Before anybody retorts with "but in skyrim you play into your character" I know that, this is an "optional feature" meaning that if you didn't want to use it, you didn't have to use it... you wouldn't be penalized for it.

By far my favorite feature of Daggerfall was the ability to make advantages and disadvantages in character creation, and modify the characters pre-standing reputations with generic factions. This added a whole new level of character customization, and added lots of non-LARP roleplaying value (non-LARP meaning it actually affected the game, and isn't just you "pretending")

If you haven't played daggerfall:

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

Advantages and Disadvantages: was a feature in which you could define up to eight factors for both "advantages" and "disadvantages." (eight for each) depending on the magnitude of the advantage or disadvantage, it would raise and lower a "difficulty" slider that affected how quickly your skills raise.

So for advantages you could get things such as:

- Increased magicka ability (1.5x intelligence, 2x intelligence, 3x intelligence)
- Weapon expertise
- Rapid Healing
- resistance/immunity to (fire, frost, shock, magic, etc)
- etc

And for disadvantages you could get stuff such as

- Inability to regenerate magic
- Weakness/Dire weakness to (fire, frost, etc)
- Damage from (holy places, sunlight)
- Forbidden materials (iron, steel, silver, etc)
- etc

And like I said, depending on the magnitude of the ones you pick, it raises or lowers a difficulty slider that affects how quickly your skills advance.


Reputation is pretty straightforward, you can change your standing reputation with Nobility/Scholars/Peasants/Underworld, so if you want to make a seedy scumbag character you can make nobility and scholars hate him, and underworld/peasants like him.

These two features were great because if you wanted to, you could design a character exactly like you wanted them to be. If you wanted a past criminal who is inept at magic but great at stealing, you could make it so.

Didn't Birth-signs kind of replace that?

I love the Daggerfall system, and I love Daggerfall, but if it were to make it into Skyrim, it'd need a fair deal of changes. I want it to feel equally like a role-play thing and a game-play thing, whereas Daggerfall's never much struck me as much more than game-play(though I did play a Breton healer who was a vegetarian and so never ate meat at the taverns, and never wore leather armor, so I guess I'm being a hypocrite).
In any case, with revision, and the races actually having effect in the class-maker(which I guess wouldn't be a class-maker, seeing as classes are yesterday), along with birth-signs, this could make for some very unique characters for everyone.

I like the reputation part.

There was an alternate start mod in oblivion that let you choose some of this. Also it let you choose if you were afflicted with a certain disease.

Well, naturally it did have a few flaws, but I'd like to see the basic idea of it re-implemented, it's nice to build a character to compliment your playing style. If you're never going to use magic anyways it is nice to be able to gear your player towards fighting advantages and magic disadvantages.

Birth-signs was an okay system, it was like the daggerfall one except not very customizable.

Daggefalls system was a bit easy to exploit and I'd rather they keep the advantages and disadvantages with the races.
Skyrim's system seems to be perfect for me.

The advantages and disadvantages are now determined by which race you pick in Skyrim.

Agreed it needs some tweaks. But with the removal of classes (the reason we have been told being that they don't want to usher you into picking a specific way of playing, only to find it isn't fun), I doubt this will return.

Meh. I wouldnt mind it. Reminds me of the 'traits' in Fallout NV, which I hated. Every advantage had an equal disadvantage attached to it.....I hated that and ended up never choosing any of the traits.

Like I said I dont mind it if it were reworked from Daggerfall's system....But I dont really care. I wouldnt mind seeing some sort of replay value added to the game. TES are games that are notorius for being replayable, so wouldnt it be cool if once you beat the game you unlocked some sort of special mode like the OP describes or something similar or even different? Maybe you could restart the game with your current player level (IF you wanted, and only IF) or you could have more customization in the character creation, or cheats were unlocked.

Those arent the greatest examples but it would be neat to see something that you can unlock once beating the game. It could add a whole 'nother depth to the replay value.

Daggerfall's system was more in-depth than the inherent race characteristics of other games and futhermore, since when has any race --real or fictional-- produced an entire population of people with the exact same underlying characteristics. I'd like to see something similar to Daggerfalls Adv/Disadv and Rep system implemented(only more in-depth). I'm all for the new take on skill progression(you raise and specialize in, what it is you actually use), but this is more about initial character creation, its about creating a shadow of your character's backstory and defining him/her at the most basic level and it would help the RPer bring a more accurate representation of their character to life in-game, as it cements the desired strengths, weaknesses and personality characteristics into the character in such a way that it affects both gameplay and how the world reacts to you. This my friends can only make the game better.

I want the return of advantages and disadvantages, really helps flesh out your character.

And to the naysayers, it would be optional. Itsgrady its called balance, perks are the bonuses.

I didn't play daggerfall much, but I played enough to know the character creation is awesome!
The advantages and disadvantages were the best, relations was cool too.

I'd also like to see advantages and disadvantages take effect in enchanting, such as the boots of blinding speed, but thats a discussion for elsewhere

I'd hope for more options to customize your character for roleplaying reasons, but the options shouldn't be too extreme. By extreme I mean too easy to exploit some way to unbalance the game.

Daggerfalls A&D sytem was replaced by Birthsigns as far as most of its options were concerned, HOWEVER it seems even birthsigns are being cut out. but they could expand on that sytem and give greater factors like

Able to recover stamina much more quickly or require less sleep than normal

Bosmer could have beast tongue and get animals to preform various tasks like tracking, hunting, guarding etc etc.

You have some kind of disease that reduces your characters stats significantly for a few days every month or so.

The Character suffers stat penalties for being near or dealing with Fire in and out of Combat, like wise for Darkness and other environmental effects.


one could go on really.

Apparently you only choose your race. Because... choice scares off casual people. Or something. It worked for Fable 3, if by work you would mean "Lower sales and lower metacritic score"

Hey, let's change more things no one complained about, because if we don't change things... then... they'll, stay the same. That's bad. For some reason.

I like the idea of race bonuses and greater powers.. but I actually prefer the game without birthsigns. It's nice to define your chracter at startup.



This is a sensitive topic, some casual players will definitely resent being punished for mistakes made during character creation, but there should really be "avcanced options" for people who know what they want to play.

I can understand that some "casual player" may want to quickly make a character and embark on the main quest, but I like to carefully plan my character's stats and play the game to that tune, and there should be optional menus for that.. advantages, disadvantages, and reputation would help fill that "optional" role.



Please don't crap on ideas and concepts for such trivial reasons. The traits are there, they are optional, so you don't need to use them. They were an optional addition not a necessity, so you don't even need to touch them. Besides traits were in fallout 1 & 2, just another thing New Vegas did right.

Advantages, disadvantages have always been optional and they should definitely make an appearance, fort he sake of character customization and world-affecting roleplaying.



Interesting argument, but a touchy one at best. Race often does promote unique characteristics.. mostly based on environmental circumstance and diet.

But thats irrelevant, as each race in TES is unique, and as such it would be nice to see each race be good at certain things. If all races are the same then there's no point in having races at all, except for cosmetic purposes. daggerfall did have race attributes, but a bug caused them to not work.

I will miss the quirkiness some characters tend to develop, but on other hand I imagina how frustrating it must've been for someone with no knowledge of the series whatsoever jumping into Oblivion and having to pick a bunch of stuff he doesn't even know yet how they work. It is daunting, and for the people saying that video game player are becoming dumb right trigger spammers I can only say one thing:

Yepper. Pretty much. Mind you, I don't think it's that bad. Long are the days I had the time and patience to read an entire booklet and restart a game several times trying to develop the best character setup according to my gameplay needs. RPGs back in the day were cryptic as hell. Nowadays we're in a cyclic motion of having less RPGs because people are not used to their complexity and people not being prepared for RPGs complexity because there aren't that many of them.

It's adapting or dying. Though I'll miss some staples, I'll admit they were almost all frustrating. They were quirky characteristics, one could say charming, but there was SO much frustration with gaming back in the day. Not the wrist cutting frustration, I mean that nagging feeling of "I'm screwing this up, aren't I? Awww damm, this thing is gonna get so buggy at any time..." and "Oh, so this is what that thing did. Goddammit, if I knew it sooner".

I'll most definitely miss the advantage/disadvantage mechanics. The signs one, eh, not so much. But it will probably make for more unique classes. And I hope more balanced ones too. They managed to make the nords an absolutely terrible class in Oblivion. Which is a shame, for I'm torn beetween a nord and a breton on Skyrim...

I'll be honest, I started Fallout 3 first and that's what got me into TES since if figured they'd be similar. Now I've played almsot all of the TES games.

On my first play-through of Fallout 3, I was impressed by the open world, but the RPG aspects of it made me think "What the [censored] is this [censored]." I gave the game a second try and loved it once I figured out how to play it. If people are put off initially by RPG mechanics, and they don't go back to try it again, it's their loss.

Still, with that said, I can empathize with such people, but that doesn't mean that I (and others here) should be punished by not being able to play the game the way we like to play it (ala, making a character with specific abilities) It's all about the optional features. Provide an advanced menu for people who know what they want to play. As I've said, the advantages and disadvantages were never forced on the player, and they were never crucial to complete the game.

No, I want advantages/disadvantages to form as I go according to my play style (not definitive/set in stone, just stuff you know is there, like a full out warrior would have a disadvantage towards magic and ranged attacks.) and reputation would be formed upon your interaction with different factions, like F:NV.

How would your character develop health regeneration in darkness or in holy places. Take damage to sunlight or holy places. Sure perks could do it, but then how would those perks disadvantage you by slowing or speeding level progression?

I don't understand why this new classless system is so revered. Sure no classes could be a good thing, but why is throwing out all customization other than races good too?

I like all man im not disagree with nothing i want to see Skyrim full of interaction. just look the many rpg and mmorpgs theres always more than one limit.

Advantages and disadvantages are your perks. Instead of choosing them at the beginning of the game, you choose them as you play, which is far better method IMO.

I personally don't want every elder scrolls to be arena clones
(new post)
People use the word optional alot. I bet in 10 years we will not see a game with 100' of gameplay based options. For option you add in ever so slightly less quality. (unless you have endless pools of cash, time or manhours).

The main one is testing . As a dev or even a big moder may say. For everyoption you need to playtest the game with that one then this. or pull an activision and pray it works...in an open ended game.

As always my opinion might not count for squat or is invalid.

Lots of old RPG's had the advantage and disadvantage system that directly related to experience needed to level, but its a relic of an older time - I can't think of a single modern RPG including the feature. Don't know why, just another fact in the changing landscape of games.

Just to clarify my argument Toad, I have no problem and actually quite agree with the idea that race would generate widespread qualities and traits unique to its population, based on, as you said, environment, climate, diet, and in some cases in the game, cultural beliefs and spiritual practices, but even those should vary slightly in strength from one individual to the next(it would be nice if we had a small range of possible percentages of potency we could choose with regards to those). And so I still belief certain race inherent advantages and disadvantages should remain intact, but why stop there? Being a Nord, for example, is only one facet of my character, giving me advantages like a resistance to frost or greater strength and endurance than other races, while by comparison his maximum magicka potential should be far less than that of an Altmers. I guess what I was trying to say is that being a specific race should only do so much to define my character and there should be more to it then that. As I stated earlier, having an in-depth Adv/DisAdv and Rep system in place during the character creation process would help to create a shadow of a backstory for the RPer's PC and further differentiate him/her from the rest of the population. Without classes or major and minor skills to choose from in the game what is defining your character as he/she starts on his/her journey through Skyrim --certainly he/she wasn't just born the day before, not having lived at all, never having learned a thing or two from dealing with a greedy merchant, or a tricky and contentious beggar; never having apprenticed under a masterful conjurer or fought alongside an experienced swordsman; never having befriended a righteous monk who taught him the art of unarmed combat or a shadowy assasin who showed him how to move swiftly through the night. The possibilities of who and what my character are shouldn't begin with the opening title sequence of the game and certainly shouldn't be limited to a few generic race specific advantages and disadvantages. In the 'real world' I'm Canadian but I feel like that hardly defines me, it's the years at my back and the experiences I've had that truly make me who I am, and so with that said I pose the question to you good sir knight, should it be any different in the land of Skyrim?