Ways that Oblivion is superior to Skyrim

[Hal10k]

Not really. If you walk a thousand miles, then maybe you'd be slightly faster/more efficient, but you couldn't run faster than a horse.. Even a khajiit...

Also, skyrim rewards you for walking by the incredible vistas and varied landscapes that it offers. That alone has convinced me to travel by horse/foot a lot more often than fast travelling. Also the fact that you can't fast travel to the major cities right from the start and have to visit every location on your own at least once helps (aside from the horse carriages)

But heres the problem, in game everyone runs as fast as the next guy [sarcasm]which of course is totally realistic and completely believable[/sarcasm]

Fun fact, in both vanilla oblivion and morrowind, you could not run as fast as a horse or jump over roof tops UNLESS you used MAGICAL enhancements to boost your skills over the limit. Even if it was a tad bit unrealistic then all they needed was to make the increase a little more sublte. But noooo, they completely removed it.
As it currently stands, they removed a possibility from the game which probably wasn't game breaking to begin with(its a single player game for gods sake).
Do note though, I don't dislike the game. In fact it is much better than oblivion but there is no way that you can defend this retarded decision.

The main decision to remove it was because A) it really didn't add much to the experience, and more importantly, B) since the player was constantly running and jumping, those skills were always being trained. Because the player would go through so many skill increases with them, they might increase in a level without increasing their more useful skills as much. That's one of the main reason's Oblivion's level scaling was so derided: if you set Athletics or Acrobatics as your main skills, you could wind up fighting a level 20 atronach when your sBlade skill was only 34 or so, and things would only get worse from there.

There's a Tvtropes page on "Empty Levels" that describes the phenomenon, but I'm too lazy to post a link.

 

[Sight Unseen]

Not really. If you walk a thousand miles, then maybe you'd be slightly faster/more efficient, but you couldn't run faster than a horse.. Even a khajiit...

Also, skyrim rewards you for walking by the incredible vistas and varied landscapes that it offers. That alone has convinced me to travel by horse/foot a lot more often than fast travelling. Also the fact that you can't fast travel to the major cities right from the start and have to visit every location on your own at least once helps (aside from the horse carriages)

But heres the problem, in game everyone runs as fast as the next guy [sarcasm]which of course is totally realistic and completely believable[/sarcasm]

Fun fact, in both vanilla oblivion and morrowind, you could not run as fast as a horse or jump over roof tops UNLESS you used MAGICAL enhancements to boost your skills over the limit. Even if it was a tad bit unrealistic then all they needed was to make the increase a little more sublte. But noooo, they completely removed it.
As it currently stands, they removed a possibility from the game which probably wasn't game breaking to begin with(its a single player game for gods sake).
Do note though, I don't dislike the game. In fact it is much better than oblivion but there is no way that you can defend this retarded decision.

If you made it more subtle of a progression then what's the point of leveling it at all? All it would do is frustrate people over the fact that they're getting a whole lot more overall level ups (in a game where leveling up is already super fast) and not really getting any benefit out of it. You're causing the enemies to scale higher in difficulty while you're only very slightly increasing your movement speed/jump height. Also, how would the perks work in this sense? Either they'd be completely useless or completely goofy and immersion breaking.

At the end of the day they're both skills that don't really fit or have a proper place in a game like this. There's no skill in leveling them (seriously, just moving or jumping?) and they didn't really add much to the game.

I think my position is perfectly defensible and I'm glad they took out these skills.

EDIT: Also they replaced Athletics with sprinting, which is a much better and more realistic mechanic. Sprinting duration is also affected by your stamina bar, which means that you can improve your sprinting ability and be able to sprint for longer without getting tired, so you can still progress your character in that way.

I stopped playing Oblivion because going through all the Oblivion gates was just annoying and they all looked the damn same and it just frustrated the hell out of me.

The best part of Oblivion for me was the Dark Brotherhood quests and I've yet to meet up with them in Skyrim but apart from that IMO Skyrim is a much better game and a lot more enjoyable for me. But every one has their own opinions so yeah ...

IIRC the brotherhood equivalent is the companions, I'm not 100% sure but I would look around for them I think they are in the first town.



I could be wrong though

Actually, the Dark Brotherhood is still in Skyrim, the Companions are the replacement for the Fighter's Guild, and yes, the Companions can be found at Jorrvaskr in Whiterun, the first major city. The dark brotherhood I believe is situated in Falkreath, but I'm not sure as I personally have not joined them yet.

 

[DanielDeFig]

I've looked through this thread now, and I think there are a few things that need to be addressed.

According to the OP, this thread is not about how Skyrim is superior to Oblivion, but rather s´discussing a list of thing the OP personally felt were done better in Oblivion. Unfortunately the title does not support this claim, as pointed out by Grunt_Man11.

This may come as a shock to you but all I am arguing is that some things were done better in Oblivion. The clue is in the opening post and in the title.

It's not a very good clue.

"Way Oblivion is superior to Skyrim."

That tells me at first glance that you are saying that Oblivion is superior to Skyrim plain and simple. It doesn't tell me that Oblivion had a few things that were better than Skyrim.

Next time try titling the thread something like, "A few things Oblivion does better than Skyrim."

I think the OP could avoid a lot of single posts that lists the way Skyrim is superior, by editing the title to be more clear. In fact, the OP seems to fully agree that Skyrim is a better game overall.

Morrowind was better than Oblivion. Skyrim is better than Oblivion BUT there are still some things that Oblivion does better than Skyrim.

The OP talks about how the character creation is superior, but never supports this claim beyond "I can't have blue hair colours". Which is true, and sad, but that one issue doesn't make Skyrim's character creation worse, it just means that the one thing the OP cares about the most is missing.
What really pisses me off is when the OP ask for factual backup of how the Skyrim character creator is better (despite not doing the same), but completely ignores the post that does exactly that.

Ok, what can you do in the character creator for Skyrim that you couldn't do in Oblivion?

Too many trolls here. But I'll name you some just at the top of my head.

- face paint
- scars
- beards (an actual bear, not the color slider for the chin to make you think you have a beard in Oblivion)
- changing Weight/size
- a lot more hairstyles
- make your character not look like a deformed mess

Just at the top of my head as far as I can remember that you can do in Skyrim creator but not in Oblivion. Either way, you along with the OP post is clearly wrong and bias in a lot of ways and I loved Oblivion, but fact is, Skyrim is ahead of Oblivion in many ways.

I was going to post this myself, but Jove here had an even longer list than me. And let's not forget that, as many ppl have said here, in oblivion most characters ended up looking like pudgy,puffed up, clay faces, with no satisfying difference to distinguish races, and barley any difference between individuals within the same race. Skyrim however, fixes all of this.

I'm not going to get into the whole "dragons are just another avatar that happen to be on high-level enemies" and "All enemies are the same, if you ignore all the hard work the developers put into making all those creatures and their animations", because clearly we seem to be dealing with someone who thinks that such advancements in the industry can be ignored, so he can judge 20-year old games together with the latest, an justify why he still thinks the old ones are better (No shame in having favourites from older games, but having to go as far as to ignore modern advancements in order to justify yourself is unnecessary).

Finally, OP seems to be among many internet-goers that believes that their opinion can't be wrong because it's an opinion (Which is simply a misinterpretation of what opinion is).
You are free to believe what you want, and have whatever opinion you want. HOWEVER, if you base such things on fact, and it is proven those facts are wrong, then you will have to accept that.
Do you have to change your opinion? No! But you have to admit that your facts were wrong, stop basing your opinions on those incorrect facts, and simply ask yourself if you still have the same opinions now that the facts are straight.
No? then you change it. Yes? OK, you have realised that your opinion is based on your personal feelings and have nothing to do with fact (No problem, just be honest about it).

 

[Phototoxin]

Oblivion was great for its time. It blew other RPGs of the time (NWN2 anyone lol!) out of the water!

Skyrim is pretty good. Yes it's not as mature (in terms of patches, DLC or mods) but it's pretty good. My only disappointment was with the dark brotherhood line. It didn't seem as involved as the previous one nor was the lair/sanctuary as good. I was hoping that after 'the big job' (killing you know who) that the interesting and more exotic stuff would come in like killing a flying monkey from the back of a dragon while dressed in imperial legion armor!

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

-No idea about performance though since I'm running it on PC (haven't had a single slowdown).

This is the number one thing keeping Skyrim below Oblivion for me. The game is broken on the PS3 due to one major bug. The longer you play, and the bigger your save file becomes, the bigger the frame rate drop becomes. It gets to a point to where you can't really play at all, which means that you have a time limit per character until they fix it.

That's terrible

 

[Abedeus]

Well, I like the lock picking in Skyrim more. Feels more realistic than "click until it hangs in air for a bit longer, THEN lock it next time. Because it will not click back.

 

[The-Epicly-Named-Man]

And the third part of my prophecy has come to pass; people will start wistfully looking back at Oblivion despite the fact that when it came out everyone was wistfully looking back at Morrowind. Another fine example of unrealistic fanboy expectations, and "contrary-ism".

Well I have to say, despite wistfully looking back at Morrowind when Oblivion came out, I'm not wistfully looking back at Oblivion much at all now that Skyrim's out. I miss a few things like spell creation, but overall I think the whole game is better.

A position respect, I preferred Morrowind to Oblivion as well. The point is that most of the people looking back at Oblivion woth such new found reverence were probably doing the same thing with Morrowind when Oblivion came out. Basically, I'm accusing them of hypocrisy (just to be extra clear in case that whole post made no sense outside of my mind, I agree with you, and your not the hypocrite).

 

[Scrustle]

Number of dragons in Oblivion: 2
Number of dragons in Skyrim: infinity

Fixed that for you. There's Akatosh at the end of the game and the Daedric Prince Peryite. Okay, you don't really see him in the game beyond a talking statue, but he's still a dragon.

OT: I was also a bit disappointed to see athletics and acrobatics go, but I'm unsure whether it was the right thing to do. It was great once you had trained in them and you could run around like a lightning bolt and jump over buildings, but I hate how when you have a low level in it you can't move faster than a tortoise if you wear heavy armour. I guess it's a huge loss for those who like to play thief/rogue style characters, but I don't usually go for that myself.

Oblivion was also a bit more colourful than Skyrim. I miss that a bit, but Skyrim still has a fair bit of colour in it. The world far from boring. And is it just me or are a lot of the cities in Skyrim a lot smaller than in Oblivion? Like Winterhold. I was expecting that to be a huge thriving city, but instead I get 5 houses and a castle. What makes it worse is that they say the city used to be much bigger, but most of it fell in to the sea... right.

But I think the UI looks great in Skyrim. I think it's functional too. I guess it doesn't really meld with the feel of the game as good as it could do, but it's clearer because of that. I think it's just very sleek and functional. Although it is a bit weird hearing the same logbook noise from Oblivion when I open and close something which is quite clearly not a book.

Oh and also the world map. It look really cool and everything but it's really hard to use! I can't see roads or entrances to towns at all! The Oblivion map was far far better. They could fix that problem if they got rid of the clouds and allowed us to zoom in more. It might also be a good idea to mark out roads and things in the way they do in Test Drive Unlimited. That game had a really good system. But if it's a choice between the Skyrim and Oblivion map, I have to go with Oblivion.

But overall the game is still better than Oblivion, these are only small niggles. They made a lot of changes with Skyrim, you can't expect them all to be better.

 

[SextusMaximus]

Skyrim's going to be better for one reason. Every reason it is worse than Oblivion (there are few, and I LOVED Oblivion) will be fixed with mods. Just wait a month

People keep saying that mods will fix everything. You will be dissapointed, it will take years to get all the mods needed to fix all of Skyrims problems just like it took years with Morrowind and Oblivion. In fact, was UI on Oblivion every really fixed to be more like Morrowinds UI? I don't think so.

Yes it's going to take a while for the game to be "perfect" in some people's eyes, have a little patience and everything will be fine - OR have the goodwill to stop complaining and make it yourself. It may take perseverance before a game is truly great.

Oh, and no - I wont be dissapointed, you don't know how much I like the game now, so don't dictate someone's judgement based on your own dislike of the game, I appreciate you seem to dislike it - for whatever reasons you hold your own - but don't try and spread your downtrodden outlook, ey?

 

[Continuity]

...

-No more monsters leveling with you.
....

This is all you need to sell it to me ^.^

I'm going to be getting Skyrim because they have apparently made an effort to fix the leveling problems that have plagued the series from the start... all the other features are trivial compared to that in my eyes.

Edit: though I am of course waiting for patches and mods... I've been an RPG fan for long enough (20 years) to know that its not smart to jump into this sort of RPG before the fixes and mods are in.

 

[ArtanisCreed]

Alchemy in Skyrim pales in comparison to Oblivion.

Not having user created spells is a bit of a bummer. Most of the spells made it over to Skyrim, so i dont see where "lack of spells" applies. (frankly i LOVE not having to create new spells EVERY time i need an upgrade)

I do like how we are able to enchant moe than one effect on armor/jewelry now, even if it is at the cost of mass effects on weapons. Two is a solid number balance wise.

I like the look of the UI in Skyrim more than Oblivion. Granted the hangups are annoying at times. As for sorting... meh alphabetical is fine.

The skill system in Skyrim is much better than Oblivion since u get to ACTIVELY pick what bonuses you want in a skill. Not to mention there are more bonuses you can acquire to skills than Oblivion. (Conjured weapons with built in soul trap and banish anyone?)

Character creation looks better than the previous game with a few more options. (And for the one guy who complained about presets...Oblivion had em as well or did ya forget?)

Acrobatics/Athletics always seemed strange to me. Sure running faster and jumping higher was fun...but honestly having them at 100 was a bit gamebreaking. Nothing could catch you and you can jump way to damn high, even in heavy armor. I applaud the removal of these two skills in the spirit of more solid an realistic gameplay. (as realistic as u can get in games with magic an such)

 

[Eisenfaust]

ehhh the continual winter (+ related colour palette) is starting to annoy me, and it seems the music is less iconic (though still great), and there's no menu section where you can see the titles you have attained (ie: arch-mage, etc - in skyrim it would include the Thane titles, etc) but those are really only basic cosmetic complaints i'm more than willing to put up with for an overall better game

(though not being able to dual-cast (with the combination effect) multiple different spells would be nice... as in... an electrified torrent of flame, etc, as opposed to a torrent of electricity and a torrent of flame... again, a cosmetic issue, so meh)

 

[Jack Rascal]

-No idea about performance though since I'm running it on PC (haven't had a single slowdown).

This is the number one thing keeping Skyrim below Oblivion for me. The game is broken on the PS3 due to one major bug. The longer you play, and the bigger your save file becomes, the bigger the frame rate drop becomes. It gets to a point to where you can't really play at all, which means that you have a time limit per character until they fix it.

How long have you played for? I have not encountered any problems like that. I have one quest bug that is preventing me from completing it but the frame rate has not dropped significantly. I had a problem with it once, but I think it was because my PS3 was over heating (I really should get a better place for it). I played ridiculous hours on it, so I can't really blame the game. I have played just under 70 hours, should I be worried that soon I can't play?

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

Are you shitting me?

Oblivion's character creation was fucking dire, Skyrim's absolutely destroys it.

Ok, what can you do in the character creator for Skyrim that you couldn't do in Oblivion?

Make characters of the same race that are genuinely distinguishable from one another. Oblivion's could recolour them and all that but honestly, they all looked basically the same and facial structure for every member of each respective race looked identical. Skyrim's allows you to actually customise your character easily and coherently.

That's just saying there are more/better models (ie, more presets). That isn't saying that the actual character creator (which is a tool, not a collection of models) is better. Generally speaking, a tool with more options is superior than one with fewer options.

Being able to change the hair color in Oblivion is changing the color of the hair. Doing it in Skyrim is loading the next model.

But it isn't superior. The Skyrim editor is easier to use and yields a greater result, a lot of options in Oblivion did nothing but morph a strange section of your character's face, often times not really doing what the option is supposed to do (the nose adjustment being highly guilty here).

I don't follow that last point, what evidence do you even have of this?

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

-No idea about performance though since I'm running it on PC (haven't had a single slowdown).

This is the number one thing keeping Skyrim below Oblivion for me. The game is broken on the PS3 due to one major bug. The longer you play, and the bigger your save file becomes, the bigger the frame rate drop becomes. It gets to a point to where you can't really play at all, which means that you have a time limit per character until they fix it.

How long have you played for? I have not encountered any problems like that. I have one quest bug that is preventing me from completing it but the frame rate has not dropped significantly. I had a problem with it once, but I think it was because my PS3 was over heating (I really should get a better place for it). I played ridiculous hours on it, so I can't really blame the game. I have played just under 70 hours, should I be worried that soon I can't play?

It started for me around the 25 hour mark. I chalked it up to my console overheating. Then it got worse and worse. I can't play in an area where it snows or rains now and I can barely play in cities.
http://www.nowgamer.com/news/1133397/skyrims_ps3_framerate_issues_related_to_game_save_size.html
It is affecting different players differently.
Not wanting to delete my awesome first character, I created a different profile and will experiment until the patch.

 

[Zaik]

They took out creating your own spells.

That's it, the rest is all better.

 

[Jack Rascal]

It started for me around the 25 hour mark. I chalked it up to my console overheating. Then it got worse and worse. I can't play in an area where it snows or rains now and I can barely play in cities.
http://www.nowgamer.com/news/1133397/skyrims_ps3_framerate_issues_related_to_game_save_size.html
It is affecting different players differently.
Not wanting to delete my awesome first character, I created a different profile and will experiment until the patch.

Well, I will count myself lucky then

On the NowGamer it says problems start when the save file gets above 6MB, mine is 8,5MB at the moment and I have no issues. Fingers crossed that it stays that way!