I hate this game

i....i don't get it

Limiting exploration to dungeons with designated loot chests or boss NPCs at the end destroyed the authenticity of the setting. In Morrowind if you meet a crazy powerful wizard like Divayth Fyr or a powerful political group headquarters like the Dren Plantation they have appropriate expensive gear and treasure with them. In Morrowind actually looking around common locations carefully reveals a ton of cool shit, it encourages you to take the game slower and examine places carefully, in Oblivion and Skyrim you might as well just beeline from NPC to dungeon to NPC because everything in-between exists as window dressing for funni physics fus ro da joke and nothing more.

I love to find all the odd features of it.

Did you know telekinesis is the one spell that always applies an effect on you so if you have 100% spell absorption it'll refund 5 times its cost BEFORE the rest of the spell is cast, meaning if you cast a 100 magicka spell within which you have a 20 magicka telekinesis component, it'll first refund 100 magicka (this has to be already missing magicka otherwise it's wasted completely), then it processes the cost meaning the spell is free. This turns the atronach into a great bonus, allowing you to make almost any spell you craft free if you have the magicka pool for it.

You also shouldn't use paralyze and instead use drain+damage fatigue which makes almost any npc ragdoll forever at a fraction of the cost.

So many little things like this.

Are you incapable of reading subtext?

He had to lockpick that open only to find out its a worthless replica. Now he hates the game because he is a retard.

i wouldn't count looking in a glass case right in obvious view as exploration so much as observation
you're not 'exploring' the room you're just noticing there's a case, then seeing there's something you want in it
going around morrowind's massive areas, moving off the beaten path and finding good loot for your troubles is exploration, but describing looking around a tiny room that you've ended up in as part of one of the big questlines and spotting something obvious as exploration too feels like an insult to exploration
now yes it is a dick move to make them replicas, but that's oblivion for you, not wanting to give you fun stuff until you reach the required level for it but teasing you with the idea of getting such things early is one of oblivion's big problems

Exploration is completely meaningless if loot is gated behind levels.

It isn't a real glass dagger, because the game is heavily level scaled and glass equipment is for higher levels. In Morrowind that would have been a real glass dagger.

I wouldn't say it is exploration, but having real items instead of the replicas makes the world feel more real. In Morrowind, you will see NPCs wearing high level gear and surrounded by high level and you would know these are powerful and important people. In Oblivion, nearly everything is level-scaled, so it doesn't have this feeling. One of the most memorable encounters in the game is Umbra specifically, because she isn't level scaled.

I hate you.

i don't disagree with you, like i said shit like the replicas is one of oblivion's big problems, locking most of the fun shit behind levels feels restrictive and unrewarding most of the time