I'm loving Skyrim and am not really bothered by most of the things people are complaining about (though I can understand where they're coming from).

Still, I've been thinking about how the Skyrim experience can be improved even further... and it hit me. A change in the traditional system that is bound to displease some people, abolish levels altogether. Bear with me.
The only point of it is to add 10 points to Mana, Health or Stamina and unlock a Perk... and create a basis for level scaling.

Instead get rid of levels. When you first create a character you have a certain amount of points (let's just say 300) you can add to either Health or Mana, depending on what you want to play. Stamina becomes a trainable skill (while arcane talents (Mana) physical robustness (Health) are genetic and can't be enhanced without magic, I think it makes sense from a realism point of view). Health isn't gained you'll say, but that's what armour is for.
There would be no level scaling. We already have different classes of Bandits, Critters and Dragons which provide weaker or stronger challenges anyway.
When it comes to balance, you'd be evenly matched with a Bandit when you start, but a Bandit Chief kills you with 2 hits. (like in my current Master difficulty game...)
Once you're in the later stages you end up slightly stronger than the Bandit Chief but not so much that he isn't a threat at all anymore.

Buffs would have to be decreased and obviously the Perk system would have to be overhauled.

Other ideas that I find would add depth to the game and would like to see, which aren't connected to the levelling system at all:
-Dwemer, Ebony and Daedric armour or weapons are not craftable, but can be improved with the smithing skill and correct resources. So if you find these weapons they are cherished and honed. Daedric equipment being especially rare.
-Disenchanting does not destroy the item. (so basically, if you find an enchanted Ebony Axe, you can change the enchantment)
-Arrow fletching is possible. But Arrows weigh 0.25 (200 arrows weigh 50lbs).
-Fatigue (increasing after 18h without sleep) effects Stamina / Stamina regen
-Hunger effects Health / Health regen

This is just a rough sketch of how what I would improve and once the CS is out I'll see if it's possible to mod. (some things doubtlessly are)

Everyone trys to change things to match their vision of the perfect game. Pity everyone else has a different vision. In your system, people would be coming here complaining just as much as they currently are, with just as much right to.

I really dislike your idea, but everyone has his own preference so I won't bash it.

A more general notice though: Excluding levels from the game is in no way related with stamina regeneration and needs like hunger and sleep. I would remove those points from your OP if I were you, to increase the chances of having a meaningful discussion on levelling.

Obviously, I'm not asking Bethesda to take on my suggestions either. Nor am I saying it's the only way it should be.
I'm aware that not everybody will like it (probably fewer than would dislike it). After all, people like the traditional idea of being Level XX and even more want to end up being a demi god (but ironically still expect a challenge).

Just, you know, thought we could have a discussion of how gameplay could effectively be improved, or just changed, instead of crying about how things are or justifying them.

No offence, but I think that's a terrible idea

Yes, those are ideas that aren't connected to the levelling, which is why I added them under "other general changes". But you have a point, I'll change the header to it.

Fair enough, but it would be nice to here the reasoning behind it. Where do you think it's flawed?

As it stands we're already half way there with Skyrim and the Levels are more of a token gesture creating more problems than anything.

I like your idea :thumbsup:

I was thinking about something similar to this the other day while playing Dark Souls.

People bang on about realism in these games but majority of the system just doesn't work out realistic. Being able to increase your health is the obvious thing. The other is certain things not weighing anything (arrows) and being able to carry a ludicrous amount of items around. Diablo had a more realistic system where you had a finite amount of space to use up.

Personally I would:

Make health static. You have a base health and that is it for the game. Want to take more damage then you need better armour. Also, being able to take multiple hits with an axe without armour or arrows to the head is just ludicrous. If you are hit in a low armoured area or completely bare area then you should at the very least lose most of your health and in most cases die instantly.

Have no regenerating health bar. If you low on health then you need to seek medical attention. This could be in the form of potions and medkits or visiting a healer.

Add bleeding. If you are seriously wounded then you will gradually lose health over time as you bleed out. This can be fixed with healing items or staved by other items until you can get to a healer.

Add autosaving like Dark Souls. If you die in that game you are dead. No saving just before a boss fight. Obviously you would respawn but it would likely be at the nearest shrine or crypt and then you go from there. Also, to make it more meaningful I'd make it so you lost a chunk of gold. You can just ignore the loss but you could also go back to where you died and reclaim it.

Make it so pulling back a bow decreases stamina over time. Firing an arrow should also decrease stamina.

Make it so all arrows can be reclaimed from an area or victims body.

Make it so you cannot melee attack at all with no stamina. Also, blocking should use up stamina. If you have little stamina left then the block will fail. This may already happen but I'm not a melee character

Make weight more important. The more I carry the slower I should move and strike. It should be based on percentage of weight carrying to carry capacity like Dark Souls. Also, there should be a discernible difference between swinging a light weapon and heavy weapon. The pay off should be damage.

Add in the ability to parry properly and dodge and roll like Dark Souls. Yes Dark Souls is getting a lot of mentions, but that is because it's far superior in terms of combat and realism.


That's all I can think of for now but in terms of realism and immersion I think they are good changes

Edit:

Also weapons and armour should dull with usage. Smithing can bring them back up to scratch

Make more realistic restrictions on carry capacity on weight. A number of slots that are grid based like Diablo and a more realistic carry weight.

Make races mean something. Orcs should have more carry weight but be slower. Kajit should be quicker and jump higher etc...

Make combat on horseback possible

Make it so perks are not bought but learnt from books, trainers or successfully dodging or blocking an enemies attack (which are slightly different). Blocking or dodging the attack of a frost troll would give you a bonus to one handed combat for example. Obviously for mages and archers this doesn't work so well. The book and training system would however work. I guess what this means it that instead of levelling up sneak and then being able to buy a one handed perk you would instead need to go and actively train for that specific perk. Not sure how you'd improve blocking in a combat situation though lol. Possibly combat would be a way of gaining specific special perks that can't be bought in the base tree. I do think that you should not be able to purchase a perk with a level up in a different category however

Dont really like it too much except for level scaling disappearing..

I like some of those ideas but others, such as removing levelling altogether, is just changing the genre of the game. The Elder Scrolls has already gone from RPG to Action RPG, it's now more along the lines of Mass Effect. The 6th game in the series is going to be more like Assassin's Creed at this rate.

That would be great, but difficult to implement because of the combat system. At least for modders.

Have no regenerating health bar. If you low on health then you need to seek medical attention. This could be in the form of potions and medkits or visiting a healer.



Good point. The draw weight of a longbow was over 160lbs!
Archers were stronger than men at arms, believe it or not.



Arrows break or go blunt, a percentage of them is alright imo.




A very good idea.



I pretty much agree with all those points, although I find the carry capacity alright personally.



I was aware that the entire idea would not do well with the traditionalists.
To me it's not levelling that makes an RPG though, it's exploring and surviving on a strange continent.

Statistics are the core of an RPG, it's what makes your character truly unique to you. As you play your character it will progress and grow in a manner of your choosing. Bethesda have already opted to drop a lot of this with Skyrim.

Removing character progression takes away a lot of the RPG aspect and makes it an action game, where your character development is essentially entirely story-driven. The only thing that would separate your character from other people's characters is how it looks and which perks you chose, if that's how some people would define an RPG then Modern Warfare 3 is an RPG.

Don't mean to high jack your thread either by the way. I pretty much agree with your points and I don't see why a lot of the hardcoe element wouldn't be in favour of making the game more realistic within the game world.

I'm actually at a loss as to how lazy they were with regards to racial differences. Apart from very specific perks they just don't matter. Khajit should be able to see in the dark better all the time, and be quicker and more agile. I mean it says so in the character description for heaven's sake

I like the idea! Just not getting rid of levels and perks I see where your coming from though!

Spaz_lad, I don't think Perks should be removed, they're good.
They'd just have to change because they're linked to Levelling up. Say, get a Perk for every 10th skill-up. (that's pretty much how it works already anyway.)



You misunderstood.
Statistics and Character progression are still there, in form of Skill-ups.

One important factor would be how you distribute your Mana and Health for your Character, that's where you would determine how you mean to play and would open all sorts of combos and experiments. Magic or Combat heavy? A bit of both?

But you can already skill up everything to 100. Levelling isn't really something that needs fixing, zoning and level scaling is what needs looking at.

Modern Warfare isn't 'far' off being an rpg if you look at the elements they've added. Ok in terms of role playing it obviously isn't but a fair few rpg principles are in there. Reading that sentence back sounds stupid but I think you get what I mean.

What's being proposed isn't losing upgrading your character altogether, but more that it should be done in a more realistic fashion. Just running around hitting something shouldn't improve my hitting stat. I should need to be taught new principles. How bout instead of pressing the level up stat button to improve you have to learn from trainers, reading books and fighting an enemy and 'learning' his special technique? So every enemy has different hits and if you successfully block or dodge an attack you then have 'learnt' it and your stat improves

You forgot adding weight to gold and only having one life with no respawns. Your game will save itself when you exit it. So if you die you need to start over from scratch. Potions aren`t very realistic either. Should have bandages you can use or make from animal hides that heal over time for 1 hp per sec and a skill tree that allows you to build up to 5hp per sec regen using bandages. And also have it to wear you get tired wearing heavy armor all the time and need to take breaks removing it because it`s so heavy. No swimming with armor equiped either, like in DnD you had to remove it or you would sink and drown.

Or maybe instead of only having 1 life, you could respawn but whatever killed you destroyed all your equiped items or stole them. So you would either have to go back and try to get your items back or just get new gear. Each death should have an extreme penalty if you really wanna be hardcoe. Something like a negative to skills that can only be removed by reskilling up. kind of like the EQ2 experiance debt system they had. So if I dead , I would get -10 to my armor skill and I would have to gain +10 armor skillups to remove the debt and then continue working the skill as normal. I like item degenerations too you mentioned. but let me go one step further, when an item breaks it`s gone for good, goes poof! You`ll have to hunt ore to craft new armor because vendors won`t sell crafting mats anymore and vendor armor prices should be tripled.

These ideas coupled with yours would really liven up the game and make it 100x more realistic and fun. Once the CS is out im doin it.

you still haven't got me. this change would be an attempt to 'fix' level scaling and zoning. (I assume by zoning you mean areas with strong critters and areas with weaker critters)

it's hard to explain in few words... let's say we have a scale of power going from 1 to 10 in the game. where 1 is where the player starts off and where the weakest enemies are. 10 would be where the player is at the highest level reachable in the game.

what I propose is cutting the power scale from, say, 1-3 with the player able to reach something like 3.5 by the end of the game. We have various versions of the same enemies on different scales already, so we can use them to zone. ie Dungeon A is predominantly populated by Draugr, Dungeon B is full of Resless Draugr however and they hard to beat early on until skills have been honed.

Numbers and all that are only examples used to bring the point across.

In short, the scales are very far apart in this game so it's hard to balance things and easy for things to become under or overpowered.

I just can't see the purposes of many changes. Like removing leveling altogether... having character progression through stats is such a powerful motivator and rewarding system for many gamers. It is so powerful that even FPS games are now implementing some sort of persistent level system. Removing leveling and having huge restriction over character progression would only work if the action part of the gameplay is superb, like a fighting game where fiddling around with stats would detract from the focus of the game (action) or you have multiplayer balance concern. Neither of those is the case for TES series.

For removal of leveling to make sense, this game's combat system would need so much overhaul that it would no longer be recognizable. With current super-simple-watered-down combat, removing leveling would either make combats snorefest (too easy) or just tedious (repeat tedious thing like bash and quick swing x 20 times only to die in one hit if you fail to block).

Realism aspect wise where to begin... first, let's remove magics, dragons and monsters because there is no realistic ways of interacting with such creatures and features. Sorry if you think you can have fun and realistic combat against 10 tons of flying beast equipped with flamethrower. Basically you have a carnivore with size of an elephant, can fly with agility like a small bird, and has military grade flame thrower. If it was anything near real, you would be cooked alive under your armor in like 2 seconds, or it would just wiggle around you and hit you with any part of its body for bone shattering force. Don't even mention armor because even with modern technology you can't survive being trampled on by an elephant in an armor, and even if armor was to hold, the soft bone and tissue inside won't, aka reasons why cars are design to collapse on impact.

Again, there is character progression. Skills and perks are still there. there just isn't a "level".

But you're still much more powerful with one-hand 100 and armour 100 than a player with one-hand 15

No problem worth those ideas. Though losing potions is probably overkill I feel, especially for a mage. Possibly make them more expensive or rarer though. I've got no problem with certain quick mechanics as long as they make sense within the game world

edit: And Gaizo that is the kind of over the top response that stops constructive thinking. Realism within the game world is completely different from actual realism. We're looking for the former as it would enrich the role playing experience. I personally would like some of the more hardcoe changes (like losing items and gear) but it would probably make the game unplayable to most.

On the hardcoe aspects, Dark Souls actually does a lot of that in one form or another. I feel they get the right balance between hardcoe realism and being an 'enjoyable' experience. It does piss me off very often but for the most part it only punishes you when you deserve it for not respecting enemies

I'm gonna stop you there, NO.

Or we could just turn it into an action adventure game.