Oblivion…TOO BIG

[erastes]

The trouble with Oblivion is that it's too bloody big. Granted the world isn't infinite and there are places where you come up against the end of the map and you can't ride any further, but in order to do a lot of quests you need to find locations—and you can't fast travel (e.g. through the menu, not gallop there on the horse) to a location you haven't already visited. So there's a bloody lot of pointless galloping around in circles trying to find places – because you can't "find" them until you are actually just about on top of them.

Plus the fact I'm a bloody vampire through no fault of my own, and don't want to be (and am working on the cure) and therefore can only gallop about pointlessly at night. It look me about an hour of real time yesterday to find one stupid cave, which the game designers thought would be funny to hide beneath an overhanging cliff. Ha ha ha. Very amusing.  I also need to find garlic, bloodgrass and a few other pieces of crap, and frankly the thought of careering around blindly looking for this kind of crap fills me with gloom. Yes, I can cheat and look up the best places to find them, but that shouldn't have to be the first resort. There should be in game people you can go to to FIND STUFF OUT. Most of the things you have to find out are through chatting to random NPCs or overhearing conversations which start up when you are close enough—the snag there is that they only play once,and if you aren't actually within earshot, you miss the conversation completely.

There are so many quests and subquests and sub-sub-sub-sub quests that I believe you could play this game forever and never explore all of it. But obviously some people have. I mean HAVE YOU SEEN THE OBLIVION WIKI?  The people there have catalogued everything. Right down to how many of each plant grows in each area. *gobsmacked* Who has that much time?  I admit that it's probably fun to find the plants you need in the wild—but frankly I'd rather there was a merchant you could buy everything off. Even at inflated prices.

Comments

[lexin.livejournal.com]

Bloodgrass you find inside Gates. That can be fun.

What you want is to start again (I bet you wanted to hear that) and not become a vampire. That was your first mistake.

[venivincere]

You and my son have the exact same complaints about Oblivion. :-( My guess is that they want you to stay so engrossed in the game you never leave your PS3.

[venivincere]

Josh says the quest giver usually marks things on your map for you. Also, he says there's a person at the Arcane University (though you have to advance through the Mages Guild) who can gather ingredients for you, he thinks.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, generally the next target gets marked on the map--but that's no good if you need to find something that's not on the map--like crabclaw cave--the stupid bint who is curing my vampireness said "oh go and get me five gems" but didn't say where to find them, so I cheated and got the locations from the internet--but didn't really want to cheat entirely and find where the places where...my fault, i suppose!!

Oh - I'll pop over to the arch mage place - I'm a member there, not that I'm any good at magic!!!

thank hhim for me!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

ok - gates - i can do that. I've closed a few of them, but there;s still loads out there!!

not starting again. no no no no no.

[4thofeleven.livejournal.com]

Oblivion's Vampirism's not too bad - if you feed on someone (activate a sleeping NPC - Mage's Guildhalls are a good place to find sleeping people without trespassing...) you won't suffer damage from sunlight for the next twenty-four hours.

(Try Morrowind if you want to really be frustrated - no fast travel, most locations are unmarked, and 90% of NPCs won't talk to you if you're a vampire!)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

OH! thank you - i did NOT know that if you feed on people you can go out into the sunlight! that will save a lot of waiting in the mouths of caves!!!