also, while i’m here, the native leveling system is bonkers… It’s horrible. You can kind of ignore it, but you’ll be much weaker than you would be if you play into it.
The only roadblock here are guild requirements to get to the top of the hierarchy. Gameplay-wise, I can’t remember any time I had regrets over a borked leveling in the past or something. In spite of Morrowind’s system sounding utterly weird, it didn’t implement autoleveling to such a degree that it matters. Comparatively, I got frustrated with Skyrim and completely dropped Oblivion the last time I tried to revisit them. The latter directly tied enemies and their equipment to your base level, so it punished you greatly in the middle of the game if you pick something weird, and you can’t just sink money to correct that.
The level scaling in Oblivion and Skyrim are worse, true. It’s kind of impressive how bad an idea and execution the level scaling in Oblivion was. They place enemies based on your total level, so if you leveled up from non-combat skills then you’ll have a bad time. It makes exploring kind of pointless, because you’ll never find anything interesting. And then there were the bandits wearing thousands of GP worth of equipment mugging you for 100gp.
In morrowind, not much scales with you so it matters less. You can’t raise a skill above its stat, so you can kind of paint yourself into a corner with bad leveling. (Though I think you can use fortify-attribute to get around that at trainers)
I feel like that push (and then radiant quests, automated faction battles, structure of dungeons with a final chest and an exit, mini-bosses etc) came from Todd trying to optimize everything in production after the hell of making Morrowind. Let the game write itself as much as possible, let’s make places not Lego, but Lego Duplo constructors for our designers and generate trees\grass over them, and then - the leveling got too generalized to become awkward. Wide brush strokes and big ideas as a base canvas, with some select things painted-in afterwards intentionally.
The only roadblock here are guild requirements to get to the top of the hierarchy. Gameplay-wise, I can’t remember any time I had regrets over a borked leveling in the past or something. In spite of Morrowind’s system sounding utterly weird, it didn’t implement autoleveling to such a degree that it matters. Comparatively, I got frustrated with Skyrim and completely dropped Oblivion the last time I tried to revisit them. The latter directly tied enemies and their equipment to your base level, so it punished you greatly in the middle of the game if you pick something weird, and you can’t just sink money to correct that.
The level scaling in Oblivion and Skyrim are worse, true. It’s kind of impressive how bad an idea and execution the level scaling in Oblivion was. They place enemies based on your total level, so if you leveled up from non-combat skills then you’ll have a bad time. It makes exploring kind of pointless, because you’ll never find anything interesting. And then there were the bandits wearing thousands of GP worth of equipment mugging you for 100gp.
one of the original developers recently came out and said it was a huge mistake: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/elder-scrolls-4-oblivions-level-scaling-was-a-mistake-says-designer-so-why-is-it-in-the-remaster
In morrowind, not much scales with you so it matters less. You can’t raise a skill above its stat, so you can kind of paint yourself into a corner with bad leveling. (Though I think you can use fortify-attribute to get around that at trainers)
You know, you could afford glass armor too, if you skipped the cup of soy ale every other day! Coin-to-coin, that’s how my business is going!
An article for an article: https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/27/18281082/elder-scrolls-morrowind-oral-history-bethesda
I feel like that push (and then radiant quests, automated faction battles, structure of dungeons with a final chest and an exit, mini-bosses etc) came from Todd trying to optimize everything in production after the hell of making Morrowind. Let the game write itself as much as possible, let’s make places not Lego, but Lego Duplo constructors for our designers and generate trees\grass over them, and then - the leveling got too generalized to become awkward. Wide brush strokes and big ideas as a base canvas, with some select things painted-in afterwards intentionally.