Oblivion levelling

Vai · 28 Mar 2006 at 10:16

I have been reading the official Oblivion forums and I don't get this "auto levelling" thing, people are saying that all the monster's level up with you? If so what is the point in levelling, isn't it supposed to make you stronger? :confused:

Could someone please explain how the auto levelling works? I would read the big thread but it is 36 pages long @_@

Fx-Overlord · 28 Mar 2006 at 10:23

You level after you gain a skill level in one of your major skill attributes. But yes, it is true that the baddies are based on your own level, so that it will always be a challenge. I don't really now how it works, but i guess in each quest or dungeon then the monsters are just plus or minus your level by some integer depending on the difficulty of the quest/dungeon.

I guess one of the popular arguments of having levelled monsters is that since the game is so open ended ,the devs wanted it so that everyone could explore everywhere, and certain levels wouldn't be restricted to certain areas because the monsters were too high a level or the loot too low to justify a raid. I quite like the levelled monsters thing tbh, but it is getting quite hard at level 10+

Psyk · 28 Mar 2006 at 12:24

Does that mean those Clannfear things will always be hard as rocks, whatever level I am?!

PeterNem · 28 Mar 2006 at 12:55

I'm not sure if the actual monster itself levels, or just the type of creature you encounter. For instance, I'm level 17, and mudcrabs and rats are so easy, one swing with a rubbish weapon and they're dead.

However, I'm encountering more and more tougher creatures out in the wild, and less of the easier ones!

Chaos · 28 Mar 2006 at 12:57

Thats my only grip with Oblivion, I dont like the idea that everything lvls with you, a lot of people have complained about it on the official forums.
I wanted to go back to a noob area as a high lvl and own everything easy but you cant

Fx-Overlord · 28 Mar 2006 at 13:01

Psyk said:
Does that mean those Clannfear things will always be hard as rocks, whatever level I am?!

You'll probably get different monsters or at least a different variation of them like the skeleton guardians, and goblin beserkers. But essentially, it should still be as hard.

Davey_Pitch · 28 Mar 2006 at 13:01

Not everything does level with you. Certain creatures will always remain at the levels they're at, but the higher level enemies will continue to improve as you do (while always remaining a couple of levels above/below you), meaning you always get a challenge. I actually think it's a good thing.

JimJones · 28 Mar 2006 at 13:08

It's a dynamic system. Almost everything will level up with you but they will stop at a certain point so that you will be more poerfull than most things at some point. Not sure what the boundarys are. Probably 5-6 levels they go up with you then stop.

Jim

nikebee · 28 Mar 2006 at 13:12

Davey_Pitch said:
Not everything does level with you. Certain creatures will always remain at the levels they're at, but the higher level enemies will continue to improve as you do (while always remaining a couple of levels above/below you), meaning you always get a challenge. I actually think it's a good thing.

Agreed totally

I think the Oblivion levelling system works much the way it did in Final Fantasy VIII, everything levels up with you so your bound to fight something that will give you a decent challenge... but there things out there that will still be easy at high levels.

Think of it like this... a level 40 mudcrab is easy to a level 40 player, but tough to a level 1 player.

All the monsters/people will all have max health levels when levelling up just like you do... so small easy pests wont have high health even at stupidly high levels.

PinkPig · 28 Mar 2006 at 13:33

Chaos said:
Thats my only grip with Oblivion, I dont like the idea that everything lvls with you, a lot of people have complained about it on the official forums.
I wanted to go back to a noob area as a high lvl and own everything easy but you cant

I think it's a good thing. It's always shattered an illusion for me somewhat in a game that you can go back to some previous point and whatever else has happened in the game there are still some weak rats trying to kill you, yet because you've "levelled up lots" they're no good at it anymore.

Chaos · 28 Mar 2006 at 13:39

The thing I find because of this is that you dont really get a sense that you are becomming more powerfull, you have new spells / moves etc but things are pretty similar throughout the game it kinda defeats the purpose of exploring because when you find a new dungoen you know its gona be a similar kind of level mobs than every other dungoen youve found.

Psyk · 28 Mar 2006 at 13:45

Is anyone else finding the first oblivion gate extremely difficult? I'm level 13 with high strength and blade skill and everything is still really hard.

Stag · 28 Mar 2006 at 14:31

Psyk said:
Is anyone else finding the first oblivion gate extremely difficult? I'm level 13 with high strength and blade skill and everything is still really hard.

The one at Kvatch?

I did that while on level 3!

Maybe that actually made it easier thinking about it, with the auto leveling enemies?

me227 · 28 Mar 2006 at 14:38

If everybody is so worked up about it just change the difficulty slightly up or down.

I put it up by a tiny few notchs before I actually started the game, and while over in Kvatch it was so hard to kill anything at all, I had to bring the difficulty back to default then all was fine.

speeduk · 28 Mar 2006 at 14:45

Think about real life. People don't have levels they have skills. What makes you more efficient later on is your skills, spells and potions and what ever armor or weapons you have.

Seft · 28 Mar 2006 at 15:07

I think you can still improve your other skills without everything else improving.

At least that's what I'm doing (especially with Alchemy - Get good at that and a farm raid will net you almost a thousand with fatigue potions alone).

Matmulder · 28 Mar 2006 at 15:39

Surely your levels dont mean anything - its your skills?

Which makes me wonder. You could never rest and stay at level 1, yet have seriously high skills? Assuming they base your level on the difficulty of the monsters, things could be much easier

Curio · 28 Mar 2006 at 15:56

Yes, this really does seem to be causing all-out civil war over at the official forums

I can see it from both sides. My initial reaction is that I like to level-up and then be able to go back and totally own earlier areas of the game. But then I realise that it wouldn't work too well because there aren't really "earlier" areas as such.......you're just dumped into the middle of a huge and fully explorable world.

Personally, I would like something in between. It would be nice to have certain types of baddy (bandit, zombie, etc) to stay the same level, but as you level up it could throw in random hard mobs (that are adjusted to your level) to make things interesting. And that would be more realistic - you might go back to an earlier dungeon and are unlucky enough to find a badass bunch of bandits camped out there. Or you may get lucky and find a bunch of noobs. That way you would still feel that nice fuzzy glow of superiority most of the time, but would also have to stay on your toes!

The loot issue I'm not sure about yet. It would be a bit crap if bandits start dropping high-end armour around like candy tho.....which seems to be the case from what I'm reading

Hopefully they can tweak lots of these issues out with a patch or two.

Messiah Khan · 28 Mar 2006 at 16:10

Stag said:
The one at Kvatch?

I did that while on level 3!

Maybe that actually made it easier thinking about it, with the auto leveling enemies?

Lol, I was level 1 when i did that, came out of the gate as a level 2 though. And it probably is easier to do it the lower level you are.

Ugley_Matt · 28 Mar 2006 at 16:39

It never bothered me having an out of bounds area that you knew that if you walked into you would get killed on sight. You knew you just had to bide your time until you could beat up the bullies and get your revenge. However if the world keeps up with you then it deoesnt reward you improving your level as relatively you will not see a difference.
I think the auto-scaling can be argued as a good or bad thing but the auto-scaling loot seems totally wrong to me.
A bandit that jumps you when you are a low level should be a tough challenge, but that same bandit jumping out at you when you are a high level mage and you just look at them and they turn to dust seems much more realistic (as real as a RPG can be). If a bandit is wearing ebony armour, why dont they sell that and live the high life?
Maybe the inhabitents are just really fashion victims and you are such a trend setter that as soon as you have ebony weapons, everyone else has to have them too?