Tea Leaves

Hey, I love the idea of no levels. Just let your stats slowly increase with the skills. I don't want the stats gone alltogether because it feels good to have my character get stronger and faster and smarter. But if the level system wasn't there I wouldn't feel compelled to sit there sleeping and casting spells until I had upgraded 3 skills 10 times before getting in that fight I'm sure is going to push my blade skill up and give me a level before I'm ready.

I'd ditch the auto-levelling of the world too. I see no reason for it.

I miss swinging my mouse different ways to get the sword/ mace/ axe swing a different way. A blade always hacking in the same way always reminded me of the cheap horror movie where someone is stabbing with a knife at arms length up and down while the music goes eeeennnnnt eeeeennnnt eeeennnt.

Ok, enough.

What a pretentious load of rubbish!
Have you even been to the official forums and read any posts about the 'dumbing down'?

The main reasons presented by previous fans re 'dumbing down' are the following:

Incessant level of hand-holding in the game:
1. Pop-up spoiler quest boxes and quest markers - telling you where to go, exactly what to do in each quest and what to think. The game has been created so that a 5yr moron could complete it. Some of the fans find this aspect insulting - RPG's are traditionally challenging puzzle/problem solving games. The only problem solving Oblivion offers is combat.
2. There is very little lore/conversation or conflict between factions - it all plays out like a fairy tale.
3. Level scaling - the game levels with the player (ie as the player levels up, so do the combat situations) which takes away player progression (some think this a defining aspect of an RPG), this makes the game play like a FPS as leveling becomes meaningless.

> RPG's are traditionally challenging puzzle/problem solving games.

[The author has edited this comment because he wrote it late at night, while he was grumpy, and was unnecessarily rude]

The only "challenging puzzle/problem" to be solved in _nearly all_ CRPGs -- and that includes whichever one is both of our favorites -- is to answer the question "Where is the guy whose ass I must kick?" I can count the exceptions to this rule on one hand.

The fact of the matter is that if you think that the other RPGs you enjoyed so much are not leading you by the nose as much as Oblivion does, you are kidding yourself. Most RPGs don't need a map marker because they take place in a Long Dark Hallway, and all the player (including 5 year old morons) need do is "keep walking forward".

Regarding the faction conflicts, I've found the interactions in Oblivion to be about on par with most other RPGs, and perhaps a little better than average. I think the people who are expecting more are simply engaged in wish-fulfillment fantasies.

Likewise, I daresay you can't find a single RPG where combat situations don't de facto level with the player. Sometimes they are defined by geography rather than strictly by player level, but from a design standpoint, the intent is clear.

Basically, the "dumbing down" crowd is upset over something that, ultimately, happens in every good game, via one mechanism or another. But playing computer games, while fun, is not a skill in quite the way your comment suggests it is. It is not, shall we say, brain surgery.

Oblivion is a game. The game does not exist to give you a feeling of self-importance or validation. If you don't like the map markers, don't set your active quest and you won't see them. If you are upset that the enemies level with you and are too hard, then turn down the difficulty slider, and you can have your sense of "progression." There are people who claim that in-game automaps are for the weak. I think that their criticisms are flawed too, and for the same reason.

I will reiterate my basic point: if Oblivion was designed the way the "dumbing down" crowd claims they want it, few people would want to play it.

Go play any decent RPG; eg KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Vampire Bloodlines, Arcanum, or Morrowind. Soak up the atmosphere, the backstories, the conflict, the dialogue...

Enjoy the mystery/intrique and sense of achievement from solving quests. And yes, these games do have combat and combat is an important part of the game, I'm not saying it isn't.

You may be able to turn off the markers but what about the pop-up boxes and simplistic dialogue? You don't even get the pleasure of finding hidden areas or reading books - the big neon spoiler pop-up ruins any pleasure from exploration.

Why do you automatically think I need the game to be easier? I am an intelligent gamer. I have already worked out how to exploit the combat and it is always exploited because everything levels with me.

Oblivion is a very enjoyable first person shooter but a braindead RPG. Its GTA-LOTR.

It's a shame you resort to insulting people who hold a different point of view. It's rather amusing that I so often seen references to "PC Nazis", when quite the opposite is the case. I'd love to have an intelligent conversation on this subject - but clearly it won't happen here.

I was actually extremely sad when I discovered that it was impossible to collect candles. In Morrowind, I furnished an entire bandits cave with loot, books, various furniture-like stuff that I'd picked up and, ofcourse, candles. As I brought home more candles, I expanded my domain in the cave, bringing a friendly, light atmosphere to what used to be dark and spooky. I think I spent hours on it, and that cave (Adanumuran is the name) became my home in Morrowind.

None of that is possible in Oblivion. I can't pick up candles or lamps, and even if I could, the caves reset after a set amount of time anyway, so I'd just return to find my home invaded by bandits, who'd mess with my things and attack me on sight. Also, the otherwise nice new physics system prevents me from stacking books properly, and usually makes a mess of everything I want to arrange in the game world.

I still love the game, ofcourse. It's got me hooked just like Morrowind did back in the day, and though there are many changes I don't like, there's a lot of improvements too, and most of the things I loved about Morrowind are still here (the freedom, et.c.).

I'm just trying to show that while it's easy to make fun of people for complaining about these tiny things, they might have entirely valid reasons for these complaints. It might seem irrational to you, but it was disappointing to find out that one of the things that made my personalized Morrowind experience special, is not possible in the sequel.

I basically agree with peterb re dumbing down. The trajectory of the RPG since (in my case) Bard's Tale has been on balance for the best. I think the best example is KOTOR, which was way more fun than the Baldur's Gate games it clones mainly because it streamlines a lot of the icky details of inventory management etc. Of course it took lots of crap for being dumbed down for console players. The relationship between Morrowind and Oblivion is similar, and the changes are for the better. (Except the interface, which really is dumbed down to a size 50 font so peterb can play the game on his couch!)

That said, I do think that the sort of step by step quest handholding, which perhaps originated with Baldur's Gate and reaches its apotheosis in Oblivion, does have its downside. I agree that all quests in RPG history were on rails, but you didn't always have your nose rubbed in it so much. The weakness of this sort of plotting is much more obvious when the structure is telegraphed so transparently by a series of map pointers and canned journal entries -- it does detract from the illusion of openness and story development. However, this has been true since Baldur's Gate and was particularly flagrant in Morrowind also. And on balance I prefer the Oblivion scheme to the old Ultima scheme of having to take lots of notes and remember what to do next along 20 different concurrent quests.

I must also protest that the name-health-job business started in Ultima IV. In Ultima III, there is no conversation, talk to a person just gets them to spit out a single canned phrase.

"An RPG is the game that I played when I was 13 years old and didn't have any friends, and any game that isn't exactly like that I will complain loudly is not really an RPG."

This made me chuckle! :)

I'm not keen on your other definition, though; do you not believe it is possible to make an RPG without numbers? There are plenty of pen and paper games that achieve this, why not in videogame form?

Regarding excising levels... I've thought about this often, because class and level systems are the minority in tabletop RPGs. But, and I think this is key, the appeal of cRPGs seems to be centred upon their logistical play - that is, the repetitive play: gaining advantage (being rewarded) by performing a highly repetitive action sequence.

I fear that any cRPG which attempts to excise logistical play (and I have tried this myself!) is cutting its audience size by at least a half and quite possibly by a much larger proportion.

I am greatly enjoying your discussions of Oblivion, Peter. I will not be able to play these games myself (no time), so I appreciate getting a coherent perspective on the game from you and psu. I'm not surprised that your *ahem* rather acerbic writing style has elicited less than amiable responses from the gaming community, however. :)

Best wishes!

Hello :)

I have been playing CRPGS since 1998 (or 1999).
And I started with Baldur's Gate - and am still playing it. Why do you ask ? Beacuse of the great story, the roleplaying aspect and the chance of being a hero :) .

I have also played Oblivion (for just about 4-5 hours now) and I can feel a difference in my attitude towards Oblivion. I just feel nothing.
The game so far hasn't been able to give me a sense of beeing the hero. The guards and the inhabitants of Oblivion do not seem to bother that the gates of Oblivion have been opened.
[And the radiant AI seems to have trouble differentiating between my character and the
inhabitants: In the Imperial Palace the guards
did not seem to recognize that they have said:
"citizens are velcome..." to me, because they said it each time I went by them, which in the end were a little annoying].

As for the quest markers, and the auto-map, and the fast travel system, I really do not have a problem with that. As far as I know, Sacred has a similar where there also is a red marker where you're supposed to go to complete a quest. And the auto-map feature and the fast travelling system were also done in the Baldur's Gate series. [And I think it was part of why this series became so popular as it did]. Baldur's Gate did also have a day/night cycle, realtime combat (which you could pause), shops were also closed at night time etc. etc. And the Might and Magic series (the rpgs) did also have people tending their own business, going around town,
shops were opened during day or night time. And even the inns closed at a certain time. And you could take boats or horses to other parts of the realm. So I don't really see the reason why some people are lamenting (or are upset) that Oblivion has e.g. questmarkers and a compass.

My take on Oblivion is that - yes - it has nice grahics. But nice graphics do not (alone) make a good game. And a very combat oriented game do not make a good either. [And yes, in Baldur's Gate - there is also combat - but combat in this is a means of resolving a quest- and sometimes you don't need to fight at all].

Another positive and refreshing to say about Oblivion is the fact that there is a newspaper, being funded by the Empire. I find this feature very refreshing. And I also find the fact that I can overhear what people either are saying to one another or to the guards - a fresh and innovative touch.

What I don't like is that the word seems to be sterile - there is absolutely no people whatsoever. (again: compared to e.g. Baldur's Gate or Planescape Torment). I mean: The graphics are fine - but where are the people.
And most af all - where are the sounds of trees moving, wind blowing in the leaves, birds singing, people making haste or hammering etc. etc.

Personally, I have a problem with the interface. I can never get used to use wsad to move and the
mouse to direct the camera. [I think I get a form of motion sickness - and I also find myself not knowing where I am - in the game - ofcourse ;) ]

Also it bothers me that to equip a bow rather than sword, you have to scroll down (or trough) several menus. [I think it would be better if you i.e. with the right mouse button could change your (equipped weapon) ]

IMO the game's interface (especially for the pc) is a disgrace. It seems to be a direct port of the Xbox (console) interface. Luckily, the modding comminity has done something to correct this.

Make no mistake: I still find Oblivion to bee a (very) good game, not just a great game. (as some reviewers find)

bye
Karsten

I played KOTOR... I did not observe the "depth" of dialog or story that people claim exist. The story in the game is about as good as a long winded Star Trek episode.

What I observed was that rather than picking "Rumors" from the dialog menu, you got to pick "I have some more questions". Otherwise, the NPCs had their set scripts just like the NPCs in Oblivion have their set scripts. Yes, some of the scripts were a bit longer.

KOTOR had a better overall narrative than Oblivion, but it did not have as much content, and the pacing was worse. It took 15 hours to get off the sewer planet. Also, all the maps in KOTOR had a sort of Halo-like repetiveness about them, so it would have been nice if they just told me where to go so I didn't have to sit there running back and forth through all the identical hallways. The load times were also worse.

Also, all the puzzles were stupid. I mean cmon, Towers of Hanoi?

My point here is: what kept KOTOR going was the bad-ass light saber and force power combat, combined with the interesting plot. Zapping people with lightning just does not get old.

I don't think it gets points for character development or back-plot. Every time Karth or Bastilla opened their mouths and started moaning about this or that I just wanted to kill them.

What Oblivion lacks in plot it makes up for in Dungeon Crawl goodness. In this regard, the game is streamlined and fun. If you want to call this an FPS, then by all means go back and replay Baldur's Gate a few more times. But you should perhaps pick up Halo and compare the gameplay a bit.

Dhruin,

I promise that if you don't open your comment with "What a pretentious load of rubbish" and talk about "5 year old morons" that I won't in turn insult you. Maybe I should have a thicker skin, but what can I say. I am only human.

That is, unless your point is that the article itself is insulting, in which case all I can do is point out that there is an entire team of developers at Bethsoft who are regularly being labasted for not writing a game that hews to a standard that doesn't exist. I bet they feel a little insulted about that. The problem I have with the phrase "dumbing down" is that it is so generic as to prevent nearly any rational discourse on the issue. This article is an attempt to pin down some of the specifics behind that sweeping statement and show them as baseless.

I am in no way a Bethsoft apologist. As I've tried to say before, there are plenty of criticisms about the game that one can make that are serious and significant (I simply haven't written that article yet). Note, for example, the ones that Karsten raises: issues with the user interface, yes, but consider his main complaint, which I will paraphrase here: "The graphics are pretty, but it lacks emotional depth. I don't feel anything. The world seems sterile." Those are serious criticisms, and one can immediately come up with counterexamples, such as Planescape: Torment which had worse graphics but got those perhaps more central emotional issues right.

The reason the "dumbing down" generalization gets under my skin so badly is that it is implicitly making two false claims: one general, one specific. The general falsehood is that it plays into a commonly held but untrue belief that RPGs are "intellectual" games, when the truth is that most of them simply require less dexterity, which is not at all the same as require you to be smart. The specific falsehood is that the claim is often made in a context where it implies that the previous games in the Elder Scrolls series were "less dumb". In reality, if you take away the graphical changes, there are precious few differences between this and the previous games.

Hope that helps.

I didn`t read all the posts above, and I`ll just say that Oblivion was a disappointment for me for all the reasons already mentioned in this discussion.

Point is, Bethesda wanted to appeal to as much as gamers as possible and they succeeded. If you have a shitload of people telling the same thing, there`s something to it. The game is simplified a bit too much for my taste, and the feeling of reward after a hard quest is not here anymore. Some people feel differently of course but I`m just gonna wait for Gothic 3.

Gothic series by the way has no leveling, is a lot simpler in a lot of aspects, opponents out of your league are everywhere around etc. But it`s challenging and much more organic and that`s waht counts for me.

"Point is, Bethesda wanted to appeal to as much as gamers as possible and they succeeded."

Yeah, it must suck to be them...

Yep. The game is selling like hotcakes. While I agree with some of the criticisms, the makers of the game have to feel like it is an unmitigated success.

Nice review and I agree with your viewpoints... all of them. I don't go to the official Oblivion boards anymore for any reason. You can write the most benign post there and the first response will be a critism of some kind.

In fact, the offical Oblivion board is worse than Barrens chat in WOW. I thought that wasn't even possible.

I avoid the silly levelling in the vanilla games using Kobu's character advancement system: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=429404

Kobu is a responsible modder who's worked hard on quality as well as features and I couldn't go back to playing without his mod.

Of course it is true that "role playing" games have always been dumber than their fans have believed.

But that doesn't erase the obvious fact that Oblivion is a very dumb, shallow game compared to other games with real depth, real strategy and real AIs. See the Europa Universalis series, just for starters...

I think you make some valid points, and "dumbed down" is one of those stock phrases that people tend to use to mean "only got rid of the annoying bits after I'd learned to deal with them".

That being said, I *do* think Morrowind was a better game, and I *do* think that some of the things people call "dumbing down" are part of the problem.

For example, the Big Green Arrow. Yes, all RPGs are fairly linear, and it's always fairly obvious what you're supposed to do, but there is, to my mind, a world of difference between "there's a corridor, I should probably go down it" and "I need to head for the Green Arrow". It's a question of immersion: if I know I have to go down this corridor, then I am focusing on the corridor. If I am heading towards an arrow, I am focusing on the arrow. I stop actually thinking about what I'm supposed to be doing, and just think in terms of following the arrow, because that's the simplest way to get results. If I'm told "you have to go to Balmora" and I get on a Silt Strider and say "take me to Balmora", I feel I've interacted with a fictional world. If I'm told "you have to go to Bravil", and I fast travel to Bravil, I feel like I've just used a CRPG fast travel feature.

Mate, that article is about the most pretentious, inaccurate pile of crap I have ever had the misfortune of reading, bolstered only by your own belief that you a lot more about RPGs than you actually do. What you completely fail to see is that the complaints levelled at Oblivion aren't 'it departed from being a hardcore RPG, like the rest of The Elder Scrolls series was', it's that the rest of the series at least struck a balance between having action and 'hardcore' RPG. Oblivion doesn't. It throws out practically all aspects of being an RPG, and became basically a hack-and-slash adventure with the occasional nod in the general direction of being an RPG. I wouldn't even mind this if that's how it was marketed and promoted. It wasn't. It was marketed and promoted as an RPG.

To address the concept of 'dumbing down', let's see what is (or, more accurately, isn't) in Oblivion that means it's dumbed down:

Muckle great arrow on your compass pointing you to your next objective at all times.
Muckle great arrow on your map pointing you to your next objective at all times.
One click get-practically-anywhere-from-practically-anywhere fast travel.
Big pop-up screens pretty much telling you in minute detail what you have to do next in your current quest.
Melee combat which is basically 'rattle your mouse button as fast as you can'.
Thanks to loot levelling, pretty damn good equipment that takes very little effort to get.

Thanks to all of the above, I can quite honestly say that the only time I've actually had to use my brain whilst playing Oblivion was during quests in player-made mods. In most, if not all, other RPGs I have played, I have actually had to figure stuff out, not just follow the big arrow and click my mouse at anything that gets in my way. Actually, if you replace 'follow the big arrow' with 'run down the corridor', you get a pretty decent description of Quake.

Your comment:

'And make no mistake: the skill and levelling system in Oblivion is unnecessary and wanky. Put simply, you cannot understand it without reading about it on the Internet. That's really all you need to know to know that it is poorly designed.'

Try reading the manual sometime. Or even just reading the screens in-game. I would say anyone with half a brain would be able to understand it from those.

Finally, removing the levelling? That's one of the very few things that makes it even something that is remotely, by a large stretch, approaching something vaguely like an RPG. Remove the levelling system, you've basically got Doom, except with a slower pace, a bit more freedom of movement, and in a fantasy setting.

"It throws out practically all aspects of being an RPG, and became basically a hack-and-slash adventure with the occasional nod in the general direction of being an RPG."

It is, I think, a good rule of thumb that any argument which has, at its core "this game is not an RPG" and fails at any point to describe what an RPG actually *is* is probably flawed.

I find the arrow annoying. I find the popups moderately annoying. I don't give a damn about the combat system. I don't think any of those elements make the game "not an RPG" and indeed I'm not sure if "not an RPG" is a remotely useful criticism to level against an RPG.

One could imagine a hypothetical game in which all of your criticisms were reversed: there was no IC guidance on quests, combat was much more complex, you had to walk everywhere: "this is not an RPG, I would say, it's part puzzle game, part beat 'em up, and a whole bunch of pointless trekking across scenery."

OK, so we're not allowed to criticise Oblivion in terms of the other Elder Scrolls Games (full disclosure: I made it through about one town worth of Morrowind and then went back to replaying Fallout and Fan made NWN modules). But are we allowed to criticise Oblivion in terms of other RPGs in general?

I mean, maybe the other Elder Scroll games didn't have very deep or interactive quests but if we come from a world of RPGs where player choice is involved in determining the course of events are we allowed to point out that the quests in Oblivion are all linear and that the only aparent outcome choices are: "finished" or "in progress"? Which sucks.

Someone earlier said that Oblivion is GTA-LOTR and I totally agree with this. This is what makes it simultaneously so good and so fun and so disapointing to me.

QUOTE(peterb @ May 19 2006, 04:21 PM)

I've been writing up my thoughts on Oblivion recently, and have some things to say about the constantly brought charge that it is "dumbed down." I believe this claim is untrue. Since someone on the comment thread asked if I had seen this forum (indeed, it was exactly this place I was thinking of), I figured I should alert you to it:

http://www.tleaves.com/weblog/archives/000611.html

Kind regards,
peterb

you're living in another plane of existence, obviously

When you criticize an opinion you must criticize that opinion, not what YOU fantasize or interpret or constrain that opinion to be.

For starter limiting the discussion to crpg rather thanc including mmorpg, muds and pen & paper rpg, or even the theorical *ideal megagame* is plain dumb.

you are making the false assumption that game cannot evolve otherwise than graphicaly, and that there is no direction in evolurtion/change.

otherwise, please search for my previous answers on the subject. I'll still try to sumarize it.

world scape
1. levitation cut (see tes2 and tes3)
2. tiny disneyland cities (see total war series, daggerfall, arena, etc...)
3. limited monsters variety (see mm6, many mmorpgs)
4. no visible live factions (see mount and blade to get a feeling of war)
5. tiny gameworld (see daggerfall, many mmorpg, etc, lol even mount and blade)

Gameplay
1. limited manoeuvers (see Drakhan, Daggerfall climbing, Thief)
2. pitifull riding (see mount and blade and mmorpg)
3. cut weapons
4. no crafting

you obviously got no clues what you're talking about

QUOTE
My personal definiton of an RPG is that anything with an epic plot redolent of adolescent wish-fulfillment fantasies and "progression" of a protagonist qualifies. But if you want an even simpler definition, here goes: any video game that at any time, for any reason, shows you more than three numbers on one screen is a computer RPG. End of story

your definition is quite limited. it pretty much describe a movie. as for progression, sorry, but it's idiotic. progression is ABSOLUTELY UNECESSARY i a rpg. proof: Traveler and Runequest , 2 of the greatest rpgs had nerly no progression. you had a complex character creation system and that was it. YOU at 30 or 40 years old, freshly retured from the army. Further proof: shooters game. they can have a great story yet no kill progression. they can get damn close to a very good rpg if atmosphere is well done. in fact some really well done shooters are much closer to rpgs than so called rpgs. I'm obviously not talking about quake/unreal but about some of the star wars titles, tomb raider titles and drakhan - and no doubt many others - that involve more than mindless shooting.

That leave your definition empty and akin to a generic description of a movie. unfortunitely, movies and book-in-which-you-are-the-hero (popular in the 80s, roll dice to combat, choose option to send you to a different page) have very little to do with role playing games !!!! the soul of rpgs is about having a living world that react to your action, rather than a preset sequence of event. A true rpgs have infinite replayablity, infinite quests, etc.

Failing that, it must have a complex fulfiling storyline and intense interactivity. oblivion don't score too high in there with it's preset traps, low ai adversary, artificially leveled adversary, and too heavy focus on battle. In Morrowind the world was so interactive you could decorate your house in-game and have fun doing that. tes4 physic is so broken your house just look like a mix between container-filled rooms for storage and necrophilia-oriented torture rack for the perverts. hardly any rpgs in there. you can forget the neatly arranged weapons display of morrowind and the pillow forts .

I definitively don't like tes4 game atmosphere. they promised more animal life than MW there's hardly any. You can dream of fishing in your head because it's not in game.

As for heroism, you can leave all portal open and no one notice. close them all and martin become the hero. all predetermined no matter what you do. very boring. not epic at all. in fct if you're clever you can FINISH the GAME and still be at level 1. how's that about epic and progression ! don't believe it ? use your brain and figure out the puzzle. real easy. it's all about skill choice. pick the right ones and you don't need to level ever. the game become a gigantic joke.

QUOTE
The Elder Scrolls games have always been action games. I recently played Arena, the first game, for a significant amount of time, in preparation for a review. It is a game of mindless, nearly constant real-time combat, right down to having to "swing" the mouse in order to make your character swing his sword. Anyone who claims that Oblivion has more real-time action than the previous games in the series hasn't actually played them. The main difference between Oblivion and the earlier games is that the real-time combat isn't quite as boring and stupid and irritating and the terrain isn't randomly generated (by "randomly generated," by the way, I mean "boring and stupid and irritating").

Arena isn't the deeper example. I guess you're fairly young and have no clue whatsoever how limited those computers that ran arena were. if I recall corectly I played it on a 486 with 4 meg ram. quite pitifull. and limited. my current computer got 1GB ram PLUS 256 MB ram for the video crad. you obviously got no clue how to programm and about the space required for data structures, do you ? That said despite the limits, arena had a pretty long storry line, plenty of puzzles and riddles - and overall was more a puzzle game than anything else. still you could get cool side quests at taverns. but I don't expect you to know any of that since *playing extensively* in your mouth is probably as deep as your article is. a couple hours is my uess. no one your age could stand those old graphics any longer than that.

QUOTE
Which brings me to my real complaint about Oblivion. It is not that they cut too much, but that they cut too little. Why not get rid of levels altogether?

Here is your redeeming remark I guess. Level are unecessary. they can mage resistance and life points with specific skills.

QUOTE
But it is "poorly designed" in exactly the opposite way that the most vocal critics claim. And if Oblivion was changed to be the more contemplative, intricate, and baroque game these commenters claim to want, it would be less fun than it is. And, not coincidentally, wouldn't sell.

you should cut the fliff remarks. you're saying nothing and leveraging on thin air.

QUOTE
for Bethesda as, every day, they have to read complaints from obsessive-compulsives who shout to the rooftops that the game is ruined, ruined, because it won't let them collect candles.

here you are proving your lack of analysis skill.
why implement a complex lightning system if you can't light your house ?
in fact why can't you move the furniture.

keep in mind I got a master in software engineering, specialized in computer graphics with pretty good knowledge on cutting edge virtual reality (stuff pretty close to star treck holodeck, but unless you got a million $ to spend, you can't have it at home)

my guess is you just haven't figured out what interactive world mean and how it ties up with rpgs.

I'll tell you that much, it got nothing to do with making a mess in your house because you walk too close to a stack of apples. oblivion has made the worst use of physics I ever seen in a game.

QUOTE
Most of the problems in Oblivion come not from the innovations it introduced, but from the fact that it is the ultimate expression of what it means to be an Elder Scrolls game.

Innovations ? enlighten me please ?

In my files, all the technology used in oblivion is licensed from outside and poorly used. I could make a list. it's pretty large.

QUOTE
Every Elder Scrolls game has improved on the past by cutting out more and more. I can't wait to see what they cut out of Elder Scrolls V. It's going to be great. Lest anyone believe that I am being sarcastic, I assure you I am perfectly serious.

Yes, tes4 cut the running functionality for 20% of the customer. for tes5 they aim to bring that up to 100%. the plan is to put blank disk in the boxes. that way no one can complain !

if they feel nice they may include a cd called *the playing of tes5* so everyone can experience tes5 in its full glory. since it's only a mpeg it cannot crash or feel buggy. now it's even simpler to play than tes4, you just press play on the mpeg player.

but don't be fooled ! it got full depth of rpg immersion. plenty of choices at every frame: pause, play, stop, forward, rewind, slow. you can even play with many sliders to adjust contrast, sound volume, etc.

tes5 the ultimate rpg experience.

A very poor analysis of the situation. Your thought processes lack depth and complexity.

You are not as smart as you think you are, and the people you disagree with are a lot smarter than you think.

If you didn't put your energy into glorifying yourself by insulting others, and instead focused on trying to understand the points of view with which you disagree, you'd actually be participating in what is generally known as "intelligence." You should try it. It beats being an obnoxious loud-mouth, and you don't end up looking like a jack-ass as a result.

The irony of people showing up here spewing insults in order to claim that psu and peterb shouldn't ever be insulting in talking about games is just painful.

Also, folks, if it bothers you this much that somebody has a different opinion about your favorite game, try leaving the house once in a while. Put the controller down, do something else, and try to get some goddamn perspective. It's a GAME. You're screaming at folks who LIKE THE GAME TOO, but happen to have slightly different opinions about it.

If you can't handle that, how exactly do you make it through everyday life without freaking out all the time?

Nat, the reason why so many people are 'turning up' here is very simple. Have a look here and you should see why for yourself:

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=442774

While I'm not Nat, and I don't even play him on TV, I suspect he's bewildered that people are showing up throwing insults rather than that they are showing up at all. I did indeed invite people from the official forums to participate after Ben mentioned this being a frequent topic there. I missed the part where I referred to anyone who disagreed with me as a wifebeating childhater.

Exactly. I'm not surprised that people are showing up.

I'm just surprised that they feel the need to hurl insults and scream at total strangers over a VIDEOGAME.

You just hate the game because you are gay. And stupid. And gay.

There, it had to be said. I might as well be the one.

Oblivion is made for stupid people. You're a stupid person. Go figure.

To respond to "Tim!"'s complaint about every quest being linear with only two outcomes...I have to disagree, I've been on several with a number of different possibilities. For instance, fail on your first attempt to join the Thieve's Guild and then that opens up a different quest you can do later to get in. The paranoid guy in Skingrad has at least three or four different outcomes, although most end in one character's death. The Mage Guild quest to get a book from some mountain has a bunch of possibilities, too...and those are just off the top of my head.

I like Oblivion, and I've stuck with it for much longer than I expected to. I've been playing games since the late 70s and don't really care about this being "dumbed down". You know what's more important? THAT I CONSIDER IT FUN. Yeah, sometimes the green arrow gives too much away, but if I have thirty active quests I like having a map pointer telling me where I should go. If I couldn't fast travel between cities I would have quit long ago. If I had to write stuff down on paper, I would have found a different game to play.

And frankly, I feel like too many RPGs out there take the wrong approach of making things more complicated just for the sake of adding in more numbers. Japanese RPGs can be especially bad at this -- give every weapon a separate experience point level! To attack somebody you have to know the numerical values of your weapon level, its rating, terrain modifier, the blood type of your best friend, primary element affinity, secondary element affinity, and biorhythm. When you go up a level you have to play a chess game on a hopscotch board to increase your attributes but only if you've collected 99 herbs and spices and also levelled up your pet rabbit's thirty primary attributes. Oh, and all of this is on a screen where each of those attributes only has a three letter code identifier. I'll take the dumbed-down game, kthxbye.

> you obviously got no clue how to programm and
> about the space required for data structures,
> do you ?

I think I just strained my diaphram laughing.

I can't reply to Astarsis's comment in detail because it, quite literally, left me speechless. But as an illustration I'm going to pick one specific complaint you made and talk about it, because it shows how your thinking on this issue is muddied. I believe that most, though not all, of your thinking on the other issues is similarly muddy.

You identify as one of the supposedly negative changes in Oblivion:

> 2. tiny disneyland cities (see total war series, daggerfall, arena, etc...)

And all I can say in reply to this is to agree: Arena's cities were not tiny. They weren't tiny at all. They were huge. Huge cities. Huge, expansive, cities. Huge, expansive, randomly generated cities.

Huge, expansive, randomly generated, soul-crushingly boring cities, each one precisely the same as the other, differing only in what color chainmail bra the randomly-generated and soul-crushingly boring NPCs were wearing.

So if that is your definition of a "smart game," than all I can do is be thankful to the fates that the people that developed Oblivion didn't have you in their focus groups. Because you, my friend, like bad games.

"Because you, my friend, like bad games."

O gimme a fuckin` break!
The guy might have gone over the top with his post, but he`s right on almost all accounts. And you`re both wankers, really. ;)
Take it easy folks and remember it`s just a game, no matter how bad it is. :bliss:

QUOTE
Huge, expansive, randomly generated, soul-crushingly boring cities, each one precisely the same as the other, differing only in what color chainmail bra the randomly-generated and soul-crushingly boring NPCs were wearing.

So if that is your definition of a "smart game," than all I can do is be thankful to the fates that the people that developed Oblivion didn't have you in their focus groups. Because you, my friend, like bad games.
END QUOTE

Did you even read Astarsis's summary? Hmm, maybe since it wasn't voiced text, you didn't understand it?

Astarsis said Arena was shallow as well. He never said it was a "smart game". You're entire counter-argument is founded upon a misreading of his opinion. Pretty sad that's all you could come up with... but then, from someone who thinks an RPG is anything with 3 numbers on the screen, you must have a medical excuse for such idiocy.

*You are not as smart as you think you are, and the people you disagree with are a lot smarter than you think.

If you didn't put your energy into glorifying yourself by insulting others*

Nice try babayada, really ! except while I was blunt and harsh, I wasn't insulting anyone but being specific on the criticism.

in fact, I was very detailled. I even said one of his point was valid, and in fact right on spot.

By the way peter b posted his ultra genric rant (puting everyone that complain in the same pocket *Dumb brigade*) directly on the official forum and deserved a very direct reply.

As for glorifying myself, I hardly need that ! LOL ! Not only I led a good life and some of my creations (miniature catheter) are saving lives around the world, but I was also successful beyond my wildest expectation in the Morrowind modding world. So glory seeker ? hardly ! If anything I worked much harder in encouraging other modders and other programmers reaching their own potential to the fullest, and I'm very glad they did.

You can come back to me to talk about intelligence when you got a few patents under your belt, ok ?

but obviously you're not able to keep a cool head and do a level-headed discussion.

*The irony of people showing up here spewing insults in order to claim that psu and peterb shouldn't ever be insulting in talking about games is just painful.*

Let me guess, another peterb fan coming to the rescue ?

*Theonius halidomide *

Thanks for clarifying the blunder peterb made. Dead on. insulting about 500,000 peoples is quite a feat. But I'm suspecting he was just trying to get peoples to click on his adds to get a free xbox ? isn't what your stategy was peterb ? you said that quite clearly on another blog !

*While I'm not Nat, and I don't even play him on TV, I suspect he's bewildered that people are showing up throwing insults rather than that they are showing up at all. I did indeed invite people from the official forums to participate after Ben mentioned this being a frequent topic there. I missed the part where I referred to anyone who disagreed with me as a wifebeating childhater.*

Dumb brigade ?

And nice try pretending not to know Nat ! Disguise 101 failled !

*> you obviously got no clue how to programm and
> about the space required for data structures,
> do you ?

I think I just strained my diaphram laughing.

Posted by Mahim at May *

Another good try by a friend of Peterb. Unfortunately it's true. Anyone can program, few know how to optimize. My algorithms usually run 10x faster than those of other peoples. the key ? algorithms and data structures. it's one thing to know of them, quite another to master their use. that's the difference between a poor graphic engine and an ultra streamlined one.

Basically I'm saying those old game had so little space to run on you were even hard pressed to get decent graphics to even show up. Back then using assembler to optimize things was commonplace. But let me guess, you're too young to remember that time, which lead to your laughter...

*I can't reply to Astarsis's comment in detail because it, quite literally, left me speechless.*

you would have been better speechless !
or perhaps considering making excuses to to the 55% of disatified customers you're labeling as the dumb brigade ? but I'm guessing making excuses is beyond you ?

*You identify as one of the supposedly negative changes in Oblivion:*

good try ! I don't care about changes. I care about final product. TES4 is unfortunately a piece of crap. a visit to the tech forum will convince you. I'm certain a freshmen would build a better engine. the only redeeming aspect is the high poly models. but if the game was better done they would have used LOD (Level of details) to streamline it

* Huge, expansive, randomly generated, soul-crushingly boring cities, each one precisely the same as the other, differing only in what color chainmail bra the randomly-generated and soul-crushingly boring NPCs were wearing.*

nice attempt. you obviously didn't read my analysis above. if you're not a programmer, I can excuse your lack of knowledge. if you are a programmer, you're the poorest excuse I've seen... total lack of understanding of how algorithms and data structures requires space.

give arena the space we got today and you replace the meager 4-8mb of the time (and I bought it in 96 just before DF cameout, the game was out in 94... so chop this down to perhaps 2 mb ? ) by today's standard 1GB and I can hapilly fill it with a full psychological simulation that will leave you speechless.

so when we talk about resource use, Oblivion fair poorly. by the way, peoples out there hardly find OB npcs lively. once they're done with their quests they get pretty boring. it's hardly up to radiant AI promises or up to what today technology allowed to do.

they built it as a movie rather than as a game / simulation. If I want to see a good movie I'll go see one, the advantage being I don't have to click through 10 monsters before I hea the next character speeking, in fact I wouldn't have to click at all.

sorry, but today computers are able to do far more than just a click through story.

oh and the funny part is that your description of arena cities pretty much fit oblivion cities perfectly, to the exception of the hugue/expensive/random part :P

you obviously NEVER played arena, and crtainly the look you had at it was RECENT in which case it's mindless, because you would compare it to TODAY game.

It's as dumb as saying prehistoric men are a bunch of idiots and should all be killed because they got no sense of fashion !!! give them a few 100,000 years to evolve, will you ?

In any case, your whole argument make no sense at all.

In my book:

1. it make sense to be satisfied with a game and describe what you like

2. it make sense to be disatified with a game and describe what you dislike

3. it make sense to get exemple from other games to illustrate what could be better

but it's utterly idiotic to take exemple from a 10 yers old and use that as proff a recent game is *better*. it's as dumb as comparing a current day katana to a crude prehistoric era club ! of course the katana is better, so what ? that doesn't tell me if it's a good or a bad katana !!!

what do you do to show you're strong ? beat up 5 years old ? I wonder !

of course I know what you do to prove you're smart, you bring up 5 friends and start shouting insults because you're too scared to fight your own battles.

oh my, someone could find your ploy about those adds clicking to get a free xbox 360 !!!

-----------------------------------

> Pete should buy this game soon.

Hey, man. Convince people to click on enough google ads that we make a few hundred bucks in a short period of time, and I'll buy a 360 before you know it.

But really, $465 is a lot to spend for one game.

Posted by peterb at April 18, 2006 09:01 PM
-------------------------------------------

straight from

http://www.tleaves.com/weblog/archives/000595.html

nice plan really !

Another comment...

400$ a lot of money ?

I guess we get a clue about Peter b and his friends age group and their obvios scam plan to get a couple of Google-financed xbox 360.

No wonder they stick together so closely !

Wow, I sure do hope when I get out of high school I can learn to be as good a software developer as you are. I stand in awe of your powers of deduction. Yep, you sure saw through me.

"And nice try pretending not to know Nat ! Disguise 101 failled !"

Uh, he just said he *wasn't* me, not that he doesn't know me.

Please learn to read.

Also, now I'm curious.

Astarsis, you're waving your Super-Elite Programmer credentials around a lot.

So: where did you get your "master in software engineering, specialized in computer graphics"? What school, and when?

Also, you say 'My algorithms usually run 10x faster than those of other peoples". What have you built? Where can we find out about it online?

And finally, you're claiming that peterb must not know as much as you because he's "too young". How old are you?

If you're going to try to argue from authority, you ought to be able to back that authority up with some evidence.

Wow, the strangely vituperative defense of PF Chang's held the glorious crown of Mindless Incivility on this blog for so long, and with such ease. But there's a new champ today!

If only there was a PF Chang's in Oblivion to criticize...

Good try to track my identy Nat. I don't really plan to suscribe to virus-0email anytime soon :D But good try really.

I haven't been waving any credential except where the comment I was making needed a *where does that come from* and stating my education is faster than quoting a book.

Most of the dicusion above hardly need more than a college course. But I can give you some info on me. I got my eduction in north america (Nat starting her satelite trace :P ) and I'm over 30. Through work terms and full time work I work at about 4 different companies on above 10 projects, all of which shiped. About half of those were slo work (mostly early career) and my highest position was team leader. Good enought ?
I'm not counting any school projects in there, just commercial stuff, otherwise it would be way over 100 programm.

In any case, knowing my university, adress, etc won't help you telling how good I am, and I don't have demos online.

By the way, you'll rarely find software online, except for tools. most hardware based products (all medical equipment software, including imagery software) are provided with the machine. same goes for software running in planes, car, cellphones (except downloadle games and stuff, but not the core). And there are a lot more programmers doing that than other type of software. I never worked in the gaming industry but I know lots of peoples there.

The performance is a subject that came over and over in the comments from my bosses, teachers and lab assistants. I do produce really efficient code, remarkable enought for the customers to notice the improvement.

*And finally, you're claiming that peterb must not know as much as you because he's "too young". How old are you?*

It's the other way arround. I guessed his age from lack of knowledge. his failure to understand how a drastic reduction in memory (and cpu power !!! back in arena time it was what ... 8 MHz cpu ? today it's like 3+ gHz and you got a graphic coprocessor) would adversly affect the capability of the game in term of AI and features / liveliness.

Anyway, this is very basic stuff that you learn even in college. So I assumed, as I said either he isn't a programmer (doesn't have the formation) or haven't made it past college yet (due to not understanding data stucture/algorim / memory/cpu speed and how they interact together)

Basically more ram => you can have bigger data structores. more cpu speed => you can use more complex algorithms.

As for his age I guessed it from his latter comment that sort of gave away that he didn't played arena or dagerfall when they where released. and that make him at most 25 years old.

other factor in the way he reacted hinted at him being more like college-age. so I'm guessing at 20 years old based on all this. I may be wrong, I don't know him.

as for the backing up things with facts, I don't have time to waste. I can't really start giving you courses on all that I know. Nor do I plan to take an exam.

I can tell you I made it as far as playing with NURBS in computer graphics, and I'm definitively no expert on that. In fact the more you know, the more you got to learn. NURBS is as complex as it gets. If you got questions on that I'll try to answer. It's complicated enought that you'll be able to see if I don't have a clue or if I do know at least little bit.

No one with a graduate university formation (bachelor completed) would know anything about NURBS unless they're really crack in maths and computer science, and then that would make me a 20 year old genius instead of what I say I am.

Fair enought ? Can't promise I'll be there before next weekend thought. You can even ask a question as silly as what's a NURBS or whats a bezier curve...and I'll give you the basics. Thought even that would prove nothing since there are websites on that.

I still think you're weird. Would it not be simple to simply state peterb degree of eductation ?

by the way there is hardly anything I said that need to be backed up with authority. it's barely logical analysis and reasoning

*Nat =
Uh, he just said he *wasn't* me, not that he doesn't know me.

Please learn to read.*

He said he didn't played with you... as good as hinting he didn't know you.... it really did look like posturing to pretend unknown peoples stepped in his defense rather than like what it was...calling his friend to assault a blasphemous stranger

*peterb=
Wow, I sure do hope when I get out of high school I can learn to be as good a software developer as you are. I stand in awe of your powers of deduction. Yep, you sure saw through me.*
I sure you do :P but I suspect you're more the salesman type, the way you planned to get that xbox 360

Wow. The inmates are really taking over the asylum here.

I therefore think it's about time for me to join in and DEMAND that peterb retract his historically and technically retarded LIES about the conversation system in Ultima III!

Obviously if you had HALF an education in advanced algorithms like QUICKSORT and data structures like LINKED LISTS you'd know that Ultima III could never have had a 'name/job/health' routine, as this only became technically possible in Ultima IV following the advent of SPLAY TREES. Ultima III was published in 1983 but the first paper on SPLAY TREES only came out in 1985, the same year as Ultima IV. QED

Wikipedia concurs with my technical analysis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_IV

Technically, the game was very similar to Ultima III, although much larger. This was the first Ultima game to feature a real conversation system; whereas NPCs in the earlier parts would only give one canned answer when talked to, now players could interact with them by specifying a subject of conversation, the subject determined either by a standard set of questions (name, job, health) or by information gleaned from the previous answers, or from other characters. Many sub-quests were arranged around this.

"I haven't been waving any credential except where the comment I was making needed a *where does that come from* and stating my education is faster than quoting a book."

Except that quoting a book would actually back up your statements. Just saying "and I have a MASTERS in COMPUTER SCIENCE and also I INVENTED THE CATHETER which SAVES LIVES and by the way my algorithms run TEN TIMES FASTER THAN ANYBODY ELSE'S" makes you sound - not to put too fine a point on it, like a complete wanker.

I'm also rather surprised that a man of your undoubtedly fine education can't actually spell, use correct grammar, or indeed structure an argument properly.

All these pointless factoids you keep spewing completely miss the point. This is a conversation about gameplay, not about programming.

Daw,

I fired up my Apple ][ emulator. You are right, and my memory was wrong -- it was in fact Ultima IV, and not Ultima III, that introduced Name? Job? Health? conversation trees.

That being said, the conversations in Ultima III were still more interesting and emotional than in Morrowind, so go figure.

On a related note, this thread has inspired me to promulgate a new rule about using our comments threads. I will not apply this rule ex post facto, because I think that's tacky. I am stealing this rule from one of my favorite sites, Gamers With Jobs. To wit:

4) You Must Attempt to Follow English Standard - This is not a rule meant to squelch the voices of those who do not use English as a first language, but to remove those for whom English is their primary language but can not be bothered to form coherent sentences. We won't ban you if you choose to haphazardly split infinitives, but the basic conventions of the language are a requirement, I think, for intelligent discussion. That means employing punctuation, capitalization, sentences, paragraphs, subjects/verbs, and the recognized and proper use of alpha/numeric characters (meaning W is not \/\/).

In other words: you may disagree with me. You may disagree strenuously with me. You may even make ad hominem arguments, up to a point, and call me an ignorant high-school kid or a "salesman type".

But while doing all that, you have to spell correctly.

That is all.

[[ You Must Attempt to Follow English Standard - This is not a rule meant to squelch the voices of those who do not use English as a first language, but to remove those for whom English is their primary language but can not be bothered to form coherent sentences.]]

English is definitively not my first language, so I apologize for that. As for structuring paragraph better, the problem is that the space provided to write is very tiny.

and sorry for misjudging your age, as apparently you played ultima II and IV ? that makes you quite old. I'm still surprised you can't figure out how memory constraints and cpu speed will affect adversely data structures and algorithms. And I'm not talking about simple stuff like quick sort or linked lists here.

I'm talking state machine (large ones), petri net, neural network and advanced graph algorithms. the sort of stuff than inject real inteligence in a game.

In the case of Oblivion they didn't go that far, they used mostly simple state machines, path finding, and for the liveliness they used ton of recorded speech and animation. The last two take quite a bit of space. The technology just wasn't there at the time of Arena.

[[ Except that quoting a book would actually back up your statements ]]

[[ I'm also rather surprised that a man of your undoubtedly fine education can't actually spell, use correct grammar, or indeed structure an argument properly.

All these pointless factoids you keep spewing completely miss the point. This is a conversation about gameplay, not about programming.
a book would actually back up your statements ]]

I'll grant your wish bellow. But honestly a short discussion (questions/answers) is usually enought to judge the education of someone. There are enought ressources online to double check the knowledge someone claims.

My argument above in the first post I made was as well structured as the tiny space for writting allowed. I even managed to create sections.

As for your comment on english mastery, they only show intolerence toward non-english speakers. Considering Canada is the closest neighbor of the USA and Europe is multilingual, perhaps it would be time for you to evolve past the Nehenderthal age :P

(just kidding, but seriously those sort of arguments you make are usually made by trolls unable to stick to the discussion at hand, you seem more refined than this from your other comments in that blog)

About your comment on this being a discussion ahead, read my first post. the rest are only replies to accusations from peterb and friends who no doubt where too overwhelmed by the arguments in my post. It's quite funny that most posters that are not friends of r Peterb actually agreed with me, even before I came back to see the mess and take my own defense.

That said I'm getting tired of all that absurdity. I simply came here because Mr peterb made a rather insulting post in the official forum

Just read the title: dumb and dumber, and the nickname he give peoples that don't agree with him: the dumb patrol. Considering over 50% of the customers that bought oblivion are unsatified, he's currently insulting about 1 million peoples for no reason at all.

Can't he just use a normal title *my view on oblivion* and call the peoples who disagree the oblivion-haters or whatever he want that at least doesn't insult anyone

That said, here is the meaningless quote you requested. It's from *Textureing and modeling* a book on procedural generators for textures and geometry, going quite in depth on multi fractals, perlin noise and the like. It's the sort of stuff you use to do particle generators, terrain, clouds and the like. It can work on both ray tracing and standard rendering (opengl/direct x) systems.

In case you're wondering what's the use of that stuff, it's heavilly used by Pixar in their movies.

Here is youre qote. I'll spare you the formula. It's from page 150 of the first edition. I got another more recent edition but not here (in this office).

[[Solid spaces can be described simply in mathematical terms. They can be considered to be a a function from three-space to n-space, where n can be any nonzero positive integer. More formaly solid space can be defined as the following function:

S(x,y,z) = F, F element of R^n, n element of 1,2,3...

(as best as I canc write the function here)

Of course, the definition of solid space can change over time; thus time can be considered a fourth dimension to the solid space function. .... ]]

I'll spare you the rest, the book is quite large. And I got plenty of other books from gpu gems to nurbs book to numerical methods...

I hope you're happy now ?

That said if you guys want to discuss further rpgs I'll be happy to oblige.

As for peterb I'm sorry if I offended you, but you were quite offensive to everyone too, as the censored part of your post above can prove :P Unfortunately I CANT edit my own posts. Unfortunate because about 2 seconds after making the first post I was indeed going to remove the insulting parts after I re-read myself.

But honestly, my comments were far less insulting than yours, and I certainly didn't called all my friends to the rescue to mob the heretic :P In fact I called no one. You should seriously rethink your behavior in face of criticism.

I'm certain you're more than able to defend yourself in a discussion if you bear yourself to do it. And if the conclusion is to apologize because you were wrong and hot headed, what's the big deal ?

A last note to Dan Hemmens , I really don't care *how I look* (even if I do a lot of training :P). I only care about logic. What's right. What's wrong. 3-4 peoples ganging up on another with insults because they can't have a logical conversation on gaming is clearly *wrong*. As is posting insults in the main forum (ok a link to an insulting article, all the same) for the purpose of getting peoples to click on google adds to make $$. It's just plain disturbed. (see my quote of Peterb from another blog of his friends)

That said, I'll be nice and forgive his actions :P

I'm more than done *defending*. if anyone want to keep throwing insults go ahead, I'm tomatoes-proof.

In any case none of those ridiculous arguments would have taken place if peterb and friend had stay on the subject: crpg

Try to put that *fight* behind you now. It's getting ridiculous to get so many attack from peterb & friends each time I post. If anything I suspect I'm not the one looking the most foolish as a result. So lets stop making fools of all of us :P

Have a nice day !

Wow.

> Considering over 50% of the customers that bought oblivion are unsatified

Do you have a source for this, or is this the well-known, time-honoured technique known as "argument by making things up"?

"Just read the title: dumb and dumber, and the nickname he give peoples that don't agree with him: the dumb patrol. Considering over 50% of the customers that bought oblivion are unsatified, he's currently insulting about 1 million peoples for no reason at all."

Since English isn't your first language, I can see how you might have misinterpreted this. The title of this post is a reference to the fact that a lot of "oblivion haters" describe Oblivion as being "dumbed down". The term "dumb patrol", then, refers to people who describe Oblivion as having been "dumbed down" (which is, in fact, a useless allegation to make, since it tends to basically mean "isn't complicated in the ways I think it should be complicated."

As for the rest of your points, this is still - as far as I'm concerned - a conversation about gameplay, not tech specs. Peterb's point about Arena/Daggerfall having randomly generated terrain is not that he felt it should have used a different method to generate its world, just that he felt that vast, pointless tracts of wilderness do not add to a game.

Would someone please hand me my ass so that I can laugh it off again?

Thanks!

You guys lost me the second you started talking about hardware constraints and algorithms. I'm not sure how that is germaine to the conversation.

I have to agree that the industry has labeled any game which has character statistics (even if they aren't modifiable) as a RPG. I like the "three numbers" classification scheme.

The lack of even vaguely interesting choices has led to me shunning the RPG genre and playing FPSes, where at least the cardboard cutout characters are intentional. I believe the last interesting RPG I played where I enjoyed the dialogue choices was Fallout 2.

Without the details of storytelling (little things like character, coherency and pathos), I tend not to see the point of RPGs. They don't offer reflex-driven competition, social interaction (even the stunted social interaction of the 12-year-old squeaky gaming community), or mental challenge.

I find it analogous to watching a 60-hour long B-grade movie that I have to click through scene by scene.

Now, I sympathize that Oblivion doesn't live up to high-art storytelling, but what exactly were you expecting? What particular aspect of Elder Scrolls are you missing that has left you feeling so betrayed?

Regardless of all of the above, Oblivion would be better if it featured more hunky, manly battle dwarves.

[[> Considering over 50% of the customers that bought oblivion are unsatified

Do you have a source for this, or is this the well-known, time-honoured technique known as "argument by making things up"?]]

About every poll on the official forum ?

I'm sorry mr wiseguy. But the morrowind forum didn't look like the oblivion mess at launch time. I don't recall ever seing that many complaints about a game, not even when they released the weird Diablo II patch on Battle net just before the xpack went on sales (the famous patch where Diablo II/hell was made unplayable... they fixed it within a week)

[[Since English isn't your first language, I can see how you might have misinterpreted this. ]]

Nice try really, I didn't say I was lacking a brain. I just lack your 20-40 years experience at getting the spelling and grammar perfect. Or perhaps you never tried learning a second language so you don't have a clue.

peterb article was full of contempt for peoples taht *dared* to criticize oblivion.

I explained what dumbed down meant for the peoples who used it, and that whatever you guys want to fantasize it meant it got no bearing on facts. it DOESNT mean simplified it the way you think. It mean all the stuff uselessly cut off.

Simple obvious exemple. Every game out there manage seamless transitions, why can't oblivion do it ? answer: they pushed all into hiring artist to produce high poly bells and whistle and not enought into hiring programmers. you have to be blind not to noticed all technology was licensed from outside.

As for complicated, Oblivion *is* complicated for some of the simplest things. even the level up and leveled monsters are all screwed up for nothing. you have to design your character backward. I'm sorry but this ISNT simplifying

[[As for the rest of your points, this is still - as far as I'm concerned - a conversation about gameplay, not tech specs]]

you still haven't read it, have you ?

[[Peterb's point about Arena/Daggerfall having randomly generated terrain is not that he felt it should have used a different method to generate its world, just that he felt that vast, pointless tracts of wilderness do not add to a game.]]

just for starter, he's wrong. the terrain was NEVER randomly generated, it's pulled out of a topography database. The comment on pointless tract of land is absolutely ridiculous.

I already stated 10x already the ram/cpu speed limitation. Redo Daggerfall with today technology (unfortunately Bethesda said they lost the code) and it will look and feel BETTER than both oblivion and morrowind. How hard do you think it is to turn the *pointless track of land* into *filled with lively npcs and quests* land.

Honestly, not hard at all. you all pretend to know more than me about programming (or at least put doubt about my background) yet you can't figure out that today technology can indeed generate a very sophisticated simultion of the real world that would make the world alive as long as you want and more lively than oblivion.

for god's sake, we got automated robots that can find peoples stucked in dangerous terrain, but we can't do a simple world simulation where kingdome (and demons, dragons, whatever) clashes and where merchants exchange goods ? seriously, using a petri net that stuff is so easy the cpu wont even feel the heat. you couldn't witness rebelions, assasinations, war, the whole deal that make heroic fantasy what it is.

instead they DIDN't hire much in term of programmers, bought outside technology (speedtree, havoc, gamebryo and much more) and focused on hiring an army of artists that would create ultra high poly models. they didn't evenn bother to do Level of Details which is why Oblivion graphic performance suck so much it melt all but the fastest graphic card.

Oblivion doesnt NEED a fast card. never did. it's just 10x slower than it should be. look at game out there, there manage to look better while not melting anything. why ? because they didn't spet their money wisely.

As for the rpg aspect. beyoond the fact it doesn't have all the expected weapons (you can't even throw a dagger) it doesn't have any crafting (unlike all mmorpg) it barely got a small assortment of creature and dungeons (less variety than morrowind or any mmorpg)

on the quest side it's rather linear. once you do all quest (and does this make sense from a rpg point of view ? you roleplay a good monk or paladin type guy ? are you supposed to do the evil quests) - anyway, even if it take you 2-3 chracters - once all quests are done, it would get rather repetitive to play again. the closing of the oblivion gates are already ultra-repetitive.

they had in their power to make the game much better. they improved the graphic (even if its in an inneficient way) but they cut a lot on the feature from previous games without adding any new feature.

If you played mount & blade (whih is still only a demo version !), you know oblivion's horses are hardly worth talking about. tell me, how can only 2 peoples have delivered a game that does horse combat in a balanced way yet Bethesda with a team of 70 could not ?

How come mount & blade, which doesn't even claim to be a rpg, manage to have factions waring against each other in a believable world ?

why Oblivion didn't deliver on it's promises of really large battle ? on the promise of *live another world*

it doesn't even have the simplicity you guys claim it has. just try decorating your house. you're in for an headache.

it's hard to see oblivion as anything but a short hack n slash game.

in fact judging by google video.... I'll let you see what peoples who keep playing it do whit oblivion... deem to have more in common with gone postal or hentai games than with rpgs. if that's your style, have fun. I prefer rpgs and real-life women (and not to beat them up :P as those peoples seem to be doing)

I'm underimpressed to say the least.

I still fail to see the *simplicity* in oblivion. it's totally weird and conter intuitive as a game. want an easy game, attack quickly at level 1. want a hard game, prepare for battle. please explain to me how this is logical or simple. It got tons of player frustrated. Of course all morrowind veteran figured out the easy exploit : don't level up

I wish I could send an email to warn King arthur to level up so he can be allwed to loot excalibur. of course a level 1 hobit isn't allowed to meet a nazgul, so froddo was in the illegal business there.

I am trully impressed by that article !

Seriously, only a very easy customer would be satified after buying oblivion. worst rpg I ever played. it may be nice graphically, but otherwise useless.

And quite frankly, I would rather watch Lord of the Ring 10x in a row. It's much nicer.

If you don't get bored after the 5th gate, you really love replaying the same scene over and over. you would be better off playing unreal or quake. at least you can play against real peoples, not some dumb easilly fooled AI.

Is it wrong for me to be enjoying this thread quite so much. It's like the old days of Usenet all over again. Anyway....

"[[> Considering over 50% of the customers that bought oblivion are unsatified

Do you have a source for this, or is this the well-known, time-honoured technique known as "argument by making things up"?]]

About every poll on the official forum ?"

For a guy who claims that his maths and programming skills are genius level, he really doesn't know a great deal about statistics does he?

"I didn't say I was lacking a brain. [...] peterb article was full of contempt for peoples taht *dared* to criticize oblivion."

Errmm... I think peterb has been criticizing Oblivion, and he has been doing that without too much self-loathing going on.

What peterb is criticizing, though, is the game as it actually exists. Rather than say compared to a game that seems to exist only in some peoples' imagination. Some of the stuff this guy is coming out with suggests he's either a time-traveller or has only vague acquaintance with reality:

"Every game out there manage seamless transitions"

Really? So, what, I was just imagining those horrendous loading times for Jade Empire?

"today technology can indeed generate a very sophisticated simultion of the real world"

I asked Eliza "can todays technology generate a very sophisticated simulation of the real world?"

Eliza replied "Say, do you have any psychological problems?"

This is also not directly relevant to the discussion but I'd like to point out that it was, in fact, I who invented the minuature catheter which saves lives. Which makes that other guy even less credible.
Just sayin', is all.

-pvg

"I already stated 10x already the ram/cpu speed limitation. Redo Daggerfall with today technology (unfortunately Bethesda said they lost the code) and it will look and feel BETTER than both oblivion and morrowind. How hard do you think it is to turn the *pointless track of land* into *filled with lively npcs and quests* land."

Umm... really fucking hard?

Going from "vast tracts of empty space" to "vast tracts of space filled with interesting details" requires a lot more than a technological upgrade. It requires actually creating interesting NPCs and lively quests.

To put it another way, perhaps if you redid Arena with today's technology, and *added a huge number of lively quests and NPCs* it would be better than Oblivion, because it would contain a huge number of lively quests and NPCs.

"Honestly, not hard at all. you all pretend to know more than me about programming (or at least put doubt about my background) yet you can't figure out that today technology can indeed generate a very sophisticated simultion of the real world that would make the world alive as long as you want and more lively than oblivion."

I know sod all about programming. I know a lot about games. Today's technology can't do shit to produce a believable NPC or an interesting quest. It doens't matter how good your algorithms are "deliver this message for me" is always "deliver this message for me."

You might as well say that if you took a book written in the 1980s and then published it as a .pdf the magic of "modern technology" would somehow make it into a better book.

You can't program something to be interesting, you certainly can't program originality, and you definitely can't program character development.

With regard to the "Oblivion is not an RPG" debate, it is perfectly clear that it is not. No computerised RPG has ever yet been made, and it will be a long time before it happens. The concept of RPGs root from the mid 1970's when pale spotty teenage spods sat around in one of their bedrooms pretending to be knights, wizards etc while playing "D&D". The whole point was that the scenario could be *anything* that the dungeon master wanted, and that this could change in *any way* at *any time*, and that the players could interact with the "world" not only in any single possible way that a real person could, but in many more impossible ways too. Example, if Spod "A" says "I take off my left sock and stuff it in the dragons nostril", the character could attempt to do that. So RPGs are in a very real way escapism, i.e. they allow someone to do or be something that they could not do or be in the real world. To argue about the compass being unrealistic is pathetic, many high level knights endured horrible deaths merely because the dungeon master did not like them much, or was in a bad mood due to being particularly spotty that day, while their adventurer companions survived the cataclism merely by dint of being the dungeon masters best mate in the real world. I guess what I am trying to say is, people who complain that RPGs should consist merely of difficult puzzles to endow them with a false sense of intellectual superiority have utterly, utterly missed the point of what these games were about in the first place, (and I would bet everything I own that the "spod-god" Gary Gygax would agree). If you want difficult puzzles, play chess or do the times crossword. RPGs are, and always have been there as an escape into an alternative world, pure and simple, and although there is a way to go yet, none approches an alternative world as closely as Oblivion.