Approaching Oblivion for the first time after years of Skyrim

[Rufyhaki]

So, I wanna get into Oblivion but I fear that after years of Skyrim and now SkyrimSE I'll feel discouraged and give up right away, wasting money.
I also now that the game has many flaws, so another concern of mine is if mods can "fix" these flaws for good, or they just help a bit.
I don't know, do you suggest me to buy this knowing my experience? Can you clarify these doubts? Thank you in advance.

[bevilex]

it just about opinions. Some people will say something is bad and others will say it's good.

To make it simple, if you liked Skyrim, and still want to play this kind of game in which you create your own character, explore, do quests etc, then go for it.

Don't like something about the game? Just mod it, there are thousands of mods on Nexus, just like Skyrim, everythnig can be changed, improved.

It's worth the money and even more if you like to mod.

[Doctor3D]

Originally posted by bevi:

it just about opinions. Some people will say something is bad and others will say it's good.

Yep - I was just offering my personal opinion on the game. Others may swear up and down that this one is the best. Different strokes.. OP could buy this game and find it to be the best thing since sliced bread.

I should warn OP - I am nearly always in the minority when it comes to what games I like and why I like them.

For example - my favorite part about Oblivion is what most people hate. The leveled enemies - just about everyone hates them it seems - yet that's its only saving grace (aside from some witty quest situations). The game is probably the most challenging of all the ES games simply because of that feature. In Morrowind, for example - the first few days of the game are the best for me because my character is so weak in the world - but by the end i'm so OP that it bores me. Oblivion doesn't have nearly that problem.

[Rufyhaki]

I decided to go for it, purchase the game, so far I'm liking it, so thanks everyone for your insights. :)

[Shay]

Beware of overencumbering and of the armour degradation! Overencumbering stops you full on your tracks, and you may never realize it, but your armor will be broken by the time you do, on a second note, this is important advice, you can spend you whole game without leveling up, not because you dont want to, but because you may not notice it, to level up, rest in a bed somewhere, there's a bar that starts filling itself on the skills tab which tells you your progress, and everything is costy as hell compared to skyrim (money isnt incredibly hard to get, thankfully, and, if you bought the game of the year edition (and the deluxe one, was it?), you probably have gotten a crap ton of quests while you were escaping the prison, dont worry, those are the dlc quests, they didnt try to implement those like in skyrim and just mad eit so that you got a notification. good luck, from a Skyrim player who tried out oblivion and ended up liking it.

[Rufyhaki]

Originally posted by WassapDude94:

Beware of overencumbering and of the armour degradation! Overencumbering stops you full on your tracks, and you may never realize it, but your armor will be broken by the time you do, on a second note, this is important advice, you can spend you whole game without leveling up, not because you dont want to, but because you may not notice it, to level up, rest in a bed somewhere, there's a bar that starts filling itself on the skills tab which tells you your progress, and everything is costy as hell compared to skyrim (money isnt incredibly hard to get, thankfully, and, if you bought the game of the year edition (and the deluxe one, was it?), you probably have gotten a crap ton of quests while you were escaping the prison, dont worry, those are the dlc quests, they didnt try to implement those like in skyrim and just mad eit so that you got a notification. good luck, from a Skyrim player who tried out oblivion and ended up liking it.

Thank you very much sir for the infos too. :)

[Wontarii]

Go ♥♥♥ Yourself .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8jvGEg_67U

[Woe]

Originally posted by NoctuaVenVK:

Go ♥♥♥ Yourself .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8jvGEg_67U

Are you trying to become a bad meme?

[Woe]

To OP I HIGHLY recommend you install a few mods mainly the unofficial patches that fixes a ton of bugs and problems with the base game and [Oblivion character Overhaul] mod and finally [Qarl's Texture pack] as they help bring oblivions ugliness in check to more modern games (aka skyrimish "pretty")

[Rufyhaki]

Originally posted by Woe:

To OP I HIGHLY recommend you install a few mods mainly the unofficial patches that fixes a ton of bugs and problems with the base game and [Oblivion character Overhaul] mod and finally [Qarl's Texture pack] as they help bring oblivions ugliness in check to more modern games (aka skyrimish "pretty")

Already installed, lol. Install Darnified UI too, as well as some other mods/fixes. Lots of work.

[Woe]

Originally posted by Rufyhaki:

Originally posted by Woe:

To OP I HIGHLY recommend you install a few mods mainly the unofficial patches that fixes a ton of bugs and problems with the base game and [Oblivion character Overhaul] mod and finally [Qarl's Texture pack] as they help bring oblivions ugliness in check to more modern games (aka skyrimish "pretty")

Already installed, lol. Install Darnified UI too, as well as some other mods/fixes. Lots of work.

You're good to go my dude just don't uninstall mods mid game. Just recently finished setting my mods up myself will be playing it new tonight (been 5 years) Cheers

[Rufyhaki]

Originally posted by Woe:

Originally posted by Rufyhaki:

Already installed, lol. Install Darnified UI too, as well as some other mods/fixes. Lots of work.

You're good to go my dude just don't uninstall mods mid game. Just recently finished setting my mods up myself will be playing it new tonight (been 5 years) Cheers :chug:

Have a good run my man

[Dingbat]

Originally posted by crippknottick:

As someone that has spent years playing and making mods for Oblivion, I am having a hard time playing it again in 2018 (last time I played was right before Skyrim was released).

To me, Oblivion has not aged well, though I remember so much good about it.

I think my biggest gripe was getting used to a controller with Skyrim, where in Oblivion there is next to no controller support at all. I just can't get into mouse & keyboard games much anymore as I get older and lazier.

I apologize beforehand. I always sigh a lot in discussions that state that a game has "not aged well..." Yes, it is a product of it's time. I agree that the faces look funny. That said, when exploring the wilderness, I'm still awestruck. I don't use any mods for cosmetic reasons and it still looks crazy beautiful to my eyes. The lighting is inspiring to me. The quests are still great. Yeah. Skyrim looks better. It still doesn't lessen what Oblivion has accomplished or what it still is. I still encourage people to try it, even in the halcyon glow of Skyrim.

Now, with that off my chest, here is my "controller response". While I'm not adverse to m and k, I've always preferred a controller. While m and k are still required, it places most actions available in common play to a standard controller.

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

O.k. Bear with me. This is my pre-prepared controller
dialogue for Oblivion. These controller questions get asked
a LOT. I use a Logitech F710 gamepad (and have used an F310) set to Xinput.
After modifying my Oblivion.ini file (User/Documents/My Games/Oblivion)
my controller has the following functionality:

D-Pad - Movement. Forward, Backward, Left, Right.
R Stick - Camera.
L Stick - Hotkeys, 1-8.
R Stick click - Switch between first and third person perspective.
L Stick click - Stealth mode (crouch).
A - Block.
B - Attack.
X - Interact.
Y - Sheath/Unsheath weapon.
RB - Jump
LB - Cast selected spell.
Start - Brings up the Menu.

This set up works very well for me. Keep in mind that Oblivion comes with PARTIAL controller support at best and m/kb (mouse and keyboard) are still necessary for things like navigating within the menu and interacting with npcs. You won't get much love from the game if you insist on using the controller only.

Lastly, I'll include the pertinent part of my Oblivion.ini file. If you want to try it,
PLEASE, PLEASE BACK UP YOUR OLD .INI FILE FIRST! I accept NO responsibility if your pc starts smoking, begins speaking in tongues, or displays other aberrant pc behavior! I'm simply trying to help. With all that said, the controller part of my .ini follows:

[Controls]
fVersion=1.8000
Forward=0011FFFF
Back=001FFFFF
Slide Left=001EFFFF
Slide Right=0020FFFF
Use=00FF0001
Activate=0039FF02
Block=00380100
Cast=002EFF04
Ready Item=0021FF03
Crouch/Sneak=001DFF08
Run=002AFF0A
Always Run=003AFFFF
Auto Move=0010FFFF
Jump=0012FF05
Toggle POV=00130209
Menu Mode=000FFF07
Rest=0014FF0B
Quick Menu=003BFFFF
Quick1=0002FF27
Quick2=0003FF21
Quick3=0004FF22
Quick4=0005FF23
Quick5=0006FF24
Quick6=0007FF25
Quick7=0008FF26
Quick8=0009FF20
QuickSave=003FFFFF
QuickLoad=0043FFFF
Grab=002CFF06
bInvertYValues=0
fXenonLookXYMult=0.0005
fMouseSensitivity=0.0055
;X = 1, Y = 2, Z = 3, XRot = 4, YRot = 5, ZRot = 6
iJoystickMoveFrontBack=2
iJoystickMoveLeftRight=1
fJoystickMoveFBMult=1.5000
fJoystickMoveLRMult=1.5000
iJoystickLookUpDown=5
iJoystickLookLeftRight=4
fJoystickLookUDMult=0.2000
fJoystickLookLRMult=0.2000
fXenonMenuMouseXYMult=0.0003
bBackground Mouse=0
bBackground Keyboard=1
bUse Joystick=1
fXenonLookMult=0.0030
fXenonMenuStickSpeedMaxMod=5.0000
iXenonMenuStickSpeedThreshold=20000
iXenonMenuStickThreshold=1000
;Language values: 0-English, 1-German, 2-French, 3-Spanish, 4-Italian
iLanguage=0
SlideLeft=001EFFFF
SlideRight=0020FFFF
fXenonMenuStickMapCursorMinSpeed=1.0000
fXenonMenuStickMapCursorMaxSpeed=15.0000
fXenonMenuStickMapCursorGamma=0.1700
fXenonMenuStickSpeedPlayerRotMod=3000.0000
fXenonMenuDpadRepeatSpeed=300.0000
fXenonMenuStickSpeed=300.0000
iXenonMenuStickDeadZone=15000

[bonseez]

MY FIRST ELDER SCROLLS GAME WAS SKYRIM, so I can speak from more of your perspective. Personally, i think Oblivion is miles better in skyrim in terms of the quests, writing, roleplaying, and build variety. As for the combat, it feels like skyrim except less weighty. Your attacks feel very light, like you're swinging a feather. Making combat unsatisfying. A feature of oblivion is spell casting being mapped to a seperate key. This means you can have a shield and sword and still spell cast, or have a two handed weapon and spell cast. One thing to mention, you CANNOT duel weild in this game, but there is a mod that adds it if you really want it. I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to get into the game, unless you're a graphics snob. Even then, there are mods. I will say, skyrim had MUCH better exploration. Oblivion only had one dungeon level designer, so they are very repetitve, but this is forgiven because of the way better quests, and the best Elder Scrolls DLC yet, Shivering Isles. If you only play skyrim for the exploration, then you might not like Oblivion. I would say go for it though. I cant play skyrim without mods, its so boring, i find Oblivion's vanilla gameplay to be much more enjoyable. For one, the character builds are much better. You actually have skills and attributes, and meaningful perks You dont pick perks, they're more like abilities, but every 25 levels you get a new ability for that skill. Being a mage is much better, there are WAY more spells, and you can make your own spells. Again, this is shadowed by Morrowind, even more skills and spells

Examples of cool skills

ACROBATICS: this controls how high you jump. If its high enough, you can do back flips and reach places you enemies cant.

HAND TO HAND: fight with your fists, if this skill gets high enough you can start doing karate chops and stuff

ATHLETICS: this controls how fast you run and swim.

These are my favorite skills, but as for attributes, you have STRENGTH, INTELLIGENCE, WILLPOWER, LUCK, SPEED, PERSONALITY, AGILITY, ENDURANCE.

These all control your skills, adding more depth to the character creation.

This being said, like every Elder Scrolls game, it has flaws. As i stated, the boring dungeons, and the 2nd biggest flaw is the broken level scaling. Short explanation is that enemies will level higher/faster than you, making you feel REALLY weak. Endurance levels your HP, each level up you can get +1 up to +5 into an attribute, depending on how many skills you leveled that are controled by that attribute. Ogres can have 5000 HP while your weapon does 50 damage and your HP is like 400. You can lower the difficulty slider very slightly each time you level up.This can also be fixed by NOT picking the skills you want to use as your major and minor skills. This is really stupid, but it works. Or you can use mods like oblivion xp to fix this. And if you really want to, you can min/max your character. Making sure you get +5 to Endurance each level up. Also, new higher level enemies will appear depending what level you are. Example, at around level 10 trolls will apear in the world out of nowhere. This is immersion breaking, and kind of annoying. Since enemies level faster than you, AND you're getting stronger new enemies, it makes you feel puny. These are the problems i see with the game, the level scaling problem is very annoying, but its almost not worth caring about, as this game has some of the most memorable quests in a video game. I hope this helped you, I would be happy to help with any other questions you have.

[Rufyhaki]

Originally posted by BigDaddyRooster(Tony Bamanaboni):

MY FIRST ELDER SCROLLS GAME WAS SKYRIM, so I can speak from more of your perspective. Personally, i think Oblivion is miles better in skyrim in terms of the quests, writing, roleplaying, and build variety. As for the combat, it feels like skyrim except less weighty. Your attacks feel very light, like you're swinging a feather. Making combat unsatisfying. A feature of oblivion is spell casting being mapped to a seperate key. This means you can have a shield and sword and still spell cast, or have a two handed weapon and spell cast. One thing to mention, you CANNOT duel weild in this game, but there is a mod that adds it if you really want it. I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to get into the game, unless you're a graphics snob. Even then, there are mods. I will say, skyrim had MUCH better exploration. Oblivion only had one dungeon level designer, so they are very repetitve, but this is forgiven because of the way better quests, and the best Elder Scrolls DLC yet, Shivering Isles. If you only play skyrim for the exploration, then you might not like Oblivion. I would say go for it though. I cant play skyrim without mods, its so boring, i find Oblivion's vanilla gameplay to be much more enjoyable. For one, the character builds are much better. You actually have skills and attributes, and meaningful perks You dont pick perks, they're more like abilities, but every 25 levels you get a new ability for that skill. Being a mage is much better, there are WAY more spells, and you can make your own spells. Again, this is shadowed by Morrowind, even more skills and spells

Examples of cool skills

ACROBATICS: this controls how high you jump. If its high enough, you can do back flips and reach places you enemies cant.

HAND TO HAND: fight with your fists, if this skill gets high enough you can start doing karate chops and stuff

ATHLETICS: this controls how fast you run and swim.

These are my favorite skills, but as for attributes, you have STRENGTH, INTELLIGENCE, WILLPOWER, LUCK, SPEED, PERSONALITY, AGILITY, ENDURANCE.

These all control your skills, adding more depth to the character creation.

This being said, like every Elder Scrolls game, it has flaws. As i stated, the boring dungeons, and the 2nd biggest flaw is the broken level scaling. Short explanation is that enemies will level higher/faster than you, making you feel REALLY weak. Endurance levels your HP, each level up you can get +1 up to +5 into an attribute, depending on how many skills you leveled that are controled by that attribute. Ogres can have 5000 HP while your weapon does 50 damage and your HP is like 400. You can lower the difficulty slider very slightly each time you level up.This can also be fixed by NOT picking the skills you want to use as your major and minor skills. This is really stupid, but it works. Or you can use mods like oblivion xp to fix this. And if you really want to, you can min/max your character. Making sure you get +5 to Endurance each level up. Also, new higher level enemies will appear depending what level you are. Example, at around level 10 trolls will apear in the world out of nowhere. This is immersion breaking, and kind of annoying. Since enemies level faster than you, AND you're getting stronger new enemies, it makes you feel puny. These are the problems i see with the game, the level scaling problem is very annoying, but its almost not worth caring about, as this game has some of the most memorable quests in a video game. I hope this helped you, I would be happy to help with any other questions you have.

12 hours or so into the game, going with some sort of spellsword build, so far I'm enjoying the game. Like you perfectly described, there are some flaws in exploration and such, I already noticed. Installed Darnified UI to fix the consolish UI, already noticed how obnoxious the leveling system is, so I recently installed Oblivion xp update. Like, I agree with EVERYTHING you wrote, I don't even have to say anymore than this. XD
Only thing is (maybe you can help, since we have such similar tastes and you took your time to write your opinion in such a precise way), the quests often don't add a mark even when they should, and sometimes they do in the compass but I can't find it in the map. Is this some bug or is there a way to fix this by installing some mod or something?

For example: doing some duties for the Fighter's Guild, the guy tells me he doesn't have a job for me and I should speak to X guy. I know who X guy is, but I can't remember the town he's in, since I accepted this quest hours ago. This is not the perfect example but nontheless I hope I've made myself clear.

[Count Von Count]

If you have accepted a quest for someone and have not yet completed it, you’ll find it under the current quests tab. You can only have one active quest at a time though, unlike Skyrim.

I never had a problem with finding people, usually they are marked by a quest marker or (in your particular example) you should get told where they are. Azzan is in Anvil, Modryn Oreyn is in Chorrol, and Burz gro-Khash is in Cheydinhal