Being a long-time Elder scrolls player, I really think that removing some of the attributes is a bad idea. It's sure going to give me less control over my character's strength, for example. Not gonna get that feeling of "Hell yeah, strength 100, he'll beat the living daedric souls out of anyone who tries to kill him."

Not too good, Bethesda. Not enough to stop me from buying this, though.

Very true.. when i heard this i was really somewhat taken back. Attributes are imo important for a roleplay game, they define the character you play.
This "only three attributes ala magick" sounds very MMO like to me
Kinda crippled my anticipation for Skyrim....

Health will probably be tied to strength. Max out health upon level ups.

i thought attribs were just simplified? i hope they arent removed completely... how else can i tell myself i am genius without max intelligence

I never liked how the attributes worked in Morrowind and Oblivion. I'm glad they're making a radical change. It's both bold and risky and is rare to see in games these days.
Edit- I like the idea, but I disliked the leveling system.

By pointing points into Magicka. Attributes have been folded into perks and the three main stats, health/magicka/stamina.

I am in favor of the new system. I didn't really like the attributes in Morrowind and Oblivion, and glad that they are making their own way to solve it

We'll have to wait and see. I play swordsman/thief type characters - fast and agile with medium strength. They survive by stealth and, to some degree, being able too run away when things are not good. Will I be able to do that? Maybe - don't know yet.

I was very good with the idea of a few less skills and more perks. Done right the perks would give much greater differentiation than the skills alone. Now there are no attributes and presumably differentiation will be handled by variations in health/stamina/magika. That is not nearly enough to make up for losing attributes. Maybe perks are going to fill the gap here too?

If so, then here is my problem (and it was pointed out by someone else long ago). By defining attributes I immediately created a character with a certain personality. Not completely filled out but on a certain path. What will I get when I create a character in Skyrim? Will he be unique from the start or will every character start as a generic template to be built from scratch?

There are ways to manage it. If it is all in the perks then an interesting character can be generated by selecting multiple perks on creation. Maybe something else that I no one here is aware of.

And if I don't like it, well, I play on a PC and I canmod the snot out of it .

I'll wait to see the game itself before I formulate my opinion, but I must say I don't know If I like the idea.

Sure they weren't really needed, but I'll miss them for roleplay reasons.

forgiven if gamplay is better :mohawk:

Indeed.

I'm pretty sure damage and such will be perk-related.

Although yeah, it does feel nice to have 100 in attributes. A feeling of accomplishment that you're worth.

But, I feel that we'll get that feeling of accomplishment back by the star-constellation system that is related to our skills and perks now. That sounds awesome and really neat. I imagine it will be a much greater feeling of accomplishment than numbers would be.

I, too, am hoping for being able to select a few perks at the start, but even if not, you will be gaining levels much faster than in both Fallout and Oblivion. While characters may start the same , within an hour or two they will become very different. And by the end of the game, with all of the possibilities of Health/Magicka/Stamina and only being able to have about 50 of the 280ish perks, it will be very unlikely that two characters will be remotely the same.

Not a new topic, but I'll bite...

The more I think about the old attributes, the more I see the wisdom in change. The new system seems pretty solid to me... even from the scraps of information available. I ended up grinding too much with my characters last time around to maximize my attributes. And, in the end, my characters all ended up maxed out at the same level anyway. I think the elimination of attributes and the addition of the perk system will lead to much more varied and interesting end-game results.

I still want to see how the Greater Powers that affected attributes (i.e. Adrenaline Rush) take shape, though.

The system had to change sooner or later. Whether it'll be good or not, though, we'll have to wait and see. Perhaps it will be better, perhaps it'll be worse.

I am with this guy right here, all we can do now is speculate and hope for the best. Whether or not it is good will be determine the moment we put the game in :toughninja:

things to understand guys. perks have perty pictures

also, this isnt exactly groundbreaking - dragon age 2 does somethin similar though it does use simplified attributes with basically 3 main bars (which in this case are just attributes).

Dragon Age II and Skyrim are different. However, they do share the RPG genre. I see your point that it isn't new, though.

Also, we still have skills that define our characters that attributes doubles up on. Instead of personality and speechcraft, we only have speechcraft. That said, npcs will no longer have personality either, so communications will be defined by the skill only. Speed works the same way.

yeah it isn't really new/original, but I think that it will make everything better. I care more about improvement than originality, but sometimes they go hand and hand :celebration:

So many attributes were just unnecessary. They were just a bunch of extra, cluttered numbers to keep track of. Keeping things simplified is the key.

One example, D&D versus GURPS. In D&D, there's HP, MP, Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, and your many skills.
Intelligence is unnecessary because your skills are a true measure of your knowledge. Charisma is unnecessary because there are skills that make it redundant; it's also not a good universal attribute. Constitution is really just HP-part-2.

In GURPS (with one redundancy removed), there's HP, MP, Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom, and skills. Much simpler.


We're not losing anything, the extra nonsense is just being shaved off, leaving a clean, pure set of truer attributes.

Remember, Skyrim has been in development way before that quick cash in Dragon Age 2.

I always liked how skills also depended a little bit on attributes. After all, your personality goes a long way towards making people like you. As well as your skill with words. This'll be interesting to see when the game's out.

Good point, I want people to trust my assassin :spotted owl: