I'd too suggest switching to a fluent leveling system with no level pauses and automatic distribution and calculation.
Personally i'd make it in a way that measn "100" isnt MASTER but "experienced enough to do it mainly flawless", being a MASTER means levelin beyond "100" and trying to HOLD it over 100.

Wow, that makes alot of sense. I always thought feats/perks would be really cool.

I used to be for more consolidation of skills but now I understand how dividing up skills into smaller skills can be better sometimes in the sense that it allows to diversify more. There needs to be some sort of balance. Like many different skills, but skills like acrobatics & athletics (besides the obvious use) and speechcraft all need to be more useful.

In theory the Elder Scrolls levelling system sounds great, but in practice it's one of my least favorite things about the series.

I like the leveling system, but they need to fix the level-scaling present in Oblivion in future TES games.

No doubt.

Here's something funny:

I like the IDEA of the Morrowind/Oblivion system better than I like Daggerfall's system.
I like PLAYING the Daggerfall system more.

For what it's worth, the "smooth leveling systems" do make the game more enjoyable: either I use a skill or I don't. No worrying that ignoring conjuration for 80% of the game will somehow "nerf" my character in a way that wouldn't have happened if I had trained conjuration like a madman immediately. Asw long as I use it, it has the same overall effect on my character. While that isn't "true to life", it at least acknowledges the effects of EVERYTHING I've done in-game.

The topic says it's about the "rule system" as a whole but it's really about two problems:

1. Stat multipliers on level being a bit haphazard.
2. Level scaling.

The first problem comes really from the fact that you get a x2 if you increase a skill once, but to get a x3 you have to increase a skill (or combo of skills related to a single stat) SIX TIMES. And once you get to six, the bonuses suddenly take off: x4 at 8, x5 at 10. This is just silly. It encourages the player to obsess over either not "wasting" skillups if they don't think they'll get to six, or if they do, blowing past six to ten. Either stagger the skillups more evenly, or just make it so that increasing skills directly increase your stats so you don't have to worry about it.

The solution to the second problem is to not just remove level scaling, but to fire every single person who thought it would be a good idea in the first place

I think the main problem with Oblivion's level scaling was primarily two-fold:

1. The enemies only gain HP after around level 20-25, which is offset by the player presumably not having mastered the weapon of choice (how that would happen, I'll never know)
2. The easier enemy types disappear almost entirely at high levels.

A side effect of the specific implementations is that iron and steel armor disappear above level 20, which is a common complaint. It should be "fixable" by several means, such as having two low-level bandits with NPC-leveled equip appear (That is, they could be, for example, "approximately player level/2 +3 each"). Also, you could solve it by having a leveled list that offers a pool of equip for a given NPC type.

So there'd be a 3% chance the high level NPC has the second grade of armor (say, Steel), and a .5% chance of the lowest (iron) at level 20. the mid-grades would appear most often, but at 20, there's a small chance of the best armors appearing.

A third option would be to use the difficulty slider to influence the level selection (say, NPC will have a better chance of Iron at .1% than daedric .05%, but Orcish will be more common than Steel, to make the opponents more durable).

It's not at all a black and white issue: it's a matter of whether it could have been executed better (yes) and whether Bethesda has discovered ways to do so (yes, Fallout 3). Will TESV contain unleveled areas? Who knows. It may. But general purpose scaling is likely to stay, and your energies are best spent suggesting ways to refine it, rather than wanting someone to lose their job over displeasing you.

Even "tweaking" the scaling like you say, you'll still have the problem of never encountering an area that's too hard or easy for you, and having the feeling of reward when you level snatched away because you know the world is moving right with you. Level scaling itself has to go, except within limited rangers (say a bandit cave could scale within levels 1-10 or so, marauders 8-20)

The rules system may not be perfect, but the alternatives appear to be worse. You could go with an "XP" system where your actions have no direct bearing on HOW you improve (like in D&D). You can add a bunch of "Perks" that might be fine in an "arcade" game, but make no sense in terms of why you can suddenly do things flawlessly that were impossible 5 minutes before (like in FO3). You can remove attributes and skills completely and just have the character remain "static", but where's the "fun" in that? Overall, I think Bethesda had the right idea, but the implementation in OB was poor, and even Morrowind could have used a good bit of "tweaking" to make it less of a grind at low skill levels. Scrapping the idea in favor of something "different" with its own set of problems isn't my idea of a proper solution (remember - a "solution" is a substance dissolved in a liquid, like alcohol).

That is one thing I definitely disliked about Oblivion development. Reinventing the whell, as the devs love to call their process, involves taking the old idea and making it knew, but still keeping aspects of what made the old idea so great. Oblivion didn't do that, it threw the baby out with the bathwater. Downsizing skills while jacking up ease of raising them. It made for extremely quick leveling which in turn destroys the experience with enemies that jump from iron to steel to glass and daedric. Oblivion's issues were definitely a whole interconnected web of problems, mainly all leading straight back to the leveled enemies. Perks were also really annoying, leading to the situation of "suddenly do things flawlessly that were impossible 5 minutes before". This really screwed up the magic system. I HATED the perks they used, which were actually a thinly veiled attempt at nerfing magic users ability to scale well early in the game. I would have appreciated real perks like faster casting, costing less mana, and higher success chances (which would also require that the chance of failure was included, which I really think helped balance out Morrowind's magic system).


Alcohol is always the solution, my good man.

this

i like that its complicated and hard at times because then i wouldnt wanna play if it were all easy to understand and what not.

There's one other thing that I haven't seen mentioned here, that I think is a problem with the game's current ruleset, and that's the inconsistent increases in health and magicka. Health increases when you gain a level, or increase endurance; magicka only increases when you increase intelligence. This causes a discrepancy between the two pools, particularly at higher levels. This gets even worse with level scaling, as enemies' health keeps increasing, while magicka eventually caps out, leaving a mage character feeling a bit crippled, the higher their level gets.

I'd personally just make it so health only increases when endurance does.

Wouldn't that quickly cripple mage characters, who have to focus upon willpower and intelligence?

Stealth characters as well, who focus upon speed and agility.

I think that depends on other stuff too much to be sure. In earlier games having twice as much health is a clear advantage, but if they were to implement some of the deadlier combat ideas that have floated around, it might not matter as much, since more emphasis is put on not taking damage at all. If the game is less combat-oriented and more options are given, stealth won't need as many HP, and so on.

Well, stealthers ought to be trying to avoid being hit, so health shouldn't be a key concern for them, in any event.

As for mages; well, on one hand, they'll have less health, but on the other hand, they will no longer have to empty their mana pools at an enemy three times to kill them, so I'd say it all balances out.

In addition, what about a hybrid class? Heavy armor wearing battlemages would definitely have issues with juggling points between 3 stats that they require to function, if not more, depending on their weapon choice.

What needs to be scrapped is the nonsense that "level scaling" is to blame, or that the whole game is "scaled".

Seriously. Look at the data. It's all there for the reading. If you do, you'll quickly see Oblivion's "serious scaling issues" are little more than "why are all of these lists so similar?" Think about it: The lists point to a creature of a specific type at a specific level, until near the end, when they point to a specific creature of a PC-relative level. And all of the lists are constructed similarly, with variance mainly to give regions a slightly different flavor (no mountain lions in the swamps, few trolls in the plains, etc). Try making a mod to spice up the lists a bit, and if necessary, ADD (not remove) level scaling to "lesser creatures" to keep them "in the mix". I bet you'll find the system isn't what you thought it was whatsoever.

And contrary to popular belief, there are static creatures in Oblivion.

That's leveled lists, not level scaling (and, yes the lists do in fact need to be diversified, the percentages need to be tweaked, etc), and it's only covering the leveled lists in a basic sense. It doesn't count the authoritative leveled lists of enemy equipment, or of loot, and how widespread they are in their use, where the only static ITEMS in the world are copy-pasted iron weapon racks (sometimes steel), coupled with a pitifully small handful of weapons/armor with a proper name.

EDIT: Just went back and read your previous ideas regarding how to handle leveled equipment. While you are still allowing loopholes for weak equipment to reappear in the world, it still doesn't fix the overall problem that the whole world is inexplicably and dynamically growing in power and wealth as relative to you. Giving high-level NPCs the chance to don low-level equipment is rather superfluous and useless when the game will still statistically churn out high-level NPCs at higher levels, and those high-level NPCs will statistically have high-end equipment. The point of editing level scaling and leveled lists is removing the inclination to flood (or even mildly saturate) the game with high-level whatevers, even if there is still a pithy chance of getting something low. The point is to maintain that the ratio of steel to daedric in the game is roughly the same at level 1 as it is level 30. Or that the ratio of iron to steel to orcish to ebony to glass to daedric to [insert equipment type here] stays roughly the same from level 1 to level 30. Leveled lists can indeed fit within that goal quite well, but their use has to be limited, their division of purpose has to be ridiculously high, and how broad of a level spectrum they cover in the larger scheme of things has to be pretty minuscule.

The scaling comes into play when your NPC in question, be it guard or bandit or etc, independent from the leveled list structure, has the "PC Level Offset" box checked on their info sheet, guaranteeing that their level will always, always, always be plus or minus whatever number is in their offset field as relative to your level. And the amount of generic NPC blade-fodder that uses said PC Level Offset is ridiculous and completely overbearing. The lists are only one half of the equation. The scaling is the other half.


Ah yes, apologies. That giant horde of static creatures that I could proverbially count on my fingers.

Daedric will always be #1

^ :confused:

My point was to illustrate that leveled lists should not cause an influx of Daedric/high-end equipment, nor should they eliminate or even significantly reduce iron/steel/low-end equipment.

If, at level 1, 5% of the world's available equipment is Daedric, then at level 30, it should still be relatively close to 5% availability.

I've been thinking about how a systems for gaining more health could work since purely basing it on endurance makes it heavily unbalanced, not only for characters that don't want to level endurance too much but also for those that don't level it early on since it doesn't work retroactively. So since pretty much everything is gaining by doing why not health as well?

This would mean instead of gaining more health per level based on endurance you gain more maximum health by getting injured, for every injure you gain a little extra to your TOTAL health.
It also takes into account how much damage you took in total so just casting a long term damage effect or getting pinched by angry mudcrabs, while it DOES have a effects, it's a fairly minor one compared to the effect you'd get while getting hit in a real fight.

In fact the same could be done for magic and endurance, instead of magic being based on your intelligence you gain magic by using it and endurance by “exhausting” yourself, for every time you use it it adds a little to your total.


This way your health, magic and endurance would be less bound to your level but more to how you play, lose a lot of health means you also gain more total, use up a lot of magic and you can hold more magic. This actually kinda is how endurance is handled, the difference would be that they are not bound by attributes or other stats.
Generally like this you don't have to adapt to how you want to play but your character adapts to the way YOU play.

PS: While this would fully work with how TES handled health so far it was originally “designed” for a different system but there wouldn't be much problem converting it.

This would mean instead of gaining more health per level based on endurance you gain more maximum health by getting injured, for every injure you gain a little extra to your TOTAL health.
It also takes into account how much damage you took in total so just casting a long term damage effect or getting pinched by angry mudcrabs, while it DOES have a effects, it's a fairly minor one compared to the effect you'd get while getting hit in a real fight.

In fact the same could be done for magic and endurance, instead of magic being based on your intelligence you gain magic by using it and endurance by "exhausting" yourself, for every time you use it it adds a little to your total.

In my opinion, that would make things more than a little spamtastic for mages, and for health it just seems to me to be rewarding incompetence. I think that instead, players could choose to pump points into their health or magicka, as an alternative to other attributes.

So if I've earned points at level-up by using spells, instead of using those points to increase Intelligence/Willpower/whatever, I can choose to instead spend that point on increasing Magicka. This maintains some balance as well - do I want to increase my potential power or my 'ammo pool' as it were? Quality VS quantity.

The same could very easily be done with health - do I want to be a relatively strong hitter with a lower health pool, or is it more important that I can be smacked about a bit and still be standing?

Well for mages it already IS spamtastic with the current system, hell even more so as all you have to do it make a one point spell and cast it over and over again. With this system it would actually reward you more for pushing your limits and using much magic in a single spell as that is much more effective.
About the "rewards incompetence", the actual system was based on a quite different health and injure system where wounds are actually more severe and DON'T heal instantly which would make injures more serious. So just saying "I'll soak up damage, guzzle a potion and continue" wouldn't work, you'd still have to watch out for yourself. Plus not every hit you take really injures you, some just use up your endurance and make you tired, which can end VERY bad.

Also try not to think with the current system where you start out with maybe 80 hitpoints and 70 magic points, think of it FAR more extended. Like if you'd start out with 500 hitpoints and taking a great load of damage only gives you one or two points to your total and you're injured which takes some time to heal again.
The full system is a bit harder to explain but personally i think this is better than the current one that heavily unbalances you depending on your endurance and encuranges painfull level grinding rather than just playing.