I wonder how this will effect Skyblivion.
I feel like of the 3 “human scaled” elder scrolls (since Arena and Daggerfall are another kind of madness), Oblivion is the one that would need a gameplay loop update the most.
Morrowind and Skyrim have different ways to manage progression and discovery, but Oblivion feels completely broken compared to both.
Kind of why I liked it. I could use some in game exploits to hit level 30, for better equipment scaling and considered that level 1.
Oblivion was kind of really bad though. It had the worst level scaling of the genre.
I think the spell crafting was also toned down and more gated than Morrowind. And the equipment I think was overly simplified.
Progression was atrocious indeed.
You had all the reasons to cheese the system by levelling up as little as possible, or ignoring all but two or three of your class skills. Or even choosing to progress specifically in non-class skills.
Because trying out all of your class skills would make you level up way too fast, and suddenly you’re facing armies of enemies and you have zero edge against them.
Not sure how what exactly they changed with Skyrim, but the balance feels a lot better. Maybe it’s the perks, getting rid of classes entirely, or not tying enemy levels to yours that tightly.
Maybe they can fix that in this alleged Oblivion remake of them.
I feel like trying to combine
- high vertical power growth
- non linear “open world”
- power fantasy
all together is just fundamentally at odds with itself.
Personally I’d prefer to see less vertical power growth. I’d rather have the numbers stay somewhat constrained.
Like, let’s say the most damage you can ever do with a lightning spell is 100. Work backwards from that to figure out how much health things should have. We want a master mage to be able to blow mooks up in one zap, mid tier in 3, and big scary shit in 6.
A novice mage zaps for 20. We want mooks to take 3 hits, mid tier stuff maybe 10, and big scary stuff a lot.
Mooks: ~60hp Mid tier: ~210 Bosses: 600
If your gameplay is then deeper than a simple stat check, a novice can persevere and win against a big challenge.
I really super dislike it when you have stuff that looks like a mook or a boss, but is statted otherwise. I remember in Oblivion some witch lady was oddly high level, and she kept fighting despite having like 50 arrows in her face.
Something like that, but with more thought put into it than a Lemmy post from the couch.
I always thought, it worked quite well to have different areas with weaker or stronger enemies. That way, you have challenges to match to your character’s strength, but you still have a form of progression and you get shown your power-level when you pass through a low-level area again. Downside for game studios is that this requires good world building, to guide players where they should or should not go. And yeah, that wasn’t exactly Oblivion’s strong suit with mostly everything looking like a high-fantasy meadow…
I think having areas with weaker or stronger enemies is fine. Good, even. So long as you can tell by looking at them what you’re getting into.
Dark Souls generally does this. A rotting skeleton is a low threat. A giant knight in black armor and man sized sword is a bigger threat.
Oblivion will often have dudes that visually and behaviorally are the same, but hit way differently because of the numbers assigned to them. You can’t really look at a scene and understand what you’re getting into.
Other games also do a bad job here. Borderlands for example will have identical looking bandits, but in this area they’re indestructible level 100, and that one they’re push over level 5. The ass-creed Viking one did the same thing. Archers on one side of the river you could ignore, but the far side would one hit you.
I think a lot of studios don’t want to invest in the extra art assets and stuff when it’s cheaper to just use the same monster model and assign it different numbers.
The music goes undeniably hard, though
They’re done remaking skyrim, now they’re going backwards.
As someone who hates “natural” directions (I never once understood where the fuck barton was talking about in FNV) I would have preferred a Morrowind remake with map markers
I don’t know about New Vegas, but the trick with Morrowind is that when the guy tells you, you need to go to a cave west of town, that you then get lost, run into a naked barbarian and help get his clothes back, then you run into a lady who got robbed, but fell in love with the robber, so you help reunite them, and then you’re halfway across the map and have long forgotten that you were supposed to find a cave, but you had a much better time than you could have had in that cave.
Also, the cave might be south of town. It happens. 🙃
And that’s exactly why I dislike map markers generally, because I tend to ignore everything else on the way there. That said, they’re pretty useful if I’m lost but I think I’m close, so having it be an option that’s off by default would be nice.
Morrowind already has map markers. They’re used for MOST quests. There are only a handful that give directions based on landmarks without also marking the objective location. And only one of which I can recall where the directions given are wrong. It does not, however, allow fast traveling between marked points.
I would always “fast travel” to a new spot by orienting myself toward the part of the map the NPC marked and then using a spell to buff my acrobatics skill by 1000 (like the scrolls of Icarian flight found outside Seyda Neen) and just jump there.
using a spell to buff my acrobatics skill by 1000 (like the scrolls of Icarian flight found outside Seyda Neen) and just jump there.
we got Michael Jordan over here.
Put the buff on your shoes and rename them to “Air Jordans”
Unreasonably hopes for a morrowind release on switch
