Point missed. Whiff! I was drawing an anology to another game in which quicksave would be a problem, in order to illustrate that optional features can sometimes damage the intended gameplay experience. Nobody here is arguing against a quicksave in Skyrim.

Even if quicksave was the problem in Skyrim, it still would not allow you to change decisions you made 100 gameplay hours ago, unless you wanted to rewind and lose those 100 gameplay hours. What we're talking about is changing Perks without rewinding. I have no problem with people who want to revert to an old save and make a different level-up decision. Changing Perks without losing anything is a problem.

Exactly. harvv gets it.

No way.

I see talk about basically forcing people into playing the game multiple times. Todd Howard made it crystal clear and I totally agree with him that it would be wrong to try and force a play style on people. If you want to play through with multiple characters that's fine. If you want to invest 100+ hours into a single character, that's fine as well. They aren't going to design it to force you into a "preferred" way of playing, and I respect them very much for that!

You may not be able to get all perks in one play through, but they've made it clear that it's perfectly viable to level every skill if you want. It will just take a very long time, as it should.

This, personally i wouldnt have them be resettable at all but if it had to be done i could see maybe after youve reached their max level of 50 (i think Todd has stated that after 50 leveling goes much much slower). So maybe after 50 you could change them for that character through a process thats much much longer than obtaining them in the first place.

Also todd has said that leveling will be much faster and the perks will be coming in really fast to give you a sense of reward or something like that



not even sure by your response if your for or against perks being able to be reset

I dont think anyone is talking about forcing you to do anything, but from all the interviews so far i took from it that....your character sort of becomes what you put into it.....you use your sword all the time and pick just sword perks youre gonna be damn amazing at cutting peoples faces off.....on the flipside if you do a little of everything....you will have that small advantage over the amazing sword guy in that you can use a good bit of magic(not great) while he cannot, but you are also not really great at anything in particular like he is at the sword because that was your choice/style of play and you have to live with it because you chose to play that way, no one forced you. Pretty sure he has stated mutliple times that you level and stuff based directly off your highest skill so that seems to be the way theyre thinking.

So no one is forcing a playstyle, it just comes automatically from how you play your character. But you do choose to play the way you choose to play and that leads to consequences...Being able to redo your perk trees would be the same as having a big list of every decision you have made throughout the game and be able to just manipulate them however you want to see what happens without actually playing.

Haha. What makes you think I missed your point? Your point is good for that survival game. I made another point pointing the error in that anology. Also if you didn't miss my point, you would see that I agree with "changing Perks without losing anything is a problem" stance.

The point is that an optional feature can be detrimental even to those who never use it. If it's possible for that to be true in that survival game, it's possible for it to be true in Skyrim. That is the anology. Since you agree that it is possible for an optional feature to be detrimental to a game, then you should agree that it is possible in this game. Yet you said that the anology makes no sense. Sooooooo yeah.


I did miss that. I admit that I find your posts hard to follow sometimes :sadvaultboy:
Anyway, I'm glad we agree, at least partially :foodndrink:

lmao...was thinking the exact same thing just now

New purpose for the Oghma Infinium now that attributes are gone?

absolutely freaking not. the only game that did this right that i played was neocron. the neocron method involved buying pills that would reduce specific skills by a couple of points. they were expensive and they only did a couple points at a time so if you were a high level character completely redoing your character was pretty much out of the question. it did work for low level characters though and you could do it for midlevel characters but it took along time. after you took each pill (and they worked one at a time) you had about 10 or 20 minutes where you characters had reduced stats. these were ingame minutes so you couldnt just log out and come back later. this was ok for fixing your early character but pretty much impossible after you got to a certain point.

however, i dont see how they could implement a system like this in skyrim for obvious reasons. if you screw up your character then that is because of your stupidity. you should have to deal with the consequences.

Not really no. The choice is simple If you wish to only use the once per day save don't make any quick saves then you can't use them, surely sticking to your principles is not so difficult, I have managed it with not fast travelling in oblivion or either fallout title despite knowing full well that I could at anypoint. I have stalked and lost my prey in Assassins creed 2 without the aid of the HUD despite the knowledge that I could switch the HUD back on at any point and have a magic the GPS point me straight to him. And I've had my ass handed to me repeatedly in Dragon age and did not flinch from nightmare despite the loading screen goading me into changing down the difficulty after every death and i'm sure you have likely done similar things. At no point did i feel that having these options that I'd resolved not to use detract from the experience for me.

Another way to design the game is to have a list of options at the start of each playthrough that are fixed throughout, quick save on/off character respec on/off difficulty change mid play through on/off. This allows you to head off any temptation before you are faced with it. The Pro Evolution Soccer series did this as part of the master league season mode If recall correctly, it also had an auto save feature that caused you to lose 3-0 if you quit mid match.



You do realise that option is kind of already in the previous games anyway. You have the option to turn down the difficulty any time you meet a tough monster but I take it you don't nor does this pose much of a wrenching dilemma for you.

Point is right for that game. anology is right too, so I show how funnily correct it is with comparing losing a perk to losing a team member. But does it make sense for our situation? No. In a survival game, you would like to cut things like that, quicksaving. In an RPG game, you would want to add things like that, changing a profession. There is no reason to add competitiveness to an RPG game. It kills roleplaying, roleplaying changing from a convict to a mayor.


That's why I want you to look at the situation from another perspective. You can bring as much as punishment you want. Changing a perk costing 3 perks, 20 skill points, no perk for 3 levels.(-5 level decrease, I hate level mechanics, it works so wrongly.)... :flamethrower: Burn sarusas!


:tongue: My logic... it works... in a weird way. I try to bring different viewpoints on subjects, most of the time it can be said that I'm devil's advocate. I just want to show there are more ways. And also English is not my native language.

The fact that the consequences are there in the first place sets the whole tone for how you play the game to start with(making you use your brain and think about the choices you make), taking that out completely changes it and destroys that feeling. How do you not understand or are you simply saying you dont because you find replaying to be "exercise in tedium" as you put it.

like i said before being able to reset your perks(which are there because you chose to play the game that way) would be the same as looking at a list of all the past choices you made in the game and being able to alter them how you want without actually playing the game. I think the feature youre looking for is saving the game before your first perk, then reloading that when you want to try new ones.

like others have said it would break the core philosophy of the game, that they give you multiple ways to do everything(choices) and you have to choose, then you play on with the consequences brought on by your decision.

For me it would ruin the feel of the game just having it in there because the experience / skill / effort or w/e you had to have or put in to it to get to that point would be kind of pointless.

:rock:

No reactions to my little story of self observation. Too much of a TL:DR or does the point of view I bring to the table with it not hold any water ? Some are saying the effort you spent before on your character would feel pointless but isn′t that the case in IRL too ? I know TES is fantasy and not really IRL but we do tend to use IRL experiences as benchmarks for certain things within the game. Well at least I don′t see a problem in slowly getting new skills to replace your old ones, would have to be done before hitting max level though. Not like you′re gonna re-educate someone whose level would represent years of experiences IRL (I′d imagine a level 50 character would be like a 70 years old man IRL, not like you′re gonna make him forget all his skills in golf he honed from the age of 18 in favor of chess skills before he meets his demise, but someone may get quite rusty in golf by the age of 70 and could be a champion in chess if he stopped golfing and started to play a lot of chess in his 30′s or 40′s.

Id rather not have the reset in at all... But i dont really agree with your anologies. Lets take sarusas...he wants to be able to completely wipe all his perks and all his stats clean and redistribute them as he likes so he can try other aspects of the game besides the ones he chose to play originally. Youre saying you started doing something different at the age of 10 which is literally nothing youre 10 is incredibly young youve barely begun to do anything. Resetting perks would be like practicing your ass off to get amazing at swinging a sword for yearssss and then you decide you want to be good at magic, you start clacking your heels together and forget every single thing youve done all that effort and training and all that is erased while simultaneously skipping all those years of training, battle experience, knowledge everything it would take to learn that discipline and being a master.

If it is implemented that you can change your perks which id rather it not at all, i think it should either be like you said(change at a younger age)....only available VERY very early on in the game like only after a few perks, or it should be after your max level and should take much much longer than doing it the first normal way if you want your original character to have these different ones.

Sooo theres my reaction to your observation

But personally i think you play the way you want and you end up getting what you get for playing that way, you dont get a redo on every other decision you make in the game you shouldnt get one with this, if you want to play another style make another character or reload an old save.

Just save the game before you level and if you find you don't like the perk, reload the game from that point. It's really no different than what you're proposing.

I've read it. Glad things worked out for you.

So if you become level 25 with 25 perks. And at level 50, still have 25 perks but different ones... That looks pretty balancing to me. He who didn't use this mechanic, can go to 50 perks of pure class for whatever his preference was. 50 perk jack of all trades included.

I'm not good with rules: 25 max change, every change cost one. Does this rule work for above?

@ellert....I dont know why i didnt think of this earlier haha but vtastek says it perfectly!.....If you go halfway through and decide you want something else, you can choose to follow that if you like but you will only end up mediocre at both compared to the person who has worked hardest for that one discipline (Jack of all trades) seems completely fair and natural....although sarusas' argues he would like to to be able reset the perks as well as stats and redistribute everything as he likes which sort of defeats the whole purpose of playing the game in the first place imo.

But ya completely agree with you vtastek on this one hah, was a bit hard to tell what you were saying earlier lol, if you decide you want to do something else halfway through then you can if you like and you will end up being half good at both.

Well I was thinking of something a little bit different. Let′s say you are level 49 and accidentally spent 1 point in combat when you just wanted to have 50 in being a mage, then you could swap the 1 point for a magic point, going from "48 magic + 1 combat + 0 stealth" to "50 magic + 0 combat + 0 stealth" and with a certain degree of restraint you′d not be jumping everywhere around. A good system would be one that only allowed you to start changing around late, like at level 10 you would have 3 in combat, 2 in magic and 5 in stealth when you realized you wanted to be a pure warrior, then it would maybe progress like this.

10: 3 Combat - 2 Magic - 5 Stealth -- Somewhere around here he decides "I just want to be a warrior"
11: 5 Combat - 2 Magic - 4 Stealth
12: 7 Combat - 2 Magic 3 Stealth
13: 9 Combat - 2 Magic - 2 Stealth
14 - 11 Combat - 2 Magic - 1 Stealth
15 - 13 Combat - 2 Magic - 0 Stealth
16 - 15 Combat - 1 Magic - 0 Stealth
17 - 17 Combat - 0 Magic - 0 Stealth -- Goal Achieved, he is now a warrior
18 - 18 Combat - 0 Magic - 0 Stealth
19 - 19 Combat - 0 Magic - 0 Stealth
... etc

As you see he didn′t become a pure warrior until at level 17 when he started making the change as early on as level 11 and it does make you have to deal with your choices if you are not quick, someone at level 30 with 15 Combat - 2 Magic and 13 Stealth is already too late to become a pure mage if the max is 50, since taking 1 from combat and stealth in turn for 20 levels still leaves him with 5 in combat and 3 in stealth and only 42 in magic at level 50. So it′s not like it would be "WOOSH change!" or anything like that. But if he had decided to be a pure Combat player he could have achieved that around level 45, some levels before the estimated max, so it still favors you sticking to your plan.

Those thinking my story is one that kinda fits mostly since I was so young at that age do have a point, but hey I don′t have much to work with, being only 18 I have no idea if I′d have a easier time retaining my current skills by the time I became 30 if I did the same thing or not, I do know people learn and forget things faster at a younger age (namely during their childhood years) but it wouldn′t be impossible to bend the rules of reality a tiny bit for the video game Skyrim and just pretend a level 30 is able to forget 13 levels of Stealth by the time he hits level 43.

What I′m more going after is the fact that you need to practice your skills to keep them, most would grimace at my suggestion thinking "so there is still no consequence for choosing the wrong path in the beginning ?" Well what I mean is that if you make a mistake initially and get a combat skill when you mean to go pure mage, and let′s say for the sake of relevance that your characters combat skill is represented by his ability to make a stone skip on water, but he goes for the path of the mage and gets 1 more magic point when he levels, but he only got 1 because in theory he practiced his skills at skipping the stone by going to the lake at least once a day to skip stones for half an hour, but if he instead lost his 1 combat skill and got 2 magic skills, then in theory that would represent if he skipped going to the lake and spent the gained time on practicing even more magic!

I realize this becomes moot for someone who has always been pure at something since he doesn′t have skills to retain, but I bet Bethesda would be able to work out something, perhaps you could get one free perk at level 50 but only in your area of expertise if you stayed pure, it could be something like...

Dedication to X: Your dedication to X over the span of your life has made you even more proficient at it than your less dedicated peers, you gain one free perk that you can freely spend in X but not in Y or Z

How would that sound ?

And after all, if one would at level 25 start to move his skills from stealth to magic, he could as well just start spending points in magic and end up with 25 magic and 25 stealth rather than 25 magic and 0 stealth, kinda pointless if you don′t get some plus for removing a skill you have. I do have one other idea though, perhaps it would be possible to have to remove 2 skills to add to another, that way pure players would benefit from sticking to their decision and those that changed early on would not be damaged too much (someone with 1 in every skill at level 3 that wanted to go for pure thief could have 49 skills as a thief at level 50 that way rather than 1 magic, 1 fighting and 48 thief), but someone who started to change later would be more crippled (doing it with 10 in all at 30 would result in you having 40 thief skills at level 50 rather than the 49 if he′d changed at level 3, or even only 30 if he was 15 warrior and mage at 30 when he decided to be a pure thief by 50).

:whistling:

Natural evolution my friend. Just sit back and enjoy the flashy bells and whistles. It will be enough.

1. How do you know if you never played the game?

2. I never liked perks anyway, who needs to be stuck with them?

3. The perk tree was broken anyway I spent 99% of the game grinding levels for that next perk.

4. I shouldn't be shackled with redundant perks, this will give me the opportunity to build the character as I go!

5. This way I can be the character I want to be!

6. I trust BGS implicitly, if they decide it is good that is good enough for me.



Need I go on? :confused:

What? you arent stuck with them, You gain them based on what you do so you arent shackeled with anything, and its been stated that the perks are going to come very fast specifically so it doesnt feel like a grind for them

I guess one man's shackles is another man's dog collar. :thumbsup:

It must be nice to have such infallible self-control. Can you accept that other gamers might not have your iron will? (I don't ) Or do you think that games should be designed only for players with masterful discipline, and if some people let the cheesy options ruin the game for them, it's their own fault?


I do like the idea of fixing options at game start. That would go a long way towards my acceptance of the idea. I would still worry that the game design would be built around the assumption of malleable characters, though; game balance is a tricky thing. If they built the game with no respecs, balancing it normally then at the last minute added a checkbox at playthrough start to enable respecs, along with a warning that that is not how the game is intended to be played and that it might mess balance up, then I would be OK with it.

It still seems like too much of a fringe demand for it to be worth the development effort on their part, but maybe that's just me.


Maybe, but as I recall, Oblivion was a cakewalk anyway, so I never thought about it :wink_smile: