You are unhinged and I am HERE FOR IT. I am so fucking glad the algorithm brought me to you. You're like a friend going on an angry rant at the D&D table. Please take this genuine compliment in the spirit in which it is given. This is peak weaponized autism. You are a gift. Never change. Love your videos, man.
I think people have missed the point on Pat’s section on levelling: It’s not that you have to efficiently level, it’s that if you play the game as intended you run into problems that can inadvertently ruin your playthrough because if you don’t know what you’re doing you can be in a state where you are consistently one-shotted, can’t do enough damage, or have to turn the difficulty down and now level too slowly to see level-gated content. The solutions are to either level efficiently, which is terrible and no one wants to do, or to play in specific ways which requires prior knowledge and also sucks since it removes player choice. You can’t play the way the developers intended, which is to be rewarded for playing however you want which builds a character more like the role you want to play. The level scaling system doesn’t accommodate it. In Pat’s words, it’s “accidentally evil.” A shorter version is that Morrowind is built in a way that players bounce off until they realise any build ends up overpowered, Oblivion is the opposite in that any build looks viable until you hit some level boundaries dozens of hours in and realise you can’t play the way you want anymore. If you *have* to play a certain way or adjust the difficulty, it’s a failure of design rather than of the player and can’t be sufficiently attributed to skill. They legit just built it wrong for what their intended purpose was.
I'm with you on this. I appreciate Old Knights content because it is actually amazing. I like Oblivion, but it has a real curve when it comes to accepting that some builds just don't really work. And Bethesda screwed up pretty bad with that as you can invest a lot of hours into a character that can't really work. Hell, they created basic classes like the Thief and Agent which don't have major access to any real combat capabilities so are almost destined to fail. Like you quoted Pat saying, "accidentally evil". I hate to say it, but the Skyrim "class" system is a "better" class system then Oblivion, simply because it's upfront about what you're getting and how to get it. Sure it has less depth, but at least your average player will know what their doing.
I don't think I agree with You here. I get that without efficient levelling the game can get too hard because of the level scaling, but... From what I've seen online the people that were constantly one-shotted were the same people that picked auto-levelling skills (acrobatics, athletics) to "cheat" the system and level faster. I'm not saying that is the only reason, but I believe that could be a majority of people who was upset about the levelling system.
Yeah, pat said that in since in morrowind there is (almost) no level scaling for enemies, even the worst build can eventually overlever and become OP. In Oblivion, not efficient leveling creates an ever-growing power difference between enemies and the player. He later in the vid explains that's why he picked the majors that he picked, to control the leveling.
@@Va5syl There's also the players like me, who tried to play a heavy melee build and ended up with a wet noodle because we had the absolute insolence to pick the Endurance skills as majors. Or picked acrobat/atheletics not to cheat the system, but because we wanted to play a mobile character. I may have bounced off Oblivion for a while before I actually took a deep dive into the mechanics.
Well said. In morrowind, you start out as a tadpole and end up as a god. In oblivion, you start out as a decent warrior and end up as a cretin unless you have prior knowledge and farm/grind to well, oblivion. The point of the original video is that if you pick a regular old race and a class that THEY BUILT FOR YOU you'll end up boned, which is a major problem with oblivion. Only thing I'll say is that in skyrim they streamlined this, and corrected for this very problem, and people still bitched because it made the game same-y and luckluster.
I think here Patricia is comparing leveling attributes in Morrowind and Oblivion. Because of unlimited trainer usage in Morrowind, the player has greater agency on how they want to shape their character. In his opinion the change in how trainers work is a step back.
I think unlimited training greatly diminishes the player experience and progression system in Morrowind. The combat itself can be fun in oblivion if you actually try to deal damage. It is not fun if you intentionally deal the least amount of damage possible.
What sort of madman would play a glacial build that goes needlessly slow? Perhaps the same sort of madman that would produce 12 hour long videos that go needlessly slow . . .
I think the efficient leveling idea is that you don't have skills you frequently use as your major skills to have more control over when you level, but it always seems wrong to me to do that.
I think it's partially down to the fact that people expect attributes to be rather important in Oblivion, as they typically are in other RPGs, but they just barely matter. The other part is down to people's fear of unintentionally making a non-optimal character by endgame (even though attributes barely do anything) and meanwhile completely kneecapping their builds in early game and (especially) midgame.
The most important thing is to never choose Athletics as a major skill, because you get experience just by walking, so unless you plan on riding a horse or sneaking everywhere, you'll have pretty much no control over when you level up.
@@chameleonx9253 honestly, even when efficiently leveling (to an extent), I favor athletics, because it doesn't go up fast, even as a major, and the starting boost makes me faster and the game more fun.
@@squid4545The skills themselves are what do the heavy lifting, especially when you get really high levels. For example, going from destruction level 80 to 100 reduces the Magicka cost a lot more than going from 20 to 60. Those last 20 points matter a lot.
I'm a big fan of both you and Patrician's content, and I think what you might be missing due to not watching the entire video (which I completely understand) is that he doesn't *like* efficient leveling, and is engaging with it out of spite. His entire point regarding the character building/skill selection is that it is designed in an almost malevolent way, requiring the player to not only drastically alter the way they play the game in order to min/max it, but to actually play in a way that is completely counter-intuitive to what any player would expect from an RPG while also being mind-numbingly boring. While yes min/maxing is not mandatory to beat Oblivion, the process of min/maxing in an RPG is a time honored tradition that a lot of players set out to do, and Oblivion's system is almost perfectly designed to make min/maxing attributes as difficult/unfun as possible. His build is not presented as an "optimal" build for playing the game, and I think he would admit as much considering he openly admits to macro-ing and spamming skills to level at points in his playthrough in order to maintain his "clean" leveling. His build is simply what he put together for himself in order to most effectively manage an efficient leveling playthrough. I don't think he would ever argue that what he does in his playthrough is smart, fun, or a recommended way to play the game. It's similar to how in his Morrowind video he does an entire playthrough of the game on the original Xbox 360 version. He doesn't do it because it's optimal or required, he does it because it's unarguably the worst medium to experience Morrowind, and he wants to make a point about both how bad it is and how Morrowind is still enjoyable despite playing it on the worst platform possible. I think Patrician does slightly overstate the value of attributes when talking about "The Leveling Problem", and how detrimental enemy scaling is, but overall I actually find his section re: Oblivion's leveling system very well thought out and interesting. His commitment to an efficient leveling playthrough and talking about the follies associated with that is very on-brand for his Bethesda content which is very even handed in exploring the highs and lows of the systems present in each game. For anyone who took the time to read this comment, I REALLY recommend you check out Patrician's content. I absolutely love it and if you like The Old Knight's Oblivion deep-dives I think you'll also like Patrician's content, especially his Bethesda content.
I've watched Patrician's videos on these games and I'll agree. His point, if I recall right, is exactly that. That trying to engage with the game this way is terrible and showing what it takes to do that. He's making a point. Part of these videos is giving every aspect of the game a shake down. Doing weird things to record it becomes inevitable. His TES playthroughs will often involve him playing multiple characters through the ENTIRE GAME for a ground up take on every style of playing rather than make the all encompassing master character. Which is kind of an insane dedication to fact finding. His skyrim video certainly does. That said, I do think pointing how how little attributes do is a more effective means of disabusing people of 'the leveling problem' myth. Once you see the math done live, it all feels like such a waste of time.
Completely agree. Pat provides multiple “solutions” to the problem and resigns himself to the fact that the levelling system is accidentally evil. If you play the game casually you have a very real chance of inadvertently soft-locking yourself because the level scaling will make everything one-shot you and/or you unable to kill things. If you make the game easier to account for this, you’ll level slower than intended because levelling works based on successful uses and you inherently use things less on easy, so there’s a chance you won’t see level-gated content by the time you naturally should. The only way to actually get through it without headaches is to know things about the game before going in and accommodate that, which is pretty terrible. The game was designed with the idea that you can do anything and should do everything, but the execution of it is that you can do a very narrow amount and have to do it before you outlevel your build’s effectiveness *unless* you build a specific way.
So the reason why his character sucks is because he was ADAMANT that Oblivion is a game that requires you to efficient level your character, or you will not be able to play the game- and his evidence for this belief is his efficient leveled character.... Not being able to play the game..... That has got to be the funniest self-owns I have seen in a while. Guys, make a character you want to PLAY as and play the game normally. Throw this misconception of "efficient leveling" out of the window and go have fun..... And apparently make a character that can ACTUALLY be played... Anyways, great video, love your work!
Oblivion is 18 years old now and really only fairly recently are we seeing anything like these “efficient leveling guides” surface around. Skyrim players who want to play Oblivion look at these videos, take it as fact, get angry, and hate Oblivion after playing according to these stupid guides.
@@Elohim100 The concept of "Efficient leveling" has been around for a long while, now. People were complaining about it back when it was mainly played on Xbox 360. It's only recently that Skyrim players are looking back to past games in the series and making these "guides" more mainstream. There are videos on youtube about it going as far back as 10 years ago. Before that, it was still around, just not as interesting of a topic to post a video on it.
@@claytucker5025 I mean yeah there were guides, but completely upside down convoluted ways of leveling like not choosing your major skills or not leveling up is something I never heard of until maybe like 2 years ago. It’s all by Skyrim TH-camrs as well.
@@Elohim100 Yes, not choosing your major skills and never leveling up have been around for a very long time, SorcerorDave has a let's play, one of his roleplay ones from over 8 years ago where he was talking about this very thing in a tangent. The whole "bad leveling" misconception came from players who felt they should have been doing ridiculous amounts of damage from an average build and noticed they killed enemies slower as they leveled up, leading to the spread of the "efficient leveling" and the "don't level up" advice. But Skyrim, Has Indeed, brought some new players in who have found these old Reddit posts and guides on TH-cam to revive this misconception, anew. It's a terrible shame, the advice they found was from people who fundamentally did not understand what was going on under the hood of Oblivion, and thusly, are having a terrible experience from this amazing game and are likely deterring newer players from playing it due to those bad experiences.
I started roughly efficient leveling on my own as a kid the moment I learned how raising attributes worked. It wasn't exactly optimal, but I, for example, reasoned to take Blade as my favored skill, even though I used Blunt, and pretty quickly started being rewarded with +4s and +5s. I didn't even know about needing to get Endurance early yet, just learning how the game worked at all immediately made me start doing things that were counter intuitive from the game's presentation I don't resent this like some others do, but it's an undeniable factor baked into the game that a kid can figure out, once the hood is popped open a bit.
It genuinely ruined the series for me for a good while. I found myself nitpicking every aspect of every elder scrolls game as I played them. Once I realized it I just stopped caring and found myself enjoying it again.
The video is pretty good overall but yeah as someone who actually plays Oblivion, I found his discussion on efficient leveling weirdly misinformed and this build is always so hilariously weird and nonsense.
How in the F does anyone have a video titled "a quick retrospective" and it's 12 hours long. That's almost as long as watching all 3 LotR extended editions.
@@harpernerys7345 oh my god lmao. I just don't see how you can possibly have that much to talk about. Like, I could say everything I wanted to say about Skyrim in like 20 mins max. Dragging your video out that long either makes you talk about every little unimportant thing or just repeat yourself over and over. Not my kind of content.
@@HeavenlyPhantomStar It's comprehensive. Very well produced. Not repetitive or full of meaningless nitpicks. Not telling you to watch it if it's not your thing, but your assumptions are inaccurate.
Man I really appreciate how different your takes are on this game. I took things slow and had a blast with my last character. No efficient levelling, but I mixed my major and minor skills up so that I earned fairly high attributes without having to think about it. Orc; Warrior; Combat Specialization; Armourer, Blunt, and Acrobatics as the major skills that I used frequently, with Alt, Conj, Illusion and Marksman on the back burner. Eventually got one hundred Restoration without doing any power leveling. That’s what I love about this game. Everytime I think I’ve got the mechanics down to a perfect science, I figure out something new, and see there is no real RIGHT way to play. Chasing perfection kills the fun, but indifference can too. It makes for a careful balance that I can really appreciate, when every character plays a little differently.
Patrician has no room to talk about having a miserable gameplay experience when he’s deliberately making his build bad. You don’t need to efficiently level every time to be powerful. You just need magic. It’s accessible and easy to use.
@theoroderick782 if you enchant your gear and keep up with upgrading your equipment every few levels, playing entirely without magic is definitely possible, although more challenging
@@theoroderick782 Elder scrolls is a series steeped heavily in magic usage being an everyday thing for pretty much everyone. Bethesda may try to push there being 3 main archetypes but the reality is you are supposed to be using every aspect of the game to your advantage. By all means dont use magic if you dont want to. But be prepared to have to compensate for it with something like alchemy (or smithing if you are playing Skyrim.)
I wonder if a very inefficiently leveled character at 26 that uses magic (like knight does in his videos) would be stronger than an efficiently leveled warrior at level 26. I think they probably would be.
@infinitedeath1384 without even testing yes just by virtue of either using Destruction or even Conjuration alone. Characters in Oblivion weren't meant to ignore magic
no wonder he ran into a wall casting restoration spells with a macro edit: only found footage of mysticism and athletics being leveled with a macro, my memory might be fuzzy due to how exhausting it gets to watch such a huge video
Notice that he is standing 2m away from the mudcrab and the models do not collide. Morrowind weapons have reach as a meaningful part of the gameplay. Thats the implication of "No spears" critique of Oblivion and Skyrim, because weapons in Oblivion and Skyrim have reach only on paper, in gameplay theres almost no difference between a claymore and dagger. Anyway thats besides the point, "people" that can't grasp they are playing a RPG and not an demonsoulslike action game are beyond saving and their opinions are worthless.
I've heard this multiple times about reach and I don't really know where it comes from. Is this something that is fixed with the unofficial patch? I don't play entirely unpatched, but comparing the unpatched games is kinda stupid. Morrowind is a pathetic mess with no patches. Being blind improves your accuracy. Being fatigued improves your repair success rate. You can't level the last few points of attributes except 1 at a time. The list is endless, both of the games have insane amounts of problems unpatched.
I think long time Morrowind players have a hard time reconciling Oblivion conceptually because Oblivion is actually difficult beyond the hit chance mechanic and it's much harder to outscale the difficulty with your build, so people blame the attribute system as being why the game is hard without examining any other factors, such as: -faster paced real time combat -enemies that are properly scaled to fight you and expect you to utilize the game's mechanics -the expectation you are keeping up with your gear and regularly preparing for dungeons Just to name a few. But it's what I love about Oblivion. The game rewards you for being patient and preparing between dungeons with potions and spells and recharging your enchants and repairing your equipment. Even inefficient stock spells have a massive impact on your gameplay. It always feels like your build matters in Oblivion and I love that, too
Most people don't realize Oblivion combat relies on timing, once you figure that out it becomes a lot more fun and extremely interesting. It's a shame they dialed it back in Skyrim, because with more polish it could have been a really deep combat system.
The worst build was the one I made as a kid, before I knew how the levelling actually worked, and thought more levels = stronger. Major skills speechcraft, alchemy, mercantile, security, sneak, and I forget. IMMEDIATELY out of the sewers, go power level speechcraft and sneak, make as many potions as possible and sell everything. Then wonder why I'm dying to everything even though my level is so high. Ironically though... the actual build is probably pretty close to optimal. Most of the primary skills are things you never really NEED, so can level at your own pace, ect. It's just the implementation of it that made it the worst.
Love how this channel doubled in subs, it's so peak and it makes me realize how little I know about this game even after so many years. Statistics wise that is.
I did watch this review a few years ago- and back then i like forgotten so much of the game that it made since to me and i was like "oh okay". I will say i think PatricianTV is a great Orator and definitely has a lot of insight when it comes to Lore stuff and its fun to hear him talk about the real deep lore. But yeah after i came back to the game recently, i felt like i was going crazy cuz i was thinking to myself "this isnt nowhere as hard as Patrician was making it out to be". Heck, ive been having a lot more fun with it than i did as a kid and managed to get a lot farther than i did back then. So yeah he definitely was too harsh on a lot of aspects of the game, as a lot of people are. Oblivion is an amazing game in its own right and still worth playing so im glad youre out here sticking up for it in terms of the discourse- or whatever you wanna call it
I'd love to hear you comment further on the discussion the build was actually for. Not for any smug Internet Fight reason. Merely because the topic is interesting. Leveling speed vs. enemy health pool vs. your damage output. You should watch Patrician's entire leveling segment where he goes into why he does the build, and the leveling in general. I have personally found myself encountering the exact same issue that Patrician brings up in the video when I've tried Oblivion in the past. Enemies that hit hard, and have massive health pools, with a 'broken' feeling level bracketing system.
Physical weapons are balanced poorly, and marksman is just especially weak. Without poisons, destruction spells, summons, or enchanted weapons you just aren’t going to dish out high damage. Many new players manage fatigue poorly. The game didn’t get difficult because you only gained +3 to endurance and not +5. (Rereading this sounds like I’m being snarky/rude please don’t take it that way it is not my intent).
To rephrase the old knights comment into a nearly directly viewable example A Great build with 100 in all stats will still be a strong build if its stats are cut in half to 50, over 75% of the characters strenght comes from equipment and skills, not stats so losing 12% going from 100% power to 88% in power- not a breaking point A terrible build with bad equipment, skills, spells and items, starts out at that 50% power mark by comparison and even doubling the raw stats (ie 50 end goes to 100) would not make them twice as strong, it might only make them go from 50% to 60% in relative power to a Great build the Great build Still performs nearly 50% better with Half! the Raw Stat pool (60+50%=90) bad build = the one in the 12 hour video good build = one of old knights mages
iirc He did that build as a meme and to efficient level it out of spite of efficient leveling in the worst way possible, this is why people recommended this video of his to you. xD
When I first picked up Oblivion I enjoyed the crap out of it and barely had any trouble. That was until I started reading up on the level mechanics and people's "advice" on it. I think this miss-information has really soured the gameplay experience, because people hyper fixate on it. Good job debunking this myth. I hope your words will reach a lot of people :)
i think this is the best video you've made, glad im going back in the catalogue ❤ short rant time (as i always leave in ur comments, i feel i made good points today) Like Omg finally Yes yes yes He makes so many Wrong points in such a long "well informed" video Also not using alteration in a tank build?? As a major skill.. like- by level 10 if he just split 5/5 heavy armor and alteration (he would still get +3 endurance with some blocking and thats enough! by level 16 he'd still have 80 endurance and 210+ health) he would have 55 alteration and 50 heavy armor by 10 and be at 70-80 armor for most fights using defend (15%) and shield (30%) for 42% total after 95% effeciency and take Wayy less damage then his crap armor rating by level 10 that he had- HE Couldnt Even Equip a Shield for its defence value utility because of hand to hand (50 skill would make full dwarven like 30 armor with shield and 100 skill without dwarven shield is 35) 50 whole skill points for 5 defence according to him is a good idea! 30 +42 shield spells for 72 defence at level 10! crazy tanky as he wanted) Better yet! Feather would make him Move Swift and he could round out his magical resistant with flame/element shield and more safely absorb fire attacks 😭 He didnt even bother with the atronach standing stone for a temp 80% absorption to cast Something Good with incoming magic fills Like- Why not use soul trap and a mages staff in this build? paralyse staff is good, a large telekensis staff would restore magicka due to the unintended features of spell absoption, and damage would be damage, once again lets go with level 10! 60 shock damage staff- oh idk, 5 times more damage then his fists and ranged to boot (twice as good cause fists are about 2 hits in the same cast time) It wouldve been a Good Ulitlity of Mysticism! His Major Skill 😭 He Couldve Use just 3 of his major skills with this exact set-up and what ever weapon and achieved 4 times the results in a 5th of the time spent- god if you went gold grabbing in the thousands from guilds or poison apples you could speed run this entire affair in 2 hours with 5 heavy armor training each level and walking around casting feather HE SPENT an HOUR training Hand to Hand AT the start Duck 🤬
hes using skills like hand to hand so he'll get the +5 to strength on level. and switch to blade until you get 100 strength because oblivion is a well made game. the only major skill he uses is heavy to control the +5 endurance which is the only attribute that matters to level early
That is a good argument in favor of absorb. Honestly I didn't think of that, and I have definitely nuked myself before without thinking. However, I will say that is not the argument that Pat made. At least not that I remember, maybe I'm wrong.
I think the real problem is that people have been conditioned to efficient leveling when skills is what always mattered more, Id say its less the guys fault he didn't know but the people who keep screaming about efficient leveling and spreading false info.
Having watched Pat's Morrowind, Oblivion, & Skyrim videos, it is apparent he can put out an extremely long video & assume most people aren't going to call him on each of his mistakes. Its the classic filibuster. Just keep talking and by the time you take a breath the other guy will forget his objections. He gets a lot of things right, but he's also one of those people who thinks he knows the "right way" to play a single-player RPG. The right way is the way which causes you to enjoy the time you spend. If playing by the meta is the most efficient way and that's what keeps a player going, great. If restricting yourself to the optimal strategies makes the game a chore, then the meta is wrong. Each of us, you, Pat, & I enjoy fried chicken. Chances are my favorite way to prepare it isn't the same as yours. I think he chose that build because he was trying to recreate his Morrowind character & roleplay as the Nerevarine in a new setting. It makes zero sense from a lore perspective, but whatever floats his boat, I suppose.
Exactly. I enjoy efficient leveling because there's a good reward at the end. I get my character to level 26, all attributes except personality and luck at 100. I have the skills I don't want to use in the major category, except restoration and destruction since they take ages to grind. Then once I've gotten all the gear I want, and made some spells for buffing and weakness stacking, then I can get to the good part, which is doing all the questlines without worrying about leveling or enemy scaling, since 26 is where I stop leveling.
@@infinitedeath1384 That could be fun. Forcing myself to grind out those +5 bonuses per level, 25 times and then not leveling isn't something I'd do unless my options were that or being waterboarded, but everyone has their own way. The way I play would likely drive you mad & the way you play would drive me to tears. This isn't to say I never did the grinding thing. When I opened up the CD case for Oblivion after not touching it for six years or so, there were post-it notes with hatch marks noting my skill progress per level. That's why I like the games. They accommodate many avenues of approach.
I think the build was not really Patricia's Fault. He used that build because he though efficient leveling was the only way to get a strong late game character. I'm no expert in the game but I have played a few dozen hours and I cannot recall any sort of tips or advice in the game on what skills or abilities are good. Maybe the guild quest lines were sort of meant to do that in a way but I mean they don't really force you to play in a certain way, and by the time you find them maybe you already have a build in mind. Being free to go and do whatever is cool and all but then you get goofy decisions based on lack of knowledge. BTW I gotta rewatch your video on efficient levels to understand what your attitude is because so far I cannot understandit it properly. Sorry for any typos
For someone who spent over 12 hours on both games, you'd think Patrician would understand that not every player instantly understands how a game works and therefore wouldn't be so eager to boast about how superior his intellect is. NO, not every Morrowind player is like that, but every single player, without exception, has taken that dagger and failed to hit an enemy with it many times while at zero stamina their first time out. Morrowind just doesn't teach the player its mechanics in the best possible way, it's not some sort of Turing test. Basically: Patrician, give humility a try from time to time. (Yeah I'm totally not a hypocrite lol)
I like to level efficiently, but not at the cost of fun. Usually what I'll do is just grind up my skills for a few minutes every time I gain a new level to make sure I've got the max bonus, and then just play the game normally until I level. You "waste" some skill levels that way, but in practice you have way more than you'll ever need to get every stat to 100.
@@theoldknight85 It's mostly the magic skills that are tedious. I basically just have to stand in the corner casting a training spell over and over until I get ten levels between them. Or five levels if I've got a major skill that keys off that attribute. The physical stats are easier. I usually collect every weapon and piece of armor I find and stash them in my house anyway, so when I go back to sleep and level up I'll just pick up the gear that matches the stats I want to raise and then go out and play the game. When I get enough levels with one skill, I'll swap to a different set of gear and just keep playing. Has the added benefit of keeping things fresh, since you're always switching up your playstyle and approaching encounters differently depending on what skill you're focusing on.
What I find helps a bit with the magic skills is a tiny bit of degeneracy. Get Frostcrag Spire running early by whatever means you like, but only use it to make levelling spells until you feel you've crossed whatever invisible threshold justifies their "real" use. I find it facilities enjoying the game a bit more overall, since you're encouraged to explore early on, since travel time is spell grinding time, and getting Restoration 75 or whatever is no longer agony.
I know it might not get you a lot of views, but I'd love for you to have a side series where you play the game. You don't need to do anything particular; I just want you to fuck around in Oblivion and comment on all the random shit you see
Oblivion and Morrowind come from a time when we actually had freedom, more-so Morrowind, but it's like BGS heard the complaints of guard railing in Oblivion and said, "Hold my beer." Back to my original point, if you're going play like mentally and physically disabled character, the game is going to treat you like a mentally and physically disabled character. That's GOOD RP, not bad. The problem is after you've been spoiled by the rollercoaster that is Skyrim (and I love that ride too, don't get me wrong) you forget that a handicap means you actually have to get good at the game.
Skyrim's biggest mistake was making crafting skills so overpowered. The core systems without the balance-breaking crafting skills are actually excellent, especially on higher difficulties where you have to earn enchanted gear, potions become relevant, and your build actually matters beyond the smithing perks and getting twin enchantment. Highly recommend doing that for a more interesting experience
Having actually watched (listened to) the 12 hour video, trust me, it's not worth it. It only works as what it's intended for, background noise. The number of tangents and poor structuring (dont let the timestamps fool you) infuriated me
Having not seen the original, the shown footage looks like an overcorrection to my major problem with Oblivion: it effectively punishes you for playing in what should be an intuitive manner. It is very easy for a new player to create a wet noodle of a character accidentally when trying to build a Warrior. It is very easy for a player's damage to hit a wall relatively early on because they don't know the inner workings of the damage formula mean that damage is increased by fatigue-increasing gear. My first mage run was a miserable experience due to picking and playing the actual mage class at start and it took multiple warrior builds to zero in on a method that works without melee turning into a chore. And yes, I know now how avoid some of these pitfalls and enjoy playing some Oblivion every so often, but I do understand where that playstyle comes from.
i love to play the tank, always a pleasure to be invincible. But in this case, 25 in both light and heavy armor ? 5 in athletics ? Dude, i have the same atronach breton using alteration for more bulkiness, but i picked heavy armor, restoration, athletics or jump, blade and or destruction, mysticism and or invocation. What is his gameplay loop? Punch a man, heal, rince, repeat. "Bender punchy thingy" Mine is storm trough the level, go for the boss, conjure to keep the mobs busy, and smash that captain. "buhuhu, my oblivion chara is weak, can't do damage high level - what skill ? - hand-to-hand - ok zoomer". PS : dummies complaints about game mechanics, losers tends accompt of the hitting chance, winners relies on caius's ring, glitchers on guar hide and corckbulb root.
You’ve missed the point of Pat’s section on levelling. It’s that if you play the game as intended you run into problems that can inadvertently ruin your playthrough, so your solutions are to either level efficiently which is terrible or to play in specific ways which requires prior knowledge and also sucks. You can’t play the way the developers intended, which is to be rewarded for playing however you want which builds a character more like the role you want to play. The level scaling system doesn’t properly accommodate it. Saying “Well my build beats it and yours sucks” is the problem, the design ethos is that every build should be able to; hand to hand *shouldn’t* suck, and he was levelling it for strength so he could max the attributes to prove a point about how shitty efficient levelling is if you try it.
Recently started an oblivion play-through, first time since childhood. I love watching these videos and have heard endless people talk about the levelling system and how broken the scaling is and how you should delay level ups and never use your major skills. I decided to ignore all this and just play like a normal reasonable person would, choosing skills I intend to use as my major skills and being unconcerned with attributes (usually get +2/+3/+1 or something similar because I've been leveling luck). I figured worst case scenario maybe I'd have to turn the difficulty slider down because to hear these people talk my playstyle is insane and unviable, but the funny thing is I have not had to touch the slider once. I'm level 9 now so still quite a bit to go but I've been leveling at a steady pace, usually once or twice per dungeon or quest I complete, I've done 2 oblivion gates. Weaker enemies die in 2-5 hits, stronger enemies die in 10-15, which I think is a completely reasonable pace for them to die. I take a lot of damage but nothing absurd or unfair, usually it will take anywhere from 5-20 hits to kill me depending on the source of the damage. It's crazy to me because in both morrowind and skyrim I find myself constantly having to fiddle with the difficulty. About 10 hours into oblivion now and haven't had to touch it, and that to me is a good an indicator as any of a balanced game.
I think more people need to do purposefully bad builds. It requires you to look at the game in a different perspective and actually appreciate some of the more niche mechanics. For example my current build uses the staff of everscamp. I shoot an aoe command creature spell at them when combat starts and then focus on keeping them from dying instead of fighting enemies myself. Is it good? No. In fact its one of the worst builds ive ever played. What it does do though is make me approach combat in a way I havnt before. The fact its actually possible, even as bad as it is, is a testament to Oblivion having more nuance and options than people are willing to admit.
PatricianTV has very big lungs but little besides wind leaves his lips. The reason why he's got so many views has little to do with the quality of his content and are more because a particular brand of "background videos" have become popular in the modern era, and not having to get up to change videos is largely considered a boon. There's nothing wrong with treating media like that, but PatricianTV's ego is wildly inflated and he doesn't care to do research. Unfortunately, he has been blessed by the Algorithm so the illusion of being correct has led him to say a great many false statements.
I dunno I think you attribute ego to his writing where it may not be as warranted. He's got an opinion on video games yeah but thats a big statement to make.
There are skills that you can't help but use, these are like athletics, acrobatics, blade, blunt, restoration, heavy/light armor, destruction, armors, mercantile. These skills youre basically just going to passively spam just by playing the game with basically any class., you almost can't avoid using them. The more of those skills you pick, the faster you will level and the harder the game will be, it offers faster progression. Avoiding those skills as major skills will cause you to level slowly and the game will be easier, your character will be stronger and you will get better gear before leveling up, progression will be more slow. So balance it how you want. A better player doesn't need a perfectly strong character, its easy enough to kite around and use summons, potions, encahntments etc.
Yea, but if you don't know how fast they level as a function of use you're only working with half the equation. Restoration, for instance, levels slowly per cast so even if you're spamming resto spells, as you should, you will still won't level quickly off it. Plus most gear is leveled anyway..
@@bsh819 I'm just offering an easy to digest tip, you can use this rule of thumb to make a character, play how you want, and control the pace of leveling. If you're not specifically keeping track of skill level ups which the majority of players will not do, the longer you can delay your level up, the more points you will have and the stronger your character will be. Yes Gear is leveled, but if you are leveling up every 2 dungeons youre not going to have as much gear at level 10 compared to if you have to clear 8 dungeons to level up.
All you needed to say was this goober made a video called "a quick retrospective" that is TWELVE HOURS LONG. The only reason he can play this way is he must be an immortal alien with no concept of the value of time.
Dear Mario, please do NOT come to the castle, I’ve made an absolutely dogshit oblivion build. Just completely fucked it up
The worst build in Oblivion is the one I play - an unarmored, unenchanted swordsman who does no magic, and nothing but a one handed sword.
It could be worse. You could be using hand to hand instead of an (unenchanted) sword
You mean Pirate?
That's how I played when I was a kid. Black and burgundy outfit was just too cool.
Your Being Blunt skill has increased. You should rest and meditate on what you've learned.
You are unhinged and I am HERE FOR IT. I am so fucking glad the algorithm brought me to you. You're like a friend going on an angry rant at the D&D table. Please take this genuine compliment in the spirit in which it is given.
This is peak weaponized autism.
You are a gift. Never change. Love your videos, man.
A moment of silence to the ones who built a True Warrior class
ack light mode TH-cam flashbang
It’s a trademark of this channel
Leave us, creature of light - you
@@afungi662 true........
"Incoming !!!"
Cope
I think people have missed the point on Pat’s section on levelling: It’s not that you have to efficiently level, it’s that if you play the game as intended you run into problems that can inadvertently ruin your playthrough because if you don’t know what you’re doing you can be in a state where you are consistently one-shotted, can’t do enough damage, or have to turn the difficulty down and now level too slowly to see level-gated content. The solutions are to either level efficiently, which is terrible and no one wants to do, or to play in specific ways which requires prior knowledge and also sucks since it removes player choice.
You can’t play the way the developers intended, which is to be rewarded for playing however you want which builds a character more like the role you want to play. The level scaling system doesn’t accommodate it. In Pat’s words, it’s “accidentally evil.”
A shorter version is that Morrowind is built in a way that players bounce off until they realise any build ends up overpowered, Oblivion is the opposite in that any build looks viable until you hit some level boundaries dozens of hours in and realise you can’t play the way you want anymore. If you *have* to play a certain way or adjust the difficulty, it’s a failure of design rather than of the player and can’t be sufficiently attributed to skill. They legit just built it wrong for what their intended purpose was.
I'm with you on this. I appreciate Old Knights content because it is actually amazing.
I like Oblivion, but it has a real curve when it comes to accepting that some builds just don't really work. And Bethesda screwed up pretty bad with that as you can invest a lot of hours into a character that can't really work. Hell, they created basic classes like the Thief and Agent which don't have major access to any real combat capabilities so are almost destined to fail. Like you quoted Pat saying, "accidentally evil".
I hate to say it, but the Skyrim "class" system is a "better" class system then Oblivion, simply because it's upfront about what you're getting and how to get it. Sure it has less depth, but at least your average player will know what their doing.
I don't think I agree with You here. I get that without efficient levelling the game can get too hard because of the level scaling, but... From what I've seen online the people that were constantly one-shotted were the same people that picked auto-levelling skills (acrobatics, athletics) to "cheat" the system and level faster. I'm not saying that is the only reason, but I believe that could be a majority of people who was upset about the levelling system.
Yeah, pat said that in since in morrowind there is (almost) no level scaling for enemies, even the worst build can eventually overlever and become OP.
In Oblivion, not efficient leveling creates an ever-growing power difference between enemies and the player.
He later in the vid explains that's why he picked the majors that he picked, to control the leveling.
@@Va5syl There's also the players like me, who tried to play a heavy melee build and ended up with a wet noodle because we had the absolute insolence to pick the Endurance skills as majors. Or picked acrobat/atheletics not to cheat the system, but because we wanted to play a mobile character.
I may have bounced off Oblivion for a while before I actually took a deep dive into the mechanics.
Well said. In morrowind, you start out as a tadpole and end up as a god. In oblivion, you start out as a decent warrior and end up as a cretin unless you have prior knowledge and farm/grind to well, oblivion. The point of the original video is that if you pick a regular old race and a class that THEY BUILT FOR YOU you'll end up boned, which is a major problem with oblivion. Only thing I'll say is that in skyrim they streamlined this, and corrected for this very problem, and people still bitched because it made the game same-y and luckluster.
I think here Patricia is comparing leveling attributes in Morrowind and Oblivion. Because of unlimited trainer usage in Morrowind, the player has greater agency on how they want to shape their character. In his opinion the change in how trainers work is a step back.
Patricia? probably in a couple of years ahahahaha
@@ПётрПавловский-щ1хthis pipeline definitely exists
I think unlimited training greatly diminishes the player experience and progression system in Morrowind. The combat itself can be fun in oblivion if you actually try to deal damage. It is not fun if you intentionally deal the least amount of damage possible.
What sort of madman would play a glacial build that goes needlessly slow?
Perhaps the same sort of madman that would produce 12 hour long videos that go needlessly slow . . .
Damn, calling out the man himself, get ready for a huge signal boost lol.
I think the efficient leveling idea is that you don't have skills you frequently use as your major skills to have more control over when you level, but it always seems wrong to me to do that.
I think it's partially down to the fact that people expect attributes to be rather important in Oblivion, as they typically are in other RPGs, but they just barely matter. The other part is down to people's fear of unintentionally making a non-optimal character by endgame (even though attributes barely do anything) and meanwhile completely kneecapping their builds in early game and (especially) midgame.
The most important thing is to never choose Athletics as a major skill, because you get experience just by walking, so unless you plan on riding a horse or sneaking everywhere, you'll have pretty much no control over when you level up.
@@chameleonx9253 honestly, even when efficiently leveling (to an extent), I favor athletics, because it doesn't go up fast, even as a major, and the starting boost makes me faster and the game more fun.
@@squid4545The skills themselves are what do the heavy lifting, especially when you get really high levels. For example, going from destruction level 80 to 100 reduces the Magicka cost a lot more than going from 20 to 60. Those last 20 points matter a lot.
I'm a big fan of both you and Patrician's content, and I think what you might be missing due to not watching the entire video (which I completely understand) is that he doesn't *like* efficient leveling, and is engaging with it out of spite. His entire point regarding the character building/skill selection is that it is designed in an almost malevolent way, requiring the player to not only drastically alter the way they play the game in order to min/max it, but to actually play in a way that is completely counter-intuitive to what any player would expect from an RPG while also being mind-numbingly boring. While yes min/maxing is not mandatory to beat Oblivion, the process of min/maxing in an RPG is a time honored tradition that a lot of players set out to do, and Oblivion's system is almost perfectly designed to make min/maxing attributes as difficult/unfun as possible. His build is not presented as an "optimal" build for playing the game, and I think he would admit as much considering he openly admits to macro-ing and spamming skills to level at points in his playthrough in order to maintain his "clean" leveling. His build is simply what he put together for himself in order to most effectively manage an efficient leveling playthrough. I don't think he would ever argue that what he does in his playthrough is smart, fun, or a recommended way to play the game. It's similar to how in his Morrowind video he does an entire playthrough of the game on the original Xbox 360 version. He doesn't do it because it's optimal or required, he does it because it's unarguably the worst medium to experience Morrowind, and he wants to make a point about both how bad it is and how Morrowind is still enjoyable despite playing it on the worst platform possible. I think Patrician does slightly overstate the value of attributes when talking about "The Leveling Problem", and how detrimental enemy scaling is, but overall I actually find his section re: Oblivion's leveling system very well thought out and interesting. His commitment to an efficient leveling playthrough and talking about the follies associated with that is very on-brand for his Bethesda content which is very even handed in exploring the highs and lows of the systems present in each game. For anyone who took the time to read this comment, I REALLY recommend you check out Patrician's content. I absolutely love it and if you like The Old Knight's Oblivion deep-dives I think you'll also like Patrician's content, especially his Bethesda content.
I've watched Patrician's videos on these games and I'll agree.
His point, if I recall right, is exactly that. That trying to engage with the game this way is terrible and showing what it takes to do that. He's making a point. Part of these videos is giving every aspect of the game a shake down. Doing weird things to record it becomes inevitable. His TES playthroughs will often involve him playing multiple characters through the ENTIRE GAME for a ground up take on every style of playing rather than make the all encompassing master character. Which is kind of an insane dedication to fact finding. His skyrim video certainly does.
That said, I do think pointing how how little attributes do is a more effective means of disabusing people of 'the leveling problem' myth. Once you see the math done live, it all feels like such a waste of time.
Completely agree. Pat provides multiple “solutions” to the problem and resigns himself to the fact that the levelling system is accidentally evil. If you play the game casually you have a very real chance of inadvertently soft-locking yourself because the level scaling will make everything one-shot you and/or you unable to kill things. If you make the game easier to account for this, you’ll level slower than intended because levelling works based on successful uses and you inherently use things less on easy, so there’s a chance you won’t see level-gated content by the time you naturally should. The only way to actually get through it without headaches is to know things about the game before going in and accommodate that, which is pretty terrible. The game was designed with the idea that you can do anything and should do everything, but the execution of it is that you can do a very narrow amount and have to do it before you outlevel your build’s effectiveness *unless* you build a specific way.
So the reason why his character sucks is because he was ADAMANT that Oblivion is a game that requires you to efficient level your character, or you will not be able to play the game- and his evidence for this belief is his efficient leveled character.... Not being able to play the game..... That has got to be the funniest self-owns I have seen in a while. Guys, make a character you want to PLAY as and play the game normally. Throw this misconception of "efficient leveling" out of the window and go have fun..... And apparently make a character that can ACTUALLY be played...
Anyways, great video, love your work!
Oblivion is 18 years old now and really only fairly recently are we seeing anything like these “efficient leveling guides” surface around.
Skyrim players who want to play Oblivion look at these videos, take it as fact, get angry, and hate Oblivion after playing according to these stupid guides.
@@Elohim100 The concept of "Efficient leveling" has been around for a long while, now. People were complaining about it back when it was mainly played on Xbox 360. It's only recently that Skyrim players are looking back to past games in the series and making these "guides" more mainstream. There are videos on youtube about it going as far back as 10 years ago. Before that, it was still around, just not as interesting of a topic to post a video on it.
@@claytucker5025 I mean yeah there were guides, but completely upside down convoluted ways of leveling like not choosing your major skills or not leveling up is something I never heard of until maybe like 2 years ago. It’s all by Skyrim TH-camrs as well.
@@Elohim100 Yes, not choosing your major skills and never leveling up have been around for a very long time, SorcerorDave has a let's play, one of his roleplay ones from over 8 years ago where he was talking about this very thing in a tangent. The whole "bad leveling" misconception came from players who felt they should have been doing ridiculous amounts of damage from an average build and noticed they killed enemies slower as they leveled up, leading to the spread of the "efficient leveling" and the "don't level up" advice. But Skyrim, Has Indeed, brought some new players in who have found these old Reddit posts and guides on TH-cam to revive this misconception, anew. It's a terrible shame, the advice they found was from people who fundamentally did not understand what was going on under the hood of Oblivion, and thusly, are having a terrible experience from this amazing game and are likely deterring newer players from playing it due to those bad experiences.
I started roughly efficient leveling on my own as a kid the moment I learned how raising attributes worked.
It wasn't exactly optimal, but I, for example, reasoned to take Blade as my favored skill, even though I used Blunt, and pretty quickly started being rewarded with +4s and +5s. I didn't even know about needing to get Endurance early yet, just learning how the game worked at all immediately made me start doing things that were counter intuitive from the game's presentation
I don't resent this like some others do, but it's an undeniable factor baked into the game that a kid can figure out, once the hood is popped open a bit.
His content is very cynical. I think more people should try to avoid consuming that kind of content. It will make you miserable.
It genuinely ruined the series for me for a good while. I found myself nitpicking every aspect of every elder scrolls game as I played them. Once I realized it I just stopped caring and found myself enjoying it again.
These games are as easy or as hard as you make them, its entirely up to the player on what they want to do.
The video is pretty good overall but yeah as someone who actually plays Oblivion, I found his discussion on efficient leveling weirdly misinformed and this build is always so hilariously weird and nonsense.
How in the F does anyone have a video titled "a quick retrospective" and it's 12 hours long. That's almost as long as watching all 3 LotR extended editions.
His Skyrim video is 20 hours long
Its a meme, Pat does it on purpose. His takes are pretty solid in all honesty and pretty well researched.
@@harpernerys7345 oh my god lmao. I just don't see how you can possibly have that much to talk about. Like, I could say everything I wanted to say about Skyrim in like 20 mins max. Dragging your video out that long either makes you talk about every little unimportant thing or just repeat yourself over and over. Not my kind of content.
@harpernerys7345 to be fair, skyrim is nowhere deep enough in any form to warrant a 20 hour retrospective
@@HeavenlyPhantomStar It's comprehensive. Very well produced. Not repetitive or full of meaningless nitpicks. Not telling you to watch it if it's not your thing, but your assumptions are inaccurate.
Man I really appreciate how different your takes are on this game. I took things slow and had a blast with my last character. No efficient levelling, but I mixed my major and minor skills up so that I earned fairly high attributes without having to think about it.
Orc; Warrior; Combat Specialization; Armourer, Blunt, and Acrobatics as the major skills that I used frequently, with Alt, Conj, Illusion and Marksman on the back burner.
Eventually got one hundred Restoration without doing any power leveling.
That’s what I love about this game. Everytime I think I’ve got the mechanics down to a perfect science, I figure out something new, and see there is no real RIGHT way to play. Chasing perfection kills the fun, but indifference can too. It makes for a careful balance that I can really appreciate, when every character plays a little differently.
I love how 1/3 of the comments start with "I think..."
I can't stand watching 12+ hours of this Patrician guy. His tone of voice is borderline obnoxious. I hope that's just how he reads his script.
Patrician has no room to talk about having a miserable gameplay experience when he’s deliberately making his build bad.
You don’t need to efficiently level every time to be powerful.
You just need magic. It’s accessible and easy to use.
And if you don't wanna play mage?
@theoroderick782 if you enchant your gear and keep up with upgrading your equipment every few levels, playing entirely without magic is definitely possible, although more challenging
@@theoroderick782 Elder scrolls is a series steeped heavily in magic usage being an everyday thing for pretty much everyone. Bethesda may try to push there being 3 main archetypes but the reality is you are supposed to be using every aspect of the game to your advantage. By all means dont use magic if you dont want to. But be prepared to have to compensate for it with something like alchemy (or smithing if you are playing Skyrim.)
I wonder if a very inefficiently leveled character at 26 that uses magic (like knight does in his videos) would be stronger than an efficiently leveled warrior at level 26. I think they probably would be.
@infinitedeath1384 without even testing yes just by virtue of either using Destruction or even Conjuration alone. Characters in Oblivion weren't meant to ignore magic
no wonder he ran into a wall casting restoration spells with a macro
edit: only found footage of mysticism and athletics being leveled with a macro, my memory might be fuzzy due to how exhausting it gets to watch such a huge video
:))
How can this build be the worst if he's not a wood elf with the tower birthsign?
Notice that he is standing 2m away from the mudcrab and the models do not collide. Morrowind weapons have reach as a meaningful part of the gameplay. Thats the implication of "No spears" critique of Oblivion and Skyrim, because weapons in Oblivion and Skyrim have reach only on paper, in gameplay theres almost no difference between a claymore and dagger.
Anyway thats besides the point, "people" that can't grasp they are playing a RPG and not an demonsoulslike action game are beyond saving and their opinions are worthless.
I've heard this multiple times about reach and I don't really know where it comes from. Is this something that is fixed with the unofficial patch? I don't play entirely unpatched, but comparing the unpatched games is kinda stupid.
Morrowind is a pathetic mess with no patches. Being blind improves your accuracy. Being fatigued improves your repair success rate. You can't level the last few points of attributes except 1 at a time. The list is endless, both of the games have insane amounts of problems unpatched.
I think long time Morrowind players have a hard time reconciling Oblivion conceptually because Oblivion is actually difficult beyond the hit chance mechanic and it's much harder to outscale the difficulty with your build, so people blame the attribute system as being why the game is hard without examining any other factors, such as:
-faster paced real time combat
-enemies that are properly scaled to fight you and expect you to utilize the game's mechanics
-the expectation you are keeping up with your gear and regularly preparing for dungeons
Just to name a few. But it's what I love about Oblivion. The game rewards you for being patient and preparing between dungeons with potions and spells and recharging your enchants and repairing your equipment. Even inefficient stock spells have a massive impact on your gameplay. It always feels like your build matters in Oblivion and I love that, too
Most people don't realize Oblivion combat relies on timing, once you figure that out it becomes a lot more fun and extremely interesting. It's a shame they dialed it back in Skyrim, because with more polish it could have been a really deep combat system.
@@TheOwneroftheIC I feel Skyrim does this as well and people don't really give it enough credit, either
Be wary that your confidence does not become arrogance...
The worst build was the one I made as a kid, before I knew how the levelling actually worked, and thought more levels = stronger.
Major skills speechcraft, alchemy, mercantile, security, sneak, and I forget.
IMMEDIATELY out of the sewers, go power level speechcraft and sneak, make as many potions as possible and sell everything.
Then wonder why I'm dying to everything even though my level is so high.
Ironically though... the actual build is probably pretty close to optimal. Most of the primary skills are things you never really NEED, so can level at your own pace, ect.
It's just the implementation of it that made it the worst.
To be fair, I think the reason he was leveling h2h in the begging was to efficiently level strength.
Love how this channel doubled in subs, it's so peak and it makes me realize how little I know about this game even after so many years. Statistics wise that is.
I did watch this review a few years ago- and back then i like forgotten so much of the game that it made since to me and i was like "oh okay". I will say i think PatricianTV is a great Orator and definitely has a lot of insight when it comes to Lore stuff and its fun to hear him talk about the real deep lore.
But yeah after i came back to the game recently, i felt like i was going crazy cuz i was thinking to myself "this isnt nowhere as hard as Patrician was making it out to be". Heck, ive been having a lot more fun with it than i did as a kid and managed to get a lot farther than i did back then.
So yeah he definitely was too harsh on a lot of aspects of the game, as a lot of people are. Oblivion is an amazing game in its own right and still worth playing so im glad youre out here sticking up for it in terms of the discourse- or whatever you wanna call it
I'd love to hear you comment further on the discussion the build was actually for. Not for any smug Internet Fight reason. Merely because the topic is interesting. Leveling speed vs. enemy health pool vs. your damage output. You should watch Patrician's entire leveling segment where he goes into why he does the build, and the leveling in general.
I have personally found myself encountering the exact same issue that Patrician brings up in the video when I've tried Oblivion in the past. Enemies that hit hard, and have massive health pools, with a 'broken' feeling level bracketing system.
Physical weapons are balanced poorly, and marksman is just especially weak. Without poisons, destruction spells, summons, or enchanted weapons you just aren’t going to dish out high damage.
Many new players manage fatigue poorly.
The game didn’t get difficult because you only gained +3 to endurance and not +5.
(Rereading this sounds like I’m being snarky/rude please don’t take it that way it is not my intent).
To rephrase the old knights comment into a nearly directly viewable example
A Great build with 100 in all stats will still be a strong build if its stats are cut in half to 50, over 75% of the characters strenght comes from equipment and skills, not stats
so losing 12% going from 100% power to 88% in power- not a breaking point
A terrible build with bad equipment, skills, spells and items, starts out at that 50% power mark by comparison and even doubling the raw stats (ie 50 end goes to 100) would not make them twice as strong, it might only make them go from 50% to 60% in relative power to a Great build
the Great build Still performs nearly 50% better with Half! the Raw Stat pool (60+50%=90)
bad build = the one in the 12 hour video
good build = one of old knights mages
iirc He did that build as a meme and to efficient level it out of spite of efficient leveling in the worst way possible, this is why people recommended this video of his to you. xD
Worst build in Oblivion ever created?
MagiStank by Jerma985.
When I first picked up Oblivion I enjoyed the crap out of it and barely had any trouble. That was until I started reading up on the level mechanics and people's "advice" on it. I think this miss-information has really soured the gameplay experience, because people hyper fixate on it.
Good job debunking this myth. I hope your words will reach a lot of people :)
i think this is the best video you've made, glad im going back in the catalogue ❤
short rant time (as i always leave in ur comments, i feel i made good points today)
Like Omg finally
Yes
yes
yes
He makes so many Wrong points in such a long "well informed" video
Also not using alteration in a tank build?? As a major skill..
like- by level 10 if he just split 5/5 heavy armor and alteration (he would still get +3 endurance with some blocking and thats enough! by level 16 he'd still have 80 endurance and 210+ health) he would have 55 alteration and 50 heavy armor by 10 and be at 70-80 armor for most fights using defend (15%) and shield (30%) for 42% total after 95% effeciency and take Wayy less damage then his crap armor rating by level 10 that he had- HE Couldnt Even Equip a Shield for its defence value utility because of hand to hand (50 skill would make full dwarven like 30 armor with shield and 100 skill without dwarven shield is 35) 50 whole skill points for 5 defence according to him is a good idea!
30 +42 shield spells for 72 defence at level 10! crazy tanky as he wanted)
Better yet! Feather would make him Move Swift and he could round out his magical resistant with flame/element shield and more safely absorb fire attacks
😭 He didnt even bother with the atronach standing stone for a temp 80% absorption to cast Something Good with incoming magic fills
Like- Why not use soul trap and a mages staff in this build? paralyse staff is good, a large telekensis staff would restore magicka due to the unintended features of spell absoption, and damage would be damage, once again lets go with level 10! 60 shock damage staff- oh idk, 5 times more damage then his fists and ranged to boot (twice as good cause fists are about 2 hits in the same cast time)
It wouldve been a Good Ulitlity of Mysticism! His Major Skill 😭
He Couldve Use just 3 of his major skills with this exact set-up and what ever weapon and achieved 4 times the results in a 5th of the time spent- god if you went gold grabbing in the thousands from guilds or poison apples you could speed run this entire affair in 2 hours with 5 heavy armor training each level and walking around casting feather
HE SPENT an HOUR training Hand to Hand AT the start
Duck 🤬
hes using skills like hand to hand so he'll get the +5 to strength on level. and switch to blade until you get 100 strength because oblivion is a well made game. the only major skill he uses is heavy to control the +5 endurance which is the only attribute that matters to level early
I think absorb health _is_ useful. Really useful. It’s immune to reflect. If it hits you get hp, if it reflects you don’t lose hp. It’s a win-win.
That is a good argument in favor of absorb. Honestly I didn't think of that, and I have definitely nuked myself before without thinking.
However, I will say that is not the argument that Pat made. At least not that I remember, maybe I'm wrong.
@ Nah your not wrong, Pat doesn’t mention it. I think I learned the absorb thing from Spiffing Brit or someone like that.
I think the real problem is that people have been conditioned to efficient leveling when skills is what always mattered more, Id say its less the guys fault he didn't know but the people who keep screaming about efficient leveling and spreading false info.
Having watched Pat's Morrowind, Oblivion, & Skyrim videos, it is apparent he can put out an extremely long video & assume most people aren't going to call him on each of his mistakes. Its the classic filibuster. Just keep talking and by the time you take a breath the other guy will forget his objections. He gets a lot of things right, but he's also one of those people who thinks he knows the "right way" to play a single-player RPG.
The right way is the way which causes you to enjoy the time you spend. If playing by the meta is the most efficient way and that's what keeps a player going, great. If restricting yourself to the optimal strategies makes the game a chore, then the meta is wrong. Each of us, you, Pat, & I enjoy fried chicken. Chances are my favorite way to prepare it isn't the same as yours.
I think he chose that build because he was trying to recreate his Morrowind character & roleplay as the Nerevarine in a new setting. It makes zero sense from a lore perspective, but whatever floats his boat, I suppose.
Exactly. I enjoy efficient leveling because there's a good reward at the end. I get my character to level 26, all attributes except personality and luck at 100. I have the skills I don't want to use in the major category, except restoration and destruction since they take ages to grind. Then once I've gotten all the gear I want, and made some spells for buffing and weakness stacking, then I can get to the good part, which is doing all the questlines without worrying about leveling or enemy scaling, since 26 is where I stop leveling.
@@infinitedeath1384 That could be fun. Forcing myself to grind out those +5 bonuses per level, 25 times and then not leveling isn't something I'd do unless my options were that or being waterboarded, but everyone has their own way. The way I play would likely drive you mad & the way you play would drive me to tears.
This isn't to say I never did the grinding thing. When I opened up the CD case for Oblivion after not touching it for six years or so, there were post-it notes with hatch marks noting my skill progress per level. That's why I like the games. They accommodate many avenues of approach.
I think the build was not really Patricia's Fault. He used that build because he though efficient leveling was the only way to get a strong late game character.
I'm no expert in the game but I have played a few dozen hours and I cannot recall any sort of tips or advice in the game on what skills or abilities are good. Maybe the guild quest lines were sort of meant to do that in a way but I mean they don't really force you to play in a certain way, and by the time you find them maybe you already have a build in mind.
Being free to go and do whatever is cool and all but then you get goofy decisions based on lack of knowledge.
BTW I gotta rewatch your video on efficient levels to understand what your attitude is because so far I cannot understandit it properly.
Sorry for any typos
Honestly could you stop using ai generated images, it isnt related at all to the video and it makes you look lazy
if this comment gets 5 upvotes you have a deal. I am a little lazy (I have 3 kids and I'm a full time teacher)
What part of this video is AI
@@Ephraim225 the thumbnail.
For someone who spent over 12 hours on both games, you'd think Patrician would understand that not every player instantly understands how a game works and therefore wouldn't be so eager to boast about how superior his intellect is. NO, not every Morrowind player is like that, but every single player, without exception, has taken that dagger and failed to hit an enemy with it many times while at zero stamina their first time out. Morrowind just doesn't teach the player its mechanics in the best possible way, it's not some sort of Turing test.
Basically: Patrician, give humility a try from time to time. (Yeah I'm totally not a hypocrite lol)
Honestly, the thing that shocks me the most is that some people like Maglir
Lovin' these videos you upload
I like to level efficiently, but not at the cost of fun. Usually what I'll do is just grind up my skills for a few minutes every time I gain a new level to make sure I've got the max bonus, and then just play the game normally until I level. You "waste" some skill levels that way, but in practice you have way more than you'll ever need to get every stat to 100.
That’s pretty reasonable, I’m just too impatient
@@theoldknight85 It's mostly the magic skills that are tedious. I basically just have to stand in the corner casting a training spell over and over until I get ten levels between them. Or five levels if I've got a major skill that keys off that attribute.
The physical stats are easier. I usually collect every weapon and piece of armor I find and stash them in my house anyway, so when I go back to sleep and level up I'll just pick up the gear that matches the stats I want to raise and then go out and play the game.
When I get enough levels with one skill, I'll swap to a different set of gear and just keep playing. Has the added benefit of keeping things fresh, since you're always switching up your playstyle and approaching encounters differently depending on what skill you're focusing on.
What I find helps a bit with the magic skills is a tiny bit of degeneracy. Get Frostcrag Spire running early by whatever means you like, but only use it to make levelling spells until you feel you've crossed whatever invisible threshold justifies their "real" use.
I find it facilities enjoying the game a bit more overall, since you're encouraged to explore early on, since travel time is spell grinding time, and getting Restoration 75 or whatever is no longer agony.
I know it might not get you a lot of views, but I'd love for you to have a side series where you play the game. You don't need to do anything particular; I just want you to fuck around in Oblivion and comment on all the random shit you see
I really like how both the videos are disliked
I really hope this channel isn't gaslighting the whole community about the game mechanics because i believe in every word he says like it's gospel
the games cheap and easy to run, the uesp is also there, so far so good
Oblivion and Morrowind come from a time when we actually had freedom, more-so Morrowind, but it's like BGS heard the complaints of guard railing in Oblivion and said, "Hold my beer." Back to my original point, if you're going play like mentally and physically disabled character, the game is going to treat you like a mentally and physically disabled character. That's GOOD RP, not bad.
The problem is after you've been spoiled by the rollercoaster that is Skyrim (and I love that ride too, don't get me wrong) you forget that a handicap means you actually have to get good at the game.
Skyrim's biggest mistake was making crafting skills so overpowered. The core systems without the balance-breaking crafting skills are actually excellent, especially on higher difficulties where you have to earn enchanted gear, potions become relevant, and your build actually matters beyond the smithing perks and getting twin enchantment. Highly recommend doing that for a more interesting experience
Having actually watched (listened to) the 12 hour video, trust me, it's not worth it. It only works as what it's intended for, background noise. The number of tangents and poor structuring (dont let the timestamps fool you) infuriated me
Having not seen the original, the shown footage looks like an overcorrection to my major problem with Oblivion: it effectively punishes you for playing in what should be an intuitive manner. It is very easy for a new player to create a wet noodle of a character accidentally when trying to build a Warrior. It is very easy for a player's damage to hit a wall relatively early on because they don't know the inner workings of the damage formula mean that damage is increased by fatigue-increasing gear. My first mage run was a miserable experience due to picking and playing the actual mage class at start and it took multiple warrior builds to zero in on a method that works without melee turning into a chore. And yes, I know now how avoid some of these pitfalls and enjoy playing some Oblivion every so often, but I do understand where that playstyle comes from.
love seeing oblivion content on my feed now :3
Well played Sir.
i love to play the tank, always a pleasure to be invincible.
But in this case, 25 in both light and heavy armor ? 5 in athletics ?
Dude, i have the same atronach breton using alteration for more bulkiness, but i picked heavy armor, restoration, athletics or jump, blade and or destruction, mysticism and or invocation.
What is his gameplay loop?
Punch a man, heal, rince, repeat. "Bender punchy thingy"
Mine is storm trough the level, go for the boss, conjure to keep the mobs busy, and smash that captain.
"buhuhu, my oblivion chara is weak, can't do damage high level
- what skill ?
- hand-to-hand
- ok zoomer".
PS : dummies complaints about game mechanics, losers tends accompt of the hitting chance, winners relies on caius's ring, glitchers on guar hide and corckbulb root.
You’ve missed the point of Pat’s section on levelling. It’s that if you play the game as intended you run into problems that can inadvertently ruin your playthrough, so your solutions are to either level efficiently which is terrible or to play in specific ways which requires prior knowledge and also sucks.
You can’t play the way the developers intended, which is to be rewarded for playing however you want which builds a character more like the role you want to play. The level scaling system doesn’t properly accommodate it. Saying “Well my build beats it and yours sucks” is the problem, the design ethos is that every build should be able to; hand to hand *shouldn’t* suck, and he was levelling it for strength so he could max the attributes to prove a point about how shitty efficient levelling is if you try it.
Your build sounds awesome.
Recently started an oblivion play-through, first time since childhood. I love watching these videos and have heard endless people talk about the levelling system and how broken the scaling is and how you should delay level ups and never use your major skills. I decided to ignore all this and just play like a normal reasonable person would, choosing skills I intend to use as my major skills and being unconcerned with attributes (usually get +2/+3/+1 or something similar because I've been leveling luck). I figured worst case scenario maybe I'd have to turn the difficulty slider down because to hear these people talk my playstyle is insane and unviable, but the funny thing is I have not had to touch the slider once. I'm level 9 now so still quite a bit to go but I've been leveling at a steady pace, usually once or twice per dungeon or quest I complete, I've done 2 oblivion gates. Weaker enemies die in 2-5 hits, stronger enemies die in 10-15, which I think is a completely reasonable pace for them to die. I take a lot of damage but nothing absurd or unfair, usually it will take anywhere from 5-20 hits to kill me depending on the source of the damage. It's crazy to me because in both morrowind and skyrim I find myself constantly having to fiddle with the difficulty. About 10 hours into oblivion now and haven't had to touch it, and that to me is a good an indicator as any of a balanced game.
just don't forget to enchant your gear or keep upgrading spells for dps purposes and Oblivion's difficulty is completely reasonable yes
I think more people need to do purposefully bad builds. It requires you to look at the game in a different perspective and actually appreciate some of the more niche mechanics.
For example my current build uses the staff of everscamp. I shoot an aoe command creature spell at them when combat starts and then focus on keeping them from dying instead of fighting enemies myself.
Is it good? No. In fact its one of the worst builds ive ever played. What it does do though is make me approach combat in a way I havnt before. The fact its actually possible, even as bad as it is, is a testament to Oblivion having more nuance and options than people are willing to admit.
You can buy training for skills you want to use. They will be cheap.
But yeah. trying to fight with a level 5 spear is painful.
You can kill with hand to hand.
Lmao I love your channel and patricians
PatricianTV has very big lungs but little besides wind leaves his lips. The reason why he's got so many views has little to do with the quality of his content and are more because a particular brand of "background videos" have become popular in the modern era, and not having to get up to change videos is largely considered a boon.
There's nothing wrong with treating media like that, but PatricianTV's ego is wildly inflated and he doesn't care to do research. Unfortunately, he has been blessed by the Algorithm so the illusion of being correct has led him to say a great many false statements.
I dunno I think you attribute ego to his writing where it may not be as warranted. He's got an opinion on video games yeah but thats a big statement to make.
PatricianTV is kind of a hack tbh. A 12 hour video is awesome if you have 12 hours of original stuff to say; he usually doesn't.
He also tears into Oblivion while excusing Morrowind for having some of the same flaws or weird gameplay mechanics
I get bored of morrowind in the time it takes to walk to pelagiad
There are skills that you can't help but use, these are like athletics, acrobatics, blade, blunt, restoration, heavy/light armor, destruction, armors, mercantile. These skills youre basically just going to passively spam just by playing the game with basically any class., you almost can't avoid using them. The more of those skills you pick, the faster you will level and the harder the game will be, it offers faster progression. Avoiding those skills as major skills will cause you to level slowly and the game will be easier, your character will be stronger and you will get better gear before leveling up, progression will be more slow. So balance it how you want. A better player doesn't need a perfectly strong character, its easy enough to kite around and use summons, potions, encahntments etc.
Yea, but if you don't know how fast they level as a function of use you're only working with half the equation. Restoration, for instance, levels slowly per cast so even if you're spamming resto spells, as you should, you will still won't level quickly off it.
Plus most gear is leveled anyway..
@@bsh819 I'm just offering an easy to digest tip, you can use this rule of thumb to make a character, play how you want, and control the pace of leveling. If you're not specifically keeping track of skill level ups which the majority of players will not do, the longer you can delay your level up, the more points you will have and the stronger your character will be. Yes Gear is leveled, but if you are leveling up every 2 dungeons youre not going to have as much gear at level 10 compared to if you have to clear 8 dungeons to level up.
All you needed to say was this goober made a video called "a quick retrospective" that is TWELVE HOURS LONG. The only reason he can play this way is he must be an immortal alien with no concept of the value of time.
Oblivion is unplayable without the +5 attribute on levelup mod anyway
It's not "unplayable." That's hyperbole. Attributes aren't as important as skills.