Since we now know that ESV will not have attributes I've been trying to think of another game that is a RPG with no attributes so I can have some idea of how this works. About all I can come up with is Mass Effect, which IMO isn't a RPG but more an action shooter with some skills like an RPG.

So is that what it's going to be like? You level up, you add more to your skills?

Are there any other games like this to use for comparison?

Thanks.

When you level up, you can boost your Magicka, Health or Fatigue, and your Health bar grows a little bit automatically.

Mass Effect uses XP leveling. Not the TES "use it and gain" leveling. Entirely different take on the system. Aside from being a linear shooter and not an open-world fantasy....

And by definition Mass Effect is an RPG. You play the role of a customized Commander Shepard. Simple. It's very different from many others, but it is still an RPG in the main sense of the term.

OT: As for attributes....aside from Mass Effect (being class and skill based) I can't really think of any at the moment...

The Fable games? I can not recall if they used attributes in the traditional sense...

in fable 2 yes but bot fable 3, that gane used a open a chest to upgtade kibda system.

We still increase our skills like we have done in past TES games, but inctead of spending points into attributes when leveling, we get a perk and can increase our health, magicka or stamina. Health goes up by itself though a little bit.

Demon's Souls however ran 100% around attributes (which are stats in the game).

Deus Ex and Gothic (or it does have it I don't remember).

I don't really think there has been any game that had a stat system quite like Skyrim's. But I can try to explain it as thoroughly as I can with the information we've been given. Sorry if you already know a lot of it:

- The primary/derived stats from the previous games (health, magicka, fatigue/stamina) are now called "attributes."
- There are 18 skills, categorized into combat, stealth, and magic, although any character can use any skill, and there are no major/minor skills.
- You still raise any skill purely by using it.
- Every time you raise any skill, it gives you some amount of "experience" that counts towards leveling. The amount of experience will be larger for higher skills, so raising a skill from 60 to 61 gives you more experience than raising a skill from 30 to 31.
- ^ This is complemented by having the experience requirement for the next level increase each time you level up, slowing down drastically by the time you reach level 50. You can keep leveling after this, but very slowly. The max level is somewhere in the 70s, based on whenever you can get all your skills to 100.
- Once you get to high levels, you will need to specialize and focus on raising your high skills in order to contribute much towards leveling.
- Every skill has what would be called a "skill tree" in other games, though many of them sound like they will be passive and are thus called "perk trees."
- Each perk tree has 12 to 20 perks, often grouped for specialization. For example 1H and 2H have perks for sword, axe, and mace specialization, and destruction will have perks for fire, ice, and lightning specialization. There are a total of over 280 perks.
- Every time you level, you get to choose one perk. There are also some requirements for choosing perks, so you can't pick a perk just because you already have the previous one in the tree. They are playing around with the details, but it's possible that you will only be able to get 50 perks max.
- In addition, every time you level, your health increases a bit. Then you get to choose to bonus health (further), magicka, or stamina.

Some things that attributes previously had an effect on will be solely handled by skills, others might have perks to handle them, and others might be dependent on health/magicka/stamina.

Pure speculation:

- There will possibly still be skill trainers, allowing you to pay to increase skills.
- My guess about the "requirements" for perks is simply that you will need a certain skill level for each perk in that skill. Others have suggested that you will only be able to choose perks from skills that you increased to contribute to your last level up. I don't think that is likely because that system would have the potential of level ups where you can't pick any perk, and I don't see Bethesda implementing a system where that can happen.
- With no willpower I'm guessing that magicka regen rate will be a fixed percentage of your total magicka per second, instead of being handled by perks or skills.
- I'm also guessing the same for stamina regen rate. If this is how it turns out, you can effectively raise your speed by increasing your stamina: sprinting will cost stamina, so raising it will allow you to sprint for longer periods of time, plus the increased stamina regen rate will decrease the time that it takes to start sprinting again.
- Some people have suggested that there will be perks that do not belong to any skill. I haven't really seen anything to support this, and the math seems to add up with perks being skill-related only (average of 16 perks per skill x 18 skills = ~288 perks)



So yeah, I can't think of any RPG that had a stat system that worked very similarly.

The best example I can think of is Ultima Online. Your character had health, mana and fatigue much like Skyrim and it also had a similar skill system in which you gained skills by using them. The differences are there were a lot more skills to choose from and characters didnt advance in levels at all. There were no perks either.

That seems to sum it up quite nicely. :goodjob:

Theres certainly been PnP systems with pretty simple attribute systems. Prince Valiant had 2, Brawn and Presence. There were no derived attributes. There were skills and traits. The emphasis was on storytelling rather than number-crunching.

With a total number of 280+ perks out of a max of 50 allowed, that is highly unlikely to ever occur. Next to impossible in fact. There will always be something useful for the player to take, even if it wasn't quite what you had hoped for. Fallout 3 had far less perks, and there was always something I had unlocked previously that I could take.

Amber: Diceless Roleplay is another one. Yeah, there are a handful of stats.... but I believe they're only ranked in relation to the other players. (You are effectively playing god-like characters, after all). So, my character might be Stronger than Bob and Weaker than Jane. In a basic test of strength, I'd always lose to Jane. But, if I could roleplay the situation well enough with the GM (effectively describe unique tactics, figure out a way to gain advantage, etc), I might be able to win a Strength contest with Jane. Like your examples, the emphasis is on storytelling.

Not really applicable to a cRPG, of course, since you don't have that freeform interaction with a GM.

Vitality Intelligence Endurance Strength Dexterity Magic Faith Luck

Gothic smaller then TES and have requirements like Strength attribute for weapons as well as Dexterity for bows, Deus Ex has really different mechanic Augmentations works more like perks or spells

It has Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence
http://uo.stratics.com/php-bin/show_content.php?content=30491

Excuse me, no game comes even close to TES , my opinion of course , Bethesda created the RPG genre :bowdown:

Well If I remember well Fable TLC has Strength
thats work with Physique what affect damage done as well improve speed of heavy weapons
Health just health
Toughness basic resistance to damage - your 'natural armour'.
Will thats work like Magicka
And Skill thats work more like combination of Speed and Agility

Well Fable didn't have really hard or complex mechanic, why was need streamline it even more?

Hear me out. The idea that some people are suggesting is that when you pick a perk, you are limited to only perks from skills which you raised to contribute to the level up.

It is very likely that perks will still have skill level requirements, or else it would be possible to get all perks for a skill even if you've only raised that skill 12 to 20 times. I'm guessing these requirements will use the same 0, 25, 50, 75, 100 system that Oblivion's skill perks used. Let's take destruction for example, because it's the skill whose perk tree that we've gotten the best look at:

http://cdnstatic.gamesas.com/akqacms/files/tes/screenshots/SkillsMenu_wLegal.jpg

From that it looks like there will be 12 destruction perks: one level 0 perk, four level 25 perks, three level 50 perks, three level 75 perks, and one level 100 mastery perk.

- When you get to character level 20, your destruction skill is 50, and you choose one of the three level 50 perks.
- At level 21, your destruction skill is 51, and you choose another level 50 destruction perk.
- At level 22, your destruction skill is 52, and you choose another level 50 destruction perk. You've now gotten all the 8 destruction perks available until your destruction skill is at 75.

Then (for whatever reason), you do nothing but destruction, raising it up until you level up, but not quite to 75. But since you've already gotten all the destruction perks available below destruction level 75, and since you didn't raise any other skill between level ups, you can't pick any perk.

Now why would someone do that? I remember several times in both Morrowind and Oblivion where I would have tons of ingredients, then just turn them into tons of potions, raising my alchemy skill 10+ times and getting a level up just from alchemy alone. You could say "just use a variety of skills and that won't be a problem," but I don't see Bethesda implementing a system where there's even the potential that that could happen. I think it's far more likely that when you level up you can choose a perk from any of the 18 trees, but you can only get perks which you meet the skill requirement for (25, 50, 75, 100).

There is one other possibility: the 280+ number does not include multi-level perks, so the actual number of "perks" that you can choose for a skill is greater than 12 to 20. But I thought I read somewhere that 280 includes the multi-levels.

Deus Ex and MassEffect 1&2 are some.

There are some with only 4 attributes, and thats only 1 more than Skyrim if you count the Health, Magicka, Stamina system.

Ofcourse, how many of those games have 18 Skills (1-100) and 18 Talent Trees (1-15) for 1 character :drool:

Well from already mentioned games UO has most 58-60 if I remember well, talents is not great example since they are not fundamental at all just nice additions to skills.

No, that would be Dungeons & Dragons. That system was around long before computers were and they had some of the first cRPGs ever made. Pool of Radiance was released before Bethesda was even in business.

Those SSI games were great. Really loved Eye of the Beholder and Pool of Radiance.
I don't remember the character creation though. were there attributes, or did we just pick a class?

No, that's not the way it's going to work. It's been mentioned that the perk system is based somewhat on the way they worked in Fallout. There, once you met the requirements of the perk, it was always available to you afterwards even if you didn't take it immediately when it first came up.



Not only that but there will be tiered perks, so that you can't take the second one without already having the first.



But you'll still have all the perks from the other trees that you can take. If you're a caster type, you don't want to focus only on Destruction, you'll want to spread your abilities around. So if by chance there is no Destruction perk available, you can still take a Restoration perk that you passed over earlier. Perk selection will not be a one time only thing, that would be a very poor design indeed. Once you meet the requirements, you'll always be able to choose it later. And with that many perks available, it will be virtually impossible not to find something that is useful to your character.

Yes indeed. I played through the Pool of radiance trilogy several times on my Commodore 64. I was never able to get into the fourth one though, Pool of Darkness.



D&D has always had attributes, but they played a very tangible role in that system. I can't speak for anything before Oblivion, but there they just played a very minor role and seemed more like a throwback to the D&D system than a viable game mechanism. Far too many people, when they think of RPGs, think of some variation of the D&D system, which essentially started it all. But it's not really necessary when dealing with a computer based game.

nono Bethesda gave them the idea i am sure just ask on the forums these guys know everything , ohhh Bethesda :bowdown:

If i remember well Bethesda gave to Ernest Gary Gygax some pencil , some dices and paper and got him in to books and all that RPG stuff , Bethesda even created TCG :nod:

Just my opinion

Ahh yes about good old times, does some one still remember Lands of Lore game series it has similar to TES skill progression but also special abilities thats similar to perks, but it was really simple in comparison with Ultima for example, the same goes to Dark Messiah and Arx Fatalis, I really don't want see similar downgrades of RPG mechanic in TES.