Hello all,

Just started to play Oblivion because I completely wrecked my Morrowind game with a bug and now . . . . more bugs! And right at the start!

Right after I select my class, as soon as I start moving the game just starts piling new quests that have absolutely no bearing on what I'm doing (trying to get into the sewers). Anyone had this happen? Quest popup after quest popup just keep coming.

By the way, I was going to play pure vanilla, but with such a big bug happening right at the start, I may need to start looking into mods. Particularly interested in the ones that get rid of scaling, because scaling is dumb.

That is the tutorial and the correct thing to happen... You have not yet received your character class until the totural is finished

Boo hoo if you don't want scalling because it's hard wired in... Just don't level up until you are ready

Just to clarify: These quests started popping up, unprompted, immediately after the emperor is killed. They are about locales and characters that I haven't heard of or encountered yet. I'm just about to go into the sewers within the first 30 minutes of the game, and I'm getting inundated with things that aren't supposed to be happening at that moment in the game.

You never said which quests, but I assume they are from the DLC's, in which case they are not bugs, just not that well implemented.
This mod postpones them, but it's probably a bit late to install it now.
https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/47089

yes end of tutorial = outside in the sun... until that point nothing is fixed in stone

scaling = levels 1-5 - the same

tutorial teaches you the basics of the game; combat, sneaking, picking locks and using traps... all of which you can skip if you want and he will assume you are "class" based on how you played the tutorial up to that point i.e, did you pick the locks, use a sword, bow or spells

If you don't like the quests to be added, simply disable the DLC's and play the game without. Whenever you feel like playing DLC content, simply enable the DLC (or DLC's) you want to play, and the quest(s) will show up in due course (I myself saw this happen many years ago after I had installed the original Shivering Isles release and loaded an existing savegame of the base game - no reason to believe the game works differently now).
How to do it? Launch Oblivion, click Data Files, tick (or untick) the appropriate boxes.

Ah okay, thanks for the explanations. I had to look up what DLC is. Oblivion is probably the newest game I've ever tried to play, TBH. Most of the games I play are from the mid-90's to about 2000. So this whole DLC business model is news to me.

In this case, I guess you can simply accept the quest entries without thinking much about them - there's nothing wrong with them (they don't interfere with the rest of the game. Get familiar with the game, follow the main quest or simply travel around (you don't have to do the main quest at all - a cross-country sightseeing tour can keep you busy for days and weeks and give you a lot to do, if you visit locations and talk to people). Once you feel familiar with the game, check your open quests, and do whatever you like.
There are mods and unofficial patches available, but I'd worry about those later, especially when you are not familiar with installing this kind of additional content.
Have fun!

The quest notifications popping up annoys me, too; really immersion breaking (there's a mod to fix this). Just stand still for a minute or two, let them pop up, click them away, and forget about this ever happening. Some of these DLC feel like cheat mods to me when followed through too early, providing overpowered gear and riches and far to great housing and such.

Today all DLC come bundled with the game. But at the time when these DLC were published, it was, well, as DLC, for players already well acquainted with the game; and if you paid ten bucks for a horse armour, you'd like to see it in the game asap!

But I just am chiming in to say that I know people - avid Oblivion players and modders since the release of the game - who have never even started the main quest! :D

I don't understand this obsession with mods from some gamers. It appears to be a generational thing, not willing to accept the way the game is designed, and feeling compelled to change every detail to suit your fancy.
I think Oblivion is a great game the way it is. Gaming for me is playing the game how it was designed and beating it, enjoying it, accordingly.
The popups you are receiving are supposedly from conversations you overhear or messages you received, so not immersion breaking at all.

Modding, a generational thing? I'm not sure that this is the case -- no matter what generation you might have had in mind when making that statement.

And in the case of Oblivion, we are not talking adding bells or whistles (well .. that, too); it's about adding detail rich continents several times the size of the original game world; it's about filling the dull and empty roads with merchants or gypsies; it's about adding quests the size of the original game (Order of The Dragon); and then there is the occasional total conversion (Nehrim).

-- and my (modded) Oblivion grass looks way better than my (unmodded) Wither3 grass :D

some people see a glass half empty, for some the glass is half full

and a few of us feel we should redesign the glass :)

Well, I think people deserve to play the game they paid for in the way they want, and you may wonder why they use mods, or disagree with these people, but it remains legitimate nonetheless. I myself admire the enthusiasm, creativity and motivation of many modders, and I enjoy being able to get a lot more content. And I thank Bethesda for providing a powerful flexible game engine ready for public use.
My first playthrough of Oblivion was without mods (with one exception: I used a German translation mod, because the original translation was horrible and the English version wasn't available in Germany at the time). It was a great experience, but I didn't like the leveling system. So I tried several mods addressing the issue (I still fondly remember the Random mod, which simply randomised the monsters you meet - a creepy experience). Later I played larger mods like Oscuro's (still one of my favourites) and Martigan's which opened up new ways of playing and enjoying the game. Even later I played Nehrim, a totally new game based on the Oblivion engine, and other partial conversions - new game content playing in the Oblivion world.
And I still return to Oblivion occasionally, without any mods (except the UOP's), and try different playing styles, different personal house rules (like playing without weapons and armour, or playing without fighting at all), with or without playing the main quest.

With that said, there is some justification in saying that there are people who focus more on mods than on the game itself (and sometimes even blame the game for mod-related problems). To each his/her own.

I became aware of the practice of mod abuse in MMO's, where they were intended and used to cheat.
In a MMO you are competing and playing along with many others, so it is crucial that the mechanics of the game apply to everyone equally in order to level the playing field, and allow skill and knowledge to determine success. Game developers who were serious about maintaining the integrity of their MMos were compelled to invest a lot of time to thwart mod abuse.

If you want to use mods to cheat yourself in a single player game, so be it, it effects only yourself. Not all mods are designed to reduce challenge though as you described. As long as their use are expressly approved by the game developer, then it is fine. I do worry about the bigger philosophical picture though.

Computer games are intellectual property just like movies, books, music; Is it ok to mod a movie if you don't like the ending, to change it to suit your desired outcome? If you disagree with the viewpoints expressed in a book, should you mod them to reflect your own beliefs? Should you mod a song if you prefer a faster tempo or alternate lyrics?

This is about Oblivion a Singelplayer game, why bring multiplayer cheats/trainer into this?
Also developers of multiplayer games always had to work against cheater that tried that.

Another thing, not ever mod is there to give you godlike powers that make the game trivial, that is just a fraction of a fraction of mods that are available.
And again those that do this are rightfully labled cheats/trainers.

Its seems that you have a very narrow view what mods are.
New Textures/Models/Quests/Gamemechanics/Locations/Items/NPCs/Sounds/Music/Animation
Vastly improving games by fixing bugs that the devs left in the game/could never fix.

This is aboutt Oblivion a game that was shipped with "The Elder Scrolls Construction Set"
An Editor by Bethesda for the players to expand their adventure in the game.
Like they did in Morrowind, like they did in Skyrim,Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4.
This very Developer/Publisher is known for letting players alter the game the way they see fit and people
love these games for it.

And if you ask "yeah but whats in for the developer/publisher"?
People are still bying these games to this day in ever steam sale Bethesda games rank among the highest
selling years after the initial release.

So yeah i cannot even name one thing that would be bad when it come to singleplayer mods sorry.