The Elder Scrolls XV: This is my Thu'um Stick

[halfeye]

Believe it or not, I tried that. I didn't go in to the game planning to make it a bookkeeping exercise. That was a reaction to what I found in the game. And when I looked up various discussions online, I found it was a very common experience.

When I start a new RPG, I expect to spend the first few levels running and hiding from most things. But by the time I reach level 20 or so, I expect to see a payoff in the form of being able to swat bandits and random wildlife with ease. That happens in Morrowind and in Skyrim, it even happens in Fallout 3 which is contemporary with Oblivion. Oblivion is an outlier here.

Morrowind uses exactly the same levelling system as Oblivion, but with a lot more skills, and middle skills as well as major and minor, not that the middle skills have any effect on levelling (I think, I haven't played Morrowind much).

What (PC, I never used any other version) Oblivion got wrong was reducing the number of skills, which had a presumably unexpected effect on levelling.

The thing on using skills you don't normally use is that they need to be skills you can use at will, but normally don't, so you can level up as soon as you need to.

[Keltest]

Morrowind uses exactly the same levelling system as Oblivion, but with a lot more skills, and middle skills as well as major and minor, not that the middle skills have any effect on levelling (I think, I haven't played Morrowind much).

What (PC, I never used any other version) Oblivion got wrong was reducing the number of skills, which had a presumably unexpected effect on levelling.

The thing on using skills you don't normally use is that they need to be skills you can use at will, but normally don't, so you can level up as soon as you need to.

Morrowind also didn't have scaling content to the same degree that Oblivion did. Random Bandit #217 isn't going to be accosting you with glass equipment and a bunch of high level fighting skills.

[Kesnit]

Only if the skills you picked for levelling are combat related.

I did say to pick a combat style and armor weight.

If you picked stuff not directly related to combat, such as lockpicking or alchemy, then the monsters would scale up in power while you did not.

You can pick those as well. I pretty much always had stealth, lockpicking, and armorer as class skills.

If you run dungeons, your combat and armor skills are going to go up - probably faster than your others. (If you use magic, that will go up as well.) If you spend your early levels doing nothing but selling and doing alchemy, yes, your levels are going to fall behind your ability to fight.

Same applied to stuff like stealth, so if you played a sneaky thief type you'd rapidly find monsters outscaling your ability to kill them.

I played sneak thief and could still kill monsters.

You never saw bandits in full glass or Daedric shaking you down on the road for 100 septims?

I did. They died pretty quick because I had the combat skills to kill them. As the game leveled, so I did - sometimes faster than the game, sometimes in time with the game.

You were never concerned that it didn't matter than anywhere you went, you would only find creatures and treasures carefully scaled for your level (and nothing else)?

One thing I find boring about Skyrim is how once I get a few levels under me, most everything that drops is just vendor trash (once I improve it to raise my smithing). I like the idea of actually getting good things from drops.

[Morty]

I've honestly never understood the complaint about skills in Oblivion. I disliked most everything there, but the supposedly wonky levelling just didn't seem to apply to me. I kept myself pretty much exclusively to magic skills, for the record.

[Caelestion]

I like the idea of actually getting good things from drops.

Except that you didn't get "good" things: you got aggressively average things, even if they were unique quest rewards. Did they level up with you if you got them at low level? No. Did you have to delay doing quests with unique rewards if you actually wanted them at a reasonable level? Yes. I quickly dumped the vanilla levelling system and found several other mods to replace it with.

[Keltest]

Except that you didn't get "good" things: you got aggressively average things, even if they were unique quest rewards. Did they level up with you if you got them at low level? No. Did you have to delay doing quests with unique rewards if you actually wanted them at a reasonable level? Yes. I quickly dumped the vanilla levelling system and found several other mods to replace it with.

One of the first things I did with Skyrim and Oblivion was hunt for a mod that disables unique item scaling. Give me the best possible version of a daedric artifact or otherwise allegedly masterwork item, thank you. Getting a cool looking glass short sword that's barely better than silver is embarrassing.

[Resileaf]

I got a mod that lets you level unique items so they remain relevant.

[veti]

Morrowind uses exactly the same levelling system as Oblivion, but with a lot more skills, and middle skills as well as major and minor, not that the middle skills have any effect on levelling (I think, I haven't played Morrowind much).

Not exactly. There were some important differences.

One, a lot more skills, made it harder to gimp yourself by inadvertently picking all the skills associated with one stat. If you played a mage in Oblivion, it was virtually impossible to get a +5 increase to Int or Wil. I found that kinda counterintuitive.

Two, when you levelled up, the rest of the world didn't level with you. True that some harder encounters would be unlocked, but not *everydamnthing* on the map.

Three, the stat improvement counter didn't stop when you got the level up notification. If you really wanted to improve a stat, and you got the level up notice before you were ready, you still had options. Like, go to a town and buy more training before you go to bed. In Oblivion that didn't work, meaning significantly less control over levelling.

And four, training was unlimited. Again, this plays to the number of skills available, and the non-scaling world. Because it was quite feasible to find a piece of glass or ebony gear at low level, you could sell that and buy practically unlimited training in some skill you'd never even thought about before. (hence cheap because you were starting from skill 5.)

OK, so the last thing is almost as gamey and implausible as Oblivion, but all these differences militate the same way: they give the player more options. Those are all things that Oblivion took away. OK, I can see the case for simplifying the number of skills, and the level scaling was an obvious if misguided experiment - but the other two changes seem quite pointless except to irritate the player.

Bethesda, it should be noted, recognised their error, and didn't repeat the level scaling nonsense. They learned that lesson quickly enough to avoid repeating it in Fallout 3, and by Skyrim they'd got the balance about right, at least for the first 20-30 levels (after which you start to run out of challenges, but no worries - you can start on the higher level DLC, or simply start a new character).

[Vinyadan]

I think that there are different things to consider. I found my first piece of Daedric Armour in Skyrim after 200 hours. That's way too much, because it forces the player to grind a skill if you want to wear daedric armour. In Oblivion, I probably had a full daedric armour around level 20 (that's what my post-Bruma statue looked like). They were so trivially found, that I discarded them when they were damaged, instead of repairing them. In Morrowind, I never had a complete daedric armour, but you could get some parts as reward, and there were phenomenally OP artefacts that beat daedric anyway. (also, Morrowind armour had 8-9 pieces, Oblivion 5-6, and Skyrim just 4-5).

Morrowind was the one that gave the most satisfaction, but that's because all those items were skilfully hand-placed. Same thing with hostile NPCs, those in Morrowind were cooler because they were hand-made. I think that this is the actual problem with levelled enemies, it means a bunch of enemies that are automatically generated and all look the same, and loot that suddenly becomes too frequent and loses its charm.
Of course, the other side is that in Morrowind you quickly turned into an engine of destruction. At level 7, you already were one of the toughest things around. At level 20, you were effectively immortal. Skyrim probably handed this pretty well by making you slightly weaker, but leaving room for huge changes in gameplay when you hit certain milestones -- Impact for Destruction, or reaching 100 enchanting and casting spells from one or two schools completely for free.

Also, I remember fights in Oblivion as extremely chaotic. Something about the enemies charging my horse and my horse charging back or running away, and people dispersing on the plains and never coming back. But something I didn't like in scaling in Oblivion was how zombies became constantly worse HP sacks that couldn't really damage me, but took a lot to take down and you would often fight one on one.

EDIT: Also, IIRC, Skyrim has a hidden cap for armour rating.

[Keltest]

Worth pointing out, Morrowind only had one complete suit of Daedric Armor in the base game, and it was being worn by Divayth Fyr. You could come close, but would be missing a couple pieces. I believe it was Mournhold that added enough of the missing pieces for a second full suit.

[Triaxx]

80% damage reduction is the armor cap.

[veti]

Of course, the other side is that in Morrowind you quickly turned into an engine of destruction. At level 7, you already were one of the toughest things around. At level 20, you were effectively immortal.

And then you went to Mournhold or Solstheim, and discovered things that could still kick your butt clean back to Vvardenfell if you were cocky enough to tackle them head on.

Level 20 in Morrowind was epic level. By then I'd finished the main quest, and as you say there was nothing to fear - until the expansions.

Level 20 in Skyrim is kinda mid-level. Equivalent to maybe level 10 in Morrowind.

Skyrim probably handed this pretty well by making you slightly weaker, but leaving room for huge changes in gameplay when you hit certain milestones -- Impact for Destruction, or reaching 100 enchanting and casting spells from one or two schools completely for free.

Arcane smithing for me.

The actual armour calculation in Skyrim is maddeningly opaque. As well as the cap, there's also a hidden bonus per item worn. And the value of items can vary depending on what else you're wearing. And then you add mods, and it starts to get messy.

[factotum]

Two, when you levelled up, the rest of the world didn't level with you. True that some harder encounters would be unlocked, but not *everydamnthing* on the map.

I played around with the editor supplied with Morrowind a bit--you know, just adding a pair of boots with ridiculous bonuses to Athletics so I could do a single jump from the north gate of Balmora to the south gate of Caldera, that sort of thing. One thing I noticed is that the dungeons in the game have a level *range* associated with them, which affects the level scaling within them. So, you could have a dungeon with a level range of 10-25, and the game would scale the monsters inside to match your level within that range. If you went in at level 5 you'd be facing level 10 opponents and would have a bad time of it. Go in at level 40 and everything would be level 25 and a breeze to defeat. I never understood why they didn't implement a similar system for Oblivion. Of course, the fact the level scaling was also handled in a brain-dead way didn't help--the description of a Dremora Caitiff in the game says they lead groups of weaker Dremora, but if you're of the appropriate level when you go into an Oblivion Gate you'll find nothing but Caitiffs in there because anything else is too low level as far as the level scaling goes.

[Divayth Fyr]

Worth pointing out, Morrowind only had one complete suit of Daedric Armor in the base game, and it was being worn by Divayth Fyr. You could come close, but would be missing a couple pieces. I believe it was Mournhold that added enough of the missing pieces for a second full suit.

Mournhold and Solstheim - each added a pauldron.

I never understood why they didn't implement a similar system for Oblivion.

Oblivion's thing was "fixing" things people complained about for Morrowind, just in a bad way. Medium armor and Spear were axed (while people complained that they were sub-par compared to the alternatives), ditto for Enchant as a skill (which was both underpowered when you wanted to use it normally and op as heck when you abused it), and since they were complaints about how the level scaling worked, they went ahead to "improve" it.

[Aeson]

Worth pointing out, Morrowind only had one complete suit of Daedric Armor in the base game, and it was being worn by Divayth Fyr. You could come close, but would be missing a couple pieces. I believe it was Mournhold that added enough of the missing pieces for a second full suit.

Technically speaking, Divayth Fyr's set of Daedric armor is incomplete - he doesn't have a helmet either on him or in his tower. It's still easily the most complete and in some sense readily-available set in the game, of course.

Of course, the other side is that in Morrowind you quickly turned into an engine of destruction. At level 7, you already were one of the toughest things around. At level 20, you were effectively immortal.

Depends a bit on how you leveled. I played through the game as an Imperial merchant prince once without leveling a single skill directly related to combat until the mid-teens or so - just Alchemy to quickly turn a massive profit and Speechcraft/Mercantile to further increase the margins, and while I did not do so you could theoretically hit level 18 before hitting the normal skill caps for Alchemy, Speechcraft, and Mercantile even if all three of those started as major skills and Speechcraft/Mercantile were specialized. That character was neither one of the toughest things around at level 7 nor effectively immortal by level 20, though I suppose it probably could have been if I'd chosen to spend the fortune I was accumulating on training rather than on accumulating an even bigger fortune, but it was a fun character to play, at least for a while.

[Morty]

Back when I was active on a Polish TES board, I think there were a number of people who had killed Divath Fyr to get his armor and then found themselves unable to progress the plot. Though probably not as numerous as those who had killed some of the infected under his tower, which caused him to refuse to speak with them.

[Keltest]

Back when I was active on a Polish TES board, I think there were a number of people who had killed Divath Fyr to get his armor and then found themselves unable to progress the plot. Though probably not as numerous as those who had killed some of the infected under his tower, which caused him to refuse to speak with them.

Theoretically, I think the only thing that totally stops the plot is losing access to Sunder and Keening somehow. Even the otherwise lethal damage they inflict without a functional wrathguard (which you normally get from Vivec, or jury-rig from Yagrum) can be overcome with enough cheese, or just a crap ton of HP.

But yes, ticking off the residents of that tower and/or killing Vivec are the fastest ways to bring the plot to a sudden halt if you don't have Wrathguard.

[Caelestion]

Even killing Vivec isn't a hard brake on the main plot, as you can take the false Wraithguard to Yagrum Bagarn and have him activate it himself.

[Morty]

Well, yes. A player who knows what to do can wreck a lot and still finish the game. Not so much a player who doesn't know the game inside out and doesn't read the dialogue carefully enough to notice that Divath Fyr tells you not to kill his patients.

On another note that's been discussed, it's certainly true that whether or not you become powerful in Morrowind really depends on what you do. And it's easy to do the wrong thing. I tried to play a "pure" mage when I started and it was miserable. I never felt like I was very powerful at all. Playing the optimal warrior/mage hybrid is a different story.

[Caelestion]

Magic simply isn't that powerful in Morrowind. Your magicka doesn't recover naturally, you have the stupid jazz hands problem and the spells you can make for yourself are explicitly less efficient than the default ones. Of course, the spell-making is pretty awesome, but it does have its limitations.

[Resileaf]

Well, yes. A player who knows what to do can wreck a lot and still finish the game. Not so much a player who doesn't know the game inside out and doesn't read the dialogue carefully enough to notice that Divath Fyr tells you not to kill his patients.

If you're playing Morrowind and not reading quest text, you only have yourself to blame.

[Kantaki]

If you're playing Morrowind and not reading quest text, you only have yourself to blame.

Isn't that true for most games? Don't pay attention to the dialogue/exposition and you can only blame yourself when your character gets eaten by pillows.

[Vinyadan]

On another note that's been discussed, it's certainly true that whether or not you become powerful in Morrowind really depends on what you do. And it's easy to do the wrong thing. I tried to play a "pure" mage when I started and it was miserable. I never felt like I was very powerful at all. Playing the optimal warrior/mage hybrid is a different story.

That funny feeling when you try to kill a flame atronach with your spells, and realise they have reflect...

[Rodin]

That funny feeling when you try to kill a flame atronach with your spells, and realise they have reflect...

My first character that I really got invested in was an Altmer mage with the birthsign that gave you extra magic damage but doubled your weakness to magic. So I could deal an insane amount of magic damage, but if anything hit me with a spell I was toast.

That reflect ability was so infuriating that I outright modded it out. If they'd made it so that the spell rebounded and I had to dodge a fireball with a 50 foot radius that would be one thing. If it was a spell they cast with a graphic to warn you they had a shield up it would be fair. But no, the reflect ability was a passive that just instantly transmitted the damage. That meant that if I fired my fancy custom spell at one of the enemies with reflect I just had a 50% chance of instant death. Even if I wasn't shooting at them and they just happened to be around a corner and got caught in the blast radius.

It really wasn't very fun.

[veti]

Magic simply isn't that powerful in Morrowind. Your magicka doesn't recover naturally, you have the stupid jazz hands problem and the spells you can make for yourself are explicitly less efficient than the default ones. Of course, the spell-making is pretty awesome, but it does have its limitations.

The single spell I cast most was homemade, and way more efficient than the default. Bound Longbow, 15 seconds duration.

The vanilla version of Bound Longbow gives you 60 seconds for 6 magicka. But why would you need it that long anyway? Any creature that can survive two or three hits from that thing - would be right up in your face long before the spell gives out. Mine gives 15 seconds for 1 magicka, so it's cheap, easy to cast, and gives enough time to take out up to three cliff racers for a single point. (And also quite enough to take down an ogrim or a golden saint, if that's your current need.)

[Morty]

Self-made spells were less efficient, but I found that I basically had to create them, because the pre-made spells were just impractical. The damage ones didn't really scale with level and shield spells lasting for a minute or half were too difficult to cast. It was all a mess, really.

I remember making damage spells that lasted 2 seconds rather than 1 - because a spell that does 35 damage/second for two seconds is easier and cheaper than one that just deals 70 damage once. It seemed to work well.

[Caelestion]

Well, yes, you can design spells to be more useful, but as I understand it, if you try remaking the default spells in the spellmaker, they are always more expensive.

[Morty]

Well, yes, you can design spells to be more useful, but as I understand it, if you try remaking the default spells in the spellmaker, they are always more expensive.

That is correct, but in my experience a moot point. You're going to need to design spells anyway, as the default ones are impractical.

[Vinyadan]

In Morrowind, while your magicka didn't reload, the charges of your magic items did. So you could, for example, create a belt of water breathing that would completely recharge itself by the time the effect ran out. It was a nice way to spare magicka. It also didn't mesh very well with your carefully picked standard equipment, though. 8 armour pieces, 1 shield, 2 rings, 1 amulet, 1 cloak, 1 shirt = 14 slots to keep an eye on, plus your weapon.

No doubt, interface-wise, playing as a wizard in Morrowind was a pain. You had few shots, a good chance of failure because of fatigue and running, long animations, and the problem of reflect/absorb. I think Oblivion was the best one, simply because of how immediate it was. Just push the button, no need to put your sword away. Skyrim decided to go for a style that would emphasize pushing a lot of buttons, which was less boring than Oblivion, but also was pretty messy. That you fired from the left hand with the right button also didn't exactly help. However, Skyrim actually kept Oblivion's spellcasting approach, but tweaked it and used it for shouts instead.

A problem that came up with magicka regen was that fights turned into running around while waiting for your bar to replenish while casting healing spells, to then run around a little more so that you had the magicka to cast your damaging spells.

[Aeson]

Your magicka doesn't recover naturally, you have the stupid jazz hands problem and the spells you can make for yourself are explicitly less efficient than the default ones.

I don't mind the lack of continuous magicka regeneration in Morrowind - what else are Restore/Fortify Magicka potions for, if not to give me magicka when I need it, and it also alleviates too-good-to-use syndrome because playing keep-away for a few seconds while waiting for enough magicka to cast that last fireball or whatever isn't an option. The problem Morrowind's magicka has is more that if you want to be a 'pure' spellcaster you almost have to take both a race and a birthsign that boost maximum magica - 1xInt simply wasn't enough if you were going to rely almost exclusively on spellcasting in combat and made it almost a waste to drink a potion since a Standard Restore Magicka potion would probably restore more magicka than your maximum.

As to Morrowind's 'jazz hands,' I mind it less than I mind Oblivion's "your spells suck if you're wearing armor - especially if they're spells that affect things based on level." I'd rather wait a second or two to draw my sword than further weaken spells that weren't all that good in the first place if you weren't doing something like stacking Weakness to Magicka on the target, especially since raising the skills that reduced the spell efficiency penalty has always been a bit of a pain because you have to get hit or pay for training in order to advance them, you don't really want to do either of those, and in Oblivion training was capped at five trained skill levels across all skills per character level, losing unused training levels each time you advance your character level.