The Elder Scrolls

[Slothy]

Your second point is incorrect, but the rest are pretty sound reasons.

No, his second point is bang on. Unless you're sufficiently leveling different skills before leveling up you will not maximize your attribute increases. And unless you know in advance which attributes you need to increase for your playstyle, you may still screw yourself. Because since enemies level with you it is remarkably easy to leave yourself underpowered very quickly and unable to deal with the enemies you come across.

In fact, I did that exact thing the first time I played the game because the level system is about as poorly described in the manual and in game as possible, and it's easy for a new player to underestimate how important the attribute bonuses are if you are used to RPG's that aren't idiotically designed.

And sure, there's a difficulty slider there to help save your butt if you screw up your build, but it's really nothing more than a band-aid for a terrible smurfing system. And to add insult to injury, leveling those skills to get the attribute bonuses takes so stupidly long that were I playing with the intention of getting to a high level without screwing myself I'd probably choose to just go play a game that wasn't stupid before I ever succeeded.

most of these are common flaws with like every Bethesda game!

Considering the leveling and combat were less stupid in Fallout 3 I'm inclined to believe that Oblivion is something of an anomaly in this regard until I actually play another Elder Scrolls game. That said, I didn't like Fallout 3 that much either so I'm in no hurry to play anything else Bethesda.

[Jiro]

The first time I tried to play Oblivion I ended up pretty smurfing screwed when I got to Kvatch (or whatever it was called). Then I restarted and instead just never levelled up.

[Slothy]

The first time I tried to play Oblivion I ended up pretty smurfing screwed when I got to Kvatch (or whatever it was called). Then I restarted and instead just never levelled up.

That's largely the decision I came to during later play through attempts. I'd usually save before leveling and see what the bonuses were. If they weren't sufficiently high I'd reload and wait hours before trying again.

There is something severely wrong with your game when not/barely using what should be one of the most important game mechanics is playing optimally.

[Quindiana Jones]

Saying that Oblivion's levelling system screws you over is like saying that not IV and EV training your Pokémon screws you over. You don't need to max everything out. It's completely unnecessary. Whether you think it's bad or not isn't the point, I'm simply pointing out that you would have to do something inconceivably stupid to find yourself gimped by levelling. I literally cannot think of what you must be doing to find yourself in such a situation.

I agree with Jiro that levelling is arguably pointless. It's main use is to unlock higher level armours, but I thought they were ugly so would rarely bother with them anyway. I would just enchant normal clothes and do my adventuring like that, just because I could look cooler.

My main disappointment with the Elder Scrolls games is how they keep removing brilliant things. Where the hell is spellmaking? Why have my enchanting options been completely nerfed? Where have loads of spell types gone? It flummoxes me that Bethesda can continue to decrease the replayability (*gag*) of their games and still be considered one of the best companies in the industry.

[Madame Adequate]

most of these are common flaws with like every Bethesda game!

I think Bethesda are somewhat overrated but Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Skyrim, and yes even Fallout 3 have all been pretty enjoyable to a greater or lesser degree and have one way or another avoided most of these problems. For example Morrowind and FO3 have level-scaling like Oblivion does, but they both handle it infinitely better and more sensibly from a gameplay standpoint and neither ever screwed things up like Oblivion does as standard.

Saying that Oblivion's levelling system screws you over is like saying that not IV and EV training your Pokémon screws you over. You don't need to max everything out. It's completely unnecessary. Whether you think it's bad or not isn't the point, I'm simply pointing out that you would have to do something inconceivably stupid to find yourself gimped by levelling. I literally cannot think of what you must be doing to find yourself in such a situation.

You don't need to max everything out, but if you go level up through non-combat things like alchemy, barter, lockpick, or speech (ahahaha never use speech) then you're not going to be able to increase your combat stats like strength and endurance even remotely enough to keep up with the enemies. Just because you avoided it does not mean it is "inconceivably stupid" to fall victim to it, and not only do we have people saying this happened to them in this very thread, but it's also one of the foremost complaints about the game since it came out years ago and you can find an abundance of posts discussing it all across the Internet.

My main disappointment with the Elder Scrolls games is how they keep removing brilliant things. Where the hell is spellmaking? Why have my enchanting options been completely nerfed? Where have loads of spell types gone?

This I agree with, I want more magic making and enchanting options and MORE SPELLS

[Hollycat]

Oblivion (PSP) - UESPWiki

[Quindiana Jones]

The lack of Chameleon and Weakness to- enchantments and spells are my most hated thing about Skyrim. As soon as I heard about the dual-wielding, I was massively excited to have an element spell in the one hand and it's coinciding Weakness spell in the other. Broke my heart.

I've Majored in all those skills, often at once, and never found myself ruined in combat (though certainly challenged against certain enemies), hence why I don't consider doing such a thing an inconceivably stupid act. I was assuming something spectacular, given the level of complaint. The levelling system is stupid, I should mention, but anyone should be able to complete the game on Normal, regardless of their Major and Minor skills.

[edczxcvbnm]

I think Fallout succeeds where the Elder Scrolls fails (Fallout 3 excluded). I tried a bit of Morrowind and hated it, I played a decent bit of Oblivion and hated it (Fallout 3 fixed a lot of mistakes) and I have played a good amount of Skyrim and thought it was decent enough but I am not prepared to cast the judgement upon it that I will the rest of the series because it looks like it tries to do something different and make steps in the right direction.

Elder Scrolls doesn't allow me choice in my character. I can make any character I want but I have no real say in the story. I can't choose to help the "bad guys". I always have felt constrained in that I can't make the choices that actually matter. Fallout 3 had this problem as well. If you look at New Vegas, a lot of the missions don't greatly differ in the lead up to the final confrontation but your decisions on who to side with start to mount up until you have picked your horse and the outcomes for all sides have there positive and negative aspects making it so that there truly is no right or wrong choice. I got to pick my side whether it was House, NCR, Caesar or myself. In this way, I could be the character I wanted and in Oblivion I couldn't side with the demons or whatever to destroy all of these psychic assholes that magically know I stole their spoon when they were 8 towns over.

Skyrim looks like it attempts to offer the choice I seek from the get go but I don't yet own it to see if these choices are superficial or if it starts to really define my character by the choices I make and the alliances I form. I honestly have no faith in Bethesda because I feel they have always screwed this up in all of their games.

Oblivion was also a troutty game to play. Fallout 3 improved upon pretty much every single aspect of that game. Skyrim, I am indifferent to. They tried to go in a new direction and it makes sense but I also feel like it forces me to play endlessly just to get good at a certain set of skills, it really shouldn't be a problem in a game like this but in the 10 hours I played I failed to do even one side quest. The world seemed very uninteresting to me until my rental ended when it finally seemed like it was worth exploring when I reached the snow university thing :/ I mean...I couldn't even go around randomly slaughtering people. I tried to do that to this one town but everyone was invincible. They just kept getting back up. This was the town on my way to be the DragonBorn. If I want to be king of the assholes then I should be allowed to. Even Fallout 3 let me kill damn near anyone and I did just that. Nuke Megaton and throw old asshole off balcony. Valid gameplay decisions. Elder Scrolls doesn't believe in this.

I guess this kind of shows where my interest in Open World RPGs lie. I am just anticipating Fallout 4 but with a weary feeling. Bethesda is going to make it and I just don't think they understand that series. New Vegas had a lot of bugs but it is a far superior game in terms of choice to Fallout 3.

[Laddy]

The laughably low amount of skills, weapons, and spells are why I am incredibly underwhelmed by Oblivion and Skyrim. Yay! Sword, dagger, mace, hammer, axe, and bow! Six weapon types, two armor types, and like, ten spell types at best is inexcusable for an open-world RPG. There needs to be more options not only in combat, but expanding stealth and diplomacy as options rather than less-effective and generally pointless alternatives would be nice.

The fascinating setting of Morrowind was abandoned in favor of generic fantasy claptrap. Cyrodiil is actually the Roman Empire in a big jungle but screw that for some medieval forests!

smurf yeah! This! and Skyrim to a lesser extent. I can't give two trouts about Cyrodiil as a locale because they made it some generic fantasy wasteland instead of some actual world.

Shivering Isles, however, is throughly entertaining.

[Pike]

Well I'm definitely not here to say that Elder Scrolls is the best series ever, but I do think it's fun when you feel like running around and exploring and beating stuff up.

[Slothy]

Saying that Oblivion's levelling system screws you over is like saying that not IV and EV training your Pokémon screws you over. You don't need to max everything out. It's completely unnecessary. Whether you think it's bad or not isn't the point, I'm simply pointing out that you would have to do something inconceivably stupid to find yourself gimped by levelling. I literally cannot think of what you must be doing to find yourself in such a situation.

Considering the game never adequately explains leveling to the player either in the game itself or in the manual, and taking into account what MILF said about leveling up through anything other than combat skills, the only thing you have to do to completely screw yourself is to literally just play the game and level up when you're able to like any sane person would do.

I'd love to see you explain how that's inconceivably stupid because if you honestly believe that then I'm at something of a loss for words. The only inconceivably stupid thing about leveling in Oblivion was the way they designed it. They basically made a system which strongly rewards deferring levels for as long as possible, punishes leveling once you're able to which no other game I've ever played has ever done making it the complete opposite goal that any gamer would have ever encountered before, and then they never tell you that these idiotic incentives exist. And the fact that you agree that leveling was pointless only shows that you realize how stupidly broken it is yet a player who inadvertently gimps themselves must have been the one to do something idiotic. Not the developers who created this smurfed up system of punishments and rewards to begin with?

[NeoCracker]

Well I'm definitely not here to say that Elder Scrolls is the best series ever, but I do think it's fun when you feel like running around and exploring and beating stuff up.

This is a sentiment I can agree with, regardless of my own issues.

[Laddy]

Morrowind did one thing better than any game I ever played: atmosphere. This game had an amazing atmosphere to it. The soundtrack, while it did loop, was excellent and epic without being cheesy. The island of Vvardenfell was incredibly unique-looking, almost like a cross between Wonderland and a prog-rock album cover. But above it all, the game introduced you to a mystifying culture that you were an outsider of. The Dunmer, their religion, their culture, their architecture, it blew me away. The sound of the silt striders over the main theme, the issue of slavery, the daedric worship. It was truly engrossing and despite its less-than-fun combat system, Morrowind managed to blow away every other game in that department.

This song is amazing.

[Quindiana Jones]

Considering the game never adequately explains leveling to the player either in the game itself or in the manual, and taking into account what MILF said about leveling up through anything other than combat skills, the only thing you have to do to completely screw yourself is to literally just play the game and level up when you're able to like any sane person would do.

I'd love to see you explain how that's inconceivably stupid because if you honestly believe that then I'm at something of a loss for words. The only inconceivably stupid thing about leveling in Oblivion was the way they designed it. They basically made a system which strongly rewards deferring levels for as long as possible, punishes leveling once you're able to which no other game I've ever played has ever done making it the complete opposite goal that any gamer would have ever encountered before, and then they never tell you that these idiotic incentives exist. And the fact that you agree that leveling was pointless only shows that you realize how stupidly broken it is yet a player who inadvertently gimps themselves must have been the one to do something idiotic. Not the developers who created this smurfed up system of punishments and rewards to begin with?

It is a stupid system, yes. My argument is that at worst it adds nothing to the game. You're doing something wrong if you find yourself being defeated by the game because of the useless levelling mechanic. The blame is on both of you. Levelling is meaningless in Oblivion by virtue of the equally stupid scaling, so it shouldn't have such a large effect on your game.

This discussion has made me want to play Oblivion again. xD

[Slothy]

Well I'm definitely not here to say that Elder Scrolls is the best series ever, but I do think it's fun when you feel like running around and exploring and beating stuff up.

I'd probably like the idea of playing another Elder Scrolls game if Bethesda let another company like Obsidian make one instead. As much as I love the idea of exploring these sorts of open worlds just because, I've gotten bored with the worlds in both Bethesda games I've played. But I absolutely loved the world Obsidian built in New Vegas. Yeah, it probably helps that a lot of the guys that work there apparently worked on the older ones, but still, I like what they did and I will definitely take a lot more notice of their future titles now.

It is a stupid system, yes. My argument is that at worst it adds nothing to the game. You're doing something wrong if you find yourself being defeated by the game because of the useless levelling mechanic. The blame is on both of you. Levelling is meaningless in Oblivion by virtue of the equally stupid scaling, so it shouldn't have such a large effect on your game.

This discussion has made me want to play Oblivion again. xD

If you level without sufficiently building up your combat attributes enemies quickly outpace you in terms of strength making the game dramatically harder in only a few short levels. The leveling system isn't just stupid because it has backwards incentives. Enemy level scaling makes it worse because there's no accounting for how much your character actually developed and in what areas. If you level your character every time you're eligible to level up, or even just accidentally if you take advantage of sleeping a lot to heal, you will be calling up the menu and sliding the difficulty setting down before too long.

I mean stop and think about this for a second. This is a game where you create a character, you select dominant attributes and skills to level to build them the way you want. And then, once you actually start playing the game, the best thing you could possibly do is never use the system that's supposed to let them further raise attributes and develop your character. And the game never tells you that. Or even explains how the system works in sufficient detail to allow you to predict it on your first play through without reading a guide or wiki.

I'm sorry, but the player has absolutely no fault when the system is so unbelievably backwards and stupid. It's 100% the fault of the developers for creating letting such a broken system into the final game.