Duck and Cover

Level 13, difficulty 50%, high marksmanship, blade, sneak and strength, and I cleared the main-quest with ease. I wasn't even trying...

There's no chance of stumbling over great equipment at low levels, so everything you meet is dogmeat and dead after a few seconds.

But if you wait with the mainquest until level 20 or 30, everyone has great equipment, even highwaymen and bandits are near godlike in what they wear. so I guess it might be more challenging then.

Susan wrote:What distance slider are you talking about, though? There are like 4 or 5 if I remember correctly? I know I pushed the grass one a bit toward the max.

Don't be daft, throw the grass one down to the total bottom. You don't need grass. Otherwise, toggle seeing islands, trees and bananas so that you have basic visability on max. Put objects on 50-75% and items and actors on 25-50%. If that doesn't work, try scaling them all down (except for basic vis) and checking it out. Honestly, the biggest one is specular distance. If you drive that one to the bottom, you relieve the game of alot of pressure.

i might give it a try. not so much because i might enjoy it, since it's quite far from any of my fav genres, but because i've got a fetish for tweaking my substandard computer. it's not like games cost money, anyhow.

when i read all of the dac and codex bitching, it reminds me that FO1 and 2 were both far from perfection. although oblivion is far from likely to give me any great gaming experiences, it may still be a great game, despite all of the errors mentioned.

St. Toxic wrote:arrows into their eye sockets.

I approve.

St. Toxic wrote: I turned everything on, and it stopped lagging.

"Speechcraft" ( what the hell ) is the same as with "Locksmithy". Your skills hardly seem to matter

fucking splendid.

There's also not that much information to gather - 'Imperial city', 'Rumours' are the two main conversation points

fucking splendid.

Overall, dialogue is messed up, and there are no options except "I'm a helpful, interested goody-two shoes" ones

fucking splendid.

button mashing and running about like a moron

fucking splendid.

Somehow my crime is always detected by "Unseen forces" ( as the message claims ) and two guards pop out of nowhere

fucking splendid.

(the option says) to "Resist arrest" which should in fact say "Screw you copper"

fucking splendid.

overall, out of

Smiley wrote:Level 13, difficulty 50%, high marksmanship, blade, sneak and strength, and I cleared the main-quest with ease. I wasn't even trying...

There's no chance of stumbling over great equipment at low levels, so everything you meet is dogmeat and dead after a few seconds.

But if you wait with the mainquest until level 20 or 30, everyone has great equipment, even highwaymen and bandits are near godlike in what they wear. so I guess it might be more challenging then.

Difficulty scaling.

Great.

Just great.

Arbitrary world.

So is any logic offered as to why bandits and such have godlike equipment? Is the world modeled in a fashion that super well
armed malcontents have an impact on travel and trade - the economy
?
Are there town criers, people in taverns, etc. talking about "wherever
did those rabble acquire such marvelous arms?"?
Or is this an intrusion of game-logic instead of an involved world-logic
implementation?
god fucking dammit
I'll still play the fucker anyway, eventually.
It doesn't actually get any better, does it?

no escape from designer cheating.

Redeye wrote:So is any logic offered as to why bandits and such have godlike equipment? Is the world modeled in a fashion that super well
armed malcontents have an impact on travel and trade - the economy
?
Are there town criers, people in taverns, etc. talking about "wherever
did those rabble acquire such marvelous arms?"?
Or is this an intrusion of game-logic instead of an involved world-logic
implementation?
god fucking dammit
I'll still play the fucker anyway, eventually.
It doesn't actually get any better, does it?

no escape from designer cheating.

You haven't played Throne of Bhaal, did you?

Redeye wrote: So is any logic offered as to why bandits and such have godlike equipment? Is the world modeled in a fashion that super well
armed malcontents have an impact on travel and trade - the economy
?

The only logic I see in them having so superior armor is that you're spending shitloads of money on repairing your own equipment, so you can afford it by selling *their* armor...
For some reason I can't repair magical items yet. I'm still wondering when I'm hitting "expert" in anything! I have 93 in blade and I'm still "journeyman".
After that there should be expert and master. And since the game is based on 1-100 skills and abilities, do they hit at 95 and 100??

I have to wear non-magical items, and practically destroy them, then repair them again to be able to gain skills in it, since you can only raise skills 5 times from a trainer per level..

Are there town criers, people in taverns, etc. talking about "wherever
did those rabble acquire such marvelous arms?"?
Or is this an intrusion of game-logic instead of an involved world-logic
implementation?

I'm pretty sure they had no fucking idea of what to do, at the later levels.
So they implemented a system to make everyone else better, when you get more experienced and well-armed..

If only they'd partially limited the land so that you could stumble into psycho's at a fairly early stage and have your ass handed to you, you'd be forced to stay in the low-level area until you got at least a bit skills, a few good potions and some decent gear, before trying to take on the world.

Again, the freedom of the game ruins it.
Not to mention the instant travel system, which enables you to move effortlessly between cities.

This destroys any reason to actually go out and explore the myriads of ruins, crypts, forts and caves out there, since you don't *have* to!
Not to mention the fact that it makes the game seem like a quarter the size of morrowind.

I preffer morrowind's travelling to the instant travel, because you had to make choices.. should I go to this city and take the mages guild teleport, and *then* take a boat?
Or should I take a silt-strider, walk a bit, and then take a boat from there?

Through that you're forced to roam around the area a bit..

And then there's the horse...
not only does it dissapear half the time (thank god for quicksave, because the horse I finally got didn't cost me 5000 gold or whatever, but I had to go halfway through the assassin guild quests to get it!), you have to mount and demount this animal to stop and attack whatever's crawled up your ass.. because no matter how far you ride, the amount of wolves and strange critters you pick up along the way, *NEVER* give up.
They removed the superhuman jumping and running abilities, and gave you a fucking.. ridiculous... *horse*!

Which again, ruins any desire to go out and explore the country-side.

god fucking dammit
I'll still play the fucker anyway, eventually.
It doesn't actually get any better, does it?

no escape from designer cheating.

Just to top it off and "ruin" your day I'm going to tell you a spoiler.
There is no end-boss. You escort the new "king", meet a 50ft demon, and all you have to do is walk past it with the "king", go inside a temple and watch the "king" turn into a dragon and kill the demon.
No fun for you, but thanks for watching.

Koki wrote:

Redeye wrote:So is any logic offered as to why bandits and such have godlike equipment? Is the world modeled in a fashion that super well
armed malcontents have an impact on travel and trade - the economy
?
Are there town criers, people in taverns, etc. talking about "wherever
did those rabble acquire such marvelous arms?"?
Or is this an intrusion of game-logic instead of an involved world-logic
implementation?
god fucking dammit
I'll still play the fucker anyway, eventually.
It doesn't actually get any better, does it?

no escape from designer cheating.

You haven't played Throne of Bhaal, did you?

I expected that to be nothing more than a silly playground for high level
abilities and power gaming.
That is what it was.
ehue

Smiley wrote:
instant travel system

makes the game seem like a quarter the size of morrowind.

I prefer morrowind's travelling to the instant travel, because you had to make choices.. should I go to this city and take the mages guild teleport, and *then* take a boat?
Or should I take a silt-strider, walk a bit, and then take a boat from there?

And then there's the horse...
and strange critters you pick up along the way, *NEVER* give up.
.. ridiculous... *horse*!

Which again, ruins any desire to go out and explore the country-side.
No fun for you, but thanks for watching.

fuckity-fuck fuck fuck fuck

Can you at least ride the horse into a city and let the guards deal with
the horde of animals/beasties you have attracted?
That would be fun!

Use enemies to wipe out guards/etc. especially if the animals attack
ordinary people, too.
Just use the horse as a trick to wipe out populations, then loot the
corpses!
yay!

Bad AI/design = license to 'sploit.

Megatron wrote:its not that fun. mabye it'd be more fun if i could see more than 10 yards. I jumped a horse off a bridge and we fell into a river together and drowned. That's it so far, but I don't really want to do any quests and can't explore since I can't see anything. Mabye if I had a good computer or liked the gameplay in morrowind I'd enjoy it more. But, alas. No. Glad I didn't buy it though, cheers susan lol.

I don't see why it runs so shit. HL2 and guild wars worked a lot better can't it just do those settings without it looking like shit and still running worse dammit.

From what I'm read, visibility doesn't affect performance much(except maybe grass). Just increase it and try tweaking a bit more.

I've gathered a few links you might want to look at, some are about problems with FX cards:

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/inde ... pic=282064
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/inde ... pic=287905
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/inde ... pic=300053
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/inde ... pic=295524
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/inde ... pic=285886

Redeye wrote:fuckity-fuck fuck fuck fuck

Can you at least ride the horse into a city and let the guards deal with
the horde of animals/beasties you have attracted?
That would be fun!

No zones in Oblivion right?

Wrong.

All cities are zoned through a gate, sometimes with more gates, and more city zones behind those.

Guards attack aggressive critters and bandits, so you can put them up against eachother.
Bandits don't follow you for long though.

But you *can* assassinate the whole country without getting fined for it.
Guards though, I'm not sure about, since they instantly know when you've killed one, no matter how secluded the place was, when you killed the guard.
I know this, because there's an assassination quest where you have to kill a specific guard. I ended up hacking her down with a claymore and then just paid the fine. Which was double the reward.....

Smiley wrote:Not to mention the instant travel system, which enables you to move effortlessly between cities.

This destroys any reason to actually go out and explore the myriads of ruins, crypts, forts and caves out there, since you don't *have* to!
Not to mention the fact that it makes the game seem like a quarter the size of morrowind.

I preffer morrowind's travelling to the instant travel, because you had to make choices.. should I go to this city and take the mages guild teleport, and *then* take a boat?
Or should I take a silt-strider, walk a bit, and then take a boat from there?

Can you 'jump' between all towns/special locations or just a few?

Travelling all distances by foot or horse can be a bit frustrating, especially if you're running errands across the world. Instant teleportation is OK only if it feels logical and is not too frequent. I think the system in Arcanum is good as only the major cities were connected with eachother by trains and boats. Ultima has moongates and even Martian Dreams has those funny tubes. The world map and transportation system in Baldur's Gate and Fallout is a bit different, but you can move pretty quickly between cities. Instant travel is a common feature in CRPGs but it shouldn't be unlimited as that would of hurt the exploration aspect of the game and remove some of the choices you can make, like the ones you discussed above.

Instant travel between any "friendly locations" like towns, but to find forts and dungeons and mazes and special landmarks, you have to explore the scenery.

Hrm, I think I liked Morrowind better, so far. Of course the graphics are better, but....

Watch it, jRPG boy.

VasikkA wrote: Can you 'jump' between all towns/special locations or just a few?

St.Toxic wrote:Instant travel between any "friendly locations" like towns, but to find forts and dungeons and mazes and special landmarks, you have to explore the scenery.

All locations.
But like St. says you have to know they are there..

It seems though, that sometimes you are told so specifically, that you can instant there anyway?
Just a theory, but I *can* insta-port to a lot of locations, even though I haven't been there, but this is always questwise when it happens.

The world map and transportation system in Baldur's Gate and Fallout is a bit different, but you can move pretty quickly between cities. Instant travel is a common feature in CRPGs but it shouldn't be unlimited as that would of hurt the exploration aspect of the game and remove some of the choices you can make, like the ones you discussed above.

Actually you're right, it is kinda like Baldur's Gate/Fallout. Time moves, but you don't see yourself moving across a map, so there's not even a chance of stumbling over something.
I'd preffer the mage-guild teleports though, since you don't have to guess what time you arrive.

I've spent a quarter of the game "waiting" for the sun to either go up or down. For some reason it takes a lot of time to "load" waiting. *sigh*

Perhaps you're a bit dead.

So I played it today for about 3 hours. I'm not too thrilled. I got sidetracked and lost the little red-arrow-of-where-I-should-go-next-ness. Graphics are pretty fly, not much by way of load times, either. Encountered two crashes both because Windows ran out of virtual memory.

Two Marty McFly's out of Five.

Question: summoned beasties.

Can they be given orders, and does everybody just know it is yours?

I'm trying for a workaround here.

Also: traps.
Can you set them, and does it count as you attacking?