I thought the immortal snake-people in golden armor ate all the dragons except one.
But then again, I can’t say I payed much attention to the lore books in the games.
I’m hype if the setting is interesting like Morrowind, and not generic fantasy like Oblivion.
no, you’re correct. Dragons be gone, except that the leader of the Akavir is a dragon. And the King turned into one at the end of Oblivion. And it appears from the trailer, they’ve just been hiding, hibernating, or some shit.
I played Morrowind a bit a while ago though I never got very far (and don’t remember why I stopped playing) but with ES5 coming out I need to go back and finish Morrowind and play Oblivion. Any suggestions for add-ons and such for each?
ffs!
The amount of stuff to do/world to explore is far greater in Oblivion afaik. I didn’t play though all of Fallout 3 but even if that has a larger world the amount of things to do inside of it is assuredly lesser. In Oblivion you would be constantly challenged just for going random places with a quest or a cave that would never be pointed out to you otherwise or a piece of lore that is actually very enlightening. I’m 90% sure the world is larger but 100% sure that there’s more to do.
Also, if anyone were to ask me, I’d say that if they just changed the GODDAMN LEVELING SYSTEM the game would be worlds better. That shit is so stupid. “That guy wants to be good with long swords, good thing he didn’t pick LONG SWORD as one of his major skills! LOLOLOLOL” I’m sure that whoever makes their stupid fucking leveling system is one of the elite trolls on this planet.
P.S. Even though Morrowind has basically the same stupid leveling system, it’s one of the best RPGs ever made. Period.
I know I’m posting twice in a row but I don’t give a damn because A) I’m a boss B) Elder Scrolls games are amazing, and if minutely bumping this thread means that 1 more person decides to try them it will be worth it but mostly because C) FUCK THAT LEVELING SYSTEM IN THE ASS.
Here’s the generic Elder Scrolls leveling system…
At the start of the game you get to pick your race, sign, and class. Your race will come with stat bonuses and minuses, as well as a unique perk outside of that. This usually comes in the form of a passive bonus, ability, or combination. It’s very straight-forward and sensible.
Your sign gives a passive bonus or ability. Again, straightforward and nothing wrong here.
Your class, however, seems very straight-forward until you realize what leveling actually entails. Your class is merely a selection of primary/secondary abilities. At the start of the game all this seems to mean is which abilities do you want to be innately higher. Picking a skill as a ‘major skill’ is a +10/15 point bonus to it. So you think, “Hey! I’m going to be a warrior! I’ll take heavy armor, long sword, shield wearing, and running as primary skills!” In Morrowind you could even pick Tertiary abilities (I think?). These abilities are all tied to relatively sensible stats (Long sword is attached to strength, and sneak is tied to dexterity). However you level up when you improve the abilities you picked as major skills! It means that if you did pick that many combat skills and went out and did combat often you’d level up very quickly.
It’s important to note that you CHOOSE when to level up. You only get told in Elder Scrolls games that you’re ready to level, the onus is on you to go to sleep and actually level to gain the benefits.
However, the reason skills are attached to stats is that improving them provides bonuses to stats at the end of a level. If you had leveled up skills related to a specific stat you could use one of your ‘level points’ on that stat and get its bonus. The standard was +1, but if you had leveled up enough skills prior to actually leveling you could have as much as +5 on that stat. You couldn’t spend more than one level point on a single stat and you always got 3 level points every time. If all you had done was use abilities that required strength that level, you might get a +2/+3 bonus for Str and then 2 other level points that would be worth +1 to whichever stat you chose to increase.
If you had leveled up the minor skills that were also tied to stats you desired while you leveled you would’ve been able to get huge bonuses to them. Since all you did was do what your character was BUILT TO DO, you get punished. If your character had been spending time picking flowers all day while he basically cried to go slay mutant slugs you would’ve been rewarded with a stronger character after a much more arduous time of playing.
The final formula for success is as follows… Pick the skills you want to use LEAST and make them your major skills. This way you can do the shit you want to do for the first few levels without leveling up so fast you can’t really ‘improve’.
As long as the battle system stays far, far the fuck away from Morrowind, I can get behind this.
Anyhow, I’m crazy hyped. They need to steal all the ideas from modded Oblivion (Deadly Reflex or a variant of this for sure) and put them all from jumpstreet.
Here’s my wishlist:
New engine! God, I don’t want to play on a “modified” engine that looked like crap 5 years ago. Not to mention the cold automatons (NPC’s) and the dumb AI.
Amazing writing! Oblivion was an empty cold souless shell of a game. None of the quests or stories captivated me AT ALL!
Good game design! Entering a cave that looks exactly the same like the last 60 you previously visited only to fight a skelton at the end makes the game incredibly dull and lifeless.
No more scaling enemies! I hate this “design” with a passion.
Use popular mods as guidelines! Bethesda needs to learn from its mistakes and integrate popular mod content in their future games.
That’s all I can think for now…
I need the advice of my fellow SRKers…
Should I cop this game ASAP? The best part about the elder scrolls was the downloadable content, so how long until you think until the balancing (if there need be), and streamlining stuff, along with the new quests come out?
edit:
And hey, let’s not forget that this is an RPG, why do we have to power game all the time? I think it’s actually fun to play a weaker character, i like the oblivion system.
I messed up by looking up guides on how to level a character in Oblivion. I should have just played the game with the difficulty slider on the easiest setting and not have worried about it. The leveling aspect made the game a pain and when you’re not having fun with it, why bother. Otherwise it was fun doing whatever the heck you wanted and the mods made the game way better.
omg I kinda forgot about how terrible the combat was in Morrowind (until you level up significantly, enjoy missing hitting fucking mudcrabs with a battleax REPEATEDLY).
Yeah, that pissed me off too. Nothing like spending a half an hour or more trying to get through some random cave/ruin, just to fight a skeleton or slightly pimped out goblin, and open a chest that contains 200 gold 
And for God’s sake, please make any Fighters/Mages/Thieves guild headquarters look cool, as opposed to looking EXACTLY LIKE EVERY OTHER PLACE.
dunno how so many people had so many problems with the levelling. Whatever skills you took at the start of the game would level faster, and you could still go get trained. It was just a bitch and a half if you made something stupid as your initial abilities.
I’m still hoping they make magic suck less. I was REALLY hoping to see your spells change depending on how high your magic levels were. Instead of ALWAYS shooting the same lightning/fire/ice/whatever, I’d like to see you eventually get spells that blow your mind away with their magical awesomeness.
After seeing what they did with Oblivion, with the expansions (Shivering Isles had a SICK opening scene, and world), then seeing what was added to Fallout (I wonder if VATS will make it into ES5 somehow), I literally can’t wait for more info on this game to come out.
edit: Did some more reading…turns out the engine IS a new engine, however it does borrow elements from both Fallout and Oblivion. They’ve also spent a shitload of money (keep in mind how quickly this game has come along…2 years in development so far, 11 months to go) to get more animators/voice talent.
This could EASILY become the greatest RPG ever. Seriously, next time one of those East vs West RPG arguments come along, it ends the moment somebody points out “why doesn’t Japan make a game like this?”
I played Oblivion before playing Morrowind. I hated Morrowind at first, because combat sucked, magic was pretty useless, the city of vivec was a clusterfuck maze, quests involved finding NPCs and locations with only the vaguest of directions or hints, and cliffracers are annoying as hell.
BUT, it is still a better game than Oblivion. Its just grown on me so much over the years and I still go back and do more exploring, even though I already killed Dagoth Ur a long time ago. There’s just way more factions you can join in Morrowind, which means a lot more to do and see. The thing I hated most about Oblivion was the retarded level scaling system where monsters get stronger as you level up. Essentially punishing you for gaining levels. By the end, mere bandits are running around with Daevic armor. Ugh. What’s worse, because all the loot is based on level, every dungeon is essentially the same. There’s no point to explore any of it, cause all the treasure is random. And because the treasure is random, finding cool weapons and armor is also pointless, they essentially become weaker as you level. Not like in Morrowind where you get badass weapons like Sunder and Keening that stay relevant for a long time. And while Morrowind’s quests were difficult because it was often times hard to find certain locations, Oblivion made it too pointlessly easy with the damn compass.
So yeah, Morrowind awesome game. If TES V has the same dumb level scaling system as Oblivion, I’m not going to play it until its dropped down in price to 20$.
fishjie, excellent points. The quests were RETARDEDLY lame in Morrowind (go kill rats WTF?), and it was fucking next to impossible to find some of the shit. But there was SOOOOOO much hidden shit in that game. And LOL i hated trying to navigate Vivec. I also hated falling through the fucking floor almost every time I went down this one staircase in a mages guild. But there was more variety.
One of the major differences, was that in Morrowind, the cities were PART of the world, rather than separate maps. So you were able to use the jump and fly spells (which were sadly lacking from Oblivion). Item creation came earlier in Morrowind too, as opposed to later on in Oblivion (after a fuckload of quests, where you start getting items better than what your lame ass can create anyways).
And yeah, I truly hope dungeon/monster levelling goes away. It doesn’t have to completely go away, but like you said, it gets dumb when you level up a shitload of levels, and suddenly every enemy goes from wearing dirty rags to glass/daedric armour. Find MORE ways to customize shit. Gimme actual reasons to explore every random dungeon or hole in the ground I come across. Maybe hide some quests in them.
I didn’t mind the compass or the quick travel (to an extent) in Oblivion. You basically just had to get the game and do a massive tour of duty, and you suddenly never have to worry about being more than 3 mins away from a quest 
Obviously, give me some bigger enemies too. Not just dragons, but damn. Gimme big huge shit that makes me go AUGH! I’m hoping for way more wildlife too. And bring back cliff racers, they were fun when they randomly come at u from like straight above where u cant see or hear em and start gnawing on ur head.
And bring back cliff racers
that comment was more offensive than anything ive seen in my entire life. ban this man for life please.
nasty. really, cliff racers are the only thing i still hate about morrowind. there’s probably many mods out there that remove them completely. they would not be missed.
but yeah, how could I forget, fly and levitate are the coolest fucking spells ever. and no separate load times for entering large cities like Balmora, since they are part of the world map itself.
just talking about morrowind in this thread makes me want to play it again. i still haven’t beaten Tribunal and Bloodmoon, cause I’m still exploring all of Vvardenfell.
edit: also the speechcraft minigame in oblivion was straight up retarded. glad they came to their senses in fallout 3.
none of the oblivion quests captured your interest at all? really? i loved the quest where you go into a painting and fight the trolls with turpentine on your sword. it was cool
and i just want to toss my hat on the rack labeled ‘fuck level scaling’. i hated that system. one of my favorite things to do in RPGs like this is to try and ‘push’ the boundaries of where i can go. i like trying to sneak into dungeons with crafty elaborate plans, avoiding monsters way too tough for me, trying to steal badass equipment i’m way too low level to be entitled to, etc. i like finding ways to fight monsters that are way tougher than me.
and if for whatever reason i’m an idiot gamer and i can’t do that, oh well. i can follow the main quest line which will likely have a rather straightforward leveling system, and then go to these areas now that i’m higher level and do it the old fashioned way.
whichever method works for you, the option should be there. i’m glad to see level scaling is universally despised. i’ve never met someone who likes it, ever. at best people will say it’s the only ‘workable’ solution to a huge sandbox game like this, but i disagree 100%.
in fallout, there are certain areas they put high-level monsters that you aren’t supposed to be able to survive against. try traveling to ‘old olney’ in fallout 3 when you first start. no level scaling there, pal. but they couldn’t quite make themselves leave it out completely, sad to say
Wow, I may disagree with you politically and that’s ok but this is taking it too far. I request you be banned for this sir.
I agree with everyone saying the leveling system sucked ass in Oblivion. Being punished for leveling sucked ass, you shouldn’t have to exploit the system to get the type of character you want. Still loved the game though and can’t wait for the new one.
What I really hope they do bring back is making it able to drag and drop weapons much easier like it was in Morrowind. I used to enjoy finding sweet items and displaying them in a “house” aka shop that sold nothing good and taking everything out and displaying my own armor on the shelves. Oblivion it was near impossible to do that.
yeah the other shitty part about the level scaling system was playing a thief. you break into the castle at low level only to find … calipers! hooray?
lame.
whereas in morrowind i could go on a looting spree right off the bat. and locks wouldn’t get progressively harder to pick as i leveled up 
. hell yeah!
the first oblivion gate at kvatch is also difficult if you wait to do it until later in the game, after you’ve gained a few levels. your allies will stay at their same shitty low level but the enemies will scale up significantly with you, making it extremely annoying