I'm not comfortable having luck and speed at attributes anymore.

"Keep your xx out of my yy" - is about the worst principal argument I ever see around here. I play both, and I love both, but denying implementation of something that is better? As a matter of principle? Personally I find FO (or rather FONV) leveling system with (relatively) locked stats a LOT more balanced than TES ever was. TES multipliers and ridiculous grinding side effects were just awful design wrt exploit prevention, in that you could grind illusion to 100 by casting the lowest possible spell. No cook becomes a chef by making pancakes for the rest of his life.

I did manage to find a good SPECIAL replacement a long while back, but the best I could come up with atm was:
Strength
Personality
Endurance
Control (continence felt like stretching it, lol replaces Willpower)
Intelligence
Agility (includes the missing speed, which has been discussed here before as feasible).
Luck

An expanded version of OBs system could look something like this:
Combat, with stat Strenght and derivatives Hit Points and Encumbrance.
Nature, with stat Endurance and derivatives Stamina and Resistance.
Magic, with stat Intelligence and derivatives Magicka and Willpower.
Stealth, with stat Agility and derivatives Speed and Dexterity.
Social, with stat Personality and derivatives Appearance and Charisma.
Luck is a bottom feeder stat, with no derivatives. Remove or add from it at creation, and it sticks with you.

Stat never changes, one derivative can be further enhanced at levelup (here 5 rather than 3 in DF/MW/OB), while the other is a true dependent derivative.
Specialization in i.e. Combat gained you an automatic, but lower than the assigned, bonus to main derivative. Makes your decision have an impact, but keeps it from being set in stone.
Skills would be "governed by" not only one stat, but three stats to varying effect. Think Realms of Arcania. Feels natural, and not as easy to exploit.
Skills would also be a dice roll check for success on application, whereas it's effect magnitude would be based on your stats or weapon stats.
More skills (50), including some of which will be Skyrims perks. See RoleMaster system for dice roll tables why dice rolls -> critical lookups are important.
Bonuses to skills based on specialization (background) is a start bonus only, not a progressing one.
Keep in mind that skills that may seem insignificant to you may be of high roleplay value to others. The idea for having a computer as a GM is to let it present an interesting gaming experience, not necessarily a fight. There is nothing more rewarding in dice gaming than having the GM go "but but..." because the party did things completely different than he intended

So it's basically expanding the TES system into that of RoleMaster, while replacing the profession system (we can't have several hundred skills) with that of choosing a background specialization. This defines where you come from, but not where you want to go.

Speaking as someone who was very pissed when Fallout became TES with guns; I can see why TES fans don't want something from Fallout. They're completely different game series that came from completely different game developers. Fallout should remain being Fallout (well, not anymore seeing how Bethesda took it, still one can hope) and TES should remain being TES. SPECIAL was designed specifically for Fallout, and well let's just say it's special. I don't think either hardcoe TES fans or original Fallout fans would like SPECIAL being used for TES.

Too late :shakehead:

The MW/OB style is just bad. It makes no sense, you hit level 50 and all your attributes or perfect, as if you can somehow get more intelligent (intelligence..) and more good looking (personality) despite being a fully grown advlt. I like to chock it up to "being the way things work in nirn" attributes just get compounded in all facets when you level up, but really it just makes no sense at all.

I prefer a more realistic system where people are a strong as they are, they are as enduring as they are, are as intelligent as they are, etc. They are attributes, they don't bloody increase; you pick the style you want to play at the beginning and play the game in that way, you want to be a highly intelligent weakling? Well nerf your strength and buff your intelligence.. As it is now in MW and OB you just get more and more powerful as you level up, and there begins to be less and less specialization in your character, you just wind up being good at everything.

Fully support the Op, the system in Oblivion was terrible and encouraged players to do bizarre things to ensure they got +5 on level up.

Example:
My character has enough strength and I want to increase my charisma next level. That means for the entirety of this level I have to avoid combat and just buy/sell stuff or talk to people etc.
Or vice versa.
My character wants more strength next level, so I can't go to town to sell my stuff yet or persuade a npc etc.

This makes the leveling a case of counting, tracking and managing your skills rather than a natural progression.

You can actually increase IQ by training, yes to a less degree than strength but still measurable, also I guess TES intelligence is more than IQ.
No you don't get better looking but more self-confident and it helps dealing with people.

And that strength don't increase with training is pretty unrealistic, it's pretty easy to train up, you also increase strength naturally if you run around in heavy armor and swings heavy weapons in some months.

Remember the timescale here game last for months in game so you should have atribute increases. If the game lasted for some days you should not.
To raise most skills in Oblivion or Morrowind would require that you played for a very long time in game.

Yes the TES +5 attributes on level up was a problem in Oblivion, but mostly because it become a focus who distracted people from gameplay. Less a problem in Morrowind as it was more skills and no cap on training so it was easy to get 3*+5, yes you get overpowered but you would be anyway and you could focus on playing.

one thing that I personally find annoying, is that the stats cap at 100. i think there could be a more fun way of doing this. maybe perks to increase stat caps, or just make your stat not cap at all, it caps whenyou have finished those relative skills, and remove the bonus but your stats just go up based on what skills leveled. idk just tossin stuff out there.

There is, of course, the option to avoid power-leveling altogether, like you can avoid fast travel, all it takes is some self discipline and accepting that you're gonna svck for a while longer than the rest. :hubbahubba:


The big flaw IMO came when pairing it with the level scaling system, especially for sneaky characters (we've all been there, all agility and no strength)

Mostly to avoid abuse, in Morrowind you could fortify your strength to many hundred and do insane damage. Worse in Daggerfall you could fortify a magic skill to over 100 this made the spell cost fall to a low value for any spell even if they cost 1000 magic default.

The SPECIAL attribute system would work very well with Skyrim. :twirl:

***I actually created this as it's own topic, since I felt it was different, but I believe it is none the less relevent to be seen under this topic, so I will re-post it here. This explains what my brother and I believe will be the outcome of all the skills and attributes/special of Skyrim.***


Here's the facts we're working with:

-They have announced there will be 18 skills, if it is like it's predecessors it has an equal number of skills falling under Combat, Stealth and Magic, it would be 6 each.

-The screenshot displaying the menu and several of the skills used in Skyrim, infact displays every single mage-style character skill. The image in the background appears to be shaped as a bearded man holding a staff, and if scrolled along it would appear to encompass from Illusion to Enchanting. This would result in 6 mage skills: Illusion, Conjuration, Destruction, Restoration, Alteration and Enchanting.

-Mysticism is gone, it's spells dispursed among other skills

-Acrobatics is gone, having been combined with Athletics

-Todd Howard announced in his interview that 1h weapons, 2h weapons, and Marksman were weapons skills (I am predicting that he left out Hand to Hand, discluding it as a weapon, I could be wrong)

-Rather than having individual weapons skills there will be perk trees for each weapon style among the 1h, 2h and marksman skills

-He also announced that there will be 3 crafting skills (also other crafts not skill based) Alchemy, Enchanting, and Smithing, also saying Alchemy will fall under thief/stealth character skills

-There will be no class selection interface/interview in the game

-It will contain race/image based charcter creation in the beginning, different races have bonuses to particular skills (nothing is said about races having stat bonuses as well

-Not a thing has been published about the stats of Skyrim, just skills

-The characters status in the picture is 180 magicka, 240 health and 100 stamina (this is still early, but notice that they all round to a decimal of ten)

-They have announced leveling will result in a bonus to either health, magicka or stamina

-the skills fall into categories of combat, magic and stealth again

-weapon types will have perk trees, for example axe, sword and blunt.

-there will be dual-wielding

-the menu screenshot displays, magicka, health, stamina, name, level, race, skill..... no stats

I'll begin with the potential skill set-up, as I believe stats have possibly been removed from the game (if not they have certainly been changed heavily) My brother and I researched and debated about what the most likely skills to carry over would be, and what skills could be combined to shorten the list to 18.

We believe the Mage skills are all displayed on the skill-menu image which was released. This would mean a mage has Alteration, Restoration, Destruction, Illusion, Conjuration and Enchanting.

For a warrior character, we know that Smithing is one of the skills. We also expect that Block will carry over, as well as Heavy Armor and warriors have to have the 2h weapon skill. That's 4 so far... We believe the other 2 will be 1h weapons and Athletics (having been combined with Acrobatics). So for combat skills: Block, Armor, 2h weapons, 1h weapons, Athletics and Smithing.

For a Thief/Stealth character, we know alchemy is one of the skills. Marksman should also fall under stealth, as well as sneak. Sneak and security likely combined, as well as Barter and Speech. With two skills left, I believe Hand-to-Hand will carry over as one of them, to allow stealth characters an up-close fighting skill. For the last skill, Light Armor. So, for stealth skills: Sneak, Marksman, Speech, Hand-to-Hand, Alchemy and Light Armor

We believe Alchemy made the switch to stealth based not only upon the fact that Alchemy can result in poison-making etc, but to balance each play-style (warrior, mage, thief) with an individual crafting skill.

With that in mind, we thought "What if every skill is in balance with a relatively equivalent skill".

So in order to bring balance between the play-style skill archetypes, we figured 2 skills result in more efficient attacking, 2 result in more efficient defense/damage mitigation, and 2 are a method of world interaction / crafting. In other words 2 damage, 2 defense and 2 interaction skills

Now look at the skills I selected and listed again, falling under these 3 categories.

Type Combat Magic Stealth
Dmg 1---------1h weap-------Destr--------Hand-to-hand
Dmg 2---------2h weap-------Conj----------Marksman
Def 1-----------Block-----------Resto----------Sneak
Def 2-----------H. Armr--------Alter---------L. Armor
Act 1-----------Athlet----------Illusion-------Speech
Act 2-----------Smith-----------Encht-------Alchemy

When we first built this list, using only the confirmed skills falling under each category, we began to work out which skills were most likely to carry over to fill a particular spot. I think each skill fits perfectly with it's counter-part.
So, there you have my estimation of every skill we will see in Skyrim.

Attributes.... they aren't talking about attributes yet. The menu screenshot released displays alot of information on it, but no attribute information.
They said when you level up you will gain magicka, health or stamina, not attributes. So, they have either been changed to S.P.E.C.I.A.L, increased in number, from 8 to 9 or 10... or they have been removed completely. If they copy SPECIAL, I imagine Combat, Stealth, Magic will have 2 Attributes each. These 2 Attributes will represent 3 abilities each. With the potential for a seventh, Luck attribute affecting everything. If they stuck with the old attributes, they wouldn't evenly govern 18 skills. The reason to go up to 10 from 9 is to maintain Luck as an attribute affecting all skills rather than governing particular skills

We don't think they will copy S.P.E.C.I.A.L exactly because it would be STR and END for combat, PER and INT for magic, CHA and AGI for stealth. While Agility could cover Hand-to-Hand, Light Armor and Sneak it wouldn't make much sense for Charisma to determine your skill with Alchemy or Marksman as well as speach.
It is possible that CHA and INT are the mage attributes, with PER and AGI being stealth, however that would likely result in Conjuration, Alteration and Illusion falling under the Charisma category for mages which also doesn't seem quite fitting. It could be explained as those being the spell categories which require a little more *umph* from the character, but I think thats a bit loose.
Another reason is we think it could piss off some fans who want to claim that the fallout and elder scrolls series should be kept separate.

It is possible that they stick with their original attribute system for the most part, however with 8 attributes to govern 18 skills, they couldn't govern an equal number of skills, so there would have to be 9, governing 2 skills each. If Luck is to be kept as an attribute which does not govern specific skills, then 10 must be used.

We imagine those 10 stats would look something like this:
Combat-------Magic-------Stealth
STR------------INT-----------AGI
END-----------WIS----------PER
SPD------------SPI----------ACC
LUCK

Why does Combat get SPD? to govern athletics and block, w/ END governing Smithing and H. Armor
The other idea is that they would have to range from 1-10 in order to result in health, stamina and magicka becoming numerals in multiples of 10, as they were in the menu screenshot. Where END determines Health, one of the 3 magic ones determines magicka, and Agility determines Stamina.

So 1 of 3 attribute outcomes will be likely be used

-SPECIAL
-9 or 10 attributes, sticking with old attributes, individually ranging in value from 1-10 (maybe 1-some other number, however 10 is most likely)
-No attributes at all

A problem with having SPECIAL, or 9-10 Attributes, is that you would likely have certain attributes/special also representing Max stats (IE Health, Magicka or Stamina). We couldn't figure out a way, no matter how many combinations of various attributes/SPECIAL to reasonably balance which attribute represents which Max stat. AGI representing Stamina doesnt't really make sense.

So this leads us to conclude that removal of attributes is quite possible, and even probable.



These are just our thoughts, we are not giving a 100% guarantee that this is what you will see, however, we feel the skills are the most probable, and an attribute change/removal is required, in order to avoid dealing with problems of comnig up with a perfect attribute system, why not remove it.
We just wanted to get this out before the news was actually released, so that if we were right in the end, we wouldn't be like "I knew that this is what they would do" without evidence. haha.

I also posted nearly this exact system of skills/stats (some skill and stat differences, but having 2 defence, 2 attack, 2 interaction skills per play-style was a large part of my suggestion) a long time ago in a skill/stat suggestion forum (before the skyrim forum existed) I don't know if you can see all my previous posts, but check because I can see it and it's there... I don't have 1,000,000 posts, only like 10ish.

The Menu Screenshot can be seen here: http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/83423/elder-scrolls-skyrim-details-and-screenshots/
And the Todd Howard Podcasts can be heard/seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05cMC9NVtic&playnext=1&list=PLBC6C01B2CD54C339

There are much better links, but those are the first ones I found.

One of TES games UNIQUE appeal has always been the levelling system. I can't think of any other games that actually increased the skills you actually used. You want to be a better mage... cast some spells! You want to be stronger.... swing a heavy axe around. Worrying about 'counting' your skills to somehow maximize your attributes shouldn't be necessary. Maybe changing the system slightly so that attributes used will automatically increase so that it is hidden from the player might actually be better here. Swinging a heavy weapon around enough, would increase your strength, while a lighter one, your dexterity, etc.
I would be okay with that. I really hope they don't make it like every other game where I can arbitrarily buff stats that are not related to my actual activity. We have enough of those already.

I would say that's too late.



Anyway, I like fallouts attributes but I don't think I want them in tes, though my biggest concern right now is if attributes are in or not at all.
I really like that they'r changing the leveling system but I don't want the attributes to be left out.

Oh and as a side note: THANK GOD that the multipliers are gone... Probably.

A good anolyze, however I rather believe they will cut the number of attributes than increasing them. Perhaps roll up intelligence and willpower in one, or more probably speed and agility. Str+end, int+wil, (agi/speed)+per and luck would work just as well.
What is SPI and ACC?

Now it's no real need to link health and endurance as hard as it's done in previous games, that linking had the downside that we ended up with far to much health at high level, this was also true in Fallout 3, even if you had to use perks or leave other specials lower not just train heavy armor and armorer.
Health increase might still be linked to endurance but it can just as well be linked to level, same for stamina and magic. if you select much magic you will get less stamina and health.

Main problem with removing attributes is that every race would be equal except magic resistances. Yes different skill bonuses at start but we know it's so easy raising skills at low level it don't matter much, the starting spells are also pretty useless.
This conflict with races will be more unique.

I honestly don't see any real difference between a 1-10 scale and a 1-100, even if you use perk to raise attributes you just raise them 10 instead of 1 if they use a fallout 3 system where you raise special by using a perk.

One better solution in my opinion would be to raise attributes then raising skills. raise one hand weapon a level and you raise strength 0.5, this would be easier to balance as you could also use values as 0.3 or 0.7, might even have skills who raise two attributes a bit.
Some Oblivion mods uses this system.

I suggested this in an earlier thread... except without the equations...


To me this would be awesome, that way your attributes would level themselves up, just like your skills, instead of being assigned by you.
Thus maintaining immersion and realisticalism.... (yay i made a new word)

Well I never played Fallout 1 and 2, so excuse my ignorance. I'm always looking for deeper game mechanics, and TES as the only fantasy based roleplay system to support 1st person in a low fantasy approach, is "my game of choice to keep improving on". Like how I want hardcoe mode from FO and 1st person immersion (freelook and see self) from Arma2 to improve the game, but if it's from FO it's suddenly *clashing*? There is no clashing at all here. It's about adding game mechanics that for some casual players are (without even testing it) deemed tiresome, but without forcing it only everyone.

However, if someone says "bring in this awesome combat system from whatever game", and that combat system involving complex moves as the game is 3rd person only, *then* it would clash with TES 1st person approach since doing those moves in 1st person would only be disorienting and you'd loose your spatial awareness.

As I said about SPECIAL, the only difference (if we take out speed as an attribute, should be a derived attribute instead based on agility and encumbrance) is that FO has Perception (hard to implement in TES) and TES has Willpower (hard to implement in FO). For me what makes these games unique are their setting, story, and lore, not the underlying mechanics.

Strength Persception Education Charisma Inteligence Agility Luck

S+P = seeing your oponents weaknesses and taking advdantage of them. (combat)
S+A = the skill with a sword and accuracy (combat)
S+I = to have power in all your actions (combat)
S+L = to withstand large amounts of damage and not fall (combat)
S+C = to be persuasive or atractive (magic)
P+E = to be wise and make benificial descisions (magic)
P+C = to convince anyone of anything. (magic)
P+I = to understand the world around you (magic)
P+A = to avoid damage of any sort (combat)
E+C = to lead and be obeyed (magic)
E+I = to change the world around you for your benifit (magic)
E+A = to be in the right place at teh right time (combat)
C+I = to bend the minds of others for you benifit (magic)
C+A = to dance

Luck in all things.

A couple of you fail reading comprehension and make the cat moderator somewhat cranky. Stop with the annoying non-posts, especially those in all caps about not turning TES into Fallout and re-read the OP. He asked a fair question - thanks to many of you who gave their responses some thought.

I deleted a couple of pointless posts, I did leave a few in here because, well, I haven't had my coffee yet.

Its rather obvious that with hps stamina and magicka being picked at level up the way they are and with no agility as they already have said... there is no room for the old stats and instead they are dealing directly with the things those stats effected.

pssst :whisper: That's what we like to call an opinion.

Simply using bold would be sufficient. But no, the line also says "principal". Means, no reason given which would be an opinion.

I knew this was coming.

I almost said it myself, even though I love The Elder Scrolls: Capital Wasteland.

Lolwut?
"But denying the implementation of something better" is 110% opinion. You think by tossing the world principal in a sentence makes it non-opinionated? :slap:

So you think they (Bethesda) heard me? >.>

Lol, ok, I see why that was bad or insufficient wording on my part. What I mean is that if an opinion with lots of reasons for (or against) it is met with "no xx in my yy" with that as the only "argument", is when things turns bad. "Xx in yy is good because blabla" deserves a "no xx in my yy *because* blabla". Not "no xx in my yy because due being a principle".