Speechcraft.

Honestly, with Speechcraft around, Personality is redundant.

I'm saying it seems you're bashing folks for agreeing with Todd, when, in my opinion, both options (keeping attributes or getting rid of them) were good news. I've been asking for attributes to be removed, or tied directly to skills raising (So you wouldn't raise attributes on level, in fact, there would be no level screen at all except for picking a perk when your skill got to the right level), for a long time, so this news goes directly with what I've been asking for. Keeping attributes would be okay as well, such as how I suggested, or a totally different system, or even the same one, just more tweaked.

Those are terrible "compromises". Not being able to run fast? No jumping high? Backpack durability? That's Earth, not Nirn.


theres plenty of people on here that just agree with Todd no matter what he says. I never saw or heard one person say spell creation was too complicated or too spreadsheety, until Todd said that. Now everyone says the same thing. Makes me think these people didnt even use this stuff in the first place. That's fine, but no excuse to get rid of it for the people that do get everything out of their TES.

Indeed. In Oblivion casting Invisibility all the time to sneak past boring oblivion gate guards make everyone like you. Makes sense.

attributes dont make TES the worlds and the people in those worlds make TES

So... I decide, as I play my character, that I want to jump high, for whatever random roleplay reason. Being a thinking person, I look through various perk trees or however they are set up. Ah, I see I have to work to get to a certain level first, and may have to meet some other requirements (I am guessing here, but I have played other games where the skill leveling was more figuring out how you wanted to build your character similar to what Beth is calling perks.) So I have to put some thought into what I am doing. I can't just expect to get a perk on my next level up. That's generally not how it works.

In Oblivion, if I decided that my roleplay would include a character who can jump lots and lots and maybe do a tuckand roll on landing, I would need to plan on running and jumping everywhere. :shrug: In your head you are simplifying the Perk thing, even though none of us know how it works. But you seem to have decided you will get a wall o' perks, all of which will be available to you at every level up and all of which you will somehow be able to get. Meanwhile, I am pretty sure I read that there are criteria to gain certain perks. And I would take an educated guess that you are never going to be able to have all perks outside of a mod or cheat console command.

I have said this in so many words - perspective. It's a wonderful thing. Especially with regards to game development. For a major game like this, and others I can name, I cannot and will not determine how much I will or won't like it until I personally have played it. I save my money to buy games because it's my hobby and I enjoy it. It's always a risk - I have been very disappointed sometimes (*glares at DA1) and delightfully surprised (*waves at The Witcher.) Eh. Make your own choices, but if someone is here stating "I won't buy this game because no attributes", then I have to wonder why they are here at all? Your mind is made up, isn't it?

Now I can agree with this. I'm not sure if those people ever came up with a solid reason why they didn't like spell making. Not to mention their total lack of understand of the basics of the system.

I've realized how attributes in TES games are pretty redundant.
It's a big number that modifies another big number (skills), but not directly. They modify skills so subtly that I doubt the difference is even noticeable. The only thing really mattered from them was weight, health, magicka, stamina and speed. health, stamina and magicka are now directly controlled, for speed and weight we'll probably have perks (in mercantile or sneak, or there's going to be a general group).

In other games where attributes worked, skills aren't represented by large numbers, they tend to be in as abilities, so attributes modify things more directly. Like a damage dealt by an ability would be based on strength with the skill's tier adding a bonus to it, not the other way around like in TES.
In Fallout attributes were used as a base for skills, and all skills were calculated by them, they didn't just added a small bonus to a set number. Attributes there were also more static.

So, what I'm trying to say is, nothing of value is lost.

I agree. I just said I'd play the game, I never said it would be my favorite or I'd approve of removing half of it. I was arguing against those that say removing attributes is enough for them not to play.

I'd like to point out how different each TES game is from each other. The jump from Arena to Daggerfall isn't the biggest one, but it's quite exceptional and much more noticeable for the time. The jump to Daggerfall to Morrowind was huge, but it was still identifiable as a TES game. The jump from Morrowind to Oblivion was, again, huge, not as big as Daggerfall to Morrowind but still something exceptional. And each game works as its own independent game in addition to being part of the series.

I wish people could appreciate TES games for that. Skyrim will be its own game. Grow to love it the way you have the past games.

Less metagaming and more killing and looting? I don't see the problem..

Also perhaps the more you carry the less your stamina bar is so you can't run as long if your carrying a lot :shrug:

Attributes didn't make TES. Opportunities for customization of characters made TES.

The removal of attributes represents a removal of opportunities for the customization of characters. Whether it's an acceptable or even beneficial removal of such opportunities is debatable, but the fact that it is, straightforwardly, a lessening of the opportunities for customization is undeniable.

Personally I'm okay with the attributes/skills being streamlined in favour of a more focused approach to how my character will develop. This approach sounds much more natural and organic and ultimately believable. A lot of the skills were redundant and could have done with refinement a long time ago in my opinion. Bethesda has been branding their games with the "you are what you play" mindset for ages now, but I think this is mostly true now due to the changes we're seeing in Skyrim. Things like raising my personality attribute during a level-up, or giving myself higher stat boosts picking from a list based on things I have been doing AFTER the fact, is a bit of a duality. For instance, if I'm out and about raising my speechcraft and mercantile skills.. shouldn't I naturally be getting better at dealing with people as well (ie.. personality attribute)? Luck attribute? On paper this works okay, but in-game it just seems awkward to me. Agility, speed, strength, etc.. these things should all be increasing while I'm out adventuring. If I go to the gym for a week straight and worked on biceps, I don't get to increase their size after a few weeks when I've gained enough experience to "level up" and decide to make them stronger.. they organically respond to the workout and strengthen over time. Not the greatest anology, or at least how I wrote it, but it will do. I think this can only improve the overall experience and make it more believable. "Streamlining" .. "dumbing down" .. call it what you want. I for one, am looking forward to it. Hell, I wouldn't care if there were 20 attributes to cater to, but at least if they're going to be there, make them seem more worth your time. Sometimes less is more, and I think in this case, that is exactly what we're going to see unfold.

We'll soon find out.

- Probably increased by perks. You have say 500 encumbrance at a certain moment, and one minute afterwards you find yourself having +100 encumbrance, magically.
- Probably increased by perks. When you choose the path of the warrior.
- Probably increased by perks. When you choose the path of the mage.
- Probably increased by perks. When you choose the path of the thief.

Hmm, I don't see this system very flowing.

And, in my opinion it's wrong to say perks replaced attributes. Skill system has been replaced by "Skill + Perks" system, and attributes simply got cut.

Attributes are simply basic characteristics, that define the starting character. Since attributes are gone there's no more character personalisation at the beginning, you start always with the same good for nothing character. And he/she will not have any "predisposition" to learn a certain skill rather then another. All this will be probably preferred by the majority of people, but not too much by me.

Because Todd said so? ah ok and with that I direct you to my sig.



Quite Frank Im not sure why many are so surprised, we figured this to be the case in the first onsets of information released for Skyrim 4 months ago, it was a fear and now it is fact and I can't see why people are saying.


Axing attributes/Lowering skills/and basing everything on perks which completely detach reasoning for learning a skill or gaining ability through gameplay dynamically not choosing some perk is better than

Keeping Attributes, Making them more involved in Characters, attribute gain and styles being varied among races, Skills being better with Attributes and supplementing other skills + a Perk system that supplements everything but is gained over the course of your play dynamically depending on your playstyle.



Sigh...now exactly how hard is it to come up with something like THIS when you have Hundreds of employees working on a game for 5 years, HOW?

I don't want to see some stupidity (and I ask how is this anyless spreadsheety) that is a perk saying +5 to attack damage or +1 to stamina :eek: or weapon properties that should already be native to the game and not require perks to enable them, serious mace needs a perk to ignore armor? a Mace should already do that save for heavy armored foes > the mace's attack strenght + the players strenght, but nooooo.

Slowing down time perks for arrows is a step in the right direction, but it should be something learned and uncovered, not "I press this perk" bewm I can now slow down time because I picked this perk out of nowhere.


People...people Oblivion made you keep track of your skills and the "spreadsheetyness" because LEVEL SCALING was CRAP, if you did not micromanage, in Vanilla oblivion you were F'ed and had to start over, this isnt the Case.

In my modded Oblivion I don't worry about what I should level up next? I play my damn character and their actions shape their growth, PERIOD but of course this has been utterly detached and left to Perks.

The changes in Skyrim are for the better and makes TES better, maybe to the point of Daggerfall or beyond, won't know until I play the game. Attributes don't make TES or any RPG for that matter except pen and paper RPGs.

Eh. Personally, I think the skills were the basis of the entire system. You picked "major" skills to define your "class". You leveled up via gaining skills. You gained attribute points via gaining skills.... see where I'm going with this?

Excatly Skyrim isn't a Paper and Pen RPG.

For some great entertainment, and perspective on the current doings on the board, go track down some of the things Todd said about Oblivion while it was in development.

If more people here did that, I would at least hope we'd have much less "Todd said it so it's true" going on here.

It's funny to me that so many people - people who would almost certainly see right through a toothpaste commercial or a movie trailer or a political speech - are repeating Todd's statements as if they were brought down from a mountain carved on stone tablets....

Ah well... what can you do?



The second part of this sentence points out the flaw in the first.

You have absolutely no idea if the changes are for the better or not, just as I have absolutely no idea if they're for the worse or not. All either of us have are opinions, and the "debate" on this board would (hopefully) go much better if people remembered that.

No its not, now its ruled by Scripts and Code, doesn't mean RPG elements have to die and give way to action and on the fly click a perk and reap rewards.





I hold heartedly agree, hence my Sig.

I would say that other TES games are very much like a single player D&D medium. I cant think of any other game that allows you to create and role play in a set world like TES. All of my P&P friends that dont even play video games agree. In fact I remember showing them Morrowind and that was their exact response. Although they compared it to some obscure tabletop game. But its the same deal really. If X person wants to play a certain way exclusively, then ah salute!, but keep all the variety for the rest of us.

D&D isn't the only RPG system. There are some very fine systems that don't use attributes at all and aren't either bad or bland or too simple and neither are they unsuitable for role playing.

Ah, but unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

X person, in this context, is a sugar-addled 12 year old with his allowance money burning a hole in his pocket. He doesn't want complexity or subtlety - he wants to stick the game in and get busy with killin' stuff. And if he can't just stick the game in and get busy with killin' stuff, he's going to tell all his friends that the game svcks, and they're all going to spend their allowances on some other game.

And there are many, MANY more of them than there are of us. Beth, from a pure profit perspective (which, ultimately, is what matters to them) has far more to lose by alienating them than it does by alienating us.

Would that it wasn't so, but it is.....

What are you talking about? I was saying TES has been as expansive as a tabletop RPG in some regards. Its very easy to RP in ES games like you would in a tabletop. Thats all I said.

I can't believe no one has said this.

Attributes don't make TES, Bethesda does. :tongue:

In all seriousness though, just because something has ceased to be visibly quantified does not mean it has ceased to be. Feel free to make your own parrot sketch joke there.