I don't mind at all. I like gaining levels fast, at least in the beginning - which is what Todd Howard said. Levelling will slow down as you get higher, which is natural. I think it's a good thing.

Faster to get started and fast to get perk into your arsenal, but maybe after the 10 first levels you'd start to slow down more.

I think it's a good thing, because by the time I'm level 25 I have already done almost everything..

I hope your choices renders quests unavailable or failed so that at least you have a motivation to restart with another character, instead of redoing it all with every character you make.

All you'll get on a level-up this time around is a few points to your choice of Health, Magicka or Stamina with the addition of one perk out of a choice of 280. That's it :mellow: . It only makes sense to speed things up if they wish to keep the pace from previous games.
On a seperate note, it only makes sense that the leveling of skills will be slower this time, since it isn't a mandatory 10 skills to level-up anymore.

Here's my take on leveling:

It should be fun. It should be based on the game dynamics, most of which we can't know for Skyrim yet, and not based on some people's arbitrary idea that it should be fast or slow just for the sake of being fast or slow. I say we give them a chance to show us their new system before we say "fast" is too fast or slow is better. It's like when I teach English and we're playing 20 Questions and my students ask "Is [the item in question] big?"

And I reply "Big? What does that mean to you? As big as the moon? Or as big as a house? Or as big as a television?" What does Todd Howard's "faster leveling" mean to anyone at this point? Faster than what? Faster than Oblivion's? Or faster than Skyrim's first initial test leveling system's speed? Don't make assumptions with language if you want to avoid frustration.

The main idea is that it's fun, it works in the game for which it is being implemented, and that it works well in that system. I for one enjoy leveling quickly in the beginning of the game. The reason is that I want to be able to asses how the system is going to work by having a compressed-timeline view of that system right from the start. So give me a lot of choices right at the beginning. The fact that we can't pick our class means we already have a lot fewer choices at the beginning, but for me, an RPG has always been about getting so many fun choices to have to make right from the start. So I think faster leveling (if indeed that is what he is refering to in the Podcast Interview) is their way of balancing out the lack of choices in character creation.

I for one want to be able to experience the Perk System fairly often in the beginning of my character, and I don't want to have to wait for 10-15 hours of game play to begin to understand that system and then find out it's too late, that I have to start over. So I agree with this approach. Todd apparently is becoming quite a wise game maker these days, and an even better listener.

This is also my take on it, raising skills gain you a score, call it experience points, or level points. You get more points for raising high skills than low; the level point requirements for levelling up will increase for each level as experience points do.
It’s probably still harder to raise high skills than low but I guess the level point score makes them more effective as in levelling up.
Say going from level 3 to 4 require 50 uses of skill and gives you 3 the level point, going from 30 to 31 require 250 uses but gives 30 the level point.

Not a bad system if balanced, however it has one major problem with non combat skills,
If you do a lot of alchemy and armor crafting at low level to get money, add some lock picking and pickpocket and some social skills. You will suddenly be at high level while being a novice fighter, just as if you had alchemy and lockpicking as majors in Morrowind/ oblivion and used them a lot.
The same is true for some other skills in Oblivion but in lesser degree.

Only solution I see is to let the non combat skills give you less level points, not perfect but this is probably the bomb in Skyrim gameplay.

The only solution is to not specialize on non-combat skills in a game where most of what you do is kill things. Think logically and stop trying to find holes in the system.
It's only natural that if you're a character who diddles around with potions and locks then he should get his ass kicked.

There's no need to think up overcomplicated skill point systems which in most probability wouldn't work practically. People on these forums need to stop thinking that they are smarter than the people developing the game.

This.

You don’t specialize except of perks, just using the skill is enough to run into this problem.
Loads of people got problem in Oblivion because they had alchemy as a major skill, I did the same in Morrowind.
People on this forum discovered the fortify intelligence potion exploit in Morrowind before the game was released just by listen to the released news, yes I remember the postings.

And yes lots of the predefined classes in Oblivion would seriously gimp your character if you played as they was supposed to be played, probably become unplayable for a novice player.
Same was probably true in Morrowind even if it was easier at high level.
Has always used custom classes, since Daggerfall.

They seemed to have balanced it, and come to the conclusion that you needed to lvl faster, so I'm fairly certain it wont be a problem.

Any class in Oblivion played as it was "meant to be" would end up underpowered because minor skills contribute twice as much to attribute growth than major skills. Some standard classes in Oblivion were even worse as a result that all the skills governing an important attribute were picked as major so this specific attibute growth was gimped to begin with with no way to fix it.

Precisely. The Oblivion system demanded 5/5/5 levelling, you always had to watch whish skills had risen to get that +5 strength or whatever, demanding going out and letting mudcrabs hit you,or casting 600 minor heal spells. Seems this system will let us get on with whatever we want, and actually reward us for gaining a level.

Exactly the reason they are implementing the new system. I don't see how there's anything to whine about.

I suppose that some provision needs to be made for those players who just want to rush right out and fight dragons, while not making the game mindless and boring for those who want to enjoy the satisfaction of building their character up from nearly nothing. Compared to the original FO, the Supermutants in FO3 were relative pushovers, especially at low levels, but actually became MORE difficult to fight as the game went on....and this is supposed to be based on what Bethesda learned fom OB. If that's any indication of what Dragons will be like in TES V, just so some players can run right out and hack them up as "cannon fodder" at Level 2 or 3, then I'm going to be extremely unhappy. That's about 1 step shy of a big red "I WIN" button.

One thing that would help enormously would be to make the preset classes less "pathetic". If the presets are fairly optimized for combat, magic, stealth, or whatever their role is supposed to be, new players can jump right in with a "decent" character. Obviously, the system needs to be fixed so that Majors make sense to take as Majors, etc. Most of those who want to RP are probably going to build a custom character to suit their "idea" anyway.

I don't mind leveling fast in the beginning, but I hope it slows down when you're in higher levels.

And too much overpowered at the end....

What a balance.
I hope there s a open way for modder to scrap those not so smart perks and fallback to reason.

That is the base of any RPG with skill and attributes and lvl up.
Bethesda screw it up changing it and now are finishing the screw up the easy way: PERKS
Instead of doing it the right way, because right way demand ressources and above all smart people. Perk only demand a bunch of people, any people.

None of what you just mentioned will be in the game.

You increase whichever skills you want until you level up then select a perk for whatever skill you want. Increasing higher skills will make you level up faster providing health/magicka/stamina bonuses, ability to further specialize in said skill.

I'm hoping that we will only be able to pick a perk from the most contributing skill for each level up. This way leveling up one-handed skill to gain a level won't allow you to pick an alchemy perk.

I'm quite sure that I read/heard somewhere that you can pick any perk you want. If it were like you described it could be a source for frustration. Like at one point you would start worrying about using one skill too much because you want a perk for another skill. It's just not practical.



I sure hope that one day Bethesda will be experienced enough to hire someone of your wisdom and intelligence.

You have the ability to foresee what a game will play like while it hasn't even been finished yet. Your deductive reasoning abilities are truly the envy of people surrounding you.

What are you talking about?

Being you a "smart person", of course. Because obviously, it's a matter of intelligence to cast 600 minor heal spells. I loved Oblivion. But the levelling system was like... crap, having to micromanage everything. With perks you don't have to worry to be able to have the 5/5/5. I would say it's a good thing...

I'm fairly certain Todd mention it's a cosmetic change to leveling, not a change to the amount of power you gain in the game. Just because you're hitting level 25 sooner in Skyrim does not mean it's the same as previous games. The only thing you gain is the ability to unlock more perks sooner which is required because certain skills you gain from the beginning of the other games must be obtained in this method this time.

This is an interesting system if you remove the perks which imo doesn t belong to TES, arent needed, and are one more step toward Diablo first person, and we already have wow.