The leveling system, it seems to me, is about the most disliked feature in Oblivion. I'm wondering why. This is the only Elder Scroll game I've played, so I've no idea what the other games were like. With that in mind, I like the leveling system just fine, since I have nothing else to compare it to (though I'm sure I'd continue to like it fine even if I did have other experience).

So yah, lol. Short post. If you dislike it, tell me why

I don't think it's the leveling system that's the problem. The Elder Scrolls games (from Daggerfall on) do leveling the reverse of traditional RPGs. In traditional RPGs, you're awarded experience points for killing enemies, finishing quests, etc., and when you accumulate enough XP, you gain a level. At that point, you are allowed to increase one or more skills by a certain number of points. Even Fallout 3, a Bethesda game, does something like this.

In TES games, yours skills advance from using them. When you advance your main skills a sufficient number of times, you level up. I actually like this concept, because it means that my character is learning by doing, as in real life.

The problem in Oblivion is that the rest of the world levels up with you, at a rate that makes it easy for the player to fall behind. This problem doesn't usually appear until somwhere in the teens, when harder creatures with resistances and regeneration start showing up. If the character's primary combat and defense skills have not been developed efficiently by that time, the game starts getting progressively harder.

Let me elaborate

This makes it very hard to make a character that is not combat oriented. At least some skills with weaponry or magic is required to survive which limits this otherwise open sandbox. So if I wanted to make a simple merchant who travels from city to city, trading stuff, he would sooner rather than later run into big trouble if not skilled with lets say swords.

But I don′t know. Even without this leveling system, combat would still be a main thing as it is in any RPG:s or hybrids thereof. So go figure :shrug:

I Have played all of the Elder Scrolls except for Arena and Honestly it has never bothered me, I Just get on with the game

Very wise :wink_smile:

The problem I have with the levelling system is that its boring and predictable in terms of the enemies you encounter. For example I was getting sick of fighting nothing but Imps for the first 7 levels. When I got to level 8, and Trolls started spawning I was relieved that there was something else to fight. This is the worst part of the levelling system. The fact that the limited types of enemies at low levels gets boring after a while.

There are four components to Oblivion's leveling system:

Enemy Leveling - This controls when enemies appear.
Enemy Scaling - This controls the strength of enemies once they have appeared.
Loot Leveling - This controls when loot appears.
Loot Scaling - This controls the strength of loot once it has appeared.

There is a relatively small amount of enemy and loot scaling in Oblivion. Much less than most people think. The most drastic effects the player is likely to notice are enemy and loot leveling. When Jango Bear-Claw speaks of going from Imps to Trolls he's speaking about enemy leveling. Another thing you'll often hear players talk about is "bandits in Daedric armor:" that phenomenon when the entire world wears the same grade armor you're wearing as you level up. This is item leveling.

The only thing I really disliked was item leveling. For me, one of the things that made exploration fun in Morrowind was the chance of stumbling across some hand-placed item in a dungeon or under some bed in somebody's bedroom. This was almost entirely missing in Oblivion. Nearly every single piece of gear in the game was leveled. You would never see, for instance, a single piece of Elven armor anywhere in the game - ever - until you reached level 15. Don't even think about looking for it. It isn't there.

This just svcked a lot of the fun out of the game for me. It destroyed much of the world's immersiveness. Flooding Cyrodiil with Dwarven armor at level 6, then Orcish armor at level 10, then Ebony armor at level 15, then Daedric at level 20 only made me aware that I was playing a video game.

The other three leveling mechanics didn't bother me much. I was pretty happy with the rest of it.

When I play an RPG, I like to feel that I get stronger when I level up. I don't mind being a weakling first starting out, but let's say I really work hard to get to level 25. I want to feel like I'm level 25 and be able to destroy all the creatures that bullied me earlier. You can't do that in an unmodded Oblivion. If you had trouble with a dungeon before at level 4, you still going to have trouble with it at level 30. More so, because rather than having those simple ghosts, you now got wraiths and liches to deal with.

Another thing that bothered me is that basically all the loot in the game is leveled. I liked it in Morrowind where at level 1, you could (although extremely difficult) find a powerful weapon or piece of armor. And you would be rewarded for that. In Oblivion, you only find Iron grade equipment lying around.

I have no problem with leveling up and such. I just wish that enemies wouldn't level up as I do. It takes away from my overall gaming experience when one day I will be fighting rats and goblin skirmishers, and a few levels later they will be replaced by bears and trolls, never to appear again. It is also annoying that this happens with weapons and armor as well.

See, I quite like the scaling. To me, TES are all about being free to do what you do, when you want to. I find static scaling mods like OOO totally defeat the point of this by literally cornering you to the "safe zones" until later levels.

OOO probably takes it to the extreme, at least the full version. But it's better than taking 5 minutes to kill an ogre at level 40+ with repetitious hacking and slashing.

In Morrowind leveling system was done better.
(sorry to say so, but I miss a lot of skills in morrowind, you had more and better!)

Leveling was BETTER : monsters had FIXED power (so yes some dungeons were killing you alive)
while at the same time you grew, so unlike Oblivion (were leveling has a NEGATIVE effect, in morriwind you in fact were growing stronger.

-> only downfall of this was that after many hours of playing you became SO powerfull all monsters could be killed in a single blow, but by scaling difficulty up a notch this effect was only met when you leveled 40 times or more.

Now about leveling : like oblivion morriwind had +1-> +5 for attributes and they WERE like oblivion based upon leveling.
but : in oblivion it is FIXED, let me explain in detail :

Say you need 12 skills to level :
and 2 skills will give +1

And you had messed up
6 strenght
2 endurance
2 agility
1 luck
1 personality

That would give you the options of
+4 strenght
+2 endurance
+2 aility
+1 for rest

SO not optimal, now what wiould you do in morrowind? : you just bought some extra training (since training was unlimited, you could even LEVEL on training, given you had the gold)
how you ask?

Well in oblivion if I level 100 skills without sleep, and than sleep, it will level me only once, and the myultiplyers will be based to that first 12 skills
all further skills will count towards the next leveling up

In Morrowind you would ALWAYS only level up once! no matter if you level 10 or 1000 skills.
so yes you "wasted" levels in morrowind, to get +5 +5 +5 bonus:)

About the rare items : yes leveled items svck too.
though I like the basic idea of new monsters apering after certain levels (Same like I modded morrowind, after level 30, dragons, and such would add to the wildlife, making sure you still had SOME challenge evem when getting strong)
but they would not REPLACE the wildlife or dungeons, no their would just be MORE, new area's unlock etc, but that was my mod, perhaps I will need to mod oblivion the same way once;)

also in morrowind you had more balance armour, since you had 2 extra armour classes

Morrowind :
Unarmoured (skill of clothing only)
Light armour (same as here)
Medium armour (removed:( -> was most used since it broke not as quick down as light, and still was not as heavy, leaving space for some loot)
Heavy armour (same as here)

The effect of TRAINING it was severe : when I had unarmoured skill 50, wearing only clothing, I would have a better armour rating than wearing deadra armour at level 20.

What I also miss : being able to wear clothing AND armour (in morrowind you did get to wear clothing AND armour (seems logic, would you wear plate armour on bare skin, or pull some shirt and basic garments under it?)
That also gave more items to enchant, an effect I miss -> need to find a mod for oblivion that allows for cloth + armour wearing;)