Oblivion:Gripes/Scaled Leveling

The UESPWiki – Your source for The Elder Scrolls since 1995

This article provides Scaled Leveling gripes, as part of the Game Balance section of the Gripes article.

Can break immersion for some by inexplicably making enemies and items become stronger throughout the game world as you level up.

The alternative is requiring or expecting characters to reach a certain level for every quest (and the enemies associated with it), which would also break immersion. Characters would also be forced to start in the "low level" area of Cyrodiil, slowly migrating through the world, while NPCs traveled freely regardless of their actual level. In the opinion of this poster, it's preferable to have a world that grows and develops as you do than a world where people from one city away can have access to entirely new equipment and items, and be at an increased level.

In the opinion of THIS poster, its preferable to have a believable world, and the ability to grow, and achieve something. Scaling destroys any sense of character growth or development. The level scaling system does not fix the issues with characters becoming too powerful, it just flips it on its head. If someone who created a mage, practices as a marksman, their marksman skill will grow while they don't increase in character level. This leads to the situation that they can kill pretty much anything with no trouble at all. A variant or hybrid system would probably be the best option. Obviously, humans, cities and roads should be accessible to all characters, but other areas should be extremely dangerous. There should definitely be an increase in the number of "boss" monsters (those that require you to flee and return later, after much practicing).

If all quests would require you to battle Nether Liches and Daedroths from the very beginning, low levels would be just levels where you continually summon and kill skeletons to increase your level to be able to finish those quests. The real problem is not that the world scales with you, but that it stops scaling when you reach a certain level - even if there aren't higher level creatures, they could increase in quantity rather than quality.

or low levels would be when you used your head more than your strengths and avoid high lvl enemies & quests.

Its true that it gets harder at points, but after a while, you do get that sense of achievement. EG: the first time you see a troll, it kicks your ass. now I am far above the trolls power and kill it easily. While it does grow with you, many things are capped, but enough is kept variable so the game never gets completely old.

Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul takes an axe to the level scaling system.

Look. Here's the flipside. Look at Morrowind. By the time you're level 30, it is practically impossible to die unless you try. You can kill Almalexia, Vivec, and Dagoth Ur in the time it takes them to say hello. Look at it more from a high-level standpoint and it'll make more sense than a low-level standpoint.

Some of us think it felt totally awesome to be able to fell a god in one hit, Now look at it from a low-level standpoint and it means that you had to actually think to get through the game.

No "easy" or "hard" areas - whatever difficulty is set follows you throughout the game.

I say instead of making everything scale to exactly fit your level, keep it scaling to you, but also make certain places scale differently than others, that way you can still have the fun of easy and hard areas, without dying every five seconds at the beginning because you went to an area where enemies are 20 levels higher than you.

So move the game's difficulty slider. Turn Oblivion into a hellish, desperate struggle, or turn an Ayleid ruin into a cardboard fort.

Moving the difficulty slider is an artificial and immersion-destroying way to solve this problem. There is no sense of character growth, or great risk. Perhaps there could be easy and hard areas, and the people who like a flat boring challenge can change the difficulty to make everywhere the same.

Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul adds some hard areas, specifically the Amazon caves and Corrupt Valenwood Ranger ruins. Also gets rid of Level capting.

Rare items, like Glass and Daedric armor/weapons, become extremely common after a certain point (around level 25). Every bandit (and similar NPCs) that you encounter is wearing Glass/Daedric...no one is wearing Steel, Dwarven, Leather, etc... any more. Aren't glass and daedric supposed to be super rare and super expensive? Since when did bandits have the cash to purchase daedric, and still be left unopposed by the legion? A better system would make Glass/Daedric less rare at the higher levels but still have the majority of NPCs wearing lesser quality materials.

Daedric was pretty common in Daggerfall, (And of course not in arena at all.)

This kills the idea of bandits even trying to steal from you. If they already carry a full daedric set, why they just wouldn't sell it?

They don't sell it because it makes them really, really good at staging highway robberies. That's why musicians have good instruments and still play concerts and make albums.

That's not a good comparison. Even a really, really incredible guitar isn't gong to be worth more than a few thousand US dollars at the absolute most (unless it was some famous person's guitar, in which case it's not the quality that you're paying for), which is a very nice chunk of change but not really totally life-altering for the average first-world person. A set of Daedric gear is worth enough for a Tamriel commoner to retire as a wealthy man. Nobody with that kind of money would sit in the freezing mud or some damp cave all day waiting to ambush travelers, most of whom will be dirt poor. Plus, being a musician is a lot easier and more fun than being a bandit. Even if it sounds like a cool life at first , think of the downtime between exciting plundering sessions. Sitting around for days on end with surly, smelly bandits, exposed to the elements, bad food or none at all, bugs and animal attacks, high mortality rate. Most of them would've sold that Daedric gear and moved to a mansion in Anvil long ago.

Retire as a wealthy man. I don't think so. Out of a set of full deadric the most money you could get is less than ten thousand septims. Thats bearly enough to by a shack. If I was a bandit with a set of deadric armour i'd be hoping to amass some more funds before i call it quits.

I'll remind you that a manor in Cheydinhal is 15,000 drakes, about what you get if you sell your armor to a high gold merchant, and that one of the Orcs working in that party house in Cheydinhal makes a passing reference to her not making much more than 5 gold a year (asking her about the Fines will reveal this).

Perhaps the reason is that as you progress through the game and kill more dremoras, some will eventually get looted. However, this doesn't explain how glass armor becomes so widespread. Not to mention that seeing every bandit wearing the same powerful equipment will reduce the variety in the game (after all, where are the bandits that are lower on the food chain?). Furthermore, the actions of bandits makes them more suited to lighter armor (daedric or not, they aren't going to stand much chance facing off hordes of guards, and light armor lets them flee better). It can also be argued that bandits would rather sell off the armor, due to the extra burden it presents to their highly mobile lifestyle.

 :: Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul adds some hard areas, specifically the Amazon caves and Corrupt Valenwood Ranger ruins. Also gets rid of Level capting. gets rid of the Daedric and glass wielding bandits.

By the same token, at low levels certain things are not available from vendors that should be. You would think that iron/steel/silver and chainmail would be available from the beginning, even if the player cannot afford it. It is not. By the same token, you cannot buy better alchemical gear, regardless of your own Alchemy skill, until you have gained enough levels for it to show up. A level 5 character who practiced to 100 alchemy (doable but difficult) would still be stuck with Novice level gear.

Thats kind of like complaining the game is too hard and it has to offer want every thing now.The items are rare at store at the level they start appearing on enemies if they were the same in theory all you would have to do to get a full set of daedric is level non-combat skills until you reach level 22 when ,by the opposite of the current system would have that armor, you would have an uber character and no real immersion into the game

No, the poster's point is not that he wants Daedric armor to be available from vendors. His point is that standard items that should be readily available are not. There's absolutely nothing special about iron, steel, leather or chainmail. In this "medieval" setting, items made of those materials should be readily available from the start, as they would be if Oblivion were set in the real world.

Vendor items should be fixed, it doesn't make sense that a vendor would sell you anything different just because your level is higher. I should see the same stuff at level 1 as at level 50. The only difference is that at level 1 I wouldn't be able to afford what I shouldn't have.

maybe the Vendors get better stuff over time, although if that's the case, they should also get more gold over time. The game makes it feel like you are the only person who actually buys stuff.

I agree, maybe they just didn't have it at first, but as far as the gold, that's probably just the amount they have behind the counter. I mean, why would they keep their entire earnings on them for every sale they make?

While your enemies increase in level as you do not all of your allies increase similarly. If you do certain quests when you are a higher level you may find your NPC allies will get slaughtered very quickly. The easy solution is to ensure that quest related and other semi-essential NPCs level as well.

Very few truly epic battles occur. "Boss" characters often level down too far, to the point where they are basically an interesting model and nothing more. After leveling, you can often see the exact same monster or creature as normal enemies, making "Bosses" just floating names on another enemy.

What do you think life was like? it actually makes this game an accurate RP in that there is no chain of epic battles and about the bosses-to take you back to reality, a pack of wolves has a pack leader. This one is stronger and better than the rest. Of course the creature is the same as the ones you were just fighting. This is the same with 'bosses'-if u think they should be harder crank up the difficulty slider when fighting them.

Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul 1.32 adds some Epic boss battles (Eregor, Fayth Noor, etc.) Plus makes all the existing bosses harder (its no longer possible to kill mannimarco at level 1)

Because encounter strength is based on your level, leveling without increasing your stats appropriately makes the game harder, not easier. This makes it good strategy to choose a class with primary skills that you don't plan on using much. If you want to play a thief, don't have sneak as a primary skill, if you want to wear heavy armor choose light armor as a primary skill, etc. This is frustrating and counter intuitive.

Umm leveling without increasing your stats appropriately being a gripe is like complaining about punching a guard and getting in trouble for it

The poster's point is that choosing major skills that one's character uses often is actually a drawback in character design; intuitively, one would expect one's primary skills to be the skills one uses most often. That is not the case and it can actually make the game harder for no good reason, especially if one designs a magic- or stealth-oriented character.

Because the world advances in levels with you, there's less of a sense of progress. In games without scaled leveling, breezing through game areas that were difficult 3 or 4 levels ago gives you a sense of power and accomplishment. In Oblivion, the same road that was difficult to traverse at level 10 is still difficult at level 20.

That's because of all the quests in the game. Let's say the world didn't level up along with you. If you were to start the main quest after getting to level 50 and becoming the leader of every guild, and the Grand Champion on the Arena, you could breeze right through the quest in about an hour or two. How would that make you feel like you've accomplished something? Fighting a battle and losing a few times may be frustrating, but it just adds to the satisfaction when you actually do beat those few enemies, or complete the quest. Without the world leveling up, the game would seem like a bore.

I don't agree with that, and I'm on the poster's side. It depends on your gaming style if u want to start the main quest after getting to the 50th level. Personally, I would play main quests as soon as I get the chance to, but I would like to earn that chance. It is irrational that creatures are stronger and stronger while you are making progress in levels. There is no fulfillment in that 'leveling of the world with you'.

Congratulations: You are the Champion of Cyrodiil. You are level 54. You have beaten every quest in the game. You have Goldbrand and Umbra. You still can lose to many creatures, and are unlikely to survive a guard attack. With guards so high in level, why can't they take down all of the Oblivion gates. Needs better accomplishment.

Imperial legion guards are hardened soldiers; they won't go down easily, even to an experienced adventurer. Sounds like you need to adjust the difficulty slider, though; it's there for a reason.

It seems that the situation is similar to a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Daedra beat guards, the player beats daedra and guards beat the player......

There are mods that exist to revamp scaled leveling. A list can be found at the Oblivion Mod wiki.

In all honesty, you have to be pretty bad at the game if that his happening, no offense. Aside from that, how did you kill Xivilai in droves, but get killed by the guards. I am a Level 41 Khajiit and (without any help from summons or other NPCs) can kill of every guard in the Imperial City.

Some of you seem to be missing the point. The guards in the game adjust to be as strong as you. You close a Gate, gain a fame point, and become the Hero of Kvatch. Then you resist arrest and are faced with the realization that any random nameless guard could have done the same thing as you. Your not really a hero. Your just an average joe who cant hold down a regular job so he takes on more dangerous assignments while the other people drink in the tavern, glad that they didn't have to spend the whole day killing pesky daedra.

No guard in Oblivion can ever be as powerful or anywhere near as powerful as your character, you can get the best equipment in the game, all the guards have is their regular weapons and armor unless you use the bound item glitch to give them better equipment or use a mod, guards are stuck with what they got. No guard in the game can create and use custom spells the same goes for creatures that's the reason why when you fight against a shadow clone of yourself the fight is pathetically easy because while the clone might have all the same skills and stats as you they can't use your custom spells and they can't perform as many actions as you can. The same goes for the guards yeah they might be seriously tough but they lack good gear and can't customize themselves to make up for their weaknesses, like casting spells, making potions, applying poison to weapons, using common sense to retreat to heal up and repair gear and using sneak attacks instead of charging straight into battle which gets them killed almost everytime. So no a guard would never be able to beat the game nor would 20 guards working together.

The problem with guards is that without all the enchanted equipment, custom spells, etc. they are way more powerful than the guy who has defeated a Daedric Prince(Jyggalag) and a semi-Daedric prince(Umaril the Unfeathered)

Then you’re really bad at playing this game then. I’ve actually used the bound item glitch and Frostcrag Spire glitch and enchanted every bound item I gave to the guards with a sigil stone and I still have no problem taking on 20 of them, and that’s without wearing any enchantments and without using an enchanted weapon either. Look if the game is too difficult for you adjust the difficulty slider.

While it is easy to kill them at higher levels, lower level characters have a hard time.

One other thing that really annoyed me was that all thing with 'proper' leveling. Following the advices on this site, I carefully picked major and minors skill, but when I came to avoid over leveling and gaining +5 on main abilities, I confronted with one more problem. I was suddenly paying more attention to leveling, how much skill gains will I have etc. then to the whole game and quests. I was able to spend hours practicing to achieve +5 adds, and suddenly I realized that it was a nonsense. That construction is very stupid. Again, I'm returning to genius Fallout 2. After some playing, you could learn what creatures lived in which areas, so you could avoid them if you are not strong enough. Just think about it. Creators were so obsessed with reality that they forgot one 'little' thing. It is not realistic that strong creatures just appear in the game after u did some leveling, because, in real life, they should be there, live there, independent of your f***n level! I mean, I never saw a boar in the wood until I didn't get to 'proper' level to see a boar. Ironic, isn't it?

You can strife for reality, but too much reality isn't fun, if you would have extreme reality you would wander into the forest before you could meet the boar, you would (because of reality) meat the boar and get killed, since reality doesn't let you quicksave, load or whatever it would be game over, you can uninstall Oblivion because you died.

Another example: what if your very realistic character doesn't want to enter that dungeon you want him to empty? Bethesda just made a game with many aspects of reality, but some were left out because it had to stay fun to play the game.

No one is striving for extreme reality, but... if you see a boar and it kills you, then you don't return to that forest until you are skilled or equipped enough for a boar battle. I think you are missing the point. My realistic character will enter the dungeon because I control him, it is not some man with his own thoughts; You are responsible for the acts of your character.

Thats is False you can find a High level creatures at lv 1 , Minotaurs can be found along with the unicorn.

I never knew that, but to counter your point, find me a boar at level 40.

I'm level 48 and I still see boars every now and then.

Oscuros Oblivion Overhaul eliminates these problems.

Prev:  Game Balance - Skill and Leveling System

Up: Game Balance

Next: Game Balance - Thieving