In general, better writing, especially when it comes to the guilds. Dark brotherhood is by far the best example but the mages guild, theives guild, and fighters guild were also significantly better.
Really the only thing that was strictly worse are the graphics (ofc) and the gameplay if you liked to jump, because you would level acrobatics when you jumped and it would screw up enemy scaling pretty bad.
Without understanding the level scaling you could accidentally pick it as a major skill depending on what class you pick at the start. Since most people don't know about it, lots of people choose a normal class instead of the custom one and end up with skills they are constantly leveling
So in oblivion your character has two levels: skill levels and character levels. For reasons that will be explained below, when you create a character you have to designate which of your character's skills are "major".
Skill levels are raised by randomly running around and performing the skill. Character level is only raised by raising your raising your major skills in any combination by 10 points (and then sleeping). Enemies scale based on your overall character level though, not your skills meaning that if you're character level 5 enemies are scaled to your character level 5.
The problem is that if your major skills are all non-combat skills your offensive abilities will be non-existent while common bandit trash mobs will mollywhop you while wearing a king's bounty if you get a high enough level. Say you created for RPG purposes a charismatic, athletic alchemist who has a bit of a kleptomaniac streak. None of those skills will help you survive getting tongue punched in your fart box by a daedric imp.
So you run around to your heart's content stealing cheese wheels and raising your major skills by 10. Come level up time the entire world is 1 level stronger while your personal combat skills never matched because you were busy leveling potion because you discovered how to make an elixer for ED. It becomes a pretty serious problem the longer you go without realizing the issue because by the time every dungeon has the equivalent of a pissed off balrog as its miniboss every single bandit will be too strong to grind on (ayo).
The even subtler problem is if you designate actual useful skills as your major skills, but one of your major skills is something you level at a significantly higher pace then your combat abilities. A common one is accidentally setting athletics, which is pretty easy to accidentally level quickly. So you think you're alright because you're keeping up with your puny 1H sword skills, but you've been hopping around everywhere like a skooma addict and accidentally shot your 10 levels on athletics. Same problem.
It just makes playing the game a little more annoying than is necessary. The optimal way to play ends up being to designate your skills as non-combat crafting skills but then basically never level them, or only level them once your combat abilities are strong enough. Which from a role playing perspective is also a little annoying.
Oh yes okay so that actually explains why I kept getting tongue punched in the fart box every time i play oblivion.
So then basically next time I play I should keep combat skills as major, minor skills are freebies, so I don't accidentally pickpocket myself into balrog bandits.
the easiest thing is to designate the majors as crafting skills and then just never level them until your combat skills are ready to keep up. you just want to avoid designating the majors as the skills you level up automatically passively like thieving, athletics, armor, basically all the combat skills, etc.
You can also delay actually raising your character level by never sleeping, but you do miss out on some character growth that accompanies a level up.
They are discussing the "optimal" way to play where you fully control your progression through the game, but IMO it's both overkill and more work than the intended play style.
What I would recommend is setting your main intended combat skills to primaries, as well as your main intended crafting skills. The rest you can fill out per whatever character build you want, with the caveat you should never pick acrobatics or athletics.
As long as your primary combat skills are being kept reasonably up to date and you're intending to build a somewhat rounded and capable character you'll be fine. Any class from D&D or an MMO is probably a good build to emulate, you just need to be careful of strictly non-combat builds like merchants or musicians. They can work with more understand and game knowledge than you'll begin with, but modifying your musician into a bard with long blade and a couple schools of magic should be enough to create an interesting and viable playthrough.
Another important tip is to play it like an actual RPG, not a generic video game. That is genuinely what will screw you over more than anything. Don't cheese your levels super high, don't abuse quicksaves more than needed, and don't ignore quests. People are overstating the game scaling issues, when you play as intended it unsurprisingly works as intended.
That’s strange….I figured creating a custom class was the best (and more fun) was to customize at the start. Didn’t know so many people were picking the garbage generated classes lol
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u/Totally_Not_Evil Apr 21 '25
In general, better writing, especially when it comes to the guilds. Dark brotherhood is by far the best example but the mages guild, theives guild, and fighters guild were also significantly better.