I get the principle behind having a soft cap but how do we know when we have reached this cap? Do we get to see the effect of points before we administer them?

Is this cap a universal or independent cap? So once I hit the soft cap that applies to everything or just to the single stat?

I think I just made my head hurt more :'( can someone not just summarise this in a nicely presented format that's easy to understand?

I am just quoting you because you actually spelled "a lot" correctly!!!!

YAY! It can be done on the internet!

Good questions.

Posting this again in hopes that someone can confirm or refute my speculation.

i haz gud grammerz ty

Playing for fun with a modicum of theory crafting sounds about right to me.

You know you have reached a soft cap when your stat turns orange after you assign a point.

After you assign a point you have to press a key to confirm allocation.

Stats reach soft cap independantly, so if your magica is over the cap, your other attributes are nto affected.

I don't quite understand what you are asking.

The impression I get is there are soft caps (diminishing returns) after X amount where X is a number based upon your level (including veteran ranks). Spreading your points out fairly evenly, such as playing a sorc with half points into magicka and half into health, will likely never hit these caps under normal circumstances. If you try and break the system, like the sorc in the link did (Altmer/Breton, max magicka enchants, mage stone, etc.) then you will hit the caps.

Edit: Should clarify that the "under normal circumstances" is my own speculation based off of no objective evidence.

From what I saw in the beta, the soft caps scale according to your level. It also looks like it would be difficult to hit the soft cap with just base stats alone; once you start throwing buffs/enchants/etc in there, you can hit it, but that's easy enough to deal with by switching out some of those for something else.

Are we 100% this is correct?

No, pretty sure most of this is speculation. As close as we can get to theory-crafting.

Well, the orange stat thing is observable in the beta.

This is half correct.

Half correct bit: the build outlined is a basic endgame build, i.e. starting to do Veteran Rank (VR) content. He can already get more than enough Magicka from gear, enchants and buffs to hit the soft cap/Overcharged (orange stat numbers).

Half in-correct bit: he is not even trying to come close to "breaking" the system. He is using perfectly ordinary level 50 gear (though I believe he may be in a PvP zone so getting some Health buffs). It is just how the diminishing returns/soft caps work in the game.

I mean, think about it,

1. Every time you level up, all stats increase anyway.

2. When you stop levelling, i.e. in endgame, all further improvements in your resource stats will come from gear and enchants and should increase to scale up with content difficulty because Max of resource stats affects damage. If they DON'T scale up, that leaves the only remaining stat to scale up, i.e. Health, to increase survivability to match the scaling content.

3. So, for the purpose of endgame fighting the hardest content, the only thing that is unlikely to increase much is Health(*). Therefore, you want as much Health as possible on all classes.

4. Gear itemization is even across all three stats.

5. Attribute points while levelling give 20 Health or 10 Magicka or 10 Stamina.

Therefore, it becomes a no-brainer to put all Attribute points into Health once you hit level 50.

Of course, BEFORE level 50, you are probably better off increasing Magicka or Stamina or having some balance of stats. This is because you are highly unlikely to Overcharge any resource stat while levelling unless you only ever put points into it.

(*) Having a lot of Health on gear risks either trivializing content by creating uber tanks or uniform high survival builds in endgame PvP (effectively turning endgame players into powerful NPCs).

Okay am I the only one asking the question, How the hell did this guy get to level 50? Please can someone explain this to me I see a lot of people complaining about how hard it was to level and I see this guy is level 50...please.

The player being discussed is one of several in the PTS (secret) beta. Those guys are still playing...

Don't miss this AMA, I was reading it some hours ago, a lot of info:

http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/1xzqk2/i_am_isarii_of_tamriel_foundry_and_a_longterm/

I don't understand why there has to be a cap on attributes in the first place. Investing in one over the others should be the balancing factor, because you lose out in stamina if you spec magicka, etc.

Currently, your attribute points only make up such a small portion of the actual attribute, it's a bit ridiculous. And with health giving +20 and magicka and stamina only +10 (before the cap), health is such an obvious choice. Gear seems much more important for your attributes than how you build your character.

when i was around lvl 10 with an altmer, and had 1 point in the race skill that gives magicka regen, and used a lvl 3 potion doing the same

my magicka regen turned orange, and when i moused it over it said something to the effect that "if you put more into this you wont see much return"

Very disappointed by this.

Wasn't aware of the existance of caps. Actually thought that we could build diverse characters. Might as well dump the point system and racials altogether, since it seems they are only superficial.

These kind of mechanics are nothing more than lazy balancing in my opinion. Shame.