Why I don't like Morrowind/Oblivion's Levelup System

Discussion in 'Games' started by Xylia, Nov 3, 2016.

  1. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    You say this, but...

    This is something easily sussed out with some trial and error in just a few minutes with some common sense logic. When you get to Balmora, and you find the Alchemist Shop (which I'm sure you will, because a thieves' guild quest sends you there lol) and you see she's got LOTS of reagents. A lot of them are very cheap in price.

    Any player who has a head between their shoulders is going to go "hum... what's stopping me from buying cheap ingredients and mixing them and selling them back as potions?" especially when they see that the shops restock immediately as soon as you close and re-open dialogue.

    So, after some trial and error, it wouldn't take too long (if they started with cheapest ingredients first) to discover that Scales + Muck (two of THE cheapest things Naryla sells) = Drain Personality. One successful attempt costs ~5 gold and the potion sells for ~8-9 gold at low Alchemy skill and basic alchemy tools.

    Wow, that's almost 50% profit! It's just.... you fail too often. Well, ok, thieves guild gives you 500-1000 gold per quest, I'll keep questing for them to build up some starting capital first. This early in the game, if you're worried about major/minor skills, again, anybody with a head on their shoulders will figure out that they should do Mercantile/Alchemy as Misc skills.

    5 hours later and they have Alchemy 100 and they have completely broken the game to where money is useless because they can print money anytime they want, and they are invincible because said health potions heal HP faster than nearly any enemy can take it away and said potions weigh 0.1 lbs. This means ONE HUNDRED potions is 10 lbs. Basically, you're immortal by that point.

    Skyrim doesn't allow you to do this by any means. Yes, it is impossible to mess your character up so badly the game is unwinnable, but yet there are far fewer broken mechanics just laying around to easily stumble into. Before patches, you could give yourself unlimited stats at the very beginning of the game by making a 1 second Fortify _____ to get your stats into the hundreds which made you more of a deity than Dagoth Ur ever was. And you can do this about 10 minutes into the game, thanks to the friendly mages' guild having said spells for sale and Spellmaking which leads to some of the most broken gameplay I've ever seen in an RPG, like, ever.
     
  2. Marco93

    Marco93 Star Wrangler

    I think that one limit of "The Elder Scroll" growing mechanics is that quests become only a source of money/reward.
    At the beginning of the game it's quite fine, but after a couple hours, they become quite useless. Why should I help you for 500 gold if I can get 1000 just by killing bandits? (Well, the enemy equipment was quite ridiculous too).
    The problem is that without experience points the quests become useless, and you have to play them only for the story.
    For and RPG system that's quite a limit.
     
  3. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    They could, you know, have meaningful rewards like equipment for quests? Or useful supplies? Now Morrowind... yeah some of its quests rewards things like potions and that's all good and all, but why don't any quests reward armor, weapons, etc? You could either keep the equipment or sell it for the money. Or what about a free increase in one of your skills?

    Like, say, an alchemist gives you a quest, you do said quest and the alchemist either offers to train you, OR, your experience of doing the quest teaches you a tidbit about alchemy (kinda like reading a book).
     
  4. Marco93

    Marco93 Star Wrangler

    A free increase of the skill could be a good solution, but the problem remains. If you based your character on stealth and archery, why would you need training in heavy armor?
     
  5. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    Obviously, the skill increases would be on sensible NPCs. Go to Fighter's Guild, get Heavy Armor, 2-Handed Weapons, etc. Go to Mage's Guild, get Magic Skills. Go to Thieves' Guild, get Stealthy skills.

    Outside of guilds, if you go to a blacksmith and he gives you a quest, well obviously you're either gonna get armorer, heavy armor, etc. If you go to an alchemist, you're obviously gonna get alchemy.

    So.... you either accept that you will get skills you might not be interested in, or simply don't do the quests that don't yield the rewards you want. That's better than every quest rewarding chump change, right? And besides.... in Morrowind at least (and Oblivion), a little extra Misc skills never hurt. All stats are useful no matter who you are. Strength increases carry load even if you're a mage, for example. So getting a point or two of Blunt weapons wouldn't hurt to help you raise your strength a little if your intelligence and willpower are already high, even if you have no plans of using Blunt.

    Also, later in the game, you might want the free skills to raise your skills up into something that's usable (trying to hit anything, even a rat or a mudcrab with 5-10 skill is nigh-impossible) in case you wanted to raise these skills later without having to spend a ton of gold doing it.
     
  6. Corraidhín

    Corraidhín Supernova

    So I am curious, have you played ESO? if so, what do you think of its perk-system? being an online game, it has to be handled differently, but I am curious what your opinion would be on the matter. If you have not played it, you are not missing out massively, it is an enjoyable game, but not one to die for imho.
     
  7. Xylia

    Xylia Tiy's Beard

    I've not played ESO, so I can't really comment on it.
     
  8. Corraidhín

    Corraidhín Supernova

    Ahh all right ^^ sorry, I simply had to ask!
     

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