Simple, script-lite scaling remover?

[stebbinsd]

I hate Oblivion's scaling. Not only does it remove the thrill of being able to topple an enemy that previosly whipped your ass (since all the weak enemies disappear), but the high-level enemies are just too powerful for anyone who doesn't have consistent +5/+5/+5 attribute bonuses. Not only that, but it makes daedric and glass armor and weapons a dime a dozen.

 

But what's really infuriating for me is that this seems so easy to fix. Tedious, mind you, and time-consuming, but still very easy. See, when a person first learns how to use the Construction Set to make mods, their first attempts are creating OP weapons & apparel, and/or OP monsters, and just dropping them in the game world. That's literally the first thing a modder is going to do! It's the equivalent of the "Hello World" app for programmers!

 

So it seems to me that removing scaling altogether would be a simple matter of just making enemies with constant stats and just dropping them into dungeons in place of the leveled enemy markers. Then just do that about 5000 times, and POOF, we suddenly have an Oblivion without leveled enemies, using nothing more than beginner-level modding skills!

 

Removing the leveling from loot, while still keeping it random, would be a slightly more difficult task, but only slightly. It would just be a matter of removing daedric and glass items from the leveled lists outright, placing a handful of those daedric and glass items in various locations where players would have to search for them, then changing the leveled lists so that all gear has a chance of appearing at all levels. That still seems like beginner-level modding skills, just more of it.

 

Making it so that fur, leather, iron, and steel have the greatest chance of appearing is the closest we'd get to requiring higher-than-beginner level modding skills. But I believe that can be easily circumvented simply by including the lower-quality items more often in the randomized lists. See, if a leveled list in Oblivion has multiple items that can potentially spawn within a particular level range, the item that will spawn is randomly generated. So, if a leveled list is supposed to provide a random leveled unenchanted heavy cuirass, then we can change the leveled list so that it includes 500 iron cuirasses, 490 steel cuirasses, 450 Dwarven, 400 Orcish, 50 Ebony, and 1 Daedric. Then just make it so that this "leveled list" only has one level range to it: Starting at level 1 and having no maximum level. Then we've got a 52.35% chance of the loot being low-quality iron and steel, and daedric would be astronomically rare, having only a 0.053% chance of spawning.

 

As far as modding skill is concerned (as opposed to the time it would take), this is still beginner-level modding.

 

So why hasn't somebody actually done this yet? This seems like it would be incredibly script-lite, very easy on players' systems, and while it might take a while, it would be very easy.

 

Hell, I'll even offer to pitch in myself! The quantity of work (as opposed to the difficulty) is clearly so massive that it would be way too difficult for one person to do. But I'd personally offer to help out as part of a team.

 

Who's with me? Let's get rid of this gawd-awful scaling system!

Edited April 2, 2017 by stebbinsd

[Oblivionaddicted]

And in the short version?

[stebbinsd]

And in the short version?

Huh?

[Surilindur]

It was not really that long a request. A small article somewhere can easily be twice as long. Have you checked Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul (MOO)? I think the ini file(s) for that mod have some settings in them that can help reduce the scaling awfulness of Oblivion, but I have not had the time to look into it yet.

[stebbinsd]

I'm not interested in an overhaul mod. The more expansive the mod is, the more likely it is to change something I didn't want changed, or change something in a way that just makes it worse.

[Surilindur]

Maskar's overhaul is very modular, but I can also see the benefits of a small mod for one specific thing. Anyway, I hope you will find what it is you are looking for at some point. Enjoy the spring. :)

[anonimousone]

use tie.

Profit.