After seeing those quotes... Where did "No more perks after level 50" come from?

I think with the new perk system they designed themselves into an early level-fest, because if you don't gain a few levels in quick succession you're not gonna be able to define your character's playstyle well (as opposed to the classic system where you pick a class and are immediately better at the relevant skills). It shouldn't be a problem as long as, like Todd said, it slows down and they stretch it out at higher levels. However I would appreciate a mechanic that lets us level more slowly should we wish to.

I prefer slower leveling, but I look forward to seeing how it works out in Skyrim.
For us PC players it will be modded. Probably both ways, faster and slower

I think, in this context, "fast" or "slow" leveling are just relative terms - we can really only talk about leveling being fast/slow relative to the game's content.

What would be a problem is if your character leveled up to high levels very quickly, before you'd experienced most of the game. Then the rest of the game wouldn't be as challenging and rewarding.

But, based on what Todd said in the podcast, it sounds like Bethesda are aware of the need to balance out the rate of leveling with the amount of content.

Game is set to level up to level 50, after this it's sort of soft level cap who makes you level slowly, you also slow down levelling speed as you level up.
Numbers of levels does not matter really.

One concern I have is that it appears all skills are primary now in the way that it looks like raising any skills have you level up, this could easy punish you for using non combat skills a lot. A Morrowind or Oblivion character with speechcraft, alchemy, security and lockpicking as primaries would get a hard time later in the game
As I also assume perks are skill dependent like in Fallout 3, you can not take sword mastery with 15 in swords this will cause more problems.

Well, one could hope that characters good at things other than combat will also have ways to complete quests.... But we really haven't heard too much about Speechcraft and Security and so on....

Slower leveling is inherent in the system, simply be a jack of all trades.

I'll have to wait and see how perks are handled, but if it was identical to Oblivion I'd say they were crazy to make it faster.


I modded it for epic length between levelling.

Honestly, I could care less about the speed of leveling...I am just going to play and be happy with it...until a mod like LEVEL SLOW gets made...which I will INSTADL and play at the EPIC level...so now it takes 5x as long to go up a level.

Your an idiot if you think "DIS GAYM IS GONA BE OBLIVION WIT FASTA LEVELIN!11!!"

they are taking a whole different approach, and if you had bothered to read or listen to the info, the game time is still more or less the same.

EDIT: also, the faster leveling is to increase the acquisition of perks, which will be the main way of improving and customising your character to your play style.
it isnt there to rob you of a good game experience.

We will all probably do the same, however i just hope the vanilla leveling system doesn't make you a god after just 20 hours playtime. Unfortunately even a mod that adjusts XP gained or needed for level up can only counter this so much. The reason being is that if the game is designed to be fast then you will need to do every [censored] quest in the game to achieve high level with a level mod. Leaving nothing to do once you are a high level.

They are probably letting you level up slightly faster in the beginning to make up for the lack of character creation so you can choose a lot of perks.

The exact quotes were:



So while we level faster, there are more levels. And the implication of 200 hours of content would seem to suggest we don't need to worry about stretching the gameplay out.

The whole point is that it doesn't do that. They just structure the benefits of levelling around the rate at which they want you to level. Howard said they designed the game as a 1-50 game, not a 1-30 game. The levelling is more frequent, but it doesn't make you more powerful than in previous games. They design the system so it balances...

I could do with some convincing about that...

The higher the skill is, the longer it takes to increase. But, the higher a skill is, the more it contributes to leveling up when you increase it.

A specialised character will have high skills that, when increased, contribute more to leveling up; but those skills will take longer to increase. A jack of all trades will have low skills that are faster to increase; but more of them are needed to level up. It's not clear to me that the rate of leveling up will be slower for the second type of character, because those two aspects which go into leveling up might balance each other out.

My impression of higher skills -> count more to leveling up was that it's designed to promote specialisation; and it's also not clear to me that a side-effect of the system is that specialised characters will level up faster. It's just that specialised characters will be stronger than generalist-type characters, where both have leveled up the same number of times.

I think you are assuming a level grants the same power as in previous games. 1-30 compared to 1-50. After all what is a level?

In fact i think we are all assuming this lol. I suppose my fear comes from the last games Beth has made all seem like they are slowly getting faster and faster.

Your level 30 character from Oblivion would most likely beat your level 30 character in Skyrim in a fight.

It may not matter so much if levels "grant the same power" as in previous games. Just make sure that there's enough challenging stuff around to do when you're level 50.

No one can beat my level 30 Character in Skyrim bliviongate:

Not even me

I prefer to have a slower leveling like OB, i also dont prefer to be real powerfull in a short time.

You only get 1 perk per level, if there are 6 perks in the tree for 1 handed swords it will take 6 (just a guess) levels to max that skill. Now 6 levels for bow, 6 levels for shield. 6 levels for alchemy, 6 levels for sneak. so many perks to choose from (280) so few levels (50+). You will need to level up to get the perks fast or slow no level no perk.

Where are you getting the 6 in a tree from?

I don't know about you guys, but the amount of time required to level should parallel the amount of content in the game. I never used any slow leveling mods on Oblivion, because by the time I maxed my main 3 or 4 skills I'd already raided a dozen dungeons, finished the MQ and several guild quest lines, and a crazy number of side quests. I usually maxed somewhere in the Shivering Isles.

There's no fun in finishing the defined content and being only level 19, and judging by Bethesda's other games, I have a feeling they get this. We should be more concerned that quick leveling is indicative of the amount of content and not worrying about the leveling speed itself.

Just a guess. There are 18 skills trees divided between melee, magic and stealth. 3x6 = 18. more likly the number of sub skills could go as high as 15 or 16.

I like this.