u/BeignetEtouffee

There's a subset of this community that seems to think that the best way to combat the level scaling problem is by efficient leveling. I won't get into the plethora of reasons why this is actually wrong (hot take, I know), but my question to the people who recommend this to new players is do you actually enjoy playing the game this way?

Personally, I'd rather forget about attributes entirely and just play the game naturally on the default difficulty. In my opinion all new players really need to know to "fix" the level scaling problem is to use the enchantments you get from closing Oblivion gates, maybe pick one or two magic fields you'd like to help boost your damage output (destruction, alchemy and conjuration all serve this function beautifully) and then let loose.

Edit: Just as an example because I can already anticipate the naysayers saying that this isn't simple to do: my current character is an Orc Battlemage with the Lord birthsign. My major skills are Alchemy (crazy, right), Alteration, Athletics (another absolutely insane one), Blunt, Heavy Armor, Destruction and Conjuration. I'm currently level 19 and have had ZERO issues on the default difficulty at any point in this playthrough. No efficient leveling.

I was recently reading The Fellowship of the Ring, specifically chapter 2 where Gandalf recounts to Frodo the hunt for Gollum, and being a huge fan of the movies but not having read very much of the books I was shocked/disturbed at what I read.

Here's an excerpt:

"The wood was full of the rumour of him, dreadful tales even among beasts and birds. The Woodsmen said that there was some new terror abroad, a ghost that drank blood. It climbed trees to find nests; it crept into holes to find the young; it slipped through windows to find cradles."

I mean, first off, wtf. And second, this is clearly a much more monstrous/vile character than the movie depiction of Gollum, who is closer to a wild animal than a truly vile creature.

Do you agree that Peter Jackson toned down the character for movie audiences, and if he did, then do you think it was the right choice?

I was thinking about this the other day in regards to Skyrim. On every playthrough of Skyrim it takes a couple hours for me to truly immerse myself in the Skyrimness of it all, if that makes any sense. Usually around entering Bleak Falls Barrow or later on at Valtheim Tower (the bandit "toll station" along the river that you encounter on your way from Whiterun to see the Greybeards) I'll have a moment of peak "Skyrimness."

Is there a moment like this for you in Oblivion?

Kind of hard to help fishermen collect fish scales or search every abandoned fort for rare wines when the whole world is ending and you're the only one that can stop it.

In case you didn't know reaching level 50 mercantile unlocks several unique items that you can purchase. My favorites are the Ring of Transmutation and the Birthright of Ascalon (Elven Cuirass) which each grant +50 Magicka and are sold in Bravil and the Imperial City Market District respectively. These items are available as soon as you reach level 50 mercantile, which effectively gives you access to two max level fortify Magicka enchantments in early-mid game. And, of course, having higher mercantile makes money much easier to come by early on, which helps with training and custom enchantments later on.

This isn't going to be a long rant, as most (frankly all) of what I'm going to say has already been said by other people. If you're new to the Elder Scrolls series you might think Oblivion's problem is its leveling system -- you'd be only partially correct; in truth, Oblivion's leveling system is fine. Yes, it can be frustrating trying to get +5 to certain attributes because, unlike in Morrowind, training is limited to 5 times per level, which forces you grind if you want a "perfect" level up. But this is not as big a deal as people think. Attributes hardly matter in Oblivion, and yes, even Endurance hardly matters because by level 20 you'll have so much health and armor that your health bar won't be a concern, even with "imperfect" leveling.

Oblivion's biggest problem is actually level scaling, and the remaster didn't fix it. Certain enemies like goblins will continue to gain absurd amounts of health with each new level long after you've maxed out your own characters damage output through intended game mechanics. This has the effect of turning every character, regardless of roleplaying, into what is essentially a battle mage. Eventually you'll resort to using less than intended game mechanics like weakness to magic stacking and min/maxed enchantments just to keep up with the bonkers level scaling of certain enemies.

This brings me to my point. I LOVE Oblivion. I think in many ways Oblivion was the absolute peak of Bethesda. But every time I drop 20-30 hours into a new character (which I have done dozens of times at this point), the game becomes an absolute slog around mid game. You see, when your primary source of damage is your enchantments and magic, there is 0 reason to select blade, marksman or blunt as major skills. I'd even go one step further and say that you're better off not training them at all because the amount of damage you gain from them (maybe an additional 20-30 damage per swing between level 5 - 100) is completely irrelevant once you reach mid game. And this sucks because enchanting is available to ANY character at level 1, unlike in Morrowind where it was an actual skill that needed to be trained. Enchanting and weakness stacking break the game in a way that's not fun. And there isn't an option to "just don't use it" because of the broken level scaling that I mentioned above.

All that said, I keep coming back to Oblivion time and again and thinking that this time it'll be different, only to eventually find that I can't play the game the way I want because of the level scaling.

/Rant