Oblivion is impossible!

[link1o1o1o]

For your primary skills, put skills you have FULL CONTROL over!!! Skills like acrobatics and athletics can be a pain because you may not want your stats at the end of each level up to be about speed or something like that. You will eventually reach a high skill for those...skills anyway because you practically jump, swim, and run all the time.

 

[Nieroshai]

I take it you aren't an RPG guy... well, not everyone is meant to like any one game. Elder Scrolls is primarily a stats game, really.

 

[Epona]

The best advice I can give is: Don't try to cheat the level system. Since the enemies level with you, you can actually beat the game at level 1 but still be very powerful from raising your minor skills. However, doing that takes out the fun. When I did that on my second playthrough I found myself constantly thinking about and looking at my skill levels.

Since your minor skills don't cause you to level up you could choose the skills you use the least as your major skills. I wouldn't though, just play it the way you like and adjust the difficulty to suit you. Bethesda really screwed up the level system but atleast they gave you a difficultly slider that can be changed at any time. It's bad design to force the player into cheating the system, either via the level system or via the difficulty slider, but Oblivion does just that.

 

[Booze Zombie]

Edit: Hey guys, thanks for all the replies. I was going to give another shot anyway, but for sure I'm going to lower the difficulty. Apparently archery sucks and or requires too much stratgie. I'll still to my blades and forget about archery all together. Does anyone know if there is a follower that could help me out this early?

Everything auto-levels with you, which is very annoying. Try focusing on heavy armour, spells, magicka regen and magicka in general... so, play as a Breton with heavy armour, effectivly.
Also, if you're playing it on the PC, put "Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul" and the Unoffical Oblivion Patch on your game for mucho joy.

Now, what happens with the set-up I've suggested, once you're good with your armour, is that you can heal yourself with the restoration spells, murder people with your destruction spells and well, easy sailing, but you've got to focus your stats and your skills or you'll get destroyed.

Rant over. Oblivion isn't a bad game it's just hard to get into and a complete failcake of a RPG system. Luckily, I heard that Skyrim will be using something more similar to Fallout 3/New Vegas with perks and stuff (not sure about SPECIAL)

They've ripped out all stats and instead you buff health, stamina or magicka directly with each level up.

 

[juraigamer]

Oblivion isn't the kinda game you can just jump into and expect to win. You have to build your character properly.

Also, don't powerlevel. Level slowly and somehow acquire the spell invisibility for any character. Why? Even if you make a character that sucks, you can always run away.

 

[newfoundsky]

Maybe you could say...

*Puts on sunglasses*

The enemies caused Oblivion.

I feel like you tried much to hard for that.

 

[Roamin11]

Really... I don't know your regular choice in games, but Oblivion is a pretty easy sauce game.

If your having problems, turn down the difficulty.

If you have a problem with the leveling system, at least Oblivion tried something new to the leveling system for say pacifist characters, it leaves a lot of things open.

Really, its a pretty easy game, just L2P

 

[Lonely Swordsman]

I hate to sound like the snobby elitist but every problem in your post could be answered by a quick look at the manual. Just saying.

 

[00slash00]

So I bought Oblivion friday (late to the party, I know) because I was looking forward to Skyrim without ever playing a Elder Scroll game. I figured I'd check it out before I paid for Skyrim.
In short, I hate it. The combat is wierd. Why don't enimies has health bars? And whats up the with leveling system? I don't get expirience from killing things? You're telling me I can level up by increasing my acrobatics skill 10 times?
And why is it SO hard? I'm at the FIRST Oblivion gate! It's impossible. I got there at level 2 (because it's the second fukin mission) and now I'm level 4 and still can't come close to beating it. I have a iron bow and steel arrows, and a "fine steel longsword" I'm Aprentice in Archery and Blade. Why do people like this game? I think it will be the first game I give up on due to difficulty in years. Atleast I only spent $20 bucks on it.
Edit: Hey guys, thanks for all the replies. I was going to give another shot anyway, but for sure I'm going to lower the difficulty. Apparently archery sucks and or requires too much stratgie. I'll still to my blades and forget about archery all together. Does anyone know if there is a follower that could help me out this early?

i never had trouble. actually thats not true. i originally made a thief/fighter and did all the side quests first so when i started the main quest, all the enemies in the portals were absurdly overpowered. you really shouldnt be having that much trouble unless you fucked up when making your class (i assume you made a custom class because all the preset class suuuuck). dont give up on a game just because you find it too difficult. games are supposed to be difficult. as far as i remember, the method for leveling up is the same one they used for morrowind so i have to ask, why the interest in skyrim if you didnt previously have any interest in the past elder scrolls games?

overall oblivion is a good game but not great. the combat was good for its time and i killed an entire summer playing nothing but that game. but the side quests were the only great thing about it. the main quest is rubbish

 

[beniki]

It does have a unique leveling system. It's actually more realistic than other games though, in terms of skill development at least. I think that taking out the attribute system would have solved all of their balance and progression planning issues, or at least tweaked it so it doesn't matter what skills you increased to get to the next level.

Happily they agreed with me and made that fix in Fallout!

Oblivion is a good game though. It's not a hand holding experience though. It's very much a case of the game saying, 'So what you wanna do now?' and it has a very heavy emphasis on side questing. If you don't really like it, then stick to Bioware type RPGs, where the story is the main focus.

Personally I didn't like it. Not because of the combat system, or the complicated character progression, or even because of the heavy side questing. It just felt so damn lonely. It was like playing an MMO without anyone else on the server. There is something cool about being the lone adventurer, trekking across mountainsides to find the magic maguffin, but sometimes you want people to recognise you.

Hmm. Think I'll try it again though. Maybe get past level 10 this time...

 

[duchaked]

sadly I had more or less the exact same problems when I first attempted to play Oblivion
Fallout 3 was much more accessible
but thanks for the tips, y'all...I've also been meaning to give Oblivion a good spin before Skyrim comes out!

 

[Kinguendo]

...Is this...is it real?

1. The enemies have health bars, it's that curved line above your crosshairs.

2. You level up from your class' main skills. Select something with the skills you intend to actually use as primary skills. It's not experience for killing things, since when does bashing a dude to death teach you how to raise the dead? It's how often you use the skill that levels it up.

3. Bows and arrows are recognised to be the trickiest weapons. If you want a cakewalk load up a mage.

I always use bows on Oblivion... LOVE IT!

I make it harder for myself by having NO armour specialities, I just wear clothes.

I never understand when people have difficulty with Oblivion, it makes no sense to me. I find most peoples complaints are that it isnt like other RPGs... wha? I thought people wanted original concepts (especially ones that WORK, like the ones in Elder Scrolls). And yeah, people complaining that its too hard... is it? IS IT?! I have never had that much difficulty with Oblivion, Morrowind is a different story because of the weird way you could hit something right in the face and NOT hit it in the face but I still got by. And when did they choose now to forget to look in "Options" to change the difficulty if they find it too hard?

It seems people just dont like realistic levelling systems and worlds where the path you take isnt completely linear.

 

[Epona]

Maybe it was just me but at the beginning of Fallout 3 I couldn't get enough ammo and I got lost everytime I tried to go somewhere. Oblivion had on open world, Fallout 3 has invisible walls.

 

[BottleOfAwesome]

If you're going to be an archer I recommend being a rogue-ish class because its almost always a one shot kill if you're in stealth... on the low-mid difficulty anyway.

 

[Vibhor]

Umm get mods. If you are playing a Bethesda game and you CAN get mods, GET THEM AS SOON AS POSSIBLE and in MASSIVE NUMBERS.

Dont listen to the fucking pc gamers, just turn down the difficulty to about 40 percent.

and play the game that bethesda gave you.

LOL FAIL!

Have you seen the list of bugs in the game?
It is larger than the buglist in minecraft beta and that is saying a lot.
Mods fix the bugs, fine tune the game to your liking and improve graphic/audio aspects of the game.
There is absolute no reason to not to get mods if you can.
Also, whats with the console elitism? Nobody even mentioned the inferiority of your console yet.

 

[A Free Man]

snip

You know what I find this kind of funny reading it. I was going to post a comment about how it's not that hard blah blah, but then I remembered the first time I played morrowind lol. Honestly it isn't an easy game when you first start, there are a lot of tricks to learn about the combat that experienced players take for granted but really make a big difference. On the default dificulty I find Oblivion slightly easy atm so I usually play it around about between the middle and hard. But trust me please when I say that you will get better, and you will like the game all the more for the fact that they don't just hand you a win but rather expect you to work out for yourself the best way to beat the enemies. Also I don't really think archery is that bad, you just need to get used to it. Take advantage of poisons/potions/enchantments/spells(even if your not a mage)/and of course the good old sneak. When you put them all together you find things much more doable.

 

[Hamish Durie]

seriously turn down the difficulty then go to the arena /joke and grow some balls

 

[ultrachicken]

So I bought Oblivion friday (late to the party, I know) because I was looking forward to Skyrim without ever playing a Elder Scroll game. I figured I'd check it out before I paid for Skyrim.
In short, I hate it. The combat is wierd. Why don't enimies has health bars? And whats up the with leveling system? I don't get expirience from killing things? You're telling me I can level up by increasing my acrobatics skill 10 times?
And why is it SO hard? I'm at the FIRST Oblivion gate! It's impossible. I got there at level 2 (because it's the second fukin mission) and now I'm level 4 and still can't come close to beating it. I have a iron bow and steel arrows, and a "fine steel longsword" I'm Aprentice in Archery and Blade. Why do people like this game? I think it will be the first game I give up on due to difficulty in years. Atleast I only spent $20 bucks on it.
Edit: Hey guys, thanks for all the replies. I was going to give another shot anyway, but for sure I'm going to lower the difficulty. Apparently archery sucks and or requires too much stratgie. I'll still to my blades and forget about archery all together. Does anyone know if there is a follower that could help me out this early?

There are no followers. If you want NPCs to help you, specialize in summoning, which is quite difficult if you want to use blade as well.

 

[ultrachicken]

Don't make the mistake of abandoning the main questline and powerleveling. Then you will really learn what it feels like to be out of your depth. Stick with it, if it gets too hard turn the difficulty down.

Actually, if you want to be a real cheesemonkey in Oblivion, you do what I did: take all the magic skills as your main skills. (I like Bretons as mages, personally.) Then proceed to run around with weapons very slowly beating up all the crappy low-level monsters. Do lots of side quests, particularly the ones that drop specialized loot. Get into the Mage's Guild. Make your own spells. Power-level yourself to level 12 or so by casting spells over and over and over and over. Go do all the Daedra prince quests.

Congratulations, you're now a god.

At no point in that many hours long process is there fun to be had.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

I seriously, can't tell if you're trolling. It's an RPG, do some side quests, level up some and so on.