The difficulty in Oblivion.

[Imbecile]

Yeah, I bumped into a couple in Titans cavern (or something), and got fairly well squished. While the relative levelling of the enemies is noticeable it seems to have been dealt with well enough (at least to me) that Im feeling constantly challenged, without feeling like Im standing still.

 

[VenomByte]

Yes, but that depends how you level your character.

If you start taking non-combat primaries and levelling them, the enemies will scale in difficulty far faster than your ability to cope with them.

 

[Excrément]

Yes, but that depends how you level your character.

If you start taking non-combat primaries and levelling them, the enemies will scale in difficulty far faster than your ability to cope with them.

peaceful characters are screwed.
but in the same way, it is normal if you are a peaceful character to have big difficulties in combat.
the problem is not that fight are too hard for peaceful character but more the lack of opportunities they have because Oblivion provide only action and nothing very interesting for speechcraft/mercantile characters.

but did you expect anything else, since 1994 tes games are about "dungeons hacking" and not diplomacy or trade.

 

[VenomByte]

Yes, but that depends how you level your character.

If you start taking non-combat primaries and levelling them, the enemies will scale in difficulty far faster than your ability to cope with them.

peaceful characters are screwed.
but in the same way, it is normal if you are a peaceful character to have big difficulties in combat.
the problem is not that fight are too hard for peaceful character but more the lack of opportunities they have because Oblivion provide only action and nothing very interesting for speechcraft/mercantile characters.

but did you expect anything else, since 1994 tes games are about "dungeons hacking" and not diplomacy or trade.

No, the problem is not just that they have a lack of opportunities, it is that the difficulty of enemies scales by your level and not your combat abilities. That's not just a lack of opportunities, that is actively putting peaceful characters at a disadvantage, making the game even harder for them as they level up further, since their enemies and NPC's combat abilities increase far faster than theirs.

If Oblivion did not have levelled enemies throughout, peaceful characters would still be viable, if a little pointless. As it stands, you will quickyl reach the point where you simple cannot go anywhere or do anything. Ironic, no?

 

[Oarfish]

Peaceful characters are screwed from the outset, not just by the leveling system. Mercantile and speechcraft are worthless skills outside of combat, never mind in a fight.

 

[Solik]

This should not come as a surprise. Oblivion has been advertised from the beginning as primarily a dungeon-crawling game. There's been no pretenses of having much support for peaceful-types. You can do your skills and run away from combat, I suppose, but no more than that.

 

[elander_]

This should not come as a surprise. Oblivion has been advertised from the beginning as primarily a dungeon-crawling game. There's been no pretenses of having much support for peaceful-types. You can do your skills and run away from combat, I suppose, but no more than that.

I don't remenber any dev saying that Oblivion was JUST a dungeon crawling game.

And it's not seepchcraft and mercantile that are screwed. You can add stealth and the omniscient npcs to the lot.

 

[Excrément]

This should not come as a surprise. Oblivion has been advertised from the beginning as primarily a dungeon-crawling game. There's been no pretenses of having much support for peaceful-types. You can do your skills and run away from combat, I suppose, but no more than that.

I don't remenber any dev saying that Oblivion was JUST a dungeon crawling game.

And it's not seepchcraft and mercantile that are screwed. You can add stealth and the omniscient npcs to the lot.

Todd Howard : "TES games have always been a "dungeon hack""

 

[elander_]

Todd Howard : "TES games have always been a "dungeon hack""

Todd Howard had a small position in Daggerfall and never worked in Arena. Still i never heard him saying that or that Ovlivion was suposed to be ONLY a dungeon crawling game.

Heres an interesting link about useless skills:

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/inde ... pic=318813

 

[galsiah]

Todd Howard : "TES games have always been a "dungeon hack""

So where is the problem with scaling enemies to combat abilities rather than level?

The goal of level scaling is not realism / coherence, but to provide an entertaining challenge to players. Their current system doesn't do this for less combat based characters.

Balancing to combat ability would also remove exploits whereby a character can increase non-major combat skills very high without seeing any increase in enemy difficulty.

If you want alchemists and merchants to lose in combat more often than fighters, then you could use for instance:
Enemy level = ( constant1 * playerLevel ) + ( constant2 * playerCombatAbilityLevel )
Or some similar system.

The current method simply sucks. If you're going for a coherent world, don't include level scaling. If you do include scaling (and thus throw coherence out the window), make sure you get good gameplay for everyone as far as possible. Scaling to combat ability would provide an automatically reasonable challenge for all characters. You could tweak that up or down according to a character's other skills, but I don't think it'd be necessary.
It really is not rocket science.

Also, saying something has always been crap in TES isn't much of an excuse. If something has always been crap and is easy to do better, it should be done better.

The levelling system is lame, and scaling to player level is a stupidly blunt and imprecise way to do things (unless player level is directly proportional to combat prowess, which is not usually the case).

 

[suibhne]

And it's not seepchcraft and mercantile that are screwed. You can add stealth and the omniscient npcs to the lot.

To be fair, I think stealth works pretty well. I'd like a little more granularity; maybe there should be three states rather than two, including "Enemy totally clueless", "Enemy aware of your presence but not your location", and "Enemy aware of your exact location and coming to kick you ass seven ways to Sunday". I really only have two complaints about stealth:

1. Enemies sometimes "detect" you from the other side of a wall. I think EvoG said this stopped after he hit the 75 skill level in Sneak, where you're no longer penalized for running vs. walking, and I'm at 73 and looking forward to testing this. :wink:

2. Enemies following you through multiple rooms once they're alerted to your presence. This is frustrating, because you should always be able to duck behind something and go into Sneak again. Otoh, I've actually made that work on almost as many locations as when it failed, so I don't think the system is totally broken.

I'm guessing Sneak success is based on proximity, not line-of-sight or line-of-hearing. I can shoot someone from across the room and drop back into Sneak, and TEH EYE lights up only momentarily before dropping back to transparency; if I'm closer, the eye icon remains lit and they and come out swinging.

 

[Solik]

If enemies scaled to combat skill instead of level, then there would be no consequence for choosing to focus on non-combat skills. Battles would remain easy for you, making you appear to be just as good a fighter at combat while still enjoying all the advantages of your non-combat skills.

 

[Dhruin]

Yeah, but in most other games there's a chance to catch up if you need to - that's pretty much impossible in OB. When you go grinding some combat levels to catch up, the enemies continue to scale.

 

[Solik]

That's not true, if your combat skills are Minor.

 

[galsiah]

If enemies scaled to combat skill instead of level, then there would be no consequence for choosing to focus on non-combat skills. Battles would remain easy for you, making you appear to be just as good a fighter at combat while still enjoying all the advantages of your non-combat skills.

Hmm... if only I'd thought of that.

Oh that's right, I did

If you want alchemists and merchants to lose in combat more often than fighters, then you could use for instance:
Enemy level = ( constant1 * playerLevel ) + ( constant2 * playerCombatAbilityLevel )
Or some similar system.

The Oblivion system isn't going to suck any less whether or not my thought-up-in-one-minute alternative sucks, in any case.

As it happens, my thought-up-in-one-minute solution is almost certainly better, since it is a generalization of theirs:

My solution: Enemy level = ( constant1 * playerLevel ) + ( constant2 * playerCombatAbilityLevel )

Theirs: Enemy level = ( 1 * playerLevel ) + ( 0 * playerCombatAbilityLevel )

Are there better numbers than exactly 1 and 0 in the above equation? I'm going to go out on a limb and say yes. Of course, another way to approach the situation would be to change the levelling system so that level were a reasonable approximation (with suitable adjustment for class) to combat prowess.
That might screw up the wonderful levelling system they have at the moment though

 

[AlanC9]

In addition to providing poor balance, isn't the OB system just an exploit waiting to happen? If your combat skills don't have any relation to enemy difficulty, then all you have to do is build a character who levels from noncombat skills.

Though I guess levelled loot keeps this under control to some extent, since you can't earn massive cash for trainers without levelling.

I'd love to read beta tester reports on this.

 

[galsiah]

In addition to providing poor balance, isn't the OB system just an exploit waiting to happen?

Yes - this sort of thing seems to be true of most Oblivion systems.
There are really two possibilities:
(1) Oblivion was designed by people who can't think analytically.
(2) Oblivion was designed for people who don't think analytically.

I'm hoping that it was (2). Most of Oblivion probably works well so long as you stick to hacking and slashing, and never ask yourself how anything works. I think it could have been a much better game if a few systems had been thought through more carefully. I don't know how good a game it is, since I haven't played, but I'm very sure that a week's work / thought could have made it much better for thinking folk.

Perhaps spending the extra week on hardly noticable graphics tweaks, rather than addressing these issues, was the financially sensible thing to do. If that's true, life just gets more depressing daily.

 

[suleo]

In addition to providing poor balance, isn't the OB system just an exploit waiting to happen? If your combat skills don't have any relation to enemy difficulty, then all you have to do is build a character who levels from noncombat skills.

Yes, exactly. Or even better, pick whatever you want and never sleep. You will never level and eventually have 100s at every skill at level 1 and totally pwn everything.

Though I guess levelled loot keeps this under control to some extent, since you can't earn massive cash for trainers without levelling.

True to an extent but not completely. The ayelid ruins provide a *very* decent cash flow. The ruin just outside the sewers, mentioned in some other posts, can net you ~2.5k. That's right at the beginning of the game, and the loot found there (and in all other ayelid ruins) is not armor or weapons.

What keeps this in check more than levelled loot is the limited number of trainer usage allowed per level (5). But even so, nothing really stops you from eventually reaching 100 at everything (or everything meaningful anyway) at level 1.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Todd Howard has always been an hack

Fixed!

 

[HardCode]

Another post by just an Oblivion player showing how the game sucks (whether he realizes it or not):

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/inde ... pic=318813

 

[Stark]

My solution: Enemy level = ( constant1 * playerLevel ) + ( constant2 * playerCombatAbilityLevel )

Theirs: Enemy level = ( 1 * playerLevel ) + ( 0 * playerCombatAbilityLevel )

well, just how do you measure player combat ability level properly?

 

[suleo]

My solution: Enemy level = ( constant1 * playerLevel ) + ( constant2 * playerCombatAbilityLevel )

Theirs: Enemy level = ( 1 * playerLevel ) + ( 0 * playerCombatAbilityLevel )

well, just how do you measure player combat ability level properly?

MAX, or AVERAGE of {blade, blunt, handtohand, destruction, marksman} would be a decent indicator, since those are the skills that relate directly to "combat ability" (I use the term loosely because the biggest skill related to combat ability is YOUR twitch ability).

 

[Sisay]

Playing a thief seems to get a bit easier at higher levels. I'm at 115 or so effective stealth (lvl 22 character) and if there's enough space I can kill anything by multiple sneak attacks with my bow. Doesn't help melees as much obviously but you can also backstab some monsters, mainly undead it seems, as many times as you want without them turning around. Radiant. Doesn't work if there's multiple enemies around, though. At earlier levels the game definitely did get harder when I leveled. There's still little reason to actually steal anything and the levelling system still sucks but it doesn't feel like a treadmill that much anymore.

I'm beginning to lose my interest in the game to be honest, I've completed the Dark Brotherhood, the Thieves Guild and a ton of sidequests but the main quest just plain sucks. It's like a return to NWN OC, collect four artifacts. Exploring seems rather pointless, too, as there just doesn't seem to be anything worthwile to find.

 

[galsiah]

My solution: Enemy level = ( constant1 * playerLevel ) + ( constant2 * playerCombatAbilityLevel )
Theirs: Enemy level = ( 1 * playerLevel ) + ( 0 * playerCombatAbilityLevel )

well, just how do you measure player combat ability level properly?

Any way to measure it is better than none. So long as it doesn't include obviously non-combat skills (e.g. mercantile, speechcraft), and does include weapon skills, armor skills etc., then it'll work much better than their system.

Ideally, of course, you'd come up with a measure of the usefulness of various skill combinations - e.g. Armor skills are probably more useful with weapon skills than with magic... -, but this isn't necessary. Any half-decent measure would be better than none.

Even with a good measure of combat ability, my solution won't be perfect. That's not the point though. The point is that it's better than theirs - and that theirs sucks: the idea that player level is a good way to balance anything when it is almost entirely disconnected from two thirds of a player's skills, is absurd.

 

[RK47]

The Oblivion Gate thing can be done without killing a single mob inside, funny shit that you can just run past and play super mario. Pop a pot or two when u get hit and keep moving. They'll never catch up if your speed is decent.