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Originally Posted by hulk
Ustwo - the effect of restricting the enemies and items to your level isn't dumbing down the game. Far from it - what it does, much like Diabo, it means you can do any quest, any dungeon, in any order you want (mostly - some are level restricted). Instead of getting awesome gear right away like you could in Morrowind and essentially making the rest of the game a total wank, now you have to work for it. If it's too hard or easy, there's the difficulty slider. Fast travel lets people cross the world without taking four hours to run.
The compass eliminates all the boredom associated with many RPG quests, and I can't imagine how mundane the game would be without it. Well, I can. As mundane as much of the previous Elder Scrolls games. You're ignoring the improvements over Morrowind, too - you can block yourself, and when you hit an enemy it actually hits the enemy. NPCs wander about instead of standing in one spot, they initiate conversation and react to what you do. It's much more of an RPG in the purest terms of the sense, role playing, and less of a stat-fest to get the über-armor as quickly as you can.
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You are 100% correct and 100% correct why this game is a disapointment to me.
Diablo is NOT an RPG, its an action game. It does that very well. I was hoping for an RPG, where some areas are VERY hard and others become very easy as the game goes on. I want to be rewarded for going into the very dangerous dungeon and getting out with a good item. I don't want to go into a dungeon at level 5 and find only Iron, and then go to the SAME dungeon, in sight of the capital, at level 20 and find glass armor. It ruins the feeling that its a world and makes it into an FPS.
The difficulty slider is not the answer, its not that the game is too easy or too hard, it just lacks any sort of feeling of 'reality'.
I will fully agree that a badly designed quest is one of the MOST annoying things in any RPG, where you are looking and looking for hut X and can't find it with the vauge 'up north' directions, and then you find out after 3 hours that its just barely outside of the city. That being said the compass is like having a constant spoiler site. Go here, talk, go here, kill, go here talk.
Blocking youself is a nice improvement I do like the combat changes.
As for the NPC's wandering around doing stuff, you are right that vanilla morrowind was very static in this for the most part and oblivion is better. After plugging in a few mods like Morrowind comes alive, its just the oposite. I never played with mods when I first played Morrowind, but my disapointment with oblivion made me check them out, in part to see if oblivion could be 'saved' from the action game it was. Some of the morrowind mods are of professional quality. There is one that replaces EVERY head in the game with a better and unique face. One replaces almost every building/tree texture in the game so instead of that drab morrowind feel you get a very vibrant world. Yet another replaces the armor textures making them look better than what is in oblivion. There are random quest mods, random travelers on the roads, semi-random town mobs, its really quite amazing how much time and effort people put in for free. One of the most impressive mods is called 'better bodies' which removes the sort of art-stick figure look to the NPC's and makes them VERY realistic, perhaps too realistic if you remove all your clothes, though I expeccted orcs to be better hung.
As for the uber armor etc in Morrowind, if you know the game, yes you can get stuff 'above' your level early on. (there are mods that fixed this) You know in 'that' chest there is ebony armor and in 'that' shine there are no guards in a room with a uber sword. If you don't know, then its quite a challange, and is a big part of the fun of exploring. In oblivion, why explore beyond when what you find is the same as what you find anywhere else? You can be champion of the arena at level 2, you can be at level 20, hell its easier at level 2.
If you like action games with a purpose, you will like oblivion, if you like deep rpgs like morrowind you will be disapointed.
What I'm holding my hope out for is that the mods will be able to fix much of what I don't like and based on the offical forums I am by no means alone in this feeling. What I'm afraid of is that while Morrowind was a PC game ported to the xbox, oblivion seems more like a xbox game ported to the pc, and from what some of the modders are saying, its harder to do things with it. Time will tell.
Edit:Oh I did miss your last point. Oblivion is VERY much a stat fest, more so than morrowind. Since enemies level with you, try leveling a non-combat character and see how well it goes for you. You will get your ass kicked outside of town by an uberwolf.