Oblivion was kind of really bad though. It had the worst level scaling of the genre.
I think the spell crafting was also toned down and more gated than Morrowind. And the equipment I think was overly simplified.
Progression was atrocious indeed.
You had all the reasons to cheese the system by levelling up as little as possible, or ignoring all but two or three of your class skills. Or even choosing to progress specifically in non-class skills.
Because trying out all of your class skills would make you level up way too fast, and suddenly you’re facing armies of enemies and you have zero edge against them.
Not sure how what exactly they changed with Skyrim, but the balance feels a lot better. Maybe it’s the perks, getting rid of classes entirely, or not tying enemy levels to yours that tightly.
Maybe they can fix that in this alleged Oblivion remake of them.
I feel like trying to combine
- high vertical power growth
- non linear “open world”
- power fantasy
all together is just fundamentally at odds with itself.
Personally I’d prefer to see less vertical power growth. I’d rather have the numbers stay somewhat constrained.
Like, let’s say the most damage you can ever do with a lightning spell is 100. Work backwards from that to figure out how much health things should have. We want a master mage to be able to blow mooks up in one zap, mid tier in 3, and big scary shit in 6.
A novice mage zaps for 20. We want mooks to take 3 hits, mid tier stuff maybe 10, and big scary stuff a lot.
Mooks: ~60hp Mid tier: ~210 Bosses: 600
If your gameplay is then deeper than a simple stat check, a novice can persevere and win against a big challenge.
I really super dislike it when you have stuff that looks like a mook or a boss, but is statted otherwise. I remember in Oblivion some witch lady was oddly high level, and she kept fighting despite having like 50 arrows in her face.
Something like that, but with more thought put into it than a Lemmy post from the couch.
I always thought, it worked quite well to have different areas with weaker or stronger enemies. That way, you have challenges to match to your character’s strength, but you still have a form of progression and you get shown your power-level when you pass through a low-level area again. Downside for game studios is that this requires good world building, to guide players where they should or should not go. And yeah, that wasn’t exactly Oblivion’s strong suit with mostly everything looking like a high-fantasy meadow…