RyushiBlade on 12/6/2006 at 03:48
Stop throwing your garbage into my forum, Nightwalker! Watch out or I'll start growing my hedges over into yours and then you'll be in trouble.
(In all seriousness, my opinion may not matter, but Oblivion isn't like Thief at all. But it's a very good alternative and well worth playing.)
Huckeye on 12/6/2006 at 12:12
This game is NOT Thief! However, I consider myself to be a very die hard Thief fan and while I played Oblivion through I remember my greatest points of enjoyment were how often it "felt" like Thief. The dungeons are where I feel Oblivion shines like Thief the most (very ambient, great use of stealth, treasure hunt, guards talk when they don't know you are near, etc). But Oblivion is a combat game. It was built from the ground up to be a combat game. There are parts that are fun and very "Thiefy" but you will have to rely on the RPG elements of the game to actually beat it. But the great thing about Oblivion is you don't have to beat it.
My wife, who HATED Morrowind and LOVED Thief started playing Oblivion. All she did was break into places and steal stuff. She was determined to not do ANY questing. She spent a couple dozen hours just breaking in to houses and looting (playing the game Thief-style and loving it). She finally decided that she wanted to be able to sell stolen items so I pointed her to the Thieves guild which requires a quest or two before they will buy goods and the next thing I know she is asking how to join another guild. She got hooked and started questing.
As a fan of Morrowind and Thief, I thoroughly loved Oblivion.
Jason Moyer on 12/6/2006 at 12:40
Quote Posted by Krush the Second
Also, it is easy to raise your skills up too quickly and jump a bunch of levels. Then a lot of the monsters level up WITH you, and if you have focused too much on your stealth skills and not your combat skills, you can't defeat any opponents.
That's exactly the way I played the game, and I'm fairly certain I enjoyed it more than if I had focused on power-levelling and kicking the crap out of everything. It's really not difficult to play the game as a Thief or Assassin using the pre-defined classes if you actually spend most of the game sneaking and using ranged attacks (like a, uh, thief or assassin).
Rolander on 14/6/2006 at 08:57
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
That's exactly the way I played the game, and I'm fairly certain I enjoyed it more than if I had focused on power-levelling and kicking the crap out of everything. It's really not difficult to play the game as a Thief or Assassin using the pre-defined classes if you actually spend most of the game sneaking and using ranged attacks (like a, uh, thief or assassin).
Agree with the power-leveling part; it might be fun for some people to rampage around as a demi-god among feeble enemies but for me it's get boring too fast.
With the proper skill setup it is perfectly feasible and fun to play a sneaker and either snipe from the shadows or sneak attack. I used to snipe first, but when it is possible I prefer a melee sneak attack, more damage (6x for melee vs 3x for ranged arrow) and especially good against ranged spellcasters. I relish the thrill of the first strike, followed by the finishing attacks as the badly-hurt caster tries desperately to scramble away for a breather ... but normally gets cut down after a couple of spells unless the caster attempts to use heal spells/potions.
Just be warned to stay away from pitched battles in confined areas against superior forces ... you'll get torn to pieces.
IMHO, the Oblivion AI is biased against ranged attacks. I'm not sure but it seems they instantly spot/sense you once you get in a successful ranged hit. The Thief: Deadly Shadows AI is better there, I think: A single, unexpected arrow hit will put the target on alert (provided it survives), but a well-hidden Garret will likely remain undetected unless he betrays his position with more arrow attacks.
Also, the snipe-and-run Thief style doesn't seem to work in Oblivion as the AI seem to lock-on to the player's position with unrealistic accuracy (after sniping a necromancer and running through a few large unlit caverns, I had expected the necromancer to be disoriented as to where exactly I was, but NOOOO .... the only way I seem to be able to escape was to exit the cave/change area). So another strike against the ranged sniper: once you loose the first arrow, be prepared to be dogged to death by the angry target (preferably the target's death, of course!) unless you have an invisibility spell handy ... at least from my limited experience (I bought the PC version only last week).
Matthew on 14/6/2006 at 10:45
You might want to check out some of the thiefy-orientated mods listed in the sticky thread in this forum; I haven't tried any myself, but some sound pretty cool.
PeeperStorm on 15/6/2006 at 02:18
Quote:
IMHO, the Oblivion AI is biased against ranged attacks. I'm not sure but it seems they instantly spot/sense you once you get in a successful ranged hit.
I've found that I can sneak ranged attack with almost no danger of being spotted once my sneaking skill gets to a high enough level (near maximum). The trick is to stay in the darkest of dark shadows. The AI "sees" me but almost immediately loses track of me. It's sort of unsettling the way that they run right up to me after that, but they just look around and then go back to what they were doing.
STiFU on 24/6/2006 at 08:55
Quote Posted by Rolander
Also, the snipe-and-run Thief style doesn't seem to work in Oblivion as the AI seem to lock-on to the player's position with unrealistic accuracy (after sniping a necromancer and running through a few large unlit caverns, I had expected the necromancer to be disoriented as to where exactly I was, but NOOOO .... the only way I seem to be able to escape was to exit the cave/change area).
Sometimes they even follow you into other areas if they see you going out there. But what I mainly wanted to say that there is an "attack and hide"-mod. I think I downloaded it once, but then I must have forgotten to test it somehow. But it might be interesting and less frustrating for a thief sometimes.
~s:a:n:i:t:y~ on 24/6/2006 at 10:00
Well, now as I've spent some time around this game and discovered it has totally distracted my attention from Thief series, I can say that it's a completely different game, that gives a different sensation, even though with all those thief and sneaking and hiding mods which I use. :) It's so different it's incomparable. And I begin to like it very much despite having tried to quit several times :thumb:
Rolander on 27/6/2006 at 15:28
Quote Posted by STiFU
Sometimes they even follow you into other areas if they see you going out there. But what I mainly wanted to say that there is an "attack and hide"-mod. I think I downloaded it once, but then I must have forgotten to test it somehow. But it might be interesting and less frustrating for a thief sometimes.
Well, after I leveled up my charactor to level 30+ and explored some fresh Ayleid ruines, I found lotsa cases where I can zoom-snipe the undead to death there. Basically it's the distance and lighting, I think. Maybe the sneak skill helps too. Same thing in outdoors; if you can stay far enough and get a good hiding place, chances are a solitary prey is good as dead by the time it finds you and tries to run you down.
Or maybe it's just because I leveled into demi-god levels and ate Xivilai for snacks :cheeky: ... multiple levelled goblins can still be a handful though ... :D
