After a long hiatus from Oblivion (four years), my roommate and I picked the game up last week in anticipation of the release of Skyrim.

I knew the leveling system in Oblivion was a complete catastrophe, but not wanting to turn her off to the game I simply mentioned that it's an issue and that we should focus on just having fun.

We're now level 25, and we're finding it damn near impossible to kill things.

We have leveled up without understanding or caring about the game's leveling system. We now have 100 in sneak for example, but our endurance has barely improved at all. We're very strong, but we use light armor and a bow most of the time.

My question is this: Will the problems continue to get worse for us, or will it eventually even out and we'll outgrow the difficulties we're currently facing?

Does it pay off to just work through the difficulties we're currently experiencing, or should we scrap it and start over? If we continue to simply level up without stressing about it, will we eventually regain viability in the game or are we just getting more and more screwed as we continue on?

I'd say keep playing. You've come far enough now and it'd be a waste to start over. But maybe it's time to think about how you play or want to play.

If you want to raise endurance, you should start using skills that have endurance as their governing attribute. Generally, people like to spike their endurance as quick as possible, as it also determines how much health you gain with each level up (10% of your endurance level). You wear light armour and its governing attribute is speed, for marksman it's agility. Your character can still be very effective as it seems it's a sneaky type, so you might want to go for the unseen backstabs? Marksman is great for shooting stuff from a distance, but up close it's not very effective.

We're working on endurance, but again we haven't made a doctoral thesis of the leveling system for this character (nor should someone playing a game have to in the first place).

That said, we've come to the understanding that if our problems on this character are only going to get worse, it's worth starting over sooner rather than later.

Are our problems going to only get worse if we don't start making a doctoral study of the leveling system?

If we're going to have to start doing that, we may as well start over and do it correctly from the beginning.

Which way should we go?

Yes and no.

In a sense your character by himself is going to become weaker and weaker compared to the enemies he faces. On the other hand your level is now high enough that you can start finding some of the ridiculously overpowered loot like for example the Mundane Ring (50% Resist Magic + 25% Reflect Spell), the Ring of the Iron Fist (25 Fortify Hand-to-hand, 33% Reflect Damage), or theAmulet of Axes (25 Fortify Blunt, 33% Reflect Damage). These are all generic non-unique items and theoretically you could find any number of them. It's entirely possible for a character to have 100% Resist Magic and 101% Reflect Damage at which point the only things that can still kill you are arrows (which can be dodged) and Damage Health poisons (which are extremely rare).

Or if you really want to be cheap you can enchant a suit of clothing with 100% Chameleon.

If you want something less cheesy you could get into Alchemy and make some really nasty poisons that do hundreds of extra damage. Or you could develop your Destruction skill. With a bit of spell chaining a mage can easily inflict hundreds or even thousands of points of damage.

Honestly, I'm not sure why you're having such trouble in the first place. I've played all kinds of different types of characters and have never had any issues killing things at level 25. As a matter of fact, it was harder killing things at level 5-10 on most characters than any level passed 20. It might just be that you don't have any good items equipped. Even with light armor, marksman, and sneak maxed out, you're still going to get destroyed if you're using low-level gear. Don't walk around in leather armor when you could be wearing glass.

The leveling system is not "an issue" as you said, nor is it a catastrophe, you said yourself that you have not taken the time to understand or care about the leveling system, so I don't know how you expected to succeed in the first place.

However, marksman can be pretty under-powered. That said, if an enemy gets close, block and hope to throw him off-balance for a moment while you move away. If you're in light armor, it shouldn't be too difficult to keep out of range of your enemy while blasting him with arrows. If you're having trouble with that, invest in a Paralyze spell.

With that said, some people just have problems with these types of games. It requires quick reaction time sometimes, you have to block at appropriate times, attack at appropriate times, and bob and weave out of the way of enemy attacks--especially if you're a marksman. It does require some degree of skill.

Thank you very much. I'll take those options into consideration.



I think this is a big part of it. We're doing quests a lot, not dungeons. The dungeons we've been doing as a result of quests are often Necro or Sorcerer caves to boot, so they're not crapping good combat gear.



On this we have strong disagreement.

Any leveling system that requires this much study to understand, is a train wreck. It's a game, not a Ph.D.

It should be understandable and usable to the player without them having to make a lifestyle choice in order to do so. This is a complete failure for a game and this leveling system is reminiscent of something that was crapped out in the early 1950s when some basemant nerd decided to make "Choose your own Adventure" books into interactive dice games.

At no time - EVER - should leveling up be a punishment. No player should ever be afraid to level their character. It should always be a good thing that rewards the player, not a punishment for not reading a War and Peace sized manual on how to level up effectively.

This game's leveling system is an absolute joke. It's a failure of the highest levels for a game that has such monumental potential and achievements in all other facets of its design. I couldn't possibly disagree with you more strongly on this issue.



I'm going the Alchemy way I think. Same difference though.



Yeah, the skill isn't the issue. I've always had a high degree of timing and finger dexterity. It's not a skill issue (for the players) in this case. I've got a lot of stuff I'm not good at, but action-packed video combat isn't one of them.

That might be your problem right there. Necromancers, Conjurers, things like that are always a huge pain. They're hard to hit with spells, arrows, or melee weapons, they run through a dungeon and you have no choice but to gain the attention of everything at once, they summon things that get in you're way, ugh. You'll have problems with those types of characters no matter what. Just loot every chest and make sure you have lockpicks (or the Skeleton Key since you're already over level 10) or Open spells since all of the best loot is in locked chests.




We do disagree then. With games like this, you do have to spend some time in learning how it works. Hell, with any game you have to learn how it works. If you want to get better with a bow, you have to use a bow. Using a bow is linked with the Speed attribute. If you want to increase your speed, increase your bow skill or one of the other Speed-governed attributes. It's that simple. It makes perfect sense once you learn how it works, and if you tried, you could have figured it out by level 25. But I can understand the thought process, I've also played games where I don't care enough about the system to learn how it works and just go flying through things however I want, but it in the end I always end up kind of screwed because I didn't take the time to learn how things work. Same issue here.

I love this game and I did kind of get use to the leveling system. And to be fair some might consider it a bit more initative than say the Calabi-Yau Hyperspace Manifolds.

But I admit it is pretty weird and clunky.

There are two separate problems that tend to be mixed together (1) the odd way in which you get attribute bonus, and (2) the immersion breaking way the world changes when your character levels up.

(1) causes leads to strange things like it being helpful to put skills you use a lot as minors vs majors
(2) leads to your player getting weaker, and other odd things like bandits in supposedly rare Glass and Daedric armor

Mods can fix both problems. But they are only available on the PC. If you are on the PC, I recommend the nGCD mod for problem (1). No more sleeping ot level up, and no more picking attributes to increase. That's all very natural and behind the scenes.

For problem (2) the OOO overhaul mod makes level scaling far more reasonable. You still get challenges at all levels. You but it's kind of hard to get weaker at very high levels.

As far as starting over, if you decide to use either of the above mods, I recommended it.

If you don't use those mods, I don't know. If you decide to continue you might try some blocking or armorer (maybe training) to bump up endurance. Also for a sneaky, fast, bow character, the tactic is naturally keep your distance. Invisibility spells or potions can help get you out of tight spot and then get some ranged shots in.

And character made Alchemy poisons and potions can be amazingly powerful, if you have good alchemy skills and alchemy equipment. Alchemy can overcome lots of problems.

Good luck.

Oh, we have no problems with clearing a sorcerer or conjurer dungeon. We cut through those like butter. They don't carry good combat gear to steal though.

The creatures we have trouble with tend to be the Nether Lichs, the Wraths, and the Goblin Shaman or Warlords. It takes a ton of hits to kill any of these and they hit hard as Hell. I run into the same problem with Ogres.

Thanks for the warm wishes, Savlian. We're getting our alchemy gear together as we speak. We kind of neglected it for a while because we didn't have access to the good herbs. We'll catch up pretty fast I think.

Then yeah, no surprise there. Those are typically the boss-level enemies. Just whip out the metaphorical big guns if you have them and prepare for a fight. Ogres aren't too bad as long as you can be a "medieval Muhammad Ali" and get close, back up, shoot an arrow, and repeat. Their attacks are fairly telegraphed. For Lichs, Wraiths, and Goblin Shaman, try to get behind cover when they attempt to use a spell on you. Typically, strafing to the left and then timing a strafe to the right just as they use their moves will cause them to miss. It's a bit easier using ranged attacks, but it takes some practice.

Keep playing, dont worry too much. Everyone should have trouble with nether liches and gloom wraiths. Some of the dungeons for the main quest (i'm level 30) took me longer than an hour to complete. My char is a conjurer, she does not use any weapons at all but is just a pure caster. I dont think the levelling system is screwed (if you want really difficult levelling try Drakensang) and the game is incredibly hard at those levels.

For example any high-level deadra summoned by the player has no weapons, nor does he have a summon of his own. This means that the levelled enemies will always be more powerful than you. To be quite honest, the real problem I had with the Elderscrolls series was its extremely weak magic system: the game is primarily designed for melee characters or for weapon-weilders in any case.

It is very difficult to play a pure mage, in the style of Nerverwinter Nights for example. Also there are a myriad of useless spells. Take paralysis or invisibility: any truly useful chameleon/invisibility spell has an immense cost, a high-illusion requirement, and lasts less than 60 seconds! Most high-level creatures (and their summons) take much longer than 60 seconds to kill. The shield/resist magicka spells are also useless: again duration vs cost. Typically a mage can cast a spell mantle which has no limited duration but tends to expire when it has absorbed a set number of spells. Not so with this system. There is much more, in short it is an unbalanced system which only worked somewhat in Morrowind because of the various levitation items.

Ph.D. ? Give me a break, you are being extremely overdramatic.

The leveling system is easy. Everything levels up as you do, if your noncombat skills are leveling you up fast but your combat skills are lagging behind you will find yourself being outmatched. Find the best gear and weapons for your level, turn down the difficulty slider if you accidentally overlevel your combat abilities.

Tip: Don't level things like alchemy, restoration, athletics, mercantile to max right off teh bat if you are combat oriented because the extra levels you gain won't make you better with a sword or bow. If you are going to powerlevel, don't make those skills major skills as those are the only ones that level you.

Magic is not weak, it's extremely powerful. I agree that summoning is somewhat weak and it's also true that defensive spells work much better as enchantments than as castable spells. But offensive spells are extremely powerful, especially at higher ranks. A Master of Destruction can do a little spell chaining and dish out hundreds or even thousands of damage. An Expert or Master of Illusion can control the minds of his enemies and make them kill each other so he doesn't have to. And if you are good in Restoration you can cast an Absorb Health spell that kills nearby enemies and simualtneously heals up all the damage they do to you.

I can understand and respect the diverse opinions expressed here. Let me simply add my own - no more nor less valid than others:

I believe that to truly appreciate Oblivion requires a significant commitment to learning the mechanics of the game. It is my nature to get very deep into a game and stay there for years. Therefore, I find Oblivion a beautiful game but will admit it can be frrustrating for new players, casual gamers or those who don't want to study and 'get into' it.

Magic. I simply adore the magic system in Oblivion as very creative and flexible. Creating my own combination spells - how cool is that? With some creativity, a pure mage is downright awe-inspiring.

Leveling. I like the idea of leveling up based on how you use your skills, not how many quests or foes you knock down. I don't mind the effort of learning the details and building a character that suits my needs.

The true beauty of the game is that the makers realized one cannot create a game that is 'perfect' for every player, and provided the ability to mod it for those who play on PC. This indeed allows one to tweak the game into something that fits one's personal taste and definition of 'perfect'.

I'm a gonna throwdown my two septims too:

Lot of great opinions here, we all have different experiences because we are all individuals... I tend to agree with Velorien and Horty.
You want to be good at whacking with a sword? Use a sword. Good at a bow? Use it then.
I too enjoy, and wholeheartedly accept and embrace a leveling system that rewards me based on the skills that I use. Yes, it's a little more clunky than that, but I've never experienced a bad character who couldn't kill things, save one: the one I tried to power level.
I pick the skills I plan to use, then use them. You want to be combat-oriented? Choose a major skill that complements it, doesn't necessarily have to be an weapon skill either, like Block.
I'd say keep going.... there is always the difficulty slider, and often on said slider, it's often only a single 10% reduction that is the sweet spot in terms of difficulty.
Get yourselves into a dungeon, and let things beat on you, if you are wearing armor.
And as a sidenote: my mages are hands down the most powerful characters I've ever created. Custom AOE spells with Paralyze? Check. Never needing to use a weapon? Check.

I think Alaston isn't complaining about the way your character levels up, but by the way the enemies are leveled and scaled.

I tend to disagree, as I have stated, but often great ideas are born out of disagreements.

A pure mage in the Elder Scrolls universe is not a powerful character, or I should say not as powerful compared to other systems. Firstly you can indeed stack effects, something like a chain of elemental damage or Paralysis which is incredibly straining on magicka reserves. But the key elements which are required for mages to be powerful are simply missing: the mage's first actions during combat should be first to protect himself (not just abjurations but disappear from combat, stop time, levitate etc..), second to debilitate the enemy in some way. Sure you have disintegration spells or paralysis but they won't last very long and the duration vs magicka cost is not worth the effort. The real havok-wreaking stuff is simply missing: Time stop, power words, flesh-to-stone or a constant-paralysis spell (which would naturally succeed upon a check of sorts.) Something which paralyses the enemy upon check would not be time-based (5 seconds, 10 seconds etc..) but would be constant as long as the check succeeds.

Here the mage is often running around trying not to get hit, although Morrowind did have that wonderful levitation spell, and moreover one can easily misfire a destructive spell as the enemy moves around. Shield or protective spells are based on percentages, not spell absorption. All this means, effectively, that anyone but a Master of the Arts is screwed and power-levelling is greatly encouraged.

Having said all that of course I love the games. And spellmaking is my favourite thing to do, something which is equally missing from many other RPG games.

You dont have to plot out your leveling, you dont even have to increase your endurance.


Get some ALchemical potions that do Damage health. Then get some conjuration and some Illusion.

You also need an enchanted bow and enchanted arrows if you can find them.

Invisible-->Sneak-->Poison--->Conjure--->Invisible.

Repeat as necessary.

True. I'm working on my Ph. D. The leveling system doesn't require a Ph.D. and I am guilty of hyperbole.

Still, the point is that this is a very complicated system - and a game shouldn't be that complicated.



The Hell it is.

Take any person who is not a veteran of RPGs and try to explain this to them. Measure their reaction - if they even understand what you're saying.

Even vets of RPGs (as I am), think this system is overly complicated and ridiculously difficult to understand. And yes, it does have some potential pitfalls in it. Many of them, actually. It's not all that hard to get yourself into a mess in this game.



Yes, it certainly does.



Well, these are two different issues - each with its own set of liabilities (and perks). But correcting one of the two, or correcting both, would certainly be a substantial improvement that helped both cases. The system of leveling itself is indeed complex, and in some ways is counter-intuitive for someone that doesn't have the time or inclination to dedicate quite a bit of time to understanding the mechanics of the game, which frankly... Require a secret decoder ring that's only available on this site or on the wiki. Without that, the average human being has no real way of figuring out or understanding the leveling system. Even if they did, the chances that they'd understand it easily are about zero.

It certainly wouldn't pass the grandma test. The "grandma test" is a term used to describe something that is explained such that you can tell your grandma about it and she can understand, execute, and replicate your results."

The way monsters level is a separate, but somewhat related issue, in that if it were more tailored to the player's method of leveling there wouldn't be huge disparities between the character's ability to kill something and that "somethings" ability to kill the character.

NPCs factor in here too. When's the last time any of you bothered to go get a murderer from the Dark Brotherhood and take him into a dungeon? I completed the quest and took one once... He lasted about two seconds. I tried it two more times with each of the murderers (6 times total, at least). Not once did any of them survive the first encounter with anything other than a rat, a dog, or a crab.

There are other factors at work as well.

Simplifying the system is a good idea. It just is. I realize that we as "hard core gamers" start to feel territorial and we do a bit of gate-keeping sometimes, so we're apt to defend overly complicated systems that "keep the rif-raf out" sometimes.

But the value of having a very understandable and usable leveling system is important, especially if we ever want games like this to become "mainstream" enough that they continue to be supported by the general population.

Let's be honest, gang. This game is popular and because of that, there will be more and they will be better. The reason it was popular was because of the graphics, the size of the game world, the amount of quests, and the number of things your character could start off doing. As the player gets deeper into the game though, the mechanics can and do catch up to them - and most people don't want to devote that kind of time to a system as ridiculously complicated as this one - and that's broken in many ways even once its understood.


If you want to continue to have this kind of product accepted by people outside of a niche market, it must be made so that they can understand it in the long-term so that they don't get frustrated. "It's a neat game. I don't understand it and I stopped playing it though."

I've heard that from people. Maybe they'll buy Skyrim and maybe they won't. Some of them will, but some of them remember that they got totally lost during the last game and they just kept getting creamed too.

A system can indeed be both good for a role-player, and understandable - and it can do both at the same time. It does not have to be this complicated mess of number crunching and cluster-screw that we have learned to accept.

By the way... Many years ago I saw an RPG that had an amazing leveling system. It was fantastic, actually. It wasn't complicated, nor did it make things difficult to balance either on the GM end or on the player's end.

TORG.

"The Other Role-playing Game."

Look into it if you haven't before. It's VERY possible to make an RPG that is simple to understand, amazingly fun to play, and that is also very challenging and well-balanced.

No, it's not that hard. No, it doesn't have to be that complicated.

No, It really doesn't have to be this way.

That sounds like a challenge.

You have 21 skills that determine how good you are at doing things. You increase skills by using them. 7 of your skills are major skills. Whenever you increase a major skills you get 1 leveling point. When you have 10 leveling points you can level up by sleeping. When you level up you lose 10 leveling points. When you level up you choose to increase 3 out of 8 attributes. You get bigger increases in an attribute if you increased skills governed by that attribute many times since the last time you leveled up (or got 10 leveling points, to be more accurate). That's the basics and it should be pretty clear. Explaining how much exactly attributes are increased is more complicated, but less essential for playing the game.

Exactly how much an attribute gets increased is based on how often you have increased a skill which is governed by that attribute since the last time you leveled (or gathered 10 leveling points, to be more accurate). If you haven't increased any skills governed by that attribute it goes up by 1 point. If you increased a skill governed by that attibute 1-4 times, it goes up by 2 points. If you increased a skill governed by it 5-7 times, it goes up by 3 points. If you increased a skill governed by it 8 or 9 times, it goes up by 4 points. And if you increased a skill govered by the attribute 10 or more times, it increases by 5 points.

The real complication is not in the character leveling system itself, but rather in the interaction between character leveling and monster scaling/leveling (more on that later).The attribute multipliers are messed up and bad game design, but not really all that complicated.



If my grandma were still alive she probably wouldn't know how to use a computer to begin with so this test is a little unfair. Even my mother hardly knows how to use e-mail. In fact the only person in my family that I could hope to teach any game at all is my younger sister.



The problem with monster leveling is in the assumption that there is a direct corelation between your level and your killing power. Most of the complications surrounding the leveling are related to engineering ways in which your killing power would be muchhigher than your level indicates. The most extreme of these is the under-leveling aproach where you never use your major skills and become a master of your minor skills.



Yes, there is a difference between complicated and complex. Complexity should be preserved, but complication should be eliminated. Skyrim seems to be moving in the right direction based on the information they have released until so far. They seem to have eliminated attributes (not confirmed, but highly likely) so no more attribute multipliers. Instead when you level up you get some Health and then you choose whether to increase your Magicka or Stamina or to increase Health a second time.

OFF TOPIC:

I have a quick question about Torches that didn't need it's own Topic. I looked on UESP and only found that they burn for 1000 seconds (accumulative 16.6 real-time minutes), but could NOT find the distance. Is it like 10 feet or so?

:thanks:

Chess is one of the most popular games in the world. Can Chess pass your "grandma test?" No, it can't. Is Chess is a bad game because it is complicated? If you are consistent you will say "Yes" to that question.

I will go further than that. I believe the reason Chess has endured for so many centuries is precisely because it is complicated.

A "grandma test" does not ensure quality.

Agreed! I LOVE Chess.

I really don't get it here (apart from the thread straying somewhat from the intended scope.) The levelling system in the Elder Scrolls is NOT complicated, it is one of the easiest systems I've seen. It is different from a traditional point-buy system, a system where certain feats are required for certain class or systems which do not allow for such freedom when levelling. Here all you need is to keep an eye on governing attributes and "skill perks". As an example, a mage is incredibly easy to level (though not easy to play as I have expressed in my previous opinion): all you need is a skill-level of 100 in the chosen school to cook your enemies, summon a powerful deadra etc...

Please look at something like the Dark Eye levelling system or even traditional D20 systems, they are much harder to understand, implement in video-game form and lastly completely master. Then you can truly screw up your character and there is no turning back. (I love the Drakensang system to bits btw)