Which Oblivion mods are you using?

[Old Scratch]

First at some point those cap leveled creatures will stop showing up.

Second, I can already "one shoot" kill a lot of creatures at lv1 with the rusty iron weapons from the starting dungeon.

Not as far as I can tell at level 23. I still come across rats, timber wolves, and weak mountain lions. I just finished a quest recently with some mountain lions that died in one hit.

Bullshit. You may have killed or rat or two in one hit in the starter dungeon, but that's not "a lot of creatures".

That is the issue, they sould NOT start to spawn with gear that when sold would be enough for them to retire.

The hell they shouldn't, what the fuck would be the point in fighting them if they had nothing substantial you could sell?

Also again what is the point of then level with the player when they are pushovers either way?

None, except to hurt characters that decided to specialize major skills in non-combat.

So that they at least still present a remote challenge. If you specialized in non-combat skills, you should be willing to avoid combat. What, is every creature in the game supposed to be a pussy so non-combat characters can kick their ass?

They are pushovers if you are a fighter (or any combat oriented character) but if someone wants to play a non combat thief they are forced to stop raising their major skills and train their combat skills but since the enemies leveled they are screwed ... its not like they can go look for a lower level enemy and train.

See above. If you specialized as a thief, there should be plenty of enemies in the game that can stomp you if you go toe-to-toe with them. Did you have a problem that Garret in the Thief series couldn't hack & slash through levels?

And I say dont put much weight in morons that are unable to grasp the idea of a world were rare items became common destroy immersion.

If they're common, how the fuck are they rare, smart guy? Standard armor sets and weapons in the game aren't rare, magical items on the other hand are.

Fist money sinks have to be worth something.

I get free horses (not that it matters with fast travel) with the best one being given as a reward.

Houses are pointless outside storage.

Gear is pointless when the world always going to default to your level so why do I need a glass weapon when almost nobody will use then because I am not "high level enough".

Yeah, I already mentioned that the incentives were weak, which is where the real problem lies.

Because the world defaults somewhat to your level, you need better gear to keep an edge over things. It's not pointless.

Certain people enjoy stuff like being able to buy and decorate houses--however retarded that may be-- so I doubt those are entirely pointless for everyone either. You can get additional benefits from houses too, like the one in Skingrad where you hire a maid that will make you strong potions. Or the one in Anvil that starts a quest. Again, they're weak incentives but not entirely pointless either.

Of course its not enough ... the arena and guilds sould have skill requirements for rank advancement.

I agree.

Its the whole "the world levels with you" that I have a issue with, the fact that so many plugins have been released to cap enemies levels, remove high level "rare" items from their spawn list and allow low level enemies to still be generated and the interrest of people to use such plugins shows Bethsoft really screwed up with Oblivion.

I don't think having the world scale with you is inherently a bad idea, the implementation in Oblivion was just shoddy as hell.

 

[suibhne]

First at some point those cap leveled creatures will stop showing up.

Second, I can already "one shoot" kill a lot of creatures at lv1 with the rusty iron weapons from the starting dungeon.

Not as far as I can tell at level 23. I still come across rats, timber wolves, and weak mountain lions. I just finished a quest recently with some mountain lions that died in one hit.

That's been my experience too, except for no weak Mountain Lions. But the lower-level monsters are pretty scarce; it's pretty impossible not to notice that the world is heavily scaled, even if you can still find a Rat using a microscope.

Bullshit. You may have killed or rat or two in one hit in the starter dungeon, but that's not "a lot of creatures".

Not bullshit at all. E.g., I cleared all of the sewers underneath the Imperial City at lvl 1 with mostly one-shot kills, equipped only with the tutorial gear. I was using Stealth, tho, and maybe Drakon was as well.

 

[Old Scratch]

That's been my experience too, except for no weak Mountain Lions. But the lower-level monsters are pretty scarce; it's pretty impossible not to notice that the world is heavily scaled, even if you can still find a Rat using a microscope.

You're right, keep in mind the question I was answering though:

So let me get this straight...

EVERY enemy in the game (even unique ones) are scaled in difficulty to the character level and EVERY container has randomly generated loot scaled in value/power to the character level?

Bullshit. You may have killed or rat or two in one hit in the starter dungeon, but that's not "a lot of creatures".

Not bullshit at all. E.g., I cleared all of the sewers underneath the Imperial City at lvl 1 with mostly one-shot kills, equipped only with the tutorial gear. I was using Stealth, tho, and maybe Drakon was as well.[/quote]

Rats != more than one type of creature

I don't even know what the point of Drakron's comment about this was anyway. I guess that rats are always weak. Considering my character doesn't use stealth, and had to hit rats a few times early on, compared to when I reached level 5 or so and could own them in one regular attack, it's clear they don't scale with your level which was my point.

 

[suibhne]

Not bullshit at all. E.g., I cleared all of the sewers underneath the Imperial City at lvl 1 with mostly one-shot kills, equipped only with the tutorial gear. I was using Stealth, tho, and maybe Drakon was as well.

Rats != more than one type of creature

Er...the sewers actually contain Rats, Mudcrabs, Goblins, Skeletons, Bandits, and Vampires, a list which I believe comprises more than one type creature. I easily handled them all at lvl 1, which made me think "Hey, Vampires and Goblins are a HELLUVA LOT weaker than in Morrowind..."

But yes, you're obviously right that Rats don't scale much - maybe from lvl 1 to lvl 5 or something, if even that. Maybe they don't even scale at all. Of the enemies I encountered in that opening sewer, it turns out that Skeletons and Goblins scale the most - far more than Vampires.

 

[Twinfalls]

Just in case Rendelius missed it the first time:

Anyway, before you tidy up that review with some justification for the mod community doing Beth's work, you might want to check out the initial PC sales numbers versus the d/l numbers from TESS. That gap is probably already tens of thousands of paying customers, and it'll only get bigger and bigger.

It seems disingenuous to evaluate the game including mods, when maybe 0.5% of purchasers will install those mods and the CS isn't even shipped with the game. Anyway, did your copy of the game include an invitation to d/l the CS?

@bryce - it has a particular line:

"Hey, I don't have wings"
"Of course not - you're a boy"

that gets a cheer from a section of the crowd every time. It's actually a very sweet moment. Also the film has abundant cutesyness, a chick who's part and parcel of the action, and muppets with hilarious 80s mullets.

 

[Jason]

"Why do women love the dark crystal so much"
The Dark Crystal is awesome and I had a penis last time I checked. *checks again* Yes, a penis. It's more of a little boy movie than a chick movie. There's all kinds of crazy creatures and it's somewhat violent for a kiddie movie. I can't wait to get my niece to watch it. She likes weird shit.

 

[Twinfalls]

I dont think bryce was saying it's a chick-film exclusively, just that it happens to also be popular with the ladies, which is unusual for fantasy (or perhaps not - princess bride, labyrinth etc)

DC also has Stephen Froud art direction, which is cutesy but manages to be weird enough to be cool. Film looks a bit dated now but hand-made stuff is always better than cgi.

And that orrery is spectacular.

 

[suibhne]

Sagerbliv's Creature Balance Fixes now incorporates Tom Servo's Rare Items Mod as well as many of the features from Lyrondor's Combat Behavior Mod. They're basically all three in one package now, which means it's the package to get.

They've also exposed a major weakness in Oblivion's modding architecture, tho. In a nutshell: NPCs are generated once, at the start of the game; critters are generated throughout the game on a defined timescale. So sage's mod works for critters with no problems, and changing mods in midstream only means some recently-visited areas will have to respawn to show the effects, but NPCs will only reflect your mods if you've enabled them at the very start of your game. That means the mod has to be enabled at character creation - which is to say the beginning of the tutorial, not the end of it.

 

[bryce777]

Man, I could not even remember that line. All I remember is the orerry. I will have to watch it again some time. Too bad it's not in theatrical release anywhere; maybe I could pick me up a new young wife.

 

[Drain]

Are there any mods fixing the moon gravity?

 

[aweigh]

The moons in Oblivion are so fucking close it's a wonder the planet isn't wracked by crazy weather and other stuff.

 

[Nog Robbin]

The moons in Oblivion are so fucking close it's a wonder the planet isn't wracked by crazy weather and other stuff.

Judging by the erratic behaviour of the NPC's I'd say there is plenty of lunar intervention being witnessed...

 

[aweigh]

lunar laffo

 

[Data4]

I'm only running the mod that removes the Loading Area popup. A lot of the mods I was interested in required you to start a new game, like the real-time mod, and one of the leveling fixes. Are there any new examples of those that don't require a restart? At 50+ hours in, I don't really care to start over so soon.

-D4

 

[aweigh]

Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul (the best leveling, loot and balance mod yet) works just fine with old save games. It's recommended that you start a new game, but it's definitely not necessary; you'll still get all the changes.

 

[suibhne]

Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul (the best leveling, loot and balance mod yet) works just fine with old save games. It's recommended that you start a new game, but it's definitely not necessary; you'll still get all the changes.

That's not quite right, unfortunately. You'll get all of the changes to critters, loot, etc., but no changes to NPC levels. And in Beth's wonderful engine for Oblivion, the "NPC" category includes everything from shopkeepers and city guards to Necromancers, Bandits, Marauders, Vampires, and even Dremoras.

For totally inscrutable reasons, Beth set up the game so that critters (monsters, animals, etc.) are spawned whenever you come across them, according to whatever levelling rules are currently in place, but the reference table for NPCs is basically created at the very beginning of your game. I can't describe it better than that because I haven't mucked around in the CS at all, but feel free to refer to sage's posts for more info. Mods like Oscuro's or Tom's can still affect the equipment carried by NPCs, but they can't affect the actual levels of NPCs unless the mods are enabled when you first start your game. In other words, NPCs (meaning the long list of friendlies and monsters above) continue to level with you as Beth designed unless you start a new game with a mod in place from the very start.

Why Beth made their engine this stupid is anybody's guess. Between the stuff I've read about the CS and the ridiculous RAI bullshit I've seen, I'm guessing they just don't have a whole lot of programming talent over there.

 

[ANDS!]

Er...the sewers actually contain Rats, Mudcrabs, Goblins, Skeletons, Bandits, and Vampires, a list which I believe comprises more than one type creature. I easily handled them all at lvl 1, which made me think "Hey, Vampires and Goblins are a HELLUVA LOT weaker than in Morrowind..."

Where are you encountering VAMPIRES at level 1? The first vampire I came across was part of the quest for the S'krivaa. Not calling bullshits - but Im increadibly skeptical of this.

As for one-shotting Goblins - they are pretty weak and I dont think are meant to be any kind of challange.

Im only interested in the UI mod.

 

[suibhne]

Where are you encountering VAMPIRES at level 1? The first vampire I came across was part of the quest for the S'krivaa. Not calling bullshits - but Im increadibly skeptical of this.

Start a new game and explore the sewers underneath the Bloodworks - or just crack open the CS and check when Vampires spawn. It's a big gameworld with lots of dark holes; I'd already encountered maybe 40 or 50 Vampires before I did the quest you're describing.

Anyway, this is yet another comment from you with all the hallmarks of a serious cranial hemorrhage. The default levelling system means you can explore almost all of Cyrodiil at level 1, Vamps and all. Maybe you just haven't played the game enough to notice that critters like Vamps and Goblins scale with you basically linearly all the way from Lvl N00b to Lvl God.

 

[ANDS!]

Start a new game and explore the sewers underneath the Bloodworks

If you've reached the BLOODWORKS - and have chosen to NOT SLEEP at all to that point. . .or not sleep in a bed, then I wouldn't be suprised if you hadnt encountered anything above your level.

Maybe you just haven't played the game enough to notice that critters like Vamps and Goblins scale with you basically linearly all the way from Lvl N00b to Lvl God.

Dont spend too much time in sewers, and so haven't seen a goblin (or had a problem with one) since I was what. . .lvl 8 or 10.

Goblin LEVELS may scale with you - abilities do not. Surely thats not TOO difficult to understand. At level 20 if you arent properly equipped to deal with a goblin who repetoire is Bash/Fast Hack - then you probably need to take a few classes in remedial roleplaying.

Or just load up Fallout and enjoy some good old fashioned turnbased isometric dungeon crawling.

 

[RK47]

..........
why r u telling ppl how to play the game. seriously.
he just prefer to explore the sewers for a little discovery & loot and probably ran across some vampires. I know I did to afford some non major skill training early game, i simply went sewers for loot.

the auto-scaling game is flawed for those people who likes to take risks and expect to be rewarded. There's just no such thing in the non-modded version of Oblivion. I still find garbage chests that has very hard locks on them and too many people wearing daedric for my liking.

And I went to this tavern at lvl 5, there were people in steel & mithril maybe...I came back at lvl 20, they were in Daedric & Glass. Wtf? Did they win a poker game while I was out there closing oblivion gates? Do I really have to go looking for daedric drops if i knew these guys would auto-upgrade easily?

If I can't really spend my money on anything but training at high lvl. Ok Recharge costs a bit, but that's minor. I still find gold almost useless. Enchanting is so cheap once you unlock them. With humanoid randoms walking around with glass / ebony / daedric at lvl 20 I never run out of cash.

Who the heck would need Mercantile? Another mod fixes the problem by creating a non-limited store lvling, but still creates the problem of thiefs having too much access to powerful weapon at the start.

There's more problems relating to the auto-scale world of Tamriel. But i think that's my biggest gripe with the system.

 

[Data4]

u 4got 2 abbreviate srsly. ur kewl pointz r decreasing like pie slices in a persuasion game.

This post has no value.

-D4

 

[Nog Robbin]

I'm only running the mod that removes the Loading Area popup. A lot of the mods I was interested in required you to start a new game, like the real-time mod, and one of the leveling fixes. Are there any new examples of those that don't require a restart? At 50+ hours in, I don't really care to start over so soon.

-D4

I'm running a number of mods, none of which required a restart, though most are quest/NPC fixes. I also have the Khajiit night eye correction (making the power a toggle rather than a once a day ability for 30 seconds), and corrections for birth signs (so they are not affected by the stat caps).

If you want to go to real time bring up the console (~ key) and type in
set timescale to 1

press ~ again to close the console. You should then be running at 1 minute game time = 1 minute real time. I have mine set to 20, I think the default is 30. (20 means 1 minute real time = 20 minutes game time, so a day lasts 72 minutes real time.

 

[suibhne]

If you've reached the BLOODWORKS - and have chosen to NOT SLEEP at all to that point. . .or not sleep in a bed, then I wouldn't be suprised if you hadnt encountered anything above your level.

I hadn't even levelled at that point. Really, it's not hard to get underneath the Bloodworks; in fact, I assumed the name "Bloodworks" had something to do with Vampires rather than with the Arena, because I hadn't even entered the Imperial City at that point.

Your overall sentence doesn't even make sense, tho. First of all, you can't sleep outside of a bed (or bedroll) anywhere in the game, so I think you're rather confused. Second of all, what does your last sentence even mean? The levelling mechanic in Oblivion means you'll almost never encounter anything significantly above your level.

Goblin LEVELS may scale with you - abilities do not. Surely thats not TOO difficult to understand. At level 20 if you arent properly equipped to deal with a goblin who repetoire is Bash/Fast Hack - then you probably need to take a few classes in remedial roleplaying.

Er...how is that "roleplaying"?

In any case, Goblins scale pretty damn well with you, especially once they start wielding Glass and Ebony weapons when you're around lvl 20. After all, levels in Oblivion are predicated on ability increases, not vice versa as in d20 systems and most other cRPGs. You might counter that's only true for the player, not for the any other creature in the gameworld, but in fact you'd be wrong.

You simply don't understand Oblivion's default levelling system, which raises attributes, abilities, and other stats. Before continuing to argue from a position of total ignorance, you should crack open the CS and disabuse yourself of your current notions.

 

[RK47]

Anyone find the Magic system a bit unsatisfying?
I tried out an Illusion boosted Rogue...and find Invisibility very cheap. I tested a dungeon run with it turned on constantly (Breton magicka pool is enough) while in stealth mode. I cleared an Ayleith ruin's loot without killing a single mob O_o cause they simply can't detect me. What's the point of Chameleon spell with crazy high costs ?!

Sometimes they DO spot me recasting it...they ran towards me, swing a few blows which I sidestepped, and I continued on my looting spree.

I tried Kvatch at lvl 15 and finds it quite the same.
I didn't need to kill a single mob except the Sigil Keeper in the portal since it's constant cast of invis.

But clearing Kvatch proved to be a bit difficult. I relied heavily on poison. and the cheesy part is applying triple poison and then going invis as they pound on the poor God Mode Captain's body.

I tried destruction and find the dmg pretty much capped at your magicka storage. Yes, I can pump INT but what's the point when WIL makes it regen faster and helps resist spells? I usually shoot one poison arrow, gets close to spam a couple of 25 elem - touch spell. When my magicka gets low to 20-30% I'll invis and wait for regen a bit before finishing.

 

[ANDS!]

Your overall sentence doesn't even make sense, tho.

English your second language?

First of all, you can't sleep outside of a bed (or bedroll) anywhere in the game, so I think you're rather confused.

Well obviously - I magically started a character at Lvl. 23. Must be a glitch in the game -

The levelling mechanic in Oblivion means you'll almost never encounter anything significantly above your level.

Again - for those whose first language isnt English - your lvl may scale, abilities do not. Chew on that. . .spit it out. . .take another piece. . .chew on it some more - and them come back 'round these parts; I'm sure you'll have sussed it out by then.

In any case, Goblins scale pretty damn well with you, especially once they start wielding Glass and Ebony weapons when you're around lvl 20.

So their LOOT has scaled, not neccesarily their ability to effectively wield a weapon. Again - if Goblin's are giving you trouble. . .even wielding a nice glass or ebony weapon - ya might need to work on your hack-slash twitch skills.

I didn't need to kill a single mob except the Sigil Keeper in the portal since it's constant cast of invis.

If thats the way you choose to play - thats the way you choose to play. Eventually though - youll have to get into fights, and without actually going out to fight something - youre skill will never rise.