Remember when you took those piano/guitar lessons all those years ago? In all likelihood, if you've stopped playing, you probably can't play as well as you once did, if at all. It's because, as the old adage goes, "if you don't use it, you lose it" !

This is why I believe skills should atrophy at a certain rate if you don't use them for a long period of time. Successful writer and researcher Malcolm Gladwell claimed that, as a rule of thumb, it takes roughly 10 000 hours of hard practice at something to truly master it. This is why having a character with 100 in every skill doesn't make a lot of sense. You would have to be some sort of God living for thousands of years to accumulate that degree of expertise in every single skill field, right?

Of course, someone fairly adept in a field with some years of experience won't degrade too much after a few months or even years neglect, and that is why there should be thresholds. My friend, who used to be a guitar wizard, stopped playing for about 2 years. He recently picked up the guitar again and, as expected, was nowhere near where he once was. But less than a week later he was back up to speed, scorching the fretboard with his shredding. Thus, there should be certain thresholds that, once you pass in skill level, your skill cannot degrade below. For example, if the threshold goes in increments of 20, ie 20, 40, 60, 80, etc., then if you were to get your lockpicking skill up to 44 and do not use it for a long while, the lowest it will degrade to would be 40, because you remember the basics of all you knew before. You could then easily get it back up to 44, and beyond if you keep training it. I used increments of 20 just as an example here. A better model would probably be increments that start of large, and exponentially decrease. For example the thresholds could proceed as 20, 40, 50, 60, 70, 75, 80, 84, 88, 90, 92, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99...ad infinitum - this will mean that you will have to almost constantly be training up in the higher levels to stay at your cutting edge peak, which is how it is in the real world. Also I do not believe there should be a hard cap, as there is no 100 "perfection" level that any human can obtain at a skill.

I believe mechanics like this would be interesting to have modeled in the game, and would create a dynamic forcing the player to think a bit more about which skills they use or how often. In order for this to be effective, it is obvious the rate of atrophying would not have to be non-linear, hence the term "learning curve". The rate of atrophying might be fairly high early on in low skill levels, and would taper off as it gets higher. This makes sense because you are using skills a lot early on anyway, and this would further define your characters proficiencies. I think this would be a cool addition to the game, and will mod it in if it's not in vanilla (which it probably won't). What do you guys think?

biased poll is biased

I respectfully disagree, while this would make the game more realistic in a sense, it would also be quite annoying, what if you put perks into one handed and then switch to mage for a few in game weeks and come back to see that your perks are wasted?

This is one of those instances where Gameplay > Realism I'm afraid

I don't see this as either neccisary or desirable. It would be tedious and annoying, Realism is fine to a point but this idea just takes it too far.

Only in prison

Because switching completely to mage for a couple weeks just for kicks wouldn't make any sense in real life, especially if you're trying to survive.

Sorry to inform you, Skyrim is not real life, it is and always will be a Video Game, the point of a video game is entertainment. Skills dropping because of lack of use doesn't sound entertaining, it sounds tedious and frustrating and it goes against pretty much all RPG mechanics. General rule of thumb for Rpgs is this. You kill stuff, do quests, level up and increase skills not always in that order. Skills going down would ruin the progression as well as create a possibility to level up infinitely. Your idea contradicts the game mechanics.

It's a silly idea. It's just going to force someone to swing their sword or shoot a fireball every once in awhile to ensure they don't lose any skill, then going back to focus on the skill they want.

I think it would create more of a sense of being actively involved in the stats of the character. To me it would be deep planning and thinking, which I enjoy. Some may call that tedium and frustration though

This feature is already in TES games, you lose your skills when you rot in jail, lol

Why is that silly? That's literally what you'd have to do in reality. Shoot a fireball or an arrow every once in a while to keep your form. Is that too hard?

And I respect that, however people want their character to progress, improve and get more powerful as the game goes on, not weaken. Maybe they could integrate it into a hardcoe mode but I just don't think it adds much to the game, sorry.

I never meant to imply that your skills could ONLY atrophy. Of course the ones that you would use would go up, thus making you more powerful (and those are the skills you use, so why should it matter if you're not so good at the ones you don't use?)

Is it too hard not to have to?

i wouldnt mind it. however, they skills should come back much quicker than if your learning them for the first time. once you learn how to ride a bike etc etc. you know. you would also have to have a bottom limit that they wont go past because otherwise you would lose levels.

I think it would be cool but it should go very slowly one point a month.

My argument is precisely the opposite: it would be too easy

I would like this, but as a mod. I cannot see Bethesda adding it other than in unique circumstance (like jail). If instead you suggested a game structure that increases the prevelence of these types of situations then maybe I could see it being implemented.

Also, it would not ruin leveling mechanics since they made it so higher skills raise levels faster and I don't think your level has any effect after level 50 anyway.

Edit: While it would be nice if Bethesda designed games exactly like we want them, we have to keep in mind that they have a style they are going for and we should try to find a way to make the things we want fit their style if we want them implemented officially.

Thing is, Elder Scrolls has always been about freedom to develop your character as you see fit, they want you to be in control of your character and his/her progression throughout the game world, forcing characters to regularly use every skill (or forcing them to do anything for that matter) will wrest control from the player, If you want to play as a pure mage, warrior, thief or a mixture of them, then you can. The emphasis here being that you are free to change your playstyle whilst playing, i.e. wake up one morning and thing "Hmm, I know I'm a mage but sneaking around and stealing stuff sounds fun!" and you can do just that, go from one archetype to another without having to restart. If your skills decreased over time then you are essentially limiting the player in what he/she can do, might as well just go back to choosing a class at the start.

1. It's tedium for no purpose other than being "realistic"(your view of realistic)
2. It's not really realistic. If I don't practice something for a week, I'm not going to forget anything. It's take a long time for skills to diminish if they do at all...Somethings diminish at different rates or not at all(riding a bike for ex.) Even when you are "rusty" after a prolonged period of not doing something the skillset is still there, you just need a little time to get back into it.
3. It's not too hard, It's just pointless.

It sounds like the opposite of what Bethesda is trying to do. They removed classes so your character isn't so defined, this sounds like it would define your character the longer you play. I just can't see it being fun, but rather annoying.

Jesus no. The play time of an average character will be around half a year of in-game time.

I agree that anything that limits the player playing how they want is bad, however if you read my full post you would realize that it is not limiting overall, as there will be thresholds. You could be the master of everything god if you wish, but it would just be a lot harder. Also you couldn't go from being a master in one area to one in another in a day, which makes sense. If anything, it would create a lot more playtime and give the player the freedom to be limited. Although I guess most people would like to do whatever whenever in the game. That's fine for dikeing around I, but I think having this atrophy mechanic would make the game more challenging.


So if you're taught to play a concerto on the Piano, you can play it exactly as you could a week later with zero practice? That's abnormal. Also I never specified a specific time frame, if anything it would be much longer than a week. And I acknowledged that whole rusty skillset argument in my original post

If you learned to play the piano, would you forget in a week? You're being rather specific with that example.

[quote name='Arseth' timestamp='1308797087' post='17959024']
I agree that anything that limits the player playing how they want is bad, however if you read my full post you would realize that it is not limiting overall, as there will be thresholds. You could be the master of everything god if you wish, but it would just be a lot harder. Also you couldn't go from being a master in one area to one in another in a day, which makes sense. If anything, it would create a lot more playtime and give the player the freedom to be limited. Although I guess most people would like to do whatever whenever in the game. That's fine for dikeing around I, but I think having this atrophy mechanic would make the game more challenging.

It's quite hard as it is, especially now that they have removed major skills. It took me an excess of 300 hours to master 18/21 of my players skills, and those that were not mastered were a long way off. This was annoying in GTA: san andreas, you would spend hours at the gym trying to work off fat, then you would go to the cluckin' bell, have one meal to regain health and you would be fat again.
I would go into more depth, but I'm in the UK and its 4 in the morning, I need sleep or I'll get cranky. Bye bye.