I really don't mind that attributes are gone, but it's really annoying that everyone is calling health, magicka, and stamina "attributes" now. Attributes imply a stat that is relatively static except for bonuses or certain conditions that lower them. H/M/S are stat bars representing your current condition, not an overall general view of your character. It's like people have forgotten that H/M/F were in previous games, and not as "attributes."

Power attacks really weren't even perks, they were just a damage boost that was inherent in previous games (also they were default in Oblivion too but each perk gave extra effects depending on the direction of the swing). However, the extra effects they had attached to them I would count as perks, such as the chance to disarm.

As for the weak looking character. Weak people can do just as much damage as strong people, it's all in technique with weapons, not brute strength. A strong guy can do massive damage by swinging his mace with all his strength but a weak guy using a mace has had to practice to make up for his lack of strength so he has learned certain areas of the body to hit that will cause massive damage, something that the strong guy never had to look for because he already does massive damage just by swinging. There's the way that a weak guy can do just as much damage as a strong guy. Adaptation.

@Deathcoffee Health, Stamina and Magicka (well mana in most other fantasies) have always been labeled as attributes in all other games they appeared, they ARE ATTRIBUTES because attributes are a quality of the person and health, stamina and magicka are all qualities of that character. Also to make sure everyone knows this, you do choose attributes when you level. So now you choose attributes and a perk from the trees of the skills you used to gain the level, instead of just attributes.

Exactly. You don't have to be able to lift a two ton rock to kill someone with a sword. Technique is much more important.

As far a H/M/S, I can't personally think of a game or RPG system where they're called attributes, but I guess the fact that they're no longer derived stats warrants the label. Still it's not exactly correct when people say "there used to be 8 attributes, now there's 3." It would be more correct to say "there used to be 11 attributes, now there's 3."

Well back in the old games, Health, Stamina (fatigue) and Magicka were stats but now they are more like a hybrid between stats and attributes. You put points into them to define your character like attributes but they are also stats. So basically in Skyrim, they are attributes and stats simultaneously.

The Oblivion Manual classifies H/M/F as derived attributes because they "are derived from the primary attributes." I wonder if Bethesda still thinks of H/M/S as derived or if they consider them mostly primary now.

Case in point. Meet the hardest hitting man alive...

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS_defJ5L9SsD_UiisTblVNdSRVQuMywAMNqxfP319OHxU9Cadx

...you'll notice he isn't built like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I wouldn't tell them they're wrong, but I'd tell them to wake up, open their eyes and realize that technology has advanced. The number system was put into RPG's back in the day because RPG's were once table-top games turned into video games, and now we can make much more immerse variants of the number system. I'm thinking of my character as a real person, not a video game character with l33t stats, and I'm going into this game unlike I've gone into any previous TES game.

I notice that he's no weakling either. :toughninja:

I won't say their wrong because they aren't to the point that it is a fundamental part of THEIR role-playing experience but the fundamental definition of role-playing has nothing to do with spreadsheets and number crunching at all and thus who are those "spreadsheet and number crunching roleplayers" to say that not having spreadsheets and number crunching makes TES not a role-playing game?

Mainly, we only need the bare essential spreadsheets and number crunching in video game RPGs now because we can visually define our characters and skills do the rest. Spreadsheets and number crunching are basically now isolated to staying with Pen and Paper RPGs and the older video game RPGs that still required them to define your character because of lack of tech, thus you had turn based gaming. We can better define our characters now with new tech.

Edit: I swear to god Gpstr if you come back and quote me and spout the same lines of "Strawman" or "tired rhetoric" or one of the other myriad of same lines you always say to try to compromise the intelligence of someones argument, I'm going to beat you with a stick :poke:

So, what new technology are we talking about here? Because I don't see anything new that Skyrim's character system introduces to the RPG genre; it just removed things. :shrug:
Also, in Pen and Paper RPGs, numbers are incredibly tiresome to process - a computer can make much better use of them.

Showing that you can get an RPG working without base attributes is something new (well it isn't at all really but for a lot of people here it is). Removing stuff can end up giving us something new too.

:facepalm: Skyrim has added way more than has been "removed" but it seems it's easy for people to ignore the additions and only see removal (looks at the perception of Oblivion) Also, body customization is a good example, it makes the strength attribute unneeded. Another is agility, if your agile you'll just dodge and roll out of the way. Intelligence was never used to decide your characters intelligence as intelligence doesn't increase over time. An intelligent character is intelligent because you decide it is, not by some arbitrary number and the list goes on of things the tech has allowed to be freed from the grip of some number. Also, the incredibly tiresome numbers are still being processed by the player just as much as the computer. How RPGs in video games are going now however is that the computer is making much better use of them instead of giving players numbers that actually have no impact on what they are supposedly doing (like making your character stronger or smarter)

Which the weak guy doing that kinda damage, is already reflected by skill >.> you completely missed the point where that big beefy guy with brute strength is no longer reflected, "anywhere" not even by perks im sure.
I'll agree technique is more important, but you ignored where i also said in a previous post "equally skilled" characters will do the same damage, REGARDLESS that one clearly is stronger, just because of skill (perks aside since they could just as easily have the same perks)... perks dont properly reflect attributes anyhow. cause your not gonna tell me they have a "Strength Perk!: You deal more damage on your hits, because your that much stronger! and you also can carry more stuff, flex your muscles and be oohhh, and awww'd at in town, slight bonus to your health, and blah blah blah".... I am gonna laugh if they actually did do that, :-p

no matter how you paint it up,... get enough strength, its better,.. or on the other side, get more skill, then its better, your example only shows that skill is important(more important? sure),.. not that it makes a scene where two equally skilled characters(both being equally skilled meaning them both hitting those weak spots your taking about, in case that wasnt clear), but one with more physical strength, will dish only the same damage. Which is gonna be a common problem now

and that two-ton rock lifting person will gladly smash your no-strength sword dancer Deathcoffee Assuming he wasnt an orge and too stupid to know what to do with his strength and had equal skill- which is the point im making. Sleign is incorrect in saying a weak person can do just as much damage as a strong person.. place them both at the same skill levels and test this. More force still comes out to more damage. GRANTED that skill is more important, but without strength you might as well have taken orges out of the game as well in that case... speaking of which, how the heck are giants handled then? (Answer: Very Carefully)

and the power attack thing should have been obvious in my post that i was well aware of what they did, it even referenced the perks for them only having only effects. Sorry for posting it like that in a joking manner, rather misleading.

but you know,.. dont get me wrong,.. i love the idea of these perks,... but if strength and other attributes are now spead among perks- idk, that doesnt make sense and creates powerful warriors en masse' of every character... hey you said yourself, skill is more important, but now it doesn't have low strength scores to hold it back :/ perks let you specialize, but they dont make you strong, therefore those perks are no better than an extension of the skills themselves.

and sorry for the lengthy posts,... just trying to get me point across and the responses, well in this case, doesn't apply because the scenerio i presented was not addressed, or probally just not understood.
The answer obviously lies in the full view on how their perks are actually set up, so i could be shown they did this right, just as easily as you can be shown they did it exactly how im trying to point out. Which I guess is to say the system is flawed without a way to properly reflect strength? Because of the oddities that will arise between seemingly physically strong and weak characters, both equally skilled.

EDIT: And on the subject of redundancy,.. whats wrong with two seperate factors adding into the same result? it IS the sum of a persons skill and strength that creates the damage after all... it wont make sense no matter how they cover it

Umm, it has nothing to do with skill. It's just a technique that the weak guy had to adapt to make up for his lack of brute strength, it has nothing to do with the fundamentals of the skill of combat. It was just an example of how a weak guy can do just as much damage as a strong guy and the fundamental flaw with the thought that "strong guys are the best guys" Interesting rant you go into though...

And no, I'm not wrong, strength has nothing to do with it. A weak guy can beat the hell out of a strong guy in a fight even if they are equally skilled as well, strength is not the end-all-be-all, not even close. That's the first thing that they teach you in a boxing class, strength isn't that important, speed and technique is, that's why I've never bulked up in muscle, I stayed with lean muscle, it allows me more range of motion and still have strength but not over the top strength that gets you nothing in return.

Actualy they arnt likely to wonder why thier chars are so slow because they wont ever be so slow. You werent slow in fallout yet it doesnt have athletics nor acrobatics.. you can jump just fine there.

The game is designed to be playable with whatever skills and stats it has. Not having athletics simply means running isnt handled that way anymore. It doesnt mean your slow.

That last bit I agree with
Things like fatigue and encumberance that were a real pain to keep track of in a PnP system a crpg can do for you
But that sort of thing can be handled under the hood, no need for the player to bother about them, The player just needs to know that running fast or carrying a lot tires them quickly

Number crunching isn't an integral part of roleplaying, its a means to an end

I bet the one-handed perks that give you moves will generally be aimed at quick, agile attacks, while the two-handed perks that give you moves will be for strong, powerful attacks. But ultimately it still doesn't change the fact that if two people are both equally skilled and capable of finding the unprotected spot in someone's armor, it doesn't really matter who has bigger muscles. A well made sword is designed to penetrate someone's flesh with minimal force. In fact I'd say the quick, agile person would be able to do more damage than the slow, strong person because they will be first to get a good stab. Yet this would never be represented right with a simplistic attribute-based die roll system.

The only weapon that strength really made sense for were the gigantic two-handed boulder-on-a-stick warhammers. But anyway I think it's pretty likely that the big, brutish races like Orcs and Nords will get better bonuses for two-handed weapons, while races like redguard and dunmer will get better bonuses for one-handed weapons.

Please, read carefully. I asked what Skyrim's character system introduced new to the RPG genre.
How does body customization make strength attribute unneeded? That's just ridiculous. You always go on about how effects are important, yet you want to replace gameplay mechanics with mere visuals?
Dodging and rolling (while not even confirmed for Skyrim which I was talking about) is not an action of your character, but of the player (you). Unless there's a difference based on skill or attributes how well I can dodge, it doesn't replace agility at all.
Intelligence doesn't increase over time? I don't even know what you are talking about here. Again, what tech replaces the intelligence attribute?
You say the list goes on, but have not even started it.



So basically you are saying the weak guy overcomes his weakness by learning techniques which the the stronger guy is incapable of learning.
Forgive me in the case I misunderstood you and am building a strawman here, but that argument doesn't hold water because the strong guy can learn techniques just as well.

Removing stuff is introducing something new because a RPG system is a whole that is more than the sum of it's parts. That new RPG system as a whole that isn't using good old attributes is something new. You just made something new by removing stuff from the old systems.


Assuming that Nords start with higher "two handed" skill then Bosmers, you take those two and train them through 100 mudcrabs with the same two handed weapon each you can bet in the start and in the end the Nord will be better with ir than the Bosmer which will be reflected in the fact he had a higher skill with it at start and at the end.

But if the Nord takes no training in the two handed weapon at alll and the Bosmer does until he reaches the same skill level value, then yes the Bosmer will be as good as the Nord with it despite his lower stature. The point is that the Bosmer just put MORE effort into learning that weapon than the Nord and he only ended up at the same potency level which is directly visible in the fact he got the same number near the "two handed weapon skill" box.

All intelligence did was derive your magicka. That's it. Oh and make NPCs comment about how "you're a bright one," even if they've never talked to you before.

that technique would ultimately be reflected by SKILL
a strong guy with the same skill level would likewise have the same damage output FROM skill that the weak guy gets FROM skill.
then when strength is factored in, there should be a difference, regardless of your reasoning, thats JUST HOW IT WORKS. I dont get whats so hard for you to understand about that. In Skyrim, they NEGATED THAT DIFFERENCE however small it may be. Now go make your body customized midget with no muscle and fully built towards combat and overpowering everyone thru skill and you'll see what i mean.

you obviously did not completely read what i said, i agreed with you that skill adds more... your making me out to look like im trying to say strength is all encompassing when it comes to damage,.. which is NOT what im saying,.. it is a FACTOR which now gets overlooked completely




Deathcoffee has however made a point more in line with the arguement i was aiming at... thank you Deathcoffee,.. that does make sense, strength is more geared towards larger weapons
what then tho... against unarmored foes?

No strawman. My argument makes perfect sense if you would stop to think about it. I explained it plainly earlier but I'll explain it even more now. It's not that the strong guy CAN'T learn it, it's that he won't learn it because he has no need to. The weak guy overcomes his shortcoming by finding a new technique that allows him to do massive damage and do just as much damage as the strong man. The strong man doesn't and will never learn that technique because he doesn't need to as he already has the damage he needs. See what I'm saying, the strong man had no need to look for a new technique thus he doesn't know it while the weak man needed it to overcome his deficit and thus learned it and became equal to the strong man by learning the technique out of necessity.

Also, no one has ever added anything new to the RPG genre for years. Everything that has ever been thought of is already in. If you think about it, every idea has been around for MANY years, just in different forms. Skyrim adds new things to the RPG genre that are in new forms but no one has added anything to the RPG genre since the '80s, TES however has reinvented those ideas several times and still continues to do so, so in that essence they are adding things to the genre as TES is redefining and setting higher and higher bars for RPGs.

I really wouldnt class mass effect or fable as roleplaying games.
Sure, it says so on the box, but thats just a buzz word.
They are action/adventure games. Why?
Because they have no attributes and no skills, because the 'choice' you mention is false choice, there really is no choice, the game is linear. Sure you can choose 'good' or 'evil', but the path you travel is set. You go from beginning to end in a straight line and the choices you make dont affect that, they are cosmetic.
Dragon age comes closer to being an RPG, and it would have been one if enemies respawned. That they dont respawn makes levelling linear and limited, thus, not RPG.

I agree that some weapons depend more on reflexes and agility while others require brute strength. Morrowind made this distinction somewhat by having Short Blades associated with Speed. It's a good example of nuances have been lost by systematic streamlining. Having played Oblivion so long i'd actually forgotten that the Speed attribute was also associated with reflexes in Morrowind.

Different styles of combat require different manner of skill.

There are some combat styles that require more raw strength, while others require less, but it depends on quick movement.
Both of them can be just as damaging.