Oblivion:Gripes/Skill and Leveling System

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This article provides Skill and Leveling System gripes, as part of the Game Balance section of the Gripes article.

Quest items should level with you. This means that you need to get to a high level in order to get good gear to start a faction.

The Quest Award Leveller mod will upgrade your quest reward items automatically as you level up.

The Crusader Relics do level with you as long as you use the armor stand.

The game puts less emphasis on character development and more on player reflexes and skills.

Oblivion is the kind of game that lets you control every movement of the character rather than turn based fighting, so of course player skill and reflexes are a huge part of it.

There's more sense of accomplishment for some in dodging every arrow that comes in your way by your own effort, than having a message or animation happen when a arrow hits you but your high dodging skill says otherwise.

One might also make the point of how frustratingly stupid it was to have your sword swing through thin air, even though you clearly were close enough and on target, in Morrowind. Taking nothing away from Morrowind, the damage/hit system in Oblivion is immensely more satisfying. I find myself using less unrealistic "cheater" methods to defeat enemies in Oblivion than I ever did in Morrowind, and I credit this almost entirely to the improved fighting system.

Oblivion's leveling system is not only highly illogical, but it also forces the player to concentrate his skill raises by stat each level in order to obtain good stats. The player must only increase three stats per level, and so must make sure to level up the skills that will contribute to those stats. This forces the player into some odd circumstances, such often requiring him to avoid using certain major skills in order to avoid leveling before he increases other skills more times first. This often prevents a more natural progression, where the character simply becomes better at the things he does.

It seems that the two most common complaints in this guide are either leveling too fast (the "leveling problem") or the game allowing you to become an uber-character (such as 100% Chameleon or 100% Reflect Damage enchantments). Basically, either the game is too hard, if you choose to power-level and simply disregard the +5/+5/+5or1 leveling system, or the game is too easy, if you decide to use certain types of enchantments. However, this all goes back to Oblivion's freedom, including freedom to create balanced gameplay or incredibly un-balanced gameplay. If you want balanced gameplay, all you need to do is avoid the "cheap" enchantments and try to make a well-rounded character. And if the way you level all of a sudden makes the game too hard, turn down the difficulty slider - it's there for a reason. Don't ever feel bad turning the difficulty slider down (or up!) as it is the number one way to balance the gameplay, no matter how you chose to level your character or mold your character.

This breaks immersion and requires replacing roleplaying with powerplaying. You need to pay attention to numbers, limit usage of certain natural to use in given circumstances skills or "train" by casting useless spells for hours, jumping in place or letting a weak monster hit you repeatedly. You can't just go doing whatever feels natural in given moment or the game will become unplayably hard really soon. The most basic rule of good game is never to punish the player for progress. Oblivion explicitly punishes you with harder monsters for progress in unrelated domains.

I suppose oblvion is different than other games in trying to provide a challenge or a way to goof around with the game.Anything could be part of your roleplay so training on yourself doesn't break RP such as training as an acrobat jumping your way across the roofs in Bravil or climbing a mountain to increase athletics.I never actually tried to level optimize and I reached level 37 without a single character remake and I can take the whole anvil guard with the weapons i have on me LEVELING IMPULSIVELY!!! so really unless you make an all non-combat skill build than you can't really mess up

The Kobus Character Advancement System addresses leveling issues.

The difficulty slider is there for a reason. Ignore the +5 +5 +5 garbage unless you WANT to be "hardcore". The Oblivion leveling system is incredibly intuitive in that it levels up the skills you use naturally IF YOU PLAY NATURALLY, not standing around letting a goblin slice at you. If it's too hard, tone down the difficulty. It's really that simple.

Not to mention the fact that the so-called leveling problem whereby characters get better slower than the bad guys is in fact extremely easy to avoid. Good equipment is not hard to come by and closes most gaps with ease. Even my character, who has a tendency to underuse half of my major skills and overuse the other half (not to mention fails the +5/+5 stuff with flying colors) does not have problems with gameplay. Are you one of those people who always plays games at maximum difficulty even when highly bad at them? Because if so, that's a habit that can get you into such a mess. And one that's really worth breaking.

The game's skill and stat caps are too low for the size of the game; a melee- based character may max out his strength, endurance, blade/blunt skill, and heavy armor skill rather quickly, preventing him from advancing anymore as a fighter. This is further complicated by the scaling system, since even once these skills are maxed, they might still not be sufficient to kill what should be a weak monster easily.

Your forgetting poison and enchantments, which makes melee fighting almost completely one sided, also even without enchantments and poison, at high levels 30-50 range I haven't had any problems taking down enemies with a plain daedric longsword or an enchanted weapon that has run out of charges, because I get tired of recharging my weapon. Also beside weapons most of the best gear in the game is heavy armor not to mention things like the mundane ring, which boosts your defenses into the stratsophere, I don't really see how you can get beat up all the time with just a straight combat build. While yes you can max out certain skills which might preventing you from getting a hundred in strength and endurance which can be rough on melee build you still shouldn't be getting torn apart though.

The number of level increases available to the player does not correspond with the number of increases required to max out attributes. The average character will peak at around level 48, whilst it takes 50 level increases to attain 100 in the Luck attribute. This forces the player either to choose 'The Thief' birthsign or to create a non-typical character/class combination, such as High Elf Warrior or Nord Mage.

If max stats mean that much to you, you could use the Jail bug to continue leveling so you can max your luck without needing the Thief birthsign.

Not exactly skills and leveling, but when I first started the game, it was a challenge managing what few gold coins I had. I would desperately search for the cheapest inns to sleep, and I'd rather steal weapons than have them fully repaired (since repair hammers and flat out repairing are very costly to a beginner). Then I was level 10, I already had 20000 gold and I decided to buy Rosethorn Hall. Okay, I'm back to being a cheapass again. Level 15, I'm getting up to 50000 gold (often drained thanks to training and purchasing repair hammers, soul gems, and repairs.), still have to manage my cash. Level 20, I'm 100000 gold thanks to selling my ebony claymores, vampire ashes, and the occasional quest. Level 22, 500000 (yes, five hundred thousand) gold because everyone's packing enchanted Daedric. C'mon! Now that I have a house, shouldn't I pay taxes or something? What about the occasional thief that breaks in while I'm away? I could buy Tamriel if I wanted to, and all the fun of trying to manage my few resources is now gone. Of course when one doesn't have a house, the max. gold should be capped, since the banks don't like your situation of being unemployed and homeless, and I'd love to see you haul 500000 pieces of metal on your person everywhere you go.

Stop looting NPCs, and only take loot from chests and the world. You do not always need to sleep in an inn, it is easy to find an abandoned bed or a beggar's bed, in fact you can easily go the whole game without paying for a bed. That will go a long way towards preserving the feeling of "limited" wealth. There have also been mods created for the PC that address the overabundance of expensive items late in the game; to be sure, it is a problem.

Too many perverse incentives. Players with a mage or thief character are encouraged or even required to use combat-related stats in order to progress 'naturally'. A thief that doesn't level strength-related or willpower-related abilities will find themselves unable to carry much of the items they steal; a mage that ignores endurance related skills will likewise suffer. The additional benefits of training secondary skills are vast compared to the training gold or time involved, but require some fairly significant immersion-breaking. In related terms, most characters can benefit from simply never leveling up, and thus facing level 1-8 enemies with 80+ skills for a majority of the main game and every guild quest. It doesn't matter whether this is done by using only secondary skills throughout the game or just avoiding rest. Mods can fix this with varying results, but it's just a counterintuitive design that really isn't friendly to new players or console players.

Mages are supposed to have a hard time leveling up non-magic related attributes, being that they focus heavily on magic and their minds, and tend to forget about their bodies.

On top of which, Mages can simply enchant themselves to overcome all those problems. I for one always have a feather spell active and a hood which feathers me because I rarely use combat.

Characters can be gimped easily. A character with too much an emphasis on out-of-combat abilities in their main skill sets (base classes such as Agent or Thief, many custom classes with Acrobatics, Sneak, and Alchemy) can find themselves facing level 5+ enemies with the same combat statistics average builds have coming out of the sewers. Alone, this is a major problem; combined with potentially poor choices like Nord Agent it can make a character effectively unplayable. Again, fixable but could have been done significantly better -- Baurus could even give in-game advice for builds likely to end up with few combat-strengths.

No type of character build is completely unplayable, while yes making a non combat build and using only your non combat skills can be rough you can still play the game. While yes you will have a harder time then most builds that concentrate on combat but you can still beat the main quest, also as someone who has put around 2,000 hours into this game with a variety of different builds and some with absolutely no emphasis on combat skills and I still beat the Main Quest easily. Also if all else fails you do have the difficulty slider and can adjust the difficulty of the game to make it easier. Baurus does make comments on what he thinks your character’s class is but your right he doesn’t offer any tips about which is the best combat build, and in reality with so many people playing the game with so many different types of builds and being completely successful Baurus doesn’t really need to give you any advice. Also look at it this way may be Bethesda wants us to figure out what works for us and are characters on our own without being hand held by being told which builds are more powerful then others.

Skill level-ups can provide no benefit. Excluding Athletics and Acrobatics, skill levels above 100 are effectively useless. For most players this wouldn't be an issue, since reaching 101 or higher is impossible excluding fortify, except avatars have Luck. Luck modifies basic skill attributes behind the curtains at a value of 0.4 skill points per point of luck past 50. With no level-ups or equipment, but the Thief sign and luck as a class attribute, skill values between 94-99 provide no gains to that skill. With equipment and level-ups, this can end up involving a much larger range (theoretically up to or more than 19 levels, but usually less than 10). Combined with Fortify Skill benefits, this can end up very confusing or as potentially wasting attributes.

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