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Oblivion Designer Moves To New Company
Gamasutra reports on the new position that former Bethesda designer Ken Rolston has taken with Big Huge Games. The lead designer for Bethesda's hit titles Morrowind and Oblivion, Rolston is now slated to be working on an unnamed title for the Rise of Nations developer. Rolston announced he was planning to retire early last year but ... apparently not. The designer characterizes his new project as 'a strikingly original and cunning concept for a console RPG'. No name or concept was included in the announcement.
If this console RPG they're making is as good as Rise of Nations was, then hot damn, should be good. I just wish the rest of the RTS people liked it. :[
I like the idea of a scaled leveling system, but not the way it was implemented in Oblivion. I already have the leveling mod so I am still playing, but here are my 2 cents.
3 42878here
-There was almost no variation in the enemy's skill. Starting enemies at your level was fine, but after leveling most random enemies stayed at your level. I think it would have worked if when your character was level 30, you could encounter enemies from level 1-30.
-Having non-combat skills as main attributes was suicide. I commented on this before http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=213220&cid=17
One other small gripe I have with Oblivion and Morrowind is that when you encounter and enemy I wish:
1) The music would fade into the combat music rather than an abrupt change(see Zelda TP and many other games)
2) When combat was over it would fade back into the same tune that was already playing, rather than starting a new one.
Don't games usually get hard at the end? And shouldn't a failure to train adequately put you at a disadvantage?
Nobody ever said you could enter the game as a mage and completely ignore magic and succeed. Or that you could build all of your abilities equally so you basically don't have shit and you shouldn't have problems beating the game. Welcome to the world of RPGs.
By level 30, even if you have been getting +2 stat increases the whole time rather than +5, assuming you have some halfway decent armor and weapons, you should be able to stroll through the toughest enemies blindfolded with one arm and one leg tied behind your back. At level 33, I can take on 5-6 of the toughest enemies at the same time, and dispatch them all within 30 seconds using at most one potion.
Actually, having all combat skills as main is suicide. To get the best character, you do need to level a certain way. In order to do that, you need to control when you level. In order to do that, you need some combat skills that are not main skills, so you can switch to those when you don't want to level. It also helps to have a few skills that you can use in the opposite fashion, for quickly gaining a level after you have advanced your skills enough to get the bonuses you want.
I didn't powerlevel much, getting three +3 stat increases per level on average. By level 25, nothing could come close to killing me. Levels 2-20 were kind of frustrating though, as it really didn't feel like I was getting any better. After level 20, things started to get easier, then as I said, by level 25 they were a cakewalk.
I will also say, there are some cheapskate techniques one can use to kick ass any time things get hard. Do the mages guild quests to the point where you can enchant. Run around collecting grapes and tomatos near Skingraad. Make and sell restore fatigue potions until you can afford to enchant five things with chameleon 20%. You are now permanently invisble, nothing can see you to hit you, and you always get sneak attack bonuses. 10 hours into the game and you are invincible.
I dind't find that trick until level 25 or so, but there's no reason you couldn't use it much, much earlier.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Sure, but when run of the mill bandits are running around in a king's ransom worth of equipment, and perfectly mundane animals are suddenly a match for an entire conscript army, there's a teensy problem with your design. Welcome to a lazily balanced tabletop D&D game.
You know.... there was a difficultly slider... and since it's a single player game, feel free to make the game as difficult as you like.... you're the only person you have to please.
Seriously, I didn't find it all that hard in the end (but I spent well over 100 hours on the game, so I was pretty trained in most everything), but I ended up turning the difficulty down slightly just so that the actual fighting portion of the game didn't take so long so I would have more time to explore and such.
Oblivion more than any other game is a sandbox, you build the experience you want...
Friedmud
Even though he's been given a large pay rise, he's found that everyone else has also received the same raise and all the prices have gone up accordingly, leaving him wondering why he bothered.
If you are a mage, make use of the mages guild to create customized spells that match your abilities.
:)
Like my favorite spell, "Camp Fire". This little gem consisted of a long duration firespell that did a few points of damage. It also did some fatigue damage as well. This kept the mana cost somewhat low. When you encounter a bad guy, the first trick would be to hit him with some powerful fatigue drain effects, until he hits the ground, passed out. Then, run close and drop the camp fire on him. He will lay on the ground, unmoving, happily toasting away to his death. Sometimes it takes a while, so feel free to pull out marshmallows and toast accordingly.
Oh, should fire not get the job done, you could try the sister spell to Camp Fire, entitled, "Electric Chair".
Reapy
Enter a gate of Oblivion at level 1 and this terrible threat consists of a bunch of puny weaklings. Walk down a road just outside of a peaceful town at level 20 and you get attacked by bandits with godlike strength, wielding ancient weapons of power.