Anyone who played Daggerfall will remember the advantages/disadvantages system. It kicked a lot of ass and was sorely missed in Morrowind and Oblivion. It was a great way to allow you to overpower yourself in one respect without being out of balance. If you had a bunch of advantages without proper disadvantages, you wouldn't progress easily at all. It was fun and made you think and made characters unique. I'd like to see that system return with even more/cooler advantages and disadvantages. Thoughts?

That system was an epic win for role playing, and affects your character all game long. Phobia of the undead, only regenerating spellpoints in darkness, acute hearing, and so on. Maybe you could list the effects and have us suggest some new ones?

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:ClassMaker

I will. I kind of did this thread last minute. I'm in the Navy, and I have a 12 hour watch that I have to go to in about 10 minutes, so I didn't have time for anything super well thought out, lol. I was kind of just wanting to get the idea out there cause I haven't seen a thread mentioning this specifically in a while, and this is the kind of thing that can still be added at this point in development. If people haven't gotten the discussion rolling by Friday afternoon when I'm off watch finally (cause i have another lap around the clock tomorrow night, so not much down time in between), then I'll go way indepth with it.

That Class Maker for Daggerfall is a thing of beauty. I would love something like this in Skyrim. Never read about it in detail, so thanks for bringing it up.

Well in Morrowind and Oblivion they still use the Special advantages and Special disadvantages but they tied them to races instead of you choosing them. Unfortunately they didn't keep the increase or decrease of difficulty to raise a level on skills.

Yeah, the thing is that since they tied it to races, there is no difference between my altmer and yours, every member of each race is a carbon copy of the same template at the start of the game. The old system makes for a much more personalized PC, way beyond anything you can come up with the current birth signs and race default attributes. I don't understand why they got rid of it, since it was optional anyways, and its basically implemented the same way as current birth signs and race abilities, they would just need to make the options available at character creation and add the advantages and disadvantages the same way they do with any other ability, like nords cold resistance for example.

Its just kind of odd they stripped their custom class maker of so many things, and instead settled for set preset stats and a few very limited birth signs. Maybe it had something to do with game balance and all that level scaling... Who knows?

This is one thing that hooked me for Daggerfall

Once I got the gist of how to create classes and add all the bells and whistles to the advantages, disadvantages, and reputation I loved the game (although I have to admit it's one of the most challenging games I've ever played).

Now I feel like I'm missing out, since I've never played TES2. :unsure: How feasible is to play Daggerfall on modern systems? Has it aged well?

The graphics definitely haven't aged well, but if you get past that you'll have yourself a fantastic RPG, the most in-depth in the TES series. Just download Dosbox and find a guide on how to get it set up, or you can wait for http://daggerxl.wordpress.com/ to be completed, but that won't be for a while.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll take a look and try it out. That DaggerXL mod/conversion looks great by the way. Really impressive.

This could probably be done with an adaptation of the Perk system that FO3 had.

In the past elder scrolls games section of the forums they can hook you up with the right program and tweaks you need to run Daggerfall on most any system. With the free download and everything, it's too good to pass up.

As far as aging well, I'm too biased to answer. Ask questions if you need help though, there isn't much in the way of hand holding or direction given in game.

Yesyesyes, bring it back. I loved how Daggerfall had this classical RPGy character creation system. I'd not link it to the difficulty of the game, though. Instead, I'd just let the player go and make a better character than allowed, but tell him he thereby enters "easy mode" - or tell him he has chosen the "hard difficulty" when taking more disadvantages than needed.

DF's traits adjusted level scaling, not difficult. It was marked easy and hard, because it became easier, or harder to level up.

But yes please. It really allowed for increased customization, and was very RP friendly.

I loved the Daggerfall character creation system. I was so disapointed in Morrowind and now Oblvions creation system. I would hope that Bethesda still doesn't think that they have to make the game "simple" or "dumbed down" or what ever you want to call it so the "masses" or "casual gamer" will play the game.

Well you can download it for free of the Bethesda site. You will need DosBox to play it. Install DosBox. From there if you still have problems, go to the old TES games forums and ask there, just like I did, and as usual they helped me get it going.

That would be amazing.

I could finally make my character as unique as my Daggerfall character in a new TES game.

I gotta admit I'm usually against this kind of thing, but that looked plain old excellent. I would love it if they integrated this kind of system.

Easy install of Daggerfall on modern OSes: http://theelderscrolls.wiwiland.net/?title=Daggerfall_:_DaggerfallSetup_EN

You should definitely pick it up. It's my favorite TES game tied with Oblivion. Daggerfall is pretty difficult, though not quite as hard to play as Arena. I think Daggerfall looks pretty good for '98. It's not actually that bad to the eyes even now. Not to mention seeing as how Daggerfall is the largest gaming world ever created, you can use up alot of the 10 months we have left til Skyrim :celebration:

1. Daggerfall Character Creation is easily the best in the whole series, or the whole CRPG genre.

2. Birthsigns were a huge step backwards, no Morrowind fan should ever forget that

3. List of examples of dis/advantages in my signature.

4. Don't forget that it should be possible to really gimp your character if you wish, since I'm quite sure TES5 isn't giving me enough challenge comes it with a hard core mode or no.

Daggerfalls class maker was awesome on so many levels, really hope we get something similar.

This system allowed for more diversity and complexity in character creation by affecting more than the too geometric stat/skill system. Though it should be more balanced, avoiding oubviously non problematic disadvantages and too benefic advantages.

I don't mind the races having bonuses and disadvantages so much but to reduce the system to birthsigns only was a big mis-step, by all means include them but keep the custom creation as well, and I agree allow players to make weaker characters as well as stronger ones, to add to the challenge if that's what they want. Deeper game elements should not be removed if some players don't like or can't handle it that's what the defaults are for, but don't take it away from the rest of us


Download this http://theelderscrolls.wiwiland.net/?title=Daggerfall_:_DaggerfallSetup_EN for an easy life, just before it installs I recommend unchecking the extra content and only install the user made bug fixes for the first playthrough, the game runs very smoothly using this and I second checking out the daggerfall forums for some general starting out advice. As said graphics are dated but gameplay is great




That's not the only thing Morrowind took a step backwards on, but for this thread that's where the customization went wrong

I love this thing its like traits but way better and versatile.

If we just had a fraction of these choices, even the disadvantages are great for RPing a were wolf or vampire or something. Use no silver weaponry or go near holy places.

Phobias I like.

Glad a discussion has started about this. I'm WAY too wiped out from watch right now, and I'm gonna go to sleep as soon as I can to prepare to do another 12 hours tonight, but when I'm recovered from this [censored] schedule for the weekend I'll definitely make a contribution to the discussion.