But there is still the problem that if you just train non-combat skills then you start fighting you just get owned by anything, I think you should have something like a combat level that only increases when your using combat skills or you'll still just get owned by anything that wants to kill you.

As long as the leveling system is nothing like the Fallout games. I found myself reaching the top level before I beat the game. I like the idea of not gaining experience in something you are not doing or using. It makes sense to me that if you are not using a certain skill why would you get any better at it.

I usually hear complaints about the levelling system with Oblivion when it comes to everything else levelling up with you, such as the enemies and the loot you find. The actual skill building system is fine, methinks. Could do with some tweaking here and there (magic was too easy to build up while fighting and stealth was too hard), but other than that it's just fine.

AND for the love of God, NO level cap, please. Many of you might like starting a new character over and over again just to feel like you're actually progressing in the game, but I don't. Especially the tutorials... I know Uriel Septim's dialogue off by heart now, and it's not good. It keeps me awake at night O.o

Yeah, everything else leveling up can be annoying but it also assures you that the game will not become too easy.

You know, I read a lot of gamer blog material on leveling efficiently and I understand the need to maximize the chances at higher difficulty settings. But in TES4 most of the problems with leveling come from IMHO too much of a metagame mentality. And it does illustrate the problems with levelled NPC's/monsters, the metagame knowledge for example that a loot will be way sicker if you wait until level 20 to do the quest would never occur to a character's "mind".

And I honestly believe that some people really just have to conquer the game mechanics until they become tedious. We know that you can't avoid making athletics increase during normal gameplay. What character is going to think, "ok, I need to increase my willpower not speed so I'm going to ride a horse."? And then two levels down the road you are riding around and need speed at a later level so now you are walking all over Tamriel? Game mechanics need to not feel like they have to be controlled in metagame angles in order to keep things manageable in game. I dunno, lot of rambling there but I'm trying to contribute.

:( I cant do that on my ps3...

But the randomness is somewhat lessened by the use of an attribute. You get a +5, you automatically pick the attribute. The only flaw IMO is the fact that attribute contributions don't rollover. That way if you have +2 in something by over leveling you don't lose it, it just adds 2 to the next level up. That seems better. Characters would cap quicker but not that much.

Maybe automatically increasing attributes as they hit 10 increases in governed skills? You could get to decide "focus attributes" each level instead for easier increases in those attributes and skills. Just to replace the mechanic with something, otherwise leveling would be a nuisance not a rewarding event. (but I do think leveling in a sense is very artificial.).

Keep the learn by doing system, but lose the attribute multiplier system. I like the way GCD for Morrowind and nGCD for Oblivion do it.

Me too, I prefer Realistic Leveling for Oblivion though.

No one cares? I guess it's because we like to play real games and not tech demos. Look at your avatar, for example. It's a glorified tech demo. The game itself? Crap.

Don't tell me it's a joke now, because I couldn't care less. There is 80mil console gamers, there are a LOT that care.

"Let me see your face. You... you are the one from my dreams.". Sounds like a pickup line lol

To say that Oblivion had a bad leveling system would be wrong, because it was not. It essentially did what was intended: Make the player carve out his or character's skills and attributes to fit their game style. If you played a Warrior-like character, you had to press up your Str and End or you'd be easy prey, and (usually) forsake other attributes like Int and Agi/Will. And I think Beth chose to let End work better the earlier you got it to make End-based characters stand a better chance and maybe even to hold back the sometimes retardedly powerful Battlemages that you could build. (Pulling an entire Oblivion portal and tanking them down is Really funny.)

The only real problem with the leveling system was that if you wanted a Jack-of-all-Trades you had to plan it very well to not waste attribute points. (If you had been doing alot of agi, str and end-based things in one level then you Had to make certain that you didn't skill up in any int, will or speed-related skills or their points would be wasted)

So the problem doesn't really lie with the leveling system, but how it is used with scaled leveling. Becuase TES has always been about making your own choices of gameplay and this is why we (at least I) love it so much. But the leveling system and the scaled leveling does not agree with making your own gameplay, because you're constantly forced to hard-focus some skills and some attributes (nearly always combat-related) to not fall behind vs your enemies. I can for example say that starting off as a warrior and then deciding to take the more shadowy path and joining the Thieves Guild was a terrible misstake. Because as you sneak around and lockpick your greedy [censored] off, you gain skills in sneak which eventually lead to you leveling up causing all enemies to become increasingly powerful until the point where your warrior skills can't keep up anymore.

So the problem is essentially that the game forces you to take a violent and hard-coded leveling path. Now I can understand if many players didn't notice this, but the more you played the game the more it became obvious. And this is what led many to trying out the many leveling mods that exists.

Of all the leveling styles I tried for Oblivion there are really only three(two, since one doesn't really count) that worked better than the original one:

Experience leveling: This classic style worked great with Oblivion's scaled leveling simpy because it scaled better for non-combat oriented characters. Ofc this should never be implented into a TES game, but I just wanted to put it out there and say that it actually worked Better.
Attribute-scaling: Attribute scaling means that instead of chosing your attributes on the level up screen your attributes simply adjusted based on your skills. While this is only a minor change it actually worked very well, for some characters. For Agi-based characters and Jacks-of-all-Trades this worked great, Int-based could be both ways depending on specifics but Str-based characters did not really benefit because if you wanted a high Str stat you needed to work on both Blade and Blunt... which is just annoying. It was also a bit hard for characters who didn't have Sneak/Lockpick and neglected Marksman because they recieved no Agi.
Combat-related leveling: Combat-related leveling means that you only recieve points towards your level by skilling up combat-related skills (Blades, Marksman, Destruciton, Heavy Armor you know the drill), while other skills either only gave half a point (I think Stealth, Illusion and such were part of this) or no point at all(Merhcantile, Speechcraft and what-not, since they don't contribute to combat but actually help avoid them). The only problem I had with this system at all was that some non-combat skills could be leveled extremely high until they actually made a difference on the combat, but this was rare and often situational.

There are many ways to go, and I can only hope that Beth choose the one that works best. If not, then I'm certain our wonderful modding community will see to it... Because we don't care about consoles!