This is a great post - I completely agree.

I've been playing pen-and-paper RPGs since the early 1980s, both as a GM and a player. The essence of these games, whether it was AD&D 1e, 2e, GURPS, OSRIC or even more obscure games, was always the open world sandbox aspect of the world ,where the players could completely choose to do whatever the hell they wanted (or at least make the attempt), and as the DM, usually the fun part for me was attempting to weave the story and adventure I had planned for that week's session into the unfolding narrative formed by the player choices.

It was not about the STR, DEX, INT, etc. It was about the story that developed out of the player choices.

Obviously, due to technological limitations, even Bethesda's RPGs do not provide anywhere near this level of freedom, but they are much closer to capturing the essence of a pen-and-paper campaign than any other video games I've played in the past several years.

and im pretty sure that other things the attributes got up like that amout u can carry or mana regeneration will be coverd by perks theres no real difference

Again, making them meaningful would require a sever cut into the skill system...
Static attributes just wouldn't work with TES, it was always about character progression into the way you're playing. You couldn't evolve your character meaningfully if the attributes you mainly depend on never or rarely changes.

As for redundancy, you would have a point if it would be two different ways to reach the same goal, but a warrior both requires strength AND skill to be good, just having one is not enough.

And I would still say that attributes doesn't add a realistic or complex enough picture either.
There would be jumps of progression either way...

Attributes in Fallout 3 were fire and forget. You don't increase your Str through your actions. You start with 3 str you end with 3 str even if you do nothing but wield an axe, unless you take a perk which has nothing to do with in game actions.

There are also perks in Fallout locked unless you have the skill requirement.

From a role play stand point attributes are just a number if you have perks and skills that do the same thing! Carry weight, lets be honest here, adds pretty much nothing. All essential items will be taken en mass regardless of carry weight. If you really want to be role playing carry weight why the hell are you fighting with 5 weapons and two armor sets in your pocket, bag or where is your stuff again?

I disagreed with that post completely and on many levels, and also found the parting remarks to be rather impolite and biased of personal preferences.

playing a mage, throwing on a suit of heavy armor, and letting groups of rats hit you while you stare at the wall isn't fun. neither was the stat multiplier system. modding always +5 on ob and mw made the game much more fun. it'll be nice to have a vanilla TES where you can actually pick some skills, use them, and be powerful. not crippled later on because you have 3 willpower majors, ect. tbh, this design change has been accepted a lot more than other things (removing mysticism, armor merging, ect.) If it bothers the vocal minority off so much, they can just mod it in.

A $50 fixer-upper? Modding anything significant back in requires that many parts of the game actively acknowledge it and use it ~or it's simply for show... and not worth the time taken to mod it in. :shrug:

They did go you did get a new system.Not argueing just giving you how i see it .sorry my first attempt at multi quotes i messed it up

My apologies if I came off as impolite; I'm simply trying to say that despite reservations (even I have a few) that focusing only on what worries you solves nothing. Try to meet the good with the bad. Try to play the game open-minded. If you really dislike the changes, that's not a problem, or a bad thing. No one game can entertain everyone.

And yes, I may be a bit biased; part of what really bugged me about Oblivion was in the end, I was worrying more about trying to optimise my statistics than simply playing the game and seeing how my character turned out. I've recently restarted, said screw optimisation, and although I have a weaker character I'm enjoying the game much more. With the complete removal of attributes, this won't even be an issue for me.

So, I guess what I'm saying is "Sorry it drives you nuts. I hope you still enjoy the game despite the developer's design decisions. I humbly disagree and approve of the changes".

Attributes vary from game to game and do different things. Many RPG games don't have skills that define how hard you can hit, what magicka you can cast and the effectivness of your bow. Most rpg games consist of picking a class and developing his attributes from there and picking up the skills as you reach the level requirement.

Elder Scrolls is unique and has always been one of the most unique RPG games out there in terms of exploration and character development. I pity the people who can't think outside the box.

Well, I must admit I didn't understand exactly what Deven meant when he compared Skyrim to the anology of a bus, but it didn't seem to be mean-spirited.

In any case, I wholeheartedly agree that the essence of RPGs is not stats, not even remotely.

The essence of role playing games, going back to the grandaddy of D&D, has always been about participating in a story that develops at least partly out of your choices as a player.

The most fun pen-and-paper sessions in which I've participated have always involved each player taking on the role of a character in a wide open sandbox world where you can be who you want, do what you want, etc., not unlike Bethesda's oft-repeated mantra.

Everyones so crazy about this subject gesh we dont even know if they will be covered by perks maybe it will be a skill of its own didnt todd only say that the main ones r gone so if u want to increase your magicka u can directly now so maybe u can with everything else to like mana regen. and so on

I disagree. Attributes would take nothing away from skills. Interestingly, Beth said that skills don't matter that much anymore and perks are where the power is. Skills are pretty much just a number you need to raise to have access to perks.
I wouldn't advocate statis attributes, either. There is a multitude of possible systems that would incorporate dynamic attributes in an interesting way.


Urm, exactly my point. Are we misunderstanding each other here? :wacko:


Why is it either/or? I don't mind jumps of progression (perks) as long as there are still ways to increase effectiveness gradually.

if it's not worth the time than it's not that important. people have worked years on mods to turn TES into middle earth, seems like a significant change that's not really worth the time. but people do it anyway.

Everything the attributes did is in the game. Magic, Stamina, Health, Skills, Perk trees, and constellation stones are used to define my character. I'm not a strong character because my Strength is at level 45. I'm strong because I can carry heavy things, and smash a person to death with a heavy mace. I choose perks, level skills, and choose constellation stones that make me stronger than another person. But, we honestly don't know for sure how it all works and how it will feel playing the game. The developers have spent years creating and playing this game, if they think the feature is redundant, then I'll take their word for it and then see how it works out when I play the game. You have zero experience with the games mechanics, yet you think the "removal" of a list of words and numbers is completely unbelievable.

All we can do is share information that has been given to us, talk about it, and form an early opinion about that information. If you don't know that information, then you can't form an opinion about that information. We can't have a solid opinion about how the game plays, because we have not played the game. We can have an opinion on what things Todd and the others have shared about the game. Imagine if Skyrim were a book that had not been released yet. The author shares information about some characters, settings, and a general idea of the plot. Those things may help us know if we are at least interested in the book, but what he shared really has no reflection on the books quality, and it's entire contents. I won't really know if I like that book until I read it. I can say, I probably won't like it or I probably will like it, based on this information the author has given me, but I can't say for sure until I actually begin reading the book.

i agree with u both i dont think its all about stats i thinks its even better this way now i can directly increase my magicka helping me become a stronger pure mage

I agree 100%, but stats represent the real limits of the PC, and that represents the boundary inside which the player's choices [should] exist ~with that specific character.

No... It is important if they actually consider doing it, but it is not worth retrofitting half of the game to support those changes properly everywhere they should be acknowledged. Hacks are easy, but a really good mod takes a lot of work and testing.

Ah, but therein lies the problem. If there were a strength-attribute, this would be true. But without a shared variable, I can make a character that carries stuff like an ox, but punches like a hamster. Or a character that crushes an orc's head with one hand, but can't lift a box of kwama eggs. Without attributes, there is no connection between related abilites.

Yeah, but most of us that know what we're talking about when we complain about these things being remove hate that fact because it means that we are not going to have the same degree of enjoyment that we had in past games or in other games that use similar systems.

No one is complaining because they had to rely on attributes to play or to get through the game or whatever, we're complaining because they were integral parts of the game that actually made you think.

These games are not supposed to be interactive stories, they are supposed to be interactive worlds, where you grow, and develop. Attributes, no matter how poorly fleshed out they were (and that was the real problem btw, there is nothing inherently wrong with the concept of an attribute system), helped serve that purpose of creating a believable world where you grow.



A few good chances do not outweigh the many bad ones. Just because the game moves forward in a couple areas does not eclipse the fact that it has move backwards in others. The fact that Tavern Brawls are a feature to be excited over yet the removal of an entire school of magic (that mind you, was completely legitimate) garners a response akin to "Who cares it doesn't matter and blah blah blah" is just sad.



Nice to see Greg that you are seeing reason. We can all agree that attributes in the past weren't the best things ever, but is that cause for removal? No, its cause for improving them.



It was also about the story of your character. The games are centered on the player you know and making the player something that never develops throughout the game (whether its by story, development, and whatever else you can think of to define a character) is pretty bad imo. Sure, the ability to define through development is still there, but only as a shadow of what it used to be.



No, it wouldn't.



Not necessarily. In the case of your warrior, its a matter of hitting hard every time you hit (which wouldn't be often) or hitting often (but not very hard), or indeed, getting both benefits. Indeed, it would have been better, I think, to make it to where you couldn't reach both extremes (extremely skillful versus extremely strong) in one character without putting in a lot of work (and I mean 1.5-2x the work for both extremes as opposed to if you had just focused on one extreme), which actually works very well with Skyrim's take on leveling.



Why I said "if they fleshed out the attributes more". Fleshed out to a point beyond what any past TES game ever did.



Except they aren't just a number, and skills/perks should not accomplish the same thing as attributes.



Its encumbrance, not carry weight. Either way, neither is very realistic regardless of what system is put in place.



You would have been able to say the exact same thing if they had just removed level scaling (Which was the real problem with Oblivion), and not attributes along with it.

if it's not worth the time than it's not that important.

Problem is that the equivalents of what we have lost in the Morrowind->Oblivion->Skyrim transition has never been modded in seamlessly with the games. Skills, spears, even new types of magic have never made it into the games as seamlessly as the developers could have done it. And this is because much of what people are arguing for here is likely going to be prevented because the game will be hardcoded.

i agree with u both i dont think its all about stats i thinks its even better this way now i can directly increase my magicka helping me become a stronger pure mage

Which you did by raising intelligence in the past. You shouldn't be able to sit there and level up a bunch of Combat skills and just be able to say "Hmmm, i think I'm going to gain more magicka" even though nothing you did to reach that level up actually had anything to do with your magical capacity.

This, simply put attributes were just named thresholds which pertained to the "3 attributes mentioned" (fatigue, health, mana) in some way, so instead of having different categories which stand for/portray these main attributes they have instead scrapped them and have left you with a more direct way of improving your character with not only that change, but have now allowed for additional customization through (perks) giving the player the ability to expound upon those attributes even further.

I don't quite follow. Are you saying that the player is something that never develops throughout the game if his INT, STR, etc., is not increasing?

Even in pen-and-paper games with these stats, they played a very minor role in actual gameplay.

For example, if your DEX was higher, perhaps you had a 5% higher chance to move silently, etc., but ultimately, when the DM is making that roll behind his DM screen, he's still balancing whatever the die lands on vs. what he needs to do to keep the story flowing and make sure the players are having a good time. If you are almost dead and he wants you to be able to surprise that monster, he's still going to let you succeed in surprising that monster, regardless of your DEX score, or what the die landed on.

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Changing gears on this, would you all agree that there are at least some aspects of what makes any RPG video game (even an Action RPG) into a great one, that are completely independent of the specifics of the stat system?

For example, how would you feel about a game with detailed, old school RPG stats, but very poorly written quests, or not enough interesting factions to join, or absolutely no compelling NPCs?

Actually, if the one simple attribute of strength was in the game, you could be strong because you're strong, and you could carry heavy things, smash a person to death with a heavy mace, and whatever other perks you might pick to convey the illusion of strength simply and directly because you were strong.

The difference between using a straightforward measure of strength to determine all those other things and using perks for all those other things to represent strength is the difference between planting a seed and watering it and growing a flower and collecting a stem, a bud and a bunch of petals, gluing them all together and making a flower.

How does character Wisdom or charisma/Personality pertain to those three mentioned attributes, when in dialog? Consider (for example) the Aragorn character. He was wise, but not a spell caster. He was also not an exaggerated personality like any of the hobbits, or the other non-humans in the Fellowship.

Question: Based on what we know of Skyrim, is it possible to create each of the characters in the the fellowship accurately and ~most important distinguishably (both in ability and in indicated behavior)?

I don't see it as possible without character attributes (and a lot more of them than Skyrim seems to have).

^ not to mention Luck.

I don't see what the big deal was, a lot of them where useless like the interview said, endurance only increased health so why not just increase health directly. Intelligence only increased magic so that's useless otherwise. I'm happy with this change and it will still be an awesome game, anyone who refuses to buy it now are just nitpicking senseless arguments, if you don't like the game then why are you even in these forums...