To put it simply, TES: Oblivion, much like Morrowind except on a more heinous level, is one of the few role-playing games that actively makes me NOT want to level. See, in Oblivion, you have major and minor skills - practice the major skills and you go up in levels. Now, the trick is that when you go up a level, you get to assign three stats to go up. The stats will go up from 1 to 5 points depending on how many skills of that stat, major or minor, you raised between levels.
Now, here's the rub, Oblivion does a pretty counter-intuitive thing. If I play, say, a fighter who's good with an axe, decent with a bow, wears some light armor, and is decent with the armorer ability - that's four different stats right there. Since I need to raise 10 major stats to go up, odds are that I'll probably get a small multiplier in one or two different areas. If I want a decent stat raise, I have to spend a while training a bunch of other skills by repetitively casting the same spell, making potions, punching monsters, etc.
Now, that in itself I wouldn't mind so much -- after all, wasting time is a time-honored tradition of the RPG genre. I wouldn't mind if it weren't for the fact that when you, say, go into a dungeon, your skills raise at a FAST clip, so fast that if you want to complete a single dungeon, you'd best be prepared to either stop midway and start doing all that other stuff (assuming you have all the things you need to do said stuff -- which in the case of lockpicking or potionbrewing isn't a safe assumption to make), keep exploring while doing said stuff (but preparing to be completely gimped by, for example, swinging a sword you don't know how to use at various beasties), or leave the dungeon and come back when you've sufficiently trained elsewhere so that you don't accidentally raise a level and gimp yourself.
And gimp yourself you will, because the game raises monster levels and encounter types to match your level as you go. Meaning if you DO choose to just play, you may find yourself getting creamed down the line. Yes, you can adjust the difficulty slider to compensate, but that's really not much fun.
Speaking of not much fun, this is the first game in a while that I've played where I hate character creation. Hate it because I find myself not picking skills I DO want because of the fear that over-using them will level me far faster than I want to go. The process is painful, largely because I have to anticipate the level-up mechanic rather than just create a concept that I like. If I make a really diverse character, I can pretty much guarantee that if I just play him normally, he's going to get wiped out come level 10.
It's frustrating. I love so much else about the game but its core character mechanics (probably the most important thing about an RPG) really, really cause me to lose enthusiasm. There are already mods for the PC that completely change the level-up mechanism, but those likely are never going to make it to the 360. I wish they would. In any case, that's about all I should write at the moment. I may give Oblivion another chance this weekend, but I'm sad to say that I'm not exactly thrilled about the idea. And that sucks.
Grab a mod that sets the Stat Modifier to 1x the number of skills improved rather than .5x. You wind up not worrying nearly as much.
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It's annoying, true, but it's not really character-gimping. I didn't really understand how the character level mechanic was working until I was in my 20s. My class was the Nightblade, which means that all three Speed and all three Willpower skills are primary for me. Which means that unless I get a level entirely based on Willpower or Speed skills I'm not going to get a +5 in either, and I can't get +5 in both.
However, I still managed to get high stats in both those, Int, and Strength by taking +2s and +3s per level. I never felt gimped; I did feel that the monsters were scaling too high in my teens, but dropping the difficulty 1% fixed that.
Now that I've been deliberately raising secondary skills a lot between levels, I've got maxed Strength, Speed, Intellect, and Willpower at level 30 and I'm rapidly closing the gap on Agility and Personality and about to start work on End (since I didn't realize it was useful early, it seems pointless to worry about it now ).
An optimized build requires a counterintuitive lack of focus on what you want to actually be doing, true, but I don't think most of the class arrays are truly gimped, just at less than maximum effectiveness.
theres a lot of skills. from the sounds of it, the smart thing to do is to keep your weapon skills of choice as minor. so if you want to have shortsword, sheild, and medium armor? keep em minor, and train em so you get better stat bonuses on levelup. have a seperate skill for major, something you have more control of. a different weapon choice, a different suit of armor.
if you work it right, you can get +10 to a couple different minor skills every level, meaning +5 to a couple diferent stats. which puts the curve of combat in your favor, at least for a while.
in morrowind, i recal my habit of chosing luck as one of my main stats, and rasiing it one every level. because otherwise it took until level 90+ to max it out.
Heh. In Morrowind, I would wait until I level, sleep, figure out the modifier, quick-load, power level skills to push two stats to +5, and then take those two and luck. Maxed my stats pretty quick.
It seems that in Oblivion, once you hit a level and are notified about it your modifiers are locked in...I saved before sleeping once, raised my sneak ten points, and my modifier was still at x2.
I select thematically appropriate major skills, then go play the game without sparing a thought for strategic leveling.
I usually top out at x2 and x3 attribute modifiers, and I've never felt particularly underpowered.
Ditto.
I also don't sleep very often (level 10 at the moment, Sneak 115).
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It seems that in Oblivion, once you hit a level and are notified about it your modifiers are locked in...I saved before sleeping once, raised my sneak ten points, and my modifier was still at x2.
Indeed, but you got a +5 at the next level. As soon as the little level up icon appears, your ability score bonuses are locked in for that level up.
Nowadays, I usually sleep to level as soon as I can after getting the icon, and then immediately grind up skills that raise the abilities I want to raise that level. Then I go about adventuring and know that my +5s are ready no matter whether or not I level in the middle of a dungeon.
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