Whenever it comes to the speed of leveling, we must consider not just how fast you level, but also how high a level you can get to as well. Whatever qualifies as "too fast" in leveling is reletive to the maximum level in the game. In Fallout 3, I found the leveling speed too fast, same for New Vegas, but in these games, the level cap was 20 (Before Broken Steel), and thirty, respectively, had the level cap been 40 or 50, I might not have minded the leveling speed. It has been stated that in Skyrim, while there's no hard level cap, around level 50 is where most characters will eventually get, whereas in past Elder Scrolls games, the 20s were already a fairly high level, it's about around that point where the game starts to become painfully easy in Morrowind, give or take a few levels depending on how powerful your character is, and in Oblivion, it's around that time that the strongest types of enemies and items start to spawn. It was very rare that I'd keep playing the same character long enough to get up into the 30s, so we're talking about a game where, on average, characters are probably going to finish at a higher level than past Elder Scrolls games, considering this, I think faster leveling is reasonable. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean I'll like the leveling rate in Skyrim, I'll have to play the game to see, but the idea of faster leveling in itself doesn't bother me for this game. In the end, what exactly the ideal leveling rate for any game is depends on how the game is balanced.
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.
And this is also a problem with the way leveling worked in past Elder Scrolls games too. Players were often encouraged to practice or train skills their characters had no use for, in order to get higher multipliers for attributes, of course it wasn't strictly necessary to do that, but not doing so would often create underpowered characters, and in any case, if your gameplay mechanics in a role-playing game actively encourage players to NOT role-play, then it probably means you're doing something wrong. Now, you can argue as much as you want that role-playing requires setting limits for your character, and I won't disagree, but a game that calls itself a role-playing game should try to support such a playstyle where feasible, where it simply can't do so, it should at least not discourage it.
The entire point of letting players choose perks, or attributes, for that matter, upon leveling up, is to allow players to develop their character the way they want, regardless of how they were playing before. Giving players a choice and then limiting their choices when they actually get to the point where they can make them is counter intuitive, and actually encourages players to not role-play because they would be forced to use whatever skill the perk they want to pick belongs to, instead of using whatever skill makes the most sense for their character.
I see your point. Maybe we can meet in the middle and at least have perks be skill level based.
I'd imagine that's already he case considering that perks sort of act like "sub skills" allowing you to specialize further under certain skills, and it makes sense to me. Because I'd have no reason to want to specialize in say, maces if I wasn't planning on focusing on one handed weapons, and that's different from limiting what perks a player can choose based on the skills used in that level as if a perk requires, say, at least level 25 in one handed, then you just need to get it that high, how or when doesn't matter, so players wouldn't feel pressured to increase one handed so many times in this level so they can get that perk the next level, they'd just need to already have a certain level of skill in one handed.
» Sat Feb 19, 2011 8:04 am 
