Oblivion sucks

[bvanevery]

A reprint from my venerable gamedesign-l in 2009.

the speed record for snapping a DVD in half goes to...

...Oblivion! Aptly named. I bought it less than 30 hours ago.
Goodbye $20 on a BestBuy gift card. Sorry Bethesda Softworks got the
pittance.

Computer gaming media is getting tougher as time goes on. These DVDs
didn't really snap, they just bent. CD games used to explode in
beautiful showers of shards when squeezed between thumb and the other
4 fingers. Squeezing is directed outwards to keep from injuring the
hand. Traditionally, it makes a big mess. So much less fun now.

The direct culprit was the infuriating lockpicking minigame.
http://oblivion.wikia.com/wiki/Lockpicking No matter how many
internet cheat sheets I read on the subject, no matter how many video
tutorials I watched, I simply could not distinguish the sounds they
were referring to. Actually, the more I turned to extra-game help to
figure it out, the worse I got. I ceased being able to do even the
easy locks. In-game, I never figured out much of a pattern. I
thought it was based on sequences of 4, but I really couldn't gain
clear confidence in that. I ran out of my 100-or-so "beginner's"
lockpicks pretty quickly, on some chests that didn't have much in
them. I played a Thief character, and I was too wimpy to clear the
stupid monkey demons at the first Oblivion gate. I couldn't find a
new, plentiful source of lockpicks. The sewers in the Imperial City
didn't have many in them. I couldn't find a fence. I figured I
needed lockpicks to break into houses on the waterfront to prove
myself worthy of joining the Thieves' Guild, but I couldn't open the
locks with only 3 lockpicks. Save-load-save-load-save-load didn't
work.

I couldn't find any good items to steal. Just tons and tons of nearly
identical houses with low level loot. Couldn't kill, couldn't steal,
couldn't pick locks. I played probably 20 hours total, and I spent
most of it feeling shut out of the game. I liked the intro with
Patrick Stewart's character, that's about it. I'm pretty sure I
snapped the previous game, Morrowind, although after a much longer
play period. I think I may have managed to pick the worst case
content path for Oblivion. Possibly, my cheesy laptop speakers don't
make the sounds that distinguish the lockpick noises.

Oblivion also had an annoying Persuasion minigame.
http://oblivion.wikia.com/wiki/Persuasion It has a UI that makes a
first time user scream "WTF??!" Fortunately, it was quite amenable to
internet tutorials. Once I read those, I understood what needed to be
done, and then with minimal practice I was cranking out total
persuasion. Unfortunately, umm... persuading people is mostly
pointless. Very rarely did I encounter an NPC that required
persuasion to divulge information. It helped a bit selling my stuff,
but there really wasn't anything worth buying.

Just before Oblivion, I played 8 of a 9 hour time demo of the Guild
Wars MMORPG. Totally repetitive hack 'n' slash. That's why I didn't
just create a non-Thief character in Oblivion, I had just done
grinding to death. I didn't play that last hour of the demo, because
I saw nothing original in Guild Wars at all. Only slightly creative
thing was a little girl who followed me around everywhere, sort of my
groupie or protege. It was neat having a fan club.

My $20 may have had some benefit. It's gotten me charged up about
solving RPG design problems. One clear lesson: don't include asinine
minigames. I'm tempted to say "don't include minigames" but I haven't
experienced a non-asinine one in a RPG, so my jury's out.

 

[Haim]

First of all,fuck you for the title.
Yes if you look "objectively" you can wonder why it is good game at all,this can be said about any game.The biggest problem is that it is so much generic,large part of the environment,the dungeons the quests,the people.But really to an extent a game does not need good gameplay to be a successful and good game,it more the artistic value of the world,that is how much you "see" the personality of the world and how much you like that personality.
Why angry birds is better than its clones(not that it is original in itself)?
Why ffvii and pokemon are so good?they are repetitive as hell,the combat system does need much thinking,yes the thinking of growth is nice but most of the time you don't do it.They have an awesome world,character, they are alive(due many parts of oblivion are dead,generic)

Oblivion is about doing whatever you want,explore the world.
Yes the persuasion is worthless.
About the lockpicking,they open when the pin is really near the upper edge.
Anyway you can learn unlock spells or buy scrolls to do it,make it part of your character story
"I suck at lockpicking so I got myself a scroll"
You being sucks does not make the game bad.

 

[Cheeseumpuffs]

First of all,fuck you for the title.

This. Oblivion is a fantastic game.

The lockpicking mechanic is easy as shit. It has nothing to do with sounds. Loot is everywhere, you just need to know where to look. You can join the Thieves Guild with literally one lockpick.

Persuasion is kind of dumb but not necessarily useless. Gets you way better prices. You could've used persuasion to make joining the thieves guild easier. Some quests require persuasion to advance.

Also always use at least one combat skill, even if you're a thief. It's plain stupid not to.

"I can't find any lockpicks"
"There's nothing worth buying"
Hm, seems like there's at least one thing worth buying. Do you know how many merchants stock lockpicks?

You're a bad person

 

[TheScornedReflex]

I hope you choke on a slice of cucumber you despicable worm turd.

Each tumbler has a repetitive pattern where the correct time to get it comes up.

I will dance on your grave.

 

[Cherry Cola]

Everyone knows Bethesda games are all quantity over quality, lacking in substance and solid game mechanics. It's okay to still play the games and enjoy them, just as its okay to think sugar on its own tastes fine, it just means you happen to like something which objectively isn't that good and in fact in many ways sucks dick, and you should feel slightly bad over your lack of taste and refrain from spreading it via social media and irl interaction.

It's not okay to claim Bethesda's games are good however. Irregardless of whether you play them or not. Fallout 3 was alright I suppose tho.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

It's not okay to claim Bethesda's games are good however. Irregardless of whether you play them or not. Fallout 3 was alright I suppose tho.

Agreed. Bethesda is a factory of generic titles with Morrowind and Fallout 3 Vegas being their best ones trying and mostly failing to achieve something more ambitious than simple generic open world rpg.

 

[QuickTwist]

@Cherry Cola, @Blarraun,

What RPG open world game do you think are good?

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

Open world nature of these games is in conflict with their rpg elements. More open world means more generic lazy content to fill the world. Bethesda makes good open world games generally speaking, but it's all to the detriment of storytelling and character development there.

 

[bvanevery]

Agreed. Bethesda is a factory of generic titles with Morrowind

I snapped that one too. Got way farther into it though. I'm sure I have an exact critique out on the internet somewhere, but I remember getting really frustrated / bored with level-up nonsense, and boring NPCs where you have to keep pestering everybody to find out what's worth doing in the game. I did briefly have fun role playing a half-orc cross-dressing serial killer. My intent was to wipe out everyone in the game, but after 20 kills I got an idea how long that would take.

 

[QuickTwist]

Open world nature of these games is in conflict with their rpg elements. More open world means more generic lazy content to fill the world. Bethesda makes good open world games generally speaking, but it's all to the detriment of storytelling and character development there.

Why would open world take away from storytelling? I'm not trying to say Bethesda is the greatest storyteller, not at all. I was just wondering why the two can't go hand in hand.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

Why would open world take away from storytelling? I'm not trying to say Bethesda is the greatest storyteller, not at all. I was just wondering why the two can't go hand in hand.

For obvious reasons.

Time needs to be spent to create rpg elements and separate time goes to create open world features, more of one means less of the other. Allowing players their choices leaves many loose ends and gaps that need to be filled with detail and quality to offer a better experience and nowadays it's impossible to create as much content to achieve similar things on large scales. It's possible to create a lot of mediocre content that isn't well adjusted to the whole or didn't have as much creativity or thought put into it compared to pure rpg focused titles.

Not only that, Bethesda hires content creators who make this kind of generic art, so after all these projects they tend to stick to what they know, they specialise in it and as a result are most likely inexperienced when it comes to other areas.
I won't go into much detail because this all seems fairly obvious and you can find more about it yourself.

Actually there's an open world game I'd call good, it's Witcher 3 (previous games in the series weren't open-world, this one is slightly). I didn't mention it earlier because it's not a typical sandbox choose your adventure open world, but it has great storytelling with open world elements.

If you compare the witcher series with the elder scrolls or fallout, you'll see why a pre-existing character in a consistent universe based on extensive background lore has a lot more depth and appeal than all those other stories in a generic setting offered by a majority of sandboxes.

I'm not saying open world is a bad direction to go, I think it's the future of the genre. All these new titles show improvements and new technologies will ultimately allow developers to be much more uncompromising with their time.

 

[QuickTwist]

For obvious reasons.

Time needs to be spent to create rpg elements and separate time goes to create open world features, more of one means less of the other. Open progression leaves many loose ends and gaps that need to be filled with detail and quality to offer a better experience and nowadays it's impossible to create as much content to achieve similar things on large scales. It's possible to create a lot of mediocre content that isn't well adjusted to the whole or didn't have as much creativity or thought put into it compared to pure rpg focused titles.

Actually there's an open world game I'd call good, it's Witcher 3 (previous games in the series weren't open-world, this one is slightly). I didn't mention it earlier because it's not a typical sandbox choose your adventure open world, but it has great storytelling with open world elements.

If you compare the witcher game with skyrim or fallout, you will see why a pre-existing character in a consistent universe based on extensive background lore has a lot more depth and appeal than all those other stories in a generic setting offered my a majority of sandboxes.

Glad you mentioned TW3

 

[bvanevery]

For obvious reasons.

Time needs to be spent to create rpg elements and separate time goes to create open world features, more of one means less of the other. Allowing players their choices leaves many loose ends and gaps that need to be filled with detail and quality to offer a better experience and nowadays it's impossible to create as much content to achieve similar things on large scales.

Chris Crawford infamously lost his career, trying to solve this problem. He failed. Only recently did he admit it. I admire that he tried, but I wished he would have changed his course sooner. I think if he spent more time writing and less time trying to auto-generate stuff, he might have gotten better results.

 

[Hadoblado]

It's an open world game. You almost always had options to get through a door. Even assuming you couldn't manually lockpick, you could hard crack by using the autopick function. If that failed, you could find the key and steal it. Often there were alternate entrances too. Scrolls and spells worked.

But really, you just needed to learn the skill. I never really mastered it to the point I'd never break a lockpick, but it was easy enough that I never ran out of lockpicks.

I think there were good elements to the game, but I found it ultimately unsatisfying. The combat was dull, and the leveling system finicky. I never wanted to be high level because monsters got stronger faster than I ever could, and they did so in tedious way: increasing their health to the point fights took forever.

Skyrim may have been dumbed down, but IMO it was a vast improvement. It still suffered from open world tropes, but not to the same extent, and they were mostly optional. The landscapes were hella good too.

 

[bvanevery]

I'm wondering why lock picking doesn't even seem to work on these touchpad laptops I'm using? Oh well, I'm just hitting "auto solve" as I deliberately made 2 characters who aren't thiefs. One is intended to be a fireball spewing wizard. The other is intended to be a pure warrior type. Each is on a different laptop, so it'll be interesting to see which does what and how any foreknowledge influences the other.

Right now the warrior has a progress lead due to a longer battery life on that laptop. However, there's something wrong with the mousepad response on it, I can't seem to freelook and move at the same time. I can see how that's going to spell death when combat gets harder, and it's fairly annoying when trying to look around and move.

 

[Pyropyro]

Can't you just use the "Open" Alteration spell instead?

 

[bvanevery]

Maybe the fireball wizard can. He hasn't even made it out of the intro area yet, ran out of battery power. I'm not sure what spells he actually knows. It's presently irrelevant because he hasn't run out of lockpicks yet.

The stuff that comes out of the chests hasn't really been worth it anyways. I'm thinking about various activities that people typically do in RPGs that are actually pretty pointless, just a waste of time or an unimportant decision. More on that some other day, when I have more cogent thoughts.

The warrior probably can't cast stuff. She's got a nice big war hammer though, which would be great if chest bashing was allowed. Send all the gold pieces flying everywhere, break all the potions....

I've thought of making a Marxist RPG, where the consequences of the "murder hobo" "fetch quest for your Lord" economy are laid bare.

 

[Hadoblado]

Just FYI, destruction magic never makes the grade. Enemy health scales faster than your damage, decreasing the chance that they'll die before you run out of mana. At a certain point it's rendered almost entirely obsolete. It can work okay in conjunction with other offensive options, throwing out a burst of damage to initiate or finish off a fight.

Whoever designed the system and then had it repeated in subsequent games needs to learn themselves a lesson. Skyrim made it more appealing but it still ended up far weaker than weapon use.

 

[bvanevery]

Well the fireball mage is a roleplaying idea, so if the role turns out to be shit, I'll just condemn that branch of Oblivion as poorly thought out. Same as I did the thief!

The laptop with more battery life has the warrior chick on it. I'm pulling a sort of Grace Jones thing, although I seem to be more about the giant warhammer than the toothpick. It seems her lot to do all the goody goody stuff, like follow the main quest and take the plight of the Empire seriously. I think that's going to cause the fireball mage to be a bit of a scoundrel or at least a nihilist.

Another odd factor in the competition, is the fireball mage laptop is picking up a wifi signal in this Walmart parking lot, and the Grace Jones laptop is not. So G.J. has pulled waaaay ahead in things happening in the game world. I'm not going to just do all that stuff again, with a wizard, so it's becoming an extensive playbook on what not to do. I don't think the wizard is even out of the tutorial area yet.

 

[QuickTwist]

If you are playing as a mage or warrior, I think it would be safe to assume that using a lock pick could just as well be completely out of the picture. Think about it in terms of occupation if you will.. Will a computer specialist know how to pick pockets? Maybe, but it isn't his forte in a general sense.

@bvanervery, I would highly suggest looking into the Dragon Age games - they tell stories very well and with the new Dragon Age: Inquisition, you can role play pretty well with dialog option at the very least. Ofc there are more restrictions of what you can do for mage, rogue and warrior -not particularly seen in the Bethesda games but I highly acclaim to the games Bioware makes.

On an aside, I've been spending a lot of time playing DA:I lately -its a beautiful game that you can really get lost in the environment pretty easily - especially if you can play at ultra setting @1080p or more. I'd say its almost if not on par with TW3 in terms of graphical quality. Different style ofc, but still both games look stunning at high and ultra high settings.

Also on DA:I, the combat system, skills and abilities and attributes are very fun to play with and there is a decent crafting system so you can min max to your hearts content. Min maxing the right way can almost break the game tho - its possible to kill the toughest dragon in the game in seconds using the right abilities and having the right gear, but the great thing is that you can role play and still be pretty effective granted you at the right part in the game and you have decent armor and stats. I'm currently in the next phase of the game from a fresh playthrough and playing on nightmare and even though I am experienced with the game there was a main quest that took me several tries to complete, though everyone admits its the hardest part of the game hands down. And unfortunately its pretty much impossible to solo DA:I as opposed to being able to do it in DA:O.

Lastly, this game is huge, I mean really really big. There are several maps that are as big as the whole DA:O game and last I checked, DA:O took me about 100 hours to complete everything I possible could. If you like it, you could be playing the game for several hundred hours on a single playthrough I know I plan to.

There is a game of the year edition for sale on Origin for $40 that comes with all DLC, so that is not a bad price at all.

 

[bvanevery]

The mage is up to level 4 and has pretty much run out of lock picks. But when I get 'em, I use 'em. It increases his Security skill. Beginner's gains and all of that.

In Oblivion "beginner's gains" is actually a pretty strong bias against specializing, at least at the beginning. I wanted my mage to be a fireball hurler, but Flare is weak compared to other things. Also to advance, it's most efficient to work on my weakest mage ability. So I find myself summoning skeletons, absorbing health from enemies, and mixing potions, because those are my lowest attributes that can be most easily improved.

The warrior is up to level 3 and is getting ready to close the 1st Oblivion gate. The mage, in contrast, sorta wandered off the other direction. And will probably keep doing so. Why bother with the same levels twice?

I feel like I'm mostly doing a RPG style First Person Shooter. Except I'm not shooting so much as doing melee, whether warrior or wizard. Combat definitely seems biased towards melee. First Person Melee, is that a genre?

 

[bvanevery]

I find I'm a pretty hardcore flower picker. I've gone through several iterations of characters and approaches, abandoning them somewhere in the level 4..7 range. I realized I should actually be rewarded for the primary activity I'm engaged in, so I've created 2 different 'Alchemist' variants, on 2 different laptops. One is into Heavy Armor and Athletics, the other is into Light Armor and Acrobatics. Both do Security, i.e. I rob a lot of shops. Both have Mercantile, as between robbing shops and making useless potions, I'm quite the mule. I don't know how long this low value muleing existence is going to hold my attention, but I think I've got pretty good character builds for this sort of thing now. Neither character has been in circulation that long though, I'm not even sure if they've risen to level 3 yet.

My strategy in choosing major abilities, is to make it so that I'm always improving in all the stats. One major ability per stat, excluding Luck of course. These characters are somewhat generalists. Their main mission in life however is Alchemy.

I'm also only into melee fighting. I don't even carry a bow, I sell 'em. At some point I may revisit the archery question though. I thought the bow was really slow to fire and thus really unsatisfying / hard to use, but it could be I'm unwittingly trying to use power shots for everything. In Thief: The Dark Project, you had to pull the bow all the way back or it doesn't work. In this game, maybe you can do a quick release, but more pull gives more power. If so, then maybe bow combat doesn't actually suck as hard as I thought.

 

[bvanevery]

I haven't kept any of my earlier characters. One muled 9K gold, based on sales of mostly unneeded potions I mixed + low level loot like shoes. Technically I haven't deleted her, but I'm typing this on the laptop she's on. Meaning I'm using battery power to type this up rather than play with her.

I have started over again with a custom class I call the "Cynic". It is designed to level up as slowly as possible. Most of its major skills, are stuff I rarely use or will never use. All of the stuff I actually do all the time, are minor skills. This is because as far as I can tell, as you level, monsters are simply made tougher everywhere you go. In relative terms, you're actually standing still or going backwards! Better to play most the game at Level 1.

Finally, this game, I figured out how to get into the Thieves Guild and how to fence stolen loot. I think that was unnecessarily painful to figure out. Arguably, it took me 8 years? Or lord knows how many play hours before I trashed that previous round of characters and created the Cynic.

Before I had a fence, my main tactic was to take every single bit of food / alchemical ingredient I could find, and then make potions out of 'em. Doesn't matter if they're stolen, my resulting potion won't be stolen. So for alchemical ingredients, I am my own fence. It's not that difficult to raise alchemy skill in a hurry if you like / don't mind mixing up stuff. But I'[ll be honest: my restart was triggered by finally becoming an Expert alchemist. Once I knew all 4 properties of commonly available ingredients, I realized the resulting potions weren't all that exciting. I had piles and piles of them that I'd never use. I can sell 'em, but it's a rather grindy way to get gold. I used to inherently like picking flowers, but the thrill is starting to wear off.

 

[Cherry Cola]

@Cherry Cola, @Blarraun,

What RPG open world game do you think are good?

They are such timesinks that nowadays I usually avoid them unless I think I'm going to dig them so there's a lot which I haven't tested. Most seem highly formulaic and uninteresting.

GTA V seems pretty good but haven't played. Witcher 3 is on another level compared to pretty much all the other open world games as far as I can tell, hard to deny that its currently the best even though it isnt really my thing. Played through about half of it which means I put like 100 hours into it. New Vegas (not a bethesda game)+expansions is very solid, when you reach max level youre just about done with everything if you havent been fucking around too much which is nice, very few games get that bit right. Usually you become hyper overpowered after 7 hours or so and then combat is meaningless for the rest of the game, or you hit max level and then just have an rpg thats missing core rpg mechanics (such as in oblivion, fallout 3 and 4, Dragon Age inquisition.. hell most open world rpgs).

Fallout 4, unfortunately kinda sucks. Its fun at first but quickly loses all of its appeal due to retarded crappy game mechanics and lack of interesting story lines and quests.

Unfortunately the general publics lack of appreciation for good game mechanics and overappreciation of filler content means most open world games are going to be mediocre timesinks at best which translates to crap in my book >: (

 

[Hadoblado]

@Bvanevery
Alchemy is intrinsically over-powered in any game that you can pause to drink them. Having high alchemy skill gives you infinite health, mana, stamina, as well as whatever other effects you want. Since there's no limit to how many you can drink in a given amount of time, it's utterly broken and it blows my mind that they haven't figured it out after so many games. Okay so it's not infinite, but it makes use of resources you pick up anyway, and if you're frugal you can save them up to when you actually need them and essentially have a 50x multiplier on hp for the hard fights.

Not to mention that pausing that often makes game-play halting and crap.

You're right about the 'cynic' build. The leveling up is borked. At level one, you can max out your skills and equipment without increasing the power of opposing monsters, which is obviously desirable. I'm glad they got rid of this silly shit in Skyrim. You end up OP, but the alternative is to slog through monsters that take half an hour to kill each, or play on reduced difficulty *spits*.

 

[bvanevery]

Actually in Oblivion they've kept the supply of reagents for making health potions rather tight. Granted, I haven't tried buying them, but it's simply not true that you pick up enough of these ingredients as you go about your journeys. It's actually a lot of work to make potions, let alone health potions. So no, alchemy is not intrinsically overpowered. At the lower levels I've run out of health potions plenty of times, despite being an alchemist and a dedicated flower picker. There's other stuff I need to do as well, like rob people bilnd, or delve dungeons, and those don't tend to yield a lot of health ingredients.

Another limiting factor is you can only drink 4 potions at once, not an infinite amount. This can definitely get you killed. I'd say save / load is more powerful than chugging health potions. Sometimes I forget to save though, and then I have the experience of feeling like the game is griefing me when I die. I think a basic problem of RPG is the player typically spends a lot of real wall clock time doing work, i.e. mouseclicks. I do not like having that real work thrown away on something stupid.

Cynic is totally working! Yes, because I did pick Mercantile and I sell lots of stuff, she does level up. But when she does, she's had so much experience in various endeavors that she can take +5 in all 3 abilities she selects. Maybe I will stay ahead of the 'monster inflation' that way. If not, well I'll do a game where Mercantile isn't a class skill. I've found I sneak a hell of a lot more than I jump, so maybe Acrobatics could be a major skill, that I will rarely use.

 

[Hadoblado]

Really? Only four at a time? Is that a patch or something? I have never felt like I needed to be able to drink more potions. Weird. It could be that I have a penchant for using the restoration school too? Now I'm concerned, is my memory really that bad? For the health potion ingredient thing, maybe we are drawn to different things. I very rarely have issues with a lack of potion ingredients, but then again, I did buy from shops as I passed through. There's not really much else to spend your money on (not that I valued anyway).

Save/load works but I try not to have to use it that way (I will if I die, but I don't intend on ever having to). I don't like dying and losing a lot of progress. I prefer game mechanics that have your respawn and be inconvenienced (like having to find your body, all monsters respawn at full), rather than consequenceless save/load.

You can't keep up with the monster inflation. Or, you can for a while, but long term they always win. iirc they increase in power directly off your level, whereas you increase of the attribute/skill gains. Since you're capped at 100 for both, and they are not, at a certain point you are left in the dust. For the same reason, characters need to specialise. You can do fine by doing the thing that you do do really well, and forgoing all else. If you generalise, nothing you do will be at an appropriate power level for the monsters you fight. Your character will always hit a point at which it is a really bad idea to continue leveling, but if you are efficient and always make sure you take +5's, you'll keep up for a good while and also experience a reasonable degree of variance (fighting real daedra instead of scamps). If you ever level up and get less than max attributes, you're asking for trouble - but meticulously reaching every goal before you achieve your tenth point in a major is boring and not something I'd want to do.

Considering you're still playing, don't you think snapping the disk a little melodramatic?

 

[Cherry Cola]

@Bvanevery
Alchemy is intrinsically over-powered in any game that you can pause to drink them. Having high alchemy skill gives you infinite health, mana, stamina, as well as whatever other effects you want. Since there's no limit to how many you can drink in a given amount of time, it's utterly broken and it blows my mind that they haven't figured it out after so many games. Okay so it's not infinite, but it makes use of resources you pick up anyway, and if you're frugal you can save them up to when you actually need them and essentially have a 50x multiplier on hp for the hard fights.

Not to mention that pausing that often makes game-play halting and crap.

I think there are many ways around this. Cooldowns for instance, or toxicity level as in Witcher 3. Still its a common problem. Just tried out Dragons Dogma, in that game there are consumables everywhere and no workaround whatsoever. The game was originally released in 2013 iirc, but come on, the issue is so basic and simple it shouldn't have been in any game at all since the year 2000. I really wonder whats wrong with game developers sometimes when they opt for bad stuff for seemingly no reason. Oh well Dragons Dogma wasn't a good game apart from that either.

Agree about pausing in general. Either you go for something that is supposed to be paused (bioware games, vats system in fallout) or you include micropauses at most. Still games don't get this right, even the Witcher 3 fails in this regard. Though I am willing to forgive the latter because the pauses often feel like nice breathers wherein you think about the fight and how best to tackle it and then drink potions in accordance with that (wide array of different potions and stuff available, so lots of room for smart decision making).

Its worst when you just pause to drink a health potion or something akin without any balancing mechanic - as in Dragons Dogma, developers which release games with such mechanics should have their assets seized and used to lobby for the legalization of marijuana or to help starving children or some other good cause.

On a sidenote I believe, or rather hope, that Bethesda's days of glory are soon over. Fallout 4 was a disappointment, the company has learned very little the last 13 years or so. If they release another rpg this dated people are going to start catching on. Its crazy how they are considered the open world rpg developer when they really haven't been since before Oblivion. They seem to really not care at all about making good games, because they keep on including the game bad mechanics over and over again, heck in the case of Fallout 4 they even regressed the game mechanics of New Vegas, just made it straight out worse. Defixed a bunch of the fixes Obsidian hade made, such as the conversation system (in Fallout 4 charisma is once again basically meaningless as in Fallout 3, and in contrast to New Vegas).

For this reason I believe seizure of assets is far too mild a punishment. These transgressions upon decency warrant defenestration.

 

[bvanevery]

Really? Only four at a time? Is that a patch or something? I have never felt like I needed to be able to drink more potions. Weird.

I don't know if the behavior changed from the original game, but I am using the last patch they shipped.

It could be that I have a penchant for using the restoration school too?

All of my guys use restoration / healing. There's nothing stopping anyone from doing it, and if you're not a wizard type, there's not much other use for magicka. You really can't restore while you're standing toe to toe with someone in a melee though. That's when you need potions... or when you're running, and the next fireball in the back is going to kill you. But if you can run and restore, that somewhat works. The other dude might be doing the same thing though, maybe at a rate faster than you heal. But, usually it's better to save your own life first, then come up with another strategy for taking on the baddie. Maybe you give up and go find something else to do, in one piece.

Now I'm concerned, is my memory really that bad? For the health potion ingredient thing, maybe we are drawn to different things. I very rarely have issues with a lack of potion ingredients, but then again, I did buy from shops as I passed through. There's not really much else to spend your money on (not that I valued anyway).

Possibly, as I'm a Thief and don't believe in buying things. I've never shopped for ingredients. Also as I've primarily played as a thief mule, I've just ended up with way more potions that I made myself, than is worth carrying around. I never need that much stuff for fighting monsters. Lately I've been selling everything that weighs more than 0.1 lb, even if they are 'precious' health potions. I'm getting jaded, I think I'll find another one somewhere, or simply not need them.

Actually, potions have turned out to be pretty useless. I've poisoned my blade a good number of times when I needed to 'get serious' with someone, but it's too tedious to do that all the time. Stopping all the action to figure out what resources you're going to use, can be an interesting RPG puzzle solving mechanic. But compared to a smooth as melting butter FPS combat mechanic, having to stop all the action just to poison your blade gets old. That chews up real wall clock time.

Considering you're still playing, don't you think snapping the disk a little melodramatic?

No. I've not played the lock picking minigame even once. I don't regret my decision back in the day. Actually that minigame doesn't even work on my laptop mousepads for some reason. Think I'll look up why.

I think I'm still playing because I'm in Melbourne FL and bored.

 

[bvanevery]

No. I've not played the lock picking minigame even once. I don't regret my decision back in the day. Actually that minigame doesn't even work on my laptop mousepads for some reason. Think I'll look up why.

Couldn't get any web hits on that. Don't have the patience to dig more.

I think I'm still playing because I'm in Melbourne FL and bored.

I think I'm also trying to see if exploration is worth anything. Or if the game "gets better" at some point, assuming you're not following the main quest. In other words, how open world is it really?

I got seriously griefed by the "stuck inside a painting" quest. The premise appealed to me, but the delivery was horribly tedious. Tons of save load because I couldn't make a dent in 6 trolls at all. This might be a byproduct of the leveling penalization phenomenon. I only just started halting that character's progress, playing it cynically to improve minor skills rather than major ones. It may be a pretty weak character right now.

I almost deleted the game. But part of me was determined not to let the game designers have the satisfaction of beating me. If they cared. Or, I just didn't wish to suffer their callousness. If they cared! I don't think I'd make a habit of bad quests like that though. There will come a point, much like the lock picking which started this experience, where I just scream THIS SUCKS! and end it.

The character that started out playing cynically, indeed who has a Cynic custom class, might be doing better. It's hard to tell. I haven't really diverged their explorations much, because they're both thieves and they both needed to do some basic guild quest stuff for that. Now I'd say they're both "caught up" so it's a question of 1) a low level guy with the advantage of player wisdom, vs. 2) a high level guy with a lot of gold. I still haven't found an appropriate use for gold. Damn if I'll buy a house, I still live out of barrels and crates!

 

[bvanevery]

I have discovered, much to my dismay, that if you live out of a "particular barrel", the contents of that barrel will reset eventually. It's probably related to the amount of time it takes for flowers to regenerate and so forth. All the gear I had been piling up in the Imperial Market District, it's just gone. Including at least one dearly won quest item, a light armor "apron of adroitness" from that stuck-in-a-painting quest above.

So I'm deleting that character. It was in a real tailspin anyways, since I had played it "in good faith" instead of cynically. And I had just become a Master of Alchemy too.

I can't figure out what to do about my compulsion to mule entire castles. The stuff looks valuable, despite the price tags on 'em. I still don't have any real outlet for gold. I guess I could cynically spend it on minor skills. I can't imagine paying the bloated prices the merchants want in shops for stuff. Maybe the trick would be to have Mercantile as a minor skill, then artificially train it to 100, while still at Level 1. Although I have found, not having enough Strength, does cramp one's muleing style. Feather potions / spells only buy about 40 lbs. more carrying capacity, at least on that last character I was using. Helpful but doesn't hugely change the style of play.

Now I'm wondering, even if I buy my own house, can all my stuff still disappear? Does a house come with an empty cupboard / chest that won't respawn junk, erasing all your stuff? EDIT: most bought houses have 'safe' containers in them. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Containers But it would be far cheaper to use one of the available 'safe' containers to begin with. They aren't always in convenient places for muleing though.

I wonder if items left in the landscape, also don't have an infinite persistence, but will vanish eventually.

 

[Sly-fy]

Oblivion is a great game IMO. Skyrim is even better, but I just wish that the main story was longer and more challenging, and that the map didn`t have so much snow.

One of my favorite things about Oblivion was that Uriel Septim was voiced by Sir Patrick Stewart.

Spoiler

I only wish he hadn`t been offed in the beginning...

This guy gives some good examples of what was good in Oblivion compared to Skyrim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS4ZecLhO_g

I also liked having a gladiators` arena and it`s a shame that Skyrim doesn`t have one.

I also remember having had a harder time lockpicking in Oblivion than I did in Skyrim.

 

[Grayman]

I never finished Oblivion. Some day in the future when Bethesda restructures the old esm and esp modules to work with the newer engine and combines the best mods into it glitch free I will finish it.

 

[Cognisant]

The leveling system suck and I was shocked and appalled that they made the same mistake with Skyrim.

Also Skyrim really punished magic users.

 

[bvanevery]

The Cynic, who has 1 least-frequently-used major skill for each stat, has continued as the way I play the game. The other laptop, I tried starting over with a "mage with a blade". His mission was to pursue only the main story, since I was ducking it in the other game. But he got his ass kicked so hard and so immediately, that I don't know if I'll continue the exercise. Let's put it this way, as long as I've got enough battery power and can keep my eyes open, I'll be continuing with the Cynic. The other laptop only gets used when I run out of power. And I think, I probably won't run out for the next 2 weeks, which means I'll just keep going with the Cynic.

The Cynic has mastered alchemy. I already had more potions than I can do anything useful with... now I can mix more useless potions, with even fewer ingredients! I try to find reasons to go into combat, which will use up potions, but quests don't necessarily send me into harm's way. I don't see a reason to go dungeon crawling for its own sake yet, as you can't count on the rewards being worth much of anything. When I run out of other things to do I might consider it, but I haven't.

I've got 10K gold that has no use. Why pay trainers? I only need training if I'm being prevented from making forward progress somewhere, and so far, that's not a problem. I did enough Speechcraft for long enough, to make it past any quest that has that as a barrier. I don't even think my Speechcraft is exceptionally high, just good enough. You need pretty much a "70" to get on people's good sides.

I've stopped muleing chests. There's not enough gold for the weight carried, let alone the mouse clicks expended. I don't even pick up steel armor anymore. I might stop picking up iron arrows. I used to consider them to be like a kind of currency, but they only provide 10:1 gold per pound ratio. Maybe I'll stop taking silver forks, knives, and spoons too. Generally I like to see 25:1 ratio, such as found in certain books. I muled lots of alembics, calcinators, etc. until I got into the Arcane University. Which I don't know what to do with really. I'm an alchemist, not much of a spellcaster. They've got a wonderful herb garden that I can use periodically, but I've already got far more potions than I need.

Current ambitions are, to find some artifact for a countess up north, so that she'll give me a different artifact in exchange. Got a mission from the Grey Fox himself. I'm in both the thieves' and the mages' guild. I'd actually do just fine in the fighters' guild too, as I run around in heavy armor and have massive strength. An alchemist and a mage aren't exactly the same thing. You can become a kickass alchemist just by being compulsive flower picker and potion mixer. Which is pretty similar to the impulse of muleing chests. So basically a thief alchemist, who kept working on strength so he could carry away more loot. Also endurance, because I knew the monsters would just be artificially leveled up, and I'd need the strength and endurance.

Yeah, the leveling system doesn't work. Hence why I level as little as possible. There's no incentive to having all the monsters get stronger around you!

 

[redbaron]

Scaling difficulty is one of the worst things to ever become a thing in v1de0 g4m3z. That and storylines.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

All TES AI is nonexistent. In Skyrim it has two conditions (if ranged, keep range and attack (without any variation or tactics) / if melee choose shortest path and attack). Most games without decent AI suck and it's a growing trend now that game devs noticed not enough people care about smart enemies or smart NPC movement so they can get away with scripted lines, cutscenes and no effort in that department.

Most people want immersion and feelz and that's what they get, movie-like experiences streamlined for immersion and devoid of mental challenge and that's why the market for games looks like it does.

Even the notable exceptions that managed to reach wider audiences did so because they offer a mindless esport spectacle, which again is both immersive and exciting to the audience. (It attracts crowds for different reasons than it attracts its challenge seeking participants)

 

[bvanevery]

I think that games which explicitly scale difficulty are lame, because difficulty will implicitly scale in other games anyways. Take Civ-style games for instance. You can generally knock off early enemies near to you, because the AI is usually more stupid that the human player. You just jump 'em, and have fun devouring your earliest gains. But the more distant the enemies on the map, the more time they've had to build up and present a threat. The real abuse of that, is the civ that starts in the middle of nowhere, with no other contacts, and manages to become far more advanced than anyone else because it is left alone. This is totally ahistorical and I can think of several real world feedback mechanisms which would correct this, mostly inspired by Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel". But the main point is the farther away the enemy is, the stronger it gets on its own. You don't need to explicitly scale anything, as long as enemies have their own independent action and ways of getting stronger themselves.

Probably too much work for Bethesda, so they did their half-assed static world that waits for you to do anything in it, then penalizes you for doing things by leveling up the monsters.

 

[bvanevery]

Most people want immersion and feelz and that's what they get, movie-like experiences streamlined for immersion and devoid of mental challenge and that's why the market for games looks like it does.

I dunno. I'm inclined to say it's also less labor for devs, who are risk averse with their corporate multi million dollar budgets. It's a ripe area for indie conquest though. I've always regretted that the Dwarf Fortress guys couldn't see it in their hearts to be something other than ASCII worshippers. They coulda made a lot of money, if only they did anything to reach a broader audience, while still retaining hardcore thinking about their simulation.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

I dunno. I'm inclined to say it's also less labor for devs, who are risk averse with their corporate multi million dollar budgets. It's a ripe area for indie conquest though. I've always regretted that the Dwarf Fortress guys couldn't see it in their hearts to be something other than ASCII worshippers. They coulda made a lot of money, if only they did anything to reach a broader audience, while still retaining hardcore thinking about their simulation.

Lol, first you complain about big companies and then you wonder what would happen when an Indie duet would become as big, exactly that, lots of sacrifices for the money. DF guys managed to do something amazing with their funding instead, they share their game free of charge and get enough donations to keep going, that's just as perfect funding scheme as you can get.

There's plenty of indie devs making good, challenging and otherwise satisfying games. I don't think there's a hungry usergroup out there. Whoever needs such games eventually finds the niche they like. I don't think the community at large misses out on something they would rather be doing. Those capable of searching and evaluating, are I think already a more sophisticated non-mainstream group of gamers whom the industry ignores and sporadically buys to write favorable reviews.

Civ AI sucks as well, it's scaled in a similar way TES is and gets more units and settlers to begin with. Completely non-adaptive and linear. Civ potential always laid in multiplayer imo.

 

[bvanevery]

Lol, first you complain about big companies and then you wonder what would happen when an Indie duet would become as big,

I don't believe that a title with the game design content of Oblivion, needs the amount of labor and capital they threw at it. "Indie" doesn't mean ugly, unprofessional, or averse to a player base either.

To be honest I am coming to understand the game design content of Oblivion as "a roguelike in drag".

exactly that, lots of sacrifices for the money. DF guys managed to do something amazing with their funding instead,

Why am I not amazed then? Or rather, why are you?

There's plenty of indie devs making good, challenging and otherwise satisfying games. I don't think there's a hungry usergroup out there.

In the RPG space? Can you name one?

Civ AI sucks as well, it's scaled in a similar way TES is and gets more units and settlers to begin with. Completely non-adaptive and linear. Civ potential always laid in multiplayer imo.

Which civ? There have been a good number of them.

 

[bvanevery]

This comment bugged me, as it seemingly displays ignorance of the design of the game. I never got around to answering it; now I will.

"I can't find any lockpicks"
"There's nothing worth buying"
Hm, seems like there's at least one thing worth buying. Do you know how many merchants stock lockpicks?

Only fences. Which you have to earn access to, by doing Thieves' Guild quests. Which means, for a thief newbie in 2009 when I wrote that review, you have to flail around helplessly not knowing what's going on, and not having any fun, until you finally figure it out. I think it's telling that they made a thief oriented add-on called "Thieves Den". I haven't played it, but I bet it solves some of these get-started-as-a-thief glitches.

You also cannot steal lockpicks in any quantity. You may find them randomly when rummaging around in chests. You can get them from killing certain enemies, i.e. goblins often carry them. But if you want 100 lockpicks "easy", you're going to have to do Thieves Guild stuff before you get access. I won't give away how you get started on that, lest I dumb down the game for anyone, but I definitely don't think I was wrong to get pissed at this game 30 hours after purchase and destroy it. The starting scenario for a thief was downright asinine, with the lock pick resource obstruction + insipid lock picking minigame.

I still haven't found out why the lock picking minigame doesn't work on laptop touchpads. Something to do with the delivery of click and drag events I guess.

In other news, I had to resort to an internet spoiler to find the 5th of Garridan's Tears. Damn annoying head banger, that one. I had the right idea, that the way I was searching couldn't possibly be right, that I'd found what there was to be found, where I was looking. But of course there was 1 place I hadn't looked very hard. And of course the tears are totally non-obvious and hard to spot, so I never found the last one casually from moving around either. Not like I hadn't been right on top of it enough times, but wasn't looking where needed.

I wouldn't exactly call that one a good puzzle. Wasted a lot of wall clock time, and reminds me of classic adventure game headbangers. Which all but tanked that segment of the industry, AFAIK.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

Why am I not amazed then? Or rather, why are you?

I'd rather not have to explain it. On another note DF isn't an example of good AI, the quality and challenge come from something else there.

Basing it on ASCI helps to ward off against lazy players who can't stomach the UI or can't replace it with custom graphics of their choice. There are also 3d engines for Dwarf Fortress for those inclined to enhance their experience. Those players who stay are exactly the niche this game attracts.

In the RPG space? Can you name one?

Divinity:Original Sin, Half Minute Hero.
Note that they aren't examples of excellent AI either. It's incredibly difficult for me to find examples of well implemented non-scripted AI. I play quite a bit of grand strategy wargames, there usually the AI is logical enough and follows a good script of actions which takes into account a few diversions and saves a bit of resources for future surprises. Far from perfect, rarely do I see an AI able to comprehend its own situation or its goals in a direct way as it should.

Which civ? There have been a good number of them.

All? Civ 5 and beyond earth are the most recent ones with terrible AI.

You may be interested in the research that's been done on language comprehension algorithms and the resulting AI able to outperform the original game engine in Civ 2. Links here and here.

There's some more research done on the topic and a few examples I could find but I won't bother with it now, there's a great mod for Mount and Blade (arguably a sandbox rpg), which introduces unit formations, fleeing mechanics and general improvements to unit AI called Prophesy of Pendor, comes with a vastly increased difficulty as well which is a good thing. Such AI tweaks and overhauls for games are often a modders domain rather than coming from the devs themselves.

It's not like I can't say what makes a good AI, even a few scripts are a good place to start. Why don't the opponents in skyrim flee? Why don't they ambush, keep formation and act like a real group of fighters would. Why don't they separate tasks and specialise, one does the healing, the other shields his friend, etc. Why don't they use cover, why can't they change the line of sight. If the player grows too strong and they recognise them, why can't they negotiate, give up, band together or hire assasins (Morrowind had assasins, not that they were strong or dangerous, but it was a nice touch). If the player slaughters them after they'd given up surely it gives the player negative reputation of a bloody monster, fueling their own ranks or maybe even turning lawful enclaves hostile or wary. So many ideas, it's barely scratching the surface.
There's lots of simple additions, that aren't resource intensive and very easy to implement overall before scripting stops being a viable solution for making npc's more clever.

The solutions to problems in most RPG's are ridiculous, a player is usually some kind of embodiment of capricious psychopath and settles all matters with a fight to death, no mercy, no taking it easy, always one thin line separating the situation from slaughter. In reality violent solutions usually are too great of a risk or too destructive for the local community to even consider them first.

Okay, I guess I've rambled on this far, should be enough to keep me without any need for rambling for a few days at least.

 

[bvanevery]

Divinity:Original Sin, Half Minute Hero.

Guess I'll examine.

Man I get tired of living in an age where people don't believe in playable demos. But at least we've got YouTube for semi-compensation. Still, one never knows what to believe, reading internet reviews. Everyone's got an opinion. It does seem like Divinity provides pretty good scope for being a real dick. http://www.somethingawful.com/video-game-article/divinity-original-sin/

Half Minute Hero, seems like resource gathering around a map. Not sure how you'd know if you're powerful enough to defeat your enemy. Trial and error? It might be an interesting game for what it is, but I don't think it's relevant to Oblivion style open world RPG.

All? Civ 5 and beyond earth are the most recent ones with terrible AI.

I distinctly remember Civ III as having a pretty hardassed AI that would kick a new player's ass roundly. Don't know about an experienced player. That was one of the DVDs I destroyed eventually. The city razing and revolt mechanics were insufferable! You basically had to either conquer every city twice, or else bring huge hordes of units around. Either way, lots of wall clock time wasted for no good reason.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

I've been editing my previous post in this thread so not sure if you've read every new addition to it.

Divinity is a great 2 player co-op game with decent tactical challenge on highest/second highest difficulty mode, I'd wholeheartedly recommend their enhanced edition to any tactical rpg fan. (If you want this to be any challenge don't steal those goddamn paintings or anything! You'll see what I mean. Also if the game seems too easy, try to pick fights you wanted to keep for last as with a few attempts most of them can be pretty fun to plan out and take from different angles.)

Half minute hero is more of a jrpg with interesting mechanics to up the ante and put some real pressure on the player.

Haven't tried Civ III, revolt is a nice scripting preventing players from over expanding and adding a reputation system it makes the game more real and challenging for sure.
As I said, I'm not looking for that kind of single player challenge in civs because I'd rather enjoy the multi.

 

[bvanevery]

You may be interested in the research that's been done on language comprehension algorithms and the resulting AI able to outperform the original game engine in Civ 2. Links here and here.

Those are interesting. Not sure it has a purpose aside from academic research, but definitely interesting.

It's not like I can't say what makes a good AI, even a few scripts are a good place to start. Why don't the opponents in skyrim flee? Why don't they ambush, keep formation and act like a real group of fighters would. Why don't they separate tasks and specialise, one does the healing, the other shields his friend, etc. Why don't they use cover, why can't they change the line of sight.

Because it's a RPG, not a tactical wargame or first person shooter. You are asking the devs to invest their development resources in a kind of gameplay that's completely different from the genre, even if it might be an interesting addition to it. It's like complaining in Quake, "Why isn't there some badass compelling narrative here? These NPCs could all have individual appearances, characterizations, lines, narratives, well why don't they?" Because they wrote Quake, not a RPG.

Let's say as a consumer you want "everything" in a title. Well, how much are you going to pay for everything? At what point would you think it's really you that should buy 2..5 games, instead of expecting it all to be in 1 game?

There's lots of simple additions, that aren't resource intensive and very easy to implement overall before scripting stops being a viable solution for making npc's more clever.

Well I dunno, you say it's "easy" to implement, but I think that depends very much on how discretized or continuous the environment is. I'm sure you could implement some heuristics that approximate what you're talking about fairly cheaply, but the player will see through the ruse soon enough. It won't be that much more complexity.

Oblivion NPCs actually do dodge and weave as they approach a bow shooter or spellcaster BTW. This makes it really annoying and un-fun to be a ranged combatant, you can hardly ever hit anything. The NPCs will also seek cover if they can't get right at you. This makes it annoying having to peer over cliffs carefully to kill things, lest you peer too far and fall down. I don't think these 2 NPC behaviors enhance my play experience, I think they annoy me.

The solutions to problems in most RPG's are ridiculous, a player is usually some kind of embodiment of capricious psychopath and settles all matters with a fight to death, no mercy, no taking it easy, always one thin line separating the situation from slaughter. In reality violent solutions usually are too great of a risk or too destructive for the local community to even consider them first.

I've noticed this as well, and I have considered making a game about it. The problem is, real world consequences of violence are decidedly un-fun. You die. You don't get to continue piling up loot. The games are explorations of our Jungian shadows, to a large extent. We get to transgress and have powers we don't have in the real world. If you constrain us in a game like the real world, then we are likely to become very, very cautious and risk averse. Is that adventuring?

 

[bvanevery]

Haven't tried Civ III, revolt is a nice scripting preventing players from over expanding

No, it is a horror that makes conquest of a map take FOREVER. The game penalizes you for actually trying to win and finish the game. The real world wall clock time is insufferable.

As I said, I'm not looking for that kind of single player challenge in civs because I'd rather enjoy the multi.

Historically, Civ games have been unplayable as multi-player games. They take way too long. I don't know about more recent titles. I haven't tried multi-player Civ for a long time.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

No, it is a horror that makes conquest of a map take FOREVER. The game penalizes you for actually trying to win and finish the game. The real world wall clock time is insufferable.

Depends on the implementation.

Historically, Civ games have been unplayable as multi-player games. They take way too long. I don't know about more recent titles. I haven't tried multi-player Civ for a long time.

Depends on the players. I'm alright spending 20 hours in a lan game to finish one map. We set time limits for turns, usually about 90 seconds a piece.

 

[bvanevery]

Depends on the implementation.

I sure thought it sucked in Civ III. I also hated that ICBMs wouldn't actually destroy cities. There would still be units in 'em you'd have to mop up. Rather unrealistic, and again made it a PITA to actually finish the game. No, I don't want to spend a lot of time loading and unloading troops from transports, just so I can "touch base" with all the cities I just nuked. That pretty much triples the mouseclick budget. That's pretty much the problem with the whole Civ series, never ending mouseclicks to get shit done.

Depends on the players. I'm alright spending 20 hours in a lan game to finish one map. We set time limits for turns, usually about 90 seconds a piece.

90 second turns is a completely different play style than what I do with Civ as a solo player. Why play a ponderous TBS with other players if you're really after something closer to a RTS experience?

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

I sure thought it sucked in Civ III. I also hated that ICBMs wouldn't actually destroy cities. There would still be units in 'em you'd have to mop up. Rather unrealistic,

That's actually pretty realistic. Modern ICBM's have multiple small warheads that cover a large area with small radius of total destruction. Many modern armies have developed countermeasures for deploying troops near the points of detonation. The greatest damage is to the infrastructure and electronics, the zone is definitely not dead or inaccessible with the right equipment. Also, there are anti-icbm warheads designed to distract or defuse at least a portion of the payload. I'd imagine each City to be equipped with those as a default, rendering nuclear warfare less effective than laymen or enthusiasts would have imagined.

Here's a nuclear blast visualisation.
Pick your favourite city (choose a metropolis, as your cities in Civ wold be of similar size), choose the modern standard warhead of (150 kt) and notice how much of the city is left intact, giving both civilians and armies plenty of room to evacuate or move to bunkers. Also think about it, those warheads are designed to cover a large area, but they don't penetrate underground structures very well, it's perfectly feasible there would be underground facilities used to defend from ordinary nukes.

90 second turns is a completely different play style than what I do with Civ as a solo player. Why play a ponderous TBS with other players if you're really after something closer to a RTS experience?

Not really, there's a lot of pondering in those 90 seconds and if you limit the time everyone has it gives everyone equal chances. It could be longer than 90 depending on our needs, but Civ isn't a very complex game and it doesn't require more time. The most tedious aspect of it is moving the units because it can't be delegated to the AI which doesn't exist.

In your earlier post you mentioned RPG and how it doesn't need AI or challenge. I disagree, challenge is a big part of immersion, also realism helps with immersion and creates consistent and believable narratives. Realism doesn't invalidate the fantasy setting of the world, it makes it more compelling and thorough. I don't feel like expanding on why I disagree with you, but I noticed you judge the entire video game market based on your own preferences rather than the complete spectrum of possibilities.