I do agree they could have gotten away with both. What would Fallout be without S.P.E.C.I.A.L.??

I do agree they could have gotten away with both. What would Fallout be without S.P.E.C.I.A.L.??

Then if you keep them, don't you run into the same problem they had with classes? You play for a few hours realize you picked the wrong stats and have to restart. You don't quite know what you want to do when you just start, so it's not a good time to have a massive irreversible choice. Odds are that you will pick wrong.

Attribute effects were mostly redundant with skill effects. Bethesda was wise to decide to keep only one of them and in choosing to drop attributes it was the lesser of two evils.

Now that attributes are out of the way, they can work on expanding the skill effects even more.

That's what I call reply value.

It also allows for another layer of diversity . . . especially in the beginning levels of the game.

Look oddly enough the adam sessler interview of todd asnwers this perfectly...

Early on they had atributes.. EVERYTHING EVERYHTING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING... did I mention EVERYTHING they did is still there? Its just now handled by something else.. skill perk or the stats....

Thus we lost NOTHING. We just use something else to adjust them.

In the Oblivion system there wasn't any huge difference in the damage either for your example. What's the issue?

Really the only substantial difference the lack of attributes makes is for encumbrance

Ugh, I really don't like this direction. Perks are nice, but they can't replace attributes in a clean and intuitive way. I can understand removing things like spears or mounts which they might not have time to implement, but considering the history of the series they would have had to gone out of their way to remove attributes. Sounds like an experimental disaster and so ingrained into the game that it can't be modded without heavy scripts.

Not enthusiastic about this particular decision, but I'll hold any real complaints until release.

They'll probably put it to 200 and with a Strong Back-like perk, you can get 100 more encumbrance points probably.

This. If we think about stamina in relation to the three archetypes, (warrior, mage, and rogue) , the warrior will pick stamina at level up most often and is the physically strongest. The mage is physically weakest and will most likely neglect stamina in favor of magicka. The rogue is a sort of balance between the two with magicka and stamina being equally important as well as being stronger than the mage but weaker than the warrior. Linking it to a single skill is...shall we say bloody stupid. If there were a base encumberance and a perk in several different skill trees related to physical strength that would increase it then perhaps that may work but I am doubtful of that scenario.

RE: outrage--pot, meet kettle. Just saying...

I'm debating whether to fully explain my reasoning or not. For now, I'll keep it simple to keep the post short.

1: So you know the new system does everything better from your many hours of Skyrim gameplay? If so, please clue the rest of us in on the details.

2: It doesn't do the same thing, at all, despite what Todd says. Have you ever looked at scripts or stats in the CS? That being said, as I stated in my previous post, it's possible that they've worked out a better system, though I have a feeling this might be looked back as Skyrim's version of the Radiant AI announcement. Again, as I said in my previous post, I HOPE I'm wrong, and I'm crossing my fingers.

2.5: Using attributes made a lot of things possible in mods and scripts that won't make sense anymore. Fatigue mods, for example, could take a lot of different attributes into account. They could run a formula on willpower and endurance to determine when to: darken the shaders, start panting, trip, fall down, pass out, reduce damage dealt, etc. The script could factor strength (or luck, or whatever) in to modify checks. The result was combat that was more challenging, and felt more satisfying and real. For this type of usage, perks don't replace attributes, but they can add to them (like in FO).

3. A similar example is gravity and physics. As the number of stats increases and the formula driving the behavior becomes more sophisticated, the feel of physics in the game becomes more satisfying. You don't have to understand the math, or know all the numbers in the background, but you notice the results. For the previous TES systems, real life, and most RPGs, stats are the building blocks that everything else is derived from (technically, skills are orthogonal, but that's a bigger discussion that doesn't change the main point). A well-designed game allows you to feel the effect of the stats. The new system parcels out the building blocks and makes them "higher order", which might result in unsatisfying feel and gameplay.

As I keep saying, I could be wrong, I hope I'm wrong, but my guess is that BGS made a big design mistake. It may be that they've improved the vanilla design but crippled the ability to improve on it with mods. It may be that they've improved everything. Until we actually play it's just speculation.

Agree Completely!

I used attributes a LOT in my Fallout 3 and NV Realism Tweaks' scripts. Without having any access to attributes, modding will be MUCH more limited for Skyrim. And that, all by itself, has me worried . . . since I would not have played Oblivion for very long without being able to add mods that fixed many of the game's issues. [The same is true for Fallout.]

encumberence will probably be governed by stamina obviously in our world when someone runs out of energy (stamina) they can barely move

Oh this! The game became so much more fun when I used a mod to just allow +5s normally. I am so very glad that annoyance is gone. :goodjob:

I didn't read this whole thread, so if I'm repeating someone IM sorry but maybe encumbrance is ties to race to start, then perks to raise it?

Pretty much.

I hope it's decided by what race you are, that's the nest best thing compared to strength.

Encumbrance should be based on backpack quality, perks, and stamina.

Holy crap we get backpacks?! Almost makes me nostalgic for grade school.

No, but its a suggestion.

no there will still be encumbrance, but stamina will probably control it

So someone who has lots of stamina (Iron Man runner/marathoner) can carry more than say someone 350lbs and arm muscles as wide as the average thigh. Distilling ones abilities to either stamina or health neither makes sense or easy to discern one character you make from another.

Maybe your stamina will drain when you move based on some logarithmic function of the weight you're carrying. That way, the more you carry, the faster your stamina will drain, to a point, and having more stamina will naturally let you carry more.

Stamina doesn't mean how far you can run, it's a term measuring your energy. Sure sprint drains stamina but so does swinging a weapon to. It's just energy, so yes, it makes sense for stamina to determine encumbrance.

Now you get to mod in perks that actually do something cool and/or modify flat numbers, instead of attributes that just modified flat numbers.