Oblivion and it's sorry console interface

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Cabezone

Gawd
Joined
Apr 2, 2005
Messages
714
Well the rumors were correct, the interface is completely consolified. You can't reasign any of the hotkeys, just movement keys and interaction keys, they're locked at 1-9. You can't rename saved games and they don't even give a date, just playtime. The inventory is all menu based, no dragndrop here. It's also huge and you can't resize it, you can only fit like 5-6 items on thje screen at once, prepare for a LOT of scrolling as you go through your inventory after a dungeon haul.

The actual gameplay itself is pretty great though, definitatly better than Morrowind. I'd consider it my perfect game so far if the interface didn't leave the PC uses behind.
 
Give it time. I predict that within 2 weeks there will be a mod that makes the interface better for a PC set-up.
 
That's what I was afraid of. Fable The Lost Chapters was like that and it SUCKED. Totally killed the game for me. Kotor was the same way. Why can't the PC version get a standard PC interface? Sheesh.
 
Update: you also can only see a small portion of the world map at a time, there is no resizing available as far as I can tell...bout a 10th of the map I'd say.

The mods are deleting all interface complaints on the official forums...nice.
 
Arch said:
That's what I was afraid of. Fable The Lost Chapters was like that and it SUCKED. Totally killed the game for me. Kotor was the same way. Why can't the PC version get a standard PC interface? Sheesh.
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OMG that interface blew major donkey balls. I couldnt navagate at all on that piece of crap!!! I will find out how this interface is, in about 3 hours :D
 
Cabezone said:
Update: you also can only see a small portion of the world map at a time, there is no resizing available as far as I can tell...bout a 10th of the map I'd say.

The mods are deleting all interface complaints on the official forums...nice.
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Who pissed in your Cheerios this morning?
 
Does the game pause when you're in your inventory?

If not, that could be a huge PITA.
 
Despite my better judgement I just went out and picked up a copy of this. I price matched at BestBuy for CircuitCity's price. Woot.

I will comment on the interface after I've had enough time to tinker with it.
 
Does anyone know how to drop items? I skipped through the little dialogue box and I can't figure out how to do it.
 
heatsinker said:
Does anyone know how to drop items? I skipped through the little dialogue box and I can't figure out how to do it.
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Shift-Click. Carried around a sodding bone for quite a while before I thought of trying that.
 
Isn't there a note pad to edit the key config till the lazy devs patch it? Or did they do something idiotic and hard code it. :rolleyes:
 
Obi_Kwiet said:
Isn't there a note pad to edit the key config till the lazy devs patch it? Or did they do something idiotic and hard code it. :rolleyes:
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a bunch of the keys are hard coded, the rest are in HEX.
 
play it their way or the highway. guess the PC version just lost a lot of "advantage" with the keyboard
 
The interface does kinda suck, but it's not all that bad, i haven't had any problem with it, now that i'm used to it it's especially easy. But i would definately download a mod to make it a more WoW style system.
 
Once you get used to it, it works really good.

It has a few sort options, but the one it is missing, imho, is the "put currently wielded/worn equipment on top".

it definitely is of console origin. They scale to resolution, but scale the entire thing, instead of just scaling controls while making room for more items/spells/skills/etc. on screen, and of course you can't resize any of the 'windows'.
 
Arch said:
Despite my better judgement I just went out and picked up a copy of this. I price matched at BestBuy for CircuitCity's price. Woot.

I will comment on the interface after I've had enough time to tinker with it.
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Despite your better judgement? The controls aren't that bad. This game is very good. I wonder who took more time playing than complaining about sleeves and not having the interface they wanted. Don't let these dudes get you down if you hadn't given it a whirl yet. :)
 
Ok, how the hell do you tell how effective your armor and weapons are? You can't mouse over any of the inventor columns and get a little box or anything! The instruction book doesn't even tell you what the stuff means!!!!

There isn't even a total summary page that tells you damage, and effectivness and AC and such.. I'm soo used to WoW but, because of that I expected more from the user micromanagement.

I am REALLY REALLY happy about the new quest system though, its awesome. If morrowind had it, I'd be playing it.
 
Another thing that really annoyed me is the lack of quick-tips when you mouse over a tab. When i first went in to the inventory, it took me a while to figure out exactally what i was looking at....

Great game so far. Wish i didn't have to go to work today. I'm pretty sure (cough) im comming down with (cough) something though.
 
How do you bind a key to switch weapons quickly?

Would be nice to use a bow and switch to a sword.

Anyone have any G15 configs set up for that?
 
You dont need to do that dude. When you are in your tab menu, hold numbers 1 through 8 before you click on your gear and that's in that spot. Use it for spells, potions, switching weapons, whatever you want. The controls are being blown up to a bigger deal than it is, but what else is new?

I only hope once my lock picking skills advance I could get the harder locks. Seems cumbersome to even get 2 tumblers. Hopefully it's intentional. I wait and see. The game is great.
 
I'm loving it so far. The interface is right now IMO is the biggest downfall. Sure i'm getting used to it and will be able to fly thru it at some point, but really in today market soem of the options and abilities that are missing are just shameful.

I hope a patch or mod comes out soon to fix the problems with it.
 
controlls arnt that bad. I just remapped a bunch of buttons to be more intuitive for me... (more morrowindish). The tab for inventory was throwing me off since i was use to it being for third person view. Put cast spell as the middle mouse button. You can remap whatever controll to any button, so i dont know what the complaints are.

The inventory screen is a PITA. it works well, but i need more info at one time. scrolling and scrolling and scrolling! bah!

I would like to see a more intuitive spellbook. If they had tabs for each magical school, that would be great.
 
So I played through about 20-30 minutes of the game yesterday. Didn't have much more time than that. The interface is adequate. Thankfully is WAY better than Fable's was. Still kinda clunky, but its serviceable.
 
Mazgazine1 said:
Ok, how the hell do you tell how effective your armor and weapons are? You can't mouse over any of the inventor columns and get a little box or anything! The instruction book doesn't even tell you what the stuff means!!!!

There isn't even a total summary page that tells you damage, and effectivness and AC and such.. I'm soo used to WoW but, because of that I expected more from the user micromanagement.
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Oblivion is a lot more simplistic, weapon-stats wise, than Morrowind. I believe the heart icon column is your item health, and the shield or the sword is how effective it is. Feather is weight.

Like everyone else said, the UI is a major annoyance, especially coming from Morrowind's beautiful interface (sure, it had problems, but compared to this it's bliss!)
 
Cabezone said:
It's also huge and you can't resize it, you can only fit like 5-6 items on thje screen at once, prepare for a LOT of scrolling as you go through your inventory after a dungeon haul.
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HydroSqueegee said:
The inventory screen is a PITA. it works well, but i need more info at one time. scrolling and scrolling and scrolling! bah!
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You can sort items by all the columns; value, weight, armor/weapon strength, and Item health. This is quite handy for easing the work after a dungeon crawl.

Cabezone said:
Update: you also can only see a small portion of the world map at a time, there is no resizing available as far as I can tell...bout a 10th of the map I'd say.
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Yeah, but you can move it around easily enough to see where you need to go next and travel there.. So is it really that big a deal?

texuspete00 said:
I only hope once my lock picking skills advance I could get the harder locks. Seems cumbersome to even get 2 tumblers. Hopefully it's intentional. I wait and see. The game is great.
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I have a fairly low skill (11 I think) and I am able to get 3 tumbler locks without breaking more than a couple picks in the process. I spent a lot of time doing it wrong though.. At first I didn't realize that I needed to left-click the mouse to lock each tumbler in place... I thought you had to try and raise all 3 tumblers at the same time and THEN left click. I just figured it was my low skill causing them to fall down so fast until I saw my wifes Thief characters tumblers falling at the same speed. Then I caught on and now it's fairly easy.

Martyr said:
coming from wow into this, the interface is shit.
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Quick rundown on my WOW experiences...

Bought the game in December about a month after it came out. For some reason WOW, and WOW alone of over 50 games I installed on that particular PC, took 20 minuters per CD to copy onto my PC. After working at it for about 1.5 hours I finally got it installed and launched it. The horrible bit-torrent patching system then kicked in and I had to wait over 2 full hours for it to download a 28mb patch. I could have installed the original basic EQ disk and then downloaded all 10 or so expansions in the same amount of time!

Anyway, 4 hours after I started I was finally able to launch the game and play for about 30 minutes before I had to go to bed. The game was okay, but nothing spectacular, and the 4 hour wait had left me in a foul mood so I didn't really enjoy it much. I ended up playing for about 3 weeks before I got completely bored and quit.

Recently my wife wanted to try the game. I reinstalled my copy and patched it (which all worked much better this time around and took less than an hour) and then I launched the game. I found a server with a low population that was NOT on the list of servers that were indicated as not allowing you to create a character. My wife then had to wait in line behind 500 people for some reason (took about 25 minutes). No idea why given that the server was low pop, but she waited. She got into the character creation screen, designed a character for about 15 minutes (she usually takes an hour in MMORPG's, but then they usually have real choices), and then she tried to create the character, but got a message saying she wasn't allowed to create one.

Needless to say that ended WOW for her, and me, right there. WTF is the point of a game that either takes hours to install and patch or won't let you create characters at all. Pisses me off every time I think of that craptacular game and the $65 I have wasted on.

(sorry for the OT)
 
Just got done playing it for about 4 hours. The interface kinda reminds me of the Fable one. But this interface is a hell alot better. Pretty easy to navagate, good organazation. Not bad at all.
 
Pulse said:
How do you bind a key to switch weapons quickly?

Would be nice to use a bow and switch to a sword.

Anyone have any G15 configs set up for that?
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do people not read manuals anymore? lol so many questions can be answered if people just read the damn thing :D
 
Well, now that I FINALLY got a chance to play the game for a bit, I can now post my opinion. I totally agree with the person who started this thread. Now, don't get me wrong, I LOVE this game. So far it's immersive, fixes some problems Morrowind had and is hella fun to play. However, I feel like the game is a console game that was ported to the PC. The inventory SUCKS. Not having any more info for your inventory items, SUCKS. Not being able to see your skills and such, SUCKS! The game is fun, but it feels like it's been WAY dumbed down for the console crowd. This irritates me to no end. Morrowind was released on PC and the Xbox and it still played and felt like a great PC game. Like I said, I love the game and will probably be playing it for months to come, but if this is the direction games are headed I'm really not happy about it... :(
 
Guess I am the only one who doesn't have a problem with the interface... even though I would rather have it normal PC style, but it doesn't bother me the way it is.
 
Arch said:
So I played through about 20-30 minutes of the game yesterday. Didn't have much more time than that. The interface is adequate. Thankfully is WAY better than Fable's was. Still kinda clunky, but its serviceable.
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Adequate is a good word for it. I'm thinking this will be an early mod cure; there's already a character management app.
 
OK OK a couple of you jumped all over me for not RTFM.

Anyway...How do you tell what items you have equipped in the inventory screen?
 
Pulse said:
OK OK a couple of you jumped all over me for not RTFM.

Anyway...How do you tell what items you have equipped in the inventory screen?
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They're shaded... ;)
 
I actually really like the keyboard layout, and the interface is not bad either. My only problem is the map can't be zoomed in/out, but other than that the interface is fine for me.
 
Agree.

I don't like the interface but I'm getting used to it.

Especially, the inventory screen. I like MW's lay out with the little color icons you could move around. I wish they had stuck with that and just organized things into categories better.
The new inventory is kind of boring...
 
Like some have mentioned earlier.

I too only find the map's lack of zoom feature annoying.
It's annoying but not enough to make me stop playing.


God damn I love stealth and theiving in this game.
Oh and the backstab stealth bonus is sexy!
 
The topic title should read "Oblivion and its sorry console interface".
 
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