Did you even play the older games? Like Morrowind and Oblivion. In those two games, the race had effect on your starting attributes and skills but those are nothing worth mentioning and are NOT in any way something that makes one race better as fighter or mage or ...

No, the reason races were really different was because of the side benefits which are NOT linked in any way to skills or attributes. Who can honestly say that an Altmer with 50% fire/frost/shock weakness and big bonus to total magicka plays the same as a Nord with 50% Cold resist and lesser powers doing cold damage and giving shield effects?

Why make the assumption that those effects which were the biggest difference (and the only that really mattered past level 10) between races aren't present in Skyrim in the first place?

No, I've only been a member here since 2002, because I'm just a lurker, who has never play a TES game. [did you even look at my sig?!!!]

My post was about attributes in general, not the specific TES attributes [hence my reference to Fallout 3]. I was referring more to what an attribute actually is (not necessarily what games refer to as attributes) . . . by definition, which is: " A quality or feature regarded as a characteristic or inherent part of someone or something."


I'm not assuming anything. Todd stated that they didn't want a player to have any skill limitations, based on the character that they created at the beginning of the game. I merely posted my concern that, without any limitations/weaknesses, there will NOT be any meaningful attributes that will make your character unique.

Altmers are immune/resistant to poison/disease.
Khajiit have night-vision.
Nords are immune/resistant to cold.
Orcs have more HP...

Tadaa! Significant differences between races without attributes, and it won't limit your character either!

ummm . . . those ARE attibutes . . . according to the definition of the word, which I gave in my previous post.

Do you KNOW that those (or any other inherent) differences will be unique to each race in Skyrim?
Because my concern is that there won't be any differences (other than cosmetic).

You are using a definition of "attribute" unique to you that diverges from the definition everyone else (including Bethesda) uses. Don't complain if people misunderstand what you say then because it's your fault.

In past TES, attributes is "Strength, Endurance, Intelligence, ..., Luck" and nothing else. In Skyrim it's "Max HP, Max Magicka, Max Stamina". Nobody ever dared to say the Nord cold resistance intrinsic effect is an "attribute"

Well, then we will have those kinds of attributes. Not all of them though...

And I was trying to tell that it is possible to make races different, while they don't lock you to certain playstyles, so your concern is meaningless.

With all due respect, your concern is based on a half remembered quote about skill limitations.

Firstly, inherent racial 'attributes' are not skills. And secondly, there is a vast amount of counter quotations suggesting there will be significant differences between the races.

Don't jump to conclusions - your premise (skill limitations) and conclusion (cosmetic differences) do not match up.

:)

I see only one problem maybe two with Eliminating Attributes and condensing them into 3 main status attributes. The 1st main problem is the beginning, under this new system everybody's character will be the same you won't have two different Imperials. One Imperial won't have a higher starting bonus in Magic over another Imperial. Both Imperials will start out the same with possibly some bonuses in Race specifc Skills like Speechcraft or One Handed. In Oblivion you could have a higher starting bonus depending on how you wanted the character to be setup like. For example if you want your Imperial to be good at Magic you probably would pick the Mage Birthsign and put a +5 in Intelligence. In Skyrim you won't be able to do that you'll only be able to focus on a skill normally instead of having a bonus or a head start. Is this a good thing only time will tell but if an Imperial wants to be good at magic they should be able to have a head start instead of being gimped because a Breton will have a head start in Restoration.

The 2nd issue and it's not as big as the 1st but it still needs to be said. Skills are now Attributes instead of just being Skills. Health, Magicka, and Stamina are fine but we haven't heard a lot about them besides being able to pick one of the 3 status attributes every time you level up. With Skills being more important they are now the Attributes of the game. I think that's has a minor flaw in it's thinking but it could still work out. I don't know I'm in wait and see mode on this system. So far it sounds fine and I like not being held back by Attributes but I still think they could've worked them into the game if the effects were changed and the way they leveled up from Oblivion also changed.

I see nothing wrong with the game making the assumption that you are just an Average Joe when you start.



Attributes are nothing more than arbitrary numbers that should have no real meaning in the game. You character's development should be determined by his/her actions, not by some mathematical formula.



And I'm 100% sure that you'll start the game being able to choose at least 1 perk for your character to make him/her not quite completely average.

No they aren't, they're abilities. There's a huge difference.

It will be almost certain that we will be able to pick at least one perk on start up, so you can differentiate your character that way. In Oblivion the differences within each race was so minor as to be non-existent. The only real difference came from choosing a birth sign and class, and the bonuses you gained from those choices can easily be reproduced through a perk. That's all those were to begin with really, one perk called Birthsign and another called class. It will no doubt work out the same way in Skyrim, except that we may be reduced to just a single perk on character creation. Which would be fine with me. It doesn't sound like it's going to take too long to get up to the next level so you can select another perk at any rate.

play gothic

Wait, another attributes thread? :shifty: Ima call the cyber police.

The race differences were pretty noticeable in my books. Bretons with 50% Magic Resistance, Nords with 50% Frost Resistance, Redguards having Adrenaline Rush, etc.

I do agree with being able to select a perk at level 1. That would be great.

All other things aside, people really need to stop floating this flatly ludicrous notion through this debate.

We might rightly discuss and debate the merits or lack thereof of a system that includes "attributes," but it's an unequivocal fact that they exist. You, I and every single person on the planet possesses some measure of the "attributes" of strength, intelligence, agility and so on. They're very real and, more to the point, very pertinent.

For instance - you might decide you want to be an Olympic sprinter. If you don't have the proper muscle and bone structure, coordination, balance, etc. - the proper "attributes" - then it doesn't matter in the least how much you might practice the "skill" of sprinting - you'll never be competitive.

Now we can certainly debate whether such "attributes" should be included in the game or not, but to pretend that they're some sort of imaginary contrivance merely dreamed up by Beth somewhere along the way is patently ridiculous.

In Fallout 3, you don't get to take your first perk until Level 2 . . . so my guess would be that Skyrim would likely be the same in this respect.

I truly hope that there are inherent race differences (attributes/abilities, bonuses/limitations, or whatever you want to call them), which cannot be negated as you level up (either through skills or perks). My concern is that this might not be the case, after hearing how so much of Skyrim's character creation has been streamlined/simplified. I hope I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing in the interviews and such is making me nervous, and is a big red flag to me.

And this pretty much sums it up for me.

I loved the inherent differences between characters. I loved the fact that when I decided I wanted to play an Orc mage, that meant that he was going to have to overcome the implicit difficulties in being an Orc and a mage. That simply added richness and detail to the character. I don't want to have to simply make believe that my Orc mage is innately at a disadvantage to, say, an Altmer mage.

Oooohh I know.... let's pretend that my first level Orc mage doesn't have the exact same abilities as a first level Altmer mage! And I'll pretend that that that means that he'll have to overcome some initial difficulties on the way to being a mage! And then I'll pretend that he does overcome those pretend difficulties that are a result of those pretend differences!"

At some point, I might as well just pretend I bought the game.

^^This; I'm not against the attribute removal, but I definitively like them, if they were like the OP said. "Static" attibutes; give some pool pts, lets say 80, with 6 attributes and a range of 1-20 to increase them, said that all races have both low and high caps (i.e. an orc can't be smarter than 18, nor weaker than 10), make them count in our game, even make perks being affected, and make not available to rise (maybe ONLY with magic items, but never with level) and you'll have a perfect system with a really customized PC for every player without "suffering the pain" of Oblivion system.



Could well be, but most of the posts I read about it seem to have a really devoted fan behind the keyboard more than an "unsatisfyed Oblivion player"; I wonder why the same people who argue "if you don't like fast travel don't use it" or "If you don't like it, don't make a bigass post about it; just don't play the game" keep complaining about the x5 attributes system, when the "if you don't like it, don't use it" answer fits pretty well there too...

OP is not asking to bring back the "old" system, but improving it with a more senseful, static one wich would add a lot more customization and probably inmersion to our characters and game without having an adverse effect on the new perk system. Everything I've read about perk system sounds really cool, but I still don't understand why they remove attrib instead of improving them.

Agreed and love it, especially the last line.

Hopefully we'll all be proven wrong and the new systems will be intuitive, rich, rewarding, and please everyone, but I reserve the right to be skeptical.

I want my
I want my
I want my attributes back.

I've hesitated to jump back in this thread, because some opinions are so overtly negative towards the new design choices that it doesn't seem productive.

But I'm still very optimistic that there will be differences between races.

I'm basing this on a fair amount of quotes that state Beth's desire to make races feel different from one another, which I've posted one example of earlier in the thread. (Yes, I know every dev quote isn't assured to materialize.) Overall, I think there's a lot of knee-jerk reaction going on in response to the new character creation principles, and people are connecting dots that don't necessarly exist. I keep pointing to the concept that Beth's desire is -- unlike past games -- that when you complete character creation and are ready to set foot in Tamriel, your character shouldn't be predisposed to become a certain type of player. I tend to agree. And I don't think that concept presupposes the "clean slate" to mean every character is exactly the same. I think that's jumping to conclusions.

It seems the goal of eliminating birth sign, classes, major/minor skills, etc. (and the bonuses that go with them) is simply to allow the player to take the path they find most fun to play. Not the path that the creation process says they are most suited to. I don't think it's ever been stated, implied, or otherwise indicated that Beth wants every character/race to have the exact same experience available to them. I think it's been implied that every play style should be available to them, which is different. If an Orc is having a grand ol' time wielding fireballs and wants to become a powerful magic-user, they damn well can. Sure, they may need to compensate slight racial shortcomings, but Beth provides ample and varied mechanism to bump certain traits such as magika via potions, enchantments, etc. to do exactly that. On the flip side, it would be hell to say, "Man, it sure is fun throwing fireballs. I wish I hadn't picked all those warrior traits before even playing the game. I guess I'll keep bashing heads in because I'm good at it."

I truly believe the new system doesn't mean all races need to play the same. I'm hoping for racial variances that are recongnizable both during creation and through selection of race-specific perks. The usual caveat applies: I may well be wrong. But I haven't seen enough evidence to believe otherwise at this stage. I'm not ready to jump to the conclusion that race is simply an aesthetic skin with no consequence. I don't think there's concrete evidence to suport it.

Indeed - the system has always been broken. Instead of insulting their fans by reiterating a broken system, they ditched it. Would a similarly complex system that works be better? Perhaps, but the removal of these attributes is better than nothing.

Two dots to that quote:

1o The goal, Todd said, is avoiding to ruin your game in the first hours due to a wrong decision.

2o The creation process is part of the game, since YOU, the player, decided the way you want to play by choosing your favourite stats and skills.

Wich leads me to this:



Todd already said that the more you use a skill, the faster you'll rise it and so, the "better" you'll rise level; Todd words:

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1185722-part-01-todd-howard-interiew/

- We think we've solved that problem this time. All skills will make you go up in experience level, but the higher the amount of experience you have in a skill, the greater the impact it has on leveling.
One thing we've noticed is that people look at their character and use the skills they have trained most.
Now you can be a magician and find a sword and use it for a long time without affecting your level of experience much. You will always be best served by focusing on something, but this game makes it very easy to vary. Using the weapon in two hands independent of each other was actually something we came on late in development, because it felt so natural with the new control system.

We'll let things happen. We have tried to balance it to the better, by allowing you to increase faster in experience-level

That means that, in Beth thoughts, we'll be playing the way we decide to start mostly; you can play (i.e.) one hour slashing and then try the magic way, and find it funnier so keep going that way, but the fact is that in previous games (TES 3 and 4) you could do exactly the same, but with a customization phase before starting (you could well improve blades, only to find yourself playing as a rogue/mage after two hours)

Don't missunderstand me, I'm really delighted with the perk system (we know little about it, but I'm asking for something like this since Morrowind), but I just don't understand why they have taken away something that many, many people enjoy instead of "fixing" or improving it (aka attributes). Both "old school" rpg-players and "newcomers" rpg-players like customization; why restrict it?

Anyway, I hope the same about racial variances; let's pray Sithis and the Night Mother for it.

Bethesda never got the attribute system right. Having attribute multipliers on level up based on what skills you raised encourages people to artificially raise certain skills to get the maximum 5x multipliers. Otherwise you'd have an inferior character, for no good reason.

But I don't think removing it completely was the way to go. Something like Galsiah's Character Development would've been better: Attributes go up automatically as you increase the skills they are related to.

I'm guessing the only racial differences there'll be now are the powers/resistances.

And that really makes no sense. How are you going to ruin your build that you make? I think you should be forced and have more consequences when it comes to character creation. There was nothing 'grinding" or wrong with the level system itself really. It was level scaling. I know this because Ive found good balance in Oblivion with a set level cap and adjusting the difficulty slider.