Why Is Oblivion's Leveling System So Broken?

Oblivion's leveling isn't broken by modern standards. It's broken by any standard.

Oblivion is the reason I still jump everywhere in modern open world games

My end-game Oblivion character was nearly unkillable and by sheer miracle I managed to mostly stay on top of the damage curve, but every now and then I'd run into a goblin with like 10 billion health.

"It probably seemed like a good idea at the time." To my knowledge all TES games used this exact same system until Skyrim. The only difference between Oblivion and previous TES games was that the world leveled up with you, and THAT (IMO) is what broke TES's level system. In Morrowind, for instance, not leveling up efficiently just meant you may need to earn a couple more levels before entering that dungeon than if you were being efficient.

level 50 dragonborn: [kills alduin in 2 hits] level 50 hero of kvatch: [gets their ass beat by a skeleton]

Being a high level in Skyrim: I am a god, nobody can touch me. Being a high level in Oblivion: Mom come pick me up I'm scared.

Wow, this is beautiful. As a teen playing this game, I didn't realize there was a difficulty slider, so I gave up and just watched my dad beat it to know where the story went. My dad, meanwhile, had a handwritten spreadsheet that he took notes on in order to level with maximum efficiency. And you know what? He beat it multiple times, with different builds. The man was a machine. Now I'm considering trying to play it again, vanilla, and do the efficient leveling trick just to see if I can pull it off.

It's actually crazy that, to optimize your character, you need to pick the "worst" class, attribute, and skill combination that you possibly can.

You know what really bugged me in Oblivion? The character classes all have these amazing drawings, I wanted to BE that Wizard with the long gray beard. Guess what? No beards.

I remember grinding dungeons before starting the main quest. The first oblivion gate looked like Doom Eternal.

I had played Morrowind before so when I first played Oblivion I did treadmill leveling stuff like running up to the top of the wall at the Blades HQ and jumping off and healing and repeating it over and over while watching tv and such. So then when I started traveling around eventually, oblivion gates were spawning all over the place but even worse were the constant bear attacks and eventually I saw a gate spawn and a bear started fighting the demons and won. You don't need to defend Cyrodil from the daedric invasion, bears will handle it.

I will always remember that the official strategy guide for Oblivion began the section on leveling by saying: “Are you sitting comfortably? Not hungry or thirsty? Good. Now, this is going to be really difficult to get through, and we don’t like it anymore than you will, but take some notes, try and keep up, and you’ll almost get this in no time.”

Enemy scaling in Oblivion is an absolute nightmare. I get that they did it so the challenge doesn't disappear but you barely feel like you're more powerful unless you use cheats or exploits, in which case you are the one god above all. I am walking around and this highwayman in part glass part daedra armor is trying to shake me down for a bunch of gold. Bruh, your equipment is expensive enough to buy a house wym you want 100 gold?

Oblivion was the reason I learned excell spreadsheets!

As I came from Morrowind, I had extensive knowledge of the leveling system. still prefer the +5 mod in both games, less of a headache than keeping meticulous track of level gains. However, Oblivion is not only horribly balanced around the leveling system, even if you powergame your character, you do not gain any relative strength, you simply manage to keep up. While I needed 5-10 swings with a sword in Morrowind at the start to kill a skeleton, when my stats and skills are maxed, that same skeleton will fall in a single strike. In Oblivion, no matter where on the curve I am, I have to hack way at enemies just like it was on level 1, still under the assumption I powergamed perfectly and my relevant skills & stats are maxed. THAT is what makes Oblivion feel so bad to play, not to mention the punishments you receive if you started certain quests early and thus get a useless reward at the end, unless you waited till level 45(?) or so.

I think one of my "favorite" issues with Oblivion leveling is alchemy. There's this weird sweet spot where you have access to almost (but not all) of the effects for each ingredient so that you can have max freedom to make useful and/or complex potions in many different ways... but... once you have access to all four, it breaks several of the most useful recipes from earlier in the curve. Suddenly, it starts to feel like the best potions now either have to be made with exactly one very specific recipe or they come with negative effects, and it becomes almost impossible to make complex poisons from most ingredients.

I didn't even know that +5 was a thing...

You forgot to mention the fact that monster health pools become absolutely rediculous at higher levels too (although your clips showcased this issue quite well). Even as a properly leveled character, all enemies are extremely tedious to kill unless you use other exploits like enchanting

7:20 Wow, I actually remember playing this game back in the day with a spreadsheet where I kept track of every skill and planned on what skills to level up and in what sequence. Every time I leveled I would go back to the spreadsheet and compare and plan on the next level and repeat over and over and over and over.

The saddest part about Oblivion's leveling system is that even though I know it's awful and unbalanced, my brain still tricks me into thinking if I jump back into Oblivion and make a new character with the correct (class-wise) major skills, somehow I can outpace the NPCs and still be an effective force in combat, and it works...until like, level 8 or 9, and then reality sets in and I realize Oblivion is best played with a calculator and not a dreamcatcher.