I can never understand why all these people care soooo much about efficeint leveling. It ruins the game and the roleplay when you constantly worry about what your leveling.Pick your character, birthsign, attributes, and majors how your character is and how it will make it fun. Dont worry about leveling. Ive played this game since the year it came out and NEVER had a problem with leveling or anything like that. if It gets to hard ( which it might ) turn the difficulty scale down. But never worry about your leveling or whatever. If your an assasin, then be sneaky and what not. dont put warrior stuff on majors so you can control leveling. JUST PLAY

Good points, I agree
I′m a roleplayer with just a tiny bit of metagamer in me and I say fun before efficiency

EXACTLY!!! Ive never had a problem with leveling. I'm always focused on having fun

While I would normally be in complete agreement with you, as I enjoy roleplaying, vanilla Oblivion's leveling system is a mess that (for many of us, at least) interferes greatly with the game's enjoyment. The real problem is that all its creatures level up with you (at least, until somewhere in the upper 20's, if I recall correctly), and that they *all* level perfectly--meaning that they get 3 +5's to their core attributes, which usually include strength and endurance. So if I take my usual "Oh, I'll rest now, and let's see, this +2 looks interesting, and I like this for +3, maybe, and hey, Luck looks great," my character will soon end up getting beaten to death with his/her spine. Of course, the difficulty level can always be lowered, but where's the fun in that?

Which is why within less than 3 months of the game's initial release, there were already upwards of 5 different leveling mods. These wouldn't have been made if there wasn't both a perceived need, and a perceived audience. To date, leveling mods still remain a very healthy subset of the game's modding community. I'm not suggesting your views are wrong. Of course they aren't. They don't hold for quite a few other people, however.

Myself, I admit to doing in Oblivion what I've never done in any other game: mini-maxing to get +5's so I can keep at level with all the encounters I get. It's no fun, but it's even less fun having to face monsters that get increasingly tough because I've been ignoring level optimization as I've done in other games. And to their credit, gamesas has abandoned the system in Skyrim, returning to Morrowind's sensible "leveled in a very few important cases, otherwise set from the start" approach to battle interactions.

I hate scaling too, don′t get me wrong. I just don′t think about it too much even though it does bug me from time to time

but when you lower the difficulty you said its no fun...but it would be the same as if you did efficent leveling and were facing monsters the same strenght. did you think of that? obviously not

Did you realize the two solutions aren't at all identical? Obviously not. If you lower the difficulty, enemies do less damage to you, and you do more damage to them. But if you go for +5's while leveling, both you and your enemies are doing more damage to each other. You're not super, in other words, as you would become if you lower the difficulty. An enemy can kill you just as much as before if you aren't careful. It's just you have a better chance of holding your own.

I do a mix of the two, usually leaving 2 of my majors as skill I don't use often. My favorite build is a battlemage with Blade, Alteration, Restoration, Conjuration, Heavy Armor, & Security. I pick all the locks I find and wear Heavy Armor early in the game, later on when I stop getting good multipliers I switch to Alteration spells for the locks (less experience than lockpicking) and wear mostly Light Armor to control leveling.

I've never touched the difficulty slider.

I don't efficiently level.

I get around Oblvion's undeniably broken leveling system by using a combination of slow-increasing skills and little-used or even entirely unused skills as majors. Once I get it set up, I never have to pay attention to skill increases OR the difficulty slider. It all just takes care of itself.

I prefer that approach, but I'd never be so arrogant as to argue that it's the best possible, or only reasonable, approach. Different people play different ways, and that's just all there is to it. There is no objective right or wrong way to play it - all there is is whatever you prefer.

I do the same thing as you bro, exept I have all my majors what I like. I was just letting people know that the slider was an option. I dont use it though. if My guy dies then he wasnt good enough or smart enough. But I just play as I play and only worry about having fun basically

As an Xbox player, I'm stuck with the game as originally designed, and the leveling system is a confusing pain. On one (since abandoned) early character, I accidentally leveled up something like four times in a row, just sleep-sleep-sleep-sleep, and suddenly all the enemies were kicking my butt. I restarted with a similar build, but with skills chosen a bit more purposefully so I could control leveling a bit more when I wanted. I still wasn't leveling "efficiently" – usually got one +5, a +3, and a +2 – but it definitely felt more rewarding when I did get to level (which is part of the fun of RPGs that allow point allocation at all!), and helped me keep apace with the baddies.

I don't do efficient leveling at all, play with the difficulty slider right in the middle, and can still take damage like a tank 0.o I normally get something along the lines of three 2's every time I level (Which isn't often now, as my majors are all combat skills)

Edit: The only time I get utterly destroyed is without my trusty blade or trusty armor hehe

While I agree with you, I can't help asking why you care? I'm not trying to be rude. But if someone else wants to level efficiently, what is that to you or me? There players, believe it or not, who even enjoy it. These tend to be folks who enjoy working with numbers. My experience has been that they are mainly people who are precise and orderly in their real lives and they also like to be precise and orderly in how they manage their characters. It's not the way I like to play, but it's no skin off my back.

About scaling: it's worth pointing out that, contrary to popular belief, few enemies in Oblivion scale. Wolves, Boars, Bears, Goblins, etc, etc, do not scale. They are treated by Oblivion exactly as enemies in Morrowind were treated (i.e. leveled but not scaled). I think the reason some players believe that all enemies are scaled is because when we do meet that occasional scaled enemy, it tends to make a big impression!

A more important factor driving efficient leveling than scaling, in my opinion, is item leveling. Item leveling is what folks are referring to when they talk about bandits in Daedric armor. There is nothing inherently wrong with the feature, I believe. But in my opinion Bethesda's implementation of the feature was overbearing and draconian.

Agreed.

IMO the problem with OBs leveling-system was that it required a lot of grinding if you wanted a "efficient" character. Remove that and the problem is solved, and that have been done in Skyrim according to the info we have gotten so far.

You've described my wife. But looking at the replies in this thread, I don't see any posts by people who give an impression of wanting to work through the numbers. Those of us who use them do so because we consider Oblivion's implementation of leveling to be very poor. For myself, I never consider using numbers in Morrowind. I simply select whatever attributes would be appropriate for a character of mine, given their background and goals. The difference doesn't lie in wanting to control it all, in other words. It lies in a system that some of us perceive as very flawed, while others, such as yourself, don't.



Most dungeon/cave//portal/etc creatures *do* level with the player, with multiple versions of the same critter receiving +5 to three attributes that affect a range of other factors. Some creatures are also replaced as your character rises in level, not by a higher level of the same type, but by a different and more potent opponent. The game becomes considerably harder as your character improves, and if this point wasn't a concern of many players, there weren't be so many different leveling/scaling mods, nor would they be so popular, with cumulative downloads in the tens of thousands.

I've no problem with anybody who likes Oblivion's leveling and scaling as they are. Everybody not only can, but should play the game differently, as they like. It's no skin off my nose if someone enjoys leveling and scaling as they are in Oblivion. But by that same token, there's certainly plenty of ammunition for those like myself who reject these systems.

Goblins don't scale? Maybe I just stink ... they were pushovers at early levels, but by the time I hit 30, a pack of goblins with a couple shamans mixed in was just about the scariest thing I had to face. And that was WITH some consideration to beefing a few minor skills before leveling...



I'm not a "numbers person" by any means, but I have to admit that "point allocation" is part of what I enjoy about RPGs. I am the kind of player who tends to wing it on the first character in a game, but plans out a character's skill and perk progression before making a new Fallout 3 character after beating it the first time. (Oblivion is quite long, though, so I kind of started doing that a bit earlier than I would've planned in other games.)

Levelling in Oblivion wasn't great but wasn't game-breaking either.

I hate how people who call themselves Elder Scrolls fans love Morrowind but hate Oblivion purely because of the levelling system. It's ridiculous.

The wonderful thing about a single player game is that you can play it how you like. My own preference is along the lines of 'know the system and it will set you free'. My character levels quite carefully and we find it completely consistent with our roleplay, where learning and training how to survive in a beautiful but dangerous land is quite important to her.

I suspect anyone who understands efficient leveling is well-familiar with the very basic concept that the game has a difficulty slider should one choose to use it.

IMHO, I think that the problem was that when you use non combat skills as majors, like mercantile, it doesn't help you fight against monsters, so you grow weaker and them monsters stronger if you continue to level non combat major skills. Just pick combat skills that you're gonna use as majors. That way, even if you don't get +5+5+5, at least you still beat out monsters. I only have +5 in endurance.

I too, play for immersion. However, I am fully aware, having playing many, many characters of how to slow down my leveling without ruining the immersion side.

"if My guy dies then he wasnt good enough or smart enough."

Well thank God at least SOMEBODY knows what RPG's are supposed to be like. Todd Howard is apparently unaware of this fact. I'd be willing to bet Skyrim will be designed to be so easy, any character you build can beat the game with no problem. That would svck, but I'm 99% sure that's what it's gonna be like.

I understand what everyone is saying. I was just saying that "personally", I have NEVER had a leveling problem and ive played for numorous years since it first came out. Tons of different character that I loved and was a part of had no problems. Some of them died, but that was there fault. I was just wondering what other people thought. ME personally, never touches the slider and my characters do perfectly most of the time no matter how they are built or what their preferences are in the world of Tamriel. I'm am not playing them. They are playing themselves, and progress themselves. Role playing, they are real to me. We are in sync.

This makes perfect sense and I'm delighted you have found ways to fully enjoy the game! You must admit that your first post was a teeny bit judgmental. I assure you that over half the posters on this thread have been playing the game since about the time it came out just as you have, and they have similarly developed, through trial, error and experience ways that work wonderfully for them, else they wouldn't still be playing this wonderful game. :foodndrink:

FIXED

Seriously if there was a character that was going to suffer with leveling issues, its mine. However I never die anymore, because I have about 50 restore life with me all the time, and its easy to get.