Hi Traveler, have a hug. I am just looking a bit to see what is what. I hope that things will be ok, i certainly have no desire or intention of being a member of a forum and a site that legislates our opinions and I will not stand for such amateurish tactics to try to mizzle an intelligent and compassionate membership. WE the members here ARE the site, not the format or some new squad of operators. WE made the forum what it is with our interest and love of Adventure games and WE have the right to continue our dialogue freely, with of course any and all proper restrictions on language and abuse. I have every confidence in our community of past members for they always self regulated to the 99th percent of respect, and i hope that the new owner is just trying to set a personal mark on things, but it is essential that we are free to be US. I will remain hopeful but vigilant.

I'm moving my comments over to the Nexus forums.  http://www.thenexusforums.com/  Again, my name over there is AbleGnome (Halcyon was taken and, after a couple of beers....)

I'll drop by here now and then to see how you're doing.

that is interesting that you are going to post on the nexus Halcyon, thanks for the heads up. I Hope you will stick around here too.

The folks over there are generally knowledgeable and intent.  I like the talk about mod development, etc.  

Also, here, now, with that goofy cartoon home page we have, I feel like I'm in a site for kids.  The forum looks that way, too.  Even though all my friends are here, I feel like I'm suddenly in a playground and not a discussion group.  

I'll drop in from time to time, sure.

good, and yes it is interesting re the mods. If you really want the in depth info on mods you might enjoy visiting the TesAlliance forum and site it is where some of the most dedicated and knowledgable modders for the Elder Scrolls universe "live" and work, and where I am studying modding as they also have classes and training as well as mods to download, and resources. Glad you are staying in touch and I will say hi over at the Nexus too.

It is getting close to Christmas time and we are decorating for it early...in Oblvion

May your stocking be filled with a trove of rare magical scrolls, enchanted Ayleid artifacts, Great Welkynd Stones and Azura's Star from the Moonshadow plane on top, Cris. 

Cheers, Terry 

Those are nice screenies, thanks Chris.  You know, looking at those, and what I can do by modding my Morrowind, has made me realize that graphics technology has reached it's nexus.   So called "improved" and more modern games like Witcher 2 and Skyrim, in many aspects actually looks worse than their predecessors.  Whereas the faces in Witcher 1 is indeed not very pretty, the faces is really the only noticeable improvement graphically speaking in Witcher 2.  The modded gameworld of Ob, really sometimes looks better to me than that of Skyrim.   ..and the faces do have a much better resolution in Skyrim, but they are now grungy and dirty and still yucky looking.  The latter might indeed be an art decision, but the end result is still the same:  yucky faces. 

..and yet, look how pretty some old games like certain of the Final Fantasies can look even on old consoles.  If art can be made to look so nice in an old game like Loom, why can't cutting-edge 3-D look as nice?   Is 3-D just never going to be able to catch up to the nice "look" of 2-D graphics, or is it simply in the art style that the answer lies?

EDIT: It must be the latter; because I find Jade Empire, a pretty old game, graphically more pleasing than I find Skyrim or Witcher 2.   I find Witcher 2 a bit prettier than Skyrim, though I tend to find the colours too intense to my tastes.

Aww, thanks Terry, much appreciated. Actually i use modded stockings and presents that can actualy be opened and are brimming with Cyrodil Goodness and yummies. 

I agree Trav, studying the art styles of games has made me very aware that technology is not the only answer, for the design and imagination and visiion of the designer can be wonderful no matter how sophisticated or "detailed" the game may be and some of the decisions of the contemporary and "modern" development people have been quite misguided. I see that same step backwards usualy trying for ulitmate realism in a number of games, Skyrin for one, the most recent Tomb Raider, and I can see what you mean about Witcher also, compared to the oldies. And I love Oblvoin for the game world allows for great beauty and fun, and creativity.

And Jade Empire is an amazing work of artistry and beauty....as are some of the older star war games, Dreamfall, TLJ, Syberia, and many of the 'oldies"....all the way back to Deathgate, Kyrandia, and Loom.

Hi Helen if you drop by, if you would like some mods to improve the vanilla game we can help with that, i have a pack of them on my archive....and also we can help with any game play questions, no spoilers, we promise.

Enjoy, it is a wonderful game!

I dropped into Oblivion last night, after nearly two months.  It was like coming home, great to be back.

My game has been shipped so I should get it before the holidays. I've only read a bit of this thread, but it looks like this is a huge game.

It is! It, and all other (main) elder scrolls games are absolutely massive, and will offer anyone a huge world to explore with very few artificial boundaries. There is also a lot of content straight out of the box, some say that unmodded it will take you somewhere along the line of 150-200h to finish all the quests and see all the locations in Oblivion. Mods will give you several times the amount of content, if you so wish to download them. 

I never downloaded a single mod except for weather mods, and I still have not played every aspect of the vanilla game in spite of buying and starting the game when it was released in 2006.   

I would suggest that you hold back on mods to start with, especially if you can stomach the ugly faces, which is really the biggest aspect of the game that needs improvement. If you like the idea of a companion doing your fighting for you, I suppose that is something to investigate, though I always like to do my own work, and for me companions get in the way ;- I always end up killing them or antagonising them because I accidentally hit them in fights, so I try and avoid them altogether at all costs.  

However, you might prefer to let them do the fighting such as we saw in CB's video. 

I'm not sure if they level up instead of yourself then, or do the 2 of you level up together, or how does it work if you let the companion do the work for you?  Do you both get the XP for what the companion does?

Those are good questions Trav and I regret to say I haven't found a clear answer to either. I didn't have a companion long enough in Oblivion to observe any new abilities of behavioral changes. I shouldn't reference Skyrim in this discussion but all I will say is that I have noticed him doing a few things lately that I had not seen previously.  As for the second part I suppose one could install the Oblivion XP mod and see for themselves but that would be a bit extreme imo. If the answer is no, than it really strengthens the case to have companion behavior options available such as in FNV. Perhaps there is a mod for that, I don't know.

Companions are fun but not really that helpful at the beginning. God Mode works just as well and give you more time to learn the game. Companions will indeed level with you and have their own stats and skills and inherent abilities. They often are made essential ie immortal and therefore you CANT kills them, so that wont be a problem Trav, all the good ones are like that....and they also have healing abilities or other helpful skills and you can use them as pack mules to carry things for you too. Your strength, ie your ability to carry things you collect wil lncrease as you level up but at first it is hard to carry a lot and you will need to stash things somewhere safe or buy or find a house.

Really mods are easy and fun and dont detract from the vanilla game at all. Improving the figure models is a matter of several minutes of file placement and easy as pie. I will be happy to walk you thru that process if and when you want and it is a joy to be able to enchance the game while all good mods never interfer with the game or the game canon.

The companions can not play the game for you, they still only follow you , they cannot lead or make choices for you so basically they are a shadow friend an there for company and tho they do fight, you will still need to make the major decisions.

Please do NOT use any of the large mods like the Oblvion XP mod mentioned in any of the Elder Scrolls games, Morrowind, Oblvion or Skyrim, it is not reccomended by any of the responsible modder communities for the series.....they are patchwork collections of many other mods and have problems and you can never really understand what has been changed, the choices some mod maker may make about changing game proceedures are never your own, and none of the mega mods are worth even thinking of. Your own game experince is the most fun part of it all.

Ah, I hadn't thought of the pack mule angle...  I must say I used my companions for that in Arcanum. 

..but re the XP, rather, I had meant, hopefully the companion doesn't earn the XP for defeating baddies that you would have earned if you had done the fighting yourself.

ah no, you get all the credit

You don't earn EX by killing something, you earn by the actions of your skills that you utilize to accomplish such. Therefore if your companion kills something first you are denied the opportunity to use those skills that boost you through each level. Want to level up quicker? Lose that companion. It just depends on how you enjoy playing the game the most, right?

Hmm, for me my uppermost goal in RPG's, is about earning EXP.  By heaven, I even used to kill bunnies for it.     Even though I hated how they'd fly through the air when I did it.. - yeah, I'd sell my soul for EXP. 

  No seriously... Steam and consoles have started a new craze with the "achievement" fever, but to me it's still about exp. exp. exp.

..and yes, I still, as recently as playing Arcanum a month or 2 back, would save after a choice of how to finish a quest, reload and replay the quest, just to see which choice would give me more EXP. (No wonder some games take me a long time to finish, eh? )  If it's the evil path that would give you more exp, then call me evil ... until being good gives more XP again..   Sheesh!  

And, yes, historically I'd grind and grind and grind in my TES games.  I used to leap about, sneak about, repeat spells over and over and over. I used to even conjure up skeletons to kill them for XP, so... no way is some companion going to streal my XP! 

Oh, only to find out later in Oblivion, that enemies level up along with you!       Oh well, if you're a mage or a thief, EXP helps for a lot of other things as well. 

In Morrowind, you really had a lot of motivation to level up your non-combat skills, so grinding in things like sneaking, agility, speechcraft, illusion and so forth, really paid off.

You gain Exp in Oblvion by mastering skills, survivving trials, advancing in the quests and many other ways besides killing foes. That is one of the tnings that I like about the game it is not just a killing grinder. There is much much more to it. I sympathize with your focus on that Trav but i wanted you to know that companions will not really affect your advancement and often add a lot of fun and companionship to the game which can be lonely at times espeicaly when exploring endless passageways in the dungeons, i use an enhanced dungeon mod that added 360 new and expanded buried cities, dungeons and caverns to my game.....

And I never kill the wildlife, they are too nice and pretty and fun to watch happily living out their digital lives in my virutal world of Oblvion. In my world the goal is to live not die....for as many of us as possible except ofr the baddies.

Originally Posted By Traveller

I used to even conjure up skeletons to kill them for XP, so... no way is some companion going to steal my XP!

Without hesitation CB adds this to his list of favorite tips and tricks. 

Oops, you took a snapshot of a typo, CB.  Ah well.

@ Chris:  No, it's not in the TES games that I kill wildlife, (I never do in Ob, except for rats and if wolves attack me, but I hate killing wolves, since I like them in RL) it's in the Gothic games. Sadly in Gothic 3, much as I hated having to kill them, the only creatures that are not stronger than yourself, are the bunnies, snakes, lizards and deer.  I hate killing all of those creautures, even the snakes whom I would prefer to leave be.

In Gothic 3 I also fought in the ring as much as possible to level up.  Luckily (IIRC) in Gothic, in contrast with the TES games, you do earn experience by finishing quests, like you do in many other RPG's , though not traditionally in TES.  I kind of prefer the quests for Xp system, it gives you motivation to do all the quests, which I don't feel in Skyrim, I'm afraid.

I guess I should do more research, i'm not exactly sure how the leveling up/exp. system works in Skyrim, I think they changed it again since Ob.

I think a system where the TES system (use it to pump it) and the "get exp. for quests completed" system is mixed together, is the ideal.  IIRC, that's the system used in Divinity 2.

Unfortunately, in most RPG's if you want to get strong and powerful enough to be able to beat the game, you have to earn exp..  that's the whole point of RPG's, -start out very weak where almost everything in the game can beat you, and even non-combat quests need some level of profiency in certain skills: and then level up and become stronger and more proficient as you earn experience, otherwise you could just as well stick to straightforward action games.