Hah thanks for that eld. You gotta admit it's a pretty bizarre scenario that it needs modding just to get it to look decent! Completely weird that some races would only have a x128 face and others a x512. I can totally see why the faces look so messy now. All those freaky residual noise colours from photosourcing being another culprit. Makes me want to make some content for this game.
Yeah actually making content for Morrowind was fun, partly because it was so easy to improve the look, but also because you could totally customise your character and their weaponry, or even make entirely new towns, environments or just random stuff to clutter up the environment. I just dunno if there are any model exporters ... I had a quick look on some editing sites but didn't find any.
Looks like people should be able to use Blender as a go-between for exporting to Oblivion. NIF format is the one that's used by Gamebryo (was used in Morrowind, so I guess it's much the same for Oblivion).
According to this forum, meshes can be put into the game from 3dsmax6 or 7 using the Civ4 NIF exporter, available here. However it seems this doesn't allow collision or complex materials, just the basic mesh and diffuse texture.
Also, if anyone still has Max3 or Max4, you can get the NIF export plugins from Bethesda's site, they're for Morrowind but it might be worth a try to see if objects exported from these work with Oblivion.
Also, here's a little tutorial I found on getting objects into the game. Dunno if it's much help to most people but it might be.
Yesterday I noticed the level- and itemscaling system for the first time and the impacts it has on the gameplay.
Even though I love the game I have to say that the way the scaling is implemented sucks. Because yesterday I realized that there'll never be any mob or dungeon that will be way to easy or way to hard for me - they're all just scaled according to my own level. And that makes leveling kind of uninteresting for me - I cannot come back to a dungeon once I'm better to clear it, because the dungeon will have leveled just as well...
Also I now fear to level my non-fighting skills, because things like personality will make my level go up but not my fighting skills. The mobs however have their fighting skills and health increased.
if it's like morrowind just build up you levels quite a bit in three diffrent skills that don't share the same stat then you'll get a bonus for every level up to that skill. I wonder if they changed that and made this post pointless?
Also I now fear to level my non-fighting skills, because things like personality will make my level go up but not my fighting skills. The mobs however have their fighting skills and health increased.
I recall that being a problem with some revision of Star Wars Galaxies as well... Level 30 doctors that never fought suddently had to deal with rancors to get any experience.
Well, if it's scaling just by looking at your level then you can get ahead of the game*cough* by increasing your core stats by five per level, using this method very quickly maxing out your core abilities and stats at a much lower level (around ten?). I beat morrowind at level sixty the first time through, twenty the second and even then I was overpowered. Once youre comfortable you can do whatever you want as you'll already be god-like at what you do, you dont really even have to max it out as a few levels of core training will give you the boost you need and the skill based system will automatically keep you up to snuff.
I've completely lost interest in the game. Ran into a bug where any of the stat increasing items or quests litterally LOCK skills so they can not be increased aside from training. I've asked bethsoft for a refund, but they have replied back saying the only way to get a refund is from the retailer.
Since no retailer i know of takes back open items, i'm basically fucked until a patch comes out. People are reporting the same bug with the 360 version. So being an archer, and having my marksmen skill locked just fucking does'nt cut it. And since i've already spent hours on this game, i'm not going ot bother making another character just to find another bug.
The scaling is terrible, as you will never be able to find epic weps or anything hidden about by the devs. They should have just scaled wep damage and armor protection based on skill. That way if you do find an epic wep, you may not meet the requirement to use it at it's full potential. IE, only if you have an alchemy skill over 30 does the poison blade actually poison etc.
And once again the game throws everything at you in the first 2 hours. You meet the emporer, gain a horse, and see oblivion rather quickly. And the oblivion reveal was the most unimpressive scene i've ever witnessed. It's just sitting there, nothing epic, no sense of adventure, it's just sitting there. The 'enchanted' effect on items makes me want to puke also. Why when i stab someone are they green, why not just make them stumble back sickly and have thier skin turn a sick shade, or puke even?
Just a note, there are aprox. 10,500 posts in the bug/errors section, and 11,000 in the game discussion. Just to give you an idea of the ratio of unhappy customers. Bethsoft still refuses to acknowledge ANY exsistance of support or patching or testing. Nothing, Nada. Fifty bucks down the drain.
Avoid the game like the plague, and shame on bethsoft for releasing this with these ever so obvious bugs and performance issues that only an autistic racoon could miss, while they post rave reviews on the front page daily and count thier bait & switch money.
I wonder what the legality of supplying a non working peice of software is, if the unhappy user base is this large. Yes I buy the right to use the software, but if it's unusable what protects consumers?
[ QUOTE ]
I wonder what the legality of supplying a non working peice of software is, if the unhappy user base is this large. Yes I buy the right to use the software, but if it's unusable what protects consumers?
[/ QUOTE ]
In regard to entertainment software I should imagine the legality is scant. This is hardly the first time a game has been released with bugs. There is no end product of the software, and its only purpose is for your personal entertainment. Entertainment is quite obviously entirely 100% subjective and you're getting into a realm that could quickly become ridiculous. Clearly that purpose failed for you (and others), but there are also plenty of people that are enjoying it. You'd be extremely hard pushed in a court of law to prove that the software is unusable. Nothing is stopping you from 'using it' after all. It's just that 'using it' causes anger in you ;-)
Nah, I'm just joking. It does sound like it has a lot of bugs. However it's also been rated very highly by many respected reviewers. Hmm.
Anyway, Amazon screwed me over, turns out they don't actually have the Collector's Edition in stock at all, so I'm gonna have to go and get it on the high street tomorrow (for £10 more )
Reviewers often ignore bugs because they have a prerelease version and assume they are going to be fixed until release. Or because they got a nice chunk of moolah for glossing over them.
[ QUOTE ]
Bethsoft still refuses to acknowledge ANY exsistance of support or patching or testing. Nothing, Nada. Fifty bucks down the drain.
[/ QUOTE ]
Oh come on, it's like this is your first game or something. I can't think of any major games that were released in a rough state, and weren't given some patch-loving at some point. Even Anachronox was patched twice, and that was after the entire team doing the patching had been laid off. Individual products may vary, but the idea that Bethesda is ignoring feedback and is not planning to do something about it, is insane.
Well, in my line of work the people paying your bills come first. The effort in linking reviews is far greater than any effort to notify the public of known bugs and the status of them.
If I were Bethsoft right now, I would be making a simple list of confirmed/pending bugs, and making it availible for public voting. The issues with the most votes get taken care of first. Mind you, regardless if it takes the same time to make a patch or not, the public is still under the illusion or is informed that something is being done about it, that is all I want. You don't make the greatest RPG's of all time, then turn out dog feces and expect a positive reaction.
They fixed things they should never have touched, so they could capitalize on the success of Morrowind on Xbox. Completely forgetting the point, that the game should be fun and immersive. I can forgive crashes to desktop, a few graphical bugs here or there, the bland dialog and voice acting, but you cant ignore the performance, removal of advertised features, incorrect system requirements, character stat errors, save game corruption, and non-finishable quests.
If you ask me they fell hard for the flashy graphics bandwagon and completely borked the gameplay. Really, it's less of a game than morrowind, just hidden under the flash. They bought into everything pre packaged and procedural they could, physics, speech, headmodels, trees, not-so-radiant-AI-that-I-still-cant-find-the-improvement-in.
50-60 bucks is a lot of money to be sitting on an unplayable title. Movies get recalled if the media or content is flawed, and replaced rather quickly same with hardware. I know games with bugs, but nothing game halting. And everytime the dev's have stated patches were in the works. I have not seen a single developer interview or statement about the bugs. You do with other companies. It's just good PR.
its far from unplayable.I agree with you that it's not the sheer leap forward that morrowind was... but it's still a lot of fun and what IS there is still leaps and bounds above most other RPGS, IMO.
Oh come on, it's like this is your first game or something. I can't think of any major games that were released in a rough state, and weren't given some patch-loving at some point.
[/ QUOTE ]
Let me tell you about one: Vietcong2.
Basicly released in a completly unfinished state and unbelievable bug ridden.
And the chance of a patch for it is close to zero
(Ok you could argue if it is a major game, but Vietcong 1 was under the top ten most played multiplayer games for quite some time).
Never had any issues with bloodlines, and at least combat and dialogue was entertaining.
I've stopped playing the game, and i'm starting to dive into the editor and scripting to see if I can't fix some of these bugs. The problem with my current char is that marksmanship is so low in relation to my level, the enemies already scaled way beyond my combat skill level. My roomate actually got intoa fight with me yesterday defending the game, a full on screaming match on his side. Then again he has a brand new 4k machine, i'd defend it to the death too.
lol my flatmate had Bloodlines, he was playing through it and there was a huge bug where if you actually completed a certain level, it didn't load the next level, and you had to manually load it through the console. That game was bug-ridden and AFAIK was never patched. Silly.
I should have Oblivion on Monday, since Amazon screwed me over and nowhere has the collector's edition in stock, I had to re-order from a different site. Grr!
I don't get what's funny about Eld's video. Guy's group has been wiped out, guy finds player and ventures deeper into the dungeon, guy is killed by a trap.
[ QUOTE ]
lol my flatmate had Bloodlines, he was playing through it and there was a huge bug where if you actually completed a certain level, it didn't load the next level, and you had to manually load it through the console. That game was bug-ridden and AFAIK was never patched. Silly.
[/ QUOTE ]
To be fair, Troika was going bankrupt at the time, so I don't think Patches were the top thing on the "to do list" however, perhaps releasing a game that was done may have staved off bankruptcy.
I'm having fun with the game, and I'm running it on a so-so system. The only bug I came across was every now and then right before it rains, the screen goes into a multicolored static, and to get rid of it, all I have to do is just save and reload.
Though I really hope they realease some model exporters for it.
Pete Hines: Were planning on doing an update for both eventually, but dont know exactly when yet.
[/ QUOTE ]
In other words, damn we really should keep a better eye on our testers to make sure they are playing our games instead of WoW.
I don't have a 360 (not enough games that scream buy me), but one of the guys did drag his in and "show off" this title last week. I have to say I was impressed with the enviroments but not the character animations. The shoulders where locked and thier backs where stiff as boards. The jump animations where pretty shotty also. Maybe it was a race thing? Either way it looked pretty bad. The few hand animations I saw where ok but they could have been more expresive and less wooden. I'm not sure what was holding them back, the hardware or animation skill?
Thankfully I hear you don't spend much time in the 3rd person which might be why they look like they do.
It's sad to see console games slip into the mentality of "oh we can patch it later why spend money on QA".
Dunno, maybe I've seen these kinds of sequences too often in movies. I'd have found it funnier if, after the second smash, he suddently stood there alive because of some bug .
Bloodlines did get 1 patch. And I managed to finish the game a couple times without too many problems. Never had to load any levels from the console. It may be buggy but it was still fun and had a good story and interesting missions.
That's pretty awesome eld, but how taxing is that on the system? I mean, it looks great, but if you have a so-so system, that could drop your framrate considerably.
my guess is that it takes some extra on the gfxcard memory, but from what I've experienced, and what I've heard from others, there's no drop in fps at all, possibly just an extra second of loading somewhere.
I decided I couldn't wait till next week for the delivery of my copy, so I borrowed the collector's ed off my friend.
I love this game so far. It's all that I liked about Morrowind, taken to new levels, and then some!
The good:
- Scope of the game ... so huge.
- Environments, especially when you're out in the countryside with ruins, monuments, forests, moors and farms... it's all so lovely, even running at 800x600 on medium detail. This game alone makes me want to spend absurd amounts of money on the lastest hardware just to experience the world to it's fullest potential.
- The lighting/weather/daytime system. As with Morrowind, but taken even further - beautiful skies, accurate atmospheric effects, lovely lighting at sunset and afternoon. Visiting ruins at sunset feels like I should have paid an entry fee to some historical site of interest...
- People no longer stand around in town 24/7 - they go to bed, go and have lunch, lock their houses when they're out. The towns now feel more like actual places people live, rather than just a collection of houses with people standing around.
- Cinematic qualities! In no other game have I felt as pulled into the world ... it was almost like being inside a Lord of the Rings movie or something, with the awesome orchestral backing, snowy vistas and strong characters riding up the mountain trail to the Blades' fortress... I just went into 3rd person and spun the camera around until I found a nice angle... it just felt so theatrical. I recommend turning up the default music volume, personally I think the music adds a lot (plus it's more obvious when you're being attacked )
- Lockpicking, this is a very cool improvement over Morrowind, rather than just madly expending lockpicks on a lock until it randomly works, you can actually influence it and take control. Can be frustrating, but definitely fun.
- Armour, I just got the Blades armour and weaponry and it personally I think it looks bloody cool, not even on full texture res. The amount of detail and design is impressive.
- Locales and textures, each place is very individual from the architecture to the textures used, and it works very well. There's a lot of thought and detail gone into that stuff, and I for one appreciate it a lot! I even sometimes end up standing in front of doors or walls in certain lighting conditions and moving back and forth just to see how the normal maps pick up the lighting... it's very effective, and their use of specular is good too. Caves also look awesome.
The bad:
- Default settings. Why oh why oh why did they bother leaving "bUseJoystick" set to "1" in the INI? I felt like my computer was dying when I first ran the game, I move the mouse and the view kinda slowly follows around, it felt like the guy was on Valium or something. Setting this value to 0 makes everything sharper, faster and smoother. No longer feels like you're moving underwater.
Also other default settings like the chase camera and the huge-font inventory and AI - they're REALLY EASY fixes which make the PC gaming experience a lot more enjoyable, so why do I have to go to a 3rd party site to find out how to implement this?
As has been mentioned earlier, it's stuff like this (that the programmers could have easily changed in 5-10 minutes) that makes it feel like a cheap XBox port at times.
- The AI is sometimes kinda silly. I was in a pub and some guy sneaks in and steals some food, 3 people shout "STOP THIEF!" then continue to talk to the guy happily while he eats their stolen food.
- I'm not really a huge fan of the persuade/coerce personality thing ... maybe I just haven't got the hang of it yet. I know the principles but it just seems like a fairly clunky implementation.
The ugly:
- Some (i repeat, some) of the Facegen NPC characters are just abysmal and look really, really bad. That said, some look rather good. I guess that's the problem with having so many customisable things, you're gonna have a few great combinations, a bunch of mediocre ones, and then the rest are just weird or nasty.
- Animations. As mentioned several times already, they're generally fairly mediocre. It was the same in Morrowind unfortunately, but I think there's enough detail and stuff elsewhere to distract from this most of the time.
Horse walk and run anims are quite good, but the jump is just wtf-quality bad. If they'd had a better animator (cos i'm pretty sure the majority of it is not down to technical limitations), then they woulda been fine and the game would be even better. As it stands, they're no great shakes, but most of the time they're enough for suspension of disbelief.
Summary so far:
That all said, I've only been playing the game for about 4 hours all told so far, I'm sure I have a lot more to see and discover. So far it's reminding me a LOT of Morrowind, in all the best ways, and just building on that.
Personally I don't really mind the horrible low res mountains and distant terrain most of the time, since you tend to be concentrating on things in the foreground, and that stuff's just backdrop, but I will try that mod Eld suggested and if it doesn't impact too much on my FPS i'm sure I'll appreciate the nice scenery even more
In other words, damn we really should keep a better eye on our testers to make sure they are playing our games instead of WoW.
[/ QUOTE ]
Or it could just be that if there's a bug in something the chances of someone finding it raises a little when 1,000,000 people are playing as opposed to just a couple hundred.
when is it not going to be okay to release a game with garbage scripts and shit voice acting? the guy who did the writing can get a powerful kick in the balls as far as i'm concerned
as for anyone looking for a fix to the LOD hotness, or basicaly anything else you can think of, check out this:
seriously tho - does anyone acctualy feel like they give a shit as far as quests are concerned? it all feels totally dissasociated from you. there's never a personal reason why you'd want to do anyhting in this game.
talk about flat story construction. again. a kick in the nuts.
Replies
http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=11880251
Don't worry about the 'spoiler' text - there's nothing remotely spoilery in there.
someones attempt at a better face with older face as comparison:
Interesting, seems like a better-faces mod is possible, and with a polycount effort it could make peoples jaws detach from heads.
*grumble*
Looks like people should be able to use Blender as a go-between for exporting to Oblivion. NIF format is the one that's used by Gamebryo (was used in Morrowind, so I guess it's much the same for Oblivion).
According to this forum, meshes can be put into the game from 3dsmax6 or 7 using the Civ4 NIF exporter, available here. However it seems this doesn't allow collision or complex materials, just the basic mesh and diffuse texture.
Also, if anyone still has Max3 or Max4, you can get the NIF export plugins from Bethesda's site, they're for Morrowind but it might be worth a try to see if objects exported from these work with Oblivion.
Also, here's a little tutorial I found on getting objects into the game. Dunno if it's much help to most people but it might be.
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=315817
http://sourceforge.net/projects/niftools/
Looks like people should be able to use Blender as a go-between for exporting to Oblivion.
[/ QUOTE ]
Go Blender!! I'll have to give that a try.
Even though I love the game I have to say that the way the scaling is implemented sucks. Because yesterday I realized that there'll never be any mob or dungeon that will be way to easy or way to hard for me - they're all just scaled according to my own level. And that makes leveling kind of uninteresting for me - I cannot come back to a dungeon once I'm better to clear it, because the dungeon will have leveled just as well...
Also I now fear to level my non-fighting skills, because things like personality will make my level go up but not my fighting skills. The mobs however have their fighting skills and health increased.
I recall that being a problem with some revision of Star Wars Galaxies as well... Level 30 doctors that never fought suddently had to deal with rancors to get any experience.
Since no retailer i know of takes back open items, i'm basically fucked until a patch comes out. People are reporting the same bug with the 360 version. So being an archer, and having my marksmen skill locked just fucking does'nt cut it. And since i've already spent hours on this game, i'm not going ot bother making another character just to find another bug.
The scaling is terrible, as you will never be able to find epic weps or anything hidden about by the devs. They should have just scaled wep damage and armor protection based on skill. That way if you do find an epic wep, you may not meet the requirement to use it at it's full potential. IE, only if you have an alchemy skill over 30 does the poison blade actually poison etc.
And once again the game throws everything at you in the first 2 hours. You meet the emporer, gain a horse, and see oblivion rather quickly. And the oblivion reveal was the most unimpressive scene i've ever witnessed. It's just sitting there, nothing epic, no sense of adventure, it's just sitting there. The 'enchanted' effect on items makes me want to puke also. Why when i stab someone are they green, why not just make them stumble back sickly and have thier skin turn a sick shade, or puke even?
Just a note, there are aprox. 10,500 posts in the bug/errors section, and 11,000 in the game discussion. Just to give you an idea of the ratio of unhappy customers. Bethsoft still refuses to acknowledge ANY exsistance of support or patching or testing. Nothing, Nada. Fifty bucks down the drain.
Avoid the game like the plague, and shame on bethsoft for releasing this with these ever so obvious bugs and performance issues that only an autistic racoon could miss, while they post rave reviews on the front page daily and count thier bait & switch money.
I wonder what the legality of supplying a non working peice of software is, if the unhappy user base is this large. Yes I buy the right to use the software, but if it's unusable what protects consumers?
I wonder what the legality of supplying a non working peice of software is, if the unhappy user base is this large. Yes I buy the right to use the software, but if it's unusable what protects consumers?
[/ QUOTE ]
In regard to entertainment software I should imagine the legality is scant. This is hardly the first time a game has been released with bugs. There is no end product of the software, and its only purpose is for your personal entertainment. Entertainment is quite obviously entirely 100% subjective and you're getting into a realm that could quickly become ridiculous. Clearly that purpose failed for you (and others), but there are also plenty of people that are enjoying it. You'd be extremely hard pushed in a court of law to prove that the software is unusable. Nothing is stopping you from 'using it' after all. It's just that 'using it' causes anger in you ;-)
Nah, I'm just joking. It does sound like it has a lot of bugs. However it's also been rated very highly by many respected reviewers. Hmm.
Anyway, Amazon screwed me over, turns out they don't actually have the Collector's Edition in stock at all, so I'm gonna have to go and get it on the high street tomorrow (for £10 more
The scaling is terrible, as you will never be able to find epic weps or anything hidden about by the devs
[/ QUOTE ]
That sounds like a cop out to me on the dev's part. In Morrowinds they hand placed plenty of stuff for us to find/loot/steal.
Bethsoft still refuses to acknowledge ANY exsistance of support or patching or testing. Nothing, Nada. Fifty bucks down the drain.
[/ QUOTE ]
Oh come on, it's like this is your first game or something. I can't think of any major games that were released in a rough state, and weren't given some patch-loving at some point. Even Anachronox was patched twice, and that was after the entire team doing the patching had been laid off. Individual products may vary, but the idea that Bethesda is ignoring feedback and is not planning to do something about it, is insane.
If I were Bethsoft right now, I would be making a simple list of confirmed/pending bugs, and making it availible for public voting. The issues with the most votes get taken care of first. Mind you, regardless if it takes the same time to make a patch or not, the public is still under the illusion or is informed that something is being done about it, that is all I want. You don't make the greatest RPG's of all time, then turn out dog feces and expect a positive reaction.
They fixed things they should never have touched, so they could capitalize on the success of Morrowind on Xbox. Completely forgetting the point, that the game should be fun and immersive. I can forgive crashes to desktop, a few graphical bugs here or there, the bland dialog and voice acting, but you cant ignore the performance, removal of advertised features, incorrect system requirements, character stat errors, save game corruption, and non-finishable quests.
If you ask me they fell hard for the flashy graphics bandwagon and completely borked the gameplay. Really, it's less of a game than morrowind, just hidden under the flash. They bought into everything pre packaged and procedural they could, physics, speech, headmodels, trees, not-so-radiant-AI-that-I-still-cant-find-the-improvement-in.
50-60 bucks is a lot of money to be sitting on an unplayable title. Movies get recalled if the media or content is flawed, and replaced rather quickly same with hardware. I know games with bugs, but nothing game halting. And everytime the dev's have stated patches were in the works. I have not seen a single developer interview or statement about the bugs. You do with other companies. It's just good PR.
hear that my marksman probably hasnt gone up in some time
due to a bug is down right angering.
I'm dealing with a bug that will not let me complete the
mage guild recommendation quest. Being that enchanting was
one of my favorite things in Morrowind, I'm a bit bummed.
Regardless though, I'm still loving the game and having a
lot of fun! I also saw the pc version running and wasn't
nearly impressed with the graphics as I was on the 360.
However, it was a mid level system and not a top end
machine.
Oh come on, it's like this is your first game or something. I can't think of any major games that were released in a rough state, and weren't given some patch-loving at some point.
[/ QUOTE ]
Let me tell you about one: Vietcong2.
Basicly released in a completly unfinished state and unbelievable bug ridden.
And the chance of a patch for it is close to zero
(Ok you could argue if it is a major game, but Vietcong 1 was under the top ten most played multiplayer games for quite some time).
I've stopped playing the game, and i'm starting to dive into the editor and scripting to see if I can't fix some of these bugs. The problem with my current char is that marksmanship is so low in relation to my level, the enemies already scaled way beyond my combat skill level. My roomate actually got intoa fight with me yesterday defending the game, a full on screaming match on his side. Then again he has a brand new 4k machine, i'd defend it to the death too.
I should have Oblivion on Monday, since Amazon screwed me over and nowhere has the collector's edition in stock, I had to re-order from a different site. Grr!
possibly the most awesome thing I've seen of oblivion.
Firingsquad.com has an interview up with Pete Hines, head of PR over at Bethesda. In the interview, the question is asked:
FiringSquad: What plans, if any, does Bethesda Softworks have for any patches for the PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game?
The response, not suprisingly, was:
Pete Hines: Were planning on doing an update for both eventually, but dont know exactly when yet.
sorry. edit: Gajillion!
lol my flatmate had Bloodlines, he was playing through it and there was a huge bug where if you actually completed a certain level, it didn't load the next level, and you had to manually load it through the console. That game was bug-ridden and AFAIK was never patched. Silly.
[/ QUOTE ]
To be fair, Troika was going bankrupt at the time, so I don't think Patches were the top thing on the "to do list" however, perhaps releasing a game that was done may have staved off bankruptcy.
I'm having fun with the game, and I'm running it on a so-so system. The only bug I came across was every now and then right before it rains, the screen goes into a multicolored static, and to get rid of it, all I have to do is just save and reload.
Though I really hope they realease some model exporters for it.
The response, not suprisingly, was:
Pete Hines: Were planning on doing an update for both eventually, but dont know exactly when yet.
[/ QUOTE ]
In other words, damn we really should keep a better eye on our testers to make sure they are playing our games instead of WoW.
I don't have a 360 (not enough games that scream buy me), but one of the guys did drag his in and "show off" this title last week. I have to say I was impressed with the enviroments but not the character animations. The shoulders where locked and thier backs where stiff as boards. The jump animations where pretty shotty also. Maybe it was a race thing? Either way it looked pretty bad. The few hand animations I saw where ok but they could have been more expresive and less wooden. I'm not sure what was holding them back, the hardware or animation skill?
Thankfully I hear you don't spend much time in the 3rd person which might be why they look like they do.
It's sad to see console games slip into the mentality of "oh we can patch it later why spend money on QA".
getting pancaked is always fun.
But anyways, Oblivion....yeah...Gotta' buy it.
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=328524
I heard you can get really detailed with your character design, so how come none of you chumps are pimping your characters!?
Cool, thanks eld. Looks like it doesn't impact framerate substantially either If you look at the numbers in the thread.
I love this game so far. It's all that I liked about Morrowind, taken to new levels, and then some!
The good:
- Scope of the game ... so huge.
- Environments, especially when you're out in the countryside with ruins, monuments, forests, moors and farms... it's all so lovely, even running at 800x600 on medium detail. This game alone makes me want to spend absurd amounts of money on the lastest hardware just to experience the world to it's fullest potential.
- The lighting/weather/daytime system. As with Morrowind, but taken even further - beautiful skies, accurate atmospheric effects, lovely lighting at sunset and afternoon. Visiting ruins at sunset feels like I should have paid an entry fee to some historical site of interest...
- People no longer stand around in town 24/7 - they go to bed, go and have lunch, lock their houses when they're out. The towns now feel more like actual places people live, rather than just a collection of houses with people standing around.
- Cinematic qualities! In no other game have I felt as pulled into the world ... it was almost like being inside a Lord of the Rings movie or something, with the awesome orchestral backing, snowy vistas and strong characters riding up the mountain trail to the Blades' fortress... I just went into 3rd person and spun the camera around until I found a nice angle... it just felt so theatrical. I recommend turning up the default music volume, personally I think the music adds a lot (plus it's more obvious when you're being attacked
- Lockpicking, this is a very cool improvement over Morrowind, rather than just madly expending lockpicks on a lock until it randomly works, you can actually influence it and take control. Can be frustrating, but definitely fun.
- Armour, I just got the Blades armour and weaponry and it personally I think it looks bloody cool, not even on full texture res. The amount of detail and design is impressive.
- Locales and textures, each place is very individual from the architecture to the textures used, and it works very well. There's a lot of thought and detail gone into that stuff, and I for one appreciate it a lot! I even sometimes end up standing in front of doors or walls in certain lighting conditions and moving back and forth just to see how the normal maps pick up the lighting... it's very effective, and their use of specular is good too. Caves also look awesome.
The bad:
- Default settings. Why oh why oh why did they bother leaving "bUseJoystick" set to "1" in the INI? I felt like my computer was dying when I first ran the game, I move the mouse and the view kinda slowly follows around, it felt like the guy was on Valium or something. Setting this value to 0 makes everything sharper, faster and smoother. No longer feels like you're moving underwater.
Also other default settings like the chase camera and the huge-font inventory and AI - they're REALLY EASY fixes which make the PC gaming experience a lot more enjoyable, so why do I have to go to a 3rd party site to find out how to implement this?
As has been mentioned earlier, it's stuff like this (that the programmers could have easily changed in 5-10 minutes) that makes it feel like a cheap XBox port at times.
- The AI is sometimes kinda silly. I was in a pub and some guy sneaks in and steals some food, 3 people shout "STOP THIEF!" then continue to talk to the guy happily while he eats their stolen food.
- I'm not really a huge fan of the persuade/coerce personality thing ... maybe I just haven't got the hang of it yet. I know the principles but it just seems like a fairly clunky implementation.
The ugly:
- Some (i repeat, some) of the Facegen NPC characters are just abysmal and look really, really bad. That said, some look rather good. I guess that's the problem with having so many customisable things, you're gonna have a few great combinations, a bunch of mediocre ones, and then the rest are just weird or nasty.
- Animations. As mentioned several times already, they're generally fairly mediocre. It was the same in Morrowind unfortunately, but I think there's enough detail and stuff elsewhere to distract from this most of the time.
Horse walk and run anims are quite good, but the jump is just wtf-quality bad. If they'd had a better animator (cos i'm pretty sure the majority of it is not down to technical limitations), then they woulda been fine and the game would be even better. As it stands, they're no great shakes, but most of the time they're enough for suspension of disbelief.
Summary so far:
That all said, I've only been playing the game for about 4 hours all told so far, I'm sure I have a lot more to see and discover. So far it's reminding me a LOT of Morrowind, in all the best ways, and just building on that.
Personally I don't really mind the horrible low res mountains and distant terrain most of the time, since you tend to be concentrating on things in the foreground, and that stuff's just backdrop, but I will try that mod Eld suggested and if it doesn't impact too much on my FPS i'm sure I'll appreciate the nice scenery even more
Back to playing more now!
In other words, damn we really should keep a better eye on our testers to make sure they are playing our games instead of WoW.
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Or it could just be that if there's a bug in something the chances of someone finding it raises a little when 1,000,000 people are playing as opposed to just a couple hundred.
as for anyone looking for a fix to the LOD hotness, or basicaly anything else you can think of, check out this:
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=308781
seriously tho - does anyone acctualy feel like they give a shit as far as quests are concerned? it all feels totally dissasociated from you. there's never a personal reason why you'd want to do anyhting in this game.
talk about flat story construction. again. a kick in the nuts.