellmaker. Causing NPCs in towns to kill each other with frenzy spells was also one of the most satisfying things to do as far as Im concerned, with the ragdoll mechanics and the better graphics. Whats so cool about the AD&D spells anyway? +2 against evil? color spray?

7. ''but the answer to being retarded one way isn't to be retarded a different way'' Why do you feel entitlted to a perfect answer? A better answer is acceptable to me.

13. Significantly better? How? Yes it would be saying much, it would be saying a lot actually.

Seems like the main reason you hate Oblivion is that you hate Bethesda. I think you should reinstall Oblivion and do some quests.

''The more trees the more CDs. This guy sure knows what he's talking about.''

Have you ever used a map editor in any game? Placing objects does take up a lot of space.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Have you ever used a map editor in any game? Placing objects does take up a lot of space.

Have you ever used your brain?

Copy/pasting the same couple of tree models would take virtually no extra space.

If you think each copy takes as much space as the original you are retarded and clueless as usual.

 

[mfkndggrfll]

Have you ever used a map editor in any game? Placing objects does take up a lot of space.

Have you ever used your brain?

Copy/pasting the same couple of tree models would take virtually no extra space.

If you think each copy takes as much space as the original you are retarded and clueless as usual.

I dont see how, since it would virtually add something. Anyway prove it or eat a potato dick.

 

[Okagron]

This is just the fucking "Do people still rank Fallout 2 over Fallout 3?" bullshit thread all over again. Same "arguments" such as "you just hate Bethesda", even though Morrowind is liked by a lot of people and the game was made by Bethesda and more nonsense bullshit. Can your shitposting have new material at least?

Reported for harvesting retarded ratings.

 

[mfkndggrfll]

Well not really, this thread is more about Oblivion vs the rest of the series and RPGs in general, not a specific game.

And that guy literally used 'I hate Bethesda' as a counter-arguments so...

 

[Wayward Son]

Alright I'm gonna go on a limb here and say that I can actually enjoy Oblivion. Most of it is nostalgia for when I used it to escape from some emotional problems as a kid, but it's true, I do enjoy it. Oh the other hand, I would never argue that it is better as a game than Morrowind, let alone anywhere on the level of Arena, the best TES game

 

[mogwaimon]

1. Sounds like a reason to hate Bethesda, not the game. Its a case of 'could have/should have been'. Maybe the current tech didnt support lush jungles for the scale of the game, isnt that a good reason? Why would they not create a lush jungle besides that? They could have copy pasted a lot of lush jungle trees but the game would have been released on 10 CDs... Its only an issue if you care about TES lore too, for someone who doesnt know that the game is meant to be a jungle it doesnt really matter.

Seems legit, I remember playing this one game back in 2006 called Just Cause that had this giant procedurally generated map like Oblivion's was, but it was in the jungle instead of a generic fantasy forest so I had to swap between 19 discs on my Xbox depending on which province I was in just to play the game.

 

[Yosharian]

I remember playing through Oblivion, getting to the Spellmaker and just thinking 'what the fuck did you do??'... Creating insane, overpowered or stupid spells in Morrowind was so epic, but they took out or dumbed down so many spell effects for Oblivion.

So that's one of the reasons I hate it.

The other reason being that it is a shit game.

 

[Sigourn]

For some reason I feel like people who hate it the most are the Morrowind fans. Those who grew up on Morrowind and were impressed by its novelty. By the time Oblivion got released they grew up too old to enjoy the type of game that it is (FPS-open world - interactive walking simulator) and are blaming it on the devs. I have never seen Arena/DF fans hate on Oblivion, for some reason...

I am a Morrowind fan myself. But I didn't grew up on Morrowind. My first TES game was Skyrim in 2014 (back when I was 21), and didn't fully get into Morrowind until a couple of years later. I haven't played Oblivion to judge it properly. But the tutorial dungeon is some of the most uninspiring shit I've plowed through in my life. Just by running around and sneaking I raised my Stealth skill like ten times. Or at least five. It's something I can accept in Skyrim, but not in what is widely considered "the best TES game" by a lot of folks. Morrowind looks better, plays better, doesn't have quest markers or boring voice acting.

You call navigation to your destination "busywork". A man's busywork is another man's favorite part of questing. In Morrowind, you end up doing a lot of fetch/kill quests. What made these so fun, however, was being able to get them done. And unlike Skyrim or Morrowind, you weren't spoonfed on where to find the thing you were sent to retrieve/kill. The thing I like about New Vegas is that, for the most part, you don't really need the quest markers. But in Oblivion, literally the first thing you must do after leaving the dungeon is go to some place you have NO IDEA WHERE IT IS AT because you've just started playing the game. There's no option but to follow the arrow. "Retrieve the Dwemer Puzzlecube" is just much more fun than "retrieve random ancient artifact from ages ago with the aid of this quest marker". Especially when you go through a dwemer dungeon paying attention to every nook and cranny because you just don't know where the fuck the devs have placed that cube. Even better is when you realize you missed an entire section of the map because you weren't paying enough attention, and if you had you would have fun the cube easily (because it's not placed between some random rocks, it's RIGHT THERE on a fucking shelf).

Also Oblivion faces look like terrible potatoes. And Gothic is simply the better franchise for open world action RPGs. Really, playing these old RPGs for the first time (and enjoying them) makes me sad knowing the franchises went to shit later on. So it's not like I finished Morrowind thinking "oooohhhh what will Bethesda/Piranha Bytes/Black Isle have in store next?".

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

If you approach Oblivion like a really shitty '80s movie then you'll get a lot of hilarity and fun out of the experience.

 

[Wayward Son]

For some reason I feel like people who hate it the most are the Morrowind fans. Those who grew up on Morrowind and were impressed by its novelty. By the time Oblivion got released they grew up too old to enjoy the type of game that it is (FPS-open world - interactive walking simulator) and are blaming it on the devs. I have never seen Arena/DF fans hate on Oblivion, for some reason...

I am a Morrowind fan myself. But I didn't grew up on Morrowind. My first TES game was Skyrim in 2014 (back when I was 21), and didn't fully get into Morrowind until a couple of years later. I haven't played Oblivion to judge it properly. But the tutorial dungeon is some of the most uninspiring shit I've plowed through in my life. Just by running around and sneaking I raised my Stealth skill like ten times. Or at least five. It's something I can accept in Skyrim, but not in what is widely considered "the best TES game" by a lot of folks. Morrowind looks better, plays better, doesn't have quest markers or boring voice acting.

You call navigation to your destination "busywork". A man's busywork is another man's favorite part of questing. In Morrowind, you end up doing a lot of fetch/kill quests. What made these so fun, however, was being able to get them done. And unlike Skyrim or Morrowind, you weren't spoonfed on where to find the thing you were sent to retrieve/kill. The thing I like about New Vegas is that, for the most part, you don't really need the quest markers. But in Oblivion, literally the first thing you must do after leaving the dungeon is go to some place you have NO IDEA WHERE IT IS AT because you've just started playing the game. There's no option but to follow the arrow. "Retrieve the Dwemer Puzzlecube" is just much more fun than "retrieve random ancient artifact from ages ago with the aid of this quest marker". Especially when you go through a dwemer dungeon paying attention to every nook and cranny because you just don't know where the fuck the devs have placed that cube. Even better is when you realize you missed an entire section of the map because you weren't paying enough attention, and if you had you would have fun the cube easily (because it's not placed between some random rocks, it's RIGHT THERE on a fucking shelf).

Also Oblivion faces look like terrible potatoes. And Gothic is simply the better franchise for open world action RPGs. Really, playing these old RPGs for the first time (and enjoying them) makes me sad knowing the franchises went to shit later on. So it's not like I finished Morrowind thinking "oooohhhh what will Bethesda/Piranha Bytes/Black Isle have in store next?".

I had a very similar experience except my first TES game was Oblivion in '09.

 

[Mustawd]

Sorry guys. This one snuck past me. No excuse.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...e-hate-oblivion-so-much.122755/ignore-confirm

 

[mfkndggrfll]

''I haven't played Oblivion to judge it properly. But''

I think you should just stop right there and go play it. Why even jump into the bandwagon like a sheep if you havent played past the intro.

''Just by running around and sneaking I raised my Stealth skill like ten times. Or at least five. It's something I can accept in Skyrim, but not in what is widely considered "the best TES game" by a lot of folks.''

Thats a pretty amazing argument.

 

[DalekFlay]

Lots of young'uns on here, so let me describe the day one Oblivion experience for Morrowind fans:

Wow, that unique world now looks like what's outside my bedroom window.
Wow, look at those fucking faces (yes they sucked then).
Wow, this world leveling mechanic is ass.
Wow, where did all the dialog go? All the voice-over in the world is meaningless without cool words.

Now, the game does a lot of things right. If you look past the generic world design it was certainly the most technically impressive open world action RPG at the time. The combat is brainless but arguably much more fun than random whacking in Morrowind that was all stat-based. I've heard Morrowind magic users can be super interesting but I never got around to giving it a go (a pure Telvanni mage is my "one day..." playthrough of the whole game again). Obviously the mainstream reviewers and Xbawksers loved the fucking thing like sliced bread, largely because they'd seen nothing like it on that polished a scale before (glitches or not). For us Morrowind addicts though it just lost something... special. Something different Morrowind had. Something even Skyrim has not regained despite large improvements over Oblivion.

Also for large parts of the oldfag Codex RPGs are stat-based affairs like Wizardry and Ultima so the whole idea of Oblivion being good is a belly-laugh. Understand that before you engage.

And with that, the probable 20th time I've wasted my life's precious minutes writing the same shit on the same website, I sign off to eat a chicken sandwich.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

think you should just stop right there and go play it. Why even jump into the bandwagon like a sheep if you havent played past the intro.

Certainly didn't stop you from talking about fallout 1 or 2.

 

[Wunderbar]

This also gives me the excuse to post this video here again.

how is this possible? Shit flies across the room if you try to put it on a table.

 

[unfairlight]

I never had any issues with that. Lots of people told me about it but I moved that shit twice to different homes without problems.

 

[Black Angel]

It's like asking why do people hate Fallout 3 so m-

Oh.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I dont see how, since it would virtually add something. Anyway prove it or eat a potato dick.

You don't see how because you're a clueless moron.

Each instance of a tree is just that... an instance. It's referring the same geometry. The only thing it needs extra space for is to store the position on the map, the orientation and maybe some additional properties. That's virtually nothing.
Therefore a map with 1 tree vs a map with 1 million copies of the same tree would be virtually the same in disk space.
In fact, since the geometry is referenced from the game files, not even 1 tree is stored in the map file.
It would take even less than virtually nothing if there is a system to spread the trees procedurally, which I assume there is in Gamebryo.
It would not fucking take 10 CDs.

So no, retard, it's not adding "something".
Storing the same geometry again and again for each copy would be even more retarded than you are.

Eat a potato dick... fucking kids trying to swear. Go back to copy/pasting the insults thrown at you, it was less embarrassing than this.

 

[bataille]

39 pages later...

 

[Falksi]

You saw everything Oblivion had to offer within the first few hours. The rest of the game was copy-paste. Morrowind never stopped throwing surprises & new elements at you.

Therein lies the main flaw with a game supposed to be about discovering & exploring a vast world.

 

[mfkndggrfll]

DalekFlay

''Wow, that unique world now looks like what's outside my bedroom window.'' Yeah like I said in the OP, people felt entitled to get a certain setting. Day one reaction to Oblivion was more like erh ma gerd teh grafix. Who the fuck cared about the setting when the game had ragdoll and good graphics.

''Wow, look at those fucking faces (yes they sucked then).'' Like I said that system works both ways which allows you to create circus freak characters which was one of the best aspects in the game at that time.

''Wow, this world leveling mechanic is ass.'' And you're going to tell me you experienced level scaling issues on day 1? I dont think so.

''Also for large parts of the oldfag Codex RPGs are stat-based affairs like Wizardry and Ultima so the whole idea of Oblivion being good is a belly-laugh. Understand that before you engage.'' But if you consider Oblivion to be an Action RPG then theres nothing wrong with it really.

''The only thing it needs extra space for is to store the position on the map, the orientation and maybe some additional properties. That's virtually nothing.''

Technically it IS virtually something. Seems like we both are as ignorant on the matter. The trees arent just 2d sprites, they are 3D with a physical hitbox.

You are gagging pretty hard on the bait. In the end it boils down to you crying because Oblivion wasnt the way you wanted it to be. I am curious though, were you following its development to be aware that it was supposed to be a lush jungle? Or did you learn it a couple years later and then grabbed your pitchfork?

''You saw everything Oblivion had to offer within the first few hours. The rest of the game was copy-paste'' ''Therein lies the main flaw with a game supposed to be about discovering & exploring a vast world.''

That would be Daggerfall. In the first few hours you can like join a guild and do some quests. The game has a ton of side quests hidden like easter eggs to keep you playing. Therein lies its main strenght and the reason why the game is aging well. If you see everything within the first few hours then why do people complain about the level scaling at lvl20+.... Its crazy how people try to twist the facts to support their beliefs. Its like that other guy who said Morrowind looked better...

Seems like the 2nd most popular argument after 'Bethesda sucks' is 'But Morrowind...' So far my conclusion is that the most vocal Oblivion haters are either 1- Bethesda haters or 2- Morrowind fans (Most which arent aware that DF or other RPGs exist)

Fans of the TES series dont hate Oblivion as much since its very similar to DF. RPG fans in general dont hate it too much either because it has good sidequests to compete with other RPGs.

At this point I am curious, when and how exactly did the bandwagon of hate start? When did it officially become cool to hate on Bethesda and Oblivion? Was it a popular youtuber that started posting vids to expose Beth and the evil they do?