I won't rehash the entire debate on demand, sorry. We could do it til death & still be on opposite ends of the arguement.
Removing substance & adding flash doesn't equal better, imho.

I hate to double-post, but I'm going to try a quick stab at this, related to my previous post.

Attributes and skills are building blocks. Perks are modifiers. Perks are potentially a great addition to the game (if we don't end up overpowered by level 10), but they can't and don't replace attributes. If you're just talking about hiding attributes, then you're right, it's a matter of taste. But some people like to see the progress and state of their character, and in that sense, hiding attributes is the same as hiding the character portrait, hiding skills. Actually, hiding attributes is worse in terms of gameplay than hiding the portrait. I wonder how many people would get upset by removing the character portrait?

If you think attributes really are removed rather than hidden: try calculating walking/running speed, jump height/distance or any physical interaction with the world without attributes, and you either get very simplistic and arbitrary numbers (clumsy game behavior) or a fragile and inflexible system. Do you think health will provide the base variable for running speed, jumping distance, damage resistance, stagger, dodge, falling down, etc? Or will that be stamina? How are health and stamina being calculated? Dice rolls? Heavy Armor skill? Just sayin'

EDIT: The last paragraph might come off exasperated, but it's aimed at BGS, not any forumites.

Why would a poorly developed system for governing attributes be worse than no system for governing attributes?

Perfection. Which Skyrim will nearly achieve IMO :rock:

I really wish we could just see the hour long demo shown to the press in Utah & other places.

With emphasis on nearly, I presume... :whistling:

I said why, would you care to read? The system beat you over the head with it's presence, svcking many players out of the experience.

Why would BGS work to put something "meaningless" like wood chopping in the game? :teehee:

Good question. Pretend you are a game designer for a second. Use your noodle and think of a reason. Can't come up with one? Maybe Illusion should be link to another attribute? Maybe it should be linked to multiple attributes?

The only reason we could debate over this til death and still disagree is because you come with nothing new to the table while sticking hard to your opinion about the matter. Good thing that endless and pointless depate won't matter, Skyrim will be great and bethesda can and has always (mostly) done great games.

Depends on how many features are cut without being replaced by something.

If you still think this game is being dumbed down, then you are clueless.

You said why you did not like the design. You did not explain why there should be nothing at all as opposed to something workable that still allowed for complex character development and skill/stat interaction.

Depends on how many features are cut without being replaced by something.

I am sure it will have the most complex linear character development that money can buy.

This too, I suppose. At the moment the game sounds far more complex than enything Bethesda has previously done, but the end product will tell its own story. Oblivion was looking to be very complex during development but a lot of features got the boot before release.

None the less, I have great confidence in this game.

Or, perhaps, a lower level character would need to gain in strength and/endurance with activities like chopping wood before they quest out into the wilds and tangle with the beasts?

I am sure it will have the most complex linear character development that money can buy.

Cute.

We will only know once we get the game...or see the size of the strat guide. It could be the deepest TES since Daggerfall, but how much stuff did we lose from Dagger to Morrow, or from Morrow to Oblivion that we knew about before the game(s) were released?

We will only know once we get the game...or see the size of the strat guide. It could be the deepest TES since Daggerfall, but how much stuff did we lose from Dagger to Morrow, or from Morrow to Oblivion that we knew about before the game(s) were released?

inorite? It's like, the system in Morrowind didn't all end at the same place, and everyone, aside from Race and Birthsign, didn't wind up being with all attributes at 100 and all skills at 100. That's totally less linear than a finite amount of specialization slots available to the player on a skill-based perk tree.

Oh right, that would go over well with those people who just want to get in there and start bashing skulls. The whole point of these games is allowing people to play them the way they want to, not forcing them into a particular path against their will.

How I see the Bethesda logic flow is. We have Strength, and Strength influences your weapon damage (Let's keep it simple for now), and then you have Two-Handed Skill, which increases your Weapon damage with Two-handed weapons. Why do you need Strength? The Attribute in this case just created more points, rather than a tangible difference. You're going from 1,2,3,4,5... to 1,5,10,15.

A better example would be Intelligence. You cast Conjuration and Mysticism, plus brew potions, to increase that attribute. Yet all it does is increase your Magicka pool. So why not have those skills increase your Magicka pool directly and eliminate that middle stage altogether? There really is no need to have Intelligence in the game, it's only adds a meaningless layer of pseudo-complexity.

That's not a skill, it's a role-playing element. Big difference.

The problem is that there are so many instances of that, there would need to be a major overhaul anyway in order to properly balance everything out.

And no doubt they considered it and realized that it just wouldn't be worth the bother.