141 replies to this topic

[MdaG]

I probably would like Morrowind a lot. As it goes for < €20 today with all the expansions it's a steal, but my gaming time is limited due to work and as such my next purchases are already reserved for Mass Effect, Alan Wake and maybe Bioshock   .

[Doubler]

Moreover, if Morrowind can still have the effect on people today as it had on me and many others back then, it'll cost you years of your life

[Blood-Pigggy]

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* The scaled enemy levels removes the sense of achievement.

http://www.tescreens...livion_Overhaul

Download that mod, it makes leveling much more sensible, there are more enemies instead of enemies leveling up with you, you can slaughter massive groups of imps this way but still be very strong.

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* The leveling system forces me to put frequently used skills as minor skills so as not to level too quickly, which feels wrong.

That's just the way it works, personally, I don't ever even use those skills, I always make a custom class, ALWAYS make a custom class, those skills aren't even worth having, (acrobatics, athletics, etc.)

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* I'm currently at level 16 and having every character in the country packing dwarven, mithril etc. gear is just ridiculous. Such items are suppose to be rare.

Once again, there are mods for this, and I believe Obscuro's Oblivion Overhaul (the one I linked above) fixes that as well, look through the Wiki library of mods.

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* Leveled loot and increasing prices as the character gains levels causes the same sensation as scaled leveled enemies.

Obscuro's mod fixes this.

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* I'm Guild master in the mages and the fighters guild without actually being a good (enough) mage or fighter which feels unintuitive.

Obscuro's mod fixes this as well since it takes longer to level, a character who's a mage from the beggining will have a MUCH easier time in the Mage's Guild quests and etc, with the mod applied.

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* The story line doesn't give a lot of options supporting other character types than the "hero". This is one thing KOTOR and Fallout did better.

I personally didn't really care about this.

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* Certain skills and spells feel useless, but that could just be me not realizing how good they really are. (ex. picking locks is superior to the unlock spells since you can just get good at pushing tumblers and not use the skill check)

Depends on what level they are, I personally hate using destruction spells and find them useless because I prefer using a heavy weapon for damage, on the other hand, I ALWAYS use paralyze and sleep spells, that's just my preference, depends on your play style.

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The scaled enemies, loot, etc. is probably what annoys me the most about Oblivion, I'd rather have seen a solution where loot and enemies are dependant on location (like Fallout and KOTOR) and that playing an evil character is as rewarding as playing a good character (also like KOTOR and Fallout). Still Oblivion is vastly more complex and there are sure to be design issues which made it hard to implement. For those of you that played through Morrowind, how did that compare to Oblivion ?

Mods can fix all of those, seriously try them. I have Obscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, and several mods that add subtle touches such as localizing creatures in the right spots, or making your vision blurry when you drink a lot.

PS - DOWNLOAD OBSCURO'S OBLIVION OVERHAUL, it's the most used mod out there, and it doesn't make any ridiculous changes or anything that seems out of place.

[MdaG]

Blood-Pigggy, on Jan 14 2007, 07:49 PM, said:

PS - DOWNLOAD OBSCURO'S OBLIVION OVERHAUL, it's the most used mod out there, and it doesn't make any ridiculous changes or anything that seems out of place.

Is it available for XBOX 360 version?

[Blood-Pigggy]

No, I used to have the 360 version but it's useless compared to the PC one, I traded it in.

[MdaG]

Blood-Pigggy, on Jan 14 2007, 10:03 PM, said:

No, I used to have the 360 version but it's useless compared to the PC one, I traded it in.

Oh, well I guess I'll have to make do with what I have then (my laptop can't handle Oblivion). I'm just going to finish the thieves guild branch and main quest and I'll have done all the "major" parts of the game (I think). By the time I'm there I'll probably have Mass Effect to play anyway.  

[Blood-Pigggy]

I need help.
I have the stupid Adoring Fan following me everywhere (I can't make him go away) and for some reason he keeps stealing things from places. I dunno if this is from mods I've installed, but since he's practically useless I want to kill him permanently. He keeps respawning after I kill him somewhere in the Imperial City, and no matter where I am, he manages to find me, be it in an Oblivion Gate or some tower high up in the mountains with several Guardian Skeletons at protecting every inch of it.

I dunno why he keeps stealing stuff, but he once stole a quest item (from the first Thief's Guild quest) and I couldn't find it anywhere on his body after I killed him. I had to use console cheats to get it from a list of items.

He's stolen bread, weapons, money, and even pickpockets people sometime. He sucks at it, guards keep coming after him and it's really annoying when I'm trying to kill someone for a Dark Brotherhood quest and he comes out of nowhere screaming with some guards coming after him.
So is there any mod or anything that totally removes him? He's a worthless annoying tard doing dumb things.

[Doubler]

The disable command might prevent respawning, although I'm not sure.

[MdaG]

Strange, I left my adoring fan standing in the rain. I told him to wait there...

[Blood-Pigggy]

That's part of the problem, the instant I fast travel he teleports next to me even if I left him in a locked grate in the Imperial Prison with the wait command..

[Blood-Pigggy]

I still have the same exact install of Oblivion that I had the first time I installed it, and I still have most of my mods activated that I've ever downloaded. It's just now that I noticed how totally different the game looks without them when I went to my friend's house and played it on his 360, it looked really ugly by comparison.

If you want to see what a few mods can do to the look of the game, just check this out.



Compared to this, which was taken at the same time of day in Oblivion without the extra mods (although there's still some distant land texturing and item texturing that I can't remove.)



The upper screenshot has improved HDR lighting (from a mod that adds more layers of lighting, in gradual steps, instead of the original 8 levels of lighting, like daylight, noon, evening, etc, this mod adds around 32 different stages) that also reflects off surfaces better.
That screen also has a Depth of Field mod, which causes more distant things to blur out, which is why the bottom screen has sharp jagged objects in the distance with muddy ugly dark textures and the upper one has brighter softer and more realistic and beautiful looking distance environments.
The upper screen has a water refraction mod as well, which makes it more realistic. You can see things under the water, your character reflects off the surface, and lighting penetrates through to the bottom instead of just drifting on the top (which allows you to go into light and dark areas underwater).
It also causes the water to look more ripply and realistic.
The upper screen also has a LOD Texture Replacement mod which replaces the distance textures with sharper crisper textures instead of those drawn out muddy looking ones originally used by Oblivion.

Although you can't see it that well (too much stuff in the way) the upper screen has improved sky textures. I have a ton of other mods as well. Including ones that allow light from outside to go into buildings, which means at night buildings will only be illuminated from candles and such inside, and during the daytime they will be bright, although areas not near windows will be darker.

There's also a mod that makes cities look alive during the night from outside, you can see torches from outside a city, and lights in windows and etc. This also leads to another mod that makes windows lit up while inside cities. I have a mod that removes foliage once harvested for ingredients, and one that increases the size and elaboratenesses of foliage that makes them look more alive and wild.

And the most amazing thing is that I only dropped a single digit in my FPS (from 32-31) with all these mods, which is the best benefit of all, since my game looks better than ordinary Oblivion on all high settings without these mods, which means I don't need a super computer to run the game on its full potential.

[Tulac]

I do wonder on what kind of a machine are you running those mods and how it affects your game performance wise.

[BeefontheBone]

It's amazing how much difference a weather plugin, some improved foliage and more gradiated lighting makes to the look of the thing without reducing performance much. Might be more of an impact for anyone near the minimum spec, of course. I'd be interested in finding out which mods you have installed, Pigggy - could you grab a screenie of the selector screen or type out a quick list?

I installed OOO and it's not bad, there are some very dangerous areas and some less so, but it's taking me hours to level up and an extremely long time to kill anything - I drew an amazon out of their cave into the forest and she had about 30 arrows sticking out of her by the time she finally dropped dead. Might try reducing the difficulty next time I play.

[Doubler]

Seems like it's mostly Natural Environments (or that other one? I never tried the other one, being quite happy with NE) in that shot, along with that depth thingey?

[Blood-Pigggy]

BeefontheBone, on Feb 18 2007, 09:25 AM, said:

It's amazing how much difference a weather plugin, some improved foliage and more gradiated lighting makes to the look of the thing without reducing performance much. Might be more of an impact for anyone near the minimum spec, of course. I'd be interested in finding out which mods you have installed, Pigggy - could you grab a screenie of the selector screen or type out a quick list?

I installed OOO and it's not bad, there are some very dangerous areas and some less so, but it's taking me hours to level up and an extremely long time to kill anything - I drew an amazon out of their cave into the forest and she had about 30 arrows sticking out of her by the time she finally dropped dead. Might try reducing the difficulty next time I play.

OOO is simple if you stick to a few guilds and such and close an Oblivion gate or two before you go do some drastic exploring.

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I do wonder on what kind of a machine are you running those mods and how it affects your game performance wise.

I have a middle of the line PC. It's not fantastic, but it isn't too bad either. I can run Oblivion on Medium to High settings, meaning I pass the Minimum Reqs, but I don't meet most of the Recommended Reqs.

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Seems like it's mostly Natural Environments (or that other one? I never tried the other one, being quite happy with NE) in that shot, along with that depth thingey?

Yep, this is an answer to Beef as well.
The mods all put together that I use for visuals are -

Natural Environments (Lighting, weather, sky)
Illumination Within (Some windows lit at night)
Sunlit Interiors (State of weather outside affects light within buildings)
Weather Inside (Like sunlit interiors, except also has sound from rain and etc.)
LOD Texture Replacement (Replaces ugly distant textures with crisper normal textures, no more big blobs of messy color)
Qarl Timeslip's Depth Of Field (Gives a depth of field effect like Gothic 3)
Everything Distant Visible (Allows you to see things such as ruins and small towns from anywhere)
Realistic Force (Improves ragdoll physics and physics in general, no more slo-mo deaths)
Cities Alive at Night (Has lights in cities when you're outside of them, looking down at Anvil from a mountain at night for example)
Elaborate Eyes (Adds new types of eyes and improves existing ones.)
Better Horse Eyes (Turns the glossy lifeless eyes into better ones)
DEJ Harvest (Makes that harvested ingredient plants have the main element removed from their visual)
Immersive Health Indication (An enemies health bar goes from green to yellow to red, depending on their level of health)
Gorier Blood (Adds more blood to the game)
Sniper Crosshair (Adds a crosshair that determines the length an arrows drops depending on distance)
BT Mod (Improves interface, larger map, smaller text + more space and easier to navigate inventory, A MUST HAVE)
Chase Mod (Turns the useless nausea inducing third person camera into a Morrowind type camera that doesn't sway everywhere)
Improved Textures (Refines most of the existing textures into much darker or better bump-mapped varients, NOT RECOMMENDED FOR MAINTAINING FPS)


Those are all the mods I have that affects my visuals.

EDIT: Crap, I forgot one of the most important mods!

Better Facial Textures (Improves all the facial textures so they look smooth and clean instead of muddy and unstructured, also, beards that don't like someone smeared chocolate all over their face.)


Also, the Total Annihilation Soundtrack works amazingly well as replacement music to Oblivion's, download it somewhere and mix and match the music as you wish, it's has some excellent combat music.