Here's one way you can modify the damage between races, physically (and even magically) without ever needing an (obvious) attribute! A slight racial coefficient in the damage calculation. Just enough to vary it up or down a bit, make a given race a bit more optimized for a given skillset and method but not so much that it renders your character ineffective if you choose to follow a path they're not directly suited for. In fact, I might suggest ONLY bonuses, rather than penalties. Voila, racial differences in ability without the need for an attribute system, and also that won't be superceded by just focusing more on the attributes you lack. I mean, at the absolute peak of physical capability, I'd still expect an orc to outmuscle a bosmer, or a spindly altmer.

As for perks and attributes, no, perks don't make attributes redundant. However, their implementation in Skyrim means they can possibly do the job of attributes better than attributes themselves, simply because they can affect things in non-static ways. An attribute never changes and doesn't make any significant changes to your gameplay beyond increasing any value it's connected to. So while perks don't make attributes redundant, they have another quality that allows them to be an effective replacement (and I'll remind you that increasing attributes was also a reward for increasing your skills, not just something unrelated that happened when you levelled up) - they're more versatile. They can do, quite simply, more than a flat attribute system ever will be able to.

Why do we need to model Strength at all? Let the skill level do the talking. You can be a master of the sword without being a hulking brute.

Of course when you call perks "mundane" they'll sound mundane. But you don't know what the perks are, and neither does anyone else. Of course, you can convince yourself they're mundane without ever seeing them just to make you feel better about not liking the system. Don't pretend they have to be mundane though.

So, rather than have your agile swordsman dodge because of a perk, you'd rather have an attribute let you dodge. Okay. Doesn't stop them from doing the same thing. The "number of benefits" your swordsman get from Agility (what are those, more bow damage and a slightly less chance of being staggered?) can all be covered by perks.


Last I checked a perk was http://www.thefreedictionary.com/perk. So where are you getting your definition?

Except you don't need those attributes to model your character and they never were meant to be that way. Originally they shaped the power of your character, when that function fades away and a new system comes along that can do that and more, it's only natural that it would be upgraded to the new system. The old attributes are still in the game, just in a different form. I mean, you don't need strength to define you character, that's what body type choices we have in Skyrim is for. If I want my character to be strong, I choose an overly muscular body type and boom, my character is strong. If my character is supposed to be intelligent, then your character is intelligent because you know it is. How agile your character is, is how agile you are. What, that guy is swinging a giant mace at you? You dodge to the right and take him out. Your agile. These features that attributes "represented" can be represented in full in other ways as actions and actual visuals, you don't need some arbitrary number to decide that when it really didn't in the first place because you had nothing to equate the number to.

Thats true, but why should we have one over the other? And I also think its important to note that an attributes system, while mundane and boring, better model simple character statistics. Then we could have perks to make things more unique.

Do we want 180 perks for raising attributes to dilute our 30 fun attributes? Or would we like a basic attributes system, and all perks be unique and cool?*

*just picking a hypothetical number on how many perks will be replacing attributes

Attribute? What's an attribute? They're dead to me. Thank you Beth.

So does this mean that people like me, who possessed a mediocre sense of coordination and reaction, are essentially more limited right now with the option of choosing what sort of character archetypes we can play, right?

Okay then; time to scrap my plan for a fleet-footed rogue and settled with the more tank-ish battlemage or something, I guess.

edit: I just personally hope that the functions of the old attributes themselves weren't completely removed, but simply being "hidden" to prevent some kind of a metagaming exploitation.

There aren't 30 attributes, though. You have Strength, Endurance, Agility, Intelligence, Willpower, Personality and Luck, and everything else is derived from them (in a game lacking these, such as Skyrim, other things become the prime attributes - in this case, Health, Magicka and Stamina). And you answered your own question as to why we should have perks instead of attributes, if it comes down to one or the other. Mundane and boring is bad game design. Realism, or accurate modelling, or any other feature of a game is only good to focus on to the extent that it does not hamper enjoyment of that game. A game is, first and foremost, supposed to be fun, and when a game designer knows his audience he should be focusing on creating a game that is the most fun for that audience, not the most realistic or with the most effective system for modelling character traits. Anything that's mundane, boring, and non-essential should be separated as chaff from wheat.

Now, of course, you could say there's no reason still we couldn't have both, which is technically true but I'll posit you this instead: each system requires manpower and hours of work to create, code effectively, balance and test. It takes a lot of work to get everything running like clockwork. Now, you could split that focus between two separate systems, each of which is capable of doing the other's job (technically), or you could keep your team together, cut the more boring and tedious one, and then focus on making the system you have left the absolute best it can be within your time constraints.

I'd personally rather one system polished to a mirror sheen than two systems, both of which are really quite good but could be better. (Of course, perks are going to be doable in a better way than they are at release for given playstyles and what have you - that's a guarantee, you can never stop improving, but the extra focus is sure to show good returns).

I guess so, but this is no different than when you were at 100 agility. Did you dodge people with high agility? No, that required acrobatics. Agility didn't make your character agile at all, that's the point. If you truly want your character to be agile, you do it yourself.



This. Only three things were ultimately derived from those attributes, that was Health, Stamina and Magicka. In reality, the 8 attributes were actually derived from everything else. It says that "attributes govern skills" but in reality, the skills governed the attributes, you can tell when you level.

Poor implementation means scrap it, not fix it? We see this a lot, why don't we get more fixing and less, "cars broken, lets just buy another"

The new car is better, IMO. 280 perks > 8 attributes, even if attributes were “fixed”.

They did fix it. They put the extra little features elsewhere in the game, made Health, Magicka and Stamina directly alterable. Now the old system is put in a safe place and then they add in a 280 perk system to do what attributes used to do in the old games, made variety in between characters and make them visually appealing and/or visceral to the player, something attributes don't do as they make little difference to your character in feel when you raise them and you don't even notice the change. So that's the final verdict, attributes weren't scrapped, they were fixed. I think it was a great fix.

Does no one listen, thats why I preach both! They are meant to work together! No one sees the light!
*Falls to his knees and sighs*

*There is supposed to be humor here, not an attack, perhaps a bit frustration*

Well, it depends on the versatility of the system you're working with, honestly. Attributes, outside of games which bow to the almighty RNG, are a rather... limited system. They provide static bonuses and there's not really any way to deal with them except tying more systems on - either limit your ability to choose perks based on your stats as well as your skills (which could potentially heavily punish people for certain builds and require them to spend time developing skills they could care less about, just so they can get the perk for that one skill of that attribute they actually care about), or you tack on another system that gives you benefits for having X attribute level... which is kind of the same thing as perks and therefore redundant.

It's not so much a case of just deciding to replace something because it's easier, it's a case of replacing something because the decision just makes sense - the replacement is outright better for the sort of game Bethesda is building.

Now, if this were an RNG-dominated game then I might say otherwise - stats fit comfortably into RNG games because they can easily govern every mechanic in the game, rather than just providing flat bonuses to given values - they actually increase the chances of success.

But that's the point, they don't work together at all. They would be redundant and cause out of control stat bonuses. If you then go "Let's just remove their old abilities then", okay....now they are just 8 words. What good are 8 words and why should we pull a brand new function out of our asses to keep 8 words in a game? The only reason to do that is because they were in the game first. There is no good reason to keep those 8 words or make a brand new system for them, that is the whole point.

Yes they should work together. I think of Fallout with the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system with perks. That worked well.

http://www.audioenglish.net/dictionary/perk.htm




I.E? REWARD FOR WORK......

I'm not offended.

Attributes weren't really scrapped, refer to Sleing's post above.

Well, one indication for possessing a high agility (or should we say, "grace" or "nimbleness" instead?) is how well do you retain your balance with a proper timing and movement as you receiving the incoming impact from a blow that would put you off-balance otherwise. That's what agility has always been for, at least for me, I admit. I don't necessarily want to keep the "Agility" attribute which I can see the number greedily around, but I most certainly prefer to have the option to play that not particularly durable but extremely nimble character who gradually becoming better at how fast he regains his composure whenever an unfortunate blow could potentially toppling him down.

edit: all I want is to have the other functions aside from health, magicka and stamina still there yet not open for silly exploitation is all and just generally being more natural.

"You dodge a lot as you play your character, congratulation: your character actually exercises his agility and gradually had become generally better with it without you even noticing! Now try to start off a new character, and notice how clumsy this new guy aims, changing direction, etc. and how easily he staggers! No more stat numbers for you to obsess over though!" - that's what I meant.

Different mags said different things, Todd has said many times, 1 hand weapon skill.

Amazing how words can mean more than one thing, isn't it?

that definition doesn't make sense here either...actually reward makes more sense.

But saying reward there just makes it seem as if you're getting it for no reason or something. When they are in fact a skill/talent learned from practicing the skill it is governed by. Yes they define your character by defining said characters skills. Saying it like it's a bad thing doesn't make it so. Isn't that what attributes did too? You were defined by an attribute that was defined by the characters skills only now you cut the word attribute out and the amount of skills(perkwise) and skill variation(perkwise) between characters is way more than before.

Why would they cause out of control stat bonuses? Because you say so?
Just lower how effective a single point of an attribute is. Its true that some were ridiculous, with 100 speed and athletics you could run ridiculously fast, that should be reduced.

And they work perfectly together. We could even have perks that are "+10 pts to strength." Sure its not the most exciting, but its an example of how they work together.
And they are by no means redundant. And its not like I only want it because they were in the old system. Maybe I want them because they model your character better than perks can. It was always a superior system to what other games used.

I don't mind the removal of attributes.
When I first heard about it I was thinking "OMGZ What have they DONE!!!111!1 :cryvaultboy: ", but when I thought it out I realized that it isn't so bad.

Attributes aren't inherently redundant when you have perks, but perks have an advantage that attributes don't have. The advantage is that perks can be non-linear, while attributes are linear (unless you completely reworked the system). The problem with a linear system like attributes is that each increase in the stat only affects you in a unchanging, incremental way (so that raising strength from 40 to 50 felt and acted in the exact same way as an increase from 70 to 80). With a non-linear system like perks, each progression in level can alter your character in much more dynamic and exciting ways, which makes for a funner game in my opinion. I'm not saying I wouldn't like attributes, but the new system isn't nearly as bad as people are making it out to be. In nearly every circumstance, anything that attributes did do could also be done with a perk, so there isn't any reason to say how features have truly been removed, when in reality they could simply be handled by perks now.

sleign's "explanation" holds as much water as me saying the same thing, Nothing, we haven't played it yet, and the argument FOR attributes has weight, perks are enver stated to replace attributes, all the GI and recent articles said was magick stamina and health are all that exist, Perks are for skills, and skills are everything and peple are harping on that PR damage control talk from Todd about how he says "you raised intelligence for Magicka right?"

The problem is that attributes as a system are designed for a distinctly different mechanical background than the one you're finding in recent TES games, by which I mostly mean Oblivion since Skyrim isn't out yet. RNG still exists in Oblivion, I guess, but it's of limited influence and that robs attributes of a lot of what they were meant to do previously - namely, affect the chance of success. I'll grant you that not all of them were supposed to do that - Strength never really helped you do anything better, but things like Agility, Willpower, Luck, Intelligence, Personality - those were the things that made it more likely you'd succeed, and ergo more likely you'd succeed in a better way (if degrees of success were possible).

Skyrim, however, is looking to be like Oblivion - that is, a game in which player actions determine the likelihood of success, rather than some random number generator. In this case, all attributes can do (as they're merely metagame concepts, numbers without context) is give you flat bonuses without any versatility. If I increase my Intelligence, my magicka pool increases and I the spells I cast aren't more likely to succeed - they don't fail - they just work a bit better. I increase Agility and I get some bonuses to bow damage and such. Personality just means people like me more at the opening of conversations, though it probably has more success-determining potential than others simply due to being tied to bartering.

But attributes in a game designed around player action as a conflict resolution mechanic are out of their element and awkward. Better to replace them with something able to do the job better than try to shoehorn them in where they don't fit.