i am somewhat annoyed by the controls, as the cannot be customized the way i want - at least it's impossible to change the mouse configuration by regular means. also, i have to change the keyboard settings everytime i start the game.

I was confused by how to configure mouse controls when I first started too; I'm glad I'm not the only one.

When you change your controls, just click the arrows to the left/right of "Keyboard" and it will switch to the Mouse configuration screen.

I'm not sure why it's not keeping your changes--that's really weird. You could try manually editing the .ini (in My Documents\My Games\Oblivion), but that's going to be a bitch since it uses hex values for everything. (wtf)

I'm loving the game, although, yeah, it does have some warts. The autolevelling loot and monsters sucks donkey balls and takes all the challenge out of being a newbie, and all the satisfaction out of being godlike. I'm running a mod to fix that, and a few other mods.

My current mods:

Sagerbliv's Monster Balance Fixes (comes bundled with a version of Tom Servo's loot fix).

A mod that makes traps much deadlier.

Dejunai's Harvest Mod that makes plants and mushrooms and shit actually go away when you pick them and then respawn when they're ready for harvest again.

Khajitt and Vampire night-eye mods that change that ability to a toggle rather than a fucking spell you need to cast over and over (dunno what the hell Bethesda was thinking).

A mod that reduces the font size of your inventory so you can see more than, oh, five or so things at once without scrolling like a madman.

A mod that makes it easier to drag around ragdoll bodies and put them in obscene and embarrassing positions.

A birthsigns mod that makes bonuses from your birthsign stack on top of the 100 max (e.g. Steed birthsign makes 120 speed possible).

A mod that changes the screaming green look of the Light spell to something a bit more subtle.

Oh yeah, and the "Juvenile Mod" that adds a "Show Me Your Tits!" option to most common dialogue trees. When you pick it, the character looks surprised and removes (unequips) their shirt for a short time. It never gets old.

I was in the hospital last week for major surgery and can't play for much more than a couple of hours without feeling shitty and having to lay down, but I'm loving the game. The dungeons are huge and cool, the game is gorgeous for the most part, and the new melee system is really fun. 

I'll write more when I get the time, but atm I'll just say I'm ~15 hours into it and digging it so far :)

I'll repeat what others have said with regard to the retarded auto-leveling of monsters; I don't really understand the bloody point of having a levelling up system when the monsters are gonna auto-adjust to provide the same challenge no matter what.

Overall though, the good outweighs the bad quite substantially :} 

Best wishes in healing! I hope everything is in order now, except for the stitches. 

Thanks, I appreciate it. :)
I had just under a foot of small intestine removed (long-term Crohn's disease damage), and the rest splunged back together. The new(ish) plumbing does seem to be in order, but I'm not going to be doing any sprinting anytime soon.

[/off-topic] 

the mods that fix leveled monsters rock... i love it now as i might run into some crazy ass ogre or other high powered beast thing, and spend a good amount of time trying to take it down, instead of dropping the same wolf in 4 hits all the time. :P

god damn though... the minotaur looks cheesy. 9_9 

and i think a map with architecture similar to the ayleid ruins would totally rock... however is responsible for that style is cool. ^_^ 

I'm rather reluctant to mod the game before I've finished the quest as the designers intended (yes, I know, that may take a while :P), although I appreciate that the goal of completing the game is somewhat secondary to the experience of just exploring the world and doing your own thing. As I said, I've played around 15 hours and I've barely scratched the surface regarding the main quest; I haven't even done the bit where you meet Sean Bean yet. 

I've been playing the first one in the series on my dad's laptop, how many levels are there supposed to be in this ?

at the end of the second mission, it tells me "Congratulations, oyu have finished blah blah. Please visit the website for more details."

I check my install folder, there's sound, texture and music files for upto six missions but the levels folder only contains files for only 2 missions. It's a 1 Cd version, I got it off the net, but it doesnt seem to indicate that there's multiple discs or anything.

Anyone else played it ? 

you're playing the demo 

that's what I thought, but everything apart from the fact that the levels folder has 2 maps, seems to indicate the full game.

Readme, writing on the cd, manual, game content for the rest of the game etc. 

i dont understand how one could give a game a decent rating that needs 3+ mods to be played. 

it's not that you need to play it with mods, but that they are easily accessible (there were some mods out a day or two after the game came out).

i played the game without any mods for the first 2 or 3 days, and absolutely loved it. but i'm notorious for customizing my games... i often replace sound effects which i don't like in games i play(heh, you should hear how my copy of WoW sounds like...)

the only major gripe i have about oblivion that i think really requires a mod is the thing about leveled monsters and loot-- how it's impossible to find cool loot at low levels, and how at high lvls, cool loot is *everywhere*.
it makes the game too easy as well, by having monsters always the same level as me. i mean, what is the point of lvling up if the monsters scale with me? if i pick up the quad damage and pentagram in quake, do other monsters become more powerful? 

I would enjoy the game with no mods (even despite the auto-leveling); it's just that the moddible nature of it allows you to tweak it to make it even better, per your own preferences and idiosyncrasies. 

it sounded like those mods greatly enhance gameplay to me, thus my comment :) 

beaten (like a horse without the �1.99 armour addon installed ^_~), but what necros and pjw said. The fact that there were about 35,478,653 separate mods available within 7 days of the game's release, coupled with the almost completely freeform nature of the game, I think means that there are plenty of ways to tinker with it here and there without actually breaking the overall experience. A lot of people are having *vastly* different experiences of the game without modding it anyway.

As for me, well I'm still not gonna apply any mods simply because I like the game perfectly well as it is. I'm actually warming to the levelled monsters too - there is already enough variation in the difficulty of the encounters imo - every fight is a challenge, but a satisfying one, and I will meet monsters who I can eviscerate easily just as often as I meet those who will end up chasing me screaming into the nearest town. It all depends on your character choices really - I seem to be rather shite with magic and bows atm (I'm working on it), but a bit tasty with a blade - this obviously is gonna make combats different depending on who I'm up against. I'm guessing necros must be playing some leet ninja battlemagey-type if he's finding *all* the combats easy. I can still make myself more powerful without levelling up, just by for example buying new spells, or scrounging better equipment.

In fact, I've deliberately chosen not to level up for bit anyway - I'm staying at lvl 11 and not sleeping, just seeing how far I can raise my stats before I decide I'm ready for lvl 12.

The balance just means that, unusually in a game of this type, most quests are potentially doable, regardless of where you are, which I feel is probably an improvement on having to do quests in a more ordered fashion, depending on your level. At the end of the day it gives players more choice, which I think is a good thing 

are there no other new games? except this oblivion thing
any1 played call of chtulu on pc? or any non-ww2 shooters? 

Call of Cthulhu is out on PC now? 

Well, as soon as one starts playing Oblivion, one tends to become oblivious (lol, see what I did there? ^_~), to other new releases... 

for CoC. afaik, it hasn't been released yet.

it's too bad it's being released now though (april 21?) because i'm busy with oblivion. :P 

Yes, I would like some comments on that too. I was planning to order it from the UK along with Quake 4, because it is dirt cheap. I've been holding back because I just moved apartment and have no money. 

has devoured my life. 

has devoured my life too. 

 

it's funny cause i stopped playing oblivion about 2 weeks ago. o.0 never completed the main quest either. heh, i'm sure i'll get back to it, but i had a sudden brainwave and had to get mapping on it. :P 

what's oblivion mappage like? Is it easy to bolt new terrain sections on, extending the current map - or are you making new stuff that drops into the existing world?

I'm seriously thinking of getting back into mappery because of Oblivion :}