From the GI article:



Do we know exactly what this means? In what way, precisely, will higher skills contribute more towards leveling?

Here are some options I've considered:

1. The higher the skill value, the easier it is to increase that skill, which allows you to level up faster. Problem: not quite sure how this would work. It seems like this would require that the higher the value in a skill, the more quickly you can increase that skill. This is the opposite to previous games, where the higher a skill gets, the more you need to use that skill to increase it. Also, Todd's quote - but perhaps I'm reading into it a little too much - suggests that it's not that higher skills can be increased more quickly, but rather that given that you've increased a skill the higher the value of that skill you've increased, the more it contributes to leveling.

2. The higher the skill values you've increased, the fewer the number of skill increases you need to make to level up. Problem: you might reach the soft level cap of 50 too quickly if you specialise too much; but it seems like the devs want to encourage specialisation, not punish you for it.

3. The game effectively treats certain skills as your major skills, and it's only by increasing those that you level up. However, as your skills change throughout the game, so too does the skills the game treats as your major skills. Problem: how to start off - maybe your pseudo-major skills are those that you get a racial bonus in? Also: the quote from Todd seems to suggest that your lower skills (the one at level 11) can still contribute to leveling up.

4. The higher the skill values you've increased, the greater your health, magicka, and stamina will increase at level-up. Problem: ???

So I'm inclined to think something like 4 is the way it will go, just because I can't think of any glaring problems with it. And 4 is obviously an interesting change from previous systems. But maybe I've missed another plausible option?

EDIT:

Ok, so it seems like a few people haven't read through the first ten posts or so, and are now just posting the same thing over and over, so I'll just amend this post to summarise the points made. I don't like to do this, because I'd prefer to leave the credit to the people who pointed out where my thinking had gone wrong, but hopefully they don't mind too much (just read the first ten posts or so to see how the discussion unfolded).

Anyway, the consensus is that option 2 is the way the leveling system will work. If you think of leveling up as needing a certain amount of points, then increasing higher skills will give you more points towards that level up. As for the problem of leveling up too fast: this need not be a problem. I thought it might be a problem because you might hit the soft cap of level 50 very quickly, with only having high values in a couple of skills, but once you hit 50 it takes a lot longer to level up. But I was thinking that the soft level cap would work by just making it so that it took a lot longer to increase your skills, and so of course, given that it takes a certain number of skill increases to level up, it will also take a lot longer to level up. So the problem with leveling up too fast on this system would be that you'd get punished for specialising, because you'd find it too hard to level up other skills.

But of course, there's another way to do this: once you hit 50, don't change the rate at which you can increase your skills, but rather change the contribution they make to level up. So, for example, suppose that before level 50, increasing a skill from 90 to 91 contributes 30% to level up. But, once you hit level 50, increasing a skill from 95 to 96 contributes 1% to level up (these might be bad numbers, but it's just illustration).

I think you're confusing yourself and making it overly complex. It was clear that its basically removing the restrictions of oblivions system.

if you level up a skill with a higher level you get closer to your next level than you would if you leveled up a skill that was say only level 10. like cowboy run-with-wolves said your making it too complex.

Well, they could have just removed the distinction between major/minor skils, and just made 10 increases of any skill = level up. But that's not what's happened - there's still the bit about higher skills contributing more towards leveling up. I just want to know what it means for higher skills to "contribute more". I don't think I'm trying to make it overly complex, I'm just trying to understand how the system will work.



That sounds like my option 2. So do you think the problem I mentioned is not a problem? Or is there some way of avoiding it?

I got the impression that theres an experience system attached to your skills. So whenever you level up a skill, it would give you x amount of experience towards gaining a new level. Levelling a skill from 34 to 35 would give you more experience than levelling a skill from 14 to 15.

Most people do not like taking a long time to level up, so specializing would make you level faster, which is a good thing. If you don't specialize, you level slower, which makes you need to grind, which isn't fun. Of course, it would be a problem if you level too fast, but we don't yet know enough to tell if this will be a problem.

The new system in Skyrim will be an improvement over previous systems as it will be more organic and remove an unnecessary list from the game. Let me give you an example - You make a character that you intend to be a mage-type character so you start flinging fireballs and summoning skeletons, A few hours later your destruction is at 30 and your one handed weapons is still at 10. you need 100 xp to level up. A 1 point rise in your destruction skill would contribute to your character level by 30 xp. A 1 point rise in one handed weapons would contribute 5 xp to your character level. Get it?

C'mon man, this is simple to understand.

If you level up a skill from 11 to 12, you will get a little closer to leveling up. If you increase a skill from 34 to 35, you get even closer to leveling up. The higher the skill, the harder it is to increase, and therefore the closer you get to the next level.

There is no "Major Skills" anymore, all contribute to your level the same. You just gain more, the higher your skill is.

Yeah, I get that that's one way it could work - that seems to me to be pretty much what I was getting at in option 2 in the OP. But thanks for making the idea more concrete. But what I'm a little worried about with that option is that you might end up leveling up too fast if you specialise too much, and this seems to be in tension with the goal of encouraging specialisation, rather than punishing it. But see below for a bit more on this...



I guess here's why I think leveling too fast might be a problem (and also how I think the problem can be avoided). So suppose you focus on one or two skills pretty much exclusively. As those skills increase, the amount of times you need to increase them to level up decreases. So you might hit the soft cap of level 50 very quickly, with only having high values in a couple of skills. Now here's why I thought that would be a problem: once you hit 50 it takes a lot longer to level up. But how can the game make it harder to level up? Well, I was thinking that it would just make it so that it took a lot longer to increase your skills, and so of course, given that it takes a certain number of skill increases to level up, it will also take a lot longer to level up. So the problem with leveling up too fast on this system would be that you'd get punished for specialising, because you'd find it too hard to level up other skills.

But of course, there's another way to do this: once you hit 50, don't change the rate at which you can increase your skills, but rather change the contribution they make to level up. So, for example, suppose that before level 50, increasing a skill from 90 to 91 contributes 30% to level up. But, once you hit level 50, increasing a skill from 95 to 96 contributes 1% to level up (these might be bad numbers, but it's just illustration).

Precisely. Not to mention, if you focused exclusively on one or two skills to reach level 50, only those skills will be raised. All your other skills will be [NUMMIT].

Deleted.

Great. I think I just had a blindspot for seeing how that way could work - so thanks guys/girls for sorting me out.

But I do still wonder about the option I initially thought would be the way to go (where leveling up using higher skills gives you greater health, magicka, stamina increases at level up). The difference between the two ways, I think, is that the way we've been discussing encourages specialisation by increasing the rate of level up; the other way encourages specialisation by increasing the benefits of level up.... But maybe if you encourage specialisation by increasing the benefits of leveling up, then you'll create an incentive for too much specialisation???

Raising a skill from 34 to 35 takes more time, and experience to do.
Rather than levelling 11-12

I think what they are saying, is that althought it is still generally based on skill levelling, they greatly implemented exp levelling aswell

I see the problem with this also, but I'm just going to wait until they reveal more of how the leveling system works.

er, what?

kay let's say I'm level 4 with a destruction skill of level 23
if I raise my destruction skill to 24 it will contribute more to getting me to level 5 then if it were going from 10 - 11

it just means the less skills you work on, the quicker you'll level up

Skills = XP
Higher Skills = More XP

That's how I interpret their description (vague though it is so far) of the leveling system this time around. As we increase a skill, it will contribute to our overall level (with the overall level being what contributes to our health, stamina, and magicka if there aren't any attributes this game, which people have speculated may be the case.) The higher the skill level, the more it contributes to our overall level. And once our overall level is 50, it will become increasingly difficult to raise our overall level. Getting to 51 will be harder than 49 - 50, and 51 to 52 will be even harder than that.

The consequence of this is that, if you haven't specialized, once you hit level 50 it's going to be much harder for you to raise your overall level than for someone who has, because all of your skills will be lower level. Those who specialize, while still taking longer to level after hitting 50, will have an easier time of it because they will have more high level skills. That's what I suspect will happen. We'll have to wait and see to be certain, of course.

I get it now. I thought it might be a problem because someone who has their skills spread out will have more skill overall, but that may also not be as effective.

This would be a great leveling system:

You role play as you feel right. No need to sketch a life style road-map before you start.

The attribute mini-maxing is out, and you don't have to think about maximizing those three attributes in level up sessions..

You do not select major skills at the start to define a pattern for your growth, but use them as you like and in the process become more experienced in the skills that you use.

As you become more experienced in skills, you can acquire perks for them that enhance their usability. The perks of your choice.

As you advance in your skills, you gradually advance in your character level, and in the level-up sessions you can choose a skill perk as you like and some other characteristics as well.

The more your character grows in levels, the harder it would become to grow further, i.e. the more character experience you have to gain, so the more skill levels you have to acquire.

When you advance the more advanced skills, you gain more character experience, so as your character grows, gradually it would become more important to specialize with the more advanced skills, if you want to advance in character levels, and gain new perks and health and so on...

So, in the start of the game, you can experience with different skills, but the more you advance your character, the more important it becomes to specialize in a few choice skills.

So in RL equivalent words, when you are young, you can change your life style easily, but as you become older, you'd better stick to the life style that you have grown into, if you want to keep growing steadily, or else you would start to slow down quite a bit.

And hopefully if the world is not level scaled at all, and different quest stages are placed at areas with different level of difficulty and the later stages of the quests are in more difficult areas, then gaining levels would become important in the later stages of the game, so the more specialized characters could finish the game sooner than the "Jack of all the trade" types.

Edit: Corrections.

You determine which skills are major or minor yourself, by using certain skills more than others. In Oblivion only your major skills contributed to your level ups! This is system is better, it rewards you for everything you do! It just rewards you more for specializing.

I like it.

Yeah at first I felt the typical knee-jerk "dumbing down" reaction welling up within me. But then upon further thought I realized that this is - in my opinion at least - actually a very fair system.

Everything you do is rewarded and contributes to your character advancement. There are no limitations on what skills you can level up. But specialization makes it easier to become higher level because, to put it in roleplay terms, your life has been focused and determined. Being a jack of all trades spreads your focus out, so you end up lower level. You can eventually catch up, but it will take longer and be harder.

Initially I lamented the possible elimination of attributes (if they're gone,) but then I realized that we aren't losing anything functionally speaking. From a conceptual point of view, it may make sense to have attributes that support skills, because it makes conceptual sense that strength lets you swing your sword harder. But from a gameplay point of view, raising your long blade skill feels like it should make you do more damage. It did, but you also had to raise your strength to do optimal damage. That was more complex and some would say better, but to me it doesn't really take anything away from my experience to simply worry about raising the skill rather than an associated attribute.

The only thing I might dislike about it is that magicka wouldn't be intelligence-based anymore if there are no attributes, so everyone at level ten would have the same amount of magicka regardless of their skills. But then I realized, they can rectify that with skill perks. If you focus on magic skills, leveling them can grant you magicka modifiers as perks. So you can still have someone weaker in magic and with less magicka than another.

At the end of the day, our characters will still be differentiated enough (at least it sounds like they should be,) we can still choose which skills to focus on, and we are still encouraged to specialize by receiving - effectively at least - a penalty for spreading our focus too thin. It's basically achieving the same things that attributes and classes did without having to include them. Depending on how you look at it, one could say that it's a more elegant solution.

Agreed. I think this has been discussed quite a bit elsewhere, but since you bring it up... The point about "achieving the same things that attributes and classes did" is the important one, I think. A lot of people seem to think that because those are out (well, assuming attributes are out) then we're going to also miss out on what those things were designed to do. But there's more than one way to skin a cat, and it sounds like BGS have found just such an interesting and elegant alternative.

Furthermore, just to excessively blow my own horn, I think another motivation behind the revamped skills + perks system is Radiant Story - having the content adapt to your character history. I think splitting up character customisation into skills + perks is a natural way of handling the twin demands of character differentiation, and differences in how the game adapts to your character's abilities. (I wrote a far too long post about it http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1156464-a-little-rant-on-18-skills/page__view__findpost__p__17040117... Probably something I should revisit, because I don't think I've gotten to the bottom of it yet.)

Don't forget that at each level up, you get to chose between an HP, Magicka or Stamina bonus.

I'd suggest from the way it was worded that it will work something like:

Level % = ( A divided by B ), where A is the current skill points in your recently increased skill and B is your total skill points across all skills.

In this way, increasing a skill from 19 to 20 would contribute 10% of a level when your total skill points are at 200 (early levels) or 2% of a level when you are at 1000 total skill points (around level 30ish I would assume, given 18 skills x 100 possible skill points ).

Now obviously this is not the specific formula Bethesda will use, they will tweak it and adjust it so the leveling curve works how they want it to, but the principle behind it is pretty straight forward.

The way I imagine it is more or less your option 2. The game could have something like an internal "counter", and how much a skill would contribute could depend on the value (or the value range) of the skill. Doesn't have to be complex, just a simple modifier, for example if a skill is 0-25 it would have a multiplier of 1, a skill in the ranges of 25-50 a modifier of two etc. Then the game would just add the various skill increased, with their multipliers, and determine wether you've leveled up yet or not - pretty much what your option 2 implies.

How "early" you would hit the cap would depend on the actual values of the modifiers for the various skills or skill ranges. It depends on whether the devs want to encourage specialising or not, and to what extent. They probably want to make the player choose between a specalised character aproach or an equaly viable generalist, since in Morrowind and Oblivion your character could eventually do everything and there wasn't much point to specialising. This system can do both, it all depends on the values of the modifiers and how the actual outcome is computed. This is even a simplistic example, it could be more sophisticated obviously.