A poll on how in-depth you want the various stages of Character Stats (Race, Class, Attributes, Skills and Birthsigns). I know that most of this has been confirmed, I just what to know what people like.

I find it interesting that none have supported the supposed decision to axe attributes. It's a clean sweep to have the original attribute system back in. Actually looking more clearly at the results, most people want Oblivion's or Morrowind's level of skills back in as well, with only one lone individual favouring the reduction in skills.

12 members is hardly a sample set. Try looking at it after 100+ people vote.

I don't think anyone wants attributes gone. I dont.

But I do think they need to be changed. The attribute system in morrowind and oblivion were sort of broken, and if they were altered to fit skyrim better and maybe even put under the hood I'd like them much better.

without birthsigns (the mage or apprenticef balance atronach is out o) my non-magic character can′t make a decent restoration spell at begining . I hope the same attributes of course

I diddnt vote as the poll options are too vague. It is not the number of skills that count but the number of actions you can perform under those skills and whether or not they make sense. Having seperate skills for long blades, short blades and daggers is a bit superfluous when they can all fit under a blades skill however putting all combat skills under a skill named combat would be going too far, the Athletics and Acrobatics skills are probably not needed as run speed, stamina drain and jump height are probably better governed by attributes alone however if you were to add climbing, grappling hooks and the dodge rolls that were already in Oblivion and tie them all under the one skill you could bring the Athletics/Acrobatics skill back. As I said it is not about the actual number of skills, you could have 100 superficial skills and it would not add depth to the game, it is more about having a number of meaningful skills without having superfluous ones.

That's actually a really good point. In one sense I agree with the removing or merging of various skills. What I dont want is a dumbed-down hack and slasher because people felt there were too many confusing skills or they felt the game needed to be sped up somehow. They seem to be streamlining it for people who cant be bothered playing the game the way it was origninally intended.

I like complex character creation. The only part of that I could let go of is classes. I like classes, and think they should still be in, because you will be following the role of a class whether you see it or not, and it "could" offer for better dialoge (but it won't).
More skills, although they should still be relevant. I like the idea of perks, in conjunction with many skills, they don't replace skills.
Attributes are a must, they won't get axed until we only have 3 skills, and then they will be redundant and absorbed into those 3 skills.
And I never understood the theory about only being able to play 1 race, dragonborn can be anybody, it has nothing to do with lineage.

I'm glad attributes are gone (I think so?). The were just derivative of skills anyway, if there was a difference between being a strong swordsman (Conan) and a weaker but skillful swordsman (Zorro) then maybe, but for me they were pretty useless, confusing, and unnecessary.

Well the more the customisation options,the better.
I like birthsigns and classes because they give you some bonus points which are valuable at the early parts of the game when you are still in lower levels.


I don't get why some people find classes and attributes confusing.
I think they just give another way to spend our time,and that's what we ask from a game.
To have nice things we can do to spend our time.

It wouldn't really make sense to remove birthsigns or to limit us to only picking the Mage, the Warrior, or the Thief. Birthsigns are an established part of lore that can make huge differences.

The only way I could see it justified to have only the Mage, Warrior, and Thief available, was if it were some small spin-off game that isn't as important as the main series. But even then, I'd expect the Serpent to be available too, since it's so different and does not fall under the rule of the other three.

Classes don't really matter to me, although I like to be able to tell people that my character is a sorceress. Attributes, meh. But I love having tons and tons of different skills. The more the better. I would love to have the option to add on more skills via the Creation Kit, like mundane skills such as painting, horseback riding, masonry, fletching..... AND, if we had the abiltiy to add skills via the Creation Kit, then we could add in Mysticism again for those like me that miss it and think it was a bogus act to remove it since it's a big part of Altmeris lore.

So has it been confirmed that attributes are completely out? I never saw that in any info. If so what is left? Health/Magicka/Stamina? Seems like the thief is getting the shaft unless they have put more critical emphasis on what is left of skills. The perk system is already sounding generic and boring

I haven't heard anything about Attributes either.... :shrug:

Attributes all ended up at 100 if you played long enough. At least with the perks, all characters, no matter how powerful, will be different.

There are no atributes as they dont want us fiddling trying to get them to reach 100 by training skils we dont actauly want to use.

Instead I think birthsigns and stats are all merged into race to make each race much more unique throughout the game.

What im hoping for is that each race has a different limit on not just carry weight but different catagories of inventory and also on different types of worn items..

I think when you see a breton or high elf they should always look like a clothes horse.. lots and lots of layers of clothing and lots of bling.. but little if any armor.

Other races specialy redguards should hate magic in all its forms or at least shouldnt cart around much of it.

The two best RPG's in my opinion are, Planescape: Torment and Arcanium.

Why I bring them up is on topic and vital to my opinion.
PS:T has a very streamlined stat and character generation set up, heck it's a heavily butchered version of AD&D.

Arcanum takes the SPECIAL system then adds a ton of other features, it makes tech and magic oposite sides of character builds.
Increases the base amount of stats, making just basic reaction based on two stats, dialogue on even more, persuasion even more.
Combat a mix of stats, a heap of different weapons and skills relating to their use, magic based on multipule factors.
A trait system based on up bringing that gives advantages but often cripples your character twice over.
A large amount of races, different dialogues with sixes, races and traits... etc, etc, etc.

My semi rambling point with all this is, that despite holding polar extremes both games are hugely alike.
Dialogues are subtle and varied, suprises are thrown up based on stat choices and dialogue ones.
Combat is hugely varied based on which paths you take, NPC's relate well all across the board... etc, etc, etc.

So a games greatness or at least greatness in an RPG sense has nothing to do with how many stats, skills and other character developements there are.
Rather it's how well the company uses them, and how much effort they put into the developement of them.
How much thought they place in the game world itself.

I don't think the amount of skills matter, as long as there are enough perks to keep them diversified.

It all depends on the system and how its made, so it's impossible for me to vote. I would hope for a system heavily based on dice games, but many don't seem to like that. I.e. a condensed version of Role Master, with its hundreds of skills (only in the main book) where you get the skills based on professions (similar, but not identical, to classes). I setup a system of my own based on classes/professions, 55 skills on 5 (2 new) arche types, similar to what Oblivion had. 12 Major skills from your profession list (if you have the background, they are easier to improve on), 6 Minor skills (choose from the arche type driving them), and 6 Misc skills (choose from anything). Now that's 24 skills you are allowed to pick perks from, the remaining 31 skills you can't improve on "as skills" or get perks from, but will be based solely on their governing stats.

But since many (most?) don't want skills to also reflect success rolls, it becomes impossible to make up good skills that enable you to do more stuff as well (as the perks). I would also separate skill increases from leveling, in the sense that using skills improves them, but still have an XP system for driving leveling where you get to increase stats which results in increases on derived stats. Stats relations to skills would be complex enough that it would discourage spreadsheet leveling, similar to Realms of Arkania where skills are governed by both two and three stats and derived stats. Both leveling and skills would suffer from exponential growth, so reaching 100 in anything would be just about impossible. Even at 1.1^level will require 13780 repetitions just to go from level 99 to level 100, so good luck. This makes it easier to get the skills you have to a good average level, but offers replayability since you don't get access to all skills and their benefits in one playthrough.

So I'm sorry, the poll is a bit useless. It's all in the system behind everything, not about adding skills for the sake of adding them. I'm all for complexity. But keep in mind it's not only the players that will come under this, but also the coders that have to try to make a well balanced gameplay for *ALL* kinds of characters no matter how underdeveloped they are; Gandalf the Mage, Steven Segal the Cook, or Conan the Librarian. The more complex the system becomes, the more impossible it becomes having this balance. Remember we're talking about mathematical algorithms here, not a thinking human game master.

Attributes worked ok and all rpg games have them. hard to imagine one without it. everybody would have simlar strenght.
problem in Morrowind and Oblivion was the +5 increase on level up focus. if they simply link them to skills so 2 increase in two hand weapons give you one in strength, this might be different from different skills and skills might help on two attributes.

Agree with the part that there should be a difference between Conan and Zorro. But i think attribs can actually help with this. For example, if damage were increased not by skill (or not as much) but by strength, and if attack speed affected by agility, then a strong character would be Conan (bigger damage) and the agile one would be Zorro (faster attack).

Skill wouldnt be useless even if they didnt affect damage because they are now required for perks and could be made to increase chances for weapon effects. So, for example:

DAMAGE-WISE: (100 STR, 50 Skill fighter == 100 STR, 100 Skill fighter) > 50 str, 100 Skill fighter

BUT!: a 50 STR, 100 Skill fighter would have the advantage of more perks and tying the chance to proc a weapon effect to the associated skill means that the 50 STR, 100 Skill fighter could be much more likely to crit/stun/bash/bleed than the 100 STR 50 Skill one.

Bottom line, after that useless rambling, I WANT MY ATTRIBS!

Of course I want to play different races. Wouldn't care too much if they only let you play Imperial, Breton or Nord or something, though - as long as the game world is awesome.

The removal of classes are great IMO. Now we can really get better at what we do without being hampered by major/minor skills.

Unless the attributes are gained in a better way than Morrowind and Oblivion where you had to concentrate on (for you) worthless skills just to get the best boost, I hope they have been removed.
Perks will be a lot more fun than attributes, and skills could replace the various things the attributes did. (Which is few, considering that magicka, health and stamina moved to a boost that you get each level independent of skill raises).

I think it's a good thing that they lower the skill number, if they focus on making the remaining skills... better. More helpful. To have Mercantile, Speechcraft and Security as you major skills in Oblivion was just a waste, when you could get +20 in Sneak, Blade, or Destruction instead. (Besides, you can open any lock at skill level 5 if you just know how to lockpick - AND add the Skeleton Key on top of that and we have a complete joke of a skill.)

I couldn't care less about birthsigns. If attributes are gone, then half of the birthsigns need to be changed. You got some small powers, some boost here and there, and it was only the Atronach that really changed your playthrough. Bethesda can remove them and instead focus on perks for all I care.

All the confirmed changes and the appearent changes (attributes, birthsigns), make sense to me, and I have no doubts that Skyrim will be the best TES experience ever. All the changes make me look forward to the game even more!

Since Daggerfall, the game is a system were you get better at what you actually practice. Such systems are at odd with class based systems where you get better at your whole class whatever it is you practice. TES tried to go inbetween with a class system but where you still only got better on the skills you trained. It never worked right IMHO so removing classes is not a problem at all since they were so broken in Oblivion/Morrowind and besides, the game will work fine without them anyway.

Dialogue was done poorly in Oblivion, the fallout series a good example at how speech should be done.

"lock picking" should be character based, so tired of the mini-games and how Oblivion's could be exploited.

Mercantile, really just needed to be expanded on more.

Really I'd rather have more skills that are all useful to different builds.

so how does the new leveling system work? has there beem any word about it? except that we no longer have major skills

how do you gain levels?