In previous TES RPGs, the Attributes are the ingredients that you use when you create your character . . . you select the way your initial stat points are distributed across your Attributes.

This is what has always allowed us to make unique starting characters each time we play the game . . . this is the main ways that you determine what your character will be like.

This is now gone . . . and so far, nothing has be released about Skyrim's character creation system that will allow us to create unique characters.

II'm hoping to be able to create a unique character in Skyrim.

I don't care how they accomplish that, or what they call it . . . as long as I can create unique character, at the beginning of the game . . . with inherent strengths and weakness that will always be part of that character . . . through the end of that game.

I leave for a while and you botch Oblivion so very badly. Now I am hearing some things about Skyrim that make me concerned... I mean, no starting class is, er, different, but what is this about you killing MORE skills? And there are rumblings of a total point buy system? WTF? I was boned. Now I fear for my sanity! Why are you making me old before my time? I actually would like someone, preferably a dev, to take my hand, stroke me, and tell me it'll be ok. Please. I like you guys, really, but now I think things are going wrong. And Fallout 3 was so good... Dear Gods please tell me it's going to be ok... *curls up into the fetal position and svck his thumb*

Attributes were not the same as skills . . . attribute rarely increased (at least not permanently) when you leveled up. Your skills were the main things that increased, and you had control over which skills increased and how much each increased. Your initial attributes determined most of what was unique about your character and those unique strengths and weakness should remain throughout the game (Oblivion didn't do so well in this either, as it was too easy to max out all your skills).

So far all I'm seeing is removal of most of the attributes, the removal of Classes, the removal of Birthsigns . . . and using Perks and fast leveling in their place. This is NOT an improvement to me. I'm hoping that there are at least still Race and Gender differences . . . but they may be gone just like Class and Birthsigns.

Exactly. So we agree. Class is just one (somewhat silly) way of accomplishing something that makes more sense, giving your character some sort of past experience.

But why are people still laboring under the assumption that we won't get some skill point credits or some other way to give our starting characters some skills?

The attitude on these forums that just because a system is changing that all functionality must be lost is just incredible.

Are you kidding me?

Quickly: Alchemy in the elder scrolls seems to be more like apothecary than alchemy... making potions and poisons?! Alchemy resulted in modern inorganic chemistry. It was the search to transform lead into gold.

Firstly, a potion is a consumable medicine or poison. There's no specification that it must be a liquid or that it can't be a paste. It just has to be stored in a bottle, so it could be any solid, liquid or gas.

Go and get some nice, creamy, goat's cheese. Not that processed cow crap made from artificial butter which has been made in some laboratory somewhere, or that other pathetic specimen which has been made into cheese after diluting a gallon of milk with all of the water in the Atlantic. But some actual, hand made goat's cheese made from milk that was squeezed out of the goat's udder and made into cheese in front of you. (I apologise if you live in an area in America/the world where the cheese is real cheese.. I went over to America last year and they treated butter like a mythological thing that didn't really exist. Then again, it was hostel food all the time so that's no reason for me to judge)

Then crush that cheese down and what do you get? You get a nice gloopy mess, which could easily be stored in a bottle and applied to your skin later to give you some kind of resistance to burns or cool burns already inflicted. Or it could be swallowed and give you magical resistance to burns. Whatever.

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but you still have that problem wherever you go. There's been no running water in TES (and shouldn't be), so you can't just fill your potion bottles with water in the lab, the universal solvent, because it STILL isn't available to you. You still have exactly the same problem. I always used my imagination and assumed that the reason my main character wasn't dead in the first week of the game was because he had a canteen from which he could take sips. and they just kept it simple by not making the game too hard core or limiting your potion bottles. Using the same assumption, the character could easily place some water in his mortar and pestle for easy mixing. It only doesn't make sense because of the heating aspect, but that's not necessary for a medicinal substance.

You could find HUNDREDS of examples of plant and animal products that give some advantage to the human body without needing to be heated before ingesting, and that crushing them increases the concentration of their goodness.

Case in point: Fruit.

Now I'm not saying that you should be able to use the alembic, the calcinator and the other apparatus in the wilderness without fire. That is silly, and I'm glad they changed it. But it would make more sense for the restriction to be placed on those equipment and those equipment alone rather than all potion making for everyone

(TO all those who point out that snow is solid and thus wouldn't melt to act as a universal solvent, I have hardly seen snow in my life, and I know that it melts when you raise it above zero degrees by bashing it with a solid object warmed by your hand)

On the other hand, I agree. It would be nice to have more unique potions

I actually like the removal of classes. In Oblivion and Morrowind I had a problem (specially in Morrowind, where I had no chance to try the different skills before confuguring my character): I created a character, I played with it for a while and then I thought "I don't like how I have made my class (I usually created my own class), I have to create a new character". And the same happened again and again. Now I can play naturally and if I find something that I didn't plan to use, but I try and I like, I can change my playstyle without starting a new game. I find this nor only good for the sake of gameplay but realistic: we are what we do repetedly (at least, Aristotles said so). I aslo think that the Perk system adds a lot of customization, and that if done properly, it's gonna be great.

That's still bad [IMO]. It makes for a loose list of spells instead of an organized list of related ones. (And there should be varied schools; not a catch-all magic ability that treats spells like ammo for a hand shaped gun..)

Removing skills. I can see why people would worry, I did at first to until i figured out why they did it. Mysticism is gone, but everything within mysticism is still in the game under the different spell trees, so no harm there. Acrobatics and athletics are gone, which makes sense if you think about it. Like Todd said, who really makes a character and says he is going to run and jump. Every character runs and jumps so why need a skill for it? But you can probably expect that there are still going to be ways of making your character faster and able to jump higher than others, it just doesn't need to take up one of your skills.

They weren't really related, though. Mysticism was effectively a grab-bag of "we can't find a better place for all this crap" skill. Sure, thematically they had some stuff in common: they were mysterious and strange spells, the workings of which were not well-understood. But from a gameplay perspective? The school was all over the damn place.

Nice thread but you lost me at "Fallout 3 was so good"

Better they fix the collection than simplify (via further merging) no?

Complexity is not inherently good. Packing even more miscellaneous crap into it would not be fixing the problem, it would be aggravating it. Moving spells to more gameplay-appropriate schools helps distinguish those schools as having a particular role. Telekinesis is perfectly in line with what Alteration is supposed to be about, and frankly I'm surprised that it wasn't in there to begin with. What exactly about telekinesis is representative of the fundamental subjectivity of reality? Mysticism was always described in the lore as a Zen-like thing. "What is the sound of one hand clapping," not "Whoa dude I totally just lifted up that rock with my mind that's far out man."

Anyway, my point was that having a school full of spell effects that match up with the advantages of other schools doesn't make much sense.

At this point I must ask... are we playing the same game? In Morrowind and Oblivion I could increase my Atributtes permanently a lot, to a point where what I have chosen at the beginning of the game didn't matter at all.

I actually like the removal of classes. In Oblivion and Morrowind I had a problem (specially in Morrowind, where I had no chance to try the different skills before confuguring my character): I created a character, I played with it for a while and then I thought "I don't like how I have made my class (I usually created my own class), I have to create a new character". And the same happened again and again. Now I can play naturally and if I find something that I didn't plan to use, but I try and I like, I can change my playstyle without starting a new game. I find this nor only good for the sake of gameplay but realistic: we are what we do repetedly (at least, Aristotles said so). I aslo think that the Perk system adds a lot of customization, and that if done properly, it's gonna be great.

Oh, by the way, you can pay for carriages to travel, now.

I agree. I would expect to have at least some "specialization" at the beginning, as we had in Fallout 3 in the G.O.A.T., for example.

Sir, if I go to your clinic with a burn on my arm and you reach for a wheel of brie rather than a medicinal ointment I will be very upset with you.

No, I'm sorry, when I think of magic potions, I do not think of mashing up cheese in a mortar and pestle -- which, by the way, will not result in anything you could pour into a bottle. It will just give you a messy mortar and pestle. If you added some cilantro, onion, jalapeno, onion, and avocado, then maybe you could use your finely-tuned alchemical sense to make me a snack, and with the new cooking system it should be easy to make some tortilla chips. Anyway, the typical image of alchemical shenanigans is that of a fashion-challenged pointy-eared geek mixing together bubbling concoctions in a magical laboratory, not some guy deciding to sit down in the wilderness and break out the bunsen burner, oblivious to wind, weather, and abundant contaminants. Necessitating a laboratory makes it more special to me, and again, distinct from just casting spells in that it requires preparation ahead of time.

In Oblivion, you did not have to use a defined class, but could create your own unique custom class.

But it won't mean all that much if you can still have fast traveling for free, by just clicking on the map. I'm hoping that fast travel by carriages is only between the cities/towns. And I hope that there is no free fast travel from anywhere by clicking on the map.

The G.O.A.T. was much like the TES Class . . . it just gave you your tagged skills (much like OB's Major Skills). But Fallout also used the "You're SPECIAL" book, at the very beginning of the game, which allowed you to distribute 40 points among your 10 Attributes. And these 10 Attributes were what made your character the most unique.

Actually, I would hope for a lot more than that. The potential is there to distinguish pros & cons between the various modes of travel. Fast travel is foot travel ~always has been (and has always been broken too). I would hope that they make fast travel inherently riskier by adding in random encounters, while having commercial paid travel have less chance at ambush, and offer the PC allies (fellow travelers and/ or guards) in the event of an attack on the coach.

This would allow the PC to buy passage (on a standardized ~profitable route), or fast travel for free (with a reduced chance of fortunate encounters ~due to forced marching their way along and paying little attention to anything but the path), or regular real time travel with anything in their way (good or bad), being shown as usual.

Actually, I would hope for a lot more than that. The potential is there to distinguish pros & cons between the various modes of travel. Fast travel is foot travel ~always has been (and has always been broken too). I would hope that they make fast travel inherently riskier by adding in random encounters, while having commercial paid travel have less chance at ambush, and offer the PC allies (fellow travelers and/ or guards) in the event of an attack on the coach.

This would allow the PC to buy passage (on a standardized ~profitable route), or fast travel for free (with a reduced chance of fortunate encounters ~due to forced marching their way along and paying little attention to anything but the path), or regular real time travel with anything in their way (good or bad), being shown as usual.

Why not?

Simplicity is not inherently good either ~especially for an RPG... Its actually a common disappointment in them when they have it.

I become experienced in 1-h swords (Skill), but I get stronger as well (Atributte), so when I decide to use a 2-h axe I have no skill, but I'm strong, so I strike better with it than somebody that has never used either a 1-h sword or a 2-h axe.

Pretty much. Plus there was no reason to get rid of Mysticism, other than just wanting to have less skills.