#I'm aware 'just ignore the minmax' is an option

[raisengen]

It's a real tragedy how good the Morrowind/Oblivion levelling system becomes once you install a mod that just silently calculates your attribute increases in the background instead of manually via level-up prompts. It feels entirely natural and immersive.

No level-up screens, no picking perks or feats, no artificial building decisions; you simply get better at whatever it is you're doing. After you've left the tutorial, every character development choice is something done in-game, in-character, in the same way you'd do it IRL. You're one or two short steps from killing off the idea of character level entirely.

(A small fly in the ointment are the perks you get passively in Oblivion as you train skills, since those give you thresholds to cram for, but otherwise you have little reason to pay attention to your stat screen beyond noting your overall progress.)

Unfortunately that's not the system we got, and instead we have 2.5k word wiki pages explaining how to optimise your entire playthrough around not screwing up your stats.